Eric Drexler predicted that the age of nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing was just around the corner. Detractors claimed that he was being unrealistic. Philip Chaston reports on Samizdata that the Royal Society have decided that all new products using nanoparticles should be subject to EU approval before being used in consumer products. It seems those detractors may be right after all — not because the technology will be too hard to do, but because politicians will do what they can to stunt progress.

Posted by Rob Fisher as General at 8:48 PM EDT

3 Comments »

When I saw a story on ITV News last night, in which the mother of a murdered boy claimed he had been killed because his murderer had played the computer game Manhunt, I decided it was too ridiculous for comment. The report was almost funny: the news reporter earnestly describing how violent the game was voiced over images of a badly animated character splattering cartoon blood around. This kind of story comes around every once in a while and then fades away again.

It’s understandable for a grieving mother to lash out and blame something at random, less so for the press to sieze the opportunity to create a frenzy, as they would appear to have done. I wonder if the traditional media is afraid of computer games because they represent time not spent watching TV, or if this is simply another opportunity to whip up a storm over nothing, get all sanctimonious, lobby the government and then claim victory when Something is Done About It.

Depressingly, it is working already. Dixons (a company I’ve never had any respect for in the first place) are apparently removing the game from shelves. Hopefully that will be the limit of this ludicrosity, but it shows how little it takes before people begin clamouring for censorship.

Update: It would appear the link between the game and the murder is even more tenuous than I thought. It was the victim that had the game, not the murderer.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties, Games at 8:14 PM EDT

2 Comments »

I’ve just seen the most appalling TV programme on Channel 4, entitled 101 Embarassing Sexual Accidents. I wasn’t watching it as such, you understand, it was just on in the background while I was working on my computer. I’m not easily offended, but I was shocked (shocked! I tell you) to hear the story of Stephen Hall, who was arrested for having sex with a goat.

According to the programme, passengers on a train witnessed the terrible act and called the police. When they turned up Hall denied everything, so they called in forensics. After all, you can’t risk letting a dangerous goat botherer run around loose in public, so it’s important to use every resource available. The scientists found (ahem) evidence on the goat, and goat hairs in Hall’s underpants. Now, according to DI Dave Crinion,

I saw the goat the next day — it did not seem too upset but it is difficult to tell.

Now it wouldn’t do to have goats being upset, so clearly Judge Michael Mettyear had no choice but lock Hall in the slammer for six months.

Well that’s a relief, but wait! Before you think you can sleep soundly in your bed tonight, consider this:

The judge expressed frustration at being unable to order that Hall be banned from working with children in the future, adding: “You have pleaded guilty to buggery with an animal, a goat. It was committed in open air with people about, with people who could see.

“You were acting in an indecent manner, indeed, there was an seven-year-old boy in a position to see, although he was protected by his grandfather.”

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties at 11:14 PM EDT

22 Comments »

David Carr comments on a story in the Independent about a proposed scheme to give children drugs to prevent them from becoming drug addicts when they grow up. Ian Gibson, head of the Commons Science and Technology Committee, can’t see any problem with that. “There is no reason to think this would not be a starter or beneficial,” he says. The National Treatment Agancy agree, saying they welcome any new ways of treating addiction.

Any new ways at all.

This is what socialism is all about. People are not responsible and have to be saved from themselves by a benevolent state. If this was a product that parents could choose to buy for their children it would be scary enough. Taking away personal choice for future generations by making value judgements for them about the alleged evils of drug taking is not very far removed from making the same value judgements about the evils of sex and inflicting them upon daughters without their permission. Even if drugs were indisputably evil the freedom to choose not to take them should not be taken away any more than any other personal freedom.

But this is not just about parents making choices for their children, it’s about the state making choices for its subjects. It is ministers that are considering this vaccination scheme. Which means that ultimately they would want it to be compulsory, and once that kind of social control becomes accepted… Well — that’s a slippery slope I do not want to be forced down.

Posted by Rob Fisher as General at 9:15 PM EDT

2 Comments »

“We want a government so badly,” says a Somalian businessman being interviewed on Newsnight. “We may not pay any taxes but it would be more correct to say we don’t pay any formal taxes.” He complains of the lack of utility services and the cost of security.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no!!” I yell at the TV. “You don’t need a government! If you want water pipes then build them! It will be a hell of a lot cheaper than paying for a bunch of corrupt politicians to sit around making a mess of everything!”

Somalia has been without a government since 1991.

The BBC reporter points at poverty and squalor and run down buildings as evidence that Somalia needs a government. If Somalia is poor then it is surely only because its economy needs to grow, and what better way to do this than trade internationally? The good news is that Coca-Cola has built a bottling plant there. The security force is hired, contracts are drawn up — in Somalia an arbitration system is used in the absence of courts — workers are hired, and money is flowing in.

The reporter is amazed that the businesses are becoming more powerful than the warlords. One businessman employs an army of 1500 men. According to Newsnight this is a dangerous state of affairs. But better these men are employed guarding something useful than roaming around pillaging. And businesses, unlike governments and warlords, are surely less inclined to use force for anything other than protecting their own property.

As Somalia gets richer the warlords will become less powerful, new businesses will spring up to provide essential services like water supplies, electricity, roads and banking, and the country will go from strength to strength unimpeded by tax and bureaucracy.

That is unless interfering Westerners manage to persuade Somalians that what they really need is tax, bureaucracy and government.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft at 10:44 PM EDT

1 Comment »

My prediction until now was that HDTV, which has been available in the USA for years, would catch on in the UK as soon as HD DVDs became available. But now BSkyB has announced a HDTV service to be launched in 2006, so the race is on.

I recently saw a demo of HDTV in its 720P configuration that the new satellite service is likely to use. The 720 part means that there are 720 lines of resolution. This doesn’t sound much more than the 625 you get with regular analogue TV, but the P part means that it is progressive scan instead of interlaced, like a standard TV. Interlacing effectively halves the amount of picture information on the screen, and sure enough HDTV looks at least twice as good as standard definition. As long as you don’t sit too far from the screen you can pick out much more detail, and everything looks crisper and more real. It’s quite stunning to see, and well worth it. For once a technology that will give us a higher fidelity experience.

Like all new technology it will be expensive to start with; but perhaps not too much so. The Americans have already absorbed much of the early-adopter costs, and flat panel PC displays are getting cheaper all the time. So it may not be long at all before we all have HDTV in our living rooms.

Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 9:19 PM EDT

7 Comments »

I’ve always enjoyed realistic driving games that attempt to simulate the real world physics of car control as much as possible - as opposed to arcade driving games. Most of the reason is that they’re so much more challenging; the rest of the reason is that I can pretend that skills I’m learning in a racing sim would translate to real racing.

This isn’t quite true. In a real car you can feel the forces and the movement, wheras a simulator has to convey this feedback visually and aurally. The best ones have realistic sound that provide information about the engine, transmission and tyre adherence — a bit of a squeal and you’re close to the limits of traction — a cockpit rendered in 3D that allows the driver’s simulated head to move forward, back, left and right in reaction to the forces on the car, and force feedback that gives information about bumps in the road and the grip of the front wheels through a turn (this thanks to a force feedback wheel like my trusty Logitech MOMO Force). All this means that to become good at a driving sim you have to learn to read these signals rather than the ones you’d experience in a real car.

Having said this, what’s most important about a driving simulator is that it has as realistic a physics model as possible. Development teams go to great lengths to recreate the effects of the car’s suspension, aerodynamic surfaces and weight distribution; and the way the tyre pressures and temperatures change over time and the effects this has on grip. The better the physics, the more real world racing techniques can be applied to the game.

This works so well that there is a well known web site called GPL Foolishness that describes how to drive the ideal racing line, the importance of corner exit speed, and how to trail-brake. It was written for Grand Prix Legends — an older game with one of the best physics models ever, and still available from Sold Out Software (who have an appalling website; you’ll have to find it yourself under “sport”) — but the techniques can be applied to other simulators and real racing. Even books about racing techniques can help.

Currently my favourite racing sim is Live For Speed. It’s an online game developed independently by a British team who are releasing it on the web in stages. S1 has been out for a year and features several cars and tracks to race on. Best of all it’s very easy to find a server and join a race, and racing against real people is much more fun than against artifical intelligence. It’s good etiquette in online races to avoid crashing and taking out half of the field, so thankfully LFS lets you practice offline and has a credit system that keeps you out of the more powerful, harder to drive cars.

Another good one is NASCAR Racing 2003 Season from the now defunct Papyrus, the people who brought us Grand Prix Legends. There’s a lot more to driving around an oval than you might think, and it leads to some incredibly close, tense racing.

And there’s plenty to look forward to. GTR is a GT racing sim developed by SimBin, whose CEO is a GT racing driver himself. I’ve played the press demo (password GTR_Press_Demo) and it promises to be immense fun.

Live For Speed S2 is in testing, and features new cars and tracks, better graphics, and possibly some damage modelling for the first time.

Richard Burns Rally looks to be the first proper rally simulator, with full length courses and the most unbelievably detailed physics modelling ever. (”The engine model in Richard Burns Rally simulates all of the working parts of a four stroke internal engine and each individual combustion cycle.”) I’m particularly looking forward to this one. Unusually for a simulation, it’s already out on consoles, but the PC version promises to be even better.

More information about many more games, current and upcoming, can be found at Race Sim Central. In particular their forum section is not to be missed.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Driving, Games at 8:11 PM EDT

3 Comments »

Today’s Telegraph has an article about Ofcom’s proposed new regulations to combat bias in TV news programmes. Apparently, ‘Foreign news channels such as Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News may be made to carry on-screen “health warnings”‘. It’s a shame this rule only applies to foreign news, otherwise the BBC might be forced to slap a label on its output.

Fox News was notorious for taking a gung-ho, unashamedly partisan approach to the Iraq war with presenters talking about “good guys” and “bad guys”.

If phrases like, “bad guys” cause so much offense, could it be that the regulators’ measure of impartiality is the use of euphemisms such as “militant” in place of “terrorist”?

Last month, it was censured by Ofcom over complaints about anti-BBC bias.

This refers to the story in which Fox reporter John Gibson accused the BBC of being anti-American. Well that just won’t do, we can’t have people spouting off unpopular opinions on British television, it’s just not British. So 24 people complained to Ofcom about it. (Then again, 200 people complained about anti-American bias in a post September 11 edition of Question Time).

The nice thing about Fox News is that it provides a refreshing alternative viewpoint. Where else on TV has the Beeb been so vehemently criticised? The BBC pretends to be impartial because the rules say they have to be, and when Fox News openly counters its worldview that’s a good thing.

On the other hand, attempting to ensure impartiality through regulation could be damaging. Surely the unrealistic expectation of impartial news inhibits people’s critical thinking. Much as welfare makes people dependent on handouts, regulated, spoon-fed, “impartial” news makes people dependent on the state for their opinions. Instead of reading a wide range of views they simply trust the BBC. After all, if the government says it has to be impartial it must be!

Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 8:05 PM EDT

2 Comments »

While searching for information about Johan Norberg’s TV documentary for the previous post, I stumbled upon Andrew Medworth’s blog. He seems to be doing what I am attempting here: a mixture of writing on personal interests and philosophical and political musings.

He has a review of Globalisation is Good:

A great documentary was rather spoiled by Channel 4’s programme announcer, as the credits were rolling, saying something like “Was that convincing, or was it a one-sided view of the world? Tell us what you think…” In this context, “one-sided” is simply an anti-concept designed to suggest a selective blindness or bias. Norberg’s programme was one-sided, on the side of the truth.

Here he is on the morality of smoking bans and utilitarianism in general:

My problem is that the “public places” being discussed are in fact private property. Pubs, clubs, shops, restaurants and so forth are private property. Somebody put time and effort into creating them, so they are not under public control: they are under control of a private owner, maybe an individual, maybe a partnership, maybe a company. The objectivist code of morality states that this owner has the right to determine whether or not people are allowed to smoke in the place concerned.

On the Fair Trade movement (I’ve been meaning to post on this topic myself — the main reason I haven’t yet is because I thought I already had; but what I remembered was an email discussion… Old age setting in already?):

The philosophical reason why “fair trade” is not in fact fair, comes from the definition of justice. For me, justice is acting in harmony with reality, making decisions on the basis of what reality and the standard of human life require. Oxfam’s notion of “fair trade” is the opposite of this: they advocate paying prices for coffee which are in direct conflict with supply and demand, and with the competence and efficiency of the coffee producers, i.e. in conflict with reality. Any departure from reality, for any reason whatsoever, has disastrous consequences.

And on the Today Programme:

I set my alarm clock to start playing Radio 4 each morning, simply because it does a far better job of waking me up than a random loud noise could ever do. There are few things better to get me leaping out of my nice warm bed and flying across the room to turn the radio off than ten seconds of listening to John Humphrys inflict his personal views on the nation.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this blog from now on.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Links at 11:24 PM EDT

3 Comments »

I’ve just finished reading Johan Norberg’s book In Defense of Global Capitalism, which I have quoted from twice before.

The last chapter contains a warning:

When boundaries become less important, people, goods, and capital move more freely — but so too can crime, fanaticism, and disease. Advocates of globalisation have to show that greater freedom and greater opportunities counterbalance such problems. They must point to possible ways of dealing with them, perhaps more effectively than before. Otherwise there is a serious risk that anti-globalist ideas will take root in the Western world, in which case a downturn or a trivial tarriff war, for example, could evoke a powerful protectionist reaction. […] At worst, it would once again lead to conflict, to countries regarding each other as enemies. When governments turn in upon themselves, regarding what is foreign as a threat rather than an opportunity, the simplist and coursest forms of nationalism will gain ground.

It’s a grim alternative to the prosperity to be had from the free association of people and the free movement of goods. It shows the importance of organisations such as The Cato Institute, The Mises Institute, and our own Adam Smith Institute in influencing policy. And it shows the importance of people like Norberg himself in educating lay-economists like me with books and TV documentaries. (Whoever said there wasn’t anything good on Channel 4?)

But despite this the book is overwhelmingly optimistic. The world is in a much better state than it was even thirty years ago and people all over the world continue to get richer. We need to keep things that way. So stop reading this and go and buy a copy. Buy some for your friends. I’m almost tempted to buy a couple of thousand and distribute them at certain events…

Link: Have a look at Johan Norberg’s own site — he’s particularly critical of Michael Moore.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Reviews at 10:43 PM EDT

63 Comments »