Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is hopping mad.  There he is, slipping down the slippery slope of billionaire-land from 17th  place in 2007 to a lowly 37th in the world this year worth a paltry $14.5bn (according to Fortune magazine),  and suddenly he and his 1992 startup company called Interval Licensing have decided to launch a series of patent suits against 11 American companies.  These include Yahoo and Facebook and Google.  Google’s Sergey Brin was a previous employee of said Paul,  who’s now bitter and twisted like lemon flavoured liquorice and believes the evil cunning mastermind Brin stole his patent-marbles and he wants them back.  Now – before he tells his mama.   Or Bill Gates.

Allen in the left corner, wearing false smile, Brin on the right, wearing nervous deadpan look - second's OUT !!!

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Every country is a kind of logical and philosophical machine, in one way or another.

There’s the energy that drives the machine. That’s money provided by the fiscus and directly, by the people and their endeavours.

There are the gears that make up the machine. That’s the lower middle class public worker and state bourgeoisie paid by the entrepreneurs who in turn expect a job description and some kind of performance appraisal.   Without such a blueprint how is the machine expected to perform?  

Victorian era-super computer - the Babbage Difference Engine - or a picture of the modern South African state

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Again the human strikes to destroy the machine’s party!   Imagine,   reports showing that the IT manager in charge of your company security (probably a crazy bald-head male or similar to quote Faithless),  is pretty likely to respond positively to a half hour conversation with the woman he thinks is a beautiful blonde he met on a social networking zone.  And then give away company secrets.  Telephonically.

The Big danger to your IT security

Then this very same bloke will, in 70% of cases,  willingly give up to this so-called blonde,  password related information such as his mother or fathers’ name,  the name of his pooch or even .. gasp,  after an hour of being shmoozed,  he’ll pass over information about upcoming confidential company stuff like software releases and strategy!!

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A trading company in the US is being scrutinized after their live trading (and some would say lunatic) machine lost control of its binary brain and ratcheted up the oil price by an entire USD leading to weird swoops in the price over 48 hours.   And losses for Infinium totaling $1.3m.

Infinium has bent over backwards since then telling all and sundry that they’ve fired the software developers concerned and all is well, caused by the machine suddenly replicating thousand of buy orders for oil in a row – and in milliseconds.

Luckily the company isn’t called Infinity.

Before you pooh pooh the story and the blog – folks were losing around $1 million .. a SECOND as the naughty algorithm played logical hookie.

Note spike

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Being a lout interested in hardware like gaming consoles,  and equally interested in the human form and how to design,  I’ve taken a close squizz at memory and cpu and have come to a momentous conclusion.

It’s not good enough and the gamers know it.  And when you purchase the BIG NVIDIA card – the heat it gives off could power a small geyser.

Whatever happened to all that speculation about memory growth? It’s all exponential, went the PR,  and by 2010 the world of memory will be cheap, reliable and the cpu will be more powerful than God and we’d be running around clutching megaterabytes of data machines the size of  a 5c piece.

newish memory

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Every day we click.  Then we read.  Some people say we only get a watered down version of reality delivered by the conservative editors who’re responding in fear to the media owners and their executives.    I’m not so cynical and backward.  Most Editors I know constantly combat this perception,  and don’t like any exec telling them what they should think or publish. 

Get yourself an RSS feed from an agency you trust.  Like Business Day and FM.   We’re surrounded here by thinking people who argue, never agree and write stuff on a daily basis that’s not controlled by the execs.  

Yet there’s always something missing.  That sting of real news sometimes is absent as we go about our business, delivering news after it happened.  Not enough thinking.

 We also receive vast amounts of information from other sources.  Like our friends at braais.  Consider this.  Which do you trust most?  The newspaper,  web-based news organizations, social networking,  or your pal? 

It’s your pal – with some provisos.  For example.   Pal may not always get the figures stats spot on.   Sometimes pal tells you about the urban myth which he or she has just heard as fact and you know its thumbsuck passed on via email.   But you’re nodding anyway.  Better not to always argue about the one about the machete wielding gangs of xenophobic crazies. 

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I read somewhere recently that some folk believe that ePublishers are going to save the Rain Forest.  Again.  First it was computers,  but all the FAQ republishing that led to manuals reaching 1000 pages explaining how to plug in Bill Gates put paid to that.  Reasonable people now know that there’s no way that anything will save forests except awareness.

But that’s another story.   Imagine the Goon Show government trying to ban eBook downloads ?   Zuma and his henchmen all running around looking for copies of “Mein Schmuck” by Jules “spittlegob” Malema but .. they’ve just been deleted by the folks.  Perhaps that’s a warning to a backward regime.   You can’t arrest people who’ve deleted dangerous information on stolen tenders from their devices now can you ?  Basically the knowledge is gained and yet …  the proof of the material is GONE.  Maybe we should all get eBooks now in preparation for the Protection of ANC fatcats Bill. 

E-Publishing has become flavour of the moment as everyone scurries around seeking their hand-held device which allows you to read books in sunlight.  But will this last ?  I only ask because you could always download books into various devices from car radio tape decks to your laptop and that didn’t exactly take off.  

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There’s a bit of technology in my left ear that allows me to pass an aviation exam. Sometimes hardware and software come together in a symphony of perfection, and in this case, while not perfect, the Phonak thingy that I’ve been forced to wedge in my left ear has helped.

I passed an aviation exam this morning that included ECG (running until you gasp and collapse and then the nurse checks you don’t die of a heart attack), blood tests, urine tests for drugs, blood, proteins, and old cigars, and after two hours of eyes, ears, nose, cardiovascular, and psychology testing, I received my Class ii aviation medical.

The Amazing bionic ear

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An irony if you please.   We’re living in an age where machines can write pretty cool ditties,  and the production tools available to engineers and producers and composers are just fantastic.

The irony is  the people who could best exploit these almost perfect frequency and engineering feats are dead.

No loops for Ludwig

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Well time to eat my words.   After being somewhat critical of the concept behind the digital wallahs gathering in the Northern Suburbs and our African needs,  lets just say Tech4Africa has been inspiring.     After listening to an exciting VOIP concept this morning which was featured on the Business Day Tech section where Shuttleworth Foundation’s Telecoms fellow Steve Song described the growth of  Orange Farm wireless net and phone systems,  this afternoon it was Leila Chirayath’s turn to amaze.

She explained how the number of educated Africans has risen,  leading directly to a demand for information,  and an ability to generate back-office systems and support inside places like refugee camps.  Talk about changing the view of our little urban friends.  I’ve often written here about the preconceptions we have about rural people being backward,  which is just bogus.  And combine that with a belief that the poor in places like Africa are dumb,  and you have a major misconception which is so wrong its almost criminal.

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