Yanis Varofakis has made a short, but very dispiriting, summary of the Greek government's attempts to negotiate any of the terms being dictated to them by Europe:
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/07/30/the-defeat-of-europe-my-piece-in-le-monde-diplomatique/
Read it & weep :( . It's quite easy to see why Europe is now probably a doomed project in the long run (by their own hands).
While the Eurozone crash of the last few years has clearly demonstrated that Britain was right to not to drop the Pound in favour of the Euro, the treatment of Greece now makes me think that the whole EU project is doomed (without major reforms that no-one seems willing to consider), and thus Britain should avoid any further integration with Europe at all (even if that means leaving the EU entirely). I suspect thus was the kind of change-of-heart which David Cameron obliquely warned his European compatriots could happen to the British people, if Europe didn't treat Greece fairly (but firmly).
Saturday 1 August 2015
Friday 30 January 2015
Why Greece's new finance minster should be welcomed, not just as a potential saviour of Greece, but the whole Eurozone
Greece's new finance minister is Yanis Varoufakis. Until very recently he was basically just an academic, albeit one who has become know for being loudly outspoken on Greece's & Europe's economic problems. He has only grudgingly become involved in politics (and Syriza).
I've been following his blog for some years, as he has had many interesting things to say about Europe's problems, and a point of view which is rarely heard on mainstream news. As such I think I've a half-decent understanding his point of view, despite not being an economist myself... but fear that his huge number of blog posts make it difficult for anyone suddenly interested in him to understand why he should be welcomed rather than feared.
Rather than do a poor job at summarising his views, I thought it would be better to point to a handful of his best blog posts. Those that give a good overview & have little economist jargon. I've tried to put them in order, starting with the most helpful first, but you could certainly skip some articles (in part or whole) if they don't (yet) make sense to you:
A bit of background on him, before he achieved "fame" (or at least notoriety!) for speaking about Europe's & Greece's problems, although the main body of the article is about why he was hired for a couple of years by Valve (creators of Steam - the PC's biggest games digital marketplace):
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a-strange-email/
Why he accepted an offer to join the Syrizas party:
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/01/09/why-i-am-running-for-a-parliamentary-seat-on-syrizas-ticket/
Two nice short overviews of why he thinks massive loans in exchange for massive austerity in Greece (and other failing European countries) is only hiding the problem, and has in fact been making it worse not better:
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/11/08/ponzi-austerity-a-definition-and-an-example/
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2012/05/31/from-ponzi-growth-to-ponzi-austerity/
He draws parallels between the financial crash of 1929 & that of 2008, and argues whether Germany/Europe should reconsider it's current method of bailing-out Greece:
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2012/02/05/is-greece-still-viable-is-europe-my-piece-in-deutsche-welle-de/
A long-ish interview about his (and someone else's) Modest Proposal (to
solve Europe's economic problems), which they've been pushing since 2010, and gives a quite nice (if now slightly out-of-date)
summary of how we got into this mess & what might be done to get us
out:
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2012/12/16/taking-stock-of-the-global-and-euro-crisis/
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2012/12/16/taking-stock-of-the-global-and-euro-crisis/
A long-ish, but very easy to follow, article on how Europe ended-up in the current situation. You don't NEED to read it, but it would surely help understand almost everything else he has written about Europe's problems. Personally I found it a fascinating glimpse into how & why the world went down the particular path it did:
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2014/08/29/why-is-europe-not-coming-together-in-response-to-the-euro-crisis/
A summary of his Modest Proposal (to solve Europe's economic problems), followed by a more-technical check of it's predictions (which you may wish to skip):
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2012/11/10/a-world-without-the-global-minotaur-why-is-the-world-economy-failing-to-recover/
A brief explanation of why they recently had to update their Modest Proposal:
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/07/11/taking-stock-of-the-euro-crisis-a-prelude-to-the-forthcoming-version-4-0-of-the-modest-proposal/
The latest version of their Modest Proposal (to solve Europe's economic problems), that takes account of more recent issues, which is split into 5 fairly short pages:
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/euro-crisis/modest-proposal/
One journalist's view of their Modest Proposal, which may help put it in context:
UPDATE:
I dare anyone to suggest more Austerity is the answer after reading this short summary of the terrible state of Greece (from a couple of year ago - the situation is surely far worse now) :
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/03/04/on-the-social-conditions-in-greece-now/
This article is now 3 years old, but it might perhaps still provide some insight into where the Syriza party may take Greece:
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2012/02/18/greek-default-does-not-equal-greek-exit/
UPDATE:
The world should listen to Greece’s big idea about debt:
http://qz.com/340448/the-world-should-listen-to-greeces-big-idea-about-debt/
Tuesday 19 August 2014
Star Citizen continues trying to be everything to everyone
Star Citizen has shown trailers for three new "modules":
Of all the modules that Star Citizen could add, I would never have guessed racing. That seems so unrelated to anything Star Citizen is supposed to be doing, it feels like they're now doing something because they can, not because it's actually a good way to spend their large (but not unlimited) money pile.
It seems like they have no clear vision for the game, and instead they're just putting in every fun-sounding feature that Chris Robert's unrestrained imagination can think of, in the hope that something fun comes out the other side. Unfortunately that rarely works, and risks players just finding the game a confusing & unbalanced mess.
I worry that all these modules will end-up taking much more time & money than planned (as usually happens with software projects), and then they run out of money. Given how thinly they are now spreading themselves on multiple "modules" aka sub-games (on the budget of less than a single AAA game) this no-longer seems so implausible.
I worry that Star Citizen starts to resemble a pyramid scheme, where later ambitious modules are announced in the hope of keeping enough money flowing that they can actually finish their earlier ambitious modules. This works fine until they run out of Space Whales to milk, or trouble with their over-ambitious earlier modules causes people to start doubting Star Citizen (thus new money dries up). They're not there yet, but if they continue on the same trajectory I worry they might at some later date.
I also suspect it's disingenuous to label each of these separate sub-games as "modules", as that implies each one has no dependency on what happens in any of the other "modules", and therefore adding more modules doesn't affect the chances of success for existing modules... But each sub-game will unavoidably expect certain things of other sub-games (so you can move seamlessly from one to the other), and may even impose certain restrictions on other sub-games. So the more modules they have, the more likely changing requirements of one module will cause problems for other modules, and the more likely other modules will have problems meeting the requirements of another module. That potentially produces a cascade of delays, where one module's problems lead to one or more other modules having to do extra work (i.e.a delay), which could then impact on yet more modules. In short, having lots of modules going in parallel is extremely risky, even though Chris Roberts may claim otherwise.
- Racing in the atmosphere of some planets.
- Exploring the surface of planets.
- Shooting people inside ships & maybe other things.
Of all the modules that Star Citizen could add, I would never have guessed racing. That seems so unrelated to anything Star Citizen is supposed to be doing, it feels like they're now doing something because they can, not because it's actually a good way to spend their large (but not unlimited) money pile.
It seems like they have no clear vision for the game, and instead they're just putting in every fun-sounding feature that Chris Robert's unrestrained imagination can think of, in the hope that something fun comes out the other side. Unfortunately that rarely works, and risks players just finding the game a confusing & unbalanced mess.
I worry that all these modules will end-up taking much more time & money than planned (as usually happens with software projects), and then they run out of money. Given how thinly they are now spreading themselves on multiple "modules" aka sub-games (on the budget of less than a single AAA game) this no-longer seems so implausible.
I worry that Star Citizen starts to resemble a pyramid scheme, where later ambitious modules are announced in the hope of keeping enough money flowing that they can actually finish their earlier ambitious modules. This works fine until they run out of Space Whales to milk, or trouble with their over-ambitious earlier modules causes people to start doubting Star Citizen (thus new money dries up). They're not there yet, but if they continue on the same trajectory I worry they might at some later date.
I also suspect it's disingenuous to label each of these separate sub-games as "modules", as that implies each one has no dependency on what happens in any of the other "modules", and therefore adding more modules doesn't affect the chances of success for existing modules... But each sub-game will unavoidably expect certain things of other sub-games (so you can move seamlessly from one to the other), and may even impose certain restrictions on other sub-games. So the more modules they have, the more likely changing requirements of one module will cause problems for other modules, and the more likely other modules will have problems meeting the requirements of another module. That potentially produces a cascade of delays, where one module's problems lead to one or more other modules having to do extra work (i.e.a delay), which could then impact on yet more modules. In short, having lots of modules going in parallel is extremely risky, even though Chris Roberts may claim otherwise.
Tuesday 13 May 2014
Star Citizen's feature creep... and other signs of a software project doomed for disaster?
It seems that Star Citizen is suffering from severe "feature creep"
(where features keep getting added long after work has started on a
project), as they are doing things like:
Apart from this sounding to me like a severe case of "Elite Dangerous envy", feature creep is a classic way for a software project to go way over-budget in time & money, with the end result being a horrible mess, or even simply running out of money before it is ever completed. Feature creep (and changing project goals) happens to many government IT projects that have tens or hundreds of millions of pounds to spend, and is why so many government IT projects end-up being a disaster. So having masses of money is not (on it's own) a good predictor of success (or failure).
Also, my impression of Star Citizen is that they're a big brand new team who have mostly never worked together before. This is not a good way to start a massive project, as demonstrated by Daikatana:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana#Development
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana#Development_hell
- Modifying the game engine to be double-precision (64-bit) for much larger game 'maps'.
- Trying to add orbital mechanics (i.e. actually moving planets & moons).
- Trying to add procedural generation of planets.
Apart from this sounding to me like a severe case of "Elite Dangerous envy", feature creep is a classic way for a software project to go way over-budget in time & money, with the end result being a horrible mess, or even simply running out of money before it is ever completed. Feature creep (and changing project goals) happens to many government IT projects that have tens or hundreds of millions of pounds to spend, and is why so many government IT projects end-up being a disaster. So having masses of money is not (on it's own) a good predictor of success (or failure).
And as someone
pointed out, this also sounds suspiciously like what happened to a certain
well-funded game about chewing bubble gum & kicking ass (i.e. Duke Nukem
Forever).
Early signs do not seem good, as someone reports
that they "have [yet] to produce ... properly working core
functionality - even the hangar is a buggy mess".
Also, my impression of Star Citizen is that they're a big brand new team who have mostly never worked together before. This is not a good way to start a massive project, as demonstrated by Daikatana:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana#Development
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana#Development_hell
In
fact Daikatana may have more similarities to Star Citizen than Duke
Nukem Forever:
- Massive hype before the project had even started, mostly coming from one famous name.
- Massive project for a newly formed team (which also kept adding more people).
- Even Daikatana's changing of game engine mid-project isn't so far off, as Star Citizen's engine has been heavily modified to be double-precision (not an easy undertaking).
- Missed deadline(s).
- The release of an (IMHO) underwhelming early 'demo'.
- Daikatana was even funded to Star Citizen levels, to the tune of $44 million.
Having said all that, I do hope Star Citizen is (at least moderately) successful, otherwise the whole space game genre might be tarnished & disappear for another decade or two (why would publishers take the risk when another First Person Military Shooter is bound to sell well?). But if S.C. is successful, then we are bound to see many more space games (even if most of them will be uninspired crap).
(Up front admission: Although I am a space game fan, Star Citizen has never excited me, but I did back Elite Dangerous, and I am crossing my fingers for Infinity Battlescape.)
UPDATE:
At least one Star Citizen backer is (IMHO rightly) getting nervous, as H1itman_Actual says:
(Up front admission: Although I am a space game fan, Star Citizen has never excited me, but I did back Elite Dangerous, and I am crossing my fingers for Infinity Battlescape.)
UPDATE:
At least one Star Citizen backer is (IMHO rightly) getting nervous, as H1itman_Actual says:
The 6 month delay of the dog fighting module along with ambiguous release dates have test a lot of us backers.
If this date doesn't hold I'm really loosing faith.
I'm an original backer. But CR release dates the past 6 months have been broken. He should have never of told backers "2 weeks from now" "1 month from now" " 1 or 2 weeks after PAX"
that kind of leading backer on creates scepticism.
Sunday 6 April 2014
Android just became crap with official update (SD cards are disabled)
I can't believe this, but the latest update to Android KitKit (v4.4.2) prevents all 3rd-party apps from writing to the SD card! This is not a joke:
community.sprint.com/baw/message/750451
I mean, WTF. Google has removed one of the most heavily used features of an OS (writing data to external media). And they explicitly prevent manufacturers from restoring this feature! There is NO good reason for doing this, not in the name of "security" or any other short-sighted reason. I know Google thinks SD cards are unnecessary (see Google Nexus stuff) but that's no reason to prevent other companies from offering such stuff. The SD card slot has now become TOTALLY USELESS. Android is now less functional than Windows Phone (in one important respect anyway).
Are they trying to drive people to Android phones that don't use the Google ecosystem, and thus don't have to put up with their ridiculous restrictions? Cos I'm sure as hell not going to buy a phone with a limited amount of storage capacity.
It was bad enough when Google removed the ability of third-party apps to toggle Flight mode (it's really handy having an app put my phone into Flight mode overnight, so I don't get rudely awakened & also to save power).
UPDATE:
I am told that apps can still write to their own pre-defined 'sandbox' folders on the SD card. If that's the case then it's not nearly so bad (and in fact is close to what I've been wanting Android to do for ages, albeit a bit more draconian than I'd have liked).
UPDATE:
community.sprint.com/baw/message/750451
I mean, WTF. Google has removed one of the most heavily used features of an OS (writing data to external media). And they explicitly prevent manufacturers from restoring this feature! There is NO good reason for doing this, not in the name of "security" or any other short-sighted reason. I know Google thinks SD cards are unnecessary (see Google Nexus stuff) but that's no reason to prevent other companies from offering such stuff. The SD card slot has now become TOTALLY USELESS. Android is now less functional than Windows Phone (in one important respect anyway).
Are they trying to drive people to Android phones that don't use the Google ecosystem, and thus don't have to put up with their ridiculous restrictions? Cos I'm sure as hell not going to buy a phone with a limited amount of storage capacity.
It was bad enough when Google removed the ability of third-party apps to toggle Flight mode (it's really handy having an app put my phone into Flight mode overnight, so I don't get rudely awakened & also to save power).
UPDATE:
I am told that apps can still write to their own pre-defined 'sandbox' folders on the SD card. If that's the case then it's not nearly so bad (and in fact is close to what I've been wanting Android to do for ages, albeit a bit more draconian than I'd have liked).
UPDATE:
But this will still mean I can't use OI File
Manager - a really really good free file manager, and instead will have
to use whatever crap is built into the phone. That sucks. Why the hell
can't Google just add a (maybe new) Write-To-Whole-SD-Card-DANGEROUS
permission?
Monday 27 January 2014
Android's permissions system is great... but also terrible
Android's permissions system is pretty good (compared to the competition). But it still suffers from several serious annoyances:
I would like to see developer being able to mark some permissions as optional, so that savy users could choose to disable them if they wanted. For example, say that My Backup's internet permission was marked as optional - then if I didn't want to use the cloud (nor risk the NSA remote-controlling it) I could simply disable internet access.
Or instead marking them as optional, the developer could mark some permissions as ask first, such that they default to disabled but upon first use the user would be automatically asked if they allow the app access to that permission. This has the benefit that the user will understand WHY a permission is needed, and so they can make a more informed decision about whether to allow it.
Or Google could take try to please everyone, by effectively implementing both options... but keep it simple for users, by having "optional" permissions default to behaving like "ask first". That way users would not have this important security option hidden from them, but savy users could change it if they want. You view this "optional" behaviour as "don't ask me about permission choices".
As far as fixing coarse permissions (esp. when grouping unrelated sub-permissions), it might be too much to ask that Google totally revamp Android's permissions, but there are a few obviously bad mistakes that they ought to fix:
- Permissions
are all or nothing - the user either grants access to all the
permissions at installation time, or he can't install the app.
- Permissions are too coarse, such that if an app needs access to one particular function/ability (let's call them "sub-permissions" for simplicity), it will usually need to ask for a load of other sub-permissions that it doesn't actually need. On it's own this wouldn't have been too bad, but...
- Permissions often contain several sub-permissions that aren't related to each other in a useful way, at least from the user's perspective, when he is worried about privacy (or possibly security). e.g. To tell whether the user is making/receiving a call or not (so it can pause itself), an app also gains access to who the user is calling, the caller's own phone number, and other personal information.
I would like to see developer being able to mark some permissions as optional, so that savy users could choose to disable them if they wanted. For example, say that My Backup's internet permission was marked as optional - then if I didn't want to use the cloud (nor risk the NSA remote-controlling it) I could simply disable internet access.
Or instead marking them as optional, the developer could mark some permissions as ask first, such that they default to disabled but upon first use the user would be automatically asked if they allow the app access to that permission. This has the benefit that the user will understand WHY a permission is needed, and so they can make a more informed decision about whether to allow it.
Or Google could take try to please everyone, by effectively implementing both options... but keep it simple for users, by having "optional" permissions default to behaving like "ask first". That way users would not have this important security option hidden from them, but savy users could change it if they want. You view this "optional" behaviour as "don't ask me about permission choices".
As far as fixing coarse permissions (esp. when grouping unrelated sub-permissions), it might be too much to ask that Google totally revamp Android's permissions, but there are a few obviously bad mistakes that they ought to fix:
- Checking whether the user is making/receiving a call should not require access to tons of other personal info. Thus music players & games & other apps could pause for calls, without getting access to lots of unnecessary stuff.
- Being able to store data on the SD card should NOT require giving an app access to the whole SD card. It would be far better if every app has a pre-defined (but maybe user configurable) folder, and could only be given permission to write to that folder.
- But once you've created an app-specific folder for writing, why not limited read-access to that folder too? Then you don't need to give an app read-access to the whole SD card either. Given that private data may be stored on the SD card, this seems like a big security win.
NSA must love My Backup
My Backup (Pro) is by far the best backup app for Android phones (at least if you aren't rooted). But I have a love/hate relationship with it, because of it's Internet permission & the fact that it can be remote-controlled (from Rerware's website). Snowden's recent NSA revelations make this all the more worrying.
Given the NSA has hacked Google's secure cloud, it
seems very likely the NSA can also read everything that My Backup stores
in the Rerware's dinky cloud, and perhaps even remote-control My Backup (since it's designed to be remote-controlled by you).
I'd like to
see a version which doesn't ask for internet permissions (and has no
cloud backup options), so I can be sure it's impossible for it to send
my data to the NSA. So far Rerware has denied my requests for such a version. But if enough people ask them, they will surely see there is demand for it, and so provide one I hope.
This would be much easier for Rerware, if Google allowed developers to mark certain permissions (such as internet) as optional. Then I'd be able to disable it's internet permission (and stop worrying).
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