One Down, Two More To Go

Blair to leave office on June 27

I hope I'm making my political stance very clear.

The Box Closes

Pandora has finally closed the hole in its check for U.S. users. Previously the "check" consisted of asking for the user's zip code, but now the service actually finds out the geographical location using the user's IP. Just as I suspected, the ban was put in place due to the recent increase of royalties paid by webcasters. For this reason I don't blame Pandora for turning its back on me. Unfortunately for them, I'm not particularly upset by the ban. AOL radio continues to stream XM satellite radio to my speaker, and the Hong Kong version of Yahoo! Music has recently opened up a streaming radio station. In short, the loss of Pandora is practically inconsequential to me because there are still many other services up and running. And of course there is the P2P option, which I will not hesitate returning to if the music industry pisses me off too much by driving every player out of the game.

Preempting A Bad Outcome

Obviously the war on Iraq is not going well. Even Bush and Howard have to admit that. However they are anything but ready to back down. Instead they want to send additional troops to the war-torn country, even though it is not clear whether that will help the situation. It would be unwise to lie to the public, such as telling them "the additional troops will ensure our victory in six months". If such a promise is not delivered in time, the public backlash will be quite unmanageable. So now we often hear the administrations preempting a bad outcome, essentially telling us "don't get your hopes up on this one". I find this strategy flawed. First lowering expectations does not make a bad outcome easier to accept, especially when "bad outcome" means more dead soldiers. The only difference is the level of disappointment, and at this point we are all too numb to be further disappointed. Secondly, telling people a plan is likely to fail begs the question of why implement the plan in the first place? I'll really like to hear the White House's logic on this.

Bad Regulations

I have discovered a class of regulations that does the opposite of what it is supposed to. Basically the lawmakers, with good intentions, creates a rule that cannot be enforced against those who are determined to break it. On the other hand, the rule inconveniences people who break the rule but not with malicious motives. Here is an example: banning photography in underground train stations. It is almost impossible to catch someone if they are trying hard to conceal their actions because every mobile phone is now a camera and provided the photographer is not posing like one, the only way to catch them is to look over everyone phone users' shoulder to confirm they are not breaking the law. On the other hand, there are many benign reasons to shoot away in a station, one of which being teenagers just like taking random pictures and posting them onto MySpace. These people are not doing anything wrong so they do not have to hide their actions, but it is them, not the potential terrorist attack planners, that get caught.

This problem isn't limited to laws -- DRM is a good example. Digital Rights Management is supposed to stop piracy but it never bothers the real pirates. Instead it is customers with legitimate copies that get inconvenienced.

The takeaway message of this post is that for any regulatory scheme to work as intended, you must be able to enforce it against those determined to break them. Failing to do that, the "bad guys" will remain free while the "good guys" will suffer rather than benefit from said regulation.

Cappuccino, No Sugar

Last week I decided to walk a few blocks from the uni to try out Starbuck's coffee. Until then I had always bought my coffee at the uni. It turned out their smallest cup is "tall" which is bigger than a medium and certainly more expensive. "No problem," I thought, "a bigger cup costs more." Because the uni cafes always added the sugar for me, I just took my cappuccino and left. I don't really mind sugarless coffee but the liquid in the Starbuck's cup tasted like hot coffee-flavoured water. It got better after I went through half the cup and it cooled down a bit, but overall it was not that great and the premium I paid for the Starbuck's brand was not really worth it. I was tempted to make a direct comparison to the uni coffee but in the spirit of fairness I had to compare apple to apple so this week I have been buying coffee at the uni without sugar. I will not go to Starbuck's again.

On the other hand, I don't think I'm in a hurry to return to sweetened coffee either. Latte has more milk so even without sugar it's easier to drink but cappuccino can be quite bitter at first. Nonetheless I found myself drawn to the supposedly unpleasant taste. Although my tongue tells me I shouldn't like the stuff I am able to pick up more of the "real" coffee flavour, previously masked by the sweet taste of sugar. The excitement generated by this discovery overpowered the tongue's reluctance for more bitter coffee, and is fuelled on by the thirst to find out even more. So far I have found out the same cup of coffee has very different tastes at various temperatures. The effect was not so pronounced before since it was sweet no matter how cold it got. I can't wait to try out other kinds of coffee and buy them at different shops. From now on, coffee will cease to be just another sweetened drink; it becomes a hobby, a field of study where I can have fun while learning.