Pedestrian crossings in Sweden / On icecubes / On software and systems / On…

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries. Rene Descartes

Pedestrian crossings in Sweden

The Swedes have made a study and found out that it is twice more dangerous to cross the street using the the pedestrian crossing ("zebra") than elsewhere. They concluded that "zebras" give pedestrians false feeling of security, as the car drivers do not really give a damn about "zebras". So, the Swedes have decided to remove pedestrian crossing. Clever. What next? I remember that a study showed that ABS-brakes and automatic stability systems cause drivers take additional risk and thus get in more accidents. Ban them too! I also think airbags should be banned - they give drivers a false feeling of immortality.

On icecubes

Whenever I order a drink or just a glass of water in USA, I get it with ice-cubes. I understand, that ice is cheaper and selling it instead of Coca-cola increases profits, but I do not understand service ice with water, at least not in the winter. Tapwater is cold enough without ice and ice just makes drinking harder. It may be a historical relic: back in 1800s ice was a luxury item and getting it with water meant that the drinker was well-off, it was a status issue. Now that anyone can have any amount of ice (and cold), there is no need to show off.

On software and systems

One often reads that software industry does this, develops that way, is booming, is failing, or whatever. I think looking at and talking about just SW is really shortsighted. One must always look at systems at hole, especially at the value the systems provide, and how the system delivers the value, and how delivering the value benefits different stake-holders (users, producers, etc). For example, iPod contains SW, but nobody really cares of the SW. Also, Google runs some SW on some HW, but they provide value by letting us search information. Also, mobile phones have SW (lots of it, I think), but even I do not really care about the SW. I just want to make calls, keep track of contacts, get woken up in the morning, listen to music, etc. A good systems architect does not have SW fetish.

On nationalism

It seems, that those who are overly proud of their nationality, do not have anything else to be proud of. If one's life is miserably, one does not have any joy of achievement, one does not feel important, then being proud of one's country/nationality is a way of escaping. And from excessive nationalism there is all too short a jump to supporting wars. Thus, one of the best ways is to arrange society in a way, which allows all citizens peaceful ways of feeling proud. If everything else fails, supporting team sports is a good way of keeping nationalism at bay - or is it?

New pinball

MIT student center has a new pinball machine: The Sopranos. I played it today. It is rather entertaining, some loops are extremely fast and the ball comes back almost too fast. One has to concentrate or else the ball will be lost. The main thing to do is to crack the safe by shooting it, but since the safe is in the middle of the board, hitting it directly will send the ball back and out. It got 45 millions, free game limit was 50.

Ben Harper scared the sissies

Ben Harper's new record was not released because his record company is full of spineless sissies. They think that his lyrics are not suitable for US citizens to hear. Listen to the Black Rain and decide for yourself. (I got this via Circulus Vitiosus, a new rising blog.)

Moving UN away from New York

In the weekend edition of International Herald Tribune someone proposed moving UN away from New York. He claimed that selling the current plot of land would yield enough money to build a brand new UN-city with embassies, shops, schools, etc, in Montreal, Canada. I like the idea. It would also guarantee, that all head of states could visit UN, for the Canadians are less paranoid that the Americans.

No jet lag - rambling

I have no jet lag. I slept more than 12 hours, waking only at 11am today. Not bad. Now I have no excuse for not writing my thesis. Except that I must visit the local Chinese restaurant for my combined breakfast and lunch, get some money to pay my tuition and run some errands. Then I will stay in some library at MIT - this cave is too dark, cold, and, well, dirty for humans to work in. Yes, I will need to clean up before she arrives, but there is still some time.
By the way, we got again 5 out of 5 from the last Systems Architecting homework. It is such a pleasure to work with Bill and Wilfried. Kind of pity that we do not have any more HW to do - I think I have to find other things to work on with them later.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs December 2005".