damned lies and statistics Archive

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Belkin’s misleading and deceptive packaging

By
Josh
– 26 February 2010Posted in: damned lies and statistics, marketroids, money, techno-wankery

For some time, I have been trying to find a case for my iPhone which provides a degree of protection for the screen. I have been known to put the phone in the same pocket as keys or coins and would prefer not to crack or deeply scratch the display. But for some reason, almost all iPhone cases are only concerned with protecting the back of the phone, leaving the more delicate screen vulnerable.

I don’t get it.

But after a lengthy comparison of iPhone cases online and at a local retailer, I found one which seemed to fit the bill: the Belkin Light Protect Rock (or LightProtectRock), also known as the Shield Flex, for 40 bucks.

First off, let’s clarify why you might need to protect the iPhone screen.

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93% of Australians prefer a steaming pile of poo to Eddie McGuire

By
Josh
– 26 February 2010Posted in: damned lies and statistics, marketroids, media, nerds, wordy things

This week I posted a survey on twtpoll, asking people the following question:

Which would you rather have in your home: Eddie McGuire or a steaming pile of poo?

The results were emphatic:

  • Eddie McGuire: 2 votes (3%)
  • Steaming pile of poo: 61 votes (97%)

While this was a terribly entertaining result, I did it to point out some of the problems with the many, many survey stories we see in the media.

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Censorship: we asked for it

By
Josh
– 16 December 2009Posted in: damned lies and statistics, f___ing censorship, government, shameless self promotion

Whose fault is it that the Australian government is getting set to deliver the Western world’s most oppressive internet censorship regime? Ours, as it happens, for failing to have a bill of rights protecting free speech. So Professor George Williams told me in this article for ZDNet.

“Australia does not have a Bill of Rights which protects free speech at a federal level. We don’t have the protections that they have in every other democratic country.That means Australia might be subject to far more stringent regulations on the internet than would be possible in other democratic countries.”

The academic community is singing from the same hymn sheet on this idea, judging by a report released today from media studies profs Catharine Lumby, Lelia Green and John Hartley. “The proposal would set Australia apart from other Western liberal democracies that have opted for a transparent, voluntary filtering regime,” they said.

They analysed the proposed filtering regime and found it could censor a whole lot more than just kiddie porn, including perfectly legal material.

“The ACMA is blacklisting a significant number of sites that are not illegal content but are considered offensive. While this may be considered acceptable where filtering is opt-in by an end user (or parent for family computers), under a mandatory filtering regime this would result in capturing material that is clearly legal but restricted in availability (off the internet) through classification restrictions.”

Unlike the Liberal Party’s shambolic approach to party unity on the emissions trading scheme, Labor polticos are so far toeing the party line on censorship. Senator Kate Lundy wasn’t saying much today, despite her strong record of criticising internet censorship proposals in the past. Looks like Peter Garrett isn’t the only one to have abandoned his principles once in power.

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I’ll drink to that

By
Josh
– 9 December 2009Posted in: damned lies and statistics, drugs, media, scienticians, violence

Serial wowser Ian Hickie from the Brain and Mind Research Institute has for weeks been peddling to the media his idea that we should raise the legal drinking age to counter the scourge of teenage binge drinking.

The crux of his argument is that young people’s brains are still developing and exposure to excessive amounts of alcohol during this period could lead to increased dumbness, or at least reduced cleverness, and a greater risk of mental health problems.

Of course, Professor Hickie lacks any scientific evidence that raising the drinking age would improve the situation.

But just to give you a very rough idea, what if there were a country where the legal drinking age was 21 instead of 18? Wouldn’t the citizens of that country be, overall, less dumb than those of countries with a lower legal drinking age? Wouldn’t they suffer fewer mental health problems?

What’s that you say? The legal drinking age in the United States is 21 and has been for decades? Goodness me!

So if Ian Hickie were correct, US citizens would be the smartest and mentally healthiest people on the planet.

But it turns out more US citizens believe in angels than the theory of evolution or anthropogenic climate change. A lot more.

Seems like the evidence doesn’t stack up, prof…

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Time to drop your prices

By
Josh
– 30 November 2009Posted in: damned lies and statistics, money, shameless self promotion

Banks are often criticised for being super-responsive when interest rates go up, wasting no time in passing on these rises to customers, while being considerably more tardy and relaxed about lowering their rates when the Reserve Bank does.

Technology vendors aren’t hugely worried about interest rates, but most tech is bought and sold in US dollars. When the Australian dollar was doing badly, local prices went up. The Australian dollar is in a very strong position now but local prices have mostly remained static.

Does this spell profiteering? In a competitive market, vendors wouldn’t be able to get away with it…

Here’s a piece I wrote for CRN: The great Australian ripoff.

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Slightly faster broadband

By
Josh
– 3 March 2008Posted in: damned lies and statistics, money, politics, techno-wankery, turtleneck-wearing latté sippers

Minister for Broadband Stephen Conroy yesterday delivered the exciting news that the government’s planned $4.7 billion broadband network would deliver speeds “up to 100 times faster than what is currently available”. Sounds great!

It will achieve this by running fibre-optic connections to the telecommunications pillar mushrooms on street corners then using VDSL (very fast digital something something else) to deliver speeds of up to 25Mbps to homes.

Call me a pedant if you must, but that’s not 100 times faster than what’s currently available. I may be decaf soy latte drinking inner city elite, but I get around 19Mbps using ADSL2 and living about a kilometre from my phone exchange. I’m no maths genius, but I’m pretty sure 25Mbps is not 100 times faster than 19Mpbs. In fact I’d say it something closer to 1.3 times faster.

But Senator Conroy’s calculation is based on the claim that “most broadband users currently receive only 256 kilobits per second”. Which is

  • A lie – statistics more than a year old show two-thirds of broadband users on faster than 256Kbps and
  • A damning criticism of how Conroy’s predecessors let Telstra and the rest of the internet industry deliberately retard broadband access and make obscene profits.

Seems like when it comes to technology, the new federal government is as pompous and incompetent as the last.

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Google outspends Australia 20:1 on renewable energy

By
Josh
– 29 November 2007Posted in: damned lies and statistics, nerds, politics, scienticians

Earlier this week, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin pledged to spend “hundreds of millions”, in the long run, on renewable energy research and projects in an initiative called RE<C (renewable energy cheaper than coal) (nerds).

The project’s eventual aim is to build one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. This is enough to power “a city the size of San Francisco”. (Though not, it seems, the actual city of San Francisco. Perhaps a city the size of San Francisco in a poorer country without all the energy-hogging fat Westerners in it.)

Anyhoo, a laudable aim, for sure, even if some cynical media types have pointed out Google’s interest is not entirely philanthropic, given its reliance on vast datacentres chock full of electricity-sucking servers.

By contrast, former PM Howard, even in über-generous election fire-sale mode, could only manage $75 million for renewables.  And commie Big Kev’s $500 million might only equal Google’s investments. Just for comparison, Google earned US$10.6 billion in 2006 (around $12 billion Oz); the Australian government ‘earned’ $232 billion in 2006-07.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation puts Google spending about 20 times more, as a proportion of revenue, than the Australian federal government on renewable energy. That’s taking into account the generous pledges of the Labor federal government that just got elected on its green credentials.

Seems like if there’s to be any real action on global warming, it’s going to come from the people and the private sector – not wishy washy politicos . . . of any flavour.

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Democratic triumph

By
Josh
– 15 September 2007Posted in: damned lies and statistics, politics, techno-wankery, violence

The democratising brilliance of Web 2.0 is that it has allowed one billion global citizens to post “OMG, me too!”, “LOL” and “This is so fucking gay” next to every single item published on the web, 24 hours a day, 100,000 times a minute.

Can anyone doubt that if we had not developed this ability, just in time, the terrorists would already have won?

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Note to self: get pregnant, move to marginal seat, start religious private school

By
Josh
– 21 August 2007Posted in: damned lies and statistics, money, politics

The treasurer today announced a budget surplus of $17.3 billion, a whopping $3.7 billion higher than anticipated when the budget was announced in May.

A substantial $7 billion of this will go into the Future Fund (portrayed as ‘a sensible investment for the future’ instead of ‘politicians lining their own pockets‘). Another $6 billion goes to the Higher Education Endowment Fund. Medical research infrastructure gets $2.5 billion.

That leaves a good $1.8 billion to spend on . . . who knows? Tax cuts for the rich? Handouts for breeders? Pork barrelling in marginal electorates? Sorry, I meant to say ‘responsible spending on infrastructure that will not drive up inflation or interest rates’. Snort.

My only advice is: work out some way to cash in before October.

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Facewha?

By
Josh
– 13 July 2007Posted in: damned lies and statistics, media, techno-wankery

Isn’t it curious that the chaps at The Oz seem to be giving a lot more airtime to MySpace than Facebook? Especially when MySpace is pretty much old hat in the journosphere, whereas the mainstream media currently can’t get enough stories about Facebook.

In today’s Australian, we discover that Kevin Rudd has started a MySpace profile and has friends such as Naughty Amelia Jane, a 19-year-old law student from Melbourne (from the ‘whenever a story is boring, put a teenage girl in it’ school of journalism).  But Big Kev has been on Facebook for more than a month, which The Oz mysteriously never covered. Yesterday, The Australian told us that although Facebook is growing quickly, it is “light-years behind MySpace’s 3.8 million Australian profiles” with only 141,000 Aussies signed up.

We can’t help but notice that Big Rupert recently spent a few hundred of his millions acquiring MySpace, whereas Facebook is still owned by its founder Mark Zuckerberg (who has refused to sell despite reported offers of up to US$2.3 billion). Not that we would ever accuse our colleagues at chez News of allowing their master’s interests to cloud their journalistic objectivity.

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