Branko's Weblog

Maciej Ceglowski has an excellent piece on the failure of the Scott expedition to the South Pole:

Now, I had been taught in school that scurvy had been conquered in 1747, when the Scottish physician James Lind proved in one of the first controlled medical experiments that citrus fruits were an effective cure for the disease. [...]

[...] Somehow a highly-trained group of scientists at the start of the 20th century knew less about scurvy than the average sea captain in Napoleonic times.

The scary bit is that scientific knowledge can be lost, and not just that: scientific progress can make it harder to regain that knowledge.

Another example would be the rediscovery of the fact that hot water can freeze faster than cold water. Tanzanian high-school student Erasto Mpemba apparently got ridiculed time and again for his rediscovery, and if it weren’t for his stubbornness might never have published about the effect that now carries his name.

See also:

• China today
• Maciej and the Secret Space Center
• Maciej Ceglowski visits the southern-most city in the world

(This post is aimed at an audience of which every member speaks Dutch, and not every one of them may speak English, so the rest is in Dutch.)

XS4All biedt zijn abonnees een ‘gratis’ virusscanner aan, en helaas heeft de provider voor het gebruiksonvriendelijkst product * gekozen, te weten McAfee (of McAffee als je zoals ik niet kan spellen).

Deze virusscanner mag je op maximaal 3 pc’s installeren, en daar ging het tot nu toe bij me mis. Elke keer als ik een extra virusscanner installeerde, zag McAfee dat als een losse licentie in plaats van als onderdeel van het 3-voor-de-prijs-van-1-pakket. Weliswaar werd daar niets extra’s voor gerekend**, maar het gevolg was wel dat ik elk jaar op 3 verschillende dagen een virusscanner moest herinstalleren. Wat toch elke keer een uurtje van mijn tijd kostte.***

Wat blijkt: er zijn vele manieren waarop je via je XS4All-account een McAfee-virusscanner kunt installeren, maar slechts één ervan zorgt ervoor dat je meerdere pc’s met dezelfde licentie dekt.

• Ga naar je McAfee-account VANAF de pc waar je de scanner wil installeren.
• Download de scanner ALLEEN vanaf het linkje van de licentie die je wil gebruiken.
• Installeer.

Elke andere methode (software op een andere pc downloaden dan waar je hem gaat installeren, software vanaf een andere link downloaden) lijkt ervoor te zorgen dat een nieuwe, losse licentie wordt aangemaakt.

Als je een nieuwe pc hebt gekocht, en je bent door je 3 sub-licenties heen, dan kun je een van die sub-licenties loskoppelen van bijvoorbeeld een oude pc die je niet meer gebruikt. Op je McAfee-account klik je daarvoor op de naam van je abonnement (bij mij: “Subscription 1 Via McAfee”), en op de pagina die volgt kun je op “Deactivate” klikken. Dat zorgt ervoor dat er een licentie vrijkomt, die je dan weer kunt gebruiken voor de nieuwe pc met de methode die ik hierboven heb aangegeven.

*) c’t 2009/26. (Terug)

**) Dat wil zeggen, aan mij werd rechtstreeks niets gerekend, ik acht het niet geheel onwaarschijnlijk dat McAfee al die extra licenties gewoon doorberekent aan XS4All. Dat zou ik ook doen als ik een schoft was, en ik heb wat dat betreft geen enkele illusie over McAfee. (Terug)

***) Dit geldt natuurlijk alleen als je elke virusscanner op een andere dag hebt geïnstalleerd. Als je de pc’s voor je gezin niet allemaal op exact dezelfde dag aanschaft zal dat gauw het geval zijn.

Waarom je overigens überhaupt elk jaar je virusscanner opnieuw moet installeren is me een raadsel. Alhoewel: de helppagina’s van XS4all suggereren dat dat ook niet hoeft. Wel moet je dan voor elke PC een nieuw e-mailadres aanmaken. XS4All laat je standaard 5 pop-accounts met elk 5 aliases (dus in totaal 25 e-mailadressen) aanmaken, dus het kan wel. Maar knullig dat zoiets is! (Terug)

The Dutch press have adopted Russian cyclist Denis Menchov as an honorary citizen. He is after all the leader of the only Dutch team participating in the Tour de France. Who else would we cheer for? So we cheer for the impassive Russian.

Menchov has won a couple of Grand Tours, which is impressive, but he has never won the one that counts the most, the Tour de France. That makes him a potential Gianni Bugno, but not a Michael Indurain. How far can Menchov go?

His demeanour during stages is not that of a true contender. Where other race leaders make their presence felt in the front of the pack, the Russian is always happy sitting somewhere in the back among the domestiques, the water carriers. Even in the last climbs of mountain stages, after the peloton has dwindled to a group of five or ten, he can often be found as the last of the first, in the spot from where it is hardest to react to attacks by others.

He does not look like a winner, even though he bikes faster than most other people on this blue marble.

The outcome of the 2010 Tour de France might as well have been scripted. The somewhat proactive Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador, numbers one and two of the last edition, have been battling for the top spot, while Menchov has been plodding along in fourth. Seen from that angle the third place won by the Russian’s excellent time trial today seems a bonus, and it is greeted as such by both the national and international press, and by the man himself. Menchov even told Dutch television that he is well contented, because he is getting better each year.

But that perspective is false. The press already seem to have forgotten that the day before yesterday Menchov lost 1 minute and 40 seconds in the last climb, in which he looked more resigned and less attacking than ever. Could he have been in contention for the first spot today? Would he have looked like the Road Runner rather than Droopy if he had managed to counter the attack of the men before him? We will never know, and Menchov’s entire attitude will never provide us with a clue. The press’ conclusion that Menchov and his employers should be happy with his third place is based in expected narrative though, not in fact.

The new front door is so me! Look, I’ve got a peephole.

Close on the heels of last month I made a couple of more improvements that you probably wouldn’t even have noticed had I not told you about them in the following.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the free market of news, news tends to gravitate to bad news. There is nothing inherently evil about that. People just like bad news better than good news.

Every now and again, somebody will start a news outlet that focuses on good news, and every time these initiatives peter out quietly after the money runs out. People just aren’t as interested in good news.

This non-evil phenomenon has an evil side effect, in that people seem to feel less safe in a world dominated by bad news. I am old enough to remember a time when the world seemed to be smaller: national news in the papers and on TV was only limited to major bad things. Nowadays it seems that every time somebody stubs a toe, there are specialized shows to highlight the dangers one’s toes face in modern society.

So when it comes to news, the market fails us. There are several ways to combat market failure, one of them being government intervention. You might consider a public sense of safety to be a public good, so government intervention would be particularly apt here.

Unfortunately, governments are run by politicians, and a bad news environment is advantageous to politicians. They are after all selected on how well they can sell a perceived combating of the ills of society. Politics therefore tends to gravitate to a state of continuously feeding a general sense of dissatisfaction and of lack of safety. You can only sell vacuum cleaners if there is something to vacuum.

In other words, the market for news cannot be fixed by the party most suited for doing so, because fixing the market runs completely counter to that party’s interests. Also the news industry cannot fix itself.

Without an empire to boast about, over the past fifty years Britain seems to have devolved into an impressively large collection of pee and fart jokes against a rustic backdrop. Now don’t get me wrong, I like that sort of thing, but as soon as people start explaining why the UK’s parliament isn’t just well endowed in an ordinary way, but is properly hung, you will have to excuse me if I start to giggle.

(Man-giggle, mind you. Whatever that means. Because real men don’t care.)

One of the greatest words in the English language is ‘runaway.’ Because I always read it as ‘runway.’ And it always makes sort of sense that way, even though at the same time I also always sense a slight disturbance in the linguistic force. Because the word ‘runaway’ is always used by the sort of people who would come up with colourful ‘runway’ analogies to mask whatever colourful writing flaws they need masked.

And then realisation sinks in: run-a-way. And suddenly the world is normal again. (Wor-l-d, not wor-d.)