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lpress (707742) writes “At a recent conference, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts rationalized charging Netflix to deliver content by comparing Comcast to the Post Office, saying that Netflix pays to mail DVDs to its customers but now expects to be able to deliver the same content over the internet for free. He forgot to mention that the Post Office does not charge recipients for those DVDs. The underlying issue in this debate is who will invest in the Internet infrastructure that we badly need? Comcast has a disincentive to invest because, if things bog down, people will blame content providers like Netflix and the ISP will be able to charge the content provider for adequate service. If ISPs have insufficient incentive to invest in infrastructure, who will? Google? Telephone companies? Government (at all levels)? Premises owners?”
Back in early March, I posted comic #1337, Hack, about a wayward spacecraft. ISEE-3/ICE was returning to fly past Earth after many decades of wandering through space. It was still operational, and could potentially be sent on a new mission, but NASA no longer had the equipment to talk to it—and announced that reconstructing the equipment would be too difficult and expensive.
ISEE-3 is just a machine, but it’s a machine we sent on an incredible journey; to have it return home to find our door closed seemed sad to me. In my comic, I imagined a group of internet space enthusiasts banding together to find a way to take control of the probe—although I figured this was just a hopeful fantasy.
I wasn’t the only one who liked the idea of “rescuing” ISEE-3. In April, Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowling put up a crowdfunding project on RocketHub to try to learn how the lost communications systems worked, reconstruct working versions of them, obtain use of a powerful enough antenna, and commandeer the spacecraft. It seemed like an awfully long shot, but I contributed anyway.
The Firebolt shifter is all you really need with the new XTR Di2 Synchronized Shift system.
I didn’t think that I would like the XTR Di2 Synchro Shift option, in which the system chooses when to shift the front and rear derailleurs based entirely on your shifting inputs only from the right shifter. The idea of both derailleurs responding to a single command and the rider only indicating if he or she wanted a lower or higher gear seemed anathema to me; I thought that I would always want to control which combinations of front and rear gears I was in.
But I loved it. The system analyzes the positions of the front and rear derailleurs and automatically operates the front shift to position the chain in the best chain line and hence most energy-efficient gear with the smallest jumps between gears.
Synchro’s gee-whiz factor is extremely high; I loved just watching the derailleurs move when it performed double shifts. This goes well beyond the admittedly-slick front derailleur auto-trim that is also nice to watch work on road Di2 systems. (http://ift.tt/1o5CwUv) When the rear derailleur reaches certain points in the rear cassette, and those points are different depending on if it is upshifting or downshifting, the front derailleur will shift, and the rear derailleur will backtrack one cog position. Synchro Shift works on both 2 X 11 and 3 X 11 systems. If you like the Synchro Shift well enough to forgo the front shifter entirely, then you end up with the same total system weight for the M9050 Di2 system as for the cable-actuated M9000 system.
Another cool Di2 feature is that you can use a short cage rear derailleur and never worry about tearing it off in a big-to-big cross gear when shifting with too little blood going to your brain. Instead, you can keep that short derailleur and chain and program the system to never shift to a gear that the chain is not long enough to handle.
You can do some programming of the system by means of a smart phone as well as with the plug-in E-tube software. And you can switch it from Manual to Synchro with the push of a button or with the smart phone or E-tube to a customized Synchro shifting order or between either one of two Synchro Shift standard options.
The feel of the shift is also a revelation. You first of all get a real click similar to the feel of a cable-shift system, not the vague feel of road Di2 that is indistinguishable through thick gloves. Secondly, the short throw and ergonomic rotation with your thumb of the curved swing of the lever is nice. Thirdly, you get the security of having a full wrap of your thumb around the grip at all times, including while actually performing a shift of any gear, front or rear.
In these days of so many possible variations of front derailleurs based on chainring count, cable-pull direction, high or low mount, clamp diameter or direct mount options, to have a single front derailleur that handles two or three chainrings and mounts on a band clamp or on an E-type or D-type direct mount is truly amazing. And certainly it is something that retailers and distributors stocking these expensive parts will also appreciate.
I never got used to the digital status display on a single short ride, but over time, I can imagine becoming attached to that as well. This would be especially true if you had the integrated Fox suspension system and could see visually whether you were in Climb or Descend mode.
The option of having Fox electronic front and rear suspension lockouts integrated into the same shifters and running off of the same battery as the Di2 system is an amazing feature on rapidly-changing technical trails. The two systems are completely cross-compatible, even to the point that you can use Shimano’s E-tube software to also program the Fox suspension system. The battery life calculator figures the battery life based on both systems combined (and apparently it doesn’t shorten the battery life much and will still last on the order of months.
All in all, the XTR Di2 goes well beyond what road Di2 did in revolutionizing rider control of gearing and now of suspension as well.
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My obit of Malcolm Glazer, owner of both the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the NFL and Manchester United of the EPL, is in today’s Guardian. It’s a joint effort with Gavin McOwan, with his handling the relationship with United and my approaching it from the US and business side. You can link to it here.
What’s interesting, in the use of leveraged buyout in English football, is the fact that the NFL, even 20 years ago when Glazer bought the Bucs, would not allow such tactics to be used. The price was ‘only’ $192 million (a record, as I said, at the time) and the Glazers tried to raise just under a third of it with the sale of Houlihans from one company they owned to another. But Houlihans stock holders would not stand for that.
United’s stockholders had no such ability, or indeed desire, to halt Glazer. His purchases of shares were driving the price up, which of course provided him with his safety net should he not wind up buying the team: his profits would pay off his lenders.
One thing cut from the piece was my original lede, which referred to ‘knee-jerk’ anti-Americanism in the response of United fans. Like London itself, English football has been purchased, bit by bit, by foreigners, starting with Fayed, moving through debt-ridden Icelanders and Norwegians, and including all sorts of other super-rich entrepreneurs. But like complaints about Americans calling football by the English term, ‘soccer’, the Glazers, and to be fair their methods, hit a nerve.
But in reality the fans basked in success, and went along at MUFC with the same kind of rip-offs that exist across football: the rising prices of tickets, the team shirt scams, whatever, because that’s what fans do, and the Glazers were smart renough to keep Alec Ferguson, the greatest manager of his generation, in place and get another five titles. As Gavin notes, with lack of such success last year, the axe fell on David Moyes immediately, and if there is no return to Ferguson-like prowress, the Glazers will start to feel the heat.
But that, of course, is nothing to do really with debt service. In fact, English clubs have always been owned by men who made profit off the backs of the fans, and pace Gary Imlach, in the old days off the backs of the players as well, and kept it for themselves. There are now those who will spend without thought for profit, turning the EPL into their own fantasy league, but the fans don’t mind that. There are those who do things like try to change a team’s name or colours, and with justification the fans hate that.
I do not admire the leveraged buyout, nor its use in football. But the Glazers simply used a more advanced version of what football’s owners have done since clubs turned into businesses with owners. Fans like to pretend they are not, but that’s what they are. They are often just owned badly, which is why English clubs go bankrupt, and why EPL teams were such an undervalued asset in the first place. It has always been a different game for those in the boxes and those in the terraces, and all-seater stadia haven’t changed that.
As I said on the World Service last night, Malcolm Glazer’s legacy here will be that leveraged buyout. I should have added it ought to be the lifting of the curtain covering the distance between the business of football and its fans.
Old Wives Well would once have stood on open moors, but it now hidden in the woods a short distance from the roadside. The name ‘Old Wife’ may imply a prehistoric origin to the site, a Roman Road also runs nearby.
The words “NATTIE FONTEIN” are carved into the well, and there are many suggestions as to its meaning, the most commonly quoted is a corruption of ‘Fons Natalis’ a celtic water nymph. The site clearly still carries meaning for some as there ribbons in the trees all around, making this a Clootie well. Whatever your opinion the site certainly has a lot of history, even if its true origins are unclear.
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An anonymous reader writes “Computer science professor Daniel Lemire explains why spreadsheets shouldn’t be used for important work, especially where dedicated software could do a better job. His post comes in response to evaluations of a new economics tome by Thomas Piketty, a book that is likely to be influential for years to come. Lemire writes, ‘Unfortunately, like too many people, Piketty used
spreadsheets speadsheets instead of writing sane software. On the plus side, he published his code on the negative side, it appears that Piketty’s code contains mistakes, fudging and other problems. … Simply put, spreadsheets are good for quick and dirty work, but they are not designed for serious and reliable work. … Spreadsheets make code review difficult. The code is hidden away in dozens if not hundreds of little cells If you are not reviewing your code carefully and if you make it difficult for others to review it, how do expect it to be reliable?'”
