jonathan.rawle.org

With all the bad press Google Street View has been getting recently, with people claiming it invades their privacy, and leaves their homes vulnerable to criminals, I was slightly surprised not to see any sections of the media blaming it for aiding vandals who attacked the home of unpopular RBS banker Sir Fred Goodwin.

What’s even more surprising is that the images of Sir Fred’s home are still available on Street View, unlike many images which have been removed at the request of homeowners or passers-by. (It was easy to find thanks to some newspapers which gave the name of his street, unlike the BBC and the police, which even gave the wrong area of Edinburgh for the address.)

Compare with photos in the media.

As much as I’m unhappy with the size of the pension Sir Fred is to receive, I can’t agree with this sort of criminal activity at all. I doubt the people who attacked his home are interested in economics. They are unlikely to be RBS shareholders or even disgruntled employees of the bank. Most likely, they are just thugs, using the news story as an excuse to commit vandalism. They might think they are outraged by top bankers’ remuneration, but as is so often the case with people who take “direct action”, they are actually far more of a problem for society than the people or organisations they attack. For a start, thanks to the vandals, even more taxpayers’ money will now be wasted providing police protection for Sir Fred and his homes. Even given Sir Fred’s much publicised income, I think the perpetrators should be made to pay for every penny of the damage, as is the only fit punishment for vandals. The sooner they are caught the better, otherwise how soon until they attack the wrong house – Google Street View to help them or not?

I was recently browsing SLR camera lenses on eBay, and noticed that there is a box providing detailed information about the item for sale. As well as more technical data, it provides important figures such as the physical size and weight of the lens: important if you are going to carry it around. Unfortunately, eBay UK sees fit only to display this information in imperial units: inches and ounces. Here is an example:

Key Features
Camera Type:	35 mm SLR
Lens Type:	Fixed Focal Length Lens
Focal Length:	50mm
Lens Max Aperture:	f/1.8
Min Aperture:	f/22
Focus Type:	Autofocus
Macro Lens:	Without Macro Lens
Mount:	Canon EF
Other Features
Closest Focusing Distance:	18 in
Picture Angle:	46 degrees
Attachment / Filter Size:	52 mm
Groups / Elements:	6 Elements in 5 Groups
Dimensions
Diameter:	2.7 in
Length:	1.6 in
Weight:	4.6 oz

Thankfully, the focal length and filter size are still given in millimetres. However, even the minimum focussing distance is in inches! While I have a vague notion of how long an inch is, ounces mean nothing to me. I searched in vain for a preference I could set somewhere to select metric units. So I decided to contact customer services to inquire about this feature. I received the following reply a day later:

I am sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused to you. First of all I would like to assure you that I am always here to assist you in the best possible way. Please note as off we eBay doesn’t provide any measurement converter (sic). Therefore, I recommend you try an online converter available on internet.

For your reference I have provided one online converter web site below:

www.onlineconversion.com

I thought the response was a little patronising. After all, it’s simple enough to convert between units. In fact, the easiest way is probably to Google 4.6oz in g. The response completely misses the point. The product information is there to make browsing and comparing items quicker, something that is lost if all the measurements must be put into a calculator. In that case, why have the information there at all? Potential buyers could instead go to the manufacturer’s website for specifications.

It isn’t that the people selling the lenses have chosen imperial units. When they add an item, they have to choose from a list of lenses for which the product information is pre-defined; inches, ounces and all. The fact that eBay only provides imperial units just shows that, despite the regional branding, eBay is still very much an American site. I doubt there is anywhere else in the world where most users would prefer weights to be in ounces. (I did try logging in to the French eBay site, and even there, it’s inches and ounces!)

I’m surprised that such a large company isn’t in touch with the rest of the world. I hope they realise their mistake, and give logged-in members a choice of units, which would apply to all item info boxes. Then I can’t wait to see the faces of American photographers when the focal length is in inches too. 1³¹/₃₂ inch lens for a 1³/₈ inch camera, anyone?

Until yesterday, I’d never heard of the person called J.P. Morgan, but then two references came along at once. Of course, I’d heard the names of financial companies such as JPMorgan Asset Management. But who was it named after?

Yesterday I was watching an old ’70s episode of Columbo, as I’m currently working my way through all the series about the scruffy detective. During the episode Any Old Port in a Storm, when they are eating in an expensive restaurant, one of the characters claims to quote J.P. Morgan when he tells Columbo that if he has to ask the price he can’t afford it. I’d never known where that commonly-used quote comes from. (Later research showed that there’s some doubt Morgan ever phrased it exactly like that.)

Later on in the same evening, I was reading an article about wireless power transmission in the Physics World magazine. This mentioned how Nikola Tesla made an early attempt at wireless power transmission at the turn of the 20th century. Tesla’s scheme involved building the Wardenclyffe Tower on Long Island, New York, which would transmit electricity all around the world. The project was financed by none other than J.P. Morgan. Unfortunately, Morgan eventually pulled the plug on the project, so to speak, after he realised that it would be impossible to bill people who received the electricity in this way. Giving away electricity for free was a price even J.P. Morgan couldn’t afford.

Wardenclyffe Tower was never completed and was eventually sold as scrap metal, but the brick building that was to form its base still survives today.

It has been widely reported that a leap second was added to clocks at midnight to prevent the time from drifting with respect to the Earth’s rotation. Big Ben, or more precisely the Great Clock at the Palace of Westminster, had to be adjusted in advance of the night, to ensure Big Ben chimed at the correct moment to ring in the New Year.

In order to measure this change for myself, I set my watch to the time signal on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday. Yesterday, they broadcast Big Ben’s chimes at 6pm on the same station, as they always do. Sure enough, the chime came a second late. The leap second had already been added! At midnight, the famous clock was broadcast on TV, and once again was a second behind my watch, although it was now my watch that was a second fast.

Unfortunately, little experiments such as this may not be possible in the future without visiting London. I was using analogue radio and television. The government plans to have switched off all analogue TV by 2012, and there are now plans afoot to do the same to FM radio in in the next decade or two. Unlike analogue broadcasts, which arrive almost instantaneously, processing and the way digital signals may “bounce around” before being decompressed at the receiver means that the received broadcast will lag behind its transmission. This is the reason the BBC dropped their famous clock idents from BBC1 television some years ago. Internet broadcasting lags even further behind, routinely by half a minute or more.

This delay in transmission will mean that anyone who relies on the televised Big Ben to mark the start of the New Year is likely to be celebrating slightly late. While some may say this doesn’t matter, what is the point of watching Big Ben at all, if it is not to hear the exact moment the New Year begins throughout the country? Why not record the programme and celebrate the New Year another night? Instead, for the accurate time, it will be necessary to use a clock set by the Radio Time Signal, or the clock on a computer set by Network Time Protocol.

So the only way to hear Big Ben to ring in the New Year will be to go to London. But even then, how accurate is it? Unless you’re standing right next to the tower, the sound of the bell will take a time to reach you. In fact, anyone who is a certain distance from Westminster, and who simultaneously listens to an analogue radio broadcast, can hear 13 chimes at midnight. Being just a kilometre from the tower means a delay of three seconds, and even standing at the base, there is almost a third of a second delay before you hear the chime! Analogue broadcasts have provided the only way of hearing the chimes at the time they sounded. In future, anyone who isn’t lucky enough to have access to the clock tower at the Palace of Westminster will have to make do with the their radio controlled watch or computer to ring in the New Year – and that just doesn’t seem quite the same!

I am actually against the expansion of air travel, including new runways at Stansted and Heathrow Airports. Yet I was furious today to read about the disruption caused to air travellers by protesters at Stansted.

People have the right to protest peacefully. But they do not and should not have the right to disrupt other people who are trying to go about their daily business. The protesters could stand outside the airport with banners and hand out leaflets to passengers explaining the dangers of climate change. But it’s really unfair to punish travellers in the way they did. Some of those travellers might only take a plane once every 10 years – hardly a big contribution to climate change – yet if that happened to coincide with the protests today, someone’s well-deserved break from work could be ruined. There was also the terrible case of the woman who was going to miss her father’s funeral in Ireland because of the protesters.

I actually think the protesters may have shot themselves in the foot. I saw no details in the media of their arguments or what message they were trying to get across. All the general public has seen is images of lots of people who have had their travel plans ruined. I think this only damages the cause of anyone concerned about climate change, as people are likely to be less symatheric towards it now.

I hope the protesters are suitably punished. They should be held personally liable for all the costs incurred due to the delays they caused, both to the airlines, and for all the passengers’ consequential losses. And they should all be banned from flying on any airline for life (as I bet many are hypocrites who still travel by air when it suits them).

Yet I don’t think the perennially incompetent BAA should be let of the hook too easily either. They claim it’s not possible to secure a site the size of Stansted. In that case, why are passengers subjected to restrictions on luggage, carrying liquids, having their shoes x-rayed, etc. when all the terrorists need to get airside is a pair of bolt cutters? Then again, given where BAA’s priorities seem to lie, I wouldn’t be surprised if they constructed a range of retail outlets by the perimeter fence ready for the next group of protesters.