7 February 2010, 12:51 UTCA walk through Melbourne CBD
On Friday, I took our visitors for a walk through the Melbourne CBD; as far as I can tell, it worked quite well! It's the first time I've really been happy with a trip showing the CBD to visitors...
The route
- Parked at Southgate.
- Eureka tower, for an overview. (That's the new viewing deck — the one at Rialto Towers is no more!)
- Across the footbridge (the bent one) and through the underpass under Flinders St Station, cross the road and turn right; after half a block, turn left into Degraves St.
- More or less straight through the lanes, arcades and Myer through to Melbourne Central. In some places there's choice — for instance, we took The Causeway (a lane) rather than The Walk (an arcade); we could have chosen David Jones instead of Myer.
- From Melbourne Central out onto Swanston St and downhill. This took us past the State Library, Chinatown (where we made a bit of a loop), Melbourne Town Hall, City Square with acrobats, St Paul's cathedral, Flinders St Station clocks across the intersection, Federation Square and across the bridge with a view of the Arts Centre.
- After the bridge, we took a left and looped under the bridge. (We could have also taken the right side of the bridge and gone down there, but I think that side has stairs.)
- Along the bank back to Southgate.
Notes:
- The same circuit could be done from any point along Southbank or nearby. Parking in Southgate costs $37; if I'm going to be doing this more often, it might be worth finding a cheaper option.
- The weakest point is probably the underpass under Flinders St Station; it's a bit too authentically a railway underpass.
- The route is about 3km (loop). It's got the advantage that it's mostly there and back, so at any point one can walk over to Swanston St and head back. There were some stairs, the biggest set at the exit from the underpass, then the occasional quarter-floor in the lanes and arcades. On about two occasions, there's a lift or escalator.
- The route is slightly heavy on the shopping, especially in the second quarter.
[permalink] ‣ keyword: me
3 February 2010, 13:26 UTCLink: "sell things which cannot be copied"
Better Than Free by Kevin Kelly When copies are free, you need to sell things which cannot be copied.
Well, what can't be copied? ... From my study of the network economy I see roughly eight categories of intangible value that we buy when we pay for something that could be free.
[permalink] ‣ keywords: creative, link
13 January 2010, 4:33 UTCCutting down the world population
Where does the meme come from about cutting the world population in half for environmental reasons? One sees it around, with various fractions but always substantial and always poorly argued; the latest in the mouth of Bruce Sterling, though to his credit he reports it more as a fear that someone else will do it rather than advocating it himself.
What's with that?
- It's morally terrible, a massacre of unprecedented proportions. For a sense of scale, the entire World War II killed some 3% of world population; so did the Spanish Flu of 1918. Half the population would be like World War II with all its terrors repeated over and over and over for a whole century. It's breathtaking that anyone can contemplate death on such scale and say anything positive at all about the prospect, let alone advocating it.
- Even if it were morally acceptable, or if someone were crazy enough to do it anyway and we couldn't stop them, it would be ineffective. Half of today's population corresponds to sometime around 1970, a time not particularly known for environmental sustainability. In addition, any of the methods suggested or hinted at would pretty much destroy modern civilisation — ironically one of the few known effective ways of actually reducing and reversing population growth — as well as themselves being generally quite environmentally harmful. In the aftermath, a "Mad Max" world would not be a green world.
3 January 2010, 9:01 UTCTomTom Worthless Map Guarantee
For Christmas, I got a TomTom XL 340. Now, while overall it's quite a nice device, the map I got with it is apparently quite ancient. Certainly my home address is not on it, which would be a reasonable starting point. We've been here for over half a decade and the street name is older than that; it's not like it was renamed yesterday. Never mind — it came with a "Latest Map Guarantee"!
Except, of course, they won't actually honour it.
Instead of getting me the map like they guaranteed — I can copy it over to the device easily enough — they're insisting that I use their software to download it and that they don't make a version for Linux. I don't mind that last bit — I don't need their software, the navigator connects like a thumb drive so making backups and copying waypoints over is probably easier without it anyway. Indeed, upgrading the map would probably be easier without it, if they actually deigned to get me the latest one. The "Latest Map Guarantee" mentions no requirements on the box, so it's reasonable for me to assume that any computer will do, certainly any computer I can already use to copy files to and from the device.
So far, their Customer Support department didn't really help, but then I get the impression they didn't really try. Certainly the responses I got were basically cut'n'pasted from the FAQ that I'd already read on their website. As such, they didn't tell me anything new, and certainly didn't contribute to solving the problem.
I rather do mind having an outdated map — a map update was the main reason for wanting a new navigator (the old Navman couldn't be updated), so ending up with an outdated one makes it all feel rather pointless.
Update 6th Jan: in continuing interchange, Customer Support is now writing actual responses, so perseverence helps. However, still no resolution.
[permalink] ‣ keyword: me
15 December 2009, 17:52 UTCA question of identity
I've been wondering over the past week or two how to do identity in connectr; I can see at least four different ways of doing it, and I'm not sure which one's best. Currently, it just grabs the identity from Telepathy (Empathy), and it will still do that; but for some features, at least, a more advanced concept of identity may be handy.
The four possibilities that I can see:
- Nothing — just use what's already there. The main down-side is that no store-and-forward is possible; a mutual friend can't forward status messages or other information. This is the status quo (though a bit more caching is possible).
- Honour system — each person picks a random identifier (uuid) and uses that with all their messages. The advantage is simplicity — it's very easy for everyone to understand how the system works and how it breaks. It's how e-mail works, for the most part.The main down-side is that sooner or later, this will no doubt be used for humorous effect and/or evil.
- RSA key (or similar) — each person makes a RSA key and uses it to digitally sign all their status messages etc. This is probably most similar to how Facebook works (except with the central host replaced by cryptography). The main down-side is limited deniability — once a message is signed, it's signed, everyone can verify it, and nothing can take it back. Also, I have a feeling that I might be trying to solve a social problem through technical means, which is sometimes the wrong thing to do.
- DH key (or similar) — each person makes a DH key and uses it to digitally sign all their status messages etc, signing them separately for each of their friends. There is some deniability— only the recipient is properly convinced by the signature — but store-and-forward is still possible. As with the RSA scheme, I may be trying to solve a social problem through technical means. The DH scheme limits the set of features in a different way to the RSA scheme — a message cannot be forwarded to a third person and retain the original signature; this affects, for instance, retweets and comments on statuses. If Alice comments on Bob's status, Bob's other friends will not see the original signature unless they're also friends with Alice. I'm not sure whether these limits would be for the better or for the worse on balance.
- Something else? There may well be other ways to do this...
Comments? Suggestions? Which of these sounds like the best way to go?
[permalink] ‣ keyword: connectr
13 December 2009, 7:59 UTCIntroduction to connectr
What is connectr?
Connectr is a distributed social network. The eventual plan is to supplant Facebook; currently, it's roughly got the functionality of Twitter, slightly simplified.
Why am I writing it?
Hosted social networks are really quite unhealthy. For an example, see the current privacy brouhaha. However, the problem is more general — the incentives for the host are all wrong as far as the users are concerned.
How to get involved?
Join in! A social network is all about the users! The previous blog post gives the details. There's a PPA, so it's easy to install in Ubuntu and similar systems. The code is up on Launchpad, if you want to join in with the development.
[permalink] ‣ 4 comments ‣ keyword: connectr
10 December 2009, 7:15 UTCSwitching desktops from the command line
To switch desktop workspaces from the command line, use the wmctrl program, for instance: wmctrl -o 1280,0
To discover the correct values for each workspace, run wmctrl -d on each one and note the "VP" numbers. The wmctrl program can also do other things, for instance bring a particular window to the front or move a window to a particular workspace.
[permalink] ‣ keyword: howto
19 November 2009, 5:31 UTCHow will the next Bond film be financed?
(Note: the first part of this is a copy of a comment I originally made elsewhere.)
Chanttojah: I mean for example, MGM cant just spend tens of millions to produce the next Bond film just to post it somewhere for free. Nor can most independent studios afford to produce a work of that scale.
Unfortunately, the answer to this is complex and tends to tl;dr.
A few points, though:
- I do not know. Nobody does. There are reasons to be optimistic that somebody will invent something, but until they do, we have no idea what it will be. That's the nature of future inventions.
- If nobody ever made another Bond film, it would not be the end of civilization, in the same way that the fact that we no longer build huge cathedrals was not the end of civilization — and at that, the cathedrals probably had the better claim.
- The social benefit of more Bond films does not outweigh the social cost of the proposed schemes (due process, assumption of innocence, rules of evidence, fair trial, first sale, ownership, privacy, hobby electronics, cryptography research, mathematics).
- Various relatively large Intellectual Property edifices have been created with relatively generous copying conditions, such as the GNU/Linux operating system and Wikipedia. A few years ago, in 2005, it was estimated that Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 would cost some US$ 8 billion if it were made as a traditional product — well over an order of magnitude more than any movie ever produced (US$ 0.3 billion, Pirates of the Carribean III).
- YouTube claims uploads of 20 hours every minute. A lot of that's dross, of course, but there are some pearls. I have no idea whether this is a good way to get to a future, Internet-friendly model of movie production; but it does indicate that there are a lot of people with the time and the inclination.
PS: It's been pointed out to me that the above is a bit negative; here, then, a bit of expansion on point 1's reasons to be optimistic.
- By analogy with software. Like films (and music), software can be perfectly copied for negligible cost. Also like films (and music), software traditionally requires large investments of money and effort for the fixed costs. Yet, over the last three decades or so, freely copied software has gone from "Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?" (Bill Gates, 1976) to the above-mentioned Debian GNU/Linux and beyond, supporting a healthy industry of programmers, system administrators, webmasters and so on.
- While I say that I do not know what business model will take hold, many proposals exist. Cinema sales will still exist, and the cinema experience is not easily duplicated in the home. Various schemes of pre-payment have been proposed, and in some cases tried. It may well be just a question of hitting on the right formula. In addition, some collaborative models may be possible, as with the Wikipedia.
- By analogy with music. Music looks like it's about 20-25 years behind software. First glimmers of plausible business models are beginning to emerge — in particular, as publicity for live work. It's a bit early to tell whether they'll last or whether they'll be supplanted by something better, but they're there and they're apparently workable.
[permalink] ‣ keywords: DRM, creative
15 November 2009, 11:48 UTCConnectr released!
I've just got to the first usable version of my distributed social network program, so I'm releasing it! So far, it's basically got the functionality of Twitter, somewhat simplified, but that should improve over the coming weeks :-)
- Requirements:
- Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10)
- Empathy, and at least one GTalk, Jabber or XMPP account
- Willingness to run bleeding-edge network-facing code
- To install:
- In Synaptic, add ppa:sabik/connectr to your Software Sources, Reload, then install connectr
- Note: this will also upgrade your telepathy-gabble and python-telepathy packages; connectr won't work with the version of telepathy-gabble that's in Ubuntu Karmic
- Connectr should now be in your Applications / Internet menu
- In Synaptic, add ppa:sabik/connectr to your Software Sources, Reload, then install connectr
- The code:
- The code is kept in bzr, hosted on Launchpad at https://launchpad.net/connectr
[permalink] ‣ keywords: tubes, connectr
4 November 2009, 14:20 UTCRegistered for LCA 2010
Just registered for LCA 2010 — Wellington in January!
[permalink] ‣ keywords: lca2010, me
11 October 2009, 3:46 UTCBetter than cordial
8 September 2009, 7:34 UTCInvestment seminar program scam?
15 July 2009, 17:59 UTCSpace colonization, GPS and mobiles
14 July 2009, 15:08 UTCCabin crew, disarm doors and cross-check
28 March 2009, 4:45 UTCLittle Red Riding Hood as if from Rainbows End
25 March 2009, 7:17 UTCTines at the end of A Fire Upon the Deep
6 March 2009, 4:43 UTCIdea: to-do schedulers and GPS navigators
4 March 2009, 14:45 UTC"Programmer-Archeologist"
19 February 2009, 15:44 UTCDoing Facebook from scratch
18 February 2009, 14:10 UTCTelepathy Tubes howto
17 February 2009, 12:42 UTCOn interruptions
8 February 2009, 6:40 UTCLUV Beginner's Workshops
2 February 2009, 11:44 UTCLink: Work on Stuff that Matters
29 November 2008, 9:25 UTCVersion control
17 November 2008, 16:54 UTCExponentiating zero in numpy
1 November 2008, 6:56 UTCCargo cults of the Singularity
30 October 2008, 15:46 UTCNiva on ebay
19 September 2008, 14:42 UTCRecording culture
16 September 2008, 16:00 UTCNon-overlapping ID counters
11 September 2008, 15:29 UTCThe stultolarity
