A perfect logo

Sometimes a logo captures the very essence of a corporation. A fine example is the logo for Betfair; a uk gambling and sporting bookmaker. The logo represents both the communication and cashflow between the company and it's customers. The company may bet fair, but you can be sure that as with all institutional gambling, the odds are stacked and the direction of money flow is predictable. You will lose. How much you lose is up to you.

Cheers and here is to "00", a predictor of your bank balance.

Gannett

Do Telecom companies keep a shadow phone bill ?

Here is an idea that deepens the feeling of all pervading surveillance. Each quarter the telecoms companies sends or just charges you for the outbound calls made to other numbers. You will also get a bill of the calls made to your mobile phone if the phone has roamed to another area. If you have itemized billing enabled or a web account you can even see the list of calls made, time, date and the cost associated.

That's all very well and those web accounts are useful for those doing surveillance, just one master password is needed for all the phone accounts at a single company. To complete the picture for the watchers that password will enable the shadow phone bill that you never see. On that shadow bill are all the times, date and phone numbers of the inbound calls made to the target number.

The next step is to pull the complete phone bills of those inbound and outbound numbers and so on three or fours steps out. Once consolidated a complete picture of who is talking to who around the target number is generated.

Lets not get too uneasy but remember ... "The telecoms companies keep shadow phone bills and know who is calling you."

Gannett

PS: Like all the best rumors this has yet to be proved.

Website form selector madness at IBM

This classic example of clumsy web form design brought to you on the IBM customer enrollment profile form. Screen shot on 15 Nov 2010.

What does this form say about the company ? Lack of attention to detail, does not customer test web interfaces, cannot tell the difference between a number value and alphabetic sort ?

Its says all of that along with making me grin as I struggle to find the correct selector for 8 employes. Oh and what the heck are "unsized employees"

Gannett

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