December 2010 - Posts
Concentration of resources of any sort makes possible larger undertakings, but also makes possible parasitism on a grand scale. When other parties have concentrated resources and inevitably fall prey to despotism, it is necessary to concentrate resources in order to resist annexation. This resource arms-race leads to nations and cities.
Centralisation has a number of advantages, but there are also major drawbacks to centralisation of large scale operations. An optimal degree of centralisation exists for any circumstance, and an optimal scale of operation exists for a given degree of centralisation.
One reason to limit size is the overheads of administration. This can be overcome to a degree using decentralisation via cellular automation. This is why capitalist regimes last longer than communist ones – capitalism decentralises resource management using an economic model. This reduces the complexity of the problem at every stage of planning, and reduces decision lag.
Another reason is to avoid creating opportunities for corruption.
It is important not to exceed either of these limits, but a combination of greed, stupidity and desire for personal aggrandisement typically has every successful organisation barrelling headlong past its optimal size. Ironically, ever more central control is touted as the solution for growing inefficiencies. The true solutions are contraction and decentralisation.
It is easy to demonstrate the truth of these assertions. If my “don’t build big complex systems, build lots of small semiautonomous systems that interact, and handle the whole as a comparatively simple emergent system” approach is valid then natural systems that work like this should be successful, stable and widespread. And they are: the simpler the life-form, the larger a portion of the biomass it constitutes.
This is not to say that we should give up and let the algae take over. I just mean we should recognise the wisdom of simplicity, and stand within the bow.
Our fearless leader Anna Bligh got some front page space today. No longer will parties accept bribes from big business. To ensure that every major party gets its fair share of graft and corruption, bribes will now be paid directly from the public purse. Naturally this excludes minor players like One Nation, which are horrible in that they insist on representing the views and wishes of their constituents, which is unacceptable when those constituents hold opinions the incumbent government doesn’t like. Paying bribes directly out of the public purse will improve government by freeing those involved from the need to provide something in return.
“We are not beholden to Joe Public,” said Captain Bligh, “and private taxpayers can’t hide behind elaborate tax shelters. So why should we answer to private enterprise?”
“What?” she went on to say. “The shelters I mention depend on loopholes were for use by retired cabinet members, their friends, families and immediate business associates. They weren’t intended for general corporate use and we are considering legislation designed to limit eligibility. Of course it would be better to go national. Then we could simply print our own money.”
A number of ass-kissing editorial pieces suggested that this is a small price to pay for democratic government. Wonderful, I say. When are we going to get one?
All of them conveniently forget that what we have is neither democratic nor representative. I know lots of true believers will argue this, saying that no party will do things likely to galvanise a counterreaction. But this isn’t true. Both major parties have a well documented history of taking the opportunity to impose unpopular legislation whenever they expect a change of government. This proves beyond doubt that politicians prefer to impose their own will than do the will of their constituents.
I found this in a Wikipedia article on auroras:
This article appears to contain speculation and unjustified claims. Information must be verifiable and based on reliable published sources. Please remove speculation from the article.
Here’s the material to which this referred.
Again, our understanding is very incomplete. A rough guess may point out three main sources:
- Dynamo action with the solar wind flowing past Earth, possibly producing quiet auroral arcs ("directly driven" process). The circuit of the accelerating currents and their connection to the solar wind are uncertain.
- Dynamo action involving plasma squeezed towards Earth by sudden convulsions of the magnetotail ("magnetic substorms"). Substorms tend to occur after prolonged spells (hours) during which the interplanetary magnetic field has an appreciable southward component, leading to a high rate of interconnection between …
This stuff looks like it was lifted from an introductory textbook. Is this speculation? Of course it is. Speculation is the lifeblood of science. Certainty is the exclusive province of religious zealots. Science is all about working hypotheses and the systematic checking and revision of them; a quest for truth that isn’t Quixotic because at every stage truth is closer.
Speculation in the presence of established doctrine is the mechanism by which science advances. The only certainty in science is that currently accepted theory is the best available approximation of truth. Childish desire for certainty is the root of religions ranging from Catholicism to Middle Management, and widespread fear of uncertainty is what allows the wicked (most of whom are clergy) to manipulate the snivelling masses into supporting their bigotry and excess. In this picture, revelation of new truth would incidentally reveal their larceny and deceit, so they respond to heresy (consideration of any idea outside of doctrine) with violent suppression.
I declare unscientific Wikipedia’s preference for institutionally-blessed revealed wisdom.
The British habit of writing dates dd-MM-yyyy would be clashes with our numeration conventions. The American date format (MM-dd-yyyy) on the other hand is completely insane; it’s not even internally consistent. Where do people get this nonsense?
Nobody would write time ss:mm:hh because that would be silly. It would clash with our numeration convention of most significant digit to the left.
We write numbers right-to-left (RTL). This is opposite to our convention of writing left-to-right (LTR). We imported numeric RTL from the Arabs when we adopted base ten and the digits 0 to 9. You might think it would have been sensible to flip this around to match our LTR standard, but writing numbers with the most significant digits earliest has the profound advantage of making alphabetical and numerical sorts produce similar order – identical if you introduce leading zeroes.
This argument applies to any quantity, which brings me back to date-time.
There is only one reasonable format: yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ssZ
The Z is the timezone. A literal Z means UTC+0. Other codes indicate other time zones. For example 1984-10-03 15:48:21K is equivalent to 1984-10-03 05:48:21Z because zone K is UTC+10 (Australian Eastern Standard Time).
Anything else is just asking for trouble.
I have heard a lot of arguments in favour of localisation but they all amount to either “Our customers believe the world will end if they do not observe the sacred rituals,” or the slightly more compelling “Our customers will get annoyed and switch to competing products.”
The first argument is an attempt to shunt an inconvenience onto someone else. Just tell them the product is limited to canonical format so it can work correctly all over the world.
The second argument is a load of bollocks. The people who choose software are not the people who use it. When the people who actually use the software start complaining, the money has already been spent. By the time there is budget to change software, the actual users will have got used to canonical format and stopped whining. Unless your competitors have also heeded this article, this may even give you vendor lock-in.
I encourage rebellion. Use canonical date format and don’t give users a choice. It won’t hurt them and it will make an age-old problem vanish.