Buh-bye Hillary…

Last night I broke a longstanding rule and watched politics on TV. Senator Obama had received enough votes to clinch the Democratic Nomination.

If you had tuned in without being aware of this fact it would have been easy to assume that Senator Clinton was giving a victory speech instead of conceding defeat. It was certainly long enough…

“For the past seven years, so many people in this country have felt invisible, like your president didn’t even really see you. I have seen the shuttered factories, the jobs shipped overseas, the families struggling to afford gas and groceries, but I’ve also seen unions retraining workers to build energy efficient buildings, innovators designing cars that run on fuel cells and bio-fuels and electricity, cars that get more miles per gallon than ever before, cars that will cut the cost of driving, reduce our reliance on foreign oil and fight global warming.”

What exactly are you trying to say here? The president is far from perfect, but this looks like you are trying to blame him for the bad things while taking credit for the good ones.

“Now the question is, where do we go from here, and given how far we’ve come and where we need to go as a party, it’s a question I don’t take lightly. This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight.”

Decision? What Decision? As best I can tell the “decision” is out of your hands. It has been made for you.

It is my opinion that Senator Clinton should have done this several months ago instead of dragging party and country through this wringer. In my opinion her inability to admit defeat has made the Democratic party into a laughingstock and caused much amusement.

As one wag put it: “Quitters never win, Winners never quit. But those who never win and never quit are called idiots“.

I also watched the Victory speech by Senator Obama. He was far more gracious and statesmanlike than his opponent, and while I don’t agree with his “FedGov-can-fix-everything” politics, I respect his position and achievements.

That a black man an African-American (literally - his Father was African and his mother was American)  could be nominated to run for President is the best proof of the greatness of America that I have seen in a long time.

A letter to my Congressman

Every day, I record the prices at the eight gas stations that I pass en route to work. Once at my destination, I enter those prices into a web site (www.louisvillegasprices.com). I have been doing this for some years. During that time, I have noticed some patterns that I would like to share with you.

The overall trend is 7-14 days of slowly falling, interspersed by lightning price spikes.

In a falling phase, prices generally go down by 1-2 pennies per day. During a falling phase there is diversity in price among the eight stations I pass.

During a spike, the price rises by 15 to 40c. The petrol sitting in the underground tank is suddenly worth more than it was last night. At the end of the spike, everyone is selling at exactly the same price, except for a few stations that lower their prices by exactly penny - presumably this is what they call “competition”.

Here in Louisville, the price also spikes at Derby, The Car show, the Quartet Convention… basically, if the circus is coming to town, prices spike. Apparently they never saw it coming. Again.

I am less bothered by price than I am by volatility, which seems to be getting worse. Some stations have installed LED price signs, presumably so that they can jerk the price around more quickly and more often.

I believe in a free market. I don’t believe that price controls will solve anything, but it is axiomatic to anyone outside of the Petrochemical industry that something is rotten in the States of the Union.

At first I thought that one method to stop them bouncing the price around would be to mandate that they only set their price when they get a delivery (which I am told is every 2-7 days). However, they would simply take a small delivery every day, set their price as before… and nothing would change.

In the short term, one solution is to prevent the stations changing their prices by more than 5c per day. How Congress might choose to enforce that without violating free-market principles is a challenge.

In the medium term, Repealing the Federal Gas Tax and getting the states to agree to repeal their gas taxes would be a start. Auto manufacturers should also be manufacturing smaller more fuel-efficient vehicles instead of marketing SUVs and Trucks. One way to encourage this is to suspend the car-tax breaks on those vehicles (unless they are purchase by a business) and moved those tax breaks to vehicles that make over 40MPG. It’s time we admitted the obvious - SUVs are not trucks, they are passenger vehicles, and not all Trucks are business vehicles.

In the long term, we need to be drilling for oil and building refineries and power stations. Environmentalists will complain; if they want to save the Earth, let them limit or ration their electricity and gasoline. At some point, we will have to make a choice between the environment and progress; we cannot have both. That choice should be made on a State by State basis.

Just a few thoughts.

The Quake of ‘08

Last night there was an Earthquake that was felt throughout the Midwest. According to the newsies, it was measured at 5.2 on the Richter scale.

Naturally. I slept through it.

I vaguely remember thinking that a train was passing, though I was not awake enough to ponder the fact that no trains pass within a mile of our house. Milady remembers being awoken by someone shaking the bed.

This is nothing new; while tornados rampaged through town a couple of months ago, I was sleeping the sleep of the just. When Christ returns in glory, and raptures his church, we will be “Caught up in the air”… and I will probably be asleep.

I have one comment to make about all this:

In spite of the zillions of dollars - both public and private - that are spent on seismic / seismographic / seismological institutes, how is it that nobody saw this one coming?

Stimulating thoughts

Much has been made in the media lately about the so-called “Stimulus Package” that has been passed by both sides of the house. Checks will soon be winging their way to a bank account near you.

Otto von Bismarck once said, “There are two things that you should not see being made; laws and sausages“. Just like sausages that can only honestly be described as a “processed meat food product”, the name “Stimulus Package” is one that defies description.

It is technically defined as a “One-time Tax Credit” on our 2008 taxes. Eligibility is based on taxable income; the “rich” won’t get a check. At the other end of the spectrum are those who will get checks but will pay no taxes in 2008.

So… the rich pay in taxes but get no check, while the poor pay no taxes… and get a check anyway! To quote Timon, “Did I miss something?“

Now we’ve dealt with the what, let’s move on to the why. Why are we being sent checks? Apparently the theory is that we will all run out and spend the money on luxury items and thus “stimulate” the economy.

Will the economy be “stimulated” by this extra money? I doubt it. Many will have spent the money before the check has arrived. Others will use it to pay off debts. Still others will save or invest the money. Some will “blow” the money, to be sure, but the impact on the economy will be minimal and short-lived. The phrase “Bandage on a gunshot wound” comes to mind.

What is most amusing about all this is the underlying assumption; that giving people back some of their taxes will stimulate the economy. If this is true, then it follows that abolishing income tax (and replacing it with a purchase tax like the Fair Tax) would result in an economic boom, “the likes of which the world has never seen”. I happen to agree.

The saddest aspect of this whole affair is what our economy has become. It has stopped being about making, building and selling things, and has become based on how much money we spend on crap we don’t need. That is what the economists mean when they say things like “Consumer Spending is down X% on this time last year“.

The last time something like this happened was a few years ago (wasn’t that an election year? Naah… must be a coincidence). Back then it was called a “tax refund”, and some people did not get one.

I remember having to explain to a relative that the reason that she did not receive a tax refund because she had not paid any Federal Taxes. She was not pleased, which I can well understand; however, the principle is easy enough to figure out: A tax refund given to one who did not pay tax is also known as a bribe.

Enjoy!

Head to head to head to head…

Or: “A tale of six headphones”

With all of the headphones I have lying around the house, I thought it would be a good idea to do a head-to-head (no pun intended) comparison. Two are headphones (a band goes around the head), three are earbuds (mount on or around the ear), and one is a set of earphones - they go into the ear canal, like earplugs - also known as “canal-phones”, which sounds too much like waterway communications to me.

The Contestants:

1. Labtec Axis 502: This is my current set of home headphones. Originally bought for the computer, I have found them to be great for general use. Standard “old-skool” headphone design, with an over-the-top band and a boom microphone that can be flipped up so that it lays next to the headband. Lightweight with just the right amount of grip. Boasts about eight feet of cable and an inline volume control that I don’t really use. Having the largest drivers they are the least efficient - they need a lot of power to drive them, and so require higher volume settings than some of the others.
2. Labtec Axis 002: This is actually the LVA-8012, the OEM version of the Axis 002; the main difference being that this one has no in-line volume control. This is my standard work headset; a “Headhugger” design with a band that goes around the back of the head.. It also features a microphone which can be flipped up out of the way. The foam earpads sit on the outside of the ear at what looks like an odd angle, bit sits on the head with just the right amount of pressure. Like the other Labtec it boasts an insanely long cable - about 8′, which can get in the way sometimes, but it also means that I can reach stuff on the other side of my office while wearing them. These are the most comfortable of the lot for me, and it shows - I am onto my third set - I tend to wear these things out every few years and I simply pick another one up on eBay. They are about as efficient as the other Labtecs.
3. Sony MDR-E575: I bought these “Fontopia” (a word which, as far as I can tell, might be Japanese for “absolutely nothing”) earphones maybe twenty years ago back in my Walkman days, and they got a heck of a lot of wear back in the eighties. They spent about fifteen years in a drawer before they were recently returned to active duty. These are the classic black earbuds with little silver accents. Comfortable fit for my ears, but a tendency to slip out. Has a good-sized cable - about 5′ - which is asymmetric, and a beautifully-designed case. To give you an idea of how old they are, they were actually made in Japan. These earphones were made back in the day when the Sony brand meant excellence instead of arrogance, design instead of DRM, quality instead of Rootkits… when the words “It’s a Sony” actually meant something…
4. Sennheiser MX400: I have been a fan of Sennheiser since I was a teenager. My first pair of headphones were Sennheisers - a cheap pair with yellow foam covers and surprisingly good sound that got “Best Budget Buy” reviews from the Hi-fi magazines of the day. After doing a little research, I found out that Sennheiser made earbuds. The nice ones were out of my price range, but the MX400s were inexpensive and got good reviews, so I gave them a try. At $11 shipped on eBay I had little to lose. The packaging was, to put it bluntly, garish - a “Yo Hip Dude” bright orange blister card does not endear your products to the over-40s, but then I suppose I am not yer typical consumer…The phones themselves are somewhat longer and more streamlined than the Sony ones, and a little less discreet. They fit my ears well, though the right one has a tendency to fall out occasionally.A wind-up case is supplied - a useful addition, that serves to protect the headphones while not in use, though it is a little “chunky” and not as well-designed as the Sony. It is also a lot larger than it needs to be, since the cable is only 3.5′ in length and symmetric. A little on the short side, methinks…
5. JVC HA-E200: I bought these for Milady when we were in England. These are “over-the-ear-phones”, which have small rubberized arms that hook over the ear; she prefers these since headphones muss up the hair (something that does not bother me!), earphones don’t fit her cute li’l ears and earbuds are physically painful for her to wear. They’re pink in color, so I tend not to use them very often for reasons that I hope are obvious. No case is supplied, though the main cable retracts into one of the units, which is a cool feature. I just wish that they did the same thing with the cable between the two units.
6. Skullcandy Smokin’ Buds Ink’d: Having never tried earbuds (the ones that go into your ear like earplugs) before, I saw these going for ten bucks from my local Circuit City, so I thought I would give them a go. Comes with three different sizes of silicon plugs, the smallest of which fit my ears. Surprisingly, no case; this is not a big deal, as they are so small and only a 3′ cable they will stow in a pocket, but I doubt that they will last long without some kind of protection. SkullCandy’s website is slow and complex, with plenty of pictures of “Yo hip dudes”, usually on skateboards hovering six feet in the air. And this product was not on their website.

The Test:

The test rig for this comparison is my handy-dandy thrifty-nifty trusty-rusty iPod Classic 4G 40GB. No equalization was used. For the test I tried to find “real” sounds - acoustic instruments and voices, along with pieces with lots of detail…

• Vivaldi - Four Seasons/Spring. (Nothing like a bit of classical for a true objective comparison…)
• Charlotte Church/Carrickfergus (lush orchestration and that wonderful voice…)
• Joe Jackson/Breaking us in two (Great use of percussion. Watch for the low-flying bongos on the right!)
• David Arkenstone/The Turning of the year (Some great acoustic and synth work. A good tune, too.)
• Michael W. Smith/Freedom (nothing like a full symphony going at it full-bore. Watch for the “drums… drums in the deep” in the second half of the piece)
• Mike Oldfield/The Voyager (Multi-layered Irish Drumming, bagpipes and electric guitar)
• Acoustic Alchemy/Lazeez (nice guitar work, pardner!)
• Kathy Troccoli/Psalm Twenty-Three (Lots of detail and multi-layered vocals… watch for the triangle on the left!)
• Bee Gees/Spirits Having Flown (Cheesy, but has some nice synth/string work. True story: The first time I heard this was on a set of Wharfedale E70 speakers at a hi-fi show. I instantly fell in love with… the speakers!)
• Chris De Burgh/Diamond in the Dark (low drums and female “sigh”… very atmospheric), Rivers of Abraham (Lower vocals and general “pop muzik” test)
• ELO/Stranger & So Serious & Secret Messages (Just cos I like ELO…)
• Queen/A Winter’s Tale (Sung by a dying man through a great deal of pain. We miss you Freddie…)

All songs are 320kbps MP3s

The Results:

Labtec Axis 502: Sound is bright, open and spacious. Vivaldi sounded like he meant business, bass was tight and pronounced but not overwhelming, high-end percussion is clear. That’s the way (uh-huh uh-huh) I like it (uh-huh uh-huh). Help! I’m trapped in the Seventies and I can’t get out..!

Labtec Axis 002: A slightly brighter sound, Bass is on the light side, but comfortable and easy on the ears. Sound is detailed and precise. Sound is almost as good as the 502s, but this one is more comfortable and does not mess with the ‘do…

Sony: More pronounced Bass, but it is imprecise and loses some of it’s “tightness”; mid-range is lacking in punch. Treble is lacking; it sounds almost underwater. After the last two this one was actually quite unpleasant. It pains me to think that once upon a time I actually thought that this sounded ok. But then I was young and did not know any better… Not available anymore, which might be a mercy.

Sennheiser: Well-balanced sound. more pronounced, tighter bass and clearer treble, though a little muffled at the high end. There were details that I could hear with these that were simply missing from the Sony.

JVC: The polar opposite of the Sony. This has the brightest sound of the lot; almost shrill at times. Not very efficient - needs lots of volume, but for those who prefer clarity to loudness, that is no bad thing. Sound is bright, clear and detailed, but lacking in bass and the lower vocal registers.

SkullCandy: If you like bass, this is the one. Lots of tight, low harmonics that are not obvious with the others come to the fore with this one. Drums, Cellos and Bass guitars sound floor-shakingly great, and male vocals are well-defined.

Moving up the midrange, it’s a different story. Piano and female vocals are a little muted. The bad news is that the high-end is conspicuous by its absence. Classical, and Jazz sound poor and the rest is lacking in openness and what I would call “fizz”; so I guess this one was not designed with the audiophile in mind.

Another issue is that unlike all of the other headphones I reviewed, when wearing these the music sounds like it is coming from “inside your head”. This is probably because the drivers are actually inside your head, or it may be because of the “closed” nature of in-ear phones.

Another oddity is that there is no way to tell left from right! Apparently Skullcandy thinks that today’s “Yo Hip Dude/tte” does not care for these things; I do. A spot of nail polish should take care of that, though it really should not be necessary…

Unlike all of the others in this test, these earbuds block out a lot of the external sounds, which makes it useful in noisy situations such as mowing the lawn or taking a flight. There is also a lot of percussive “cable noise” whenever you move your head or tap on the cable.

One redeeming feature is that the “ear-plug” nature is that you can hear yourself singing… and you will very quickly find out if you are off key! Given the miniscule size of the drivers, efficiency is unsurprisingly high; not much volume required to drive these things.

The Final Verdict:

There is nothing like a good set of “cans”, big headphones that fit over the ears, block out all extraneous sound and regale the wearer with big sound from huge drivers. However, such headphones are impractical unless you are an audiophile or work in a recording studio. All of these headphones are compromises between practicality and sound quality.

Labtec Axis-502
These are the closest things I have to a “reference” set of headphones; they set the standard by which I judge all the others. And to a greater or lesser extent, all come up short.

Labtec LVA-8012
Light, comfortable, with a crisp, clear sound. The long cable is a plus in the office and a minus on the street. When this one dies I will buy another. Nuff said.

Sennheiser
Not as comfortable or good-sounding as either of the above two, but they are a heck of a lot more portable. The case fits nicely in one’s pocket without ruining the line of one’s trousers.

JVC
These were bought in London, and it shows: It seems that audio products aimed at the European and Asian markets are less bass-heavy than their American counterparts.

Sony
These are a throwback to the old days when manufacturers used to slap the word “Digital” on everything. By today’s standards, sound is poor.

Skullcandy Smokin’ Buds
I really wanted to like these earphones, but the way things are I could not bring myself to use them for serious listening to music. In terms of sound quality they leave something to be desired. Their small size and closed design make these the ones I would want to take on a plane, and they have become the earphones of choice for watching movies on my Palm or listening to podcasts, but but in most other situations they offer little to redeem them.

IBM patents patents

Found this pearl of wisdom:IBM patents making money from patents | The Register

I wonder if it passes the straight-face test?

Doubt it.

Patently Ridiculous

An interesting story from the New York Times, in which the writer compares the Microsoft of 16 years ago with the Microsoft of today.

In 1991, Bill Gates said “If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today… some large company will patent some obvious thing [and use the patent to] take as much of our profits as they want.”

That was then, but this is now. Microsoft now holds 6000+ patents and is not afraid to use them to bludgeon the competition.

I make a living writing software, and I have done for over twenty years. In that time I have never felt the need to use a software patent, neither have I ever advised an employer or client to do so.

Why? Because it is wrong. Software is copyrightable. It is not patentable. Software is a creation - not an invention. There are perhaps, what look like a few notable exceptions - encryption algorithms, for instance - but it is the mechanism, not the implementation, that is patentable. So even when software is patentable, it isn’t.

Since inventions are patentable and “works” are copyrightable, it follows that nothing can be both. Perhaps one way to discourage this would be to revoke the copyright when the patent runs out. I suspect that Microsoft et al would change their minds if faced with that particular dilemma…

But then I think that all source code should be escrowed and released to the public domain after about ten years. Not because I subscribe to some kind of neo-communist ideology - I don’t - but because the ability to “build a better mousetrap” is the heart of innovation - and you can’t do that when some megacorp has patented and copyrighted the design of the mousetrap.

In a supreme twist of irony, the New York Times OP-Ed piece was written by one Tim B Lee. For those watching in black-and-white, that would be Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented hyperlinks and fathered the world-wide web. Where do you think we would be today if he had patented the idea?

Patents are the enemy of innovation. Some might disagree; ask who is paying their salary.

Now Reading: The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell

I’m a lackluster veteran - Yay!

Spotted this interesting piece of news. Traditionally, the boys and girls in marketing split people into three groups: “elite technology users”, “moderate users” and the rest, whom I shall call the technophobes, for lack of a better title.

The problem with this is that I do not fit into any of those categories. I work in IT, but I have a PDA and a cellphone. That makes me look like a techno-elite, until you consider the following:

• The OS of the PDA has a copyright date of 2003.
• The phone has no Camera and no MP3 player, and is on a Pay-as-you-go-plan. It is used typically 1-2 minutes a day.
• I am absolutely opposed to buying a combined phone/PDA; I feel that they work better as separate devices.
• My home machines Run Windows 2000, Windows 98 and Ubuntu Linux.
• I have an unopened copy of XP professional (given to me by Microsoft). I have no immediate plans to install it on any machine, though I eventually will.
• I have run the beta version of Vista for about six months. I was unimpressed, and have no intention of buying it.
• I have talked several people OUT of buying Vista.
• My fastest home machine runs at 2.4GHz - fairly pedestrian by today’s standard.

This makes me look like some kind of weird throwback to the days when Dinosaurs roamed the Earth… until I read the USA Today article I referenced earlier. These clever folks figured out that Techno-elites can be further subdivided into three groups. One of those groups is “Lackluster veterans,” those who use technology frequently but aren’t thrilled by it.

That’s me!

Now Reading: Women who make the world worse…, by Katie O’Beirne

Chocolate is good for your brain!

Good news -  Cocoa Flavanols, found in chocolate, causes increased blood flow to the brain…

…except “Flavanols are not only found in chocolate with a high cocoa content“, which rules out most of the American Variety, which is mostly sugar (yes, folks, there is a difference between Chocolate and Candy).

…and that “the level of cocoa flavanol used in the study is not available commercially“, which means that you cannot buy a chocolate strong enough to make a difference.

The headline giveth, the small print taketh away. Sigh.

Don’t be greedy, Cliff!

Sir Cliff backs royalty campaign

Cliff Richard is something of a pop icon in England. He started out in the late fifties as the local homegrown answer to Elvis (complete with sneer), transitioned to Pop in the sixties and Christian music in the seventies. While virtually unknown over here, he is as much of an institution as Elton John, and probably the richest Pop singer in England.

Faced with the expiration of the copyright of his earliest work, he is campaigning to have the copyright period extended to achieve parity with the songwriters, who had their copyrights extended from 50 to 90 years in 1988.

The purpose of copyright is to provide an inventive for artists to keep producing music.

• Not to provide welfare for aging musicians.
• Not to provide income for their descendants unto the third and fourth generation.
• And certainly not to provide an endless income stream for Media Corporations.

Funny how the rest of us get paid for the work we do when we do it, while this lot are bleating that fifty years of royalties are not enough.

So here’s my suggestion.

• Triple the royalties paid to both performers and songwriters, and
• Reduce the copyright period to ten years.

And stop being so greedy, Sir Cliff!