Ce chien est méchant...

Entitled Leftists are predictably 'outraged' that the Church has dared to canonise the people whom they themselves were responsible for killing:

Spanish Civil War 'martyrs' beatified

Spanish Civil War 'martyrs' beatified, angering Franco victims

Particularly sickening is the scare-quoting around 'martyrs' at these links.

Apple's 64-bit transition for phones gives new opportunties to Google, MIPS

Apple's 64-bit spec uplift has been quickly picked up by Samsung,
who may have started a race to catch up; 64-bit could become the
next must-have for the mobile phone and tablet markets.

If so, Google stands to profit from a second chance to assert control
over the Android market. Of course, since Android apps run on the
Dalvik virtual machine, there's no need for them to become
64-bit, even if the base Android operating system moves to 64 bits
itself (although Google could always revise the VM specs to do that
if they wanted to, though it's probably overkill for individual apps).

However the move to a 64-bit OS below the GUI application layer gives them
the opportunity, over time, to dump support for the 32-bit version, variants
of which have been forked by Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Alibaba. Google
could simultaneously do a bit of re-architecting, transferring functionality
to the cloud, and introducing branding and copyright restrictions that
effectively negate the open-source licensing of the code corpus itself
(I think they would leave the licensing alone, apart from at most minor
tweaks, as they know they would face a firestorm of criticism from Geekdom
if they didn't).

This would have the satisfying effect of leaving such parasitical companies
to either develop and support their forked operating system on their own (thus
increasing their costs by a small but nevertheless not insignificant amount),
or to come back to the fold of the main distribution and having to cut a deal.

It would also raise the possibility of native code extensions to existing
apps perhaps not working on a 64-bit Android platform, and that must be a
plus for MIPS, the underdog Android processor. If Google attempt to go down
the pNaCl route to solving this one, rather than requiring re-compilation,
then MIPS could see a current barrier to utilisation simply evaporate away.

Bullish for Google and Imagination Technologies then.

Russia detains Greenpeace 'activists', considers piracy charges

An interesting article on the BBC website, Russia accuses Greenpeace crew of 'piracy' in Arctic. The article seems to be more careful than usual, employing neutral-sounding language and mostly just reciting the facts — though this is probably only because sympathetic leftists will already be outraged that the Greenpeace thugs were hindered at all, given the supine response that is usual when they target western or Japanese operations.

It seems that the Russians are going to charge the activists with piracy. Hopefully they will also consider declaring Greenpeace a terrorist organisation and penalizing companies that deal with them (e.g. banks) and individuals that donate to them (e.g. swivel-eyed leftists).

My unfortunate experience with Amazon Marketplace

On 17th July 2013 I bought a 16Gb black iPad 4, via Amazon, from Selling Zone. It was to be a gift for my housebound Aunt and my Uncle, and I bought with confidence having previously bought another one through Amazon (though from a different seller), this time for a cousin of mine. Besides, I was covered by Amazon’s A-to-z Guarantee: what could possibly go wrong?

At 17:03 that day I received an auto-confirmation email from Amazon, re. my Amazon Marketplace order with Selling Zone Ltd. The only thing that appeared a little odd was that the estimated delivery date (I had chosen Standard Delivery) was a long way away: per the email, from Monday July 29th 2013 up until Tuesday August 6th 2013. I thought nothing of it, but in fact it turned out to be key to what transpired.

At 12:04 on 22nd July I got an email from auto-shipping@amazon.co.uk stating that the order had now been dispatched from Selling Zone. I noted with some dissatisfaction that the estimated delivery date was now Tuesday August 6th 2013, right at the far end of the previous estimate. It seemed even more odd that the delivery date was a full 15 days in the future, given that it had now been dispatched, but I simply berated myself for being so cheap as to choose Standard Delivery, and decided to grin and bear it and learn from my mistake in the future. Unfortunately there was no tracking information associated with the delivery.

Over the next three weeks there followed a long series of phone calls between me and my Aunt. Had the iPad arrived? No, the iPad had not arrived. The only thing she had had in the post that was not a simple letter was a cheap exercise watch, which had arrived on the 18th or 19th; there had been no documentation or covering note to say what it was for or who it was from. We decided that it must be some kind of marketing gimmick and had a little laugh about it -- who would be so daft as to send a cardio watch to two pensioners? We thought no more about it, and it got tucked away in a drawer, but that little package would also prove to be key in what followed.

On the 8th August, two days after the end of the estimated delivery period, I contacted Selling Zone Ltd through Amazon’s web interface, to tell them what had happened. I have received no reply from them to date.

I had been getting more and more worried with every day that passed. Consulting the terms of Amazon’s A-to-z Guarantee, I learned that I would have to wait for a full week *after* the end of the original estimated delivery period before I could file a claim. So the earliest date that I could file a claim was the 13th of August, but in the event it was not until two days after that, the 15th, that I claimed, as I had to go to hospital on the 14th to be assessed for heart surgery.

On the 4th September the A-to-z Guarantee claim was denied, with this covering note:

“The seller provided us with ROYAL MAIL tracking XXXXXXXXXXXXX that shows a delivery with signature acceptance. Amazon.co.uk is not able to resolve shipping problems after delivery. We advise you to contact ROYAL MAIL as well as your local authorities if necessary in order to pursue this matter further.”

I went straight to the Royal Mail delivery tracking site at http://www.royalmail.com/track-trace and entered my tracking reference and to my surprise found out that:

“Your item with reference XXXXXXXXXXXXX was delivered from our WARRINGTON Delivery Office on 19/07/13 .”

19th July… THREE DAYS BEFORE I got the email from Amazon to say that the iPad had been dispatched. TEN DAYS BEFORE the start of the estimated delivery period and a full 18 DAYS BEFORE its end! What on earth was going on? We knew that we hadn’t received an iPad. Fully convinced that something was very wrong, we turned our suspicions the Post Office, and started on a round of frustrating and ultimately unrewarding phone calls to them.

In retrospect, the requirement in the Z-to-z Guarantee that we wait a week after the end of the estimated delivery date before we could file a claim proved to be the worst advice possible, because by the time that Amazon had come back to us with the verdict that they were going to wash their hands of the whole affair, the Post Office, whom we contacted next, told us that it was too late to find out what had happened because they didn’t keep records that long.

All that could be done, apparently, was for the *seller* to submit a claim to the Post Office for non-delivery. That claim would be assessed and … something. With heavy heart I once more got onto amazon.co.uk and used the web interface to contact Selling Zone, telling them what they needed to do. As you may be able to guess, I have to date heard nothing from them in response.

Today I got a phone call from my Aunt. My Uncle had been doing a bit of tidying, and had come across the package containing the exercise watch that had appeared in the post on the 19th of July. The merest glimmer of a suspicion popped into my Aunt’s head out of the blue, and she said to him, “Could you just check the delivery tracking reference against the one for the iPad?” The numbers were the same.

I’m sure this has been just an innocent error on the seller’s part. It’s probably just coincidence that everything -- the original delivery estimate, the dispatch note, Amazon’s guarantee requirements -- everything led us to wait and wait and wait before we could get the machinery into motion. Meanwhile that little package mouldered away in a drawer, forgotten, and it was only chance that alerted us to what had happened. I wonder if it has happened to anyone else?


UPDATE
I forgot about this one, but it rather takes the biscuit.

On the 4th September my Aunt received the following communication from Amazon:

"Hello [name], are you looking for something in our Tablets store? If so, you might be interested in these items."

There followed adverts and links for a bunch of iPads from various different sellers on Amazon Marketplace. It seems Amazon's automated systems had noted that hers was the delivery address on my iPad order, had matched this to her own Amazon account address, and concluded that she was ripe for a bit of advertising. Needless to say, she was speechless [actually that's the direct opposite of the truth, as her subsequent phone call to me proved beyond doubt; but I bet she *had* been speechless for a few seconds at least].

In asking for Congress' approval, is Obama actually backing down?

Having seen David Cameron brought to heel by the UK parliament, has the incalculably Machiavellian "big-O" spotted a way to avoid the consequences of his own rhetoric? Until today, Obama was clear that he needed the authorisation neither of the United Nations (which he wasn't going to get) nor even of the U.S. Congress; now he's voluntarily decided to ask Congress for permission.

If the left suddenly drops its clamour for retribution (the right doesn't seem to be all that keen in the first place) during the debate, we'll know it was a put-up job.

Who wants to intervene in Syria?

I heard the oddest thing on the news the other day. I assume it was the BBC, just because of the utter wrongness of it, but I suppose it might have been Sky News also.

Someone was being interviewed, and the interviewer did the usual leftist thing of casually castigating their enemies, referring to right-wing bloggers who were baying for an intervention in Syria. And that's what's odd: as far as I can see, it's the *left* who are all for intervention in Syria; the right seems to have no appetite at all for such adventurism.

Now I understand...

Now I understand why Skylon is such a clever idea. From the comments on this slashdot posting about SpaceX's progress in returning a first stage booster to its landing pad under powered flight, I learned that most of the fuel a rocket uses is to get itself moving sideways not upwards (a posting on xkcd, Orbital Speed, makes the situation crystal clear).

If you think about it then, Skylon can spend a lot longer inside the atmosphere, breathing in its oxygen and hydrogen propellant mixture and gaining speed, than if it was simply going straight up, although of course there will become a point (presumably rather less than orbital velocity?) where friction will negate any further gains from staying in-atmosphere.

Judging from Elon Musk's comments on the [lack of] competitiveness of Ariane, ESA might well be advised to spend all its lifter budget on subsidising Reaction Engines instead. :-)