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On Thursday I bought a $99 (discounted from $199) MP4 player from Aldi (a German supermarket chain that has recently opened up here). The player is a Tevion model M6.
By a long way it’s the cheapest and nastiest piece of consumer electronics that I have ever owned. It has very flimsy construction (feels like it will crumple in my pocket – not like a solid iRiver) and poor design all around. The viewing angle of the LCD screen is very small, so if I hold it close to my face then the viewing angle will be wrong for at least one eye. There are two power switches, an electronic one on the top (which is also sometimes used as an escape key for menus that don’t recognise the key labelled as ESC) and a slide switch at the side. When I use the electronic switch to turn the power off the back-light will usually flicker – I guess that they wanted to have an electronic switch and then put a mechanical switch in the design when they couldn’t get it working.
The menus are strange, they have a game menu that only has Tetris – why not have a Tetris menu instead?
The FM radio function doesn’t seem to work and the option to select a European frequency range is lost when the power is cut, along with all saved station frequencies.
I never got around to testing the voice-recording function (one of the reasons for purchasing the device) as it failed in too many other ways.
The device has an AVI of Barbie Girl by Aqua and also a MP3 with a text file that has the lyrics for Karaoke, this is probably the only good feature of the device. Unfortunately it appears to have some sort of DRM as it gave a padlock icon and stopped working after I played it a few times (fortunately it’s unable to store settings so a power cycle solved that problem).
When I connected it to my PC via USB it showed two devices, /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. /dev/sdb gave an IO error (apparently due to not having an SD memory card installed) and and /dev/sda was not in any format recognised by file -s /dev/sda.
I’m going to have to return this, even $99 is too much for a device of such quality. Maybe I’ll buy an iRiver to do this if they sell one without DRM.
Early this year I deployed a server. As part of my normal procedure I ran the Memtest86+ memory test program (which showed no errors) before deploying it. After some time running the machine started to become unreliable, yesterday it crashed twice and I had to replace it. I ran Memtest86+ before removing it from where it was installed and found several memory errors. When a server crashes I highly recommend running Memtest86+ before removing it so that you at least know the cause of the problems.
As I want to use the machine elsewhere I want to discover the cause of the problem. The machine has two DIMM sockets (I’ll call them A and B) and two DIMM modules (again I’ll call them A and B). After getting the machine home I first tested the machine with DIMM A in socket A (and DIMM B removed) which passed, then I tested it with DIMM A in socket B which also passed. I removed DIMM A and tested DIMM B in each socket and those tests passed. Then I installed both DIMMs and again the test passed!
I now realise that I made a mistake in removing a DIMM when I got the machine home. I should have tested it again with the DIMMs in place. If the problem was due to heat or a poor contact made worse by vibration then the problem might have gone away during the trip home – it would have been handy to know that I would be unable to reproduce the problem! My mistake here was to change multiple factors at the same time. When diagnosing faults you should try to change one thing at a time so that you will know what fixes it!
Now, I am wondering what I should do next? Assume that it was just a bad contact and put the machine back in service? Suggestions appreciated.
An issue that causes some discussion and debate is the number and type of questions that may be asked during a lecture. In a previous post giving advice for speakers I suggested that questions can be used as a mechanism for getting a talk back on track if a nervous speaker starts presenting the material too quickly (a common mistake). This mechanism can be used by the speaker if they realise that things aren’t going to plan or by audience members who are experienced speakers and who recognise a problem. Due to this a blanket ban on questions during a talk will only work with experienced speakers who have planned their talk well.
There are different styles of presentation favoured by different speakers. Some are determined by the nature of the topic (an example that I have seen cited is topics that are very contentious which would lead to a debate if questions were permitted during the talk), but for computer science I think that questions during the talk can always work well. To a certain extent the fact that code either works or doesn’t limits the scope for debate.
Probably the major factor that determines the utility of questions is the size of the audience. If you have an audience of less than 50 people then a conversational approach can work, if you have less than 200 people then a reasonable number of questions can be accepted. But as the audience size increases above 300 the utility of questions approaches zero. If the majority of people who might want to ask questions are unable to do so due to lack of time then the value of allowing any questions diminishes. For the largest audiences there probably isn’t any point in having question time.
Another major factor determining which style works best is where the speaker has had experience speaking. Most of my speaking experience is with less formal meetings (such as local LUGs) and in countries with an informal attitude towards such things (Australia, the US, and The Netherlands). A speaker who has primarily spoken for universities such as Cambridge or Oxford (which seem to have a very formal style and questions strictly reserved for the end) or who has come from a country such as Japan(*) where it’s reported that the audience are obliged to show respect for the speaker by being quiet will probably expect questions only at the end and may flatly reject questions during the talk. A speaker who has a background speaking for less formal audiences will expect a certain number of questions during the course of the talk and may plan the timing of their talk with this in mind. When I plan a talk for a one hour slot I plan at most 30 minutes of scheduled talking (IE covering my notes) expecting that there will be 15 minutes of questions along the way and another 15 minutes of questions at the end. Often with such plans my talks run over-time. Of course this means that people who have mostly had experience speaking to smaller and less formal audiences will find it exceedingly difficult to give talks to larger audiences. This may be an incentive for having more formal arrangements for LUG talks to increase the skills of speakers.
The next issue is what level of contentious questions is acceptable. I believe that if you have a disagreement with points that the speaker is making (and have some experience in the field in question) and the audience is not particularly large then one hostile question is acceptable – as a speaker it’s reasonable to refuse to take any further questions from an audience member who has asked one hostile question. Another category of question is the challenging question (not to be confused with a hostile question), for example describing in one sentence what your business requirements are and asking how the topic being discussed will apply to that business requirement. One of the most useful questions I have been asked during a SE Linux talk was concerning the issue of backups of file security contexts, it was presented in a challenging way and the answer that I gave was not nearly as good as I could give now (the code base has improved over the last few years in this regard) – but I think that everyone learned something so that validated the question.
In smaller groups there may be some heckling when the speaker is a well known member of the group, I don’t think that this is a problem either as long as it only consumes a tiny fraction of the time (maybe 20-30 seconds at the start). For larger audiences or for speakers who don’t know the audience well heckling is generally a bad idea.
(*) When speaking in Japan I had a lot of audience interaction. I’m not sure if this is an indication of the Japanese culture changing in this regard, the fact that translation problems forced some interaction, or the audience was showing respect for the Australian culture by asking questions.
As part of my ongoing plan to make things easier for Linux job applicants and advertisers I have created a Planet for Linux Jobs in Victoria, Australia.
The LUV President had suggested that I make a proposal to the LUV committee about this. I have offered them ownership of the Victorian aspects of this idea as well as volunteering to run the services for them.
The Libby commutation has demonstrated the contempt that the Bush regime has for the US political process, the opinions of the voters and party members, and the reputation of the US. The Talking Points Memo has an insightful analysis. They suggest that an argument could be made for pardoning Libby by claiming that the case is politically based and bogus, such an argument would be difficult to sustain – particularly given the fact that the prosecutor and the judge were Republican appointees. But a commutation is admitting that the case was valid but that Bush wanted to protect a friend – or someone who might inform on him. In either case it’s a very bad thing.
As an example here’s a YouTube video of Keith Olbermann making the case for George Bush to act as decently and honourably as Richard Nixon and resign from office.
Paul blogs about why embedding media players is bad for the case of web radio. One thing I notice is that there is no convenient or easy way of extracting an embedded youtube video from a web page a quick test in my favourite browser (Konqueror) showed that the YouTube embedded section didn’t even appear.
The Debian package youtube-dl allows you to download the Youtube content in a format that can be played with mplayer, but only if you see the link – which seems to not happen if the web site tries to embed it. Avoiding flash is good if you want security or if you want to use a platform other than i386 Linux or Windows and youtube-dl removes what I consider to be the only compelling reason for Flash.
Mary Gardiner has written a lazyweb post asking about how to solve the problem of laptops being more expensive in Australia than in some other countries. She didn’t post contact details or enable comments on her blog, but that’s OK as this information may be useful to other people.
Some years ago I was living in The Netherlands and discovered that the cheapest Thinkpads were available by US mail-order (which didn’t support shipping to other countries). As I was attending a US conference (the Colorado Software Summit) anyway I decided to get a Thinkpad at that time. So I found an friend in the US who was attending the same conference who was willing to receive the Thinkpad for me. I arranged to have the Thinkpad delivered to his doorstep (he assured me that he lived in a safe neighbourhood) and a couple of weeks afterwards I met him at the conference and received my nice new Thinkpad!
I’m sure that most people who are active on the net can find someone in the US who they would trust to deliver them a package costing >$1000 and finding such a person who attends the same conference as you shouldn’t be too difficult (I’ve done it).
Another way I bought a Thinkpad was that I arranged to have a holiday in London at the same time as the wife of an American who ran a computer store. I met his wife at Heathrow airport and made the final cash payment for the Thinkpad that she delivered. I was worried about a police reaction to seeing a cash sale of a parcel in an airport, but there weren’t any problems…
In terms of warranties on laptops, the Thinkpad warrantee is world-wide. You can quote a serial number of a Thinkpad when arranging the warranty repair and they will tell you which country it was purchased in, but they always cover you. I’ve had many Thinkpad repairs, I wear out keyboards regularly through constant use, and due to the extensive travel and hard wear often other parts wear out too. It’s been pretty rare for me to have a warranty repair in the country where my Thinkpad was purchased and I’ve never had a receipt available. It’s never been a problem, they know from the serial number whether the warranty is valid and take care of everything.
Thinkpad repair (both under IBM and now under Lenovo) also operates when there is no hard drive in the machine. They don’t even ask a question about the lack of a drive, just note that it doesn’t have one.
Update: It has been pointed out to me that importing a laptop without paying tax on it is illegal in most places. But of course if you pay the tax then the total cost will probably be about the same as buying it locally.
Google has just announced the Recharge project. They are converting some of their own fleet of Prius and other hybrid cars to be “plug-in hybrids”, this means that the car can be plugged in to mains power to charge it’s batteries and petrol will only be used as a fuel of last resort. If a car is mostly used for short trips then the petrol use is dramatically reduced – but the car still has the 1000Km range that a full tank of petrol provides!
Google is also going to invest $10,000,000 in companies that develop technologies related to hybrid vehicles. If you have some ideas for new technological developments related to power saving then you might want to check out what Google is doing.
The Age has published a remarkably stupid article about terrorism titled “It’s hard to prevent the hard to imagine” which contains some amusing statements such as “a plan to use liquid explosives hidden in soft-drink bottles and destroy commercial jets crossing the Atlantic. The scale of this plot, combined with the innovative bomb design, threatened to kill thousands of people and cause massive disruption to global commerce“. This however has been debunked by many chemists, here is one of the many expert analysis of the claims.
Here’s another inane claim from The Age “So the perpetrators in the UK looked elsewhere and compiled a crude yet potentially deadly bomb from materials available in everyday life — a mix of gas cylinders, petrol and nails. Finding a way to govern access to such otherwise mundane items will be expensive, and perhaps ultimately, impossible.“. It’s surprising that The Age editorial team were unable to find someone who knows the basics of chemistry or who has ever had a need to start a fire to review the article. Everyone should know that an oxidising agent is necessary for combustion – and a huge quantity of an oxidising agent is needed for an explosion. Petrol vapour won’t ignite if it’s too concentrated (it can displace enough oxygen to prevent combustion). When a gas cylinder is damaged and set alight you get a fireball surrounding it which may be several meters wide (the one occasion that I witnessed a damaged gas cylinder on fire the fire-ball was about 4 meters wide). But no explosion. To propell nails or other solid objects you need the combustion to be rapid and only on one side of the object. Combustion on all sides (IE a 4 meter wide fire-ball) will not propell nails. Here’s what a British Army bomb-disposal operator has to say about it in The Register.
If you want to talk about dangerous items that are difficult to control how about cars? A terrorist who drove a 4WD along the footpath of Oxford St could potentially kill more people than the London bombings and would take almost no preparation.
The article inevitably concludes with claims about the efforts that al Qaeda operatives are supposedly making to recruit people for terrorist missions. Naturally it ignores the best recruiting method of al Qaeda – the huge civilian death toll in Iraq since the US led invasion. The best available medical research (by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and published in The Lancet – the most reputable and prestigious medical journal) estimates that there were 655,000 “excess deaths” as a result of the invasion in the period up to July 2006. Over the last year the best available reports suggest that the violence in Iraq has got worse (among other things the number of US air-strikes is twice what it was last year).
For more analysis of the fear-mongering being done by much of the media (including The Age) here’s another article from The Register.
It’s interesting to read The Age’s article Truth first casualty of the internet?. Maybe they should publish an article titled Intelligence first casualty of print media?.
Mark Greenaway writes about writes about robots being designed to remove weeds from farms. This seems like a bad idea given that we currently have an energy crisis due to CO2 emissions from power plants causing environment change (including reduced water supplies), and coal and nuclear power plants requiring water to produce electricity (pity about the reduced water supply). Introducing robots that require either electricity of petrol for operation and also maintenance (which probably requires plastic parts on occasion) seems to be more of a problem than a solution.
Fortunately there is already work in progress on training sheep to eat weeds. Given that we already raise sheep for wool and food it makes more sense for them to eat unwanted vegetation (weeds in a vineyard is the example given) than to grow grass specially for them.
Also Mark says that the recent increase in oil price is not good news. What would be ideal is a slow steady increase in petrol prices that allows individuals and companies to change to more efficient vehicles (smaller and slower vehicles, hybrid vehicles, and more use of public transport) and also allows governments to make changes (such as building new public transport infrastructure). Having the oil remain cheap until it starts to run out doesn’t do anyone any good (apart from the short-term interests of oil companies).
A comment on my previous post about my Linux Jobs Blog suggested that I shouldn’t fragment the information.
However I believe that fragmenting the information is ideal due to the ability of RSS syndication to drive the cost of coalescing the information to almost zero!
Currently there is a Linux job web site run by Linux Australia. It doesn’t have many adverts and isn’t even linked from the main Linux Australia web site. I believe that we can do better for the people who want Linux jobs and the people who have such jobs to advertise.
If you have a central site the jobs have to be moderated (which takes work and delays listing), the larger the area that the site covers the greater the work is to do this.
The solution is to have a distributed system with different people running listings for various regions and a syndication service to aggregate them. To start this I have created a blog which will have categories for the states and territories of Australia. Someone who is only interested in one region can visit the category for that region. Then recruiting agencies and companies which regularly hire Linux people can start their own RSS feeds to be syndicated in a planet instance for each state and territory. This gives a faster and more efficient response (adverts will appear quickly, can be changed or removed at any time, and less effort for moderation. I expect that recruiting agencies will occasionally post off-topic entries – but when their feed gets removed from the Planet installation they will probably make a commitment to do the right thing in future.
Planet installations can syndicate other Planet installations, so we can easily have a Linux jobs Planet for Australia (possibly run by Linux Australia) that syndicates the feeds from each state and territory.
In the long term I think that the best way of running this is to have Linux Australia run the central Planet instance and a LUG in each region run the local site. I started running it myself because I didn’t get a positive response when suggesting it to the relevant people in Linux Australia and LUV. That didn’t deter me, so I decided to set it up myself. If the idea takes off and if Linux Australia and the LUGs want to take it over I’ll be happy to use HTTP redirects to send the traffic to them – and help them with the sys-admin work if asked.
Also there is nothing specific to Australia in this idea. I am only interested in Australia because if I was to attempt to do it in a larger area (such as the EU) then I could spend all my time on it without gaining a critical mass in any region.
If you are interested in running this in your region then you need to set up a blog (for adverts that are sent to you via email) and a Planet installation that feeds from your blog and any other Linux job advert blogs in your region. If your country doesn’t already have a central Planet for jobs then creating a separate Planet installation for your country would be a good idea too. I will be happy to run a Planet installation for world-wide Linux job adverts (at least until I can convince an organization such as Linux International to run it) if this idea takes off in other countries.
Some people have asked what the benefit of a Planet is over a mailing list. You have to subscribe to a mailing list while with a Planet you can immediately visit it if you suddenly decide to find a new job. Subscribing to mailing lists for jobs from all countries would never work, but visiting a Planet for Linux jobs world-wide and then visiting a sub-planet for regional jobs would be quick and easy.
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