John Key under fire from the sloppy thinkers

On page 24 of the NZ Herald on Sunday today (and quoting from the opposable thumb blog), there is the following statement: "Key would be the last person qualified to run an economy, especially as the particular business he was in - investment banking - is all about maximising profit pretty much regardless of other considerations, and doubly especially given the current crisis, which has been visited on us by the colossal mismanagement of, you guessed it, investment bankers".

I didn't think this was fair on Key, so I thought I'd make a few brief comments:

- If you were in a plane, and planes all around the would started falling out of the sky, and then your pilot died, would you rather put someone in the seat with plenty of prior experience as a pilot? or would you think it sensible to blame the problem on all pilots and put someone with no experience in the job instead? 

- All Kiwi's should want the country to do well - what is wrong with being aspirational and having a leader who wants the country to run profitably? I like the idea of sound business principles being applied on a country level so that we all end up wealthier.  If Key has experience and a successful track record in maximising profit, then isn't that a good thing for us all?

- Would Key *really* be the *last* person qualified to run the economy? I suppose a P-addicted gang member could be more exciting...

- Is cutting political commentary really your skill if you use expressions like 'doubly especially'?

Encourage standardisation, reduce waste, and save the world

Standardisation is a wonderful thing. Without standards, we wouldn't have telephones, tyres that fit our cars, electrical appliances that you can plug into the wall, batteries to fit anything, or in fact almost anything that you see in the modern world. The Internet was in fact so successful ONLY because it was based on standards that any computer, on any platform could access, and so it cut through all those Mac/PC/Desktop/Server and other device compatibility issues that used to exist, and therefore made electronic information much freer and accessible to anyone, on any device.

But although standardisation is all around us, there is still SO MUCH that could be standardised, and wherever you standardise, you generally reduce inefficiency, waste and cost. And if you can do that, you can help reduce the environmental mess that we have all contributed to, that has spoilt almost every corner of our precious world.

Let me give you a simple example of how standardisation could save consumers money, save businesses money, AND be good for the planet - all at the SAME TIME.

- Think about it - Every laptop, cellphone, camera, music player or portable device currently comes with it's own plug in charger when you purchase it. I just counted, and I personally have around 20 of these little black transformers lying around my house unused at present from old laptops, digital cameras, or devices that I can't find or can't remember what they are for.

- Imagine what a revolution it would be if ALL the electronics companies worldwide actually decided JUST to standardise on a power adapter, so that every time you wanted to charge something, you could easily borrow ANY charger - at your friends house for example. It's an environmental crime that there isn't a universal charger with a standard voltage for mobile phones, a universal charger for laptops that would work on any laptop, and so on. 

- The companies who make all the devices would all benefit, because they wouldn't need to produce all those millions of chargers every time they produce a new product - saving them money. Chargers could then be sold separately (a new revenue stream), so you'd just buy 2 chargers - for example - one for work, one for home, for your laptop. When you got a new laptop, you'd simply keep your existing chargers for home, car and work, and hopefully you'd get a discount on the new laptop too because it wouldn't have come with a charger.

- The planet would benefit, because far far fewer plastics and raw materials would be used in manufacturing things that are just thrown away, so resources would be conserved for other things, and less pollution and waste would reach landfills, meaning fewer heavy metals and poisons leeching into our water supplies.

- Other benefits would pop up as a result of the standardisation. For example - charging leads or ports could be provided at places like bus terminals and airports, and in every new car, so that you'd be able to recharge any device you had with you easily if it went flat by accident. Wouldn't it be nice to have a port on the bus that would re-charge your iPod and phone?

This is just one example I can think of where standardisation would produce a benefit for everyone, and the planet too. How about other ideas such as making standard components for every day items, so that not everything needs to be thrown out to be upgraded? I must have 10 old, unused cellphones lying around from years of being in business - imagine if I could re-use the cases of the phones, and just buy a new 'brain' for the phone much more cheaply in order to upgrade. Again - it would be cheaper for consumers, and produce vastly less waste. What about making standardised computer cases with easy to upgrade parts, so that anyone can upgrade to a new PC more cost-effectively without having to take the whole metal case to the dump?

Most people have no idea how much energy is required to actually manufacture the things we use. To make a plasma TV, literally hundreds of tons of rock are dug up to mine the raw materials. Humanity needs to start being smarter, by re-using things as much as possible so that things can be upgraded rather than continually manufactured and thrown out a few months later. Re-using things and standardisation will not only be good for our pockets and the environment, but I believe will become a vital part of combatting Global Warming in the years to come.

Maths, The worlds largest machine, and the US economy

Lets face it - regular people just aren't that good at doing maths, and don't have brains that comprehend really huge numbers. In fact - almost no-one does, because our brains didn't have any evolutionary pressure to deal with numbers in the thousands, millions, billions or trillions.

Ask most people how much a a Billion dollars is, and they have a concept in their head of 'more than a million', but in actual fact it is 1,000 times more, which is actually a really large and staggering number, considering how large a million already is. Try counting to 1,000 sometime, and it will give you a much improved concept of how much bigger a Billion is than a Million.

This issue of comprehending large numbers gets us into trouble, because we often end up making scenarios equivalent in our minds that really aren't. For example - 3,000 Americans dying in 9/11 was a terrible tragedy, but was it really that much more important than the 1,000,000 people that died in the genocide in Rwanda, where basically the whole country cut each other up with machetes, an event that the world pretty much ignored?

Geeks are the perfect people to deal with these issues, because they are much more used to dealing with large numbers. Where a normal person might be tempted to spend $100,000 to try and save a first-world person dying of self-induced lung cancer and diabetes from smoking and over-eating, Bill Gates does the math and works out that he can save people in Africa for just a few bucks each, and therefore that is a much more efficient way to spend his money.

So when it came to spend a huge amount of money, and build the worlds largest and most advanced machine, of course geeks were our only option. A week or so ago, the Large Hadron Collider was switched on, bringing to life an amazing machine that: was built by 10,000 of the worlds smartest people; must be kept colder than the outer reaches of space; can accelerate particles to 99.999999% the speed of light; has a diameter of 27kms; houses the worlds most powerful electromagnets; uses more power than most countries; and can essentially re-create the conditions that were present at the dawn of the universe. 

Now - The LHC was deemed so expensive and complex that no one country could fund it or design it - so a consortium of 80 countries pulled together to try and find the money to answer the largest question of all - "where did we come from, and what are we made of" - and the total cost of the LHC? Around $10 Billion. Now - knowing that figure, and the fact that 80 countries pulled together to find that kind of money (which is actually an ENORMOUS sum), do you feel a bit more nervous that the USA is having to bail out it's financial institutions to the sum of SEVEN HUNDRED BILLION? I sure do - that's about $2,500 for every man, woman and child in the USA, and considering how many people I saw there that can't even afford a square meal, it makes me wonder if the problem won't take a bit more fixing than good 'ol boy Bush signing a cheque.

I think that the only way that that kind of money can be found is if the USA frantically starts printing money (as I believe it has already been doing to fund the 'war on terror'), the end result of which I suspect may be a permanent devaluation of the US currency. Are we witnessing the end of US world dominance? I suspect so, but we'll all be worse off, as the US has done a pretty good job of keeping the world an orderly place. In the future, with a USA that's falling apart, high oil prices, high food prices, Global Warming, and an environment that's falling apart every where you look, humanity will really need to start rolling up it's sleeves...

Palin: A celebration of mediocrity

I've been watching the US vice-presidential race unfolding, and I have to say that I'm scared. Sarah Palin i'm sure is a nice, decent person, but frankly I don't believe she has any of the necessary skills to run the world's most powerful country. Which is exactly what will happen if the Republicans win the upcoming election, and then the ageing Mcain kicks the bucket mid-term.

The scariest thing is that the Americans seem to be completely in love with Palin precisely because she is 'normal'. "She's one of us" they say, She's not elitist, we like her 'down to earth' values. But in what other profession would you ever give someone huge responsibility because they are 'like you', rather than having the necessary skills? Would you want a pilot who is a 'good guy', or an excellent pilot? Would you want a brain surgeon who plays ball on Sundays, or who has trained for more years than anyone else?

Another concerning thing is Palin's confidence - she seems to have no sense of her own limitations. She's up for anything. Everything is an immediate "YES". No financial experience? "no worries - i'll guide the country through this difficult period". No international political experience, and I only just got a passport in the last few months? "I'll handle the crisis in Iraq and Iran". No medical training? "I'll operate on this wounded soldier right now!". 

To be honest I would be a lot more comfortable if she had some idea of her own inexperience. But her enthusiasm combined with her extremely right-wing values such as "No abortions - even if the mother is under-age and has been raped", and her belief that everything happens due to the will of god, and not because of complex political interactions, make her a ticking time bomb in international relations. If she ever controls the world's most powerful army and largest Nuclear weapons arsenal, then I think we all need to be very, very afraid... (watch this video to laugh and shudder)

Windows 98 Rocks! (In 2008)

I recently employed a university student to do some work for me, and when I sat him down at the computer I had set up for him, was embarrassed to find out that all of a sudden it had decided to grind to a complete halt. MS word took around 5 minutes to start up, and even the shiny Vista start button took half a minute to pop up with it’s lovely animated fade in.

Which got me thinking: how come my $800 Playstation3 can reliably immerse me in amazing 3D, highly-graphic, CPU-intensive gameplay day after day, but a relatively new $1,600 workstation can’t even render a boring, static word document without having some problem or another?

After checking for rogue programs, doing a full virus scan, and other trouble-shooting basics, no solution to the problem could be found. The only solution seemed to be to do a complete re-install. Then I realized that I have been doing this same routine on all of the PCs I own, and some of the Macs, at least once per year for the last 10 years or so.

As I was looking for my box of software installation disks, and the one that came with this particular machine, I came across on old version of Windows 98 second edition, and suddenly had a sneaky thought – why not give downgrading a go?

As the installation process for Windows 98 started on my P4 machine with 2GB of ram, I couldn’t help giggling joyfully at the speed of the install, and the fact that I could remember installing this piece of software on a machine with a 2GB hard drive – let alone 2GB of RAM.

This giggling turned into sheer amazement once I had installed a few old applications - they would open instantly almost in advance of a mouse click. I had never experienced such speed! Of course, I started running into problems – such as the fact that drivers haven’t been released for parts of the machine, or many of my peripherals. But it got me thinking:

I realized that hardware and software manufacturers have been keeping in step - machines are getting faster and faster, but software is getting more and more complex at exactly the same rate. Which means that the actual speed of our experience on the computer has been exactly the same for years. In many respects, I can’t remember Windows 3.1 being any slower to do word processing than my current machine.

One solution could be to make all the software companies take an enforced 2-year sabattical so that they end up a bit behind the hardware guys, and then hopefully our computers will always be speedy!

Another option perhaps is that someone could write a game for the PS3, that is actually an advanced, 3D version of Windows 98, with word processing, spreadsheets, databases, storage and internet browsing, and is also a closed system (like a game) so that it can’t get viruses or slow down.

Then with all the productivity we’d all gain by everything working so much faster, and the money we’d save by the whole package being cheaper, we could get off the computer and read a book every now and again!

*of course I’m partly joking with my suggestions. But perhaps…