Quotulatiousness

September 30, 2010

Chopping off the “long tail” of Google searches?

Filed under: Economics, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:29

For your daily contrarian view of the wonderfulness of Google’s new Instant Search feature, we turn to SmoothSpan:

The Internet is a Mighty Echo Chamber, and with one fell swoop, Google Instant Search has added a big ole’ Marshall Stack to turn the Echo levels all the way up to 11.

Google reports that Instant Search will save 350 million hours of user time per year. What isn’t reported is how it will cut off the Long Tail where it starts by promoting banal sameness for searchers. This is great for Google. After all, keeping up with every last oddball search someone may want to do costs them more infrastructure money. At their scale, it is significant. So, corralling everyone into fewer more common searches is a good thing.

[. . .]

How does Google Instant Search contribute to the Echo Chamber? Well anyone who has bothered to look through keyword information on their website will see that people find sites through a bewildering array of queries. Some might even say much of it is accidental, but looking over these lists gives a wonderful window onto how your content is found and perceived by others. How often do we get to commit such telepathy with our followers? Rarely. Yet, Instant Search will substitute popular searches for those individually created. More people will be driven off the back roads search trails and onto the superhighways that lead to whomever controls the first few search results connected to the Instant Searches Google is recommending at the time.

Oddly enough, I was talking about Google searches the other day with DarkWaterMuse (whose blog is offline at the moment), but it was more in the context of “how often are the sponsored links actually useful to you?” We both agreed that the correct answer fell somewhere in the range of “rarely” to “never”.

September 29, 2010

Transformer TX project initial funding awarded to AAI Corporation

Filed under: Military, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:14

Remember the “Flying Jeep” proposal? It’s still being pursued, as the initial funding for a flying gyrocopter/SUV has been awarded by DARPA:

Transformer TX, as we have previously reported, is intended to produce a vehicle able to drive on the ground with similar performance to a Humvee or other offroad vehicle. It must also be able to take off vertically with 1,000lb of passengers and payload aboard and fly about at altitudes up to 10,000 feet at speeds equivalent to normal light aircraft.

Perhaps best of all, the Transformer TX is also intended to be fully automated, capable of flying itself with only the most basic guidance from its human operator — who would not, therefore, need to be a highly trained pilot.

Admittedly, I know almost nothing about flying, but this sounds like getting something for nothing (that is, aren’t there laws of physics against this?):

The SR/C idea is basically a winged, propellor-driven light aeroplane with a set of free-spinning autogyro rotors on top. It’s not a helicopter: the engine can’t drive the rotors in flight, and a sustained hover isn’t possible. Nonetheless, though, the CarterCopter can take off vertically as required by Transformer TX rules.

It does this by having weighted rotor tips, meaning that a lot of energy can be stored in the spinning blades (rather as in a flywheel). Sitting on the ground, a small engine-driven “pre-rotator” assembly can gradually spin the rotors up to high speed. The pre-rotator, pleasingly, doesn’t have to transmit a lot of power — thus it is lightweight, cheap and simple compared to a helicopter’s transmission. Nor is the engine required to deliver the massive grunt required to keep chopper blades spinning hard enough to support the aircraft.

Once the rotors are at takeoff speed, the pre-rotator is declutched, the prop engaged and the pitch of the rotors pulled in so that they start to bite air. As they slow down, the energy stored in their whirling weighted tips blasts air down through the disc and the aircraft leaps vertically into the air in a “jump takeoff”.

Sounds amazingly like pulling yourself into the air by your own bootstraps . . .

Still, I’d like to eventually get that flying car I was promised all those years ago.

Cory Doctorow on what George Orwell got wrong

Filed under: Books, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:03

September 27, 2010

EMALS back on track in time to save British carrier fleet?

Filed under: Britain, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:54

As discussed earlier, the Royal Navy has been watching the US Navy’s ongoing EMALS project carefully, as it might provide a major cost-saving for the new carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales. Recent testing shows the program appears to be back on track:

The US Navy’s plan to fit its next aircraft carrier with electromagnetic mass-driver catapults instead of steam launchers is reportedly on track, with shore trials using test weights a success. The progress of the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), the first of its kind, is of interest to the Royal Navy as it could offer a way to massively cut the money spent on the Service’s two new carriers — or, more accurately, to cut the money spent on their aeroplanes.

A statement issued last week by the US Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) says that the EMALS test installation at Lakehurst, New Jersey is going through its planned programme without difficulty.

[. . .]

CVN 78, aka USS Gerald R Ford, is the next US Navy supercarrier, now under construction. It’s very important to the USN that EMALS works, as it is acknowledged that it’s now too late to change the Ford’s design and fit her with steam catapults like all other US (and French) carriers. If for some reason EMALS isn’t a success, the US will have bought the biggest and most expensive helicopter carrier ever.

Though the steam catapult is actually a British invention, Blighty’s present pocket-size carriers don’t have any catapults at all. Thus they can only launch helicopters and short-takeoff Harrier jumpjets.

The problem for Britain’s decision makers is that the current carrier design limits them to the ultra-expensive F-35B, which will be roughly twice the price of the ships themselves to provide sufficient aircraft to make the carriers fully operational. Being able to swap out the deluxe F-35B for cheap-as-dirt F-18E’s may be enough to save both carriers from the ongoing cost-slashing by the ministry.

September 23, 2010

Meh. Civ V isn’t that addictive . . . is it really 2am?

Filed under: Gaming, Randomness, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:58

I received my copy of Civilization V from Amazon.ca yesterday, but I was in town all evening, so I didn’t sit down to start installing it until 10:30. I figured I could install it, twiddle about with the new UI, and still get to sleep by midnight. I probably could have, except you can’t play Civ V without registering an account with Steam. After creating the account, you apparently have to download the whole game (no idea why, as there’s a DVD-ROM in the package), and because I was online at peak hour for west coast gamers, the connection speed left more than a bit to be desired.

At around 11:30, the game finished downloading and I was able to actually start. “Oh,” I said to myself, “they’ve included tutorials. That’s nice of them. I guess that’ll cover the changed UI elements. I’ll try ’em.” I spent the next two hours just playing the tutorial scenarios.

It certainly does have the “gotta play just one more turn” thing down pat. It’ll do nicely to cover the gap until Guild Wars 2 is released.

September 22, 2010

Civ V review

Filed under: Gaming, History, Technology — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:55

No, not by me . . . my copy hasn’t arrived yet. It’s from the Guardian:

Fans of Sid Meir’s seminal strategy game tend to be purists — one reason why 2008’s Civilization Revolution was so panned by some for slimming down the formula in just about every respect.

Yet for all its limitations, the console version addressed many of the problems that the old PC franchise had ignored for too long, and the proof is here for all to see. Civilization V returns to Civ IV‘s epic scale but combines it with CivRev‘s emphasis on simplicity and clarity. As a result, this is probably the best (or at least the most user friendly) version of the game since the original and certainly the best-equipped for the now-obligatory multiplayer mode.

The first thing PC owners will notice is the interface. Heavily influenced by CivRev, it’s a thing of minimalist beauty designed to display information clearly and succinctly. This also has the effect of allowing pride of place to the new-look World Map, which is now a thing of shimmering beauty as your empire develops into a tableau of fields, factories and road networks. Zooming in and out is smoother than before and it makes the game annoyingly easy to keep playing.

If nothing else, it should keep me occupied until Guild Wars 2 is released.

Update: Just got an email from Amazon.ca, providing me with a bonus code for the “Cradle of Civilization Map Pack”. I ordered this long enough ago that I don’t even remember what this might be (or, more likely, it was added after I pre-ordered).

Update, the second (at 23:15): Yep, my copy arrived tonight. While I was in town for an appointment. Can anyone explain why they bother to ship you a DVD-ROM when you have to download the game through Steam anyway? Because it’s peak time somewhere in North America, I’ve been downloading for over half an hour and just got to 47%. At this rate, I’ll maybe get half an hour of gaming before I turn into a pumpkin . . .

Boom de yada, boom de yada

Filed under: Humour, Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:29

H/T to Maggie Koerth-Baker for the link.

September 19, 2010

The end of “ownership”?

Filed under: Economics, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:30

Cory Doctorow finds Intel adopting a Hollywood-style “crippleware”/license model in new hardware. As he correctly points out, this is an attempt to move us away from the ownership model, where you buy full control of the object you pay for, to a licensing model, where you only get certain rights of use:

This idea, which Siva Vaidhyanathan calls “If value, then right,” sounds reasonable on its face. But it’s a principle that flies in the face of the entire human history of innovation. By this reasoning, the company that makes big tins of juice should be able to charge you extra for the right to use the empty cans to store lugnuts; the company that makes your living room TV should be able to charge more when you retire it to the cottage; the company that makes your coat-hanger should be able to charge more when you unbend it to fish something out from under the dryer.

Moreover, it’s an idea that is fundamentally anti-private-property. Under the “If value, then right” theory, you don’t own anything you buy. You are a mere licensor, entitled to extract only the value that your vendor has deigned to provide you with. The matchbook is to light birthday candles, not to fix a wobbly table. The toilet roll is to hold the paper, not to use in a craft project. “If value, then right,” is a business model that relies on all the innovation taking place in large corporate labs, with none of it happening at the lab in your kitchen, or in your skull. It’s a business model that says only companies can have the absolute right of property, and the rest of us are mere tenants.

September 17, 2010

Skintight clothing that’s sprayed on

Filed under: Randomness, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:13

September 15, 2010

Recognize your password?

Filed under: Randomness, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:49

Password Authentication Tag Cloud

Earlier posts on this topic: Passwords and the average user, More on passwords, And yet more on passwords, and Practically speaking, the end is in sight for passwords.

H/T to Bruce Schneier for the link.

September 13, 2010

QotD: An alternate history we might have suffered

Filed under: Government, History, Liberty, Quotations, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:19

Thought experiment: imagine an Internet in which email and web addresses were centrally issued by government agencies, with heavy procedural requirements and no mobility — even, at a plausible extreme, political patronage footballs. What kind of society do you suppose eventually issues from that?

I was there in 1983 when a tiny group called the IETF prevented this from happening. I had a personal hand in preventing it and yes, I knew what the stakes were. Even then. So did everyone else in the room.

Thought experiment: imagine a future in which everybody takes for granted that all software outside a few toy projects in academia will be closed source controlled by managerial elites, computers are unhackable sealed boxes, communications protocols are opaque and locked down, and any use of computer-assisted technology requires layers of permissions that (in effect) mean digital information flow is utterly controlled by those with political and legal master keys. What kind of society do you suppose eventually issues from that?

Remember Trusted Computing and Palladium and crypto-export restrictions? RMS and Linus Torvalds and John Gilmore and I and a few score other hackers aborted that future before it was born, by using our leverage as engineers and mentors of engineers to change the ground of debate.

[. . .]

Did we bend the trajectory of society? Yes. Yes, I think we did. It wasn’t a given that we’d get a future in which any random person could have a website and a blog, you know. It wasn’t even given that we’d have an Internet that anyone could hook up to without permission. And I’m pretty sure that if the political class had understood the implications of what we were actually doing, they’d have insisted on more centralized control. ~For the public good and the children, don’t you know.~

So, yes, sometimes very tiny groups can change society in visibly large ways on a short timescale. I’ve been there when it was done; once or twice I’ve been the instrument of change myself.

Eric S. Raymond, “Engineering history”, Armed and Dangerous, 2010-09-12

Extensive wine list + iPad = increased profits

Filed under: Cancon, Technology, Wine — Tags: — Nicholas @ 15:55

Since I started paying attention to wines, I’ve run into the problem that every wine novice encounters: you know too much about the cheap plonk a typical restaurant offers (and except in rare cases, it’s vastly over-priced), but you don’t know enough (or earn enough) to sample all the higher-priced offerings at better restaurants. In Ontario, where all imported wines must go through the LCBO, it’s easier to get a handle on less expensive offerings.

It’s when we’re travelling that the wine list quickly becomes a daunting trek through French, Italian, Spanish, and other producers’ wines. A possible solution is being tried out at Bone’s, in Atlanta:

Given the old-school setting, it could not seem more incongruous.

At Bone’s, Atlanta’s most venerable steakhouse, a clubby place of oak paneling and white tablecloths, the gold-jacketed waiters now greet diners by handing them an iPad. It is loaded with the restaurant’s extensive wine list, holding detailed descriptions and ratings of 1,350 labels.

Once patrons make sense of the touch-pad links, which does not take long, they can search for wines by name, region, varietal and price, instantly educating themselves on vintner and vintage.

Since their debut six weeks ago, the gadgets have enthralled the (mostly male) customers at Bone’s. And to the astonishment of the restaurant’s owners, wine purchases shot up overnight — they were nearly 11 percent higher per diner in the first two weeks compared with the previous three weeks, with no obvious alternative explanation.

I’ve been relatively fortunate in my wine ordering in restaurants in Saratoga Springs, Boston, and Charleston, but that was by careful selection to match my dinner partner’s food choices, and a bit of luck. Something like the iPad with a full wine list including tasting notes would make the task of ordering an appropriate wine much easier (and, to be honest, I’d probably be willing to spend a bit more than usual to get a more interesting wine).

September 9, 2010

Terrafugia moving swiftly towards terribly expensive, impractical

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

The ever-hopeful reporters at The Register‘s flying-car desk are lowering their expectations for the Terrafugia Transition:

The firm behind the world’s most plausible near-future flying car has pushed back delivery dates again, and suggested that vehicles may wind up costing substantially more than had been planned.

Terrafugia Inc, engaged in developing the Transition “roadable aircraft”, made the announcements in a statement issued yesterday. The company says it is now setting up for “low volume production” in a new facility in Massachusetts, and that this “could allow low volume production to begin as early as late 2011”.

The most recent Terrafugia forecast had suggested that initial deliveries would begin in 2011, but it now appears that actually the company will only commence building the aircraft at that stage. Furthermore, Transitions were originally expected to sell for $148,000: Terrafugia now says the initial price is “expected to be between $200,000 and $250,000”.

Along with the pushback in production dates, the design has been down-rated for carrying capacity: now only 330 pounds of passenger and cargo when fully fueled. That won’t be enough for two average American men, never mind their kit.

Ever wonder why Japanese cars didn’t become popular at first

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

Even with an American ad agency working for them, the market wasn’t ready for this in 1969:

September 5, 2010

No longer “underhand, underwater and damned un-English”

Filed under: Britain, Military, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:38

BBC News looks at the newest nuclear-powered attack submarine in the Royal Navy, HMS Astute:

It is the stealthiest sub ever built in the UK, able to sit in waters off the coast undetected, listening to mobile phone conversations or delivering the UK’s special forces where needed.

The 39,000 or so acoustic panels which cover its surface mask its sonar signature, meaning it can sneak up on enemy warships and submarines alike, or simply lurk unseen and unheard at depth.

The submarine can carry a mix of up to 38 Spearfish heavyweight torpedoes and Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise missiles, able to target enemy submarines, surface ships and land targets, while its sonar system has a range of 3,000 nautical miles.

[. . .]

HMS Astute itself should never need refuelling over the next 25 years, thanks to the latest nuclear-powered technology which means it can circumnavigate the world submerged.

It even creates the crew’s oxygen from seawater as it sails, meaning that the air on board is no longer heavy with diesel fumes, as submariners used to complain of older vessels. The only limit to how long it can stay underwater is the amount of food on board, enough for 90 days at sea.

Rather a big step up from the diesel-electric clunkers we bought from them, wouldn’t you say? H/T to Adrian MacNair for the link.

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