Currently reading: Traffic by Tom Venderbilt. It is an interesting and fast paced sociology book on the issues of traffic and why commuters, planners and engineers make the decisions we do. It is a fun light read with a few interesting moments. (reply)
Pin-striping makes a nice difference on the 40th Anniversary HSV GTS. Not bad looking for a muscle car.

It is one of the curiosities of the US market that it does not go in for the HSV style modifications of its cars. There are third-party modding houses, like Rousch but none that have the same grasp on the market as HSV do in Australia with Holden or AMG does in Germany with Mercedes.

It is most likely one of those cultural/market quirks that exist between different regions. While it may seem bland and homogeneous to Australians or Germans, there is probably an inherent market reason for consumers deciding against those type of factory type custom builds, and for car makers to either not offer them or shy away from them.

Personally I think it is quite a large gap in the US market, but then again, all car manufacturers are in the US and there is a massive array of cars from all over the world that are offered to the prospective car buyer. (more)

A building from the Scottsdale Waterfront. (reply)
Neil McAllister argues that Software Developer Kits [SDK] are not the be all and end all of smart devices like the iPhone, Blackberry and Android. The Microsoft side of this style of argument is the boorish, "Developers, developers, developers" and that you do not have a viable platform unless developers have bought into your SDK. But as McAllister notes both the iPhone and Android come with WebKit - an HTML rendering engine based upon Konquerer's kHTML engine. The universal device in the smart phones is the web browser.

That means Web applications designed for one will render almost identically on the other, provided their developers adhere to published standards.

Those same applications will also render on WebKit-based desktop browsers, such as Safari and Google Chrome, and on any other browsers that implement the standards correctly.

Based on that, all this talk of SDKs seems almost foolish.

The iPhone applications store opened to massive fanfare but I have only downloaded one application. That is the remote so I can operate my iTunes library remotely through my phone. I use the browser on the iPhone every day and I am extremely thankful that it renders web pages without any loss of the original formatting.

Many, many years ago I did a smart device project to collect facility data. We tried an iPag which at the time was Compaq's smart device. It came with a windows operating system of some kind, I cannot recall which. It didn't work and wasnt popular. We then tried phones and the horrendous WAP toolkits. Then we tried blackberries.

The main benefit of the Blackberry was the RIM browser (as opposed to the WAP AT&T; browser which was crap). It would render a page honestly even though it was on a small screen. I made up a version of the website so that it could be used on the Blackberry but most technicians used the main website which was intended for desktops and laptop style resolutions anyway.

The browser that could render the web on a mobile device became the solution. In my opinion McAllister is right. The web is going to continue being the web and SDK's are anachronisms to get people to that level of universal browsing. (reply)
Bruce Schneier argues that the current model of terrorism is an economic one where terror seeks political utility from its actions. Schneier points out that there are seven habits of terrorism which break that model. Instead he quotes a paper by Max Abrahms which argues that terrorism has a social vector:

Abrahms has an alternative model to explain all this: People turn to terrorism for social solidarity. He theorizes that people join terrorist organizations worldwide in order to be part of a community, much like the reason inner-city youths join gangs in the United States.

Terrorism is obviously effective politically; governments clamp down on all sorts of behaviours and freedoms in response, but it may be that the terrorists themselves do not see this as a goal. They are just seeking social intimacy which unfortunately comes through arbitrary violence.

Loneliness is not a new social phenomenon despite those that would protest that modernization is creating new and heightened levels of alienation. Being lonely is part of the human condition. (reply)
The Ariel Atom effectively made the re-introduction of the Lotus Seven Sports style of sports car cool again. Since then there has been the KTM X-Bow to challenge it for on road acceleration. Another area that is showing growth is the three wheeler which avoids the regulations on the four wheel cars meaning smaller, lighter and more innovative tri-cycles can be offered. This Energya by Higgens-Aube is an example.

I would love a small lightweight sports car to replace mine, whether it is a lightweight petrol or electric car, it would be great. But the smaller roadsters like the Saturn Sky chew petrol at the same rate as my 6.0L V8 does. The electric roadsters such as the Tesla are too expensive and I cannot find prices in the US for the Atom or X-Bow. If this Higgens-Aube Energya was for sale for less than my Vette; I would buy it. (reply)

One of the chairs on the patio. (reply)
European banks are more leveraged than the problematic shadow US investment bank industry. SEC regulators allowed JP Morgan, Lehmann, etc to leverage up from 12:1 to 40:1. Some of the European banks are 64:1 and above 50:1. (reply)
Peter Watson notes that the political pogroms in Germany and Russia led to a massive transfer of intellectual wealth from Europe to the US that became evident in the economic growth after WWII. Germany had been the home of the leading edge of scientific analysis. After the intellectual diaspora from Europe it met with American empiricism and entrepreneurship. (reply)
It appears that Holden may have lost the engineering for the RWD Alpha platform. This was to be a smaller sized car than the Commodore, probably 3-Series BMW sized, which now seems to be going to GM North America as Cadillac has more control over it.

This is a blow for Holden, in my opinion, as they transitioned to an engineering company with the Zeta platform and provided a high quality and extensible platform which is used in the Commodore, Camaro and the stretched platforms such as the Buick in China.

GM has been making decisions all over the place recently; cutting this, cutting that, project so-and-so is on, project so-and-so is off, project so-and-so is on again, etc, etc. Not confidence building for an industry with high capitalization requirements and long lead in times.

Currently the moving of the Alpha engineering to North America is rumored, so maybe Holden will be able to get that business back;

In another rumored move, Global Product Board has taken development of Alpha from GM Holden and has given it to the GM North America and GM Europe operations. This was done to placate Cadillac, who does not want to compromise on Alpha's development for their planned BLS-replacement. What Cadillac hopes to achieve is to get a flexible enough platform to support 4, 6, or 8 cylinder engines, as was deemed necessary by the Wreath & Crest brand.

Holden is in a tough spot. The manufacturing numbers are too low to be sustainable for any long term - though government has been happy to throw money at Holden in Australia - and permanence will most likely be based on niche engineering ability, much like Lotus survives. Losing the Alpha platform's engineering would be a nasty loss. (reply)
Cam Riley: South Sea Republic. Freedom, liberty, equity and an Australian Republic.