Darwin's Theories

Wheeling and Dealing for raw Beltway Power

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:48:00 GMT

Glenn Greenwald calls our attention to the apparent slimeball tactics of U.S. politician Steny Hoyer, who pays lip service to opposing immunity for the lawbreaking US Telecoms Companies who willingly gave the U.S. government unlimited access to private domestic traffic. While he claims to oppose it, he's actually working in favor of it. Why would anybody do such a thing, unless hoping to gain political power?

There is a fundraising drive to help fund publicity to shine the light on this very very dark spot; please help if you can.

What's wrong with the web, Part 43

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:26:56 GMT

This is a cleaned-up version of what I sent to a major Canadian corporation's web team after trying to use their site.
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One thing that really sucks about some web sites, including yours, is the designers' wanton disregard for users' time. For example, I tried a simple thing like updating my address (because my May issue of [your print magazine] arrived June 17, after most of the offers had expired). Yet after I entered the correct address, it repeatedly failed the request with the message "A correct postal code must be entered". But NO GUIDANCE about what format to use - is it ANANAN or ANA NAN? Neither worked! Either should be acceptable - adding or removing a space character is hardly beyond the capabilities of today's computers. Or was your little Struts Action trying to say that it thought the postal code disagreed with the street/town address? Not that any city-built database would have a clue about rural addresses anyway. What is wrong with your web people? Don't you know how to word a simple error message so it actually contains a dram of useful information?

Thank you for listening.

In the end, fortunately, I was able to contact a live human being via the hundred-year-old telephone system and get him to change the address. At least, he said he had changed it, although an hour later it's not yet made it to the web site's copy of the database.
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We'll see if they even reply. Or if the updated address makes it.
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After an hour, I got two replies, the usual auto-responder acknowledgement, and, this gem:
Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are currently unable to respond to your request electronically. Please visit the Help section of the [Company Name] Website or contact [Company] at 1-800-bleah-bleah.

I wonder if anybody actually reads their emails, or if the second is an auto-responder as well?

Quoted Without Comment

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:50:00 GMT

"The line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly.... We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

"We will not walk in fear, one of another.... We are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.... We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."

-- Edward R. Murrow, See It Now [March 9, 1954]

Murrow's quote applies as much to Canada's mockery of justice "Human Rights" Tribunals as to Bush's multiple mockeries of justice.

iPhone catching up to OpenMoko

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:21:00 GMT

People who know I'm involved with Openmoko ask me how the new iPhone will affect the Openmoko project. But as we've seen, the reverse is already happening. Openmoko pioneered having a completely-accessible GPS in the GTA01, and have maintained this in the GTA02 FreeRunner. Apple have seen the light and have included some kind of GPS in the iPhone 2 (I'm assuming, subject to counter-information, that when you you paying a ~~carrier tax~~ access fee for using it, as you do with most carrier-beholden smart phones such as the RIM Blackberry). But Openmoko remains a customer-beholden smart phone, one of the very few.

In fact, there really is little point in comparing the phones directly. The most obvious difference is price: the iPhone costs ($199 plus 24 months of contracted tenure at maybe $50), for a minimum TCO of about $1400, whereas the FreeRunner costs about $299 with no contract so you can use it on any of the very-economical pay-as-go plans that you have to look around for, say $10/month for a light user, for a total TCO of $540; so the TCO for this user would be about 3:1 in favor of Openmoko :-) (late note: my iPhone guesses are low; see this Yahoo Blog analysis for better figures). But that is not why people buy the iPhone or the Openmoko. People buy the iPhone for the glitz, for being cool, for being able to show off.

No, really. A week after the iPhone was released in the US and people were smuggling them into Canada, I was buying a coffee at a Starbucks in Toronto. Some dork dressed up as a Hollywood director left his shiny new iPhone right in the way where he knew anybody who wanted to get at the cream dispenser would either risk splattering on the iPhone, or have to move it. I very gently picked it up with the respect due such a device and moved it out of the way, whereupon he tried to launch into a tirade about how much he'd (over)paid for it. I wasn't in the mood to discuss it so I just said "if it's that valuable, keep it closer to you" and left (Seriously, I do have friends with iPhones, and they are reasonable people...).

Yes, really, the iPhone is sleek, and sexy. It is also almost completely a closed environment. People keep trying to open it up, because that's a challenge. People buy Openmoko not because it is sleek (the current hardware is, but the current software is not, yet; far from it) but because it is open. Open hardware. Open software. An open process company. The iPhone is a thing to give joy those who don't care how a thing works and have no care that they have paid $1400 to surrender control of "their" device to Apple and to the carrier. The Openmoko Freerunner is a thing to give joy to those who love to tinker, who want to be able to (even if they never get around to) write their own applications in any of half a dozen programming languages. To make it do whatever they want, without regard for what the hardware supplier or the carrier wants. Openmoko.com encourages you do go "higher up and further in". Apple tries to prevent you. And that, I think, makes all the difference.

Expelled: No Intelligence Found

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:19:00 GMT

The April 24 issue of Epoch Times' Canadian Edition carried an article "Ben Stein challenges Darwin" which purports to be a review of Ben Stein's new documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, but it's more like a whitewash than an actual review. The reviewer writes: "Stein uncovers... a powerful science education establishment that threatens the livelihood of any academic who wishes to offer an alternative explanation to the Darwin concept of evolution." In fact, one of the leading examples of those who have "unjustly lost their careers and livelihood simply for mentioning Intelligent Design publicly" is Richard Sternberg. Contrary to the reviewer's claims, however, Sternberg did not lose either his job nor his livelihood. He did lose his editorship of a refereed scientific journal - not for "mentioning" creationism but for committing such a massive violation of academic ethics that it might constitute fraud legally as it does ethically: he used his editorial position to publish an unrefereed article by creationist Stephen Meyer in a refereed scientific journal. There are so many other falsehoods in Ben Stein's movie (from the opening scene in which they rented a classroom at Pepperdine University and packed it with extras to falsely convey the impression of University student support for his views), that all I can do is refer you to a detailed review in Skeptic OnLine at http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-04-17.html for a detailed discussion. You can also read an open letter from Richard Dawkins (Dawkins touches upon the truly evil attempts in the film to associate evolution with Hitler). There is also a website "Expelled Exposed".