benveniste

Guardian Angels working over time.

2009-11-05T23:29:53Z

In this case, the angel was helped out by a top-quality carriage/pram.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2009/10/16/2716580.htm

Minor injuries.

Received Spam du Jour

2009-10-30T13:49:58Z

<snip>
Dear {{first_name}} {{last_name}},

It is my pleasure to inform you that on October 27th, 2009 your information was reviewed and accepted for inclusion in the 2009/2010 edition of our registry.

Strathmore's Whos Who each year, recognizes and selects key executives, professionals and organizations in all disciplines and industries for outstanding business and professional achievements. ...
</snip>

At least in the pre-internet version of this, if you sent your money in you'd get the egoboo of seeing your name in a book.

Today's Joy

2009-10-13T17:26:27Z

Over Autumn Leaves
While banking for a landing
The shadow of our plane

Go Amtrak! Or not.

2009-10-13T01:24:59Z

If you are considering riding Amtrak for a vacation trip, I have a favor to ask. Please consider the impact on my wallet.

A headline at ABC news today read: "Fewer Riders on Amtrak, but Still 2nd Best Year." Here is the actual press release.

Although the press release tries to be upbeat, even it has hints of the downside. A deeper look at the numbers reveals a bit more.

First, revenue decreased by a greater percentage than number of passengers. So not only did Amtrak get fewer rides, they averaged less money per ticket. This does not appear to be due to people taking shorter trips, as Amtrak claims an increase on long-haul routes. Instead, it appears that Amtrak had to cut fares to attract the number of customers they did.

Second, the Amtrak FY 2009 Business Plan was for a 7% increase in ticket revenue, not a 7% decrease. The document is dated December 2008, when even the U.S. Government knew that we were in a recession. It comes as no shock to me that it was hopelessly optimistic.

That business plan called for an operating loss of just over a billion dollars. We can add a couple of hundred million to that due to the revenue shortfall. What that means is that ticket revenue did not even cover Amtrak salaries, wages, and benefits. We taxpayers picked the rest of the payroll, not to mention little details such as fuel, wear and tear, facilities, advertising and materials.

The business plan lists total federal support in FY 2009 as 1,537 billion dollars. If you toss in a revenue shortfall of 200 million on top of that, it means that taxpayers ended up paying more for the average trip on Amtrak than the passenger paid.

Did I mention the other good news? Amtrak is now boasting 80% on-time performance. Of course, they use a somewhat looser definition than the airlines, but that's up from 71% in FY 2008. Of course, in 1985, Amtrak's OTP performance "peaked" at around 82 percent. This is progress?

I'm not anti-train. Nor do I think it's reasonable to expect train travel to survive without subsidies while automobile and air travel does receive several forms of indirect subsidy. But Amtrak was formed as a politically tolerable way to phase out passenger rail travel. Long-term public ownership wasn't suppose to be part of the plan.

The best estimate I've seen of subsidies, both direct and indirect, for automobile travel is around $180 billion dollars per year. That works out to about 6 cents a mile. If it was possible to get the [u]direct[/u] subsidy for intercity rail down to merely twice that, I'd say keep Amtrak. But in the nearly 40 year history of Amtrak, it hasn't come close to that modest goal. It's long past time to shut it down.

Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-09T14:12:48Z

To quote Robert Gibbs: "Wow."

In these musings, I've bashed Republicans and Democrats alike. But I've also cut Obama some slack because of the mess he inherited. Perhaps I'm doing that still, but here goes:

In the last couple of weeks, we've seen two hopelessly politicized processes reach two very different results. Despite Obama's campaigning, Chicago was the first finalist dropped as an Olympic Host City. Yet with what I believe to be little or no political pressure from the Obama camp, he gets a Nobel Peace Prize.

I see this award as a not-so-subtle insult to the former Bush Administration. That insult may be deserved, but as with any insult timing is crucial. As an insult, the award comes far too late. As an honor for President Obama, it's at best premature.

I don't think that the Nobel committee intended to provide ammunition to Obama's political adversaries, but I predict that's exactly what they've done.

Wow.

Today's 5 cents

2009-10-02T00:25:20Z

In my grammar school history classes, I learned that the Boston Tea Party was a demonstration against "taxation without representation." It was much later in life that I learned that the Tea Party was bankrolled by John Hancock, who was far more upset that the Brits were undercutting his prices on the tea he smuggled in from Holland. But history is written by the winners, so we call the events of that November 1773 night part of the "opening act of the American Revolution" instead of "a terrorist act of organized crime."

Looked at in that light, today's new tax is not ironic at all. It's just another example of a long standing tradition of Massachusetts political hypocrisy.

Today, Boston and 29 other Massachusetts towns raised their meals taxes and hotel taxes. So the tax rate on prepared meals is now 0.75% higher than for general merchandise, and 7.00% higher than for food bought in a grocery store. As a result, lunch today cost me a nickel more than it would have yesterday. It's a trivial amount, but over the course of a year it will add up to about 15 bucks or so just for lunch and coffee.

These types of taxes are very popular these days, specifically because they are taxation without representation. By their very nature, a disproportionate burden falls on non-residents. After all, the vast majority of hotel rooms are purchased by non-residents, as are a large percentage of restaurant meals. Rental cars are even worse; the effective tax rate on Rental Cars at Logan Airport is on the order of 30% or so. In the U.S. Senate, there's broad support to charge a $10 "assessment" to people visiting the U.S. from abroad.

The Mayor of Boston, Mumbles Menino, pushed hardest for the right to levy the new taxes. So it's only appropriate that today, the first day of the hike, he writes a column expressing his "thrill" at the BIO International Convention return to Boston for 2012, saying "This time Boston will share in the revenue generated from this event because the meals and hotel tax will bolster our bottom line."

Of course Boston benefited greatly from tourism and conventions before the new taxes as well. It just took a little longer for the money to wind its way to the city coffers for Mr. Menino to spend.

So do people really believe this illusion cast by cowardly political hacks? After all, my turn at being the "other person" paying the tax came today, but everyone gets their chance in time. Are we too lazy to throw the bums out, or do we just want to believe?

Taxation without representation. It once was a tagline for revolution. Today, it's not just a great political idea. It's the law.

In the "more is better" category

2009-09-29T12:12:37Z

I just received yet another directive from IT, stating that I must change my password within 7 days and it "Cannot match 24 of your previous passwords."

Since passwords are typically stored with a one-way encryption algorithm, I suppose it's mathematically possible that a new password could match 24 of my old ones. But I'd hate to have to compute the odds.

So I'm going to assume that they will prevent me from using any of my last 24 passwords. Just in case, of course, that someone got a hold of one and has been retrying it ever since.

Hasn't anyone in the IT community figured out that this encourages people to either sequence their passwords (goAway01, goAway02, etc) or write them down so they don't forget what they invented this time?

I suspect that when reporting to senior management, the genius who thought of this will claim they've made the system more than twice as secure as when the limit was 10.

Another victim in the war on terroir

2009-09-24T23:41:51Z

A few of y'all may remember this post. Alas, the sandwich shop in my building is no longer supplied by the Terroir Coffee Company. The terroirists lost.

I hate throwing away a joke, even one as lame as this.

And speaking of Pirates...

2009-09-19T16:40:12Z

... I'm going to take a not so cheap shot at the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles.

When I first arrived in Massachusetts in the 1980's, the RMV was legendary for it's long lines, rude workers, and overall inefficiency. In fact, it was used as the basis for a business school case study of how not to do things.

Then things began to change under the Weld Administration, and for a while the RMV was making a real effort at customer service. They updated their systems, and, at least at the Registry branch I used in Reading, made a real effort at customer service. While it was never fun to have to make the trip, it became just another chore. In fact, I cited it as an example of how government could change.

But then the cycle began to swing in the other direction. Massachusetts started closing some branches and moving them to less convenient places. Not only did they close the "express" registries in shopping malls, but the Reading location also went dark. Finally, about 10 months ago, registrar Rachel Kaprielian sent out this message, telling us of RMV budget cuts. And so it was that earlier this week, I drove up to Lawrence to get my license renewed.

When I left the house, the website gave an estimate of a 20 minute wait. For the first 35 minutes after I arrived, there were exactly zero renewals processed. The staff appeared to be socializing instead. I eventually concluded that the computers must have gone down, but no one bothered to tell anyone that. Even after things started moving again, the staff member at window 2 apparently went on break for a solid 45 minutes.

I finally got my renewal 90+ minutes and 50 dollars later. But I was curious about those budget cuts. After all, I guess it makes sense to cut back on such luxuries as customer service in a recession, so I was curious how hard Ms. Kaprielian was working to "squeeze every penny of savings" from my tax dollars.

So I found the following historical look at RMV spending (in 1000's of dollars):
Fiscal Year 2005: 45,778
Fiscal Year 2006: 49,655
Fiscal Year 2007: 42,459
Fiscal Year 2008: 53,228
Fiscal Year 2009: 54,990 (Source)

So those budget cuts work out to almost a 30% increase in spending since 2007. Those "every penny of savings?" The RMV's original 2009 budget was $57,464,135. I guess in the world of State Finance, a smaller-than-desired increase equates to a budget cut.

So I guess I have a question for Ms. Kaprielian. Even after these cuts, it looks like Wages and Salaries went up 20% or so in the last 2 years, and operating costs went up even more. Who is getting that extra money, and why?

In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day

2009-09-19T16:08:35Z

First, a Piece of 8. It's silver and about 38mm in diameter.

Second, a Doubloon. It's gold, about 22mm in diameter, and shows much more wear.

NASA = Nominally A Space Agency?

2009-08-15T04:09:21Z

NASA's Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee presented its preliminary findings this week. To the surprise of absolutely no one, their findings were that NASA needed at least $3 billion more dollars a year in order to reach the moon by 2020. A Reuters story is here, and the NASA Powerpoint slides can be found here.

In a related story, a National Academy of Sciences report makes a preliminary finding that NASA isn't meeting the goals set in the 2005 Nasa Authorization Act. Once again, NASA is pleading that this is due to insufficient funding.

In case you are interested I prepared a spreadsheet showing historical NASA budgets, giving figures both in nominal- and CPI-adjusted dollars. Sources:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/hist04z1.xls
http://www.seattle.gov/financedepartment/cpi/docs/US_CPI_History_--_Annual.xls

So despite these claims of poverty, it appears NASA's been getting around the same amount of money for the last 10 years or so.

Yeah, I realize that we are talking rocket science here. But still, let's look at what we taxpayers aren't getting for that money. NASA's best case scenario is that it's going to take more time and more money to get to back to the moon than it took the first time. That's true when adjusted for inflation, despite the tremendous advances and cost savings in electronics, signal processing and the like during that interval.

Again, assuming best case, NASA won't have any person-rated vehicles to fly between 2011 and 2015. Cost overruns for the Ares I rocket are running at around 50%, and NASA has proposed reducing seating on the Orion capsule from six to four. NASA will pay Russia for International Space Station flights, but has no plans to fund the ISS past about 2016.

The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope has been pushed back twice -- first to 2013 and then to 2014. This was first pitched as a half-billion dollar project. By 2000, it was a billion dollar project and is now projected to be a 5 billion dollar project. That's barring any future cost overruns, naturally. NASA doesn't have the capability to launch the JWST itself -- it will go up on an Ariane 5.

I could go on, but instead I'll refer you to the March 2009 GAO study.

What I see is a decades-long pattern of low-balled projects, missed deadlines, sweetheart cost-plus contracts and a general attitude more consistent with pork-barrel politics than innovation. While I expect this out of a government agency, even when compared to other government-run space programs NASA looks horrid.

Yes, I know that there are dedicated scientists on the NASA payroll doing excellent work. Yes, I know about the Mars Rover and the pretty pictures from the Hubble scope. And yes, compared to a multi-trillion dollar bailout, NASA's budget doesn't look that big. But when I watch billions of dollars apparently being squandered, you'll forgive me if I sneer at calls for a "less constrained" budget.

When complaining isn't likely to produce results

2009-08-05T15:56:38Z

I'm currently staying in a hotel where the Internet Access is glacially slow. A modem would be faster.

I was thinking about calling and complaining, but I decided to just cope and relax with some TV.

When I turn on the TV, it read:

Data error reading drive C
Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?

MS-DOS lives! So I guess I should accept 20th century connection speeds as well.

The .fortune from today's Logwatch file

2009-07-29T12:14:38Z

> Fortune: You will be attacked next Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. by six samurai
> sword wielding purple fish glued to Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
>
> Oh, and have a nice day!
> -- Bryce Nesbitt '84

And WorldCon doesn't even officially open until the next day.

Just another 'net intruder

2009-07-28T12:19:10Z

Two lines from this morning's logwatch:

> 196.200.95.44: 7 times
> PlcmSpIp/password: 7 times

Apparently, PlcmSpIp is a user name used by Polycom phones for provisioning via FTP. You either have to leave the password at the trivially guessed default, or change it on every phone in your Polycom-based PBX.

Even better, I found two different tutorials for this online which neglect to mention any security precautions at all. If you follow either one, you not only end up with a wide-open FTP directory, but a wide-open shell account as well. Brilliant!

FWIW, this particular probe apparently came from a mobile phone network in Mali. I'd like to personally thank Polycom for this morning's lesson on how not to do things.

Bad film. Interesting results.

2009-07-24T22:37:39Z

I was experimenting with some Macro techniques last weekend, using one of my rolls of junk film. Most of the shots proved unusable except my "pocket piece," a political protest token I've been carrying around for a couple of months.

Sometimes, you just get lucky.

Cleveland Rocks?

2009-07-23T19:51:54Z

The headline reads "The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Celebrates Its 25th Anniversary with Two Groundbreaking Concerts."

Cool.

But why are these groundbreaking concerts being held in New York City instead of Cleveland?

Requiem for a Radio Station

2009-07-15T14:44:54Z

Okay, the title is a lie. I'm not going to hold a service, nor do I have any intention of setting this to music.

Yesterday, CBS Radio announced they were shutting down WBCN-FM, 104.1, effectively replacing it with a "sports radio" format. There's a shuffle in frequencies involved as well. While WBCN still has a preset on my car radio and stereo, I haven't listened to the station with any regularity since the mid-1990's.

But when I moved to Boston in 1982, WBCN was "my" music radio station. I woke up to Charles Laquidara, listened to Ken Shelton at noon, tried to catch the 5:05 pm comedy segment in the afternoon, and so on. I based my music buys on what I heard on that station. But my enthusiasm had already begun to wane in 1993, when Ken Shelton left and the station started running Howard Stern in the evenings. The "shock rock" style wasn't to my taste.

For many years, I simply attributed this to changes both the music scene and changes in my own tastes. While there's still a lot of truth in that, I also think that the station lost its way during that time.

So farewell, WBCN. I guess time can change me, but you couldn't change time. Like so many of the rock groups that you used to play, you're just a boring story of glory days.

Twang

2009-07-12T19:21:06Z

Doing some channel surfing this morning, I came across a show on the Military Channel called Weapon Masters . I didn't catch the first part of the "Chariot Bow" episode, but for some reason they were shooting a shock-absorber mounted, gyroscope stabilized, modern high-tech crossbow from a replicate of a 3300 year-old Egyptian chariot.

They neither tried to improve the chariot nor did they put a laser sight on the crossbow. Either would have violated authenticity, I guess. But crossbows (c. 500 BC), coil-springs (c. 1400 A.D), and gyro-stabilizers (c. 1900 A.D) were perfectly okay.

Creative anachronisms indeed.

Tacky

2009-07-11T17:24:42Z

I just saw a TV ad starring the late Billy Mays. Normally I hit mute for these, but was too lazy this time.

The commercial was for Mighty Putty, which appears to be pretty standard "knead to activate" epoxy putty at a slightly too high a price. Unfortunately, before issuing the usual end-of-pitch sweetener, Billy chooses to use the words, "But I'm not done yet."

Farewell to a pioneer

2009-07-06T14:56:21Z

Compuserve Classic was shutdown this month.

(silence)

Since I never used the service, I'll leave it to others to wax nostalgic about it. But the fact that it was still around in June 2009 should serve as a reminder just how long a system can survive once it's deployed.

Kudos (mostly) to Logitech

2009-07-03T17:02:27Z

Today, I got a chilling call from my mother-in-law. "I need help with my computer."

It turns out she has a presentation to give, and wanted to use a webcam. And, in fact, she had a webcam. All she knew was that it was made by Logitech, had a part number and a serial number, and her computer wasn't recognizing it.

So, after spending about 10 minutes talking through the "Scan for Hardware Changes" menu and getting nowhere, I talked her through getting to the Logitech support website. There, I saw the "Search by Image" option.

What a wonderful thing. Within a couple of clicks, she had found her webcam and was on the right support and download page. Alas, the thing is old enough so that Logitech doesn't supply Vista drivers.

I suppose I should be annoyed at the lack of drivers, but I'm not. She's now willing to buy a new webcam, and I'm not spending the rest of the afternoon trying to guess what's wrong.

Congratulations Team USA

2009-06-25T13:57:51Z

After making the semifinals of the Confederations Cup under improbable circumstances, the 14^th ranked U.S. team beat #1 Spain 2-nil.

In the realm of international sports, this was a huge upset. People more knowledgeable than I can argue about where it fits in the all-time rankings, but I think it's the biggest upset of this year so far.

And of course, since it was a professional ~~soccer~~ football game, by tomorrow it will disappear from the U.S. consciousness.

Think of it as money?

2009-06-25T13:11:06Z

Since February or so, I've been carrying a 20 billion dollar "Special Agro-Cheque" issued in 2008 by the bank of Zimbabwe as a conversation piece. It is, of course, chump change -- I wouldn't risk carrying a 50-trillion or 100-trillion dollar note on the mean streets of Metro Boston. But that's only because they are crisp new bills -- the 100 trillion is worth about 0.23 USD.

Behind the amusement is, of course, a tragedy. Hyperinflation is only a joke when it's happening someplace far away. Knowing this, debgeisler pointed me to this story from the Guardian. There's also a Flickr Photostream showing other parts of the campaign. Each brings the point home better than I ever could.

Kodachrome 64 Discontinued

2009-06-22T14:52:53Z

Press Release:
http://snipurl.com/knet9

I admit, I moved on to different films a long time ago, but it's still sad.

Open Thread #1

2009-06-19T17:09:30Z

... based on a break room discussion today at work.

Today's Topic: "Dung Beetle -- The Musical"