Quotulatiousness

June 24, 2010

The unhinged are now running Spanish “green” tech companies

Filed under: Environment, Europe, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 18:12

As I read this, I kept hoping that it’d be fake:

Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada — the author of a damning study concluding that Spain’s “green jobs” energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure — was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic.

Says Calzada:

Before opening it, I called [Thermotechnic] to know what was inside … they answered, it was their answer to my energy pieces.

Dr. Calzada contacted a terrorism expert to handle the package. The expert first performed a scan of the package, then opened it in front of a journalist, Dr. Calzada, and a private security expert.

The terrorism consultant said he had seen this before:

This time you receive unconnected pieces. Next time it can explode in your hands.

Dr. Calzada added:

[The terrorism expert] told me that this was a warning.

I have no idea what Spanish law says about this kind of blatant intimidation, but I hope there are charges laid and convictions resulting from those charges.

Spain, of course, recently announced that they were having to cut back on their plans to become the greenest country in Europe, as they couldn’t afford the additional costs, both up-front and in lost opportunities in other industries.

H/T to Ace for the link.

Update, 25 June: In the comments, Ed Darrell says I’ve been taken in and has a long post up with translations of the original article used by Ace and PajamasMedia: here. If Ed is right and I’ve been taken in, I’ll post a retraction. I’m sure he’ll do the same if it turns out to be true.

Update, 28 June: A clarification posted at Ace of Spades HQ makes it seem a bit less like a mock-bomb threat.

The Green company sending the package apparently had its actual package — a report — swapped with car parts at some point in the mailing. [. . .]

It didn’t look like, or feel like, a letter or report, so at that point Calzada got a security guard to scan it — and what was inside was a cylindrical object with wires attached. At that point, the security guard got an expert to examine it, with others in attendance. The contents were a container for diesel of some sort, and some other parts. The expert saw this as a bomb threat, based on a pattern used by, eg., ETA: “This one is a hoax bomb. The next one might not be.”

Apple’s latest media circus

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:24

I’ve been accused of being an Apple fanboy because I have an iPhone 3G (that which was shiny and new barely two years ago is already considered steam-powered and antique). Stephen Fry has a review up on his site, which starts with this summary not of the iPhone 4, but of the reaction to the release:

The hooplah that surrounds the release of a new Apple product is enough to make many otherwise calm and balanced adults froth and jigger. That some froth with excited happiness and others with outraged contempt is almost irrelevant, it is the intensity of the response that is so fascinating. For the angry frothers all are fair game for their fury — the newspapers, the blogosphere, the BBC and most certainly people like me for acting, in their eyes, as slavish Apple PR operatives. Why should these iPads and iPhones be front page news when, the frothers froth, there are plenty of other manufacturers out there making products that are as good, if not better, for less money? And isn’t there something creepy about Apple’s cultiness and the closed ecosystem of their apps and stores? The anti-Applers see pretension and folly everywhere and they want the world to know it. The enthusiastic frothers don’t really mind, they just want to get their hands on what they perceive as hugely desirable objects that make them happy. The two sides will never agree, the whole thing has become an ideological stand-off: the anti-Apple side has too much pride invested in their point of view to be able to unbend, while Apple lovers have too much money invested in their toys to back down. It is an absorbing phenomenon and one which seems to get hotter every week.

The iPhone 4 isn’t available in Canada yet, and I suspect won’t be taken up with quite the same vigour displayed in its US debut: unlike American customers who signed up for two years with AT&T, Canadian customers of Rogers had to take a three-year contract. None of them will be at their end-of-contract when the new iPhone is released here. It will take some of the demand away, compared to the US market . . . but certainly not enough to make the release a flop.

Australia changes PM

Filed under: Australia, Politics, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:05

I hadn’t realized just how unpopular Kevin Rudd had become:

Although he scored a landslide election victory against an 11-year-old Liberal government led by John Howard in November 2007, he had said he was confident he would win the challenge. But commentators were already writing him off. “He’s a goner. You can stick a fork in him,” Nick Economou of Monash University told Reuters.

For Rudd, the transformation in his political fortunes has been startling. Only six months ago, with the opposition going through its third leadership change since he beat Howard, Rudd and his government seemed untouchable.

A year ago he rivalled Bob Hawke as Australia’s most popular prime minister. Now he will join Hawke as the only other Labor prime minister to be dumped by his party, making him the first one-term prime minister since 1932.

The new prime minister is Julia Gillard, who appears to be facing the kind of challenge that the first female prime minister of Canada faced: being held responsible for the sins of the last leader (Kim Campbell led the Progressive Conservatives into their worst election defeat ever, dropping from holding a decisive majority to only 2 seats).

Update: The Register thinks that one of the first changes Gillard will make is to fire the current Communications Minister:

Speculation was rife this morning (or evening, over in Australia) that controversial Communications Minister and architect of Australia’s great firewall project, Stephen Conroy may shortly be for the chop.

In his place, it is suggested, Australia’s new PM Julia Gillard might prefer the more conciliatory — and also better-informed — approach of Senator Kate Lundy.

If so, this is likely to prove a victory for those opposed to Conroy’s hard line on internet censorship, as Ms Lundy has made it clear over the last few months that she prefers to win support from Australia’s voters for an opt-in filter — instead of imposing a mandatory filter from the centre, which is the hardline stance favoured by the present Communications Minister.

If true, that will be a bit of good news for internet users in Australia.

June 23, 2010

Bunch of “radical extremists”

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:09

Protest groups at the G20? No, the Heritage Minister’s sweeping characterization of the people and organizations opposed to the new copyright bill:

So when Moore warns about radical extremists opposing C-32, who is he speaking of? Who has criticized parts of the bill or called for reforms? A short list of those critical of the digital lock provisions in C-32 would include:

* Liberal MPs
* NDP MPs
* Bloc MPs
* Green Party
* Canadian Consumer Initiative
* Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada
* Canadian Association of University Teachers
* Canadian Federation of Students
* Canadian Library Association
* Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright
* Retail Council of Canada
* Canadian Bookseller Association
* Documentary Organization of Canada

While there are bound to be a few individual “radical extremists” in any organization, these particular groups aren’t known for their bomb-throwing agitator ways.

June 18, 2010

Royal charter granted

Filed under: Britain, History, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:01

The most recent recipients of a royal charter are the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists:

The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists received its Royal Charter yesterday — its mark of approval from the Queen.

The Livery Companies were originally proto-trade unions or professional standards bodies, depending which you look at it, based in the City of London. The first, the Worshipful Company of Mercers, got its Royal Charter in 1394 but was in existence for an unknown time before that. Although some retain a regulatory role — assay marks to show the purity of gold and silver are still overseen by the Company of Goldsmiths — most are now social and charitable bodies.

Yesterday’s ceremony was part of Evensong at London’s most beautiful building, St Paul’s Cathedral. The actual Royal Charter — a large vellum certificate — was blessed before freemen and livery men walked to Mansion House escorted by a ceremonial guard of Pikemen and Musketeers for a banquet with the Lord Mayor.

I was hoping that the recipients were the chaps with the morion helmets and the back-and-breastplates:

EFF introduces “Encrypt the Web” Firefox plugin

Filed under: Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

A very interesting new project from Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Today EFF and the Tor Project are launching a public beta of a new Firefox extension called HTTPS Everywhere.

This Firefox extension was inspired by the launch of Google’s encrypted search option. We wanted a way to ensure that every search our browsers sent was encrypted.

H/T to BoingBoing for the link.

June 17, 2010

Spain finds its “green” energy unsustainable

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Europe, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

Spain can’t afford to subsidize all those “green” jobs anymore:

Dead broke Spain can’t afford to prop up renewables anymore. The Spanish government is cutting the numbers of hours in a day it’s prepared to pay for “clean” energy.

Estimates put the investment in solar energy in Spain at €18bn — but the investment was predicated, as it is with all flakey renewables, on taxpayer subsidies. With the country’s finances in ruins, making sacrifices for the Earth Goddess Gaia is an option Spain can no longer afford. Incredibly, Spain pays more in subsidies for renewables than the total cost of energy production for the country. It leaves industry with bills 17 per cent higher than the EU average.

[. . .]

“Sustainability” has been the magic word that extracted large sums of public subsidy that couldn’t otherwise have been rationally justified using traditional cost/benefit measures. Spain paid 11 times more for “green” energy than it did for fossil fuels. The public makes up the difference. The renewables bandwagon is like a hopeless football team that finishes bottom of the league each year — but claims it’s too special ever to be relegated.

Of course, the lesson won’t be learned by other countries or regions . . . Ontario recently signed on to a similar kind of deal with Samsung. But Ontario taxpayers are getting a bargain: the jobs being created under this scheme will only cost $303,472, compared with the eye-watering $774,000 the Spanish jobs cost.

June 16, 2010

The irritating part of “mobile computing”

Filed under: Books, Economics, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:52

Cory Doctorow just got back from a book tour, but unlike all the other ones, he found this tour was both pleasant and productive, thanks to mobile computing:

I “rooted” my Nexus One, breaking into the OS so that I could easily “tether” it to my laptop, using it as a 3G modem between tour stops (we didn’t have to root my wife’s matching phone, as Google supplied us with an unlocked developer handset). My typical tour day started at 5am with breakfast and work on the novel, then a 6am interview with someone in Europe, then pickup, two to four school visits with a short lunch break, three or four interviews, then a bookstore signing or a plane (or both). As busy as that sounds, there’s actually a fair bit of dead time in it while sitting in the escort’s car, trying to find the next stop.

This time round, I plugged the laptop into the cigarette lighter and the phone into the laptop — this gave the phone a battery charge and the laptop internet access. And best of all, it meant that I could harvest those dead minutes to answer emails, keep on blogging, and generally stay abreast of things.

Which meant that I got lots more of the touring author’s most precious commodity: sleep. On previous tours, returning to the hotel meant sitting down for three to four hours’ worth of emails before bed, which cut my sleep time to less than four hours some nights.

So all is sweetness and light with modern mobile computing, yes? Not quite:

. . . the fundamental paradox of mobile — so long as the mobile carriers remain a part of mobile computing, it will only work for so long as you don’t go anywhere.

One of the more frustrating parts of travelling with my iPhone has been that I have to basically lobotomize it before crossing the border, reducing it from really powerful smart phone to a PDA with a phone line: the data and “roaming” charges are so high that it’s not economical to use them for anything other than an emergency. Just when being able to get driving directions or hotel or restaurant recommendations would be most useful — on the road or in an unfamiliar city — the cost is usually too high to justify turning on the damned feature.

Yes, you can hunt down wifi connections (and I did, on my last few trips to the US), but it hardly counts as convenient. The phone companies still assume anyone travelling with a smart phone is going to be spending their employers’ money and therefore won’t notice or care about the up-front costs.

June 14, 2010

I can haz bizness empire?

Filed under: Humour, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:18

The New York Times discovers LOLcats:

Three years ago Ben Huh visited a blog devoted to silly cat pictures — and saw vast potential.

Mr. Huh, a 32-year-old entrepreneur, first became aware of I Can Has Cheezburger, which pairs photos of cats with quirky captions, after it linked to his own pet blog. His site immediately crumbled under the resulting wave of visitors.

Sensing an Internet phenomenon, Mr. Huh solicited financing from investors and forked over $10,000 of his own savings to buy the Web site from the two Hawaiian bloggers who started it.

June 11, 2010

It’s not really about market share: that’s just keeping score

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:45

Eric Raymond thinks a lot of people are missing the point on the ongoing iPhone-Android battle:

It’s not about whether or not Apple will be crushed. It’s not about who makes the “best” products, where “best” is measured by some interaction between the product and the speaker’s evaluation of the relative importance of various features and costs. It’s about what the next generation of personal computing platforms will be. Down one fork they’ll be open, hackable, and user-controlled. Down the other they’ll be closed, locked down, and vendor-controlled. Though there are others on each side of this struggle, in 2010 it comes down to whether Apple or Android wins the race to over 50% smartphone market share; after that point, network effects will become self-reinforcing until the next technology disruption.

If he’s right — and he very well might be — then Apple’s moderately disappointing upgrades in the newly announced iPhone 4 may have handed the long-term advantage to Google. This may be bad news for Apple shareholders, but it’ll be a long-term positive for mobile computing.

What could possibly go wrong?

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

The US Senate is considering a bill that would give the President an internet “kill switch”. Funny how the one area most open to the widest possible spectrum of opinion and belief might be shut down at will, leaving only the regular propaganda outlets uncontrolled:

Under PCNAA, the federal government’s power to force private companies to comply with emergency decrees would become unusually broad. Any company on a list created by Homeland Security that also “relies on” the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the U.S. “information infrastructure” would be subject to command by a new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would be created inside Homeland Security.

The only obvious limitation on the NCCC’s emergency power is one paragraph in the Lieberman bill that appears to have grown out of the Bush-era flap over warrantless wiretapping. That limitation says that the NCCC cannot order broadband providers or other companies to “conduct surveillance” of Americans unless it’s otherwise legally authorized.

Lieberman said Thursday that enactment of his bill needed to be a top congressional priority. “For all of its ‘user-friendly’ allure, the Internet can also be a dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets,” he said. “Our economic security, national security and public safety are now all at risk from new kinds of enemies — cyber-warriors, cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals.”

For those of you who think this is a super-cool neat idea (because Obama wouldn’t ever abuse this new rule), just try the mental image of George Bush or Sarah Palin with this kind of power. Still seem like a good notion?

June 3, 2010

$30 per barrel for diesel fuel?

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:43

Joule Unlimited claims to have developed a new single-cell plant which can produce diesel fuel from sunlight and carbon dioxide:

Henry Ford, the father of the modern assembly line, predicted a future where fuel would be mass-produced from natural materials like fruit, weeds, or even sawdust — renewable alternatives to finite fossil fuels. Still, one energy technology being developed by Joule Unlimited, a company in Cambridge, Mass., might have surprised even him: a plant that sweats diesel.

Plants use the sun to convert carbon dioxide into energy, but Joule has designed tiny, gene-altered organisms (essentially single-celled plants) that use the photosynthetic process to create liquid fuel. Stored in brackish water enclosed in glass panels, they grow for a few days before a genetic switch is flipped, diverting their energy toward fuel production. The diesel, which they pump out continuously, is circulated away to a separator, where it’s extracted and sent to a storage tank. After several weeks, the plants are flushed away and the process starts over again. These microscopic organisms can be genetically engineered to secrete diesel or other chemicals the company plans on commercializing; president and CEO Bill Sims calls the technology an “above-ground oil well.”

June 2, 2010

New copyright bill introduced

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:21

It’s not yet online, so I haven’t read it myself (and, not being a lawyer, it might not be a good use of my time). Michael Geist has, however, and provides a useful summary of the good and the bad:

The bill contains some important extensions of fair dealing, including new exceptions for parody, satire, and (most notably) education. It also contains more sensible time shifting and format shifting provisions that still feature restrictions (they do not apply where there is a digital lock) but are more technology neutral than the C-61 model. There is also a “YouTube exception” that grants Canadians the right to create remixed user generated content for non-commercial purposes under certain circumstances. While still not as good as a flexible fair dealing provision, the compromise is a pretty good one. Throw in notice-and-notice for Internet providers, backup copying, and some important changes to the statutory damages regime for non-commercial infringement and there are some provisions worth fighting to keep.

Yet all the attempts at balance come with a giant caveat that has huge implications for millions of Canadians. The foundational principle of the new bill remains that anytime a digital lock is used — whether on books, movies, music, or electronic devices — the lock trumps virtually all other rights. In other words, in the battle between two sets of property rights — those of the intellectual property rights holder and those of the consumer who has purchased the tangible or intangible property — the IP rights holder always wins. This represents market intervention for a particular business model by a government supposedly committed to the free market and it means that the existing fair dealing rights (including research, private study, news reporting, criticism, and review) and the proposed new rights (parody, satire, education, time shifting, format shifting, backup copies) all cease to function effectively so long as the rights holder places a digital lock on their content or device.

It’s not quite the total surrender to the entertainment rights holders that many feared, but it’s certainly not the best deal for consumers. Bottom line:

For the glass half-full, the compromise positions on fair dealing, the new exceptions, and statutory damages are not bad — not perfect — but better than C-61. For the glass half-empty, the digital lock provisions are almost identical to C-61 and stand as among the most anti-consumer copyright provisions in Canadian history. Not only are they worse than the U.S. DMCA, but they undermine much of the positive change found in the rest of the bill. In the days and weeks ahead, Canadians must speak out to ensure that the compromise positions found in C-32 remain intact and that the digital lock provisions move from the no-compromise category to the compromise one.

Litany of problems with new NH-90 helicopters

Filed under: Australia, Europe, Germany, Military, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:25

Strategy Page reports that new NH-90 helicopters delivered to Australia are showing similar problems to the laundry list of issues the Germans reported when their NH-90s went into service:

The German Army conducted an evaluation of their new NH-90 helicopters, and were not pleased. Their conclusion was that, for combat missions, another model helicopter should be used whenever possible. A particular problem was the lack of ground clearance. The NH-90 can’t land on a piece of ground with any obstacles higher than 16 cm (6.4 inches). That makes many battlefield landing zones problematic. That assumes you can even get on a NH-90 and find a seat. The passenger seats cannot hold more than 110 kg (242 pounds). Combat equipment for German troops weighs 25 kg (55 pounds), meaning any soldier weighing more than 85 kg (187) has to take stuff off, put it on the floor, than quickly put it back on before exiting. Then there’s the floor, it’s not very sturdy, and combat troops using the helicopter for a short while, cause damage that takes the helicopter out of action for repairs. Worse, there is the rear ramp. It cannot support troops carrying all their equipment, making it useless for rapid exits of combat troops. There is not enough room in the passenger compartment for door gunners. There are no strap downs for larger weapons, like portable rocket launchers or anti-aircraft missiles. The passenger compartment also does not allow for carrying cargo and passengers at the same time. The winch is not sturdy enough for commandoes to perform fast roping operations. And so on. The Germans were not pleased with the NH-90.

I’ve never specced out a new helicopter design, but these complaints sound like issues that should have come up during the initial design review, not things that appear once you’ve taken delivery. It sounds like the military equivalent of buying a new car without taking a test drive or checking the specifications for how well the vehicle matched your actual requirements.

Design fail, manufacturing fail, or ordering fail?

The (almost) silent scream of the word nerds

Filed under: Gaming, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:09

The folks who labour (very much) behind the scenes of online gaming sometimes manage to hacksaw through the shackles and post about their anguish:

I’m guessing a large portion of our player base has never cracked open The Chicago Manual of Style. I work in a room full of word nerds. We live and breathe this stuff to the point where we agonize over seemingly mundane things like punctuation, capitalization, and phrasing. For years we’ve gnashed our teeth to the gums while capping common nouns and game terms with every release. Our eyes literally hurt when we edited some copy.

Starting with this article, we’re changing Guild Wars 2 house style to conform more closely to CMS rules. Professions are now lowercased except when used in a title. The same goes for playable races, though nationalities and group affiliations will remain uppercase as is consistent with contemporary practice. It may take a few minutes to adjust to the new look, but we’re pretty confident that you’re a savvy bunch. You don’t need every other word capitalized for emphasis. Context will tell you all you need to know about our lore and game mechanics. Existing Guild Wars 2 articles should be updated to reflect this, but if you catch an error, feel free to let us know.1 Existing original Guild Wars articles and in-game text will retain their legacy formatting, however.

99% of the readers won’t know what the heck you’re talking about, Bobby, but I feel your pain.

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