dw2-0

Nice review David. Thanks.

2009-07-20T23:23:46.989+01:00

Nice review David. Thanks.

I attended an enlightening talk at the Royal Socie...

2009-06-23T11:03:20.036+01:00

I attended an enlightening talk at the Royal Society entitled "the new biology of ageing".
http://royalsociety.org/event.asp?id=8248

It really drove home how laborious and time consuming is the study of metabolic pathways. We know that a severely reduced calorie diet can prolong life in many organisms (possibly humans), but finding out why this is takes decades in animal models, let alone human trials.

Many of the most significant medical breakthroughs were accidents (which gave rise to Pasteur's quip - 'chance favours the prepared mind'). Many predictions are made by people caught up in the excitement surrounding a discovery.

A good example of progress thwarted is the use of smallpox as an indicator of our maturity to rid the world of infectious diseases.
Before its pathogenesis was understood, people found that exposing a healthy person to the fluid from the abscess of a smallpox victim would infect them with a less virulent version and increase their chance of survival (although the fatality rate was still high using this method).
The realisation that milk maids exposed to cow pox had immunity to smallpox further improved the understanding and when it was finally eradicated in 1979 we thought we could conquer any disease given enough scientific understanding and international co-operation. Predictions were made about the end of infectious diseases.
Unfortunately, smallpox was relatively well behaved and suffered little antigenic shift over the course of decades which meant that the already effective vaccine would continue to work till its eradication.
Diseases like malaria are caused by the plasmodium eukaryote which changes its surface proteins very regularly to defeat vaccines.
Also, international effort have not been so concerted with other diseases, especially governments which embrace HIV denialists and amoral vitamin pedlars rampant in parts of Africa.

As with any financial advice, Past Performance is No Guarantee of Future results.

Still, the best bet at the moment is to eat around 800 calories a day in the hope that the extra years that it might prolong your life enough to for an accidental discovery of a cure for the terminal illness of being born.

I am really sad that I won't be able to attend. Mi...

2009-05-30T22:53:35.448+01:00

I am really sad that I won't be able to attend. Mike is a great speaker...

Taking the angle about how this enables natural se...

2009-05-28T00:32:05.152+01:00

Taking the angle about how this enables natural selection of intelligence to occur, I guess most people go through this as part of their psychological development - in arenas such as dating or getting on with superiors or subordinates at work. I know of friends who have gone through break ups of their romantic relationships, for example, and have to project an impression of being the "nice person" out of the whole incident to the rest of their community, to increase their dating potential in future. Likewise, I know of people whose relationship with a colleague has suffered, and coming out as the "good guy" is important for ones career.

In almost all cases I've noticed a depressing amount of cunning and deception occurs. It's interesting that when I've seen this happen, it's not always the person with the highest IQ or the most ethical person that "wins" - it's the person with the strongest social ties and trust networks that "wins" - sometimes with unfair results.

I also think most human beings go through a phase of idealism and naivety growing up. Encountering people who make use of their personality makeup, the first signs that their EQ must harden is when they must:

-- See through the deceptive intentions of others;
-- To keep track of what person A thinks about what person B thinks about person C...

Certainly others continue to

-- Deceive each other about their true intentions;
-- Pretend to be supportive of the ends of the group, but to free-ride on the support of others when they can get away with it;

Does the latter category mean only the cunning, deceitful and ruthless survive?
Ok, so I came up with this depressing hypothesis while reading your blog.

On a more positive note, I believe good guys can survive and do exist. When I (for example) meet people who meet my ethical standards, my trust instinct allows me to drop my defences - also why I choose friends very carefully. In a community, being able to have a strong (trustworthy?) trust instinct allows one to form strong social ties, to defend against sole individuals who may try to manipulate or be deceptive towards my group for their own intentions. Also, being able to detect others who are falsely trying to win my trust, in order that they may use me or my resources to damage the reputation of someone more trustworthy, involves a huge amount of EQ. Conversely, I also reluctantly retaliate (and attempt to do so proportionately) when others try to take advantage of me, so that such individuals know there is a threat to their reputation if they decide to do so.

Human beings only came to become the dominant species on Earth by learning to behave and co-operate in packs.

Their is hope beyond relying on deception to cause further increases in our intelligence or of that of an artifical one, even if that means that deception must occur first to start this cycle.

Although, the paragraph that mentions that people deceive themselves is frightening...

I have the same problem, and it's only recently — ...

2009-05-13T05:23:00.000+01:00

I have the same problem, and it's only recently — so it must be a new spambot that everyone's using.

I do two things
* Moderate comments after 7 days
* Read the comment to see if it shows any evidence of reading this specific post.

David, I had the same problems. I reasoned that so...

2009-05-07T14:24:00.000+01:00

David, I had the same problems. I reasoned that so many people have blogs that leaving spam comments are an easy way to reach a large number of people in the face of ever more effective email spam blockers.
The attack may be considered successful even if the comment doesn't get authorised and displayed on yours site.

Most people moderate their blogs and may out of curiosity follow a link before deciding a posting is spam. As well as warez and porn, this technique can also drive up the number of clicks on the target site and allows them to sell ad space.

I think wordpress runs a blacklist scheme which you can sign up for. The canonical way of dealing with automated pest is to use a CAPTCHA - a turin test to tell the difference between man and machine.

Even CAPTCHA can be defeated with a cunning scheme.
A web server can pass a CAPTCHA to another website which serves porn to its users one they have solved the puzzle.

For a novel use. See http://recaptcha.net/
which uses your visitors to help decipher scanned manuscripts.

Hi Dinesh, Your questions about TPIP (Third Party...

2009-04-16T23:58:00.000+01:00

Hi Dinesh,

Your questions about TPIP (Third Party IP) in the Symbian Platform will shortly be properly answered on the main Symbian blog.

In the meantime, briefly:

Only a very small proportion of Symbian Platform code has TPIP. However, because the platform is large, this still translates to several dozen items.

Each different TPIP item will have a different answer (or answers) for how customers can obtain solutions.

// dw2-0

Hi David, My understanding is that Symbian OS has...

2009-04-16T23:08:00.000+01:00

Hi David,

My understanding is that Symbian OS has lot of 3 Party Code in it. My questions is:
1. What % of the code in Symbian OS is from 3 Parties?
2. What portion of these 3 Party code has to be licensed from the parties and can you name them?

Thanks and Best Regards,

Dinesh

That looks like a neat book. I might have to read...

2009-04-15T05:07:00.000+01:00

That looks like a neat book. I might have to read it sometime.

You might also be interested in Zack Lynch's new book The Neuro Revolution. It's coming out in a few months. Zack does a top notch neurotechnology blog too.

Also check out my own blog (just click on my name above to get there). I talk about new neuroengineering techniques to manipulate the brain.

Nice blog by the way.

Hi Paul,

Agreed, 'Accelerando' is a really ...

2009-04-12T00:42:00.000+01:00

Hi Paul,

Agreed, 'Accelerando' is a really fine piece of contemporary science fiction, with some mind-boggling ideas.

Along broadly similar lines, I also greatly enjoyed 'Permutation City' by Greg Egan.

// dw2-0

David - for a fictional approach to this subject c...

2009-04-12T00:30:00.000+01:00

David - for a fictional approach to this subject check out 'Accelerando' by Charles Stross - http://www.accelerando.org/

Cheers, Paul

Gosh, I never realized you were just a kid. You've...

2009-04-06T08:20:00.000+01:00

Gosh, I never realized you were just a kid. You've certainly gotten a lot done in the last 3 decades.

The easy way will be when operators understand the...

2009-04-01T09:01:00.000+01:00

The easy way will be when operators understand the need for the change at the moment. But this will not be so easy since every change has a pain point.
There needs to be a revolution in the telecom field which is similar to the internet business mail email and search. The same has happening today in the automobile world, the big car manufacturers went ahead with making more premium and big cars and forget the small car market, and today small car market is a major revenue generator world wide.
If operator becomes enough smart and switches to other revenue model its good for him else they have face huge loss the way as most search and internet company lost revenue due to new revenue model introduced.

Reminds me of
this. Note the similarity of a rising nation behind a revolutionary AI project. I remember reading the Feigenbaum/McCorduck book as a teenager and feeling envy that the Japanese were going to be the pioneers for thinking computers. Guess not though. Perhaps if I can live another 25 years, I'll be recalling this project, when some other rising power (who after China?) launch their revolutionary AI project.

Hi RAM,

That's an interesting comparison! ...

2009-03-21T01:14:00.000Z

Hi RAM,

That's an interesting comparison! It's a lesson we all need to keep in mind.

// dw2-0

In the days before VHS video tape, a team from RCA...

2009-03-20T19:31:00.000Z

In the days before VHS video tape, a team from RCA went to Disney and showed them a prototype for a home video player. It featured a one-time tape casette that would have to be returned to a rental shop to be rewound.

The folks at Disney were apalled and said they would never consider offering Disney content on such a device.

"Why not?" asked the team from RCA.

"Because we have no way of knowing how many people are in the room watching the screen, so we don't know how much to charge".

Disney got dragged kicking and screaming into the home video market a few years later anyway, but even today the MPAA approaches on-line video with the same mindset. Innovating revenue models scares large companies to the point of paralysis.

I think carriers are suffering from the same problem. They are so afraid of endangering an obsolete revenue model that they are unwilling to consider innovations that might not only improve their bottom line, but take them off the consumer and developers "most hated" lists.

Interesting posts are usually the product of immed...

2009-03-20T05:57:00.000Z

Interesting posts are usually the product of immediate inspiration :)

I am not sure how this event went but one thing is...

2009-03-11T19:48:00.000Z

I am not sure how this event went but one thing is sure that unless operator shows a sign of really collbration not by meeting but by action any such discussion is time waste

MNOs are pipes, they just don't know it yet. The q...

2009-03-09T12:46:00.000Z

MNOs are pipes, they just don't know it yet. The question is how much longer people will be prepared to pay a premium for mobility.

Witness 3: Unlimited Skype and IM on your phone for a £9/month tariff.

As a consumer the only thing stopping me from switching off my landline is high-speed, low latency RELIABLE IP, in my area mobile coverage is stupidly patchy and I get dropped calls and on/off connectivity no matter what operator I'm with (I live in South London, not Somalia).

As a developer, I hate operators with a passion, purely because they are a blocker rather than an enabler: I have to waste precious time and energy removing them as an impediment to my progress, rather than them being a partner who is invested in the success of their service provision.

Handset providers are no better, having worked with Nokia and Apple in the past both were downright awful. From Sybian Certified to Nokia's intransigence and Forum Nokia clique to Apple's Fight Club NDA (the first rule of iPhone development: nobody talks about iPhone development) it's always a huge struggle to get timely information out of the provider, and again they are a project risk rather than a resource or partner.

No matter what your intentions are, the reality of the situation is that handset application development organisations are often small, lean, highly focussed and agile. Handset providers and MNOs are supertankers, and just as agile and responsive. As such this is a classic culture clash, and there's little anyone can do without radical change in the culture and organisation of the providers, which seems unlikely to happen in the near future.

I agree with m_p_wilcox. I can sympathise (up to a...

2009-03-09T12:05:00.000Z

I agree with m_p_wilcox. I can sympathise (up to a point) with the operators. Of course they need to cover their costs. However, as a consumer I want cheap, unrestricted data like I'm used to at home. A cheap bit-pipe is exactly what I want, nothing less, nothing more. I'm not sure how that circle is going to get squared but something's going to have to give at some point.

Another issue IMHO, is that the operators' own services I've seen haven't been particularly enticing. They often appear to be "me too" knock-offs of existing things. For instance, why should I use an operator music store if I already have a collection of stuff from iTunes? Why should I use the operator web services when I've already got my news, search, photo sharing etc. covered elsewhere (e.g. BBC News, Google, Flickr etc.)? Why should I pay extra for some TV streams when I can get YouTube and iPlayer content for free?

I'm not surprised they're so paranoid about losing revenue to 3rd party services if that's all they're going to provide.

They ought to come up with unique and/or superior services. I would have thought that one obvious option would be to provide a standardised billing framework for online transactions. Every customer already has payments to their operator set up in some way, so why not provide a system to apps and 3rd party services to tap into that in return for some sort of revnue sharing. E.g. if, as an operator X customer, I can go shopping online or use my favourite premium online services and just have all the fees added to my phone bill so that I don't need to register my credit card each and everytime then that would be really useful. Behind the scenes operator X would be taking a 10% cut but as an app/service provider it would still be a good idea since adopting the service would probably attract more customers due to the increased ease of making payments.

The real issue here is that the current revenues f...

2009-03-09T10:11:00.000Z

The real issue here is that the current revenues for operators are based on charging a lot for very little in many cases.

Almost 10 years ago when working on the first GPRS stacks I did a few sums to see how much an SMS would cost to send as plain GPRS data (and that's on the £'s/Mb that were being charged at the time). The figure, even than was a fraction of a penny. I'm astonished that this many years later there are still some tariffs where you can be charged 15p for sending a single SMS.

The other problem is VoIP - if you've tried a VoIP service via a 3G connection you'll know that all the talk about QoS is unnecessary for anything but important business communications. Unfortunately that leaves network operators as nothing more than ISPs with a mobility premium.

With fixed line broadband costs down to £10/month or less unmetered, that mobility premium is too high for most consumers, including me (i.e use WiFi for data on my device and the mobile data only for very occasional emergencies). The operators have really painted themselves into a corner by competing on price with fixed line broadband for laptop users with a USB HSPA modem.

As a consumer (and I expect many other value conscious consmuers see the same thing) I'm simply waiting for the deals they're prepared to give for connection via a laptop to be available on my phone, with no restrictions on use of VoIP or 3rd party SMS providers.

Here the interests of consumers and developers are aligned. In a fixed line environment regulators would step in to prevent the anti-competitive behaviour of the operators, but since governments around the world managed to rip the operators off so badly for 3G licenses, they've got to give them several more years to claw that investment back.

Essentially your point 4 reads a bit like: Somehow ISPs should be entitled to a share of all business that is transacted using the small part of the network they provide.

When you put it that way it seems absurd.

It's a difficult situation because we don't want operators to stop investing in capacity expansion and new technology to upgrade bandwidth but it's hard to see how that won't happen if they're reduced to utilities competing on price.

More difficult is that if they opened up tomorrow, the early adopters would find no problem with the service but as people saw the value the networks would become flooded and suddenly quality of service would become important (and more people would be prepared to pay for it). However, a lot of pepole would be very unhappy with their provider, since the same service they were already paying for would have degraded.

How do you manage this other than via the painfully slow expansion of services and reduction in pricing that we've seen so far?

I'd guess that, if anything, the introduction of the iPhone App Store has pushed developer opinion even further against the operators as they've seen what can be done when everyone has unmetered access and the operators don't control app distribution.

My prediction is that mobile network operators are doomed to be utilities that compete on price eventually, but they won't go down without a fight. It seems extremely unlikely that they'll collaborate where it matters. I'd love to be proved wrong on that one though.

Mark

Hi Oren,

>"If an application cau...

2009-03-08T17:16:00.000Z
Hi Oren,

>"If an application causes damage to a phone or the network, operators hear the complaints and must act to fix the problems"

That's a good point. On reflection, that's an argument for the mobile industry to hurry up and provide the kind of solution that has long been talked about (and which, to be fair, has been partly implemented already): over-the-air diagnosis and fix capabilities, that reduce the costs of customer service and support.

Once the potential downside costs of defective innovation experiments are reduced, it will make it more likely that operators (and others) will be keen to embrace such experiments.

// dw2-0

Another point to consider is the customer service ...

2009-03-08T16:53:00.000Z
Another point to consider is the customer service costs that operators must bear. Mobile innovation tends to offer distributed benefits, that the operators may share in, but concentrated costs that they bear alone. If an application causes damage to a phone or the network, operators hear the complaints and must act to fix the problems.

Excellent title David. I know and appreciate exact...

2009-03-06T16:58:00.000Z
Excellent title David. I know and appreciate exactly the message you want to convey, and I think roles such as yours are very important for all large organisations, even though they're sometimes not stated in those terms.

Well. Sometimes negative catalyst would be benefic...

2009-03-03T17:54:00.000Z
Well. Sometimes negative catalyst would be beneficial - e.g the banking sector :-)

I suppose it's a bit like band names. The more you hear it, the less odd they sound.

dw2-0

Nice review David. Thanks.

I attended an enlightening talk at the Royal Socie...

I am really sad that I won't be able to attend. Mi...

Taking the angle about how this enables natural se...

I have the same problem, and it's only recently — ...

David, I had the same problems. I reasoned that so...

Hi Dinesh, Your questions about TPIP (Third Party...

Hi David, My understanding is that Symbian OS has...

That looks like a neat book. I might have to read...

Hi Paul,Agreed, 'Accelerando' is a really ...

David - for a fictional approach to this subject c...

Gosh, I never realized you were just a kid. You've...

The easy way will be when operators understand the...

Hi RAM,That's an interesting comparison! ...

In the days before VHS video tape, a team from RCA...

Interesting posts are usually the product of immed...

I am not sure how this event went but one thing is...

MNOs are pipes, they just don't know it yet. The q...

I agree with m_p_wilcox. I can sympathise (up to a...

The real issue here is that the current revenues f...

Hi Oren,>"If an application cau...

Another point to consider is the customer service ...

Excellent title David. I know and appreciate exact...

Well. Sometimes negative catalyst would be benefic...

Hi Paul,

Agreed, 'Accelerando' is a really ...

Hi RAM,

That's an interesting comparison! ...

Hi Oren,

>"If an application cau...