Lies, damned lies and climate science

November 24, 2009 at 10:20 am · Filed under Climate Change, science

Climate change hysterics are in a flat spin this week after hackers broke into and published email archives from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) – one of the leading sources of data used to support hysterical climate models. What the BBC doesn’t tells us is that the emails reveal a probable conspiracy to alter the data to fit the doom and gloom models of climate change and, in some cases opening speak of hiding the true facts or, as the Wall Street Journal puts it: “…reveal an effort to hide the truth about climate science”.

Indeed, the article opens with a choice snippet from one of the IPCC’s most vocal proponents, the UK’s Phil Jones: ‘The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. . . . We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.’

Even the New York Times has grudgingly reported on events and the possible implications – but don’t expect to find the story anywhere near the front page. For my money, the most balanced contribution comes from Terence Corcoran writing in Canada’s National Post. As a long-time doubter of climate change hysteria, I’ll be watching developments with interest.

UPDATE (24/11/2009 1oh49): Ivo has penned a thought-provoking opinion piece on the saga.

UPDATE: (24/11/2009 16h36): The BBC’s Paul Hudson has verified that the emails are probably genuine because they “are identical to the ones I was forwarded and read [on 12 October]“.

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Partial telecoms relief

November 13, 2009 at 8:43 am · Filed under telecoms

Long suffering South African telecoms consumers yesterday got news of impending light relief from the heavy burden of a rapacious and collusive telecoms regime. Communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda announced in a ministerial report to the national assembly that peak hour mobile termination rates will drop from 125c per minute to 89c, while the off-peak rate will stay constant at 70c per minute.

IT Web reports on the news here and Mybroadband also has a take. My take is simple: It’s not enough. The telecoms players in this country have a long profitable history of screwing consumers at every turn – aided and abetted by government in the form of a minister who was incompetent or dishonest or both. Fortunately, that has changed; Apparently. Read the rest of this entry »

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S’Efricans get gored

November 5, 2009 at 1:15 pm · Filed under Climate Change

Funny thing happened at Maropeng the other day. Al Gore was in town at the behest of IBM to talk at the blue company’s local launch of its “Smart Planet” strategy. Excellent, I thought, here was an opportunity to ask the ex-next president of the United States some of those really inconvenient questions about climate change.

But sadly, even though I RSVP’d immediately, it was not to be. A little bird told me that instructions had come down from His Goreness’ legal minders that were to be expressly barred from his presentation. Oh, I was assured that we were welcome to attend the sessions that made up the rest of conference but we were unwelcome in THAT one. And to reinforce the point, there were even eagle-eyed security personnel standing by to forcibly prevent members of the fourth estate from sneaking into the conference hall prior to his arrival. Read the rest of this entry »

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Keep it simple stupid

June 3, 2009 at 4:20 am · Filed under science

Well now. Just as the so-called first world is getting ready to phase out incandescent light bulbs, boffins in the US have apparently found a way to make the humble globe more efficient. In short, they simply add a small step to the existing manufacturing process: zapping the filament with a infinitesimally short pulse of extremely high-energy laser light.

source: stock.xchng (http://www.sxc.hu/)

source: stock.xchng (http://www.sxc.hu/)

The result is an otherwise conventional light bulb that consumes 40% less energy producing the same amount of light. Read the full story on El  Reg here. What isn’t clear is how this process affects the longevity of the common or garden variety light bulb.

Of course, if this does turn out to be the elixir the boffins expect, it will spell the end of Philips’ monopoly on energy-efficient lighting technology. What a shame that would be.

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Crying wolf one more time

April 9, 2009 at 8:08 am · Filed under Computing, security

Back in 2006 I wrote what turned out to be an award-winning piece (one of only two) for iWeek about how the security software industry has a habit of crying wolf (PDF) in its quest to peddle more software. And if one goes by a recent posting on SearchSecurity.com, nothing has changed:

The Conficker-fed doomsday scenarios fed to us by security vendors and trade press has come and gone without the big disaster. The IT world on April 4 looks a lot like the IT world on March 31. It is almost disappointing, just as a forecasted winter storm that misses the mark – nobody wants to see property damaged, but a good storm is captivating and fun to watch. Conficker, also known as Downadup and Kido, was primed to start seeking its payload using a wider range of domains on April 1. The over-hyped storm has thus far turned into a dud, leaving the security industry looking clueless once again.

Read the full story here.

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So we have to live with Cape Town

March 31, 2009 at 6:16 pm · Filed under Climate Change

I’ve always seen this global warming lark as a good thing – especially the predicted sea level rises that were going wipe out low-lying areas. I mean, I’d love to see Cape Town reduced to the lost little island in the middle of nowhere. Sadly, it’s not going to happen, despite what the environmentalist lobby would have you believe.

A thought provoking piece running in the Telegraph this week expalins why. It was written by Christopher Booker and is based on the views Dr Nils-Axel Mörner, a Swedish geologist and physicist who knows more about sea levels than any one else on the planet. It’s brilliant, just brilliant. But what’s more, it actually makes sense. Dr Mörner explains in clear incorruptible language, exactly why what the political hacks at the IPCC say is so much garbage. More power to him I say.

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Microsoft hi-jacks eeePC; SA education

August 20, 2008 at 2:15 pm · Filed under Linux, Microsoft, PCs, Windows, desktop OS, open source, politics

To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement. Last night Asus launched the new 9- and 10-inch models of its eeePC in Johannesburg. That’s the good news; The bad news is the distributor, Rectron, is only bringing four of the ten models into SA – all of them with Windows.

The Asus eeePC 1000, which ships with Linux and is the model I would want

The Asus eeePC 1000, which ships with Linux and is the model I would want

I was gutted. It means that if I want one I will once again have to pay Microsoft for the privilege of using Linux. That sucks. It’s not the money – I was told that the difference in price is only about R80; it’s the principle. Why should I have to pay Redmond for NOT using its crappy software? Of course, I could always contact a friend in Dubai, have him buy me a Linux model and send it over but Asus tells me the warranty would not be honoured locally.

Nice. So the eeePC, which was launched with Linux because Windows was too fat and expensive is now only available is SA with Windows on it. In effect, Microsoft has hi-jacked the eeePC.

And then there’s the deal: Asus, Rectron and Microsoft have signed a R330 million agreement with SADTU, puportedly to avail teachers of Windows-based eeePCs – as IT Web is reporting here. Nice, so now our teachers will only know Windows; They won’t be able to choose the more affordable, more secure and more robust Linux. Sounds like another hi-jack to me.

But the numbers on the deal don’t add up. SADTU represents 240 000 teachers, which works out to R1 375 per unit. The cheapest eeePC model (7-inch screen) currently retails for around R3 000 so would imply either a massive discount, which wasn’t mentioned, or that fewer than half of SADTU’s members are expected to take advantage of the deal to buy a eeePC – the number mentioned was 80%.

SADTU is also understood to be lobbying government to pick up the tab for teachers’ eeePCs. Indeed, acting president (SADTU recently fired its president for political naivity), Thokile Nthola, did make one good point when he questioned the expectation that teachers, 90% of whom are not IT literate, could produce gradutes who are IT literate.

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Chinese water torture continues for Microsoft

August 11, 2008 at 11:01 am · Filed under Firefox, Linux, Microsoft, Windows, browsers, desktop OS, open source

Janco Associates‘ latest report on the state of the browser market makes interesting reading. The company’s press release is rather blunt: Microsoft Flops and Loses Another 7% of its Browser Market Share in 12 Months...

What Janco doesn’t show in the press release is the detail (that’s only available in the full report). One table, in particular, is illuminating. In April this year, Janco had Internet Explorer at 65.40%. Now, five months later the company says that market share has dropped to 58.50%. If that decline is sustained it’s entirely possible that Microsoft will drop below 50% in January or February next year.

Also in this report is Janco’s assessment of the Windows Vista failure. The press release headline continues: … Vista Still only used by less than 15% of all users. The full report features another interesting table, one that charts Vista market share against other versions of Windows as well as Microsoft’s total share of the desktop OS market since launch. It shows that not only is Microsoft having trouble converting existing customers but it is also losing some of those customers to the competition: in the time it has taken to get that 15% market share, Microsoft’s overall desktop OS share has dropped by more than 4% – from 96.32% to 92.20%.

And, the data don’t take into account the unwanted licences said to be boosting Vista numbers. This analysis also can’t calculte the possible lack of confidence that will be caused by Vista’s security having been shown to even more useless. If I could afford to be a Microsoft shareholder I’d be thinking about selling round about now.

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Ubuntu Linux goes retail

July 10, 2008 at 7:33 am · Filed under Linux, desktop OS, open source

I picked this up off Slashdot this morning where SirLurksAlot writes that US retailer, Best Buy, is now selling Ubuntu, both through its Web site and in its brick-and-mortar locations. It appears to have quietly been made available since May 6th of this year and is apparently the latest Long Term Support version, Hardy Heron (v8.04 if you prefer).

No mention is made of support facilities over and above those available through the various Ubuntu forums. However, Best Buy does note that the product is published by ValuSoft so presumably that’s where the support can be found. Alas, no. A trip to the technical support web site and a search for the term Ubuntu returns this response: “No products were found to match Ubuntu.”

Nice. So I can buy a nicely packaged copy of Ubuntu from Best Buy for the low, low price of $19.99 or I can download exact the same product, free, grattis and for nothing from the Ubuntu website. Hmmm, tough one.

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Europe ahead of the US in OSS adoption

July 8, 2008 at 3:58 pm · Filed under open source, standards

Interesting research on the pace of open source adoption in different territories was recently conducted by Forrester, the upshot of which seems to be that European IT professionals are ahead of their American counterparts on the adoption curve. Conducted by analysts by Jeffrey Hammond and Diego Lo Giudice, the report finds that open source adoption in most European organisations initially focused on the operating system and Web server tiers of the application platform stack, but soon widened to include development tools, infrastructure components such as application servers and databases, and higher-level components such as portal servers and content management systems.

What gets me is that the tone of the report – or at least the executive summary – seem to imply that the findings were a surprise. Hammond and Lo Giudice write that the professionals they spoke to said that their firms are interested in expanding open source adoption even further and indicated that their firms are less concerned than their North American counterparts about open source security and intellectual property issues.

I guess not living in a litigious society has its benefits.

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