Last night (as of this writing) I found myself at a rather interesting talk; the Alchemist Café was hosting Conor McGinn, PhD Candidate and Robot nerd. In the course of the Q&A he was asked whether Ireland was a good place to be doing research into robotics. A fair point; the Americans have Curiosity and the Japanese have Gundam, after all. No, quoth he, Ireland is a great place. And we could all see his point. We've constantly heard how Ireland is replete with educational magnificence, how companies the world over are setting up here to take advantage of our massive erudition. We all left happy.
But as I arrived home, I saw that our public representatives have been hard at work keeping the country safe for democracy. Specifically, Limerick TD Patrick O'Donovan issued a press release that was the most profoundly clueless thing any politician has said about technology in weeks.
To a certain extent this is a pointless post; he's attacking open source, after all, and that very fact means the world's nerds will be queuing up to attack him, a great many more eloquently than I could ever manage. Even so, as a modern, 21st century guy, I must perforce do my own bit for democracy in what's universally accepted as the most effective way; complaining on Twitter and on the web.
So what's our Limerick chum saying,and what's he trying to say? We can safely assume that he's going after the dark web in general, and the Silk Road and Tor in the specific. And bitcoin, of course. Nothing says 'technical cutting edge' like using a technical term that didn't exist five years ago.
I could make a lengthy defence of both bitcoin and tor, of course; anyone could (anyone, of course, who knows even the slightest modicum about the subjects at hand). I won't do that; I'll leave it to the myriad others with far more technical nous than I.
No, my problem isn't with his attack on the very things that are acting as a bulwark (however permeable) against the forces of tyranny the world over. My biggest problem is that he's in the fucking government. And Fine Gael, the party of government, are quite happy to put his ill-informed words on their website and, presumably, stand over them.
Seriously: does no one read these things before sending them to the outside world? Is proof-reading these days limited to running a spell checker? (spoiler: yes).
In conflating Firefox (an open-source internet browser, to use a phrase that appears more than once in his screed) with (I assume) Tor, he's betraying a fundamental lack of clue about anything related to the internet. And in order to get from his pen to the party of government's official web page, it surely must have passed by a number of eyeballs, not one of whom said "hang the fuck on a second".
Of course, nothing will come of it. He'll be ridiculed on the news for a day or two, slashdot and ars technica will get a hold of the story and sneer for a while, and then it'll all be forgotten. Except, I hope, by the people of Limerick. I hope they'll remember at the next general election that this dolt has held their constituency (and their country) up for the world to ridicule, and turf him out where he can go back to street corners, offering tin foil hats to passing motorists.
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Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Particles have mass; we didn't just imagine it
It's been a good morning.
What better way to spend a summer's morn than by rising early, wandering into the science gallery to be plied with danishes and coffee, then watch as the nerds in CERN tell us that they've discovered the Higgs? Having a bunch of particle physicists there to answer questions was a bonus, too.
Okay, so technically they've discovered a particle that might be the Higgs. But let's face it; it is.
What better way to spend a summer's morn than by rising early, wandering into the science gallery to be plied with danishes and coffee, then watch as the nerds in CERN tell us that they've discovered the Higgs? Having a bunch of particle physicists there to answer questions was a bonus, too.
Okay, so technically they've discovered a particle that might be the Higgs. But let's face it; it is.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Thank You Ridley Scott
Last evening (as I type), I alluded on IRC to the fact that I was going to watch Prometheus, Ridley Scott's latest opus. I was, I confess, somewhat trepidant, and expressed this in a way that led me to wonder: can one legitimately use the phrase "I expect to be disappointed"?
Certainly one can expect the movie to be bad; but if one's expectation turns out to be correct, can one truly claim to be disappointed?
It's also possible that one's expectations are confounded, and that the movie turns out to be great. Should one call this disappointement, inasmuch as one isn't as good a predictor of movie quality as one hoped?
It's with these conundra rattling around in my head that I headed of to the Savoy.
Two hours later, Ridley Scott had answered all my questions.
Yes, I could expect to be disappointed. Scott made sure that my casual sentence - one that could so easily be assumed to be illogical - was perfectly valid.
I wasn't expecting much. I got much, much less than I was expecting.
Friends: if you're going to see Prometheus, have no worries on this score. If you to are afraid of muttering phrases such as "expecting to be disappointed", you can rest assured that however bad you think this film is going to be, it's actually much, much worse. If you're expecting it to be vacuous nonsense masquerading as depth, then you'll be disappointed to find that there's also many a scene that makes no sense whatsoever. If you're expecting that too, you'll be disappointed by the thoroughly idiotic dialogue. And so on, ad infinitum.
So as you head off to the cinema, walk with your head held high and with the full knowledge that Ridley Scott has your back. He's gone out of his way to make a film that's so risible that you can wander into any cinema with your head held high and say in a loud, steady voice "I expect to be disappointed."
What a guy.
Certainly one can expect the movie to be bad; but if one's expectation turns out to be correct, can one truly claim to be disappointed?
It's also possible that one's expectations are confounded, and that the movie turns out to be great. Should one call this disappointement, inasmuch as one isn't as good a predictor of movie quality as one hoped?
It's with these conundra rattling around in my head that I headed of to the Savoy.
Two hours later, Ridley Scott had answered all my questions.
Yes, I could expect to be disappointed. Scott made sure that my casual sentence - one that could so easily be assumed to be illogical - was perfectly valid.
I wasn't expecting much. I got much, much less than I was expecting.
Friends: if you're going to see Prometheus, have no worries on this score. If you to are afraid of muttering phrases such as "expecting to be disappointed", you can rest assured that however bad you think this film is going to be, it's actually much, much worse. If you're expecting it to be vacuous nonsense masquerading as depth, then you'll be disappointed to find that there's also many a scene that makes no sense whatsoever. If you're expecting that too, you'll be disappointed by the thoroughly idiotic dialogue. And so on, ad infinitum.
So as you head off to the cinema, walk with your head held high and with the full knowledge that Ridley Scott has your back. He's gone out of his way to make a film that's so risible that you can wander into any cinema with your head held high and say in a loud, steady voice "I expect to be disappointed."
What a guy.
Friday, May 25, 2012
The Future is Now
My friends, as I sat here today in front of my computer, tracing the progress of the SpaceX Dragon as it approached the ISS, I sensed... something. A presence I hadn't felt since... it's been too long to remember. So long has it been, in fact, that it took some time to identify.
I was excited about the future.
Call this a blinkered and slavish adherence to one tiny aspect of the future if you will. Certainly, for those fortunate enough to have been born in the right spots on the globe, technology has brought us true wonders in recent decades. The fact that the phone in your pocket is so far ahead of anything Captain Kirk could dream of back in the 60s is but one example. Look at any science fiction film from before about 2005. If it's got future tech, the chances are that future tech is laughable. Sure, they had their fancy ray guns and their teleporters. But the computers? Pah!
Of course, they did have one thing that we don't; one thing that we should have. A space programme. Captain Kirk may have a crappy communicator, but he works in outer space.
Oh, we have NASA doing its bit; no one can deny that Hubble and Cassini, to name but two, have done more than their fair share. They've given us just not data that are incalculably valuable in terms of understanding the universe, but images that are just astonishing. I say this without hyperbole: the Hubble Deep Field is the greatest photograph of the twentieth century.
For all NASA have done, though, there is one inescapable fact hanging over them: the high point for manned exploration is now decades in the past. It's been forty years since we went to the moon. We've never been to Mars. We've never been to the asteroid belt. Even those of us who can't have remembered the first - or the last - moon landing, there was the knowledge that such things were possible, that the twenty-first century would be the century in which humanity moved from being a one-planet species. As the years went by, though, that dream drifted ever farther away. In many ways I envied the youth; they didn't grow up thinking that this could be done. For these lucky, callow children, the space shuttle is the height of rocket technology, and the ISS a shining example of what can be done if nations work together. Never mind that the station is but a shadow of what it could have been; that budget cut after budget cut have stripped it of all meaning except the symbolic.
But now we have Dragon which, as I type, has just docked with the ISS.
In and of itself, I suppose, one could argue that it's not a big deal. ESA's ATV has been doing a fine job, both as a technology test and as a delivery vehicle. Spaceship One has claimed the X Prize. But this is different.
It was the accomplishments of Gagarin and Armstrong that originally gave us hope. In recent times we've had Yang Liwei raise a flutter of excitement but the Chinese programme is, like those of Russia and the US, subject to the whims and caprices of government and budgetary committees. One should also consider that no government project is ever going to result in anything more than a small temporary outpost, ready to be abandoned at the next budget review. If we're to take the next giant leap, it's up to the citizens of the world to do it themselves.
With the docking of Dragon, that glorious next step is underway. SpaceX have shown us that it can be done. For the first time since the 1970s we can look forward, in the couple of decades or so, to humans whizzing around the solar system. The asteroids are just sitting there ripe for the plucking, and now that google lad has another option for getting his mining equipment out there.
Yes, I know. This is just an unmanned tin can docking with something that's barely outside the atmosphere. Sending a crews to Mars is on a completely different scale. But that doesn't matter. What matters is we have multiple companies and individuals trying to get into space. Spaceship One has made it into space twice, and now Dragon has proved itself. It's a genuinely useful, much less expensive alternative something that ESA and NASA need to keep the ISS supplied. It's not unreasonable to extrapolate, to say that this time we won't just give up. The opportunities resulting from - and created by - these technologies have the potential to send us further and further afield. A radio telescope on the far side of the moon. An orbital fuelling station. We can now say that we might - just might - live long enough to see a child born on Mars.
Some time, whether years from now or tens of thousands of years, humanity will suffer an extinction crisis. Be it through war, disease, supervolcano or just plain old-fashioned big huge rock from the sky, the human race could disappear from the face of the planet. If the species is to survive, it must have people somewhere else. We need to live in the Future; the future promised by Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein. A future where the spaceports are busy with traffic to and from Earth's colonies. If we're supremely lucky, a future in which space pirates sail the asteroid belt.
Today feels like the beginning of that future.
I was excited about the future.
Call this a blinkered and slavish adherence to one tiny aspect of the future if you will. Certainly, for those fortunate enough to have been born in the right spots on the globe, technology has brought us true wonders in recent decades. The fact that the phone in your pocket is so far ahead of anything Captain Kirk could dream of back in the 60s is but one example. Look at any science fiction film from before about 2005. If it's got future tech, the chances are that future tech is laughable. Sure, they had their fancy ray guns and their teleporters. But the computers? Pah!
Of course, they did have one thing that we don't; one thing that we should have. A space programme. Captain Kirk may have a crappy communicator, but he works in outer space.
Oh, we have NASA doing its bit; no one can deny that Hubble and Cassini, to name but two, have done more than their fair share. They've given us just not data that are incalculably valuable in terms of understanding the universe, but images that are just astonishing. I say this without hyperbole: the Hubble Deep Field is the greatest photograph of the twentieth century.
For all NASA have done, though, there is one inescapable fact hanging over them: the high point for manned exploration is now decades in the past. It's been forty years since we went to the moon. We've never been to Mars. We've never been to the asteroid belt. Even those of us who can't have remembered the first - or the last - moon landing, there was the knowledge that such things were possible, that the twenty-first century would be the century in which humanity moved from being a one-planet species. As the years went by, though, that dream drifted ever farther away. In many ways I envied the youth; they didn't grow up thinking that this could be done. For these lucky, callow children, the space shuttle is the height of rocket technology, and the ISS a shining example of what can be done if nations work together. Never mind that the station is but a shadow of what it could have been; that budget cut after budget cut have stripped it of all meaning except the symbolic.
But now we have Dragon which, as I type, has just docked with the ISS.
In and of itself, I suppose, one could argue that it's not a big deal. ESA's ATV has been doing a fine job, both as a technology test and as a delivery vehicle. Spaceship One has claimed the X Prize. But this is different.
It was the accomplishments of Gagarin and Armstrong that originally gave us hope. In recent times we've had Yang Liwei raise a flutter of excitement but the Chinese programme is, like those of Russia and the US, subject to the whims and caprices of government and budgetary committees. One should also consider that no government project is ever going to result in anything more than a small temporary outpost, ready to be abandoned at the next budget review. If we're to take the next giant leap, it's up to the citizens of the world to do it themselves.
With the docking of Dragon, that glorious next step is underway. SpaceX have shown us that it can be done. For the first time since the 1970s we can look forward, in the couple of decades or so, to humans whizzing around the solar system. The asteroids are just sitting there ripe for the plucking, and now that google lad has another option for getting his mining equipment out there.
Yes, I know. This is just an unmanned tin can docking with something that's barely outside the atmosphere. Sending a crews to Mars is on a completely different scale. But that doesn't matter. What matters is we have multiple companies and individuals trying to get into space. Spaceship One has made it into space twice, and now Dragon has proved itself. It's a genuinely useful, much less expensive alternative something that ESA and NASA need to keep the ISS supplied. It's not unreasonable to extrapolate, to say that this time we won't just give up. The opportunities resulting from - and created by - these technologies have the potential to send us further and further afield. A radio telescope on the far side of the moon. An orbital fuelling station. We can now say that we might - just might - live long enough to see a child born on Mars.
Some time, whether years from now or tens of thousands of years, humanity will suffer an extinction crisis. Be it through war, disease, supervolcano or just plain old-fashioned big huge rock from the sky, the human race could disappear from the face of the planet. If the species is to survive, it must have people somewhere else. We need to live in the Future; the future promised by Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein. A future where the spaceports are busy with traffic to and from Earth's colonies. If we're supremely lucky, a future in which space pirates sail the asteroid belt.
Today feels like the beginning of that future.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right
It's been a good couple of weeks for attending things and learning stuff. In the National Museum there was a day-long seminar on matters geological, where I learned all manner of fascinating facts about rocks. The National Library had a talk on Robert Boyle, which elucidated on his work in the field of medicine, of which I previously knew nothing. And yesterday I was in the Science Gallery, listening to a debate on the future of copyright. At that I learned I should buy shares in EMI.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
The headline should really have been... um...
Getting the Irish Times via RSS as I do, I occasionally suffer some slight bemusement when I see a headline without context (I've sort-of mentioned this phenomenon previously). The headline on this particular occasion — Over 51,000 illegal drugs seized — caused confusion for slightly different reasons; I just assumed (but wasn't entirely sure) that it was a bad headline.
"Pah!" quoth I to no one in particular. "Fifty thousand drugs? Surely not. They must mean €50 000 worth of drugs, or perhaps fifty thousand, er..."
Okay, that's why they did it. There was no pithy way (that sprung to my mind) of saying "tablets or other similar items". The nearest I could manage was "units of illegal drugs", and that could generously be described as "inelegant" in the context of a headline.
So the sub ed failed in his job, and gave us a crappy headline.
Except he didn't.
"Pah!" quoth I to no one in particular. "Fifty thousand drugs? Surely not. They must mean €50 000 worth of drugs, or perhaps fifty thousand, er..."
Okay, that's why they did it. There was no pithy way (that sprung to my mind) of saying "tablets or other similar items". The nearest I could manage was "units of illegal drugs", and that could generously be described as "inelegant" in the context of a headline.
So the sub ed failed in his job, and gave us a crappy headline.
Except he didn't.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
I agree with The Bloodhound Gang
Did you know about google's http://wdyl.com ? I just found out myself, but it could well have been around for a while. It's a fascinating page, and one that lets our searchy friends help us find out all about topics that we love. Try it out. I'll wait.
So you're back... welcome. Now that you've typed in 'unicorns' or whatever the hell it is that you like, you're probably quite impressed. The thing is, though, you're probably wondering what other people are typing in. Because those others are on the internet. And that in all probability means that they're horrible, horrible people.
So you're back... welcome. Now that you've typed in 'unicorns' or whatever the hell it is that you like, you're probably quite impressed. The thing is, though, you're probably wondering what other people are typing in. Because those others are on the internet. And that in all probability means that they're horrible, horrible people.
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