Quotulatiousness

November 27, 2010

Privatize Ontario’s power

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:00

Lawrence Solomon savages the Ontario government’s recently announced $87 billion energy plans:

This week, the Ontario government published its Long-Term Energy Plan. Under it, the province and Ontario Hydro’s successors are committing to more uneconomic nuclear power projects and more uneconomic alternative energy generation contracts, but on a far bigger scale than the old Ontario Hydro ever undertook. The grave the government is digging this time is big enough to bury the province as well as the power sector.

Where the four reactors at Darlington cost $14-billion, the new long-range plan calls for $33-billion, more than double the previous price tag, and that’s to build just two new reactors and refurbish 10 old ones, including those at Darlington. That $33-billion estimate is more a wish than a firm projection. Nuclear reactors, notorious for their cost overruns, typically come in at two to three times their original estimates. Darlington, originally estimated at $3.5-billion, came in at four times its estimate. Refurbishments likewise run up the bills, as seen in the two Bruce reactors at Lake Huron. In 2005, the estimate was $2.75-billion. Today, the refurbishment is already three years behind schedule and $2-billion over budget. No one would be surprised to see the $33-billion estimate balloon to $99-billion or more by the time the plan is complete.

Amazingly, the nuclear boondoggle may not represent the biggest blowout. Where the original alternative energy contracts with private power producers cost $6-billion, the new round of alternate energy projects envisaged in the Long-Term Plan cost more like $27-billion — or more like $45-billion once the supporting infrastructure for these alternative projects is factored in. This $45-billion,like the $33-billion estimate for nuclear power, may itself be a gross underestimate, partly because the supporting infrastructure is subject to cost overruns, partly because the bulk of the new alternative energy projects — unreliable wind and solar — are likely to require expensive backups to avoid blackouts.

His suggested solution? Scrap the huge plan, which on past evidence will be far more expensive, slower, and less effective than they predict. The better solution? Privatize the grid. Allow market forces to set electricity rates.

November 26, 2010

Time to upgrade your rifle sights?

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:10

The Register looks at futuristic guns, including a coming-into-production sighting system:

As everyone who has read the Discworld books knows, million-to-one shots actually hit nine times out of ten. Pentagon weaponeers saw no reason why this should not also become true for US military snipers, leading them to begin work on the “One Shot” miracle sniper-scope project.

One Shot works by using a laser to measure not just the exact range to the target (this is already common practice among snipers) but also to measure the wind forces along the bullet’s line of flight. Wind is perhaps the marksman’s greatest bugbear in long-range shooting, so much so that snipers aren’t expected to achieve a first-shot kill any further off than 600m in normal circumstances.

The One Shot instrument, which will replace the telescope used by the sniper team’s spotter, will measure wind, range, inclination, air pressure and humidity. Linked to the scope on the sniper rifle, it will continually generate artificial crosshairs indicating where the bullet will actually strike: it will also indicate the likelihood of a wind shift during the projectile’s flight time, allowing the shooter to pick the best moment to fire. All the sniper has to do is move the crosshairs onto target, wait for the circle of uncertainty to stabilise, and shoot.

According to spec, the One Shot system isn’t quite as good as the Pratchett effect: it will deliver first-shot kills out to 1500m only six times out of ten rather than nine.

November 25, 2010

Even China may not be able to afford their High Speed Rail network

Filed under: China, Economics, Japan, Railways, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:24

By way of Hit and Run, a brief note of caution about the headlong pace of construction of China’s High Speed Rail:

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) reported to the State Council recently, urging the large-scale high-speed railway construction projects in China to be re-evaluated. The CAS worries that China may not be able to afford such a large-scale construction of high-speed rail, and such a large scale high-speed rail network may not be practical.

[. . .] Under the current plan, the central government has approved to build, by 2020, 16,000 km of high speed rail providing access to about 90% of the Chinese population.

[. . .]

The report submitted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences said China’s high-speed rail construction has caused debt that has already reached unsustainable levels; particularly since the end of 2008, the government introduced a stimulus plan to fight the global economic crisis and the size of local government borrowing is already very high

As Ronald Bailey points out, China is now occupying the same position in American thoughts that Japan did thirty years ago — the economic juggernaut that is poised to crush weak and defenceless American business. The recent gushing about how wonderful China’s HSR system is and how America should build one too are really just echoes of the 1980’s lament on how Japan’s economic model worked so much better than messy US mixed-market capitalism.

Back in the 1980s, I was a producer for a national weekly PBS foreign policy show called American Interests. We ran a lot of nifty programs on various aspects of the Cold War. Another abiding obsession of the chattering classes was the coming triumph of Japan Inc. over a hapless America. We regularly broadcast shows featuring the likes of Robert Reich, Chalmers Johnson (see H&R obit from yesterday), and Clyde Prestowitz predicting that the wise bureaucrats at the helm of Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry deftly deploying their industrial policy jujitsu would soon bury us Yanks. As evidence, critics of undirected American capitalism pointed out that Japan’s economy was growing at 6 to 8 percent per year. Japan was exporting its way to prosperity and the U.S. was running a huge trade deficit with the East Asian powerhouse. Japan could do no wrong and America could do no right. Then the Japanese bubble burst.

Twenty years later, the new meme of would-be industrial policy mavens is China Inc. Promoters include Thomas Friedman and Clyde Prestowitz. China is growing at a blistering pace of 10 percent per year and exporting its way to prosperity. Once again, we are told that East Asian capitalism directed from the top by wise bureaucrats is going to outcompete the United States and toss us into the dustbin of histoy.

November 24, 2010

Kuwait has a problem with some cameras

Filed under: Liberty, Middle East, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:16

Cell phone cameras and compact cameras are okay, but DSLR cameras are not:

Kuwait has banned DSLR cameras in public places — except if you are a journalist.

But the ban does not apply to compact cameras or cameras in smart phones. Eccentric or what? And what about camcorders?

Majed Al-Saqer told the English-language Kuwait Times, which broke the news of the DSLR ban, that “sometimes people stop him while he is in his car with his camera, as if he were planning to kill someone with it. He said that he isn’t sure what the real problem is, whether it is people taking photos of each other or the size of the camera”.

There must be a reason, but it’s not immediately apparent.

November 21, 2010

He comes not to bury Twitter, but to praise it

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:00

Linked from one of Walter Olson’s Twitter updates, an interesting summary by Alan Rusbridger on the things that Twitter does for media folks:

I’ve lost count of the times people — including a surprising number of colleagues in media companies — roll their eyes at the mention of Twitter. “No time for it,” they say. “Inane stuff about what twits are having for breakfast. Nothing to do with the news business.”

Well, yes and no. Inanity — yes, sure, plenty of it. But saying that Twitter has got nothing to do with the news business is about as misguided as you could be.

Here, off the top of my head, are 15 things, which Twitter does rather effectively and which should be of the deepest interest to anyone involved in the media at any level.

There are lots of people who send Twitter updates on what they made for dinner, or what they’re watching on TV, but you don’t have to follow them. I’ve been amazed at how useful Twitter has been to me for keeping on top of what I think of as “blogfodder” items: things that I think my own readers would be interested in.

November 18, 2010

QotD: On the quality of writing, mediated through technology

Filed under: Humour, Media, Quotations, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:45

I own a computer. I don’t use the Internet very much. I’m not a technophobe. It just doesn’t help me very much. Writing is a slow and a difficult process mentally. How you physically render the words onto a screen or a page doesn’t help you. I’ll give you this example. When words had to be carved into stone, with a chisel, you got the Ten Commandments. When the quill pen had been invented and you had to chase a goose around the yard and sharpen the pen and boil some ink and so on, you got Shakespeare. When the fountain pen came along, you got Henry James. When the typewriter came along, you got Jack Kerouac. And now that we have the computer, we have Facebook. Are you seeing a trend here?

P.J. O’Rourke, “Very Little That Gets Blogged Is Of Very Much Worth”, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 2010-11-18

November 14, 2010

Well, give them partial credit for their answer . . .

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:33

Another article where the headline really carries the whole story:

WSJ Warnings About Privacy-Invading Cookies Carry Privacy-Invading Cookies
Can you move this one to the ‘Irony’ section?

The Wall Street Journal posted a story yesterday about the Obama administration’s plan to add a privacy watching task force to evaluate rules on cookies, metacookies, flash cookies and all the other online threats to consumer privacy.

[. . .]

Of the threatening, deletion-resistant Flash cookies they revealed on in my browser, tracking my trip over to the NYT to read more: two from the Wall Street Journal.

November 5, 2010

Now the sale of bogus explosive detectors makes more sense

Filed under: Britain, Law, Middle East, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:58

Remember a couple of items from earlier this year about a British manufacturer being arrested for selling fake bomb detection devices called the ADE-651? These devices were claimed to be so sensitive that they could even “detect elephants, humans and 100 dollar bills”. I figured that it was all just a kickback scam, but Strategy Page explains how the scam was not only possible but easy:

But it wasn’t just bribes that made the ADE 651 survive over a year of use in Iraq. Arabs, more than many other cultures, believe in magic and conspiracies. After the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, many Moslems again blamed Israel. A favorite variation of this is that, before the attacks on the World Trade Center, a secret message went out to all Jews in the area to stay away. Another variation has it that the 19 attackers (all of them Arab, 15 from Saudi Arabia) were really not Arabs, but falsely identified as part of the Israeli deception.

[. . .]

American troops arriving in Iraq go through a real culture shock as they encounter these cultural difference. They also discovered that the cause of this, and many other Arab problems, is the concept of “inshallah” (“If God wills it.”) This is a basic tenet of Islam, although some scholars believe the attitude preceded that religion. In any event, “inshallah” is deadly when combined with modern technology. For this reason, Arab countries either have poorly maintained infrastructure and equipment (including military stuff), or import a lot of foreigners, possessing the right attitudes, to maintain everything. That minority of Arabs who do have the right attitude towards maintenance and personal responsibility are considered odd, but useful.

The “inshallah” thing is made worse by a stronger belief in the supernatural, and magic in general. This often extends to technology. Thus many Iraqis believe that American troops wear sunglasses that see through clothing, and armor vests that are actually air conditioned. When they first encounter these beliefs, U.S. troops think the Arabs are putting them on. Then it sinks in that Arabs really believe this stuff. It’s a scary moment.

However, many troops learn to live with, and even exploit, these odd beliefs. Troops at one base discovered that they weren’t being attacked much, because many of the locals believed that the base was surrounded by a force field, so the troops would casually make reference to their force field, when they were outside the wire and among the locals. This reinforced the force field myth, and made the base safer. Other troops would invent new fantasies, like a pretending that a handheld bit of military electronics was actually a mind reading device. That often made interrogations go a lot quicker. Not all Arabs believe in this stuff, and those that didn’t and worked for the Americans, often as an interpreter, could only shrug their shoulders when asked about it.

November 2, 2010

This is either App-alling or App-ealing, depending on your party affiliation

Filed under: Law, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:30

There’s now an iPhone app for reporting suspicious election activity:

Just in time for Election Day, American Majority Action has created the nation’s first mobile application to help identify, report and track suspected incidents of voter fraud and intimidation. This free, cutting edge system will enable voters to take action to help defend their right to vote. Whether you’re a campaign junkie, or just want a better America, Voter Fraud will help you report violations at the election booth and serve to uphold the democratic process.

H/T to Ace of Spades HQ for the link.

October 30, 2010

“People, when faced with a choice, will inevitably choose the Dick-Measuring Device over molestation”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Liberty, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:01

Air travel, already burdened with far too many special Security Theatre Extravaganzas, is about to get even more awful:

This past Wednesday, I showed up at Baltimore-Washington International for a flight to Providence, R.I. I had a choice of two TSA screening checkpoints. I picked mine based on the number of people waiting in line, not because I am impatient, but because the coiled, closely packed lines at TSA screening sites are the most dangerous places in airports, completely unprotected from a terrorist attack — a terrorist attack that would serve the same purpose (shutting down air travel) as an attack on board an aircraft.

[. . .]

At BWI, I told the officer who directed me to the back-scatter that I preferred a pat-down. I did this in order to see how effective the manual search would be. When I made this request, a number of TSA officers, to my surprise, began laughing. I asked why. One of them — the one who would eventually conduct my pat-down — said that the rules were changing shortly, and that I would soon understand why the back-scatter was preferable to the manual search. I asked him if the new guidelines included a cavity search. “No way. You think Congress would allow that?”

I answered, “If you’re a terrorist, you’re going to hide your weapons in your anus or your vagina.” He blushed when I said “vagina.”

“Yes, but starting tomorrow, we’re going to start searching your crotchal area” — this is the word he used, “crotchal” — and you’re not going to like it.”

In other words, enough people are refusing to go through the “Dick Measuring Device” that TSA is deliberately going to make the alternative so invasive and degrading that people will have to go through the back-scatter imager. Not that it will actually improve anyone’s safety, but it will increase the compliance ratio for the next stupid policy to come down from the security theatre directors.

H/T to BoingBoing for the link.

Another way to exasperate your customers

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:12

Clive sent me a snippet from Thom Hogan’s Nikon Field Guide (no direct linking to the article, apparently):

I’ve never been a big fan of complicated DRM systems, and I’m not sure that they actually work to prevent real theft of software any better than loose or no systems do. This argument started back in the 70’s. I remember having a conversation with Seymour Rubenstein about DRM vis-a-vis WordStar (Seymour was the founder and owner of MicroPro, the producers of WordStar). Seymour’s take was that you couldn’t prevent illegal copying and that some of that illegal copying eventually led to sales that you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten (usually at an update cycle back then, as we didn’t have the Internet to provide instant access). My own experience with DRM in Silicon Valley was similar. Indeed, I’d say that all heavy-handed DRM does is increase your Customer Support costs. But all this just masks the real problem: Nikon’s software costs too much, does too little, and is poorly updated and maintained. So adding tight DRM to the product just pisses the customer off even more when they get hit with it incorrectly.

October 27, 2010

The AK-47, the Soviet Union’s most successful export

Filed under: History, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:56

Jon, my former virtual landlord, sent me a link to this article about the Avtomat Kalashnikov 47:

In his new book, The Gun: The AK-47 and the Evolution of War, out Oct. 12, New York Times reporter C.J. Chivers traces the origins of modern assault rifles — particularly Avtomat Kalashnikov 47, or the AK-47 — and analyzes how they’ve changed warfare. Popular Mechanics spoke to the author about how and why the AK-47 was developed and why it has had even more of an impact than nuclear weapons.

[. . .]

Q During the course of your research, did you get to meet or talk to Mikhail Kalashnikov?

A I met General Kalashnikov several times. He was a fascinating man and a very complicated figure — a master of navigating the Soviet system and its aftermath. He is often portrayed as a poor and simple peasant who, through sheer inventive genius, designed the world’s most successful automatic arm. But this is an almost absurd distillation, the carefully spun fable of Soviet propaganda mills. He’s actually something much richer: a small part of an enormous machine and a most useful and interesting lens with which to look at decades of often dreary and sometimes terrifying Soviet life. He’s also charming, beguiling, clever, funny and both intensely proud and publicly humble at the same time. The legends around him are insufficient at best and grossly inaccurate at worst. He’s quite a man and a challenging character to render.

Q Why is so much about the development of the AK-47 still shrouded in secrecy?

A After the weapon was fielded, the Soviet Union invested heavily in an official version of its creation. This was not long after the purges, when many prominent Soviet citizens and public figures had been liquidated. A new crop of heroes was being put forward by the Kremlin and the Communist Party. Mikhail Kalashnikov fit this movement perfectly — he was, by the official telling, the quintessential proletariat success story, a wounded vet with limited education and almost no training who conceived of this weapon and relentlessly conjured it into existence. The truth was more complicated. But this party-approved version was endlessly repeated in official channels, and one result of the propaganda was that many other participants in the weapon’s design were sidelined and kept silent. One important figure was even arrested, charged with anti-revolutionary activity and sentenced to hard labor. After the Soviet Union collapsed, some of these other men and their accounts began to circulate. But the archives have never fully been opened, and the myths have hardened into something that can feel like fact. We do know much more than we used to, but the full story, in crisp detail, remains elusive, and the Communist version still stands in many circles. Propaganda is a pernicious thing, and the Kalashnikov tale is an example of just how effective it can be.

October 22, 2010

Ever hear the phrase “the camera never lies”?

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 16:11

With Photoshop and other image manipulation tools, still photographs have become less and less dependable for preserving “reality”. It’ll be very soon that video will be just as undependable, but in real time:

The effect is achieved by an image synthesizer that reduces the image quality, removes the object, and then increases the image quality back up. This all happens within 40 milliseconds, fast enough that the viewer doesn’t notice any delay. As the camera moves, the system maintains the illusion through tracking algorithms and guesswork. It does seem to be thwarted by reflections though; a cell phone removed from a bathroom counter is still visible in the mirror.

I don’t think the mirror is the limitation in the video: either it’s currently limited to a single point of “invisibility” or the operator forgot to highlight the reflection for the program.

H/T to John Turner for the link.

October 21, 2010

Aha! I knew there had to be a way!

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Humour, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:54

Tech Support
Click image to see the whole strip.

I still think they should call it the “milliVolt”

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

The much-less-than-promised Chevy Volt goes on sale next month. If it had been a private company delivering so few of their promises, lawsuits or regulatory sanctions would be forthcoming. Because it’s a product of Government Motors, we’re being told that the “Electric Edsel” is not fraud, it’s fantastic:

Government Motors’ all-electric car isn’t all-electric and doesn’t get near the touted hundreds of miles per gallon. Like “shovel-ready” jobs, maybe there’s no such thing as “plug-ready” cars either.

The Chevy Volt, hailed by the Obama administration as the electric savior of the auto industry and the planet, makes its debut in showrooms next month, but it’s already being rolled out for test drives by journalists. It appears we’re all being taken for a ride.

[. . .]

So it’s not an all-electric car, but rather a pricey $41,000 hybrid that requires a taxpayer-funded $7,500 subsidy to get car shoppers to look at it. But gee, even despite the false advertising about the powertrain, isn’t a car that gets 230 miles per gallon of gas worth it?

We heard GM’s then-CEO Fritz Henderson claim the Volt would get 230 miles per gallon in city conditions. Popular Mechanics found the Volt to get about 37.5 mpg in city driving, and Motor Trend reports: “Without any plugging in, (a weeklong trip to Grandma’s house) should return fuel economy in the high 30s to low 40s.”

Car and Driver reported that “getting on the nearest highway and commuting with the 80-mph flow of traffic — basically the worst-case scenario — yielded 26 miles; a fairly spirited backroad loop netted 31; and a carefully modulated cruise below 60 mph pushed the figure into the upper 30s.”

As I said in an earlier post:

I’m very much in favour of an economical electric car: the Volt doesn’t meet that definition. It’s been rushed to market for political, not for economic reasons. It’ll be kept in the market regardless of sales figures for the same reason: it allows Barack Obama and senate leaders to point at the Volt as tangible proof that they care about the environment and reducing American dependence on foreign oil.

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