Comment Thread for Dublin Integrated Transport System Articles

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A Cherrywood Luas to Shankill Walkway, Cycle Way (and Busway)

As the crow flies, Cherrywood Luas Station is 1200 meters (that is three quarters of a mile and a brisk 10 minute walk) from Saint Anne's National School in Shankill. However if you were to walk it the only way possible, it would be over three kilometers.

Not only this, but a major accident and emergency hospital, Saint Columcille’s in Loughlinstown is a mere 600 metres as the crow flies, from the terminus. That is a six minute walk  – but again the long way around is over three times that. This is illustrated on the right.

The problem is, of course, that the Shanganagh river valley is in the way and the only way to get to the other side, assuming you are not a crow, is via Wyattville bridge.

Paywall 2.0: Rationing Immediacy of Access to Drive Newspaper Subscriptions Rather Than Quantity

Here is my suggestion for those in the Newspaper industry mulling over new revenue models. Firstly forget about charging for News. It is a commodity. Try to make money off the ads surrounding the news. Analysis however is different. Some newspapers, such as the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal attempt to drive subscription revenue by rationing either the length or the quantity of free articles. However, there is another dimension that can be rationed, that I believe is more appropriate. That is immediacy of access.

It could work like this. Step 1. When a punter comes to a newspaper website and wishes to see an analysis piece, display a portion, say 25% of the article without asking for an email address. Step 2, if they wish to see the remainder, ask for an email address and display it. Step 3, if they wish to see another article, display the initial 25% but this time, when they ask to see the remainder, invite them to subscribe but tell them that they will receive an email link to the article for free, say five minutes later. Step 4, if they ask to see other articles in a defined period of time, repeat the process with ever lengthening time intervals. At some point, the user will decide that not waiting an hour or two for access is worth the price of the paper.

The beauty of this approach is that it overcomes the problem of newspapers hiding their light behind a bushel. The best advertising for the quality of the analysis in an article, is of course the article itself. The pay first, look at the quality later approach, is self defeating. A newspaper has to rely only on the quality of its brand (or a convoluted free trial period) to entice usage. With this approach, the article is always available to the user, albeit time delayed, so the user does not moan about paywalls, and gets to appreciate that quality analysis has a value.

A value that should be paid for.

Considering that most other models have not worked, it might be worth a shot.

Shane

How to Make All World Cup Matches Knock out While Still Guaranteeing a Minimum of Two Games to Each Country

Okay so the world cup has got to the interesting bit – the knock out stages and I have started watching. All the meaningless tedium and those nil – nil draws are over and every match is win or go home. Imagine if the World Cup could be like this right from the first match.

Well here is how it could be.

Step one, increase the number of teams to 40. The opening round then consists of 20 matches between these 40 teams. This gives us 20 winners who automatically qualify for the next round and 20 losers. The losers then play off in a “repechage” ( I borrowed the word from rowing). This consists of 10 matches between the first round losers. The winners of these matches go forward to the next round to give a total of 30 going through with 10 hoping for a wild card slot. There are two wild card slots required to bring the numbers in the next round up to 32.  One of these wildcard slots is reserved for the hosts should they need it. They simple take the slot if they lose either of their first two matches. In this way the hosts are guaranteed 3 matches. The remaining wild card slot (or 2 if the hosts do not need the benefit of it) goes to the first and second round losing team with the best record as determined by a formula.

A simple formula would be the number of points won by the team based on performances in normal time. IE, a country that goes into extra time twice in the first two matches would have two points. Goals scored would then be used as a tie breaker.

Naturally, if you lose your first match, you are more likely to face a strong team in the next round.

So what are the advantages. Well here is my cut.

1.       - An extra 8 countries in the world cup.

2.       - Total matches reduced from 79 to 61.

3.      -  Best case is only 6 matches required to win the tournament, down from 8.

And best of all, no draws. Every match has a winner – and the stakes are much higher. After the frist match, if you lose, you are most likely to be going home.

Shane

Apple Co Founder Solves Problem of Lack of MultiTasking and Poor Battery Life on I-Phone

No not Steve Jobs, the other one, Steve Wozniak, affectionately known as "Woz" To quote:-

WOZ: By the way, I solved the problem of battery life and [the lack of] multitasking on the iPhone.

Interviewer: Really?

Woz: Yeah. I just have two iPhones, so if the battery runs down on the first one, I can use the other. And if I'm talking on one, I can use the other one to look something up. You would not believe how much use I get out of that.

See

http://www.newsweek.com/id/235567

US Overtook Russia as Worlds Largest Gas Producer last Year

Two interesting articles on Shale Natural Gas which is a new method of extracting Gas from Shale rocks via process called "Fracking".

Apparently the US overtook Russia as the world's largest producer of Natural Gas and it promises to make the US energy self sufficient for the next 100 years.

Articles from The Economist and The Financial Times,

Imagine turning your Nokia Phone into a WIFI Router - For Free.

Sounds incredible, but that is what you can do with Joikuspot. (www.joikushop.com)

I just downloaded it, installed it in 2 minutes and had my laptop on the web straight away. There is a premium edition for 9 euros.

Strikes me that this is an excellent corporate solution for companies wondering what is the best way to give their employees laptops mobile internet access.

S

Mark Twain: "[You are the] scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link."

Letter from Mark Twain to an early w20th century Spammer trying to sell him medicine. (Think of those Viagra emails.)

Comes from here where the original is reporduced.

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/01/youre-idiot-of-33rd-degree.html

Nov. 20. 1905

J. H. Todd
1212 Webster St.
San Francisco, Cal.

Dear Sir,

Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link. It puzzles me to make out how the same hand could have constructed your letter and your advertisements. Puzzles fret me, puzzles annoy me, puzzles exasperate me; and always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the person who has puzzled me. A few moments from now my resentment will have faded and passed and I shall probably even be praying for you; but while there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poison by mistake, and enter swiftly into the damnation which you and all other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned and do so richly deserve.

Adieu, adieu, adieu!

Mark Twain

Ulysses has been "translated" into a comic

See link here

http://www.ulyssesseen.com/comic/us_comic_tel_0002.html

and good old "Plump Stately" below.

S

Can you guys arrange some printing for later today

Let me introduce Hayes's corollory to Murphy's law, which states that "The chances of the printer running out of ink are directly proportional to whether or not you print on the morning of the presentation."

This is based on O'Tooles corlolloray to Murphy's Law which states that

"The chances of the toast landing buttered side down are directly proportional to the cost of the carpet"

This then gives rise to the Buttered Cat theory of levitation. It comes from this. As we know a Cat always lands on its feet, and buttered toast always lands on the butter, so if you butter the back of a cat and threw it out the window, would the cat levitate just above the ground while the two forces battled it out.

Somewhere along the line, You also get Schrodingers Cat, but I am afraid that one is a bit beyond me.

Referneces (THere from Wikipedia so I suppose I will get an F, but anyway)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy's_law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttered_cat_paradox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_righting_reflex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat

S :-)

PS, I think I will edit the Wiki entry to bring in my O'Tooles Corollory.

You've Heard of Peak Oil - But What About Peak Rock and Roll Quality

I came across this article on the web here, and thought it was interesting in the light of Boy Bands, Simon Cowell and Jedward.

S

==========

Many rock purists and music snobs (myself included) often lament the quality of most modern pop/rock music.  "Music these days is so trite and derivative," they say.  "It's just been downhill since the 60's and 70's.  Those were the days."

A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine added fuel to the music snobbery fire with its "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list.  Anyone casually paging through the list would notice that the bulk of the list was comprised of songs from the 60's and 70's, just like the music snobs always say.

I, however, wasn't content with the casual analysis.  So I punched the list into Excel, crunched some numbers, and found an interesting parallel between the decline of rock music quality and, of all things, the decline in US oil discovery and production:

(Sources: Rolling Stone Magazine, US Department of Energy)

Analysis after the jump.  Drill Baby Drill!

First, a little theory.  The decline in U.S. oil production* is explained by the Hubbert Peak Theory, which states that "the amount of oil under the ground in any region is finite, therefore the rate of discovery which initially increases quickly must reach a maximum and decline."  Makes sense, right?  The same theory can apply to anything of a finite quantity that is discovered and quickly exploited with maximum effort.

Including, it would seem, rock & roll. I know, the RS 500 list is not without its faults, but it does allow for some attempt at quantifying a highly subjective and controversial topic and for plotting the number of "greatest songs" over time.  Notice that after the birth of rock & roll in the 1950's, the production of "great songs" peaked in the 60's, remained strong in the 70's, but drastically fell in the subsequent decades.  It would seem that, like oil, the supply of great musical ideas is finite. By the end of the 70's, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, the Motown greats, and other genre innovators quickly extracted the best their respective genres** had to offer, leaving little supply for future musicians.

The counterargument to all of this, of course, is that the RS 500 skews unfairly towards the earliest, most groundbreaking works of music and unfairly penalizes later creations for simply coming after other works.  For example, why was Green Day shut out of the list?  I could point to dozens of songs  on the RS 500 that are inferior to some of the classic tracks off of Dookie, almost all of which came from the 60's and 70's.  But even if you assume that the RS 500 functions more of an indicator of musical early-ness, the Hubbert Peak Theory still holds true.  A whole host of talented musicians set out exploring the vast uncharted territory of modern pop/rock music that was first made possible by the electric guitar and the standardization of the rhythm section.  The resulting works from this period (the 50's, 60's, and 70's) will forever stand out by virtue of their originality. Popular music** may never again see a period of innovation at a magnitude of its first explosion.

I don't think I'm being pessimistic about the outlook on pop/rock music or snobbish about my retro music tastes.  I think the same idea applies to other creative fields that follow a similar arc of rapid exploration followed by derivative works.  Assuming some constraints on the definition of the form, the amount of innovation that can be done within that form is finite. Most of it will come early and fast, then decline after the peak.  Impressionist paintings.  Star Wars movies.  I could go on.

Now, if only we could drill for some new reserves of pop music innovation.  Perhaps there's a new Motown hit machine waiting somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, waiting to be unleashed.  Let's get drilling.

I know there's plenty of room for arguing my points, so please sound off in the comments.

*I left off Alaska from the data set mostly to make the graphs line up better, but also because the "fixed supply" concepts holds better if you look solely at the lower 48 states and not the one with all the oil and all the hockey moms.

**Although the RS 500 list includes a smattering of rap/hip-hop, it's so deficient in that regard that i'm excluding that genre from this analysis.  I wonder, though, if a similar analysis could be conducted around that genre that shows the discovery/innovation explosion after hip hop's genesis in the late 1970's.

You've Heard of Peak Oil - Well What About the Peak Rock and Roll

There is a great blog article here that charts the relationship between the quality of Rock Music and US Peak Oil Production

Extract below

==========

I, however, wasn’t content with the casual analysis.  So I punched the list into Excel, crunched some numbers, and found an interesting parallel between the decline of rock music quality and, of all things, the decline in US oil discovery and production:

(Sources: Rolling Stone Magazine, US Department of Energy)

Analysis after the jump.  Drill Baby Drill!

First, a little theory.  The decline in U.S. oil production* is explained by the Hubbert Peak Theory, which states that “the amount of oil under the ground in any region is finite, therefore the rate of discovery which initially increases quickly must reach a maximum and decline.”  Makes sense, right?  The same theory can apply to anything of a finite quantity that is discovered and quickly exploited with maximum effort.

Darkness on the edge of town....

HI Ian,

I enjoyed your piece on Darkness on the Edge of Town.

It is my favourite album and one that I have bought many times. The LP when it first came out. When this was scratched, the tape. When this was lent to someone who never gave it back, the CD. And when this was stolen from my car the week before I ripped my entire collection onto I-Tunes ... I refused to buy it for the fourth time as a download. I am now trying to find a mate who will lend it to me so that I can rip it. I feel that buying it three times already gives me a license to rip it from a friend's CD. 

And once I rip it, I am going to delete Adam Raised a Cain. 

I think it is the best album of all time, but it also has the worst song ever committed to vinyl by anyone ever in the Shape of Adam Raiesd A Cain.

Any chance you could lend me your CD or mail me over the songs. :-)

Shane

--
Shane Hayes
E:    sjkhayes@gmail.com
T:    +353 86 232 2360

Google's Acquisition Strategy

Google CEO Eric Schmidt explains their approach to strategic acquisitions. (Sergey is Google Co Founder Sergey Brin)

Sergey was surfing on the Web one day and came across what became Google Earth. He came in my office and said 'I bought them.' I said, 'For what price?' It was a small number so I said OK."

A new fiction generator

Ever had trouble coming up with a plot for a novel, well never fear, help is at hand.

Inroducing the Electro Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator.

See here for original site and here  for an automatic version. The basic idea is below.

S

--

Update: 28 Aug.

Got a full refund today.

S

============

And while I am on the subject of customer service.

I need to warn people about Echosign.com.

They provide a truly excellent service, which I used to recommend heartily, but I have had an extraordinary Customer Service experience.

I signed up, they sent two invoices by email, and I forgot about it. I did not have need of the service so I would have cancelled it if I had been receiving invoices. Eventually six months later, I was doing my accounts and spotted the recurring billing. I sent them the note below asking them to sort it out by a) cancelling my subscription and b) refunding the charges they had not invoiced for.

8 Days later, and no action.

And, it is impossible to cancel your account via their website.

And to think I recommended them to loads of people.

Hi, Can you please cancel my account immediately. I notice that I have not received an invoice from you since the 3rd of February but you have continued to merrily bill me away. If I had received invoices from you I would have cancelled my account a long time ago. You will see from the usage that I have not used it this year at all. I have recommended your service to a number of people, in fact I have raved about it to people. Right now I do not have a need for the servcie, and I am very dissappointed at the customer service I am receiving from you. I would be greatful therefore if you could not only cancel my account forthwith, but if you could refund the debits on my credit card after the last invoice received on Feb 3. I would also recommend that you put an unsubscribe button on your website. Many thanks SHane S

Dell's Chat Support

I had my first interaction with Chat based tech support and I think itis wonderful. None of that cheesy "how are you" and "getting to know you" stuff, coupled with repeating yourself to someone whose native language is not English. Instead, crystal clear communication and all over in 10 minutes. Well it would have been 10 minutes except they kept asking me if there was anything else they could fix and is there anyway the service could have been better.

They also scheduled an engineer to call tomorrow to fix it.

Incidentally, I held off getting the keys on my keyboard fixed for over a year because I could not bear the thought of a half hour tech support conversatoin.

Well done Dell.

S

The Irish Internet Association and Tiny Grey Type

It seems increible, but the Irish Internet Association si touting its conference via an email wiht 6.5 point mid grey type. The impression this gives, is that the IIA does not know the first thing about the internet. I sent them some feedback, and maybe it is a technical glitch, but still, a test mailing might have been an idea.

Unfortunately, pasting does not work, so I cannot show it.

S

Warren Buffett blew a quarter of a billion on Irish bank shares last year

Guess what,

Warren Buffett blew a quarter of a billion on Irish bank shares last year.

This quote is buried in the piece below.

“In 2008, he purchased $244 million worth of shares in two Irish banks, leaving him with an 89% loss at year's end”

But having said that, he thinks banks are good buys right now.

See this link.

http://www.fool.com/investing/dividends-income/2009/03/11/buffett-likes-banks.aspx

S

Bring Back Alan Dukes to Lead A Government of National Unity - Again

Sir/Madam,

The concept of a government of national unity has been floated in various quarters, however, there is related question that needs to be answered before this idea can gain real traction. That is, “who should lead this Government of National Unity. To me, the answer is obvious. We should put the same person in charge as was in charge of our Previous Government of national Unity. I refer of course to Alan Dukes.

For those not familiar with the 1980s, Alan Dukes was the Fine Gael leader who implemented the Tallaght Strategy whereby Fine Gael would support the Fianna Fail government as it implemented unpopular measures required to stabilise the economy, and indeed, lay the foundations for future prosperity.

So here is the plan. Fine Gael put Alan Dukes on the ticket for the Dublin South by-election. Enda Kenny moves aside and becomes Fine Gael’s prospective Presidential Election candidate while Dukes takes over as leader. The current president then calls for a government of national unity.

Now if we could only get Ray McSharry to run in the Dublin Central by-election and take the role of Minister for Finance...

Shane Hayes
Shankill
Co. Dublin