Prompted by Paradice, a few words about electronic voting or voting on the internet.

The conversation started about having broadband available for everyone and everywhere. In my opinion, this would enable government to serve it’s citizens online. Governing functions serving more effectively, efficiently and perhaps, exclusively online. We all know that enabling users to self service themselves through online resources is a huge money saver. That is why your utility companies, ISPs and banks are enabling the online services. Not because they want to serve you better, but because they need to save money. So do the governments. The issue of having a broadband everywhere is a neccessity anyway, the issue is just the timeline – to have it now or later. In the middleof a global recession, now is a better alternative than later.

This led into myself suggesting that voting could be done online. This has been trialled in Finland and the results were less than encouraging. Nevertheless, it can be done, should be done and again, the question is just about doing it now or later. Surely a working online voting system would be better than the Afgan ink in the thumb way. Or the disaster of the US holepunch cards system. Or the EU parliament system, in which I myself voted twice (in the country of residency as well as the country of nationality).  The computer based system used in the US was doomed in 2006 by a Finnish computer expert, stating that effectively, the system was made to enable tampering with.

Having said all that, in order to be able to vote online, the existing access to internet for all is not nearly enough. The system in place must be tamper-proof. Also, a strong mechanism for authentication must be in place already. Finland has this. My online bank authentication enables me to a whole array of services, not just my banking. I can subscribe to magazines, broadband, receive my post electronically, change my name and a whole lot of other government and private services. And yes, vote.

But back to England, there is still a long way to go, I just got my first checkbook from my bank, by post. I have yet to receive my bank accont details, online banking details or anything of that sort. I was in the bank with my two forms of ID, recent utility bill and all that almost a month ago. As in so many services, there has to be a strong base to build on, in order to enable the successful building of additional services. I would not advice the electronic voting in the commonwealth any time soon. I would be surprised if I had to vote via pen and paper in Finland – ever again.

In Finland, it’s the government.

First, it was banned inside public buildings and work. Then it was banned outside, in bus-stops and inside restaurants. Advertising cigarettes is absolutely illegal and has been since forever. The new development is heading for an absolute ban of selling cigarettes. Supposedly it will go through some stages, first stripping the brands from the packets, leaving just a text of the brand on an all white-packet. The effects of such a ban can be seen in the selling of snuff, which is still available in Sweden and from which the Finns get theirs regularly and deal it under the counter in several places. It is out of sight and out of mind, but not out of reach. It might very well be that the cigarettes will suffer similar fate. The government will miss out on the tax revenues, but they can do the maths. The tax revenue pales in the face of the cost of treating the symptoms.

Have you seen this sign?

15% of the population are smokers in Finland. Out of those, most agree that making them stop is a genuinely good thing. There are those who dislike the patronizing, but to be honest, some nudging is needed. Today’s society is based on the gentle guidance of those who are wiser. A government acting against the citizens would never ban cigarettes. Finland, like many other European countries, has a substantial portion of the population reaching retirement age while the recession has wrecked the pension funds. Financially, in the short term, it would be wiser to just let go of the booze and cigs taxes and deny healthcare for those opting to puff or quaff.

Finns however, do care about the citizens and are taking the route that they know is the right way to go, no matter how hard it is. Just like the superfast-broadband-for-everyone law, the Finns are ploughing the way. Just like after the winter war, they are doing what needs to be done, not because it is easy, but because it is necessary. I think it is all because of the location. It must beneficial to exist in between Sweden and Russia. Looking right, where the Swedes are constantly doing everything West, one can seek for inspiration in handling the policies.   Peeking in the east though, where the Russians are always doing things wrong, is a sobering example of what not to do.

Lenovo U350

Having once spent a better part of the year to research this issue, I can now tell with utmost confidence. The very short answer would be that I do not know. The laptop market has a very vivid life to it and all you can tell for certain is, that you do not know. Do a bit of research and remember that the glove has to fit the wearer. Basically, there are three measuring sticks one normally uses when bying products: price, availability, quality

In laptops however, the yardsticks that they are made by are: weight and size, price and performance

Which are somewhat different from the yardsticks the consumer uses

1. Recommendations by friends or trusty experts or stores
2. Colour of the laptop, as well as the overall esthetic appeal
3. Price, sticker price or monthly, for however many months

And what one should look is

1. Pennies per day, how much does a day of this thrill cost. The laptop will be old after six months and obsolete after 18 months. It will last 36 months with 75% chance, but it will not be any fun.
2. Fitting the role, is this really what you want. Have you really seen it? Fiddled the keys? As everyone who ever bought a car knows, this is an important factor and you cannot read it in the brochures.
3. Headache factor, how well it does its job, without breaking down. How easy it is to get fixed, when something happens.

Just to make it even more interesting, I can guarantee that there is no way for a consumer to get what they want to have, need for their use or the exact perfect fit for their purpose.

Perfect pitch

I have listened to endless numbers of pitches. In the first hundred or so, I was just tagging along. The next hundred taught me what to do, but more importantly, what NOT to do.  There have been some after that too. To help one cope and make notes, I have made some crude and cruel categories to place the pitches, I am subjected to.  Make no mistake, I have never believed that an agreed meeting is a permission to waste my time. It is an opportunity, but I can and will end it if there seems to be little or no point in going through it.
The “Newbies”. Haven’t done their homework, thus know nothing of you and barely anything of the company. They have no slides or business cards. Makes you point them at the competitor’s conference room. Why should you be the only one wasting your time?
The “Just pitching” salesman who has done the pitch too many times. Starting when the decision maker is not there, having conversations with 12 people and pitching to the lecture hall with three. Not engaging. Makes you schedule for another meet, after six months.

The “Inventor” who only sees what he believes (that the product is great) and is not there to find out your needs, but to enquire if you are a believer. Makes you want to believe.

The “This is going to be HUGE” people, with no budget, an oral OK from an angel and no real idea to make what they are selling, real. Makes you want to make them pay for their own lattes.

The “We would like” company. Sound idea, solid business plan, working processes and funded by their existing but small sales. They would like to expand, would like to partner with you and would like you to tell them how you would like to do it. Makes you want to say yes, and take them for all they have got.

The truly mad. Sometimes bullies just want to come and pitch their (usually mad) idea and being bullies in the school, try to bully you into buying it. It must work, as there are some of those. Makes you hope that there would be a panic button in the conference room.

Finally, someone in a middle management of a Telco, whom  I respect greatly stated that the software salesmen are crap in finding out your need, yet rather talk about features. Hardware salesmen know that the features are secondary.

Today marks the day when technology came to life. When the masses used technology intuitively.  When Ubique art installation saw the light of day. I cannot put to words the excitement I felt, when walking in the exhibition. Going in through a dark path, lit by surrounding tall plastic grass, that made sounds. It reacted to me. I walked in (and out and in and out), absolutely amazed, laughing and properly chirping away. I have been in many, many art exhibitions and nothing, absolutely nothing like this has ever caught me before.

I am not going to tell you what it feels like to go through an exhibition, wondering the pure genious of the artist in so many ways. The way they grabbed the social media, the coding, the internet, the lights and sounds, the sights and displays. How they use and involve you, the visitor, to create a lot of the art. I am just going to ask, have you ever driven a car and positively loved the engineer, realizing that you are just starting to understand the genius behind the creation? Imagine when you can see the code that makes the Matrix, yet still see a beautiful woman? Laying on your back in the grass, staring at the clouds in the sky as they begin change, to resemble, well, you.

I took a few pictures before I was told off as apparently it was not allowed. Come to think of it, taking pictures from this art makes no sense, there is no way to catch it in a frame. They remain in my (private) photo-album, to remind me of this day for days to come. For ten years, ever since this one trip to Amsterdam, I have been trying to find a better way to spend €3,50. Now I am on the prowl for a better way to spend £5,00

Digital design sensations, definetely

This discussion is so old that it can be viewed as an evolution of a discussion topic.

First, there came the bytes versus bits discussion, why is the download never more than 120, when it should be 1024? Then the 1 Mbps was too slow anyway, as there was 100 Mbps between the home computers. The ISPs have educated the users ever since, and the defence speeches have include all the OSI layers.

In today’s internet, the education is not necessary, as there are no explanations. When ordering a connection at the speed of light through a fiber optic cable and getting the normal cable modem, there is something wrong. There is no fiber all the way to your home, only to the nearest connection point. While that is acceptable, where is the 50 Mbps speed through this cable, or 24 Mbps through the ADSL line? 54 Mbps through WLAN and 7 Mbps through my mobile Internet. They have never, ever been that fast. They will never be that fast, it is impossible. The technology cannot deliver what the marketing is promising. We can take the ADSL-modem to the lab and freeze it to absolute zero, but we cannot download a file 24 Megabits per second. We can launch the WLAN-modem to space, but we cannot download a file through the Wi-Fi 54 Megabits per second.

Since the government has entered the speed promising market, the game has changed. When the government is promising a certain speed for everyone by certain date, it does so in a law. Since there is now a law, not a marketing copy, there is a real need to actually deliver that speed.

Only now are we beginning to see some ad-free, no-nonsense services to find out what your speed is. Choose what you were promised, now click here to see what are you getting web pages. Click and go solutions.  Now we know that what is advertised is not what is delivered. All reasons aside, what are we going to do about it?

I had to check the calendar, to make sure it wasn’t the 1st of April.  I am quite fond of the services of Google normally, but there is always that tiny voice at the back of my head, saying something about global domination being bad. Having a significant portion of the traffic on the internet already, hoarding more emails than any other and basically dictating what is (found) on the Internet and what is not. This is all fun and games when compared to the newest thing, Google public DNS.

This effectively not only logs all your activities in the internet, it also gives Google a power to decide what page opens, when you go to any site. Now this is actually bad. This is truly not good in the sense that the fun and games are now over.

Helsinki is about to get one of the greenest data centres in the world. One of the old wartime caves has been converted to a data centre. The heat from the servers is utilized to heat houses. In exchange for the heat, Helsingin energia will provide cooling in the cave.

Now why is this not done everywhere in the world? I don’t know for sure, but I would bet that the infrastructure is not in place everywhere. So what do the Finns have, that might be lacking elsewhere?

1. A lot of tunnels, solid bedrock and some old bomb shelters to use for the servers, that used to hide  VIPs from a neighbouring superpower’s massive bomb raids?
2. A city-wide central heating system? District heating is a completely normal form of heating in Finland, but Finland is the leading country in the world using this. Basically consisting off a network of hot water, running in a mesh of super-insulated pipes, dug under the streets. The buildings are connected to this network and the water in the sitting room radiators is heated in a central heating facility. This has won several awards for the Finns, Helsinki and Helsingin Energia.
3. A central cooling system to cool the data centre. The heat is exchanged for the cool air. The central cooling system is incredibly efficient and environmentally friendly. It gets the cold from various sources that would otherwise be wasted. One of the biggest is the sea. Seawater can be used as the main cooler for 6 months of the year (winter). During the summer, the heat from the (now idling) heat pumps and other sources can be used.

All in all, an incredibly simple and clever system. Most of the documentation is encrypted in Finnish, but there is some boasting available in English, here.

Just to stop you saying that. If you are reading this post, you are one of the privileged ones on this planet. Less than 20% of the world population has the opportunity to get online ever and less than 10% can use it in a not-so-vitally-important meaning as to update their Facebook status.

Finland is one of the keenest to get everyone in the country on broadband (by 2010). It required a law (with much opposition) to make it happen. Broadband as a term is very loose, and can mean anything starting from the US standard, 200 kbps, in whichever direction.

To visualise the broadband penetration in the world, here is a handy map.

Intrernet users around the world