DeepFreez

Slow Democracy

2007-01-23T12:03:00.000+02:00

Then I wondered about why modern democracy is the best way to do things. As a joke, some one said that we need government to keep the politicians busy while we get on with life. Many a truth has been spoken in jest.

Lets face it, democratic government is largely about some kind of representative body endlessly debating what is the Best Thing to do. The more democratic and representative (which is a good thing, right?) the longer the debate. In most industries the concept of "design by committee" is seen as bad for business. Why is this seen as something of merit when it comes to government?

I suspect this is exactly because it takes so long. Changing things like government quickly is seen as a Bad Thing, since it usually goes hand in hand with lots of angry people and some times shooting. Taking a long time to change things or making it hard for one person (or a very small group) to change things quickly prevents this.

If a tyrant of some sort (king, emperor, chieftain) is in charge, this person can make decisions on the spur of the moment and radically change things overnight. People might still get angry, but since the tyrant is either there by force, or seen to be rightfully in the position of power, it might take them longer to get angry enough to actually do something about it. Its interesting to note that the systems of government that has lasted the longest has mostly been some variant on the tyrant theme. Oh dynasties may rise and fall, but the system of pharonic rule lasted a very very long time.

The tyrant, being one person (or a very small group) and being human, is subject to human limitations, emotions and lack of wisdom. The tyrant can not be right all the time despite any divinity that may be attributed to this person. In times where radical change is needed, one person making decisions can in fact be a good thing because it makes reaction time very quick.

If there is a drought that threatens the entire city, the king can decree that every one must participate in building an aqueduct and it will happen the next day. In theory this will increase the survival rate of nations that have wise rulers. It will also increase the power of nations with ruthless rulers. Foolish rulers lead to nations disappearing. What type of ruler you get is a bit random, especially if it is determined by heredity.

So maybe one reason for the success of democracy is because it becomes hard to change things quickly and the system as a whole is more stable. You don't easily get bad rulers that make bad decisions. It also means that it is less likely that you get a good ruler that makes very good decisions. But avoiding badness seems to be more important than to find success.

In a modern world where information flows freely and the immediate threats to existence are far fewer, it would seem that the slowing down effect of democracy is its biggest virtue. It makes things more stable.

Unless you have executive power to declare war on thin pretexts...

Stephen Ritky Strikes Again

2006-11-21T17:12:00.000+02:00

Interestingly enough, Stephen Ritky contacted me in a huff about me putting up his contact details on my blog. Go figure. So now if you want to contact him, you will have to ask me for his details I guess.

It turns out that he also wants back the two CDs that he gave me at our last meeting. At the time there didn't seem to be any strings attached and I assumed that it was some more marketing "induction" material. At least he offered to collect the precious CDs. I suspect that the value of the CDs are inversely proportional to the likelihood of me participating in a sucker deal on offer.

It appears that some things in life are harder to get rid of than others.

Depth First Network Marketing

2006-11-15T09:52:00.000+02:00

So I was called by a guy called Corne (+27 82 524 1888). He said we met at some or other conference/event thing. Now I am notoriously bad with names and things, and rather free with business cards, so I took his word. He said he had some business ideas he wanted to bounce off me so I agreed to meet him.

I soon realized that I was to meet him and another guy at the coffee shop. It turns out the other guy (Stephen Ritky) was there to get met to participate in this cool "asset based income" thing.

So I listened, asked questions and tried hard to understand. I also agreed to some mass meeting at a later date to do the signup thing etc. Afterwards I went home and thought it through in detail. Here are my conclusions.

Network marketing in the Amway sense is like a breadth first search in a tree data structure. In order for me to make money, I have to get as many people directly under me to sell products to. If they have their own networks, this benefits me too because the "value" trickles up.

The scheme that was pitched to me is more like a depth first search in a tree structure. Instead of getting as many people directly under me as possible, the structure is linear downwards. That is, every new participant is added at the bottom of a long line. Any one already in the line that adds another person benefits every also already in the line, because the "value" gets trickled up to every one. Of course the total depth below you determines the total benefit you get, but since every above and below you in the line benefits of additions, in theory you have to do less social engineering.

So it sounds great: less work for some benefits. BUT (there is always a but). With the depth first scheme you get a discount based on the total volume of money spent on products by the people below you. So if you have lots of people that spend lots of money, you may get up to a maximum of 21% kickback on the money YOU spent. So if I don't buy products myself, I get no benefit. The way to MAKE money out of this, is to start your own "second leg".

The second leg is basically a branch. The difference is that on this branch, you get actual money instead of just a discount. With a mature second line (according to the marketing spiel) you can make some good money. Sounds ok to me... BUT (there is that but again)

My initial involvement is likely to mean that I want to add people below me in the line, so that I can max out my discount. Some of the money these people spend will end up with the guy that started the line I am in. So in a sense I am working for that guy. I am growing his network for him while I get a stupid little discount. Sounds like a sucker deal to me.

When I finally get wise and start my own second line, I have to tap into my social connections AGAIN, and probably do a LOT of hard shmoozing before any one in that line starts seeing any benefit. So the "easy money" suddenly becomes very amway-like. I am going to have to irritate the crap out of every one and their dog and offer them a sucker deal to get their money.

The depth first approach is very clever though. The sucker deal is much better hidden than in the breadth first approach. It would seam initially that I get lots of benefit for little effort. The way it is pitched also casts it as "asset based" income. The only way that the term asset can be applied here is in the sense that the CIA uses it: you are an asset to be used of a specific purpose.

I must say that the whole thing seems very well organized and planned. It is marketed very smoothly. During our little meeting over coffee I was repeatedly encouraged to give them numbers or contact details of people I know. Apparently they also give training in how to shmooze people into the deal, at a "reasonable price" of course.

In the end, I guess they are welcome to take money from suckers in a semi-legal way. Just keep that crap away from me, please.

Split Up

2006-10-30T09:18:00.000+02:00

So I decided to split my coding ideas and discussions form my apparently more politically minded ramblings. For code stuff go to Code In The DeepFreez. Here I will stick to politics.

Source Code Landscape

2006-10-25T09:38:00.000+02:00

So I was working with some source code for a 3D application. Using the usual game control scheme (wasd and mouse look) during the testing of the application and jumping right back into Visual Studio gave me an idea.

For one moment after the game to code transition I found my self wanting to zoom out of the code to get my bearings on the "code landscape". In fact I was a bit surprised and disappointed when my mouse wheel only scrolled the text up and down. Wow, code as a landscape!

Code has structure. It has a lot more structure than say, an article. The code generally has some local cohesiveness, meaning that the 5 lines above and below the current line will probably be related, either by being part of the same function or passably a related function.

Imagine being able to zoom out of our source code and seeing some kind of cohesiveness measure. The same function will be shades of brown. Functions that it calls will be tinted red, green and blue depending on the order they appear in the code. At a sufficient zoom level you will not be able to see the text, but that will be replaced by color and texture of the code. We humans are good at picking out those things and also to remember things spatially given those queues.

Maybe its worth exploring this idea.

Ecoterrorism?

2006-10-22T17:36:00.000+02:00

In an earlier post I made some very radical suggestions. Radical as in political fringe, not radical as in way cool. In fact, suggesting genocide as an option is decidedly not cool. I have been talking to several people about these ideas and I feel the need to reevaluate my arguments.

Lets tackle the cornerstones of my argument. When is it justified to take a human life? Does the CO2 emissions present an immediate threat to my life? What are the options open to us?

So when is it ok to kill some one? Answer: never. Phew, that was simple. But hang on, what about self defense and protection and the law and war etc? Well, its never ok to kill some one, but some times its necessary. To simplify, if there is some one that is attacking me, and he is clearly going to kill me if I don't do something, and there is no possibility to flee and the only way for me to stop him from killing me is to stop him first, and the only means I have at my disposal is to kill him first, then it becomes necessary for me to do so in order to survive. That's a lot of ifs and buts there. It might be easier to do it the other way around. If it is not an accident and my intension is to kill you, I am committing murder. What about war? When I am in at war, I clearly have the intention of killing you. Some would say I have the duty of killing you. It would be easy to say that the aggressor in a war is committing murder and the defender has no choice, but that's not the way war works. War is messy. Some times the defender needs to strike first or strike to destroy the aggressor in order to regain safety. I would like to classify wars (simplistically) into two categories. Wars where there is a clear aggressor, like the second world war, and wars where things just deteriorates to a point of thuggery. In the first instance, the aggressor is clearly wrong and the defender could make a case for destroying him. In the second instance, both sides are equally wrong for letting the situation deteriorate and the killing is not justified on either side.

Not since the bronze age have wars been fought where the aggressor attacks due to a need to survive. My tribe will die if we don't have access to the watering hole. Your tribe is simply not open to negotiation, so it has become a matter of survival to reach the water. What happens after we reach the water reveals our true character. Do we share with you, the defeated, or do we deny you the means to survive like you did to us? Simple competition for resources needed to continue living. We have refined the "need to survive" quite a bit since then. The need for "lebensraum" seemed to justify the second world war for some. The need for "liberty" seems to justify it for others. The need for "prosperity" seems to be be the true measure of some recent wars as opposed to "safety" as it is being sold. Strip away all the politics and you do not end up with "survival" which means it is not justified.

On to the question of CO2 emissions killing me. Well, to be honest, the jury seems to still be out on that one. But that might not be the case for much longer. It is becoming increasingly clear that something is changing. Wether it is a natural process or the result of man made activities should become clearer in the years ahead. Unless of course it is in the interest of those that control our news sources to have us think other wise (in either direction). The problem here is the scale of the thing that is being done to me. It is larger than just me and will probably take longer than my life time to completely reveal itself. My children will be affected more than me. They will also have a harder time to stop it if necessary, if they still can. So the question of threat becomes more complicated. It is possible that technology will advance sufficiently in the next 20 years to eliminate the threat. This is what the USA is banking on at present. Or at least that is the alternative they give to not signing the Kyoto Protocol. So now the nature of the threat changes. It becomes "Will the USA develop and implement clean technology in time?" Since it is in the interest of those who supposedly control our news sources to tell every one that these clean technologies are on the way we could expect this message to be blasted to us full throttle. Which it isn't. We have to conclude that either our news sources are not being controlled, so the clean technology message is not being pushed, or that our news sources are being controlled but that the controllers do not want us to hear the clean technology message. Either way, it would make it rather unlikely that the USA will clean itself up in the next 20 years while oil lasts.

So does it present a clear threat? Well, no. Not a clear threat. A likely threat. Unfortunately it also seems that is might be an all or nothing threat. If it does materialize as a clear threat it might very likely be too late.

So now we come to options. My simplistic analysis earlier left out several options. Reducing a population does in fact not clean up the industries. One might argue that a smaller population might support a smaller industry, but the reduction in industry will most likely not be in proportion to the reduction in population. A reduction in industry is more likely to give the wanted results. Cleaning up industry will also have the wanted results.

As China accelerates its industrialization, it is likely that cleaner industry will become much more important in the equation. Do it right from the start and avoid the mess the USA is making.

So what can we conclude from all this? Firstly, there is not sufficient moral motivation for killing 100 million people in the USA. The threat they pose is too vague at present. It is also unlikely to solve the problem. A better solution is to inform and change opinion towards cleaner industry and cleaner living. It does appear that there is some organizational opposition to this message. So how does one get a message across to millions of people that do not want to hear and do not want to change? Not by flying an airplane into a building... or maybe they are on to something there.

I believe

2006-10-16T14:09:00.000+02:00

I recently read an article "Modeling Opinion Flow in Humans Using Boids Algorithm & Social Network Analysis" Gamasutra with some very interesting ideas in it. It revealed to me the interesting subject of social network analysis. Now I don't claim to know anything about the subject, but one idea jumped out at me: The relationships we have with our information sources. Considering that I made an argument for genocide in the previous post, I thought I had better reexamine some of my fundamental assumptions.

The idea from the article that got me thinking, is that a lot of our opinions are formed due to the relationships we have with our news sources. If a source that I regard highly informs me of X I will tend to move my opinion in that direction. If a source that I hold in contempt informs me of X I will tend to move my opinion away from that point of view.

There are a couple of things in this idea that are interesting. My relationship to a specific source has very little to do with the accuracy or veracity of the source. If I had only the Pravda to read in 1980 and I found it to be useful, I would hold an opinion that had little to do with truth. Further more, I could actively turn my back on the truth based on who is giving it to me. If Al Jazeera reports that Iraq actually does not have biological weapons, I would tend to believe that they actually do, because I believe that Al Jazeera lies to further an agenda.

To take this one level of abstraction deeper. In order for me to control opinion, I need to control a source of information that many people use to align their opinion. I would also need to reinforce the belief that this source is a good one. Finally, just to make sure, I need to push opinion about other sources into the negative regions, especially if they present an opposing view.

Of course your opinion is not only formed by news sources, but also by the people around you. Some one who you respect greatly will of course influence your opinion accordingly. Within one group, people tend to have the same news sources, so the person you respect is likely to be informed from the same places as you.

To be practical, what is my relationships with my news sources? Here is a quick rundown on a scale from 1 to 10 where 10 is I believe everything and 1 is that I will tend to believe the opposite:

CNN 6
BBC 8
Sky news 7
Reuters 8
Wikipedia 8
News24 8
SABC 7

One thing that immediately struck me is that I am very biased towards the US/Western media. I also don't seem to have much of an Eastern or African view.

I would wager that its a "good idea"(tm) to be exposed to as many ideas as possible. But also, while seeking out ideas, one should evaluate the source itself critically. Failing to do so will have a few consequences. Having only sources that repeat the same ideas will starve you to the point where new ideas might even start to seem threatening. Failing to evaluate your sources will expose you to the possibility of manipulation by a small number of people who control the source. In short, it will turn you into an American....

Who is killing my planet?

2006-10-13T10:44:00.000+02:00

Lets look at some stats. The top five most populous countries in the world are

China (20.28%)
India (16.81%)
United States of America (4.58%)
Indonesia (3.56%)
Brazil (2.86%)

Wikipedia

Ok, so there are lots of Chinese and Indian people in the world.

The next stat that people would have you look at is emissions per capita. The top ten in metric tons per person (mtpp)

Qatar (36.52)
Kuwait (25.33)
United Arab Emirates (23.62)
Bahrain (21.8)
Luxembourg (21.6)
United States (19.92)
Australia (17.29)
Trinidad and Tobago (16.93)
Canada (16.54)
Brunei Darussalam (15.2)

EarthTrends

Interesting to note that neither China (2.93mtpp) nor India (1.05mtpp) feature in the top ten list. Its easy to draw two very wrong conclusions from the two lists above.

From the first list one might be tempted to conclude that China and India are the culprits, because they have the most people. From the second list one might be tempted to conclude that Qatar is a very dirty place and that they are to blame.

But wait, lets look at those two conclusions. Let us list the top five (plus China and India) CO2 producing countries and multiply their mtpp by their populations ordered from largest to smallest in million tons(Mt)

United States (5975Mt)
China (3853Mt)
India (1155Mt)
Canada (540Mt)
Australia (358Mt)

What pops out is that the single biggest producer of CO2 emissions is the United states. They produce 1.6 times as much as China and 5 times as much as India. In fact, they produce more than China and India combined!

If they reduce their emissions per person to 13mtpp they would end up equaling China. This can not be so hard to do, considering that pretty much all European countries keep it between 13mtpp and 8mtpp or less.

So now we know who is killing my planet. I don't want my planet killed because I kind of like to live here. So what to do? Lets look at the formulae and decide which factors need adjusting.

Total Emission = Population x Emissions per person

There are two factors here. Reducing either one will bring the total emissions down. Reducing emissions per person in the USA to 13mtpp would reduce the total emissions produced by 2076Mt (more than India produces in total). Achieving this would require some political will to do so. Unfortunately the United States of America has repeatedly proven that they are not interested in doing this. Either because they do not have moral fortitude to do so, or because it is not financially beneficial for them to do so. Neither of these reasons really endears them to the rest of the inhabitants of this planet.

Reducing the population to 200,000,000 people would have the same effect (that's about 100 million people less). The top ten largest cities in the USA have about 24 million people living in the city limits and about 67 million people in the metropolitan areas.Wikipedia

So here we are. I am an inhabitant of this planet and most likely my descendants will be too. In our enlightened age large parts of the world have come to the conclusion that I have some basic human rights. Among them the right to life. But there are circumstances under which these rights may be reduced for the greater good. One such is when I am in mortal danger and I need to defend myself or the life of others.

So, Mr Bush. Please reduce the CO2 emissions of your countrymen. If you can't manage that, I am sure I can think of something else to save my life and the life of my children.

The bureaucracy is expanding to met the needs of the expanding bureaucracy

2006-10-11T16:36:00.000+02:00

Ok, I am not going to moan and bitch about how bad the department of transports admin is (ok I just did.) Instead I am going to try and solve the problem. No, not by firebombing the licensing offices, although that might actually help.

Step 1: Make sure you have the manpower in the office you need. Why is it that at one office there is a queue of people stretching into the parking lot with only two clerks serving people, but in another office there are three clerks attending to no one? Some simple planning should be all that is needed to fix this. The office managers should at the very least get some training in basic planning. I am prepared to let my tax money be spent on that type of training.

Step 2: In this day and age, it should be possible for one office to access a single source of information wherever they are. This would obviate the need for people to pay any fees or fines at one specific office. If all the offices knows from the central source that I owe R186.00 for my car registration, any one of them could accept my payment. And don't tell me its a problem with infrastructure. Every office has computers in it already. Use them!

Step 3: We need more payment options. As things stand, I have to either mail them a check, or go to the one office I am assigned. No online payment options (EasyPay for instance) and no way to even do a direct bank transfer. No, its either cash or check. And how archaic is the check option!

So to summarize: train the office managers to plan their resources better, spread the load by allowing things to be done at various offices and eliminate the need to go to one of the offices in the first place.

Now the question begs, why has none of this been done? Well here is my theory.

Office managers are promoted to the point of incompetence. This is something that you will see in any government bureaucracy. You worked in this office for the last 10 years, so eventually you are the oldest and you kind of have to be promoted. You end up being a managers without the skills you need. If this were the private sector the person would have been let go or an outside manager appointed.

A specific office has a vested interest in not cooperating with others to give a better service. Better service is perceived as meaning "harder work" especially in government bureaucracies. The concept of "work smarter not harder" is probably too modern or just not attainable with the available personnel (how's that for a veiled slur). Further more it becomes harder to hide corruption if there is large scale cooperation and coordination. All the money skimmed off transactions would end up with the larger more organized operations.

With fewer cash transactions, the opportunity for petty theft is also reduced which might cause the repo man to visit some of the clerks.

Skilled manpower, cooperation and streamlined procedures... I guess getting a check book and writing a check and mailing it is a more likely route to success.

Cold Call Freezer

2006-10-10T15:07:00.000+02:00

So I got a call from a marketer (Charmaine) yesterday. She wanted to make an appointment for me with some insurance sales person. What a waste of time. So I decided to waste theirs. I agreed to the appointment the very next day (today). At first she got me an appointment with Shane for 14:00. Then she called back and said that he could not make it, could we move it to next week. I said no, it has to be tomorrow or not at all. She then made an appointment with Adrian. Good, bring it on!

At 13:56 Adrian called me and said he was going to be a "bit late due to traffic." At 14:15 when he actually arrived, I asked the security guard at reception to search the guy for a knife because I don't trust him. I am not sure if the guard actually did it. I hope so.

I managed to stop Adrian in his marketing tracks and ask him to tell me where he got my number (and I recorded his response). He gave me the number of the company that did the call for him. They are called "Swell Moves" (Tel: +27 11 791 5030) and their manager is Rina Jeffreys (Tel: +27 83 292 3317). Rina alleged that they got my number off a database they bought from the "Chamber of Commerce." Since that is a plausible enough explanation I didn't peruse the matter further.

I am however tempted to call either of the above numbers at random times from random numbers, just so say hi... you know, just in case they start missing me. Please feel free to do the same (please.)

I HATE TELEMARKETERS and I will do anything to make their lives miserable. I managed to waste Adrians time and got some good info out of him even if its not the things he thought he would give me.

Marketers beware! Your cold calls will cause you frostbite here! War has been declared!

After Breakfast

2006-10-09T10:04:00.000+02:00

I seem to find myself having a bit of a Socratic streak. I have always found that the best way to teach is to get some one to ask the right questions. No fun just giving the answer. Besides, if you ask questions, you don't actually have to know the answers. Of course, its better if you have a clue, but some times leaving it open just covers your ass. But like Socrates might attest, just asking might get you killed too.

So after breakfast I thought... hmm, I used a spoon, which is a tool. I used a bowl, which is a tool too. I ate some cereal which was made by tools. It goes on and on. That must mean I am human, because some say that only humans use tools. That's probably not strictly true, but humans are rather good at using tools.

What about making tools though? I didn't make the spoon, or the bowl or the things that made the cereal. Maybe there should be separate category for tool makers vs tool users. I wrote some code this weekend that is distinctly tool like. Then I proceeded to use that new tool and found my life a lot easier. I also downloaded some tools off the net in the hope building something new. Of the two, I think the building part was more satisfying.

In the technocracy we live in it seems there are three levels

Those that use the tools without the need to understand them (the people)
Those that use and maintain the tools (the priests)
Those that create the tools

I wish to become a high priest in this hierarchy. If this was the matrix, I would want to be known as "The Tool Maker".

Why? Because I finished my breakfast and its time to something useful.

Shopping Malls

2006-10-07T18:05:00.000+02:00

Shopping malls seem to be the modern equivalent of the Roman Forum. Its the place you go when you just want to go somewhere.

Consider this: Who designs these things? Are there any rules of thumb that may be applied to their design? What makes a "good mall" vs a "bad mall"? I have been wondering these things for some time. One day when I grow up I will write a book on the topic I think.

We can divide malls into two broad categories. The "Strip Mall" and the "Shopping Mall". I don't care about strip malls. They are all cookie cutter type things and fundamentally inspiring. Their function is to serve shop fronts to consumers. You go there if they have a shop you know about and need to visit.

The shopping mall on the other hand I would define as a place that offers an experience. Its a place with ambiance. It does a lot of the same things as a casino. It is built to make you feel good and spend spend spend.

One thing I have found is that the design of malls have changed significantly over the last couple of decades. You can spot an 80s mall over an 90s mall.

An 80s mall tends to be low ceilinged with all artificial lighting. It is designed to make you feel "inside". It also has the 80s tendency to make things square. I don't think the concept of a promotion space existed then.

A 90s mall brings in more natural lighting and brings in plants (plastic or otherwise). The promotion space came into being.

Modern malls seem to be about having different regions. Some of them themed. Some of them "inside". Some of them "outside".

Lastly there is the evolution of the mall. When a mall gets extended, the architects had better know what they are doing. It seems to be very rare that an extended mall keeps on working as it was supposed to. I think I will put up some examples at a later stage. For now, note that Menlyn Mall turned into a monster. Cresta Center got a choke point and is almost split into 3. Summerset Mall turned into a marathon.

I think I will talk about one mall at a time in the future and try to extract some general principles from the discussion.

World Breakfast

2006-10-06T08:58:00.000+02:00

So I thought an appropriate first post would be breakfast. So here it is. Is modern technology not wonderful? I get to share my breakfast with the world. Why stop at breakfast though? Why not share my lunch as well? (who knows, maybe I will)
This begs the question... WHY?!?!? Is blogging the modern answer to the angst of an exhibitionist? "I blog therefore I am"? Again... time will tell for This Author.

But then again, maybe blogging has at its heart the same idea as that found in "Enders Game" (Orson Scott Card). In this story two young children (the brother and sister of the protagonist) sway world opinion based on their online orations.
No one knew that they were just two 12 year old kids.... bloggingdid not matter.
So maybe this bloggin thing will allow This Author, by sheer force of argument, to save the human race......

Then again, mabye not. Its just breakfast after all.