It's not you in control. That's a Placebo button.

Just when you thought that you were controlling your environment, turns out your not. All those buttons that you push, they don't really have the control you imagine. Let's look at some examples

• Close the door button in lifts,
• Request to walk buttons on crossings,
• Office thermostats.

Many of the above have no effect what so ever except maybe to show a "The button is pressed" light. And it makes sense to have it that way, lets see why..

Pushing a floor button tells the lift you want to go and most lift doors have person sensors. Would you want to get sued if you had your finger on the close button and someone was caught in the door ?

Traffic flow in cities is computer controlled often through many sequential junctions. Road censors provide the input for fine tuning and coordinating the cross flow of traffic. Having pedestrians generating random flow interrupts really does not help. Pedestrian crossing time is factored into the normal sequence.

For office thermostats, one persons hot is another ones cold. The overall environment is controlled by balancing between sensor points and flow control areas. Giving finer control by adding control points would not achieve anything unless there was a corresponding increase in flow control points. For many offices that is just not possible within the ducting infrastructure.

So why give the pretense of control ? It keeps people happy. "I am master of what I ( think I ) control." Make no mistake placebos work but only some of the time, you just have to believe, or not know about the fakery.

On the downside superstitions are born when folks think they are in control of a random event. poor predictions are made when control is assumed but not actual. Stepping out into the road 10 seconds after pushing the crossing button is really not a good strategy even if that's how it is supposed to work.

Gannett

Nod to \. discussion

The complete stories of Theodore Sturgeon are collected

September 28th 2012 : Finally the complete (short) stories of Theodore Sturgeon are collected. For the last 16 years arriving slowly have been the volumes comprising this opus of this genius of fantastic fiction.

Volume One: The Ultimate Egoist (1994), Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Gene Wolfe

Volume Two: Microcosmic God (1995), Samuel R. Delany

Volume Three: Killdozer! (1996), Robert Silverberg, Robert A. Heinlein

Volume Four: Thunder and Roses (1997), James Gunn

Volume Five: The Perfect Host (1998), Larry McCaffery

Volume Six: Baby is Three (1999), David Crosby

Volume Seven: A Saucer of Loneliness (2000), Kurt Vonnegut

Volume Eight: Bright Segment (2002), William Tenn (Phil Klass)

Volume Nine: And Now the News ... (2003), David G. Hartwell

Volume Ten: The Man Who Lost the Sea (2005), Jonathan Lethem

Volume Eleven: The Nail and the Oracle (2007), Harlan Ellison

Volume Twelve: Slow Sculpture (2009), Connie Willis, Spider Robinson

Volume Thirteen: Case and the Dreamer (2010), Peter S. Beagle, Debbie Notkin, Paul Williams

Love them.

And here is a useful reference document showing the covers, story listings and index all published by North Atlantic books and in eBook format by Gateway Essentials.

My books on my iPod Touch

With the recent update to ipod software 4.1 finally the device is coming into it's own. The 4.0 software included slug like performance and nothing compelling for this iPod touch user.

However that has been turned around with the 4.1 update. The performance is back to where it should be. Now with the previously announced iBooks application I can put my own .pdf files on the device. There have been apps to put reformatted .pdf files on the iPod but for technical books that is as useless as reading the text with /usr/bin/strings.

After fixing a minor photo sync glitch I can honestly say the device is starting to be rather great.

Gannett

Craft project - covered

Here is an idea for a craft project where you don't have to get your hands dirty and get to use all those expensive applications you have lying around. Recreate your favorite book cover as a work of art for your wall. Using a tidied up scan or artwork from Amazon as the starting point build out the cover using a scable vector art package such as Adobe illustrator or Inkscape. With this one I was lucky enough to get a good quality print of the artwork from the original artist.

Try to find fonts similar to the originals paying attention to the character spacing and alignment. Compose the lettering and artwork in photoshop and print to size required.

My personal favorite is A Touch of Strange by Theodore Sturgeon with the Tim White art work which now graces my wall at 30 * 45 cm.

Cheers

Gannett

Your pension pot is £ 53.

In a recent article in the usually much respected Daily Telegraph printed Quote " The National Association of Pension Funds .... which represents 1,200 pension schemes with 15 million members and assets of £800 million, " EndQuote

Do the maths 15,000,000 members with £ 800,000,000 of assets that works out to each member having asset backing of £ 53 each. Looks like a poverty stricken retirement for us all. Even if that asset number was supposed to be billions ( 1000 Million ) that just boosts the assets per member to just £ 53,000. At current annuity rates that's an yearly income of £ 3260 for a 60 year old bloke. I think I currently spend that per month.

Cancel that gold watch its a cheepo Timex for you. On the other hand maybe a better plan is to fondle a contractor and get a $ 12 million pay off.

Gannett

FGW Live by the fine book, die by the fine book.

I hate companies that fine and charge the public for transgressions of there rules but will not pay a fine when they break there own rules. These companies are hypocritical s**ts.

For example ...

I am trying to charge FGW (First Great Western) a penalty notice because the ticket machine sold me the wrong ticket for a journey.

The ticket machines do not offer the cheapest available fare for any given journey. They do not apply group discounts even when you buy three identical tickets at the same time for the same day of travel. Nowhere on either the website or by the machine do they state that "cheaper tickets" may be available at the manual ticket window.

I think it is only fair that when FGW sells you the wrong ticket that they should pay a fine and refund the difference between the paid and actual cost. They are quick enough to fine passengers caught with the wrong tickets so live by the fine book die by the fine book.

Gannett

IT makes you go AAARRGH

Lets face it, IT can really make you go bonkers. There are just so many ways that your PC can screw you over. Here are just a few :

• Monday morning snooze fest - reboot at the start of the week or month and every bit of AV and configuration control software forgets it's history.
• 1/2 started hang - the march of icons hangs, the problem is the next icon that has not appeared yet how does that help diagnosing the problem ?
• Scan mania - searchIndexer, AVscans, Google desktop, system configuration checkers; why is that they all want to scan the machine at the same time ?
• Backup of death - you just want to save your data but the very process of copying the data makes the machine unavailable for normal use.
• Flash past options during the boot cycle - Please choose between booting on a) windows b) something sensible .... opps too late snooze you loose, no time to wait the damm thing just boots what it whats to.
• Legacy applications that break after OS upgrades.
• Legacy websites that break after browsers upgrades.
• Poor websites that only work in certain browsers for no good reason.
• Predictability of restart - every one needs to reboot once in a while, why is the process so unpredictable ending up with random sets of services and process running.
• Upgrade leap frogs - Reinstall an application, an auto update is suggested, update the application, an auto update is suggested, rinse and repeat. Acrobat reader did that every step from 10.0.2 all the way up to 10.14.

Damm that IT that makes you go AAARRRGH.

The only antidote to this madness is of course the "It Crowd" now available on box set at Amazon. :-)

Cheers

Gannett

Gannett's law of internet shopping

"Whenever multiple dependent items are ordered from the internet, they will arrive in the most inconvenient order."

For example if you order a camera outfit the first arrive will be the case, then the camera, then the batteries, and only finally the memory chip needed to actually take pictures.

Gannett