I'll Do My Driving In The Rain

I've mentioned before that I don't think highly of Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone. I think it would be accurate to describe him as being like FIFA president Sepp Blatter, but without the selflessness.  So a few years ago, when he proposed making races more exciting by having sprinklers around the course randomly spray water on the track, I was neither impressed nor surprised.  Indeed, the idea got a lot of jeers from the racing community.

While that was a crazy idea from a terrible person, I can actually understand the thinking behind it. Today's American Grand Prix was one of the most entertaining Formula One races in recent years, and that was largely due to Hurricane Patricia, the edges of which dumped rain on the track in Austin, Texas. 

And that's nothing new: Formula One races have long been more exciting in the rain.  In perfect conditions, it's just a fast parade, with the cars ending up in order of who has the most money.  The lack of traction makes things unpredictable, cancels out a lot of the technology advantage, and rewards driving skill. In fact, today's race seemed to get noticeably less entertaining through the race as the rain stopped and the track tried out.

But sprinklers?  Surely there's a more sophisticated way to approach the problem.  Besides, I have the feeling that if all races were in uniformly wet conditions, the engineers would start to adapt and turn it into a predictable competition of technology again.

So here's an idea.  I have no idea if this makes sense or not, but I feel confident enough to put it forward, since it's already guaranteed not to be the dumbest suggestion anyone's made.  For a while now, Formula One has had just one tire supplier, currently Pirelli. They make a few different types of tires with different rubber compounds (crash course on racing tires: the tire compound is a trade-off, where softer rubber gives better traction, but wears out quicker.)  Currently they bring two different compounds to each race, and the teams are free to choose between them (aside from the rule that they have to use each type at least once during the race.)

So hows this: They bring just one type of tire to each race, but they don't tell anyone what it is. Qualification and practice could be done with standard tires, but the ones supplied for race day are a random formulation that no one knows until the race starts. Everyone has to figure out how much traction they have during the race, and adapt their driving and strategies to it. 

The Right Honourable Devil-You-Know

Can you stand one more election post? Well, this one isn't about this election, but about a pattern I've noticed. It occurred to me that the result of this election was actually pretty unusual, at least among elections in my lifetime.

American pundits have commented that Presidents rarely lose the election for their second term, despite the public's supposed hatred of politicians. During my life, the only Presidents to fail to win re-election were Carter and Bush Sr. (and Ford, though he wasn't elected in the first place.)

But Canada is much the same, if not more so.  This election, where a government ran for re-election, but lost, was pretty unusual, even though that seems like a pretty ordinary result for an election. In my forty-two years, there have been only four sitting Prime Ministers that have lost elections, and they generally haven't been like this one.

• John Turner and Kim Campbell got to be PM by the quirk of parliamentary system: they replaced long-time Prime Ministers, called an election, and lost, leaving office in just a few months.
• Paul Martin did slightly better. He replaced a long-time PM, then won an election with a minority. It fell after two years, and he lost the subsequent election.
• The only time a Prime Minister who served more than a longer than a Presidential term, then lost an election, was 1979 when Joe Clark defeated Pierre Trudeau, albeit with a minority. Clark's government collapsed after nine months, at which point Trudeau defeated him in the election, winning a majority.

So this election is the first time in my life that a Prime Minister with a majority lost an election to another party that won a majority. That says something about how we like to go with the flow in Canada.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, # 28

They'll do a feature film based on the Peanuts comic strip.

• It will be computer generated
• It will be 3-D
• The ads will feature The Who's "Baba O'Riley."

Assessing Threats

Last week, Wilfrid Laurier University here in KW was locked down after someone online posted a threat of a shooting in the science building. Of course, locals were shocked: who knew Laurier has a science building?

Okay, that's just my UW heritage talking, sorry Laurier folks.  Anyway, the person who made that posting was in London (England.) He got arrested, and just spent nearly three days in jail before posting bail. He was interviewed upon release, and it came out that:

• He didn't think this would happen, or that it would be taken seriously
• He doesn't know anything about Laurier, and was only copying it's name from another post.
• He assumed that freedom of speech covered this sort of thing

That last part jumped out at me. It's a concept that a lot of people online seem to think: that freedom of speech is absolute and allows any sort of speech in any circumstance. Most people - both inside and outside the legal profession - will know that there are practical limits on free speech. The classic (i.e., quoted on Law & Order) example is that you don't have the right to shout, “fire” in a crowded theatre.

But now we have a couple of problems: in the Internet age, you can yell “fire” from the other side of the planet, and there's a lot of people who think freedom of speech means freedom from consequences.  Actually, three problems: there’s also our increasingly fuzzy definition of irony.  Afterall, our perpetrator said he didn’t think his threat would be taken seriously, since it was on 4chan, a site known for pranks.  I can see how a person might assume that, since many things of questionable taste happen there without affecting the real world. But the flipside is that if a person were to plan a shooting rampage, an untraceable discussion board is exactly where they would talk about it.

We’re left with a big overlap between what people think is acceptable online, and what raises red flags for law enforcement.  So we’re going to have to create some new understandings about what is legal, and someone is going to be very disappointed.

Blue And Red

Oh, um, I guess I should write something about the election.  Let's see, I'll just insert a joke in which it seems like I'm commenting about the election, but then it turns out I'm talking about the Jays game.  I'll think of that later.

Anyway, about the election:

• Thesis: Harper's downfall was winning a majority in the last election.  Giving complete power to a controlling personality brought out the worst in his personality.  Discuss.
• People are still talking about the possibility of electoral reform, such as proportional representation.  But we're facing the same problem electoral reform always has: the government that just won with the current rules will be reluctant to change the rules.  Too bad it wasn't a Liberal minority depending on the NDP, that would have been the optimum result for reform.
• Speaking of the NDP, they had a pretty disappointing result, ending up with the sort of seat count you would have expected, well, the last time the Jays were in the playoffs.  It's like the clock struck midnight, and now the party has turned back into a pumpkin, or something.  Hmm, orange/pumpkins?  I should work out a joke for that and put that in later too.
• Lots of people noted that Harper was desperate if he was using Rob Ford for support (see the hilarious photo op here.)  But the NDP also made a late attempt to invoke the late Jack Layton in one of their final ads.  Neither of the last-second associations worked.

So over all, I got the result I was looking for.  Then the ballgame ended and I saw the Liberals won the election. Ha, that's the joke I should use.  Nah, that's stupid.  Maybe I could talk about "that guy who keeps talking but isn't as smart as he thinks he is" and it turns out I'm talking about both Rex Murphy and Harold Reynolds.

iVoted

With the election coming up, people are once again asking why we don't have online voting. Lots of people think making voting more convenient would finally stem the tide of decreasing voter turn-out.

Techie people seem to be of two minds when this subject comes up. Some will exhaustedly explain that, yes, we can do it without security problems. Others will shudder with fear at the mere mention of the possibility of online voting. I'm in that second group, so allow me to explain our case, and why people with the same knowledge can come to such different conclusions.

The problem is the difference between what can be done and what likely will be done. It's like at McDonald's: you might get a Big Mac that looks like the picture on the menu - there's no reason that it won't look like that. But in practice, it almost certainly won't.

And with software, it can be secure, but it probably won't be. One thing I've learned is that you can't assume software is safe. Because I'm all about analogies: let's say you're buying a car. If you're like me, you'd like a reasonably safe car. And yet, I probably wouldn't put much effort into ensuring the car I choose is safe. How does that make any sense? Because I know there's a lot of infrastructure making sure all cars are fairly safe. There are regulations, government testers, watchdog groups etc. Yes, I could do some research to make sure I get the safest car available, but I know that I can get away with not doing that research, because in our world even the least-safe car is still pretty safe.

But that's exactly the sort of assumption you can't make in software. There's little regulation and independent testing, so you can't assume anything. That's not to say that all software is insecure; but if you're getting custom software made and you want it to be secure, you'll have to specify that you want security, and pay extra for it.

And that's why I'm uneasy about online voting. That other group of techies is right: we can make a safe and secure online voting system. But it's unlikely that the bureaucrats and politicians that would have to oversee the project would know how much they'll have to push to get it made right. And in the world of government contracts, where it's either take-the-low-bid or take-the-lowest-bid-that-has-connections, it's pretty certain they won't be putting the needed money into the project. If you look to the U.S. and the low quality of their voting machines, I don't like our chances with online voting.

(Pause while I remove my computer geek hat and put on my amateur political pundit hat)

And I seriously doubt that online voting would even increase voter turn-out anyway. After all, voting is pretty convenient. Or at least, it’s as convenient as many of the other errands we run. The point is, if you care about politics, the act of voting is not asking a lot. There can’t be many people who truly care about the outcome of an election but can’t spare the fifteen minutes or so to take part. The fact is, the declining number of voters is due to people’s losing interest in, or knowledge of, politics. That’s what we have to fix; reducing the time to vote from fifteen minutes to one isn’t going to coax a vote out of someone with no concern for the political state of the country.

And that’s why I don’t want to see online voting anytime soon: It will be more dangerous than it has to be, and will not accomplish the results people want. Having said this, there are other premises for promoting it: After all, it would be a boon for people with physical challenges, or those in rural areas. On those grounds, perhaps we should weigh the costs and benefits. But if it’s just about enticing the elusive non-voter, then it’s not worth it.

Spirit of Radio

There's an ad on TV for Sportsnet, and it's trying to emphasize what a multi-media sports source it is.  They feature TV, radio, the web, apps, and a dead-tree magazine.  So to do this, they show a radio playing one of their stations, a TV showing sports, a tablet also showing sports etc.

What's weird is the radio they showed.  It's got a big round speaker and a big round dial, and I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be an old-fashioned radio, a modern radio that was trying to look retro, or a modern radio that was trying to be minimalist and accidentally looked retro. 

I guess what I'm getting at is that it's pretty much impossible for a radio to not look retro. No, it's not that radios are out of date, it's just that they no longer look like anything. When I tried asking myself what I would have expected a radio to look like, I didn't have an answer.  I have several radios, but they're just parts of a clock, stereo, car, even an MP3 player.  I don't really have a mental image of a radio.

So radios are now invisible. I wonder what other devices could become invisible in the future by being consumed by other things. Say, an MP3 player, since most people probably just use their phones for that. For a while now, tech pundits have predicted that computers will become invisible as they start to use gestures or voice commands, and start to get incorporated into TVs, appliances, clothes or houses (and as I'm writing this, I see a commercial for Amazon's "Echo" voice-activated thingamajig.) 

So if you're reading this on some big, intrusive device, it's something to think about.  Or, if this is being read-out to you by a computer woven into your shirt, then it's something to look back and laugh at.