Month: July 2007

Categories
politics

Why Minister Noel Dempsey is clueless

There’s an article in today’s Sunday Times about tighter controls on provisional driving license holders in Ireland. In the interests of full disclosure I’d like to point out that I am one. Now I can begin my rant with a clear conscience. The Road Safety Authority like to say the driving test is fair and that it contributes to safer roads. Go to the driving test’s website and you’ll see what I mean. I think that this is absolute nonsense with is disproven by empirical evidence. There are over 400,000 provisional license holders on the roads in Ireland. This is a massive portion of the total number of drivers in the country. This number has been swelling over the past few years so, seeing as how these drivers are so unsafe, have the number of serious accidents being increasing? No, they’ve remained relatively static. Yes, a simple look at the figures tells you that the roads have not actually become more unsafe because of the larger number of provisional license holders. So why the need for the draconian legislation where people who’ve been driving for many years safely will need to be accompanied by a holder of a full license, even if the accompanying person got their license not by passing a test but through an amnesty granted the last time we had a serious problem with the number of provisional license holders? Well, the simple truth is that the minister has decided his stance makes him look good, tough, decisive. I think it makes him look out of touch, clueless and unaware of some of the real reasons for accidents on our roads. It’s also a bit sneaky that this has been foisted on an unsuspecting public AFTER his party get reelected. Could that really be a coincidence?
So let’s look at the problems that every road user in the country faces:

  • The roads: Travel around the world and you’ll quickly see that Ireland has some of the worst road surfaces in Europe.Yet the government feels able to charge VRT, compounded on VAT, compounded on Import Duty on every car in Ireland. Why are our road surfaces so fundamentally bad, so uneven, incorrectly cambered, so COMPLETELY UNSAFE?
  • The test itself: How many people are killed because a driver hits a curb during a 3 point turn? How many people are killed because a driver fails to indicate properly going around a roundabout (come to think of it can any driver in Ireland use a roundabout properly?). Why isn’t motorway driving covered? The test is a pile of steaming dog shit which fundamentally doesn’t measure the skills or attitude necessary to drive safely. Much of it feels arbitrary and silly in conception and implementation
  • The unwillingness of drivers to report incidents of extremely bad driving to the Gardai. Overtaking blind into bends is a HUGE problem in this country. It seems there’s no shortage of idiots who do this but they must be getting away with it because they’re still driving

I guess what really pisses me off about this is that I’m a law abiding citizen who feels let down by his government. Leaving aside the fact that I didn’t vote for them and won’t be doing so in a hurry. I’ve applied 4 times to do the test. The first time I failed because of 5 marks against for clutch related minor offenses. In all honesty I didn’t believe and still don’t believe that this made me an unsafe driver. I subsequently discovered I had a problem with my clutch which neither the driving school where I took lessons nor the test examiner spotted. So, basically my first attempt should probably have ended in success.I’d been driving for a year, had no accidents and felt reasonably comfortable behind the wheel.
I was paying around 3500 euro in insurance to drive an old Renault Megane at the time. The second time I applied, the exhaust fell off my old car the night before the test. I could have driven a safer and newer car but for my insurance premium but that’s another rant. I discovered the extent of the problem that morning but the test was too early and I ended up not being able to attempt the test as the instructor dismissed my car as unroadworthy. I was told the waiting list was almost a year so I was devastated with what happened.
The third application was made with a sense of dread. The waiting list in Waterford is insane and it took in excess of a year to get notification of the test. Due to some, common, issue with the postal service the notification arrived while I was in the US. Needless to say I couldn’t get back in time and missed another test. I applied again a few months ago and am still waiting to be tested. I sincerely hope it happens soon yet I am filled with a feeling of dread when I consider the generally hostile and antagonistic way testers behave in the experience of me and my friends. How is it normal to sit beside an unfriendly and apparently sadistic person issuing curt instructions and taking notes when you’re trying to concentrate on driving? Maybe I needed a harsher home life to prepare me for the demeaning experience that is the driving test in Ireland?
Or maybe that’s just the unpleasant red haired bloke in the Waterford test center…
So to summarise I’ve been driving for over 6 years. I have a provisional license. I have not received points for speeding or any other violation. I have had NO accidents yet have driven everything from a Renault Megane to a bulky Nissan Pathinder to a very fast BMW Z4. None, not a scratch. I haven’t made a claim on my insurance nor had a claim made against me. I treat my car like a new born baby. Albeit one that gets left outside in the cold on a regular basis 🙂
I have been pulled over once by the gardai when I got a new car and was having difficulty with the tiptronic gearbox. Long story. I received no points, just a few queries. If I feel like I’m little danger to other road users it’s because I’ve empirically demonstrated that to be the case. Which is more than I can say for the large number of drivers I see without L plate who can’t use a roundabout, overtake going into corners, exceed the speed limit on narrow country roads and generally put themselves and others in harms way yet somehow are deemed safe. Yet for the sake of a sound-bite and a trendy yet ill-conceived initiative I and others like me are the enemy.
An alternative would be to force everybody to go to driving schools and do a number of tests over a period of time designed to determine if they have the correct skills and attitude to drive reasonably and safely. If the Minister feels the test is worth doing, it should be worth doing properly!

Categories
horology

Ode to Titanium

I love Titanium watches. Well I love watches and watches being made from Ti is a boost. The problem with Ti is that once you start to wear a Ti watch you never want to wear a steel one again. It’s so much lighter and mysteriously more comfortable. The reason is to do with the thermal absorption properties of Titanium versus steel or gold. Steel (and gold) conducts heat very well, much better than Titanium. Therefore when you put on a steel watch it absorbs heat from your skin rapidly. This cools YOU down and therefore makes the watch seem cold. On a hot day a steel watch can heat up rapidly and burn your skin. Titanium is a lousy heat conductor so it has less effect when it comes in contact with your skin. The warmth you feel isn’t the warmth of the watch, it’s the lack of heat absorption from the metal. It’s also much lighter (45%) and slightly stronger than steel although the relative hardness of untreated titanium is less so the watches can get scratched. However, there’s always other treatments which can protect the metal. Or indeed Titanium alloys such as Titanium Nitride (TiN).
Unfortunately, some people think Ti looks cheap which makes it hard to get the watch you want in this most desirable of metals. So hopefully Omega will think better of it and produce a Ti Planet Ocean within the next year as I absolutely NEED one.

Categories
art

Another exhibition at Manifesto

We’re running another exhibition in Manifesto at the moment. It’s titled “New Blue” and features work from painters who’ve recently come to Waterford. As usual we’ve a wide range of work with sizes to suit all homes and prices ranging from around 500 euro to 5000 euro. I’ve added pictures to my flickr account so readers can see the opening. It’s really great to be involved in the arts in Ireland and I’ve huge admiration for those who make a successful living from it. Despite the tax breaks, most Irish artists aren’t massively wealthy and I think the Irish people often get a misleading take from the popular press. For every Enya or Bono there are hundreds if not thousands of struggling artists bravely doing their thing. They should be encouraged as helping to perpetuate a long Irish tradition of artistic endeavour and creativity. Which nicely brings me on to my next comment.
We run an open day on Saturdays when new artists can come and show us their work. This has been massively successful and there’s scarcely a Saturday where we’re not inundated with artists showing new and interesting work. These include painters, ceramicists and jewellers from pretty much everywhere. We’ve artists from China, Australia, Russia, Italy etc. It’s all going very well but we’re always on the lookout for new work so if you know anybody interested then call the gallery on +353 51 853333 or drop me a mail at sdempsey@REMOVETHIS.manifesto.ie. Removing the obvious spam avoidance text. If you want to be traditional our postal address is.

Manifesto Gallery & Retail Emporium
No. 2 Georges Street,
Waterford,
Ireland.

Categories
technology

The Vault

While reading this article on the reg, I had the strange sense that we’d all been here before. In my opinion the real issue is storing documents in unencrypted binary or textual form. Especially, with the popularity of XML-based document formats this is a bit of a nightmare.
If you analyse a system like FreeNet it works by anonymising and encrypting the information contained within the network. Therefore, if I encrypt information on my network such that reliable estimates suggest it will take hundreds of years to crack the encryption (e.g. 2KB asymmetric keys), even allowing for Moore’s law then surely the holding party can’t really claim to be in “possession” of the information. The are in possession of bits and bytes which have the “potential” to become the information. They have an intermediate form and are therefore less in possession of it than a telephone wire is in possession of a document you send via facsimile.
So one solution is the secure “vault” concept which Gaisan did some work on the distant past. The vault is a remote data store where you and only you can read your information. There are no back-doors or concerns that competitors, authorities or anyone else can read your information. There’s no “forgot my password” admin function. Access to the vault is via a dedicated “black-box” which is tamper-proof, EM shielded. Your keys are stored on smart cards and retrieval/decryption of vault information is based on presenting the correct smart card.. Different keys are used at different times and the “box” contains an algorithm to enable information to be retrieved from the “vault”. Vault space was “leased” for an appropriate period of time, which could be no more than a few seconds in an “information sharing” scenario. We had a few other ideas which I’d rather not discuss in this freewheeling blog but the overall goal as to enforce storage of anonymous bits with no idea of where they originated from and what they may be.
I’m more convinced than ever that clear-text storage of corporate information on external servers is a big legal problem and should be avoided at all costs.