I ducked into the local Borders to see what was new when I was out to buy some lunch today. Interestingly, they've decided to start stocking Make in the magazine section. This is good news, because it indicates some sort of tipping point in popularity when an Australian book store chain that doesn't specialise in technical books feels it's worthwhile to import something like that.

The bad news is that after adjusting for currency exchange rates, it's selling at 230% of the US recommended retail price for a single issue.

Apparently it's shipped here in gold plated boxes on the back of rare Antarctic albino camels, and heavens knows you pay for that kind of service. This is why you hear Australians complaining about having to pay the Far Away Tax on so much stuff. It's not just transport plus exchange rate. There's a hefty amount of highway robbery tacked on the top as well.

So, nice, but no thanks. If I decide I want to read Make on more than a sporadic basis (I tend to pick up an issue or two when I'm the US), I'll subscribe. If I was to subscribe to Make and have it shipped to Australia, a one year (four issue) subscription would cost around 50% more than a single issue at Borders.

Topics: books, venting

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Mathematics, the old "queen of sciences", kind of runs on accuracy. It's also eminently logical and not really that hard. So permit me to channel John Allen Paulos for a moment...

It was with a mix of horror and irony that I read David M Peterson's post on O'Reilly's XML blog today: "AWS Drops SQS Pricing By 10,000%?" (the irony comes in the first sentence of the post.)

Oh, dear. Let's see. Suppose the original cost was $1. So 10,000% of that is $100. So reducing the cost by 10,000% would mean that Amazon were now paying $99 for every $1 they were previously charging. Doesn't sounds like a particularly profitable business model. Probably not worth relying on that service to be around very long. Wait ... you mean, that's not what they're doing? Oh dear, it's Marketing Maths at work, again. :-(

So why not be accurate? They've reduced the price for 10,000 requests from USD 1 to USD 0.01. That's a 99% reduction. The new value is now 1% of the old value. Easy.

Ratios aren't symmetrical: reducing by half and then increasing by half leaves you with less than the original amount. That's mathematics. Trying to change it because you prefer symmetry gets you a choice of free admittance to the Flat Earth Society AGM or a poster about the geocentric model of the universe. What it doesn't get you is a passing grade.

Besides, the symmetry already exists here: we use the same starting point (the original quantity) always. If something increases from $1 to $2, you don't say it increased by 50%. Similarly, it's illogical to say that something decreasing from $1 to $0.50 has been reduced by 100%. However, this seems to be a common marketing blunder amongst people wanting to show how extreme something is.

Yeah, David M Peterson doesn't deserve this grief. He having a Zippy the Pinhead ("somebody pinch me!") moment and just made a quick note on a blog. I'll admit that I'm taking a slightly cheap shot just to have a rant. Still, it's the third time in the past day or so that I've seen this nonsense and this was the only case with a URL attached. And it's my blog. Just because your government uses this kind of arithmetic to create fiscal policy, doesn't mean you're allowed to use it in computer science.

Oh, and, in passing... Amazon Web Service's price change is a pretty sweet deal.

Topics: mathematics, venting

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Somebody in India has added my email address to their Spam blacklist. And they are subscribed to the django-users mailing list (a list to which I've posted over 80 times so far this month). That's not a problem. Mistakes happen. Spammers misuse other peoples' addresses as the "from" address and some people don't realise this (we'll call that mistake #0, but it's so common as to be almost fait accompli). The fact is that all my messages are otherwise scoring -4 to -6 (possibly even better sometimes) in SpamBayes, meaning they would get through easily without the 100 point penalty for blacklisting, but people are fully entitled to configure their spam filters however they like.

What gets my goat is how badly this person has messed up from that point onwards. Their spam filter replies to every single message they receive from my email address. Which means every single time I post to the list, I get this free reply message that is pointless. Mistake #1: spam filters should never reply to messages they process. You're just replying to somebody who is either the wrong target (if they're not a spammer) or who doesn't care (if they are), so sending a reply serves no purpose except to clog up inboxes. Further, the reply comes form postmaster@..., which would be okay, except that the postmaster account doesn't exist for that domain, so we've got mistakes #2 and #3 rolled into one: sending email from a non-existent account and not having a postmaster account for reporting problems (an obvious RFC violation and well-known blunder).

Mistakes happen. Mistakes that impact other people, repeatedly, particularly when I'm one of those other people, are not so understandable. I'm pretty close to unsubscribing from django-users as it is, since it's just a huge time drain for me with little benefit. This person is inadvertently (if they're configuration is deliberate, well ... @$%!) pushing me over the edge. When I rule the world, there's going to be an accounting for this kind of behaviour.

Topics: venting

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... is that you can see them screw it up in realtime.

I paid quite a bit of extra money for shipping on a parcel from Washington (state, not DC) in the USA last week. It contains a gift for somebody that I want to give them this week.

The merchant did their bit and shipped it on the day I ordered. UPS then managed not to pick it up on the first day (noted as a "driver error" in their online system) and, since then I've seen it get to Ontario, California — so far, so good. It should typically then go to Hawaii and then Sydney when using UPS — then Phoenix, Arizona(!), Albuquerque, New Mexico(!) and Louisville, Kentucky(!) in quick succession. What the hell?! It has now travelled two-thirds of a continent in entirely the wrong direction without anybody apparently noticing. Fortunately, it's having a layover every 200 kilometres or so, apparently, so it won't get tired on the plane. There is no way that UPS have decided Kentucky is a good launching pad for packages going to Australia.

The package appears to be addressed correctly (including the correct country, so the Malcolm Tredinnick in Sydney, Florida will not be receiving a surprise package). I've apparently managed to score a succession of the dumbest parcel sorters on the planet who are successively conspiring to ruin my week.

Okay, rant over. Back to work.

Topics: venting

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I read this piece from Glynn Moody and thought he had lost his mind in considering it a step towards patent sanity. Then I read the New York Times piece he linked to and I now think that it's possibly more reasonable.

Glynn's summary is unfortunate, though. Switching to a first to file, rather than first to invent system for awarding patents is a large step away from sanity. On a purely intellectual level, there is no logic in awarding a patent — remembering that it's a limited restriction grant designed to make knowledge available to the public whilst providing some compensation for the inventor's efforts — to anybody other than the inventor. At that point, you aren't rewarding inventors (and their investors), you're rewarding people who file patents fast and you're writing into law that those are your priorities. There might be some logic behind bring US laws into alignment with other countries, but that just means things are more broken than before (and, as Eben Moglen points out quite often, the law is not logical).

The sanity appears to be in the other parts of the bill, so leading off with the craziest part was unfortunate.

Topics: law, venting

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Like most consultants, I get a reasonable number of requests to apply for one particular contract job or another. I try to give most credible e-mails at least a courtesy reply even if I'm not interested or too busy (and to those who may have thought they deserved one, my sincere apologies for overlooking your request).

This week, though, has set some new lows. It may because I have a head stuffed full of cold symptoms and medicine, so I'm alternately cranky and sleepy, but I've received three direct e-mails (i.e. I was one of the targeted recipients; don't get me started about the quality of mailing list advertisements) that indicate there is a new trend forming in position filling and it's not good.

People, give some hints about whether it's worth applying! This can't possibly be advice out of left field — I'm just not that creative. Help me to help you.

If your request for expressions of interest (effectively) only says "please send me your hourly or daily rate" and does not indicate the topic area of the work, geographical location of the company, length of work (even approximately), starting timeframe (immediately? when filled? when suitable for best candidate?), you are screwed right out of the gate. Or, at least, I am not going to be applying. Guess what? Typically for a consultant, my rates vary based on many things. Longer jobs means lower hourly rates (or, usually, not billing by the hour, but by the week or month). Starting timeframe is another variable: how much flexibility is there to fit in with existing work? Most of the time I prefer working on only one major project at a time, so I can't say yes to everything that crosses my inbox. For some arenas — be it geographical and target market — I am either not qualified or not interested for various reasons. Is the work onsite, remote or a mixture of both? Even in the telecommuting case, your location is important. The world has many timezones and whilst we can work around most of the barriers, it's good to know the full picture up front.

Secondly, who are you? If you don't tell me anything about your (company's) background and/or there is nothing about you on the 'net, how do I establish your credibility in the field or make a guess about what the work environment is going to be like? If you're a student trying to start up a business in your spare time, the whole job is different for both of us when compared to an approach from a section manager in a Fortune 500 company wanting to get some training for their staff. Reputation is important and losing a bad reputation is harder than losing a good one. So it is to be expected that a potential employee is going to check out the employer. If you turn out to be from We Love Deforestation, Inc, I might not want to work for you regardless of pay, interesting challenges or promotional opportunities.

This is naturally one of the occupational hazards of the consulting business and the idea is that in amongst the chaff are the few grains of goodness that are the jobs worth doing. Doesn't mean I have to like it. Might be why I want to get a "real job" again soon.

Topics: software, venting

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Straight out of the "cheap shot" basket, but I cannot resist: I saw this post go paste in my RSS feed earlier this evening (via programming.reddit.com). It's almost a textbook example of begging the question.

The author wants to make the argument that you shouldn't hire "rock star" programmers/developers and gives a few examples of IT advertisements looking for such. He then starts his case by definining "rock star" in a way that makes his argument. The problem is highlighted further down as he points out what a really good developer might bring to the table (not just coding, but documentation, testing, and working with and educating others). For some reason, they don't make his definition of rock star. After all, that would undercut the argument and render the post (more? less?) pointless. Such people really would (and do) bring a rock star effect to place in the sense that they perform well and others want to be around them and emulate them. Having a slightly less "glass half-empty" outlook could help here.

Really, people, if you're going to offer "look at the silly animals" commentary, try to make sure you're not inside the same cage.

Topics: software, venting

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Qantas — the Australian international airline — sent out a mass mailing earlier this evening asking for people to volunteer for their Customer Advisory Panel. This option is available to Gold and Platinum level frequent fliers.

I don't mind participating in things like this from time to time and I try to support OneWorld airlines when I travel so that I can have some benefits from being a decent frequent flier.

Except it's been nothing but disappointment so far. The email contained a link to the initial entry survey, which I guess is part of the sign-up process, there being no other obvious way to sign up. The link goes to the right website, but returns an error. It's an opaque link, so no way to work out if there's just a typo. There's a second opaque link to the Terms and Conditions for the marketing drive (which is what this is) does work, though, and it mentions that the whole process is outsourced to a Canadian firm. So much for "buy Australian", but not a huge problem for me — I'm a citizen of the planet, not just one particular country.

Okay, so back to my error page... look in the HTML for any obvious problems. Nothing in the comments. Although somebody needs to run the generated page through a validator or at least something that checks to make sure all tags are closed. The trailing '>' character is not optional in HTML tags.

Let's try emailing their support address, which is linked on the page. Click on the mailto: link. Compose the email containing all the information, including my frequent flier number. Off she goes... hmm... back she comes... :-( Turns out the mail cannot be delivered. The target server did not accept the RCPT TO line and returned a 550. So the initial link is broken, the generated HTML is broken (minor point, but indicative) and the support email address is broken. It's just roses all around.

Now, why am I worried that the current Qantas takeover bid is going to screw around their so-called valued customers? I may have to join my bunker-mentality friends and start cashing in my frequent flier points if this sort of behaviour keeps up.

Topics: travel, venting

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Part 1 of many, I'm sure. I should try to avoid the temptation of posting to this series too often.

"...I'm sure this will be useful for many people, so ..."

Please publish your data, showing how you selected the people you sampled and ensured they were truly representative. Save me some time by also giving the confidence intervals on the result, so that I don't have to compute it myself. If you can't do any of this — you mean you made up your assertion? — it's only an emotional argument, not a scientific one. Drawing conclusions is therefore much harder and less rigorous.

Seriously, this type of argument falls victim to both unjustified use of closed world assumptions — if the group you're appealing to can't prove something's true, it must be false for everybody they don't know about — and restricted sample space problems — extrapolating from your own experiences without knowing they are typical; which they often aren't. Making an appeal along the lines of "I think this would be easier" is one thing. Roping in hypothetical "other people" without justification weakens your argument, as you are stooping to making unsupportable, empty claims, leading others to wonder why you couldn't use real facts.

Topics: venting

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