SiC – David Sidwell

Funny how working on IT projects makes you appreciate how important design is in the real world.

Take today. We’ve got a new supermarket, just opened over the last few weeks.

They, like most, are really pushing the No Plastic Bags line. And more power to them too. It’s a good thing.

But there’s a small hiccup. For the person serving you – and packing the bags – at the Express counter, they have a metal frame to hold the plastic bag whilst it’s being packed.

For the canvas reusable bags, there’s no such device. So the attendant is forced to use the nearest flat area, right beside the cash register thing.

Unfortunately, that flat area also has the outlet hole for the printed sales dockets! So bang, the dockets get mangled up and may even cause a stoppage of the register. Oops.

Maybe it’s a bit harsh to say it was designed without talking to end users. But it seems clear they didn’t take into account such ‘obvious’ usage patterns as re-usable bags. Which they themselves sell and encourage us to use.

I don’t suffer fools. I am a surgeon of cynics. I cut dumb DNA.

Julianne Moore is one actor whose work I admire greatly. She has a wide and varied portfolio and is not afraid of challenging roles. Here’s just a few

The wholesome (?) adult movie star – and caring Mom – in Boogie Nights.
One of the three female leads in the complex and moving The Hours.
The “other woman” in the movie adoption of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair
The “second wife” in the excellent 3 hour ensemble piece Magnolia

Julianne is very good at the strong female leads. Yet her characters have an inner strength and usually don’t run around ranting, raving and throwing things – and people – around. It’s a tribute to her acting that we can sense the power and control without it being spelled out in big slabs. She’s subtle, refined and very talented.

Woo hoo! The Age, Green Guide, Livewire section. A piece, by me, on NASA’s uber-cool World Wind software.

Or perhaps that should read over-selling. Either way, I’ve noticed a recent, semi-subliminal message from Telstra. The mantra they are getting us to chant is “I need really fast broadband, 4 to 6 megabits. Otherwise I won’t be able to watch new things, like TV, over the Internet”

Given that the fastest home ADSL connection is currently ‘only’ 1.5 megabits, it’s a bit of a jump to 6. And not cheap either.

But I’m now starting to:

1. question their assumptions, and
2. question their motives.

Seems like they are basing this 4 to 6 figure on using MPEG-2 technology; as currently used in DVDs and Digital TV.

But, but, but. Why MPEG-2? What about the more modern MPEG-4? This would seem to be the way of the future; scheduled to be part of the DVD follow-on products like Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

I can speak from my own tests with MPEG-4 that a 50 minute digital TV show can be compressed to 440 MB (Megabyte). This is standard definition (DVD quality) picture. Yes, the picture looks just like a DVD.

Everyone I’ve shown it to cannot pick the difference between in image quality between this MPEG-4 file and DVD.

If you work it out, my MPEG4’s are 8.8 megabyte per minute. Even with timing and protocol overheard, that’s nowhere near the “4 to 6 megabits per second“.

My media player reports a bit rate (total) of 1226 k Bits/sec for this file. My ADSL link is about 1500 k Bits/sec.

Therefore: I could probably stream this MPEG-4 file over current ADSL 1.5 megabit link (!)

Also, these are open source codecs (XviD) with open (public) compression matrices. Maybe proprietary systems can achieve even greater MPEG-4 quality at lower rates and therefore needing less speed lines.

So, back to their possible motives for this apparent up-selling. Wouldn’t be to take advantage of consumer ignorance and charge more money for the 4 to 6 megabit links? Surely not. No way.

To quote from today’s Age, Livewire section in the Green Guide: “Stimulate your movie-making muse with the vagaries of the weather, writes David Sidwell.”

Hey that’s me. And here it is