Quotulatiousness

February 18, 2011

How to view PDF documents natively in Chrome

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:42

Royce McDaniels provides step-by-step instructions for installing the PDF reader plug-in for the Chrome browser:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s How To segment here at The Walrus Says! Today we’re examining another useful feature of the Chrome web browser from Google, namely the ability to display Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files directly in the browser rather than via an external application like Google Docs which has been necessary before. The instructions below not only show you how to activate this feature of Chrome, but show you an interesting way to access Chrome functionality not part of the standard configuration menus! (Chrome itself is an Open Source project sponsored by Google; you can get complete information about the browser’s development at The Chromium Project. Enjoy!

I’m still (barely) sticking with Firefox as my primary browser, although it’s becoming a pain to use these days: for example, as I’m typing this line, the letters I type are appearing several seconds after I type ’em. It’s a bit like using an old 300 baud line with a small buffer. If the next major release of Firefox doesn’t fix this problem, then I’ll be switching to Chrome as my primary browser.

Ron Hickman, inventor of the ubiquitous Workmate

Filed under: Randomness, Technology, Tools — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:23

Many people have bought and used the Workmate collapsible workbench . . . 30 million or so. The inventor, Ron Hickman, Ron Hickman, died recently:

Hickman, who lived in Jersey, was 78. His design for the wood-and-steel foldable workbench and vice was rejected by several tool companies that believed the bench wouldn’t sell.

Tool company Stanley told him the device would sell in the dozens rather than hundreds, while other companies told him the design would not sell at the necessary price. It has since sold about 30 million units around the world, and 60,000 were sold in the UK last year alone.

Hickman sold the benches himself when he couldn’t find a backer through trade shows direct to professional builders. Black & Decker saw the light in 1973 and began producing them. By 1981 it had sold 10 million benches.

He came up with the design when he accidentally sawed through an expensive chair while making a wardrobe. He had been using the chair as a workbench.

His designing skill wasn’t limited to tools: he also is credited with the design of the Lotus Elan.

February 17, 2011

Building an (even better) army helmet

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:45

The US Army and USMC like the latest combat helmet even more than they liked the next-most recent improved model:

The U.S. Army and Marine Corps have found that their new Enhanced Combat Helmet (ECH) is even more bullet proof than expected. While testing the ECH, it was discovered that the machine firing metal fragments at the ECH (to represent shell and bomb fragments) could not fire fragments fast enough to penetrate. The ECH was supposed to be invulnerable to pistol bullets, and it was, but some types of metal fragments were expected to still be dangerous. So ECH was tested to see how well it could resist high-powered rifle bullets. ECH was not 100 percent invulnerable, but in most cases, it would stop anything fired from a sniper rifle. Overall, it was calculated that the ECH was 40 percent more resistant to projectiles and 70 percent stronger than the current ACH helmet.

The ECH is made of a new thermoplastic material (UHMWP, or Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene). It is lighter and stronger than the Kevlar used in the ACH and earlier PASGT and, it turned out, provided much better protection as well. The ECH will begin replacing the current ACH later this year, with 200,000 being eventually purchased. The ECH costs $600 each, twice as much as the ACH. But for troops under fire, the additional cost is well worth the additional protection.

Combat helmets, which appear to be low-tech, have been anything-but over the last three decades. Advances in the design and construction of helmets have been accelerating, especially in the last decade. For example, the current ACH (Advanced Combat Helmet) recently underwent some tweaks to make it more stable. That was required because more troops are being equipped with a flip down (over one eye) transparent computer screen. The device is close to the eye, so it looks like a laptop computer display to the soldier, and can display maps, orders, troop locations or whatever. If the helmet jumps around too much, it’s difficult for the solider to make out what’s on the display. This can be dangerous in combat.

The Pirates of Oz

Filed under: Australia, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:15

According to a recent study, piracy in Australia has become the biggest industry: one third of all Australians are accused of piracy in the last twelve months.

The study, released by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, claims that piracy sucks $A1.37bn out of the Australian economy.

Direct effects claimed by AFACT amounted to $A575m, the study claims — including $A225m attributed to “secondary piracy”, in which an individual either “views or borrows” pirated material (presumably whether or not the viewer knows the full legal status of what they’re watching).

[. . .]

The economic multiplier effects, for those willing to get past the press release, include reduced spending on recreation, clothing, housing and household goods. So, freetards, hang your heads in shame: not only were more than 6,000 jobs lost due to piracy, but the victims of your crime are now homeless, naked, hungry and bored.

February 16, 2011

Another, safer, table saw design

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:31

Table saw injuries can be quite gruesome — amputation of fingers, for example — so any new technology that might make woodworkers more safe is welcome. The first innovator in the field was the SawStop, a device that could stop the spinning blade of the saw whenever it detected human skin. Mighty impressive, but none of the major manufacturers wanted to buy the technology: it increased the cost of existing saws beyond what they thought their customers would be willing to pay. The inventor had to form a company to build his own table saws instead.

A post at the Popular Woodworking blog looks at a newer device to make table saws more safe:

Ten years ago, table saws were about to change. In 2001, you could buy a cabinet saw, such as a Delta Unisaw, a Powermatic 66 or a clone of the Unisaw made in Taiwan. Or you could get a contractor’s saw, a heavy but relatively portable table saw. Benchtop saws were not a significant part of the market, and things hadn’t changed much since the end of World War II. All the saws at the time had one thing in common: awful guards that were rarely used. Things were changing on two fronts. Underwriter’s Laboratories and the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) were looking into bringing American saw’s guard systems into the modern age, spurred in large part by a pesky woodworker from Berea, Ky., named Kelly Mehler.

Mehler was the author of “The Tablesaw Book,” and he questioned why European saws had more effective and user-friendly guards. At about the same time, Stephen Gass, an amateur woodworker and patent attorney with a doctorate in physics invented the SawStop, an imaginative and revolutionary device that could stop a spinning blade in less than a heartbeat if a flesh came in contact with it. These two ideas caught the attention of CPSC, and the long saga of what to do about the problem of table saw injuries began.

A couple weeks ago, this story was mentioned in the national media, in a brief story with scary-sounding headline in USA Today. As has happened many times in the last few years, this set off a round of emotional debate among woodworkers.

[. . .]

In the next few months the discussions and meetings between manufacturers and the CPSC will probably resume. One thing that will likely factor into this round will be alternatives to SawStop’s “flesh-detecting” technology. Last spring, the joint venture of member companies of the Power Tool Institute filed patent application 12769396. This describes an electronic detection system and a mechanism to fire an explosive trigger (similar to that used in automotive airbags) that would drop the blade below the table. An important difference to this approach is that it wouldn’t force anything into the blade, thus avoiding an expensive replacement due to an incidental firing. Also interesting is the mention of this system’s ability to tell the difference between wet wood and human flesh.

And there are several new patent applications from the SawStop inventors covering detection and deployment systems for table saws, and the possibility of using similar devices in miter saws. Will this mean new, less-expensive and less-destructive systems for table saws and other tools that will make woodworking safer, or will it mean years of waiting while the lawyers battle over intellectual property issues?

February 13, 2011

More on that horrific gender imbalance at Wikipedia

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:04

In case you didn’t think this was a totally serious situation the last time the New York Times headlined it, here’s Heather Mac Donald to alert you to the real significance of the crisis:

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller announced last week at the National Press Club that news from Egypt was crowding from his paper’s front page anything that didn’t have an urgent claim on readers’ attention. So what made the cut that day, in addition to the dispatches from Cairo and Jerusalem? An article on gender imbalance among Wikipedia contributors. Barely 13 percent of the anonymous, volunteer contributors to the free online encyclopedia are female, according to a study by the Wikimedia Foundation.

The gender imbalance among Wikipedia contributors is not even news. The Wikimedia study came out in August 2009 and was covered by the Wall Street Journal at that time. In the 17 months (which the Times rounds down to “about a year”) that this report has been searing the Times‘ consciousness, the paper has come up with exactly zero new facts to explain the contributor imbalance. Instead, the paper recycles Women’s Studies bromides about a female-hostile society, providing a striking display of contemporary feminism’s intellectual decadence.

So the New York Times thinks this problem is of such seriousness that it could compete with the drama of the Egyptian non-violent revolution on the front pages. It must be pretty dramatic then:

The Times‘ next move reveals the shameless legerdemain with which contemporary feminists and their allies preserve the conceit of a sexist society. Rather than using barrier-free Wikipedia as the benchmark for measuring discrimination in the by-invitation-only world, the Times uses the invitation-only-world as the benchmark for Wikipedia. Since we already know that the low female participation rate in gatekeepered forums is the result of bias, the low female participation rate in Wikipedia must also be the result of bias. Nowhere does the article contemplate the possibility that Wikipedia may instead reveal different innate predilections for what the Times condescendingly calls “an obsessive fact-loving realm.”

Given the challenge of identifying barriers to women in a forum open to all, it is no surprise that the people quoted in the article speak in gibberish. The Times introduces the first of its experts thus:

Wikipedia shares many characteristics with the hard-driving hacker crowd, says Joseph Reagle, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. This includes an ideology that resists any efforts to impose rules or even goals like diversity, as well as a culture that may discourage women.

No examples of such “discouragement” are provided, so let us move on to Reagle’s first quote: “It is ironic,” he tells the Times, “because I like these things — freedom, openness, egalitarian ideas — but I think to some extent they are compounding and hiding problems you might find in the real world.” This statement is nonsensical: How do “freedom, openness, and egalitarian ideas” both “compound and hide problems”? Does it now turn out that freedom and openness stand as barriers to the feminists’ sought-after equality of results between women and men?

Jay Rosen analyses the “Twitter Can’t Topple Dictators” meme

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:42

Jay Rosen has been seeing too many facile dismissals of the actual impact of Twitter and other social media tools in recent uprisings:

In other words, tools are tools, Internet schminternet. Revolutions happen when they happen. Whatever means are lying around will get used. Next question!

So these are the six signs that identify the genre, Twitter Can’t Topple Dictators. 1.) Nameless fools are staking maximalist claims. 2.) No links we can use to check the context of those claims. 3.) The masses of deluded people make an appearance so they can be ridiculed. 4.) Bizarre ideas get refuted with a straight face. 5.) Spurious historicity. 6.) The really hard questions are skirted.

If that’s the genre, what’s the appeal? Beats me. I think this is a really dumb way of conducting a debate. But I cannot deny its popularity. So here’s a guess: almost everyone who cares about such a discussion is excited about the Internet. Almost everyone is a little wary of being fooled by The Amazing and getting carried away. When we nod along with Twitter Can’t Topple Dictators we’re assuring ourselves that our excitement is contained, that we’re being realistic, mature, grown-up about it.

This feeling is fake. A real grown-up understands that the question is hard, that we need facts on the ground before we can start to answer it. Twitter brings down governments is not a serious idea about the Internet and social change. Refuting it is not a serious activity. It just feels good… for a moment.

QotD: The hardest economic question is “What comes next?”

Filed under: Economics, Quotations, Technology — Tags: — Nicholas @ 00:09

The hardest economic question is, What comes next? What, in other words, are the new sources of economic value? How can businesses grow and our standard of living rise?

Sometimes the answer is simply more of the same. Growth comes from rolling out existing goods and services to new markets, until there’s a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. This kind of progress may be hard to achieve, but you at least start with a clear notion of what it would look like.

That’s why catch-up economies like China today or South Korea in the past can grow so fast. Their businesses don’t have to figure out what to make or sell. They know what’s possible by looking abroad, and have a reasonable idea of what consumers, local or international, want to buy. Refrigerators and air conditioning are popular; so are shampoo and disposable diapers.

At the economic frontier, the hardest question gets much harder. You no longer have a clear vision of the future. You know neither what’s possible nor what people want. You can only guess. Starbucks or FedEx may sound obvious in retrospect, but they were once crazy ideas.

Virginia Postrel, “Would Bogie Wear Gore-Tex?: The next big thing often consists of lots of little things”, Wall Street Journal, 2011-02-12

February 12, 2011

Deeper implications of the rise of “3D printing”

Filed under: Economics, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:49

One of the most interesting things happening in the manufacturing world is the rise of a technology that may well make huge swathes of factories obsolete: practical 3D printing. What was originally just a neat way to develop small prototypes for mass production is quickly becoming a viable way to replace the entire mass production step. The technology is still limited to a small range of materials, but the price has been dropping steeply enough that small 3D printers are within the reach of hobbyists already.

The Economist points out that this will not be an unmixed blessing (as technological revolutions ever have been):

Others maintain that, by reducing the need for factory workers, 3D printing will undermine the advantage of low-cost, low-wage countries and thus repatriate manufacturing capacity to the rich world. It might; but Asian manufacturers are just as well placed as anyone else to adopt the technology. And even if 3D printing does bring manufacturing back to developed countries, it may not create many jobs, since it is less labour-intensive than standard manufacturing.

The technology will have implications not just for the distribution of capital and jobs, but also for intellectual-property (IP) rules. When objects can be described in a digital file, they become much easier to copy and distribute — and, of course, to pirate. Just ask the music industry. When the blueprints for a new toy, or a designer shoe, escape onto the internet, the chances that the owner of the IP will lose out are greater.

There are sure to be calls for restrictions on the use of 3D printers, and lawsuits about how existing IP laws should be applied. As with open-source software, new non-commercial models will emerge. It is unclear whether 3D printing requires existing rules to be tightened (which could hamper innovation) or loosened (which could encourage piracy). The lawyers are, no doubt, rubbing their hands.

Just as nobody could have predicted the impact of the steam engine in 1750 — or the printing press in 1450, or the transistor in 1950 — it is impossible to foresee the long-term impact of 3D printing. But the technology is coming, and it is likely to disrupt every field it touches. Companies, regulators and entrepreneurs should start thinking about it now. One thing, at least, seems clear: although 3D printing will create winners and losers in the short term, in the long run it will expand the realm of industry — and imagination.

So, even if you don’t have immediate plans to buy a 3D printer, you could do worse than to dust off your old drafting book and learn a bit of CAD. You may be using those skills sooner than you expect.

There’s more information (from 2009) on the 3D printing process here.

February 11, 2011

Human hacking: the overconfident CEO

Filed under: Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:19

An interesting story at PC World talks about the methods used to get inside information on individuals and companies:

“He was the guy who was never going to fall for this,” said Hadnagy. “He was thinking someone would probably call and ask for his password and he was ready for an approach like that.”

After some information gathering, Hadnagy found the locations of servers, IP addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses, mail servers, employee names and titles, and much more. But the real prize of knowledge came when Hadnagy managed to learn the CEO had a family member that had battled cancer, and lived. As a result, he was interested and involved in cancer fundraising and research. Through Facebook, he was also able to get other personal details about the CEO, such as his favorite restaurant and sports team.

Armed with the information, he was ready to strike. He called the CEO and posed as a fundraiser from a cancer charity the CEO had dealt with in the past. He informed him they were offering a prize drawing in exchange for donations — and the prizes included tickets to a game played by his favorite sports team, as well as gift certificates to several restaurants, including his favorite spot.

The CEO bit, and agreed to let Hadnagy send him a PDF with more information on the fund drive. He even managed to get the CEO to tell him which version of Adobe reader he was running because, he told the CEO “I want to make sure I’m sending you a PDF you can read.” Soon after he sent the PDF, the CEO opened it, installing a shell that allowed Hadnagy to access his machine.

When Hadnagy and his partner reported back to the company about their success with breaching the CEO’s computer, the CEO was understandably angry, said Hadnagy.

“He felt it was unfair we used something like that, but this is how the world works,” said Hadnagy. “A malicious hacker would not think twice about using that information against him.”

Takeaway 1: No information, regardless of its personal or emotional nature, is off limits for a social engineer seeking to do harm

Takeaway 2: It is often the person who thinks he is most secure who poses the biggest vulnerability. One security consultant recently told CSO that executives are the easiest social engineering targets.

February 10, 2011

No more manned fighters?

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:24

As I said the last time this topic came up, “This is not a repost from 1957”. We may actually be looking at the last generation of manned fighters, if this update from Strategy Page is true:

On February 4th, the U.S. Navy X-47B UCAV (unmanned combat air vehicle) made its first flight. It was three years ago that the navy rolled out its first combat UAV; the 15 ton X-47B. This pilotless aircraft has a wingspan of 20 meters/62 feet (whose outer 5 meter/15 foot portions fold up to save space on the carrier). It carries a two ton payload and will be able to stay in the air for twelve hours. The U.S. is far ahead of other nations in UCAV development, and this is energizing activity in Russia, Europe and China to develop similar aircraft.

[. . .]

All of these aircraft are stealthy and can operate completely on their own (including landing and takeoff, under software control). The UCAVs would be used for dangerous missions, like destroying enemy air defenses, and reconnaissance. Even air force commanders are eager to turn over SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses) missions to UAVs. SEAD is the most dangerous mission for combat pilots. But until quite recently, all these projects had either been cancelled, or were headed in that direction.

Now, the U.S. Department of Defense wants the new UAV combat aircraft in service by the end of the decade, some twenty years ahead of a schedule that was planned in the 1990s. The F-35 is expected to cease production in 2034, more than a decade after the first combat UAVs, that can match F-35 performance, enters service.

Unable to buy new aircraft designs (because they are too expensive, or simply take too long to get into service), and facing the prospect of unmanned aircraft (UAVs) displacing more and more manned ones, the American military is spending a growing chunk of its budgets on upgrading and refurbishing the combat aircraft they already have. This was not a deliberate, long term plan, but simply a reaction to shortages of new aircraft. A lot of the new electronics and weapons involved in these upgrades can also equip UAV designs still in development, so such efforts are a double win.

More and more, it looks like the new 36 ton F-22 and 27 ton F-35 are the end of the road for manned fighter-bombers. Not just because the F-22 and F-35 cost so much to develop, but because so much new tech has arrived on the scene that it simply makes more military, and economic, sense to go with unmanned aircraft. Meanwhile, the existing F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, A-10s and all American heavy bombers are being equipped with new targeting pods and combat Internet connections, along with new radars and all sorts of electronics. Older aircraft are having worn out structural components rebuilt or replaced. This buys time until the unmanned aircraft are ready. F-35s will also fill the gap, which may be a very small one.

Usual caveats apply of course, and you could do worse than reading the comment thread on that original post for some of the caveats spelled out.

The Netherlands go nuke, downplay wind power

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Europe, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:50

Of all the EU states, the last one you’d expect to give up on wind power would be the one that everyone associates with windmills:

In a radical change of policy, the Netherlands is reducing its targets for renewable energy and slashing the subsidies for wind and solar power. It’s also given the green light for the country’s first new nuclear power plants for almost 40 years.

Why the change? Wind and solar subsidies are too expensive, the Financial Times Deutschland, reports.

Holland thus becomes the first country to abandon the EU-wide target of producing 20 per cent of its domestic power from renewables. This is a remarkable turnaround from a state that took the Kyoto Agreement seriously and chivvied other EU members into adopting renewable energy strategies. The FT reports that instead of the €4bn annual subsidy, it will be slashed to €1.5bn.

I did a quick Google image search for a typical Dutch windmill image, and decided that this one was too amusing to pass up:

XM-25 man-packable artillery piece takes the field

Filed under: Asia, Military, Technology, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:17

Lewis Page has some information on the first field use of the XM-25:

First reports are emerging on the performance of the futuristic, Judge Dredd style XM-25 computer smartgun, which went into combat with frontline US troops in Afghanistan in December. The hi-tech rifle — almost a portable artillery piece — is said to have been dubbed “the Punisher” by soldiers who have used it.

The US Army news service reports that the existing five custom-made prototype XM-25 weapons, which have long been trialled and tested in the States, arrived in Afghanistan in November and were first used in combat on 3 December. Since then, as of the army report, some 55 explosive smartshells have been fired in combat and hundreds more in practice.

“We silenced two machine-gun positions — two PKM positions,” said Major Christopher Conley, describing some of the firefights in which the XM-25 has been used. “We destroyed four ambush locations, where the survivors fled.”

Earlier post on the XM-25 here.

Update, 1 April: The XM-25 program is now under contract:

The US Army’s futuristic Judge Dredd style computer smart-rifle project, the XM-25, is moving ahead. Developer ATK, which has so far made just five prototype weapons, inked a $65.8m deal this week to move the weapon into manufacturing.

[. . .]

US troops in Afghanistan, who are trying out the initial five prototype weapons, apparently don’t favour Judge Dredd references. They have reportedly chosen to dub the new smartgun “the Punisher” instead.

Feedback from these users has apparently been positive, with the AM-25’s ability to strike out accurately and speedily at Taliban snipers or machine-gun teams lurking in cover at long range highly prized. The soldiers don’t much care for the gun’s battery system, however, which reportedly has the same flaws as an iPhone’s: it can’t be swapped for a new one and must be plugged in to charge up. ATK are apparently to sort this out as the design develops.

The new engineering and manufacturing development deal is to run for 30 months.

I’m not sure what the change from XM-25 to AM-25 in that report means . . . that is, if the weapon’s designation has changed with the switch to production, or if it’s just a typo in the write-up.

Some basic sense about mergers

Filed under: Economics, Media, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:08

Megan McArdle thinks back to the great fiasco that was the AOL/Time Warner merger:

Austan Goolsbee (now the head of the CEA) spent a class getting us to describe all the reasons that the deal was a good idea — and then systematically demolishing all of our rationalizations. Mergers are not a good idea merely because one company has an asset the other company can use (in the case of the AOL/Time Warner deal, the idea was that AOL’s content and Time Warner’s delivery mechanism were two great tastes that taste great together.) AOL had a perfectly good way to get access to Time Warner’s cable network: the companies could contract to share space. When you buy a company, the price the owners will want you to pay is going to be at least as much money as they could make by holding onto the stock, so there’s no way to generate profits by buying some company simply because it has assets you want to use. In order for the merger to make sense, there has to be something that you can’t do as a separate firm, but can do together.

And that thing has to be pretty profitable in order to make up for the costs of the merger. Acquiring firms usually pay a premium for the companies they buy, which means that the new entity needs to exceed the combined profits of the old just to break even. Beyond that, mergers are extremely costly to the organization. Integrating redundant departments takes up enormous managerial time, involves most of the company in vicious internicene battles to protect their turf, and often involves sacking some of your most talented people simply because there’s an equally talented person already doing their job. Unless it’s a really hands-off acquisition — in which case, why bother? — the conflict between corporate culture often saps morale.

The couple of times a former employer of mine got “merged”, the pattern just about exactly matched what Megan describes. In neither case did the merged entity reap the expected scale of benefit that must have motivated the acquisition in the first place.

February 9, 2011

Real usage-based billing might work, but not the current form

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:25

Tim Wu contrasts the way the UBB issue is being presented and how it might actually be successful:

The issue of usage-based billing is a little tricky because such systems are not inherently evil. When you think about it, we usually pay for things on a usage basis. Gasoline, electricity and even doughnuts are generally billed based on how much you use. And the fact that usage-based billing sounds reasonable in theory is surely why the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved the new rules.

But take a closer look and something far more insidious is going on. If bandwidth were actually billed like electricity or water, that might be fine. But what the CRTC approved is something different. Claiming that its profit and consumer welfare are exactly the same thing, Bell wants to remake Internet billing. It wants to make use of the most lucrative tricks from the mobile and credit-card industries by preying on consumer error to make money. And this ought not be tolerated.

Any rule that asks the consumer to guess at usage, and punishes you if you’re wrong, is abusive. Imagine being asked to guess how much electric power you need every month, with a penalty for mistakes. Yes, that’s what cellphone companies do — or get away with — but that hardly makes it a model. It’s a system of profit premised on human error, and this begins to explain Bell’s deeper interest in usage-based billing. Bell wants to make the horrors of mobile billing part of the life of Internet users. And that’s a problem.

H/T to Michael O’Connor Clarke for the link.

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