I have used Apple's latest operating system, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion for about a week so I think now is a good time to report back. I downloaded the new system as soon as it was available and have been using it on my main work computer, a MacBook Pro i7 with 4G of RAM, since then. So how has it gone? ...
Overall it has gone very well, although there have been a few problems and compatibility issues. Also some of the new features feel a little bit unfinished so I am looking forward to getting Mac OS X 10.7.1! The new features are genuine improvements - not just meaningless design changes - and I use most of them.
First, let's get the problems out of the way. I miss Rosetta. There, I admitted it. Strangely it is being able to play older games that I miss most and I can't think of any situations where I needed any "serious" programs which required Rosetta. It's typical of Apple to force people to move ahead by dropping support for older technologies and I know why they do it, but it does create a certain amount of inconvenience some times.
I have also had one or two compatibility issues. I do have a very large number of programs installed so the fact that so few gave me any real problems is probably quite impressive. The only real disaster is the Cisco VPN client which did seem to work when I started Lion in 32 bit mode but then caused a kernel panic when I tried to close it. That software has always been poor though so it's not that surprising.
Another issue which I have found an easy solution for involves what used to be my main web browser, OmniWeb. It crashed shortly after launching under Lion but I thought it was time I moved on so I have now switched to Google Chrome as my main browser. I still use Safari as my development and technical browser. Chrome seems good: its speed and memory use are much better than OmniWeb although there are a few design features I don't like.
Apple Remote Desktop required a free upgrade to start working again and a few other programs provided automatic updates about the same time. I'm not sure if these programs would have worked without the updates but since I apply updates to my extensive list of installed programs almost every day anyway it required no real extra effort.
I also had to upgrade to Parallels version 6 to run my "other" operating systems: Windows XP, Windows 7, Ubuntu Linux, and Chrome OS. That is also performing a lot better but if that is anything to do with Lion or just the newer version of Parallels is unclear.
Lion has many new features and most of them work really well but I want to mention one feature which isn't that good. That is Launchpad. The idea of this feature is to provide an easy way to display the applications installed on the computer to make them easier to launch. When activated Launchpad shows the icons of all the applications overlaid on the screen and a single click launches them (sort of like the iPad and iPhone).
The problem is that when you have a lot of applications it's hard to find the one you want. I cleared the Launchpad database and just added the ones I wanted but after a restart they all came back. And every new app seems to get added to the end of the list. It is possible to re-order the icons but not remove most of them. It's poorly implemented and I just can't use it although when I had a subset of useful apps only I did use it. So a small improvement - the ability to delete unwanted icons - would fix this problem.
Those are the only real problems. Apart from the crash with the Cisco VPN I have had no crashes or panics. The general performance seems similar to Snow Leopard but probably no better and memory use also seems similar. I have mainly listed the problems here so in my next blog entry I will report back about the good things I have found.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Management Morons
I work in a large organisation which can be very bureaucratic, and this sometimes reflects the inadequacies of modern management processes. But it would be very unprofessional to comment on my workplace specifically so I want to discuss modern management in more general terms and also quote a few incidents from a similar large organisation a friend works in (who will remain unnamed of course).
So, first of all, what do I mean by modern management? It's maybe not such a great term because a lot of the principles are actually quite old, but it's really just about the way large organisations are organised. This almost universally means a hierarchical approach with a fixed reporting structure, a formal communications system, and a lot of detailed rules and guidelines about how things should be done.
Few people would deny that those attributes exist, but there would be a debate about the results they achieve. So let's look at the management principles and why, in my opinion, they don't work.
First there is the hierarchical structure with a CEO (or someone with a similar job title) at the top who has a series of senior managers below him (or sometimes her) who in turn have junior managers below them, then supervisors, and finally the actual "workers" (does that imply the others don't work?). Of course there are often even more layers in the system (and there actually are in the case I mentioned above).
Assuming the ultimate role of management is to enable things to get done why is it necessary to have so many layers between those who actually perform the core functions of the organisation and those who make the big decisions? Some people would suggest it is a good "buffer" system between the fantasy world of upper management and the hard reality of the real world.
In fact that is precisely what my friend reports. When an issue happens at the "coalface" it is reported up through the system, but for various reasons the message changes until it is unrecognisable. Why does it change? For two main reasons: first, the managers rarely really understand the problem so it is difficult for them to communicate it effectively; and second, the middle managers usually have a "political" agenda which involves only telling people further up the hierarchy what they want to hear so they often misrepresent the problem deliberately as well.
Both of these issues (lack of understanding and a political agenda) are natural consequences of the way management works. Managers tend to have little understanding because they have been isolated from the real work their organisation does for so long. They also tend to get to management positions because they are no good for anything else! Yes, I know this doesn't apply to everyone but it is remarkably common.
And managers tend to get to their positions of power not through competence in their profession, or through excellent organisation skills, but more through being good at working the system for their own benefit. In other words they are self centered, uncaring, and often quite immoral.
So hierarchies don't work in most cases. There are exceptions of course: some organisations have a sort of "benevolent dictatorship" in place and Apple would be the most famous example. In that case the company is lucky to have someone at the top who is genuinely innovative (instead of just using that word without really understanding what it means like most managers) and whose ideas are both brilliant and generally accepted by the equally brilliant staff who implement them. But Apple is very much the exception rather than the rule.
What about the rigid communications systems? Obviously some of the deficiencies I have described above could be overcome if more direct reporting was possible. But it rarely is. For example my friend reports he was recently working in the top manager's office and the subject of his work environment arose. There was an opportunity there for direct communications about the problems but it was made very clear that the manager in no way wanted to hear what was really happening. The happy ignorance resulting from the news passed up from the management team was obviously preferable.
Consultation is a word often heard in management circles but it's almost universally a farce. Managers often dream up some new structure then offer it for feedback but that almost never makes any difference. They have generally already decided on pushing through their agenda (which is often based on politics or pure ignorance) and no real feedback is accepted. Sometimes they will deliberately make the change more extreme than they need to then scale it back a bit to give the appearance of compromise but this is really just part of the farce.
And I have heard of a situation where an accounting firm was asked to advise on a restructuring which had huge negative consequences. But to show how accountable they were the managers had the new structure audited... by the same accounting firm who recommended it! That is just grossly corrupt and a huge waste of money at the same time. It's disgusting.
But it gets even worse. When their changes are rejected (as they almost always are) management have the temerity to say it's because the staff "can't accept change". That's just insulting and dishonest. Many people love change. If the change involved more freedom in their work, or better pay, or better conditions, or some other positive action the staff would be happy to accept it. But the changes management want aren't usually like that, are they?
And finally what about the rigid rules and regulations? I agree that large organisations need structure to operate effectively. It can't just be a "free for all" with everyone doing their own thing. But that doesn't mean that every action has to be scripted down to the smallest detail. Anyone who has contacted a foreign helpdesk and who is forced through the tedious process of performing a lot of unnecessary and counter-productive steps will know what I mean.
Additionally there is the point that an over-managed work environment doesn't encourage competent people to want to work there. If the staff are made to act like mindless zombies then that is the sort of staff you will get. It's a sort of self perpetuating system: impose mindless rules, get mindless staff, create more mindless rules for them...
It's time we got back to the real purpose of managers: to attend to the administrative and other needs of the people who do the real work, and who have the genuinely innovative and practical ideas. It's time the pretence we work under, that managers are in some way superior and automatically worth of respect was thrown away. If a manager is superior it should be obvious by his actions, and if he wants respect he should earn it like everyone else.
But with current standard of management I don't think that would happen much!
So, first of all, what do I mean by modern management? It's maybe not such a great term because a lot of the principles are actually quite old, but it's really just about the way large organisations are organised. This almost universally means a hierarchical approach with a fixed reporting structure, a formal communications system, and a lot of detailed rules and guidelines about how things should be done.
Few people would deny that those attributes exist, but there would be a debate about the results they achieve. So let's look at the management principles and why, in my opinion, they don't work.
First there is the hierarchical structure with a CEO (or someone with a similar job title) at the top who has a series of senior managers below him (or sometimes her) who in turn have junior managers below them, then supervisors, and finally the actual "workers" (does that imply the others don't work?). Of course there are often even more layers in the system (and there actually are in the case I mentioned above).
Assuming the ultimate role of management is to enable things to get done why is it necessary to have so many layers between those who actually perform the core functions of the organisation and those who make the big decisions? Some people would suggest it is a good "buffer" system between the fantasy world of upper management and the hard reality of the real world.
In fact that is precisely what my friend reports. When an issue happens at the "coalface" it is reported up through the system, but for various reasons the message changes until it is unrecognisable. Why does it change? For two main reasons: first, the managers rarely really understand the problem so it is difficult for them to communicate it effectively; and second, the middle managers usually have a "political" agenda which involves only telling people further up the hierarchy what they want to hear so they often misrepresent the problem deliberately as well.
Both of these issues (lack of understanding and a political agenda) are natural consequences of the way management works. Managers tend to have little understanding because they have been isolated from the real work their organisation does for so long. They also tend to get to management positions because they are no good for anything else! Yes, I know this doesn't apply to everyone but it is remarkably common.
And managers tend to get to their positions of power not through competence in their profession, or through excellent organisation skills, but more through being good at working the system for their own benefit. In other words they are self centered, uncaring, and often quite immoral.
So hierarchies don't work in most cases. There are exceptions of course: some organisations have a sort of "benevolent dictatorship" in place and Apple would be the most famous example. In that case the company is lucky to have someone at the top who is genuinely innovative (instead of just using that word without really understanding what it means like most managers) and whose ideas are both brilliant and generally accepted by the equally brilliant staff who implement them. But Apple is very much the exception rather than the rule.
What about the rigid communications systems? Obviously some of the deficiencies I have described above could be overcome if more direct reporting was possible. But it rarely is. For example my friend reports he was recently working in the top manager's office and the subject of his work environment arose. There was an opportunity there for direct communications about the problems but it was made very clear that the manager in no way wanted to hear what was really happening. The happy ignorance resulting from the news passed up from the management team was obviously preferable.
Consultation is a word often heard in management circles but it's almost universally a farce. Managers often dream up some new structure then offer it for feedback but that almost never makes any difference. They have generally already decided on pushing through their agenda (which is often based on politics or pure ignorance) and no real feedback is accepted. Sometimes they will deliberately make the change more extreme than they need to then scale it back a bit to give the appearance of compromise but this is really just part of the farce.
And I have heard of a situation where an accounting firm was asked to advise on a restructuring which had huge negative consequences. But to show how accountable they were the managers had the new structure audited... by the same accounting firm who recommended it! That is just grossly corrupt and a huge waste of money at the same time. It's disgusting.
But it gets even worse. When their changes are rejected (as they almost always are) management have the temerity to say it's because the staff "can't accept change". That's just insulting and dishonest. Many people love change. If the change involved more freedom in their work, or better pay, or better conditions, or some other positive action the staff would be happy to accept it. But the changes management want aren't usually like that, are they?
And finally what about the rigid rules and regulations? I agree that large organisations need structure to operate effectively. It can't just be a "free for all" with everyone doing their own thing. But that doesn't mean that every action has to be scripted down to the smallest detail. Anyone who has contacted a foreign helpdesk and who is forced through the tedious process of performing a lot of unnecessary and counter-productive steps will know what I mean.
Additionally there is the point that an over-managed work environment doesn't encourage competent people to want to work there. If the staff are made to act like mindless zombies then that is the sort of staff you will get. It's a sort of self perpetuating system: impose mindless rules, get mindless staff, create more mindless rules for them...
It's time we got back to the real purpose of managers: to attend to the administrative and other needs of the people who do the real work, and who have the genuinely innovative and practical ideas. It's time the pretence we work under, that managers are in some way superior and automatically worth of respect was thrown away. If a manager is superior it should be obvious by his actions, and if he wants respect he should earn it like everyone else.
But with current standard of management I don't think that would happen much!
Monday, July 18, 2011
What a Waste!
It's no secret than I'm no great fan of the world's religions. In the past I have listed the reasons I object to them. They include the fact that religions simply aren't true, that they have been responsible for many atrocities in the past and present, that they have suppressed alternative ideas, that they are used as a form of mind control of their members, and that they are just plain embarrassing. When I see intelligent people engaged in some silly religious ceremony I just want to laugh. Needless to say this isn't considered appropriate in some circumstances where religion is utilised!
Before I go any further I do want to say that I recognise that religions aren't all bad. Some provide charitable services, social support services for people, add to the variety of cultural experience in the world, and they sometimes give moral guidance to some groups in society. I don't think religions are inherently moral and I certainly don't think you need religion to be moral (I think the opposite is more often true) but there are some weak minded people who need to be told what's moral and many religions do an adequate (but not great) job of that.
So there's nothing much new there and you may be wondering what the point of this blog entry is. Well it's all about a new conclusion I have recently come to. I listen to a lot of material about philosophy and the history of science (my favourite source is the BBC's "In Our Time" podcast) and there's a theme which seems to be depressingly common. That is that religion has caused a lot of wasted time in the past.
Many philosophers and scientists (I use that word in its widest sense to include people doing something similar to science before the modern version emerged a couple of hundred years ago) tried so hard to make their theories fit around the prevailing theology of the time, whether that was orthodox Christianity, Islam, or other religions.
They applied the strictest standards to most of their thoughts but threw away their rigour when God was brought into the equation. For example philosophers (I'm sorry but I can't remember which right now) hypothesised that everything has a cause and this implied an infinite regression, so there had to be a first cause and that was naturally labelled "god". By some unspecified process this often translated to God (with an upper case "G") which was always the particular deity currently popular in the culture the person lived in.
Does that really make sense? Obviously if god doesn't need a cause then the initial premise: that everything has a cause, isn't true. But it's just that premise which leads to the conclusion of God's existence. If I can see that then why didn't the greatest minds the world has ever known see it too? Is it because I'm smarter than them? No, it's that I'm not blinded by the theological beliefs of the time. Even Descartes, when he was trying to get back to true first principles, couldn't help but give god a "free pass".
If thinkers had ignored the easy answer (the same one mindless fundamentalists still give today: "God did it") then they might have pursued more interesting ideas. Ideas like asking whether everything really does have a cause (quantum physics seems to show that events actually can happen without one) and who knows where that might have lead.
First causes are just one idea where God can be invoked as a simple answer which requires no further explanation. It's actually a lazy answer and is hardly worthy of the great thinkers who have used it. But there are many others as well where real progress was blocked by the concept of a non-existent supernatural entity. What a waste!
Before I go any further I do want to say that I recognise that religions aren't all bad. Some provide charitable services, social support services for people, add to the variety of cultural experience in the world, and they sometimes give moral guidance to some groups in society. I don't think religions are inherently moral and I certainly don't think you need religion to be moral (I think the opposite is more often true) but there are some weak minded people who need to be told what's moral and many religions do an adequate (but not great) job of that.
So there's nothing much new there and you may be wondering what the point of this blog entry is. Well it's all about a new conclusion I have recently come to. I listen to a lot of material about philosophy and the history of science (my favourite source is the BBC's "In Our Time" podcast) and there's a theme which seems to be depressingly common. That is that religion has caused a lot of wasted time in the past.
Many philosophers and scientists (I use that word in its widest sense to include people doing something similar to science before the modern version emerged a couple of hundred years ago) tried so hard to make their theories fit around the prevailing theology of the time, whether that was orthodox Christianity, Islam, or other religions.
They applied the strictest standards to most of their thoughts but threw away their rigour when God was brought into the equation. For example philosophers (I'm sorry but I can't remember which right now) hypothesised that everything has a cause and this implied an infinite regression, so there had to be a first cause and that was naturally labelled "god". By some unspecified process this often translated to God (with an upper case "G") which was always the particular deity currently popular in the culture the person lived in.
Does that really make sense? Obviously if god doesn't need a cause then the initial premise: that everything has a cause, isn't true. But it's just that premise which leads to the conclusion of God's existence. If I can see that then why didn't the greatest minds the world has ever known see it too? Is it because I'm smarter than them? No, it's that I'm not blinded by the theological beliefs of the time. Even Descartes, when he was trying to get back to true first principles, couldn't help but give god a "free pass".
If thinkers had ignored the easy answer (the same one mindless fundamentalists still give today: "God did it") then they might have pursued more interesting ideas. Ideas like asking whether everything really does have a cause (quantum physics seems to show that events actually can happen without one) and who knows where that might have lead.
First causes are just one idea where God can be invoked as a simple answer which requires no further explanation. It's actually a lazy answer and is hardly worthy of the great thinkers who have used it. But there are many others as well where real progress was blocked by the concept of a non-existent supernatural entity. What a waste!
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Who Needs Books?
As I write this I am returning from another trip to Australia, this time for an Apple support conference called "X World 2011" which was held in Sydney. It's a conference which discusses and demonstrates how to support, deploy and set up Apple equipment including servers, desktops, laptops, iPads, and iPhones.
Actually it was quite a useful experience because not only did I get some ideas about what other universities are doing but I also picked up a few tips I had either forgotten or (gasp) not known in the first place regarding Macs. I also realised there is a lot in Apple's server software which I have not had the opportunity to use, so I really need to set up an Apple server in a situation away from the restrictions of the university corporate environment (maybe I'll destroy my own network at home instead!)
One idea which seems to be gaining a lot of support is the use of iPads by university students, both to hold information such as textbooks and to act as an interactive teaching tool. Some universities are giving students an iPad (to use for their course and then to keep) while others are insisting that the student provides one themselves.
I certainly appreciate the iPad as a very compact and accessible information source. In a small form factor you get the equivalent of a small reference library, plus you get capabilities not available in conventional books such as animations, easy cross referencing to other ebooks and to the internet, and interaction with other apps on the device.
I haven't bought any traditional reading material for a year now because all of my technical material and fiction is now on the iPad. I have even been known to read on the iPhone for shorter periods of time if I'm somewhere without the iPad. I always have my phone with me (I just can't cope with parting from it) but the iPad, while it's a wonderful device for many things, is just a bit too big to carry everywhere.
So electronic books have a lot of advantages. They don't use up any real space: an iPad with 100 books on it takes the same space and weighs the same as one with no books; they can easily be updated: just connect to the Internet and download updated or corrected versions (as long as the licensing allows this); and they are even cheaper: one university is sourcing its electronic texts for just 60% of the price of the paper version. On the other hand many of the electronic books are a fairly poor effort at this early stage because many are just a copy of the paper version with no features making use of the technology. Obviously this will change in the future (at least I hope it will).
And let's not forget the environmental advantages. Sure, I agree that there is a significant environmental cost to actually making the iPad, but once you have it loading extra material costs almost nothing. There are no dead trees involved, no carbon produced by transport, etc. Surely this has got to be the way we store and use our information from now on.
Ironically I have to stop writing now because I'm not allowed to use electronic devices while the aircraft is taking off. Silly rule but I don't want to get thrown off the flight. I guess there are still a few occasions when the old fashioned paper books still have some advantages!
Actually it was quite a useful experience because not only did I get some ideas about what other universities are doing but I also picked up a few tips I had either forgotten or (gasp) not known in the first place regarding Macs. I also realised there is a lot in Apple's server software which I have not had the opportunity to use, so I really need to set up an Apple server in a situation away from the restrictions of the university corporate environment (maybe I'll destroy my own network at home instead!)
One idea which seems to be gaining a lot of support is the use of iPads by university students, both to hold information such as textbooks and to act as an interactive teaching tool. Some universities are giving students an iPad (to use for their course and then to keep) while others are insisting that the student provides one themselves.
I certainly appreciate the iPad as a very compact and accessible information source. In a small form factor you get the equivalent of a small reference library, plus you get capabilities not available in conventional books such as animations, easy cross referencing to other ebooks and to the internet, and interaction with other apps on the device.
I haven't bought any traditional reading material for a year now because all of my technical material and fiction is now on the iPad. I have even been known to read on the iPhone for shorter periods of time if I'm somewhere without the iPad. I always have my phone with me (I just can't cope with parting from it) but the iPad, while it's a wonderful device for many things, is just a bit too big to carry everywhere.
So electronic books have a lot of advantages. They don't use up any real space: an iPad with 100 books on it takes the same space and weighs the same as one with no books; they can easily be updated: just connect to the Internet and download updated or corrected versions (as long as the licensing allows this); and they are even cheaper: one university is sourcing its electronic texts for just 60% of the price of the paper version. On the other hand many of the electronic books are a fairly poor effort at this early stage because many are just a copy of the paper version with no features making use of the technology. Obviously this will change in the future (at least I hope it will).
And let's not forget the environmental advantages. Sure, I agree that there is a significant environmental cost to actually making the iPad, but once you have it loading extra material costs almost nothing. There are no dead trees involved, no carbon produced by transport, etc. Surely this has got to be the way we store and use our information from now on.
Ironically I have to stop writing now because I'm not allowed to use electronic devices while the aircraft is taking off. Silly rule but I don't want to get thrown off the flight. I guess there are still a few occasions when the old fashioned paper books still have some advantages!
Monday, July 11, 2011
A Week in Sydney
I'm writing this blog entry on my iPad as I fly back from a conference in Sydney. The conference ran for 3 days and I organised to have another 2 days after that. I have spent time in Sydney before of course, but I hadn't been there for a while and this time I was unencumbered with family who usually seem to complain about two "annoying" activities I often indulge in while on holiday.
The first is my wish, while on holiday, to experience the place I am visiting instead of spending half of my life in shops (which are often very similar to those we have back home except bigger). In addition to that terrible proclivity I sometimes want to do things which might be a bit geeky (sorry, there's the geek stuff coming up again) such as visiting technology museums and that sort of thing.
My second dreadful habit (which I must agree could get a bit tedious after a while) is wanting to take photos of everything, often from bizarre locations (just to get an interesting angle on the subject) and occasionally at odd times as well (I like doing photography in challenging lighting conditions, such as sunrise and sunset, where the lighting can give an unusual mood to the image).
So on this occasion I had the freedom to do what I wanted, except I was on a serious budget so it couldn't cost too much. Well I wasn't really on a budget but I did feel a bit guilty about going to Australia and leaving the rest of the family at home in the middle of the New Zealand winter (yes, it is winter in Sydney too but you would hardly know it because the weather was just beautiful every day I was there, although it did get quite cold once the sun set) so I decided that spending as little as possible might assuage my guilt somewhat.
Anyway, here's a list of what I did in my two days...
I visited the Opera House and Harbour Bridge twice - once in the late afternoon and once after sunset - to get the quintessential great photo of those landmarks. And yes, I think I got some really good ones! I love that part of Sydney because it's so scenic (not naturally scenic but scenic from a city perspective) and there's always something interesting happening.
The last time I was in that area of Sydney I still had a film camera (yes, it was a while ago) so I was limited in the number of shots I could take. This time with the digital SLR I probably took several hundred photos with various exposure compensations, ISO values, apertures, and other settings. Of those I kept about 10% and trashed the rest. Because I didn't have a tripod all of the shots were hand held which is quite challenging once the light levels went down. I should report that I was quite successful though.
I also visited a couple of museums: the Powerhouse Museum which has exhibitions of old technology (railway engines, steam engines, old computer equipment, etc); and the Maritime Museum which has exhibitions of stuff related to the sea.
Maybe the best exhibit was the "Spirit of Australia", the fastest boat on Earth. The story behind this was pretty cool. It was built in a Sydney backyard by a relative amateur, Ken Warby. He had acquired a J34 jet engine (as you do) to power the boat but was worried it might not produce enough power - so he ordered an afterburner for it! Wow, I would just love to call someone and order and afterburner. So this engine was a fire breathing monster and he set the world speed record on water with it, then went on to set another record of well over 500 kilometers per hour. After that he retired from racing which was probably a good decision if you consider the death rate of people trying to go fast on water!
There's an Apple store in Sydney so naturally it was compulsory to visit that. Now this fact should impress you: I didn't buy anything. Of course, as I said to the staff there, I own almost every product Apple has ever made already! The store is very impressive though with a completely glass front, a glass staircase, and plenty of cool Apple products with lots of people playing with them.
I also visited the Centre Point Tower which is the tallest building in Sydney. I got some spectacular views from the observation deck which unsurprisingly resulted in another pile of photos to sort through. The biggest problem I had in that situation was taking photos through the glass of the windows and avoiding the reflections and smeared hand prints.
I'm sitting in Auckland airport while I complete this entry and I have just heard that there will be no flights leaving for a while because of lightning in the area. It could take a while to get home yet! We often joke about how changeable the weather in New Zealand is but it's only after spending a week in somewhere like Sydney (I had a similar experience in San Francisco) where every day is the same (sunny and warm during the day) that you realise how true that really is.
There was only a short delay for the weather and I am now in the air again. I will be back to work tomorrow and that could be a bit of a shock even though I've only been away a week. I'm not sure when I will be in Sydney next but I already have some more geeky and some scenic locations I want to visit when I do!
The first is my wish, while on holiday, to experience the place I am visiting instead of spending half of my life in shops (which are often very similar to those we have back home except bigger). In addition to that terrible proclivity I sometimes want to do things which might be a bit geeky (sorry, there's the geek stuff coming up again) such as visiting technology museums and that sort of thing.
My second dreadful habit (which I must agree could get a bit tedious after a while) is wanting to take photos of everything, often from bizarre locations (just to get an interesting angle on the subject) and occasionally at odd times as well (I like doing photography in challenging lighting conditions, such as sunrise and sunset, where the lighting can give an unusual mood to the image).
So on this occasion I had the freedom to do what I wanted, except I was on a serious budget so it couldn't cost too much. Well I wasn't really on a budget but I did feel a bit guilty about going to Australia and leaving the rest of the family at home in the middle of the New Zealand winter (yes, it is winter in Sydney too but you would hardly know it because the weather was just beautiful every day I was there, although it did get quite cold once the sun set) so I decided that spending as little as possible might assuage my guilt somewhat.
Anyway, here's a list of what I did in my two days...
I visited the Opera House and Harbour Bridge twice - once in the late afternoon and once after sunset - to get the quintessential great photo of those landmarks. And yes, I think I got some really good ones! I love that part of Sydney because it's so scenic (not naturally scenic but scenic from a city perspective) and there's always something interesting happening.
The last time I was in that area of Sydney I still had a film camera (yes, it was a while ago) so I was limited in the number of shots I could take. This time with the digital SLR I probably took several hundred photos with various exposure compensations, ISO values, apertures, and other settings. Of those I kept about 10% and trashed the rest. Because I didn't have a tripod all of the shots were hand held which is quite challenging once the light levels went down. I should report that I was quite successful though.
I also visited a couple of museums: the Powerhouse Museum which has exhibitions of old technology (railway engines, steam engines, old computer equipment, etc); and the Maritime Museum which has exhibitions of stuff related to the sea.
Maybe the best exhibit was the "Spirit of Australia", the fastest boat on Earth. The story behind this was pretty cool. It was built in a Sydney backyard by a relative amateur, Ken Warby. He had acquired a J34 jet engine (as you do) to power the boat but was worried it might not produce enough power - so he ordered an afterburner for it! Wow, I would just love to call someone and order and afterburner. So this engine was a fire breathing monster and he set the world speed record on water with it, then went on to set another record of well over 500 kilometers per hour. After that he retired from racing which was probably a good decision if you consider the death rate of people trying to go fast on water!
There's an Apple store in Sydney so naturally it was compulsory to visit that. Now this fact should impress you: I didn't buy anything. Of course, as I said to the staff there, I own almost every product Apple has ever made already! The store is very impressive though with a completely glass front, a glass staircase, and plenty of cool Apple products with lots of people playing with them.
I also visited the Centre Point Tower which is the tallest building in Sydney. I got some spectacular views from the observation deck which unsurprisingly resulted in another pile of photos to sort through. The biggest problem I had in that situation was taking photos through the glass of the windows and avoiding the reflections and smeared hand prints.
I'm sitting in Auckland airport while I complete this entry and I have just heard that there will be no flights leaving for a while because of lightning in the area. It could take a while to get home yet! We often joke about how changeable the weather in New Zealand is but it's only after spending a week in somewhere like Sydney (I had a similar experience in San Francisco) where every day is the same (sunny and warm during the day) that you realise how true that really is.
There was only a short delay for the weather and I am now in the air again. I will be back to work tomorrow and that could be a bit of a shock even though I've only been away a week. I'm not sure when I will be in Sydney next but I already have some more geeky and some scenic locations I want to visit when I do!
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Android Versus iPhone
Which is better: Android or iPhone? Looking at the latest sales figures which show Android based smartphones outselling every other platform and Apple staying fairly steady at around 25% (poor old RIM is the main victim of Android's success) you might be tempted to say that Android is clearly superior. But I'm sure you'll not be surprised to hear that I don't agree.
Maybe it depends on how you define the word "better". If you mean the biggest selling phone is best then clearly Android wins. Of course Android is an operating system which runs on many phones, so that further complicates the discussion. But not many people would claim that simple popularity means quality in the wider sense. The problem is that all measures of quality are essentially subjective.
But whatever your views on quality how can the success of Android be explained? Allow me to offer an anecdote. In our house we have three smartphones. I have an iPhone 4 and two other members of my family have Android phones (one is made by Samsung and the other is branded Vodafone). Let's have a look at how these phones are used...
The iPhone has pages of extra apps installed but the Android phones have nothing extra at all. All of the functions of the iPhone are regularly used but many of the Android phone basic features are never used. I love my iPhone but the Android users are constantly making comments like "I hate this phone" and "how do you make it do this?"
To be fair the Android phones aren't the most expensive. They are considerably cheaper than both the iPhone and the top phones running other operating systems so the comparison is a bit unfair. But I think a lot of that large market share Android phones have comes from phones just like these. So most likely the vast majority of that share is for cheaper phones which are slow and hard to use and which the owners don't use to anything like their full potential and actually don't even enjoy using.
Even the top Android phones which I have used (admittedly for only short periods of time) have looked good on the surface but have fallen short of the great iPhone experience. And that is an opinion which has quite wide acceptance.
Of course Android does have some advantages. First, it is a more open platform so it isn't susceptible to the possibly arbitrary rules and restrictions Apple puts on the much more closed environment of the iPhone. On the other hand the closed Apple environment does result in a very well integrated environment and one which is far less likely to be affected by substandard programs and malware.
Another Android advantage is the variety of hardware it runs on. If you want a phone with a physical keyboard for example, you can do that with Android but not iPhone. That is a real issue although I think most people would learn to like the iPhone's virtual keyboard if they just gave it a chance.
Maybe the biggest Android advantage is price. The problem is that the cheaper phones tend to be slow and clunky and the phones where the hardware is of similar quality to an iPhone are often just about as expensive anyway. So what's the point?
Android is a younger system than iOS so maybe it needs another year or two to mature. But the fragmentation of the design of the user interface on Android devices and the poor experience many people have with them means that while they will probably continue to be the biggest selling platform they aren't likely to be a challenge to Apple for being the best.
Maybe it depends on how you define the word "better". If you mean the biggest selling phone is best then clearly Android wins. Of course Android is an operating system which runs on many phones, so that further complicates the discussion. But not many people would claim that simple popularity means quality in the wider sense. The problem is that all measures of quality are essentially subjective.
But whatever your views on quality how can the success of Android be explained? Allow me to offer an anecdote. In our house we have three smartphones. I have an iPhone 4 and two other members of my family have Android phones (one is made by Samsung and the other is branded Vodafone). Let's have a look at how these phones are used...
The iPhone has pages of extra apps installed but the Android phones have nothing extra at all. All of the functions of the iPhone are regularly used but many of the Android phone basic features are never used. I love my iPhone but the Android users are constantly making comments like "I hate this phone" and "how do you make it do this?"
To be fair the Android phones aren't the most expensive. They are considerably cheaper than both the iPhone and the top phones running other operating systems so the comparison is a bit unfair. But I think a lot of that large market share Android phones have comes from phones just like these. So most likely the vast majority of that share is for cheaper phones which are slow and hard to use and which the owners don't use to anything like their full potential and actually don't even enjoy using.
Even the top Android phones which I have used (admittedly for only short periods of time) have looked good on the surface but have fallen short of the great iPhone experience. And that is an opinion which has quite wide acceptance.
Of course Android does have some advantages. First, it is a more open platform so it isn't susceptible to the possibly arbitrary rules and restrictions Apple puts on the much more closed environment of the iPhone. On the other hand the closed Apple environment does result in a very well integrated environment and one which is far less likely to be affected by substandard programs and malware.
Another Android advantage is the variety of hardware it runs on. If you want a phone with a physical keyboard for example, you can do that with Android but not iPhone. That is a real issue although I think most people would learn to like the iPhone's virtual keyboard if they just gave it a chance.
Maybe the biggest Android advantage is price. The problem is that the cheaper phones tend to be slow and clunky and the phones where the hardware is of similar quality to an iPhone are often just about as expensive anyway. So what's the point?
Android is a younger system than iOS so maybe it needs another year or two to mature. But the fragmentation of the design of the user interface on Android devices and the poor experience many people have with them means that while they will probably continue to be the biggest selling platform they aren't likely to be a challenge to Apple for being the best.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Self Serving Unions
A friend of mine who is - let's not beat about the bush - a far right nut job, sent me a cartoon today which criticised unions. To tell the truth I couldn't watch it all because it was so ridiculously biased and obviously political, but I think it is still worth discussing what possible validity the criticism might have anyway.
So what are the common criticisms of unions? First there is the claim that unions are run by corrupt officials who are entirely interested in advancing their own careers at whatever cost to the union members or its opponents. In other words they claim the union is good for neither the workers nor the employers.
Then there is the claim that unions protect incompetent employees and stop the reasonable process the employers might otherwise use to remove them. Again the result is claimed to be that everyone (except the allegedly incompetent employee presumably) loses.
And finally there is the idea that unions do indeed protect their members but by working against employers the economy as a whole is damaged and (yes, you guessed it) in the big picture this is not good for anyone.
So in summary it seems that the political right see no positive role for unions at all. It's an interesting idea and one which has become more common as neo-liberal economics has become more prominent, but is it true?
Well first of all anyone should be prepared to admit that there are almost certainly unions where the people in charge are corrupt to some extent. After all, is there any type of organisation where a certain percentage isn't affected by corruption? I'm sure that if you look you will find corrupt political parties, corrupt businesses, corrupt churches and corrupt organizations of every other type. I've never seen any statistics to indicate unions are any more corrupt than anything else, and statistics (and any real facts) are generally conspicuous by their absence from right wing political debate.
A similar argument applies to the claim that incompetent employees can be protected by unions. The real question is not whether this happens at all but how often it happens and to what extent. Everyone deserves the right to defend themselves against allegations of incompetence and in an uneven power situation like employee versus manager the support of a union seems perfectly fair. I'm sure there are times when someone who perhaps deserves to lose their job is kept on as a result, but I'm equally sure there are times when the opposite happens and people falsely accused of incompetence are helped.
But even if we concede the points above do unions damage the economy and therefore disadvantage everyone, including employees, as a result? Again the answer is maybe sometimes but probably not in general. Reasonable economies - and by that I mean those which make some attempt to balance factors such as simple economical outcomes, prevention of environmental damage, and some attempt at fair and equitable work conditions - should encourage balance in the power between employers and workers. If that balance swings too much in favor of the employer then sure the business involved might do very well, but often at a cost to the employee. Naturally the balance can occur too much in the opposite direction as well if unions get too strong.
So really it's all about appropriate balance. No one (or at least very few people) wants a world where unions have too much power but they should also want to avoid one where unions (or employees through other mechanisms) have too little. Whatever your opinion on where that balance is the idea that unions are inherently bad or are always corrupt or always support incompetent workers, is just stupid and ignorant and generally motivated more by far right political dogma than any genuine reflection.
So what are the common criticisms of unions? First there is the claim that unions are run by corrupt officials who are entirely interested in advancing their own careers at whatever cost to the union members or its opponents. In other words they claim the union is good for neither the workers nor the employers.
Then there is the claim that unions protect incompetent employees and stop the reasonable process the employers might otherwise use to remove them. Again the result is claimed to be that everyone (except the allegedly incompetent employee presumably) loses.
And finally there is the idea that unions do indeed protect their members but by working against employers the economy as a whole is damaged and (yes, you guessed it) in the big picture this is not good for anyone.
So in summary it seems that the political right see no positive role for unions at all. It's an interesting idea and one which has become more common as neo-liberal economics has become more prominent, but is it true?
Well first of all anyone should be prepared to admit that there are almost certainly unions where the people in charge are corrupt to some extent. After all, is there any type of organisation where a certain percentage isn't affected by corruption? I'm sure that if you look you will find corrupt political parties, corrupt businesses, corrupt churches and corrupt organizations of every other type. I've never seen any statistics to indicate unions are any more corrupt than anything else, and statistics (and any real facts) are generally conspicuous by their absence from right wing political debate.
A similar argument applies to the claim that incompetent employees can be protected by unions. The real question is not whether this happens at all but how often it happens and to what extent. Everyone deserves the right to defend themselves against allegations of incompetence and in an uneven power situation like employee versus manager the support of a union seems perfectly fair. I'm sure there are times when someone who perhaps deserves to lose their job is kept on as a result, but I'm equally sure there are times when the opposite happens and people falsely accused of incompetence are helped.
But even if we concede the points above do unions damage the economy and therefore disadvantage everyone, including employees, as a result? Again the answer is maybe sometimes but probably not in general. Reasonable economies - and by that I mean those which make some attempt to balance factors such as simple economical outcomes, prevention of environmental damage, and some attempt at fair and equitable work conditions - should encourage balance in the power between employers and workers. If that balance swings too much in favor of the employer then sure the business involved might do very well, but often at a cost to the employee. Naturally the balance can occur too much in the opposite direction as well if unions get too strong.
So really it's all about appropriate balance. No one (or at least very few people) wants a world where unions have too much power but they should also want to avoid one where unions (or employees through other mechanisms) have too little. Whatever your opinion on where that balance is the idea that unions are inherently bad or are always corrupt or always support incompetent workers, is just stupid and ignorant and generally motivated more by far right political dogma than any genuine reflection.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Don't Deny It
I'm on my way to another conference in Australia and the flight is a good opportunity to catch up on some of the reading and viewing I have accumulated on my iPad. It also provides a good chance to blog about what I have learned. So what is it this time? I just watched a TED talk by Michael Specter about science denialism. Yes, I know, another one of my favorite topics and one almost guaranteed to result in a rant against ignorance. So here it is...
The presenter's point was that science denialism is currently at an unprecedented level. He claimed it was at its greatest since the Enlightenment, in other words since science existed in its modern form. I'm not sure if this is true or by what mechanism it could be measured but there is certainly ample anecdotal evidence that there is some veracity in the idea.
What areas of science are under attack the most and by whom? Well that's the interesting thing because the areas are wide ranging and the attackers also represent people with many different world views. It might be tempting to say that most of the assault comes from the right, after all they have traditionally been anti-science because of their political and religious ideas. But I think that is too simple because the left is almost as bad.
Their misplaced opposition is based on ideas such as what they call natural solutions being superior to artificial or technological ones. For example the claim that genetically engineered food crops should be replaced with natural ones is quite common. What they might not realise is that almost every "natural" crop is in fact already engineered. The original wild varieties would be unrecognisable to them. And there's also the fact that engineered crops provide much greater yield and better nutrition in most cases. Sure we could go back to wild forms but we would need to reduce the population of the world to about a tenth of what it is now first. That's not a bad idea in itself but I don't see a lot of call for population reduction from any area of society.
And what about opposition to vaccines? This is surely one of the most dangerous and stupid ideas existing in modern society. When people deny the efficacy of vaccines - or worse, suggest they are the cause of conditions like autism - they put not only themselves and their children in danger but also the community they live in as a whole. The alleged link between vaccines and autism has been well studied and completely rejected by real research. The link between vaccination and the elimination of disease is accepted by all reasonable people. As I said, the deniers are both stupid and dangerous and that's not a good combination!
So let's move on to natural remedies. This isn't quite as bad because using natural remedies is a personal choice and only marginally affects other people. If someone wants to take something that doesn't work then they have only themselves to blame when things go bad. Plus there is the fact that a tiny proportion of these remedies might have some positive effect. On the other hand the ones which are effective are also likely to have side effects so even then taking them is a risk.
Many natural substances have been incorporated into modern medicine (aspirin which was originally sourced from willow bark would be a well known example) but the modern forms are produced in safe conditions (as a rule) and in well controlled doses so they are far safer than taking a natural form of the same thing.
But there is also the objection that scientific medicines are usually produced by large corporations which many people distrust. I agree that a certain level of distrust is good but there are two things which need to be considered here. First, drugs produced by big industry tend to be very regulated and checked for quality, so even if there was some conspirational plan by big business it would probably not succeed. And second, big corporations have taken over a lot of the production of natural remedies as well. They love them because they can make a lot of profit for very little effort and with much less oversight than they are burdened with when producing "real" medicines.
Finally let's look at denial at a more philosophical level - of things which don't effect people quite as directly. Evolution and global warming denial would fit into this category. Again the denialism is based on minimal real evidence. There are always small factors which can be twisted to work against any theory, and there is also a level of doubt associated with any theory. Science is all about doubt. If there was no doubt and skepticism of all scientific ideas then science wouldn't really be working. On the other hand there are theories which are so widely accepted that the doubt is practically non-existent. Global warming isn't quite there yet: the evidence is very strong but there is still a small place for doubt. But the evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that you would need to be very dishonest or very ignorant to deny it.
But that's where a common trick utilised by denialists often becomes apparent. That trick is maintaining the denial but just changing the reason. It's actually almost a valid process, at least compared to a lot of the others which exist in the denial community, but the big problem gets back to the rationale behind the reasoning.
The best example might be in global warming denial. Originally these people denied warming was happening at all (some still do) but as the evidence became so strong that even they couldn't ignore it they changed their strategy. Instead of denying that warming was happening at all they switched to denying that it was caused by humans. Many still believe this even though the evidence linking the rate of warming with human activity is very good. But those who have accepted even this still have another strategy to maintain their denial. That is to reject the idea that anything can be done about it. So first global warming didn't exist, then it did exist but wasn't caused by humans, then it was caused by humans but we can't stop it.
A similar pattern exists for vaccine denial. First it was the mercury based preservative which they claimed was harmful but when that was removed their attention switched to the vaccine itself. So what will be next?
And with evolution again we often see the same pattern. First God created all life in its current form, then when it became obvious that was untrue the theory shifted to the idea that he created life but then used evolution to develop it, then when that idea looked doubtful the theory was changed again to God lets evolution happen naturally but occasionally interferes to fine tune the outcome.
It's not unreasonable to fine tune a theory when new facts become available but the option of completely abandoning it must also be considered. Science has done this many times. One of the best examples is the replacement of the Steady State theory with the Big Bang. That change just made more sense and was almost universally accepted.
But deniers don't do that. Why not? It's simple really: they have decided on what they want the outcome to be based on emotional, political, or religious ideas and they just rearrange the "facts" (which are rarely actually real facts) to suit that outcome. That is an almost guaranteed way to become delusional, dogmatic, and detached from reality. And that's where most deniers are today.
Using delusion to feed science denial is dangerous and stupid. It needs to stop before the consequences become even more serious than they already are. Genetic modification is an essential scientific and commercial tool, natural remedies almost always don't work, global warming is real and we need to act, and evolution is a fact. Don't deny it.
The presenter's point was that science denialism is currently at an unprecedented level. He claimed it was at its greatest since the Enlightenment, in other words since science existed in its modern form. I'm not sure if this is true or by what mechanism it could be measured but there is certainly ample anecdotal evidence that there is some veracity in the idea.
What areas of science are under attack the most and by whom? Well that's the interesting thing because the areas are wide ranging and the attackers also represent people with many different world views. It might be tempting to say that most of the assault comes from the right, after all they have traditionally been anti-science because of their political and religious ideas. But I think that is too simple because the left is almost as bad.
Their misplaced opposition is based on ideas such as what they call natural solutions being superior to artificial or technological ones. For example the claim that genetically engineered food crops should be replaced with natural ones is quite common. What they might not realise is that almost every "natural" crop is in fact already engineered. The original wild varieties would be unrecognisable to them. And there's also the fact that engineered crops provide much greater yield and better nutrition in most cases. Sure we could go back to wild forms but we would need to reduce the population of the world to about a tenth of what it is now first. That's not a bad idea in itself but I don't see a lot of call for population reduction from any area of society.
And what about opposition to vaccines? This is surely one of the most dangerous and stupid ideas existing in modern society. When people deny the efficacy of vaccines - or worse, suggest they are the cause of conditions like autism - they put not only themselves and their children in danger but also the community they live in as a whole. The alleged link between vaccines and autism has been well studied and completely rejected by real research. The link between vaccination and the elimination of disease is accepted by all reasonable people. As I said, the deniers are both stupid and dangerous and that's not a good combination!
So let's move on to natural remedies. This isn't quite as bad because using natural remedies is a personal choice and only marginally affects other people. If someone wants to take something that doesn't work then they have only themselves to blame when things go bad. Plus there is the fact that a tiny proportion of these remedies might have some positive effect. On the other hand the ones which are effective are also likely to have side effects so even then taking them is a risk.
Many natural substances have been incorporated into modern medicine (aspirin which was originally sourced from willow bark would be a well known example) but the modern forms are produced in safe conditions (as a rule) and in well controlled doses so they are far safer than taking a natural form of the same thing.
But there is also the objection that scientific medicines are usually produced by large corporations which many people distrust. I agree that a certain level of distrust is good but there are two things which need to be considered here. First, drugs produced by big industry tend to be very regulated and checked for quality, so even if there was some conspirational plan by big business it would probably not succeed. And second, big corporations have taken over a lot of the production of natural remedies as well. They love them because they can make a lot of profit for very little effort and with much less oversight than they are burdened with when producing "real" medicines.
Finally let's look at denial at a more philosophical level - of things which don't effect people quite as directly. Evolution and global warming denial would fit into this category. Again the denialism is based on minimal real evidence. There are always small factors which can be twisted to work against any theory, and there is also a level of doubt associated with any theory. Science is all about doubt. If there was no doubt and skepticism of all scientific ideas then science wouldn't really be working. On the other hand there are theories which are so widely accepted that the doubt is practically non-existent. Global warming isn't quite there yet: the evidence is very strong but there is still a small place for doubt. But the evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that you would need to be very dishonest or very ignorant to deny it.
But that's where a common trick utilised by denialists often becomes apparent. That trick is maintaining the denial but just changing the reason. It's actually almost a valid process, at least compared to a lot of the others which exist in the denial community, but the big problem gets back to the rationale behind the reasoning.
The best example might be in global warming denial. Originally these people denied warming was happening at all (some still do) but as the evidence became so strong that even they couldn't ignore it they changed their strategy. Instead of denying that warming was happening at all they switched to denying that it was caused by humans. Many still believe this even though the evidence linking the rate of warming with human activity is very good. But those who have accepted even this still have another strategy to maintain their denial. That is to reject the idea that anything can be done about it. So first global warming didn't exist, then it did exist but wasn't caused by humans, then it was caused by humans but we can't stop it.
A similar pattern exists for vaccine denial. First it was the mercury based preservative which they claimed was harmful but when that was removed their attention switched to the vaccine itself. So what will be next?
And with evolution again we often see the same pattern. First God created all life in its current form, then when it became obvious that was untrue the theory shifted to the idea that he created life but then used evolution to develop it, then when that idea looked doubtful the theory was changed again to God lets evolution happen naturally but occasionally interferes to fine tune the outcome.
It's not unreasonable to fine tune a theory when new facts become available but the option of completely abandoning it must also be considered. Science has done this many times. One of the best examples is the replacement of the Steady State theory with the Big Bang. That change just made more sense and was almost universally accepted.
But deniers don't do that. Why not? It's simple really: they have decided on what they want the outcome to be based on emotional, political, or religious ideas and they just rearrange the "facts" (which are rarely actually real facts) to suit that outcome. That is an almost guaranteed way to become delusional, dogmatic, and detached from reality. And that's where most deniers are today.
Using delusion to feed science denial is dangerous and stupid. It needs to stop before the consequences become even more serious than they already are. Genetic modification is an essential scientific and commercial tool, natural remedies almost always don't work, global warming is real and we need to act, and evolution is a fact. Don't deny it.
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