Random Developments

There was a fire in a bondage parlour in a suburb of Melbourne a few days ago. Nothing serious happened, and no one was injured (by the fire); it would hardly be news-worthy, were it not for the, say, unusual venue. But the venue was too much of a temptation for comedy.

Of course, there was the witty headline: Fire whips though bondage parlour. But the best part was this comment by a Metropolitan Fire Brigade spokesman: “[18 firefighters] were tied up for some time but disciplined and controlled firefighting contained the blaze to one room on the second floor”.

I tell you, everyone is a comedian these days.

Radio New Zealand’s “consumer affairs” programme This Way Up ran a story, two weeks ago, about the use of mobile phones inside commercial planes (audio here for the next two weeks). They interviewed a fair number of passengers, and I was surprised by how many actually thought that it was a good idea. My surprise went away when they asked one of those “what about all the other passengers talking on phones during the flight?”, to which she responded “hmm, I hadn’t thought of that…”.

My impression is that most people who are in favour of using mobiles on planes are actually in favour of themselves using mobiles, but not anyone else. Because, let’s be honest, conversations on mobile phones are extremely annoying when you’re not the one who’s talking. And that’s the reason why I don’t think this technology will get much traction… Also, the programme mentioned that Lufthansa actually researched the issue and came to the conclusion that people are not interested: the ones who want this technology are telecom companies and airlines.

Why airlines? Because that would be a source of income. The technology being trialled by some companies (including Qantas) makes use of a small cell (a “pico cell”) inside the airplane, to which all phones on board connect and through which all calls are transmitted; this cell is controlled by the airline, which can charge for its use. The calls then go through the airplanes’ satellite communications system to a ground station, from where they are finally connected to the standard phone system. The close proximity between the cell and the phones would make the devices use very little power and would protect the airplane’s systems from interference. It’s worthwhile mentioning that this only makes sense in places where all phones use the same system (probably GSM); if several competing systems are in use, the airplane would need multiple cells.

One interesting point is that airlines, being in control of the cell, can restrict its use; they might choose to allow only data to be sent (such as SMS and Internet access) and block voice calls. This would make wonders for the ambience inside the airplane, while still allowing people to be “connected” if they feel the need to, and the airline to make a buck or two.

Well, not here. Here.

If you don’t like the idea of the AACS being the only organisation that owns a number, now you can have your own. And you, too, can demand that people remove your number from their website, thanks to the DMCA!

This is how it works: by visiting the page linked to above, created by Edward W. Felten, you will be assigned a unique, 128-bit integer number. That number is used to encrypt a haiku written by the author of the page, becoming, then, a circumvention device as defined by the DMCA. All rights are transferred to you, and thus you become the legal owner of a number. Or so goes the movie industry’s thinking.

My number is F9 21 B7 FD DD BE 56 91 92 13 63 FD 4A 2C A5 E7, but it’s illegal for you to know this, even if I’m the one telling you.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this and this.

Yesterday, at lunch, we had an interesting problem. Our group wanted to order a chicken pizza; however, we had one person who wanted red capsicum on the pizza, but no mushrooms; one other wanted mushrooms but no capsicum; and a few others wanted both. We ended up ordering a chicken pizza, half with capsicum and 3/4 with mushrooms; what we had in mind was something like this:

It took us a while to get the waitress to understand the order; we had to draw a diagram not unlike the one you see here. The fact that she was taking the order in a PDA-like handheld device can’t have helped. And we could see from our table that it took her quite a while to explain the order to the guy actually making the pizzas.

And it didn’t quite work out. In the pizza we actually got, the quarter that should have both mushrooms and capsicum had only mushrooms; so, it was a chicken pizza, 1/4 with capsicum and 3/4 with mushrooms. We’ll try again next week.

Does anyone know of a pizza place that will accept arbitrary areas for toppings and allow for the toppings to partially overlap? It’s probably not a common requirement, except maybe for places that frequently cater to geeks…

Forget 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42. The new numbers are 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.