Kindle

My previous e-reader having died, I found the pocket-friendly form and market-beating price tag of the kindle irresistible.  If I stick to Project Gutenberg for my books, I’m not sucked in to Amazon’s Orwellian World, but I have the advantages of the latest technology (including notably an e-ink screen that is no longer slow) fronting my library.

But what about the with-keyboard versions?  That’s potentially an even more interesting device, depending on what software I can run on it.  If I can install some basic utilities it becomes truly the ideal portable computer.  How basic?  Just a text editor and it becomes the ideal companion for events like FOSDEM and for real backpacking, with both keyboard and screen being a whole lot better to use than the pocket-puter (aka smartphone), as well as decent battery life.  Add a set of regular smartphone/tablet-like apps (like email, calendar, notebook) and the ability to install apps, and it really begins to look like the device I’m waiting for.

Is that feasible?  A couple of shops where I’ve asked say no chance.  What would I have to do to make it happen?  And is anyone playing with interesting ideas like running Linux or an open-ish Android on a kindle?

Benign spam

Can you spam without being evil?

A local tech (‘puter/etc) shop seems to have found a way.  A notice on his door tells me that if I ‘like’ his facebook page, I get entered monthly for a draw.  The monthly prize is £15, so just a small incentive, but then it’s only a one-man business.

I guess that’s another manifestation of the same popularity/visibility game that gives us link farming and worse forms of spam.  But this one seems pretty-much harmless: it’s just playing the rating systems.  When ratings get gamed and subverted (like the once-useful TripAdvisor) it seems to me more a weakness of the system itself (insofar as the system rewards the gamer) than anything else.

OK, I’m probably hopelessly behind the curve here, observing something you already knew.  Hmmm …

Past mistakes

Controversy of the week: what to do about the legacy of cosmetic surgery in which a key component is (retrospectively) deemed defective?  Should the offending breast implants be removed, replaced, or left alone?  Who should pay?  Different countries have reacted differently, and every reaction is sure to have outraged someone.

I find it slightly bizarre that this should be seen as a matter for governments.  Surely it should be for medical professionals to deal with: is there a medical issue, and if so what are the pros and cons of each option?  The role of politicians might be to consider how it happened in the first place and whether there are lessons to be learned for the regulatory system.  But I hesitate to say that, because the most likely outcome of politicians reviewing a hot topic like this is to make things worse.

I have one suggestion for them.  The question of who pays if corrective surgery is required can and should be dealt with by requiring all cosmetic surgery to carry insurance against the full cost of such an event arising in the lifetime of the patient.  An insurer, having its own money at stake, is better-motivated than a regulator to scrutinise the actual risks of any particular procedure.  It is also better-equipped to do so, with the budget for expert scrutiny being determined by the actual risk being taken on, rather than competing with many unrelated tasks for a fixed, politically-determined pot.

Oh, and I wonder if this’ll lead to a whole raft of similar cases being unearthed as journalists seek out new stories?

Past Crimes

Should people who committed serious crimes a long time ago be severely punished or handsomely rewarded?  Or do we let sleeping dogs lie if a long time has elapsed and they no longer pose a threat?

This has been a week of contrasts.  On the one hand, an ex-gangster and a man convicted of theft, conspiracy and fraud get honoured in the new years honours list.  On the other hand, two men who were once violent thugs involved in a murder get maximum jail sentences.

So whose crimes happened a long time ago when the criminals were juveniles and less than half their present age?  That’s right, it’s the two who got convicted.

Hmmm ….

Lest anyone take this the wrong way, I’m not suggesting the two murderers should’ve been let off.  Just noting the contrast.

Christmas Message: Keep Out!

Is this the world’s most odious hypocrite?

The pope is reported as condemning the commercialisation of christmas in his midnight mass.

Erm, right, Your Holiness.  So what is the purpose of the fabulously wealthy organisation over which you preside?  Aha, yes.  Amongst the catholic church’s responsibilities, you maintain the communion of saints: individuals you bless as exemplary role models.  There’s a saint particularly associated with Christmas: St.Nicholas brings gifts to children.  Isn’t that the very commercialisation you condemn?

OK, the original St.Nicholas’s gift of gold was to the three daughters of a nobleman.  I guess if you limit your gifts firmly to a tiny elite, you’re distinct from our modern inclusive commercialisation.  I guess his message to the masses is to know your place, keep your grubby hands off our tradition, and don’t expect your worthless children to share the privileges of their betters.

Evidently the Victorians were wrong when they gave us the modern Christmas as a season of goodwill.  The true spirit of Christmas is that embodied by the unreformed Ebenezer Scrooge when he denounced as a humbug the commercialisation inherent in an inclusive Christmas.

But hang on!  Doesn’t the Christmas story also tell of rich gifts to one particular child?  A child who, unlike St.Nicholas’s beneficiaries, was a humble commoner by birth?  Well, no: that’s not necessarily inconsistent either: it’s the giving, not the receiving of gifts that’s inclusive in that story.  Maybe a narrative root for the church’s own fabulous wealth.  And besides, the three magi aren’t saints: their gifts to a commoner may be commendable by Victorian or modern commercialised values, but they’re not actually blessed by the church.

Good.  He’s not a hypocrite after all.  Just so long as we don’t get distracted by misguided notions of goodwill to all, his position is perfectly consistent.  That is (of course) provided his message didn’t include inconsistencies that the headlines omit.

Bargains!

Having all the shops shut for two days calls for a little discipline.  OK, I’m not going to starve if I run out of something and can’t go out and buy it, but I like a little bit of luxury.

And so it came to pass that while the fridge was not yet bereft of milk and fruit juice, yet were they not so plentiful as to last even unto the fourth day hence (Dec.27th) without undue frugality.  So doing epic battle with the crowds, I ventured forth even unto Morrisons wherein I stocked up on these things.  I’d hoped also to grab a couple of bottles of a wine that I’d recently picked up on half-price offer and which had mightily impressed, but alas it was no longer on offer.

Although the crowds in town were indeed mighty, those at Morrisons were surprisingly reasonable: much less than earlier in December.  So it was that I took a moment to see if anything interesting was on a good price reduction, and found myself so richly rewarded that I not only have tasty provisions for the days of total shutdown, but a surplus selected from such fresh items as are suitable for home freezing.  Delicious!

Also chatted to a lady who was loading up with bargains and described doing even better a year ago, when snow and ice kept most of the customers away and the shops had been truly desperate to shift the fresh food at any price.  Guess I should be shopping on Dec.24th more often!

Supreme importance

Julian Assange gets a supreme court hearing in front of no less than seven judges!  Is that a legal first since we had a supreme court?  No matter, it’s certainly exceptional.

And over what?  An extradition hearing.  That being extradition to a friendly European country whose democratic credentials and legal system are pretty-much as trustworthy as anywhere in the world.  Aren’t they?  And his alleged crimes for which he’s being extradited are also mundane, no matter how potentially serious.  How the **** is that so legally interesting and important as to merit a hearing in front of their Lordships, let alone seven of them?

The public line is that it raises a legal question over whether the authority requesting the extradition has the right to do so.  That’s a fine legal technicality, and one which under normal circumstances a judge would undoubtedly be happy to decide either way, depending on what outcome (s)he wanted.  So we must conclude there’s an unspoken point of legal interest to consider at the very highest level.

Well of course there is.  There’s the suspicion that the alleged sex crimes are merely a device in a politically-motivated persecution.  It’s hard to think of a less likely country than Sweden to engage in such political persecution, but that’s not saying much!   And in today’s decision, it seems Their Lordships are implicitly raising precisely that suspicion, and saying to the Swedish authorities we don’t trust your motives.  Interesting!

Of course if it had been extradition to the US to face charges in connection with Wikileaks, it would indeed raise important and unique issues of public interest to merit Their Lordships’ attention.  Gary McKinnon got a Lords hearing, but not Assange’s seven judges!

You read it here first

Reports in the press tell us particle physicists are getting excited at the prospect of experimental support for core elements of their mathematical models.

I look forward to the comedians’ take on this.  Who will be the first voice of the Higgs Boson to scream “leave me alone” to his observers?  If it happens while The Now Show is still on, I’ll guess at Punt & Dennis.

Bunkering down

This is unquestionably the worst time of year.  It’s dark most of the day, and to make it worse people are burning coal, wood, and other things turning the air foul.  This year remains thoroughly mild, in what may be a reversion to normal after two real winters.

And the season of humbug is in full swing.  I can cope with a few stupid lights – even flashing ones.  And a salvation army band (or whatever it was) in town playing lots of David Willcocks arrangements.

But the shops are a whole nother story.  Not just the display of ‘seasonal’ crap, but bigger crowds than at other times.  And that’s not gift shops, toyshops, or even clothes shops, it’s bloomin’ supermarkets.  Do they all eat twice as much for the whole month of December?

I wonder if I can bunker down and live on tinned/frozen/miscellaneous longlife food for the next three weeks?  Ugh

Interesting Times

The government’s latest announcements are sounding increasingly like NuLab Lite: government to intervene in markets, to pick winners and losers, to pour other people’s money into selected places.  Selected by whom?  You can be sure the job of administering pots of public money like that will be a magnet for corruption!

• Taxpayer to pour yet more money into housing (and the debt bubble) by underwriting banks losses on big mortgages.
• Slush fund for lending to small businesses.

On a more positive note, I expect that they’re taking another leaf out of NuLab’s book, and that some of these announcements will lead to very, very little action.  Let us hope!

But something more interesting is happening.  Instead of the mainstream media cheerleading all these interventions, they’ve united to rubbish them.  Across the political spectrum, we have a remarkable degree of agreement:

Ian Cowie in the Telegraph (political right): You really could not make it up. Government proposals for taxpayers to underwrite looser mortgage lending for first time buyers may help buy-to-let landlords exit the housing market with handsome profits before house prices fall further. But they are unlikely to be of lasting benefit to anyone encouraged to take on excessive debt before interest rates rise from their current historic low and more homebuyers find themselves in negative equity.

Mary Ann Sieghart in the Independent (political centre): The one thing missing from today’s housing strategy will be an outright acknowledgment that lower house prices would be a good thing. It’s still too much of a political taboo. But ministers know that it’s exactly what the younger generation need. So do prospective buyers and their parents.

Matt Griffith in the Guardian (political left): While some of the initiatives – notably the government’s pledge to provide insurance for mortgages to new-build properties – are the equivalent of an intergenerational mugging: the state underwrites young people taking on a huge debt for an asset that is clearly overvalued.

Andrew Ellison in the Times (political right): A strange conspiracy maintains the high cost of homes – hence these weird schemes to help the first-time buyer.

James Saft at Reuters: Under the plan both builders and the government would contribute funds to partially indemnify lenders against what I am betting are the inevitable losses. Borrowers, who are almost by definition younger and less well off, will still bear all losses, but will be rewarded with the chance to take out the kind of loan which has proven time and again to be a bad idea.

Wow!  They really are all singing from the same hymn sheet.  Just a shame they took so long to notice the problem!  Evidently this blog was ahead of its time, for example in August 2007:  … the taxpayer money going into this helps inflate the price of anything nice, by lifting the market in general.

Eventually perhaps they’ll put the final pieces of the picture of overpriced housing together:  If chickens can’t come home to roost now for property millionaires and bankers, we’re transferring yet more burden onto the productive economy.  And that’s tilted towards the young (because fewer of them own property) and high-earners (who pay more tax).  That’s precisely the people who will be most welcome in other countries, when the burden of subsidising our fat-cats gets too much for them.   If we drive too many of them out, the economy is basically gone!