The trials and tribulations of a wannabe rodeo clown from Titahi Bay :: Stuart Parker :: NZ :: New Zealand :: www.stuartparker.com :: Stuart Gordon Parker
Fantastic juxtaposition of articles on the Herald website.
A couple whose bank screwed up and deposited $10m in their account are being hunted by Interpol after fleeing the country with some of the money, while NZ’s power companies face no consequences after fleecing consumers to the tune of $4.3b in just six years.
If you’re going to rob somebody in this country, make sure you wear a tie.
I don’t want to sound like a hater. I think Wolfram Alpha is a beautiful execution of a unique approach to search, and I’m glad the Mathematica folks have been able to bring it to life. Unfortunately, it is subject to two critical flaws:
Let’s start out with the obvious. Wolfram Alpha isn’t a Google killer. It doesn’t even come close. Actually, it really doesn’t have much to do with anything Google does. Putting aside a whole lot of peripheral activities, Google is a search engine, an advertising network, and a bank. It helps people to find authoritative websites on topics they are interested in; It provides advertisers with a cost-effective means of reaching prospective customers; and It facilitates transactions between advertisers and publishers, and is effectively the Reserve Bank of the Internet. Wolfram Alpha does none of these things – it doesn’t lead you to authoritative sources of information, it assumes that role itself; It doesn’t help advertisers reach new audiences; and It sure as hell doesn’t help to monetise other properties.
The latter two alone would seemingly be enough to ensure Google’s continued dominance over newcomers, but even if that wasn’t the case – even if all Google was was a search engine – Google would win hands down. Why? Because this *smarts*, this unique approach that sets Wolfram Alpha apart from its predecessors and competitors is the answer to a question nobody asked. It is different more for the sake of being different than as a response to a real need, and it smacks of the ‘build it and they will come’ mindset that has lead to some of the Internet age’s greatest failures. Louis Border’s ‘Webvan‘ immediately springs to mind. Assuming people wanted to buy their groceries online, and assuming that a completely automated online-only supermarket was the best way to satisfy that need, Webvan was the best possible response to that opportunity. Problem was, both of those assumptions were tragically flawed and billions of investor dollars were lost. In the same way, Wolfram is assuming that all people want is a direct, concise response to a direct, concise question. Problem is, people don’t ask those kinds of questions or accept those kinds of answers.
Wolfram seems to misunderstand how and why people really use search. Sure, we search for information, but we do so in order to be able to do something with it. We search for hotels so we can find somewhere to stay, not to find out what a hotel is. And when we do want to find out what something is, context and referenced, authoritative sources are essential for validating what we are being told and furthering our understanding. The ’source information’ link accompanying Wolfram results provides a list of sites used, but with no indication of which *facts* came from which sources. Even Wikipedia - whipping boy of research purists the world over – has higher standards of transparency, which is kind of ironic when you consider that Wolfram Alpha was designed by a respected scientist.
Wolfram’s reference material is also alarmingly Americentric. For example, no New Zealand websites are referenced in response to queries about ‘New Zealand‘. I agree that there are always three sides to every story, but I’d back our own over the Library of Congress, any day.
The contextual deficiency of Wolfram results reminds me of John Steinbeck’s meditation on the problems of measuring a fish:
The Mexican sierra has 17 plus 15 plus 9 spines in the dorsal fin. These can easily be counted. But if the sierra strikes hard on the line so that our hands are burned, if the fish sounds and nearly escapes and finally comes in over the rail, his colors pulsing and his tail beating the air, a whole new relational externality has come into being – an entity which is more than the sum of the fish plus the fisherman. The only way to count the spines of the sierra unaffected by this second relational reality is to sit in a laboratory, open an evil-smelling jar, remove a stiff colorless fish from the formalin solution, count the spines, and write the truth. . . . There you have recorded a reality which cannot be assailed – probably the least important reality concerning either the fish or yourself.
It is good to know what you are doing. The man with his pickled fish has set down one truth and recorded in his experience many lies. The fish is not that color, that texture, that dead, nor does he smell that way.
- Steinbeck, John. 1941. The Log from the Sea of Cortez
So Wolfram Alpha isn’t what people think it is. It isn’t a Google killer. It isn’t a better search engine than Google, Yahoo, MSN or even Wikipedia. It isn’t really a search engine at all.
It is also pretty uninspiring. A lot of attention has been directed towards how *different* it is, and much has been made of the various witty responses returned by some search phrases. Sure it’s different, and its novelty value is enough to ensure we’ll all check it out at least once. But is different better? Is different enough to change our habits? Is different enough to make us persevere with a lesser solution that offers to human understanding what KFC offers to human nutrition?
It can’t be. It shouldn’t be. And it won’t be. Expectations are too high and substance is too low. Wolfram Alpha will never make it as an alternative or successor to traditional search. At best, it will become a new feature or algorithmic enhancement to Yahoo, Google or Microsoft.
But maybe that was the plan all along.
Bwahahahahahaha!
We all saw it coming, but frankly I’m amazed it took so long.
The news media have been circulating the usual clichés from insiders citing external factors such as ‘the current retail environment’. Bullshit. The fact of the matter is, Ferrit never had a viable business model and seemed hell-bent on throwing money at a problem that could only be solved with smarts and balls.
A wee word of advice to any cash-heavy corporates looking to speculate on the next Interweb bubble: if you don’t believe in your product, neither will anyone else.
I’ll give you a hint – it’s the same reason I don’t go to church at all (in addition to the obvious ones, where there is no such thing as God, and all religion is inherently false and quite contemptible)…
Heh. If you like that, you’ll love these…
As many of you are no doubt aware, Monday after next I’ll be turning 35. Dave too – funny that. Anyhoo, I’ve thought about this a lot over the past few weeks, and must admit I’m surprised at how little I actually give a shit about this ‘milestone’ year in contrast to the previous ones…
I vividly remember the card my mother sent me on my 18th birthday, reminding me to be careful as I was now old enough to be tried as an adult. It felt like such a big deal to be legally an adult, despite the fact that, while I was now eligible to vote, marry, get drafted, go to prison, and enter into binding contracts, I wasn’t about to do any of those things. The drinking age was still 20, so I was still just a kid in the eyes of the only people that really mattered (bouncers). And in hindsight that’s all I really was – a kid.
I know turning 20 hasn’t been much of a big deal since that the drinking age was lowered to 18, but it was back then. I remember proudly presenting my driver’s license to a doorman at a club in Auckland, only to be refused entry because the licenses at the time showed the month but not day of birth. “Your birthday could be next week, ” he grinned, before waving me inside. I kept the “fuck you, door monkey” to myself on that occasion, partly due to my keen sense of self-preservation, but mostly because most of my mates were still underage. I was 20 now, and they couldn’t keep me out anymore (this was before they invented Spy Bar), but there was a definite sense of loss at the end of my teens. I was convinced for years that 19 was the coolest age I had ever been – best physical condition, least responsibility, most active socially… and then it was over. Twenty. Gotta grow up now, hey son? (Turns out that I didn’t – 20 was also the year that I got expelled from university, but that’s a story for another post).
Turning 21 was a big deal, but it is for everyone I suppose. For me it was the beginning of a big adventure, and a fantastic, chaotic chain of events that has added inestimable richness to my life. I moved to Queenstown and went snowboarding every single day for a whole season. I met a guy in a bar who offered me a job in Auckland, which lead me back to University, a first-class Master’s degree, and an amazing career. I have no idea what my life would be like now were it not for some of the choices I made at 21, and it’s both comforting and frightening to look back at how flippantly some of those decisions were made.
When I hit 30, the only big deal as far as I was concerned was that it seemed like such a big deal to everyone else. We had a big party (interesting way to find out that your Dad really knows how to handle a gun), but I distinctly remember the anticlimax when it dawned on me that the day after was exactly the same as the day before. I was officially into my fourth decade, but I didn’t feel any different. Ironically, this was the first of the ‘big years’ where I felt young and stupid but actually wasn’t. I have since reasoned that the yearning for my late teens that I felt in my early twenties is something akin to a veteran’s reminiscence of battle. Fuck that – I wouldn’t be that stupid again for all the tea in China! How in the hell I escaped death and/or imprisonment is beyond me.
So now, as I approach the big three five, I’m finding that I actually really like who I am, where I am, the choices I’ve made (even, and some might say especially, the bad ones) and what lies ahead. My one regret isn’t for myself and the lost opportunities of my youth (although I do agree that the indiscretions a man regrets most later in life tend to be the ones he failed to make when he had the chance), but for the many friends I’ve had over the years who never got the chance to grow old at all. I close my eyes and try to picture the face of an old school friend who died in a motorcycle accident when we were at university. On the one hand it’s disturbing how hard it’s getting to recall what he looked like. Was it that long ago? Could we really have been that close, if I’m forgetting him already? Will I fade from memory like this when I’m gone? On the other hand, the face I do remember is still just 21 years old, and that’s what bothers me the most – he should be 35 too!
So on the 19th of January all you young pups can feel free to point out the spare tyre I’ve grown, and kid me about the heat radiating from my cake (hint hint Simonne!). You can do all that and more, because I really don’t give a shit. I’ll be thinking about how grateful I am to have the opportunity to celebrate yet another milestone birthday, and toasting the memory of friends who weren’t so lucky.
Have yourselves a great weekend.
A mate of mine who works as an aircraft engineer at Auckland airport tells me there was a privately-owned 767-200 parked there recently, by all accounts owned by Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin.
A lot of people – especially in the country that practically invented tall poppy syndrome – would heap scorn on such extravagance, arguing that they could save the planet (yeah right!) and countless starving children by flying coach and giving the savings to charity. Me, I think that without such impressive displays of what can be achieved through hard work and natural ability (ingenio et labore!), your average drone would be even more useless than they are now. Yet another reason why I can’t stand lefties – to really excell people need incentives beyond forced or fake altruism. If you don’t like Sergei and Larry living the way they do, build a better search engine and reinvent the advertising industry. I’m sure you’ll find it harder to decry such opulence when it’s your own.
Anyhoo, I like Google and find many of their products to be indespensible, personally and professionally. I even took a couple of days out of the office last month to get certified as a Google Advertising Professional. I enjoyed the training, aced the exam, and even went so far as to drink the instructors under the table at the drinkies that followed (education is, after all, a lifelong commitment). As I nursed my aching head the following morning I could quite honestly tell you that Google is a company that does nothing by halves.
And then today I get this tacky piece of crap in the mail…
Yup, that’s class. One hundred percent. Think I’ll hang it in the den, next to my Master’s degree.
One thing I learned during my near-decade in the hospitality industry is the importance of coffee. It’s the last thing your guests are served before they leave your establishment, so it’d better be good if you want them to return. Trust me on this – great coffee after a lousy meal can win back a disappointed customer, and the opposite is also true.
Rather than reminding me of what I achieved and the great experience I had with the trainers, this tacky piece of home-made laminated crap just makes me cringe. Am I being melodramatic? Possibly. Am I overreacting? I think not, and here’s why.
I was personally invited to attend the Google training. I received personal emails from our account manager confirming my place and reminding me of dates and locations. I was greeted and called on by name during the training, and entertained afterward as though by friends. My experience with Google was very much a personal, enjoyable one – hardly what you would expect from one of the world’s largest tech companies. And then they remind me that I’m just a number, one of countless thousands they engage with on a similar level every single day.
I don’t want to appear ungrateful. The training cost me nothing and was very rewarding. I still have the utmost respect for Google, and admire the Googlers I’ve had dealings with. I just couldn’t let this slide. If anyone from Google reads this, I’d like to suggest you either get the certificates done properly or do away with them altogether. This half-assed stuff really is beneath you. To everyone else, let this be a reminder…
No matter what industry you’re working in, never underestimate the importance of serving great coffee
The great triennial lolly scramble is now under way, with the dyke PM once again pinning her hopes on the student vote, this time offering a universal student allowance. She’ll be kicking herself if it works (else I’m sure there are plenty of taxpayers who would happily do it for her), ‘cos the estimated $210 million annual cost (yeah, right!) is a hell of a lot cheaper than the billions in student loan interest write-offs she used to buy the last election.
Great to see the good old Electoral Finance Act earning its keep, hey? The Radio Network is facing prosecution for comments made by two MP’s acting as guest-hosts, and Dominion Breweries has been cautioned over a Tui billboard. Yep, gotta keep that shit in check or the whole democratic process goes out the window. But a blatant $250 million bribe? Nothing wrong with that, mate – par for the course!*
I don’t know what’s more depressing – that we have a PM who deplores freedom of speech and displays open contempt for the electorate, or that a substantial partof the voting public (but hopefully not a majority) is prepared to overlook all this in exchange for a well-timed bribe. Come on, people! Wouldn’t it be nicer just to have a thriving economy? Where we’ve all got well-paying jobs? And we don’t get taxed though the ass to pay for ‘jobs for the boys’, a carbon credit trading program that won’t do a thing to halt global warming**, and an unsustainable welfare system that has condemned generations to dependency on the state?
Party vote NATIONAL on November 8 please!
* I possibly wouldn’t mind so much if it wasn’t my money in play. If you turned up at your favorite restaurant and couldn’t get a table ‘cos someone slipped the maitre d’ a twenty, you’d be pissed off, right? Now imagine he takes that twenty out of your pocket, slips it to the maitre d’ and then takes your table. You’d be set to strangle the bastard! Well this is no different. Government coffers are full of your (our) money!
** First of all, the planet isn’t actually warming. Second, there is zero conculsive evidence to support the myth that global warming is man-made. Now there’s a good reason to cripple business with yet another layer of red tape and compliance costs!
I have no idea who these people are, but they were really cool. We ran into them in Arrowtown (mmmmmmm Arrowtown pie) on Friday, and barged our way into their photo shoot. Shit – we were invited to a wedding on Friday, so we were going to a wedding (any wedding) on Friday!
As part of my continuing ‘cyber stalking‘ thread, a few weeks ago I sent a friend request to our soon-to-be leader of the opposition. It’s pretty obvious that she one of her aides had only created a Facebook profile to show the kids what a hip cat she is, and whoever was managing it clearly has no idea what the fuck they’re doing, ‘cos about a week later – and while I was getting a couple hundred views a day to my various anti-Labour rants (we love election years!) – I get this little surprise…
Once behind the velvet rope and into Helen’s inner sanctum (ooh err!), a few startling revelations…
Poking of the PM is encouraged! By men as well!
She is surrounded by ass kissers. Shame on you, Scott Bartlett!
And even more disturbing, I found myself sandwiched between Harry Duynhoven and Trevor Mallard. I could live a long time and never need to repeat that one, I can assure you!
Anyhoo, I laughed my ass off and left it at that, and by the looks of things so did she the aide managing her profile. No updates at all until today, when she announced the date for the general election.
I have the Facebook for BlackBerry app, and found myself reading her wall updates while on the ferry home this evening. It was disgusting – countless sycophants sniffing her throne, wanking on about what a visionary she is [sic]. One schmuck waxed lyrical about how great she was for her ‘the war wouldn’t have happened on Gore’s watch‘ comment.
Yep, even if the statement wasn’t a complete lie*, insulting the world’s most powerful man is a brilliant move for the PM of a tiny agrarian nation with dreams of a US free trade deal. She’s a goddamn vagenius !
The most recent post was from some moron agreeing with a statement the PM had apparently made today, that a change in government would lead to instability and was therefore not in the best interests of the nation**. Get your tongue out of her trousers, mate – these are the 80’s and she’s down with the ladies!
Never one to shy away from a challenge, I contributed a wall post in which I *politely* pointed out to this chap that since more than half of the electorate clearly want Helen and her cronies gone, a change of government is actually in the best interests of the country. I added that instability comes from the suppression of democracy, rather than its application in accordance with the law and the will of the people.
Not exactly the kind of stuff Helen the aide that manages Helen’s profile expects to see I suppose, and probably deserving of a stern rebuke or harsh words. Is that what happened?
Nope.
I have been removed from Helen’s friends list, and all of the posts on her wall have been deleted.
Helen Clark doesn’t believe in free speech. She doesn’t condone or participate in civilized discourse. Cross the line (i.e. fail to kiss her ass) and she’ll have one of her flunkies usher you away and then pretend you were never there.
That, friends, is all you need to know about Helen Clark. VOTE NATIONAL!
*Gore is a lying, self-serving hypocrite. The only way the war might not have happened on his watch would be that he would likely have offered a preemptive surrender. Either that or he would have been too busy inventing man-made global warming to find time for any *pesky* military stuff.
**First the Electoral Finance Act and now this? She sounds more like Robert Mugabe every day! Viva El Presidente!
The media circus arising from allegations that Tony Veitch had assaulted his former partner, Kirsten Dunne Powell, bothered me right from the start. Let me start out by declaring that I fully support the Women’s Refuge position on domestic violence. Not acceptable. All violence is deplorable, and for any man to use his – let’s face it, this is normally the case – superior strength to inflict physical and/or emotional harm on someone he’s supposed to care about is… it’s fucking wrong, no question about it.
But that doesn’t mean our compassion should only be directed towards the woman, and that’s where I start to get antsy. When word of the Veitch allegations broke, people commenting publicly on the issue tended to end up (whether they liked it or not) in one of two camps – you either flat-out condemned him, or you were a fellow lady basher. Is it really so black and white though? Can you (should you be able to) sympathise with an alleged abuser, offer him some degree of compassion and understanding, without you both being tarred and feathered? Apparently not, which is how we ended up with a witch hunt.
A little background…
When I was 19 years old I began a relationship with a woman I’d met at work. She was older than me, pretty close to my height, and while she definitely wasn’t ‘man-ish’, had been a gym-fanatic for many years so was very muscular. She was also a redhead, so I probably should have seen it coming. As relationships often do in one’s late teens, things were great to start with but waned over time. After about ten months I ended the relationship (or so I thought) and moved on (or so I thought). It started with her phoning me out of the blue (‘Hi, just wondering what you are you are up to’), progressed to her turning up on my door step at odd hours (‘Hi, just passing by and thought I’d pop in’), and ended up with her sitting in her car outside my work most nights (we were no longer working together) , watching me finish up in case – God forbid – I went home with a waitress. I tried to be the nice guy, tried to understand that she had had her heart broken and do whatever it took to help her, but after a while it became unbearable. I asked her to leave me alone, without success. I stopped going to my old haunts and hanging out with mutual friends (formerly my friends), I asked the police to intervene, but was dismissed out of hand. Nothing worked – I was being stalked and there was nothing I could do about it. I can honestly say I feared for my life.
One night about four months after the stalking started I went out after work and arrived home with *a guest* at about 1am. I didn’t see her car, but apparently she’d been waiting outside my house for hours. I’d been in bed for maybe five minutes when the front door of my house was kicked in, followed immediately by my bedroom door. The lights came on and there she was – screaming (‘Time to go, bitch!), kicking, and dragging my guest out of the bed by her hair. I jumped up, ran for the door, broke the hold she had on my guest’s hair, and knocked her to the floor with a right-hook.
Next day. Phone rings. All day. Highlights include nearly all of our mutual friends (now her friends) calling to tell me what a scumbag I was. Most of these people have never spoken to me since. I also vividly remember her calling to say she’d laid a complaint with the police (thankfully this turned out to be bullshit) and that I would soon be arrested. She also dropped by that afternoon to show off the black eye I’d given her, just to make sure I knew what she’d shown the cops. I was fucked. The only thing that kept me sane was the fact that the first person to hear about all this was my mother. I had called her in tears, right after the incident, racked with guilt and unable to comprehend how I had managed to do something so totally contrary to the way I had been brought up. Mum’s response?
Next time you see that bitch, smack her again and tell her I said hi!
(Mums are awesome)
Why am I telling you this? Because, as much as I’m not sure I wanted to learn it this way, here’s what it taught me:
(The latter point still doesn’t sit well with me, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true)
Turn your clocks forward a couple of years. I’m now 22, back at varsity and totally loving my life. I start dating a woman I’m working with (a little advice for you, don’t ever dip your pen in the company ink), and we end up living together – we didn’t ‘move in together’ a such, I just ended up spending pretty much every night at her house. We both worked nights (but not the same nights), we both had friends (but not the same friends)… pretty soon we started to drift apart and one of us (her) realised it but the other one (me) didn’t.
To this day I don’t know if this was something I’d subconsciously picked up from my previous relationship (with the stalker) or just a latent trait kicking in when the going got rough, but I didn’t handle the deteriorating relationship well. The more time we spent apart, the more I tried to be with her. Every mention or inference of another man drove me crazy. We argued all the time, said the most hurtful things to each other, and – despite the fact that she started staying out till all hours (I was convinced that this was because of me, as opposed to her simply wanting to spend time with her friends) – I continued to spend every night at her house.
One night things came to a head. We both had the night off work, but when I got home from varsity she wasn’t there. Her mobile was on but went unanswered all night. I sat there waiting by the door until her key hit the lock a little after 3am. All my months of suspicion and insecurity boiled over. On a conscious level I was venting, but on a subconscious level I think I wanted her to feel all the hurt and insecurity I’d been harboring for so long. We argued. We cried. We broke up and I stormed out. But I wasn’t done. When I reached the letterbox I turned on my heel and, when I found the front door locked, kicked it open. I don’t remember what I had to say that was so important, but I said it. And while she was trying – rightfully so – to usher me out of her house I shoved her backwards and into a wall – not very hard, and without causing injury, but how much damage do you have to do for it to be a fucking stupid thing to do? I’ll spare you the details of the aftermath, suffice to say that it turns out this woman had a much kinder soul than I’d given her credit for, and the Student Health counseling services are worth every penny of the extortionate U of A fees I paid borrowed for over the years.
This was a horrible experience and, again, I wish I could have come by the insight some other way. But nobody’s perfect – hell, we’re supposed to make mistakes, provided we learn from them. So here’s one of the things I learned:
There, it’s done – I’ve just openly confessed my two darkest secrets. We all have skeletons in our closets, and I have many more – but none worse than these. I’ve shared them with you for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’m no longer ashamed of them. While I’m far from proud of my actions, if I could go back and undo what I did I’m not sure I would. I actually quite like the man I’ve become, and who am I but the product of my (good and bad) experiences?
Second, I’d like to challenge you all to attempt a similar introspection. All you fine upstanding folks who cried out for Tony Veitch’s head when the rumors first surfaced – have you ever done anything you’re ashamed of? No? In my opinion, anyone who’s never crossed the line between right and wrong most likely has no idea where it is. Do you think Hilter had a guilty conscience? What about Osama Bin Laden? The rest of us sinners hopefully learn one or both of the following from our transgressions:
So I was really vocal in supporting Veitchy when the rumors surfaced, and I still am. And it’s not because I’m ‘a fucking man too’, or ‘a lady basher like him’ – it’s because, regardless of how it came to be, I am a better person than those that wouldn’t.
