The Blog of Harald

An article in “The Industrial Physicist”:http://www.aip.org/tip/ entitled “What’s wrong with the electric grid?”:http://www.tipmagazine.com/tip/INPHFA/vol-9/iss-5/p8.html eloquently states what I’ve believed all along:

bq. In the view of Casazza and many other experts, the key error in the new rules was to view electricity as a commodity rather than as an essential service.

A normal competitive market requires tension between buyers and sellers. Buyers are trying to get the lowest possible price; sellers are trying to get the highest possible price. The “sweet point” in the market maximises profit for the seller; lowering the price lowers margins and reduces profit, while raising the price drives away buyers, reducing revenue.

That last part is why competition in essential goods and services cannot work; if a buyer cannot choose to _not_ purchase, then there is no force acting to reduce prices. We need to consume a minimum amount of energy; for example, if we don’t purchase one of heating oil, electricity, or natural gas, then we _freeze to death_. We can conserve energy and reduce consumption somewhat, but we cannot stop using it altogether, and that means that energy cannot be traded in a truly competitive market.

Instead, energy automatically becomes scarce, and prices rise. This happens for two reasons. First, when energy prices are low, there is no incentive for energy producers to invest in new generators; they won’t make any money doing so. When energy prices are _high_, there is no incentive to invest, because new generators will lower prices, reducing both the “free” profit margin on the existing generators, _and_ reducing the profit available to pay for the new capacity.

Second, this kind of good creates an incentive to “game the system”: producers (or traders) can create artificial shortages and watch prices rise as buyers scramble to secure the power they need. In fact, we experienced both of these outcomes:

bq. “Under the new system, the financial incentive was to run things up to the limit of capacity,” explains Carreras. In fact, energy companies did more: they gamed the system. Federal investigations later showed that employees of Enron and other energy traders “knowingly and intentionally” filed transmission schedules designed to block competitors’ access to the grid and to drive up prices by creating artificial shortages. In California, this behavior resulted in widespread blackouts, [and] the doubling and tripling of retail rates […]. In the more tightly regulated Eastern Interconnect, retail prices rose less dramatically.

bq. After a pause following Enron’s collapse in 2001 and a fall in electricity demand (partly due to recession and partly to weather), energy trading resumed its frenzy in 2002 and 2003. Although power generation in 2003 has increased only 3% above that in 2000, generation by independent power producers, a rough measure of wholesale trading, has doubled. System stress, as measured by TLRs and frequency instability, has soared, and with it, warnings by FERC and other groups.

The blackout on August 14th was an inevitable result, and the subsequent outages in London and Italy should show even the optimists that August 14th was not an isolated event.

This is one of the things that bug me about the American political system; completely off-topic amendments.

In “Missouri Senator Tells California To Sit Down And Shut Up About Pollution”:http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=03/09/08/14590591 we learn that:

* California wants to add catalytic converters to small engines to reduce pollution
* Briggs & Stratton, the largest manufacturer of small engines in the US has two plants in Missouri
* Senator Chris ‘Kit’ Bond (R-Missouri) is chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The result: Abusing his position, Bond inserts a provion into the 2004 federal spending bill that prevents states from enforcing small-engine emission regulations more stringent than the federal Clean Air Act.

bq. “I will use every legislative tool at my disposal to stop California bureaucrats from trying to solve their own air quality problems at the expense of almost 2,000 workers and their families in Poplar Bluff and Rolla,” he said.

What a crock…

It seems to me that these days, U.S. Federal spending bills have very little to do with spending, and instead are a catch-all for hundreds of little laws to appease special interest groups, many of which would never get passed if they were out in the open, subject to public scrutiny…

I was driving to my friends’ house on Monday, and I noticed that all of the stores on Kennedy Road were open. This was a surprise to me; Labour Day is the mother of all statutory holidays, after all.

Apparently this was another one of those “boost Toronto’s economy after SARS and the blackout” things.

I wonder how many of the people who walked into those stores on Monday were members of a union? Oh, the irony…

bq. “Joi Ito’s Web: Email is officially broken”:http://joi.ito.com/archives/2003/08/14/email_is_officially_broken.html :

bq. I pronounce email officially broken. If 17 percent of legit email is being blocked by spam filters, it’s not officially working.

A conclusion drawn from a single study is bad enough, but a single study done _by_ email marketers? Surely there must be _some_ bias in the research, and therefore the conclusions. We already know that users’ definitions of “opt-in” are often very different from marketers’ versions (The fact that I give someone my e-mail address on a registration screen does _not_ mean I want them to declare every spammer under the sun a “carefully screened partner or affiliate”…)

Based on my logs, a rough estimate is that cfrq.net _refuses_ 1-2% of inbound email. We keep track of the source of blocked e-mail, and send a nightly report to users; The number of complaints I’ve received can still be counted on one hand. The rest is _all_ unsolicited bulk e-mail. The front line filters are very conservative, so I also run SpamBayes on my personal mailbox; it catches about another 10% (again, with a single-digit number of false positives since I installed it a year ago) . That too is all unsolicited (No really, I _like_ the current size of my penis, thank you).

bq. I don’t care what excuses people give. The people who made smtp should have thought more about host authentication and the people who made IPv4 should have made longer IP addresses. My guess is that there were people who were voicing concerns who had more vision.

Hey, the technology was invented in the dark ages when compared to today’s world. Nobody expected personal computers, never mind _cheap_ personal computers, never mind laptops and palmtops. SMTP even predates domain names, for goodness’ sake. SMTP was invented in an environment where the community was small enough that bad manners could be policed, never mind security. Now we have hundreds of millions of people on the ‘net; I think e-mail is holding up remarkably well, personally.

The problem here is not email or technology; it’s a bunch of people who think that SPAM is a viable business (and sadly, enough people click that it is). We solved the junk fax problem with legislation, and we’re still working on telemarketers. We’ll get around to e-mail eventually. In the meantime, e-mail marketers will just have to put up with the fact that some bad apples have spoiled the barrel for _them_. Normal, person-to-person e-mail is working just fine…

Yahoo! News – Ice Cream ‘Isn’t Health Food’-Study

bq. the staggering calorie and saturated fat content of most of the treats served up at chains like Baskin-Robbins, Ben and Jerry’s, Cold Stone Creamery, Friendly’s, Haagen-Dazs and TCBY is bound to surprise most consumers.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise, especially with all of the health news floating around these days.

bq. The CSPI said an empty Ben & Jerry’s chocolate-dipped waffle cone, designed to hold at least two scoops of ice cream, itself packs 320 calories and 10 grams or half a day’s worth of saturated fat.

Well, _duh_! The thing is _larger_ than a 300 calorie chocolate bar, and has most of the same ingredients…

I suppose it’s good that someone is smacking consumers over the head with this information, but it’s a sad sign of the times that it’s necessary.

(I have an ice cream cone or sundae about once a _month_, and yes, I “count”:http://www.weightwatchers.ca it…

Another article on manned space flight, which suggests that we should leave human exploration of space to the millionaires (e.g. Steve Fosset, the round-the-world balloon guy).

Interesting, but I’m afraid that one possible result would be Space Feudalism…

How Science Brought Down the Shuttle (Free NY Times registration required).

bq. Scientific experimentation in space can be safer and more cost effective using long-duration remote controlled orbital spacecraft.

This is true, but there are many other reasons why we are in space. My favourite set of videos from the recent ISS mission are the four-part series on eating (with all sorts of cool surface-tension physics hidden inside a mundane task), and the water film experiments by Don Petit. In both cases, an astronaut combined his love of science with a little spare time and came up with something entirely new, something that probably would never have made it off the ground otherwise.

bq. The idea of using the space shuttle as a scientific laboratory actually came about after the shuttle’s design was already in place. The shuttle program was conceived in the waning days of the Apollo program as the best option to continue a manned space program at the lowest cost. However, without a place to shuttle to, and not nearly enough satellites that needed a shuttle to launch or repair them, the shuttle program succeeded in doing little beyond creating a human presence in space. The idea of the shuttle as an in-orbit lab was used as a justification for investment in its future.

So? I think it is important that we have people in space. Switching the focus of the shuttle program in order to keep people in space is a good thing.

OTOH, I think it’s a travesty that the ISS crew has been cut from seven to three (and now, temporarily, two). The whole point of building the thing was to get a permanent presence in space; cutting the crew to the point where ISS cannot be effective (science drops from 120 hours/week to 20 hours/week) kills the whole program.

It’s important that we do more science on orbit without astronaut involvement; it is cheaper and more effective. It can also be done commercially at a fraction of the cost of NASA missions :-). But I think we _also_ need a manned presence in space, _just because_. NASA (or an organisation like it) is probably still the best way to do that.

If we get a bunch of intelligent, capable people into a space lab and then let them play, and all sorts of interesting (and useful!) things will happen.

A friend of mine need to do two things: change trains at the station near my office, and give me an attachment for his digital camera. It made perfect sense for us to combine the two.

So I wander down to the station, and walk over to the escalator for the appropriate track. “I’m sorry, only passengers are allowed on the track level. It’s for safety, and it’s a policy. You can meet your friend over there at Arrivals”. As a regular commuter, I probably spend more time on train platforms than he does, but whatever. Sadly, I understand droid mentality, even if it makes me cringe.

Still trying to be lawful, I went to the security desk to see if someone there would be kind enough to escort me upstairs, but there was no one around. Time is running out…

I wandered over to the Arrivals area for that track. Hey, the escalator is going _up_ instead of _down_. “Aha!” says I, “I now have an excuse for being on the platform if anyone stops me”. I waited for his train to arrive, went up the escalator, and joined him as he got off the train. He handed me the cable then went over to his other train, and I went down the other arrivals escalator (just as though I were an arriving passenger).

Several train and station staff saw me walking around on the “wrong” part of the train platform; nobody even looked at me twice. Which just proves, as always, that you can go pretty much anywhere as long as you look like you know what you’re doing…

I don’t like the design of the new “Canadian Child Passport Application”:http://www.ppt.gc.ca/online_forms/pdfs/ppt046.pdf.

It asks for information on both parents. I understand why, but it asks for “Relationship with other parent” and “Date of marriage (if applicable)” _twice_, once for each parent. Wouldn’t the answers always be the same?

Strangely, it also asks for parents’ “Surname at Birth”; How is this information germaine, especially for people who married before they came to this country?

On the front of the form, we write the name of the child and the applicant. On the back of the form, we write the name of the child and the applicant again, in order to sign a declaration. (Update: maybe this is because you can now print the forms from the above linked PDF, and the pages would be separate?)

It’s almost as if they were looking for filler for a two page form :-)

“Joel on Software”:http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ → “Internet Security: Too Broke to Fix?”:http://security.ziffdavis.com/article2/0,3973,1036052,00.asp

Larry Seltzer wants to replace SMTP with something that has authentication and resource limits. Well, SMTP already has authentication, and many MTAs already have resource limits…

Many people discover SMTP’s authentication when they try to send e-mail while travelling; their ISPs don’t let them. SMTP can already use TLS with certificates, SASL, or POP-before-SMTP, and many ISPs are starting to require one or more. My _hobby_ server supports all three, so it can’t be hard. I haven’t seen anyone do resource limits out-of-the-box yet, but that’s because it doesn’t really solve anything; spammers will always be able to hide inside “legitimate” usage profiles.

The problem is not the protocol, or the mythical “Internet”; it’s poorly administered computers. People who don’t think twice about _properly_ managing and securing a PBX will turn around and install, then neglect, crappy SMTP gateways. In my e-mail logs, the worst offenders for poorly administered servers are non-technical companies (law firms, insurance companies, banks :-). Most of the spam I receive comes through open relays on corporate networks, and through relays on home computers (where Microsoft installs insecure software direct from CD :-).

If we introduce a new protocol, spammers will find new ways to abuse it. Criminals are constantly finding new ways to abuse corporate PBXes, and cell phones, and calling cards. The solution is for people to stop treating the Internet as a toy, and start maintaining their servers properly. Sadly, that’s not likely to happen, and so we’re left with reactionary technology like realtime blackhole lists and desktop spam filtering software.

An article on one teacher’s experience in the D.C. public school system, from FrontPage magazine.com. I don’t know what to say about this one. Yuck.

My (quick) thoughts on the incident.

I have to commend the pilots’ defense lawyer for digging up all sorts of interesting information about the case: the use of “Go pills”; the lack of information given to the pilots; and so on. The US military has a history of ignoring systemic issues in these cases, and punishing the poor shmucks at the bottom of the chain of command. (The problems identified in the investigation after the 1999 Italian gondola case still haven’t been addressed.)

However, one thing remains clear; the pilot in question disobeyed a direct order not to fire, and four soldiers (from a foreign ally) lost their lives. The case needs to go to trial, if only to get all of the facts out in the open. I personally would be happy to have all of this interesting, mitigating testimony affect their sentencing, but it should not affect the case going to trial.

It’s not just Ontario that has gutted its school system. how to grow a bully describes one parent’s dealings with the public school system in New York (state) over the issue of bullying.

The summary through my eyes: The system there is punishing the victim and rewarding the bully. They’re doing it systematically; it’s not just the school principal, it’s the entire support structure. It’s disgusting.

There are several additional articles on the weblog; read them for the continuing drama.

It’s a stretch, but I did have to wonder; does the principal actually believe the crap he’s saying, or has he been handed a directive from above? Is he the problem, or just a cog in the machine, trying to survive like the rest of us?

Don’t write this off as an isolated incident; read the comments on all of those blog entries, or talk to your friends and relatives about their experiences; I would be surprised if you couldn’t find the pattern for yourselves.
From another commentary on the topic:

During the past thirty plus years, the public education system has gone from mediocre to abominable. If you think your children are being spared, if you think your school isn’t so bad, if you think things were bad when I was in public school, it couldn’t have gotten much worse than that, you are mistaken. Let me say that again, in case it isn’t clear: YOU ARE MISTAKEN.

My kids are in private school, and it’s working very well for them so far.

(Thanks to “Mama, don’t send your kids to public school” from The Safety Valve, which I found courtesy of Mark Pilgrim’s Recommended Reading software.)

The story gets worse.

The senseless tragedy only got more puzzling as Peel Region police revealed it wasn’t the first time the children had played with the “readily accessible” .45-calibre semi-automatic gun in the bedroom shared by Michael and his big brother in the family’s Mississauga townhouse.

Police also revealed that the gun is a Spanish-made Star Firestar 45, a cut-rate version of a military weapon that isn’t popular with gangs because it is relatively heavy and hard to conceal. Investigators are tracing the gun’s past.

I don’t understand. Why would someone in Mississauga need a .45? Why would they leave it loaded, in a bedroom where a six-year-old lives and plays?

This morning on the CBC there were interviews with parents and police officers who work to impress children with the dangers of real guns. The anecdotal evidence is that children do understand the difference between real guns and “playing cops and robbers”. Yet at the same time, we have this shooting (and the regular stream of them from our friends to the south).

I’m still trying to figure out how do deal with the whole “playing guns” issue with my kids. Whee.

Source: canada.com

A 7 year old girl shot her 6 year old brother dead on Saturday in Mississauga. They found, and were playing with, a .45 semi-auto handgun (unregistered) when the girl pointed the gun at her brother and shot him in the head.

The owner of the gun was the two kids’ 22 year old brother, he has been arrested and charged with criminal negligence causing death and numerous firearms offences, including unsafe storage of both the gun and the ammunition.

The brother (through his lawyer) is pleading not guilty and planning on fighting the charges. So much for taking responsibility for his actions…

The boy is dead. The girl is permanently scarred. The family is irreparably damaged. All because this 22 year old is an idiot.

As chronicled elsewhere in this weblog, I have a friend with many guns. His pistols are locked in a small safe; all of his longarms and ammunition are locked in a separate steel cabinet, which has its own hookup to the alarm system. In addition, they all have trigger locks.

Leaving a weapon lying around unlocked is bad enough; lying around unlocked and loaded? I hope they bury this guy.

Naturally, the pistol was unregistered, showing yet again that the bungled Canadian firearm registry is useless as well as mismanaged.

Story links:
The Toronto Star
The Globe and Mail
Canada.com
CBC News

We interrupt this program for two annoyances:

• People who stand on narrow escalators (where there’s no room to pass) so that everyone else has to wait for them. I make exceptions for people who obviously have trouble with stairs, but watching someone walk 500m and then stand on an escalator really bugs me.
• People who are perfectly able-bodied using the elevators on the subways and GO train platforms. Those elevators are supposed to be for people in wheelchairs; I’ve also seen people with strollers and carts use them, which is ok by me. However, I’ve also seen a mother with a child in a stroller have to wait for three or four elevators, because they are full of selfish S.O.B.s who are too lazy to take the stairs (or even worse, the escalators).

WALK, PEOPLE! IT’S GOOD FOR YOU!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.