If Multichoice sold DSTV like Telkom sells ADSL...

First, keep in mind that both companies are supposedly trying to maximise profit...

• Applying for a DSTV installation would result in a date more than a month away, instead of today or tomorrow if no physical equipment is installed
• If your decoder broke, tough.  Buy another one.  No-one would fix it.
• Even if you had a dish and decoder, getting connected would take at least 2 weeks.
• If DSTV ran out of satellite bandwidth, you would have to wait a year or so for a new one to be launched.  No pre-planning would happen.
• You would be charged R150 p.m. for the privilege of having DSTV, before even being allowed to view any channel.
• You would then pay extra for whatever you want to view, per minute.
• International content would cost a lot more, and be capped to 3 hours per month.  Watching more would cost R2 per minute.

Now. if Telkom sold ADSL like Multichoice sells DSTV:

• An independent technician would able to install a physical line today or tomorrow, if you didn't have one.
• There would be a swap-out service for routers, for a nominal fee per month. 
• If you already had a line and router, getting connected would be a matter of minutes.
• Telkom would not run out of ADSL ports, ever - they would plan ahead based on demand and unused ports, and not wait until after the last port has been used, and the next customer cannot be accommodated to begin ordering new equipment.
• You would not be forced to pay R150 for the privilege of having a landline even if you didn't want to make calls.
• Your ADSL package would only be capped at entry level, and the top package would not only be super fast, but uncapped as well.

If only...

Seatbelts vs Crime

In South Africa, the big problem is violent crime, and everyone is very concerned.

This can be used to demonstrate how people misjudge risk, and make bad trade-offs: If I could invent a device which would reduce your chance of being killed in a criminal act by half (statistically proven), I would probably be a billionaire in a very short time, as people would be willing to pay thousands for such a device, and probably be willing to fork out a monthly subscription fee as well.  They would force their children to get one, and if someone owned such a device, and didn't use it, they would be labeled as lunatics and gambling with their lives.  If they neglected getting their children to use it, they would be ostracised in polite society, and would be ashamed to admit it.

Now, in South Africa, our road death toll is roughly equivalent to our crime death toll.  A device exists that reduces your chance of being killed in an accident by much more than half - and comes standard with every single car, for decades already.  It is called a seatbelt.  Yet by my informal survey, between a third and two thirds of people do not wear their seatbelts regularly; some even fasten them over the empty seat and sit on them to silence the warning buzzer.  The figures for children are actually worse - very few people would hesitate to take a quick trip with their children not in a car seat or wearing a seatbelt.  This includes smart, educated people with the financial wherewithal to afford car seats...

The number one cause of unnatural death in children is car accidents, where they often have not been properly restrained...

And in case you feel like ignoring this because you do not stay in South Africa, keep in mind that in almost all other countries the chances of dying in a car accident is at least an order of a magnitude higher than the chance of dying due to a criminal act, yet I am willing to bet you would still consider the Criminal Death Preventer....

If you are one of the people religiously wearing a seatbelt, and doing the same for your children, you probably agree with me 100%.

Sony PSN security and usability fail (After 15 May 2011)

Yes, this is not directly about the famous PSN hack, but rather some more comments on how their security and usability still suck.

<rant>
When I could finally log back on, I had to change my password with a link sent to my email address.  OK, this makes sense, as they could not trust their passwords anymore.  But why does my password have to look like this?


Your password must:
- contain at least eight characters
- contain at least one letter and one number
- not contain any character used more than two times in a row
- not match the sign-in ID

Which means that Pasword1 is valid, yet YouWillNeverGuessThisPassword*&%^$%#%^&^ is not?
Nor is oInYhgbYNCyhsdUBuo valid, or AnyPassPhraseThatHappensToRepeatACharacterSomewhere173 or AnyPasPhraseThatHapensToMisOutOnANumber.

Also, if you click on any menu item, and try to cancel, you need to confirm that you want to cancel.  The last time something this bad was invented was when you had to click on Start to Shut Down.
</rant>

Road rage and driver education

How often have you waved your hands at another driver and swore at them in traffic?  And sometimes it escalates into full blown road rage, and someone gets hurt (or worse).  In order to see the benefits, lets turn this question around:

How often have you improved your driving behaviour due to someone else swearing at you and waving their hands in traffic?  Oh, sorry, you were already a perfect driver (or at least above average, like the rest of us, lol), but humour me... Right, not even once.

So, if you have never improved your driving based on the free education offered by others, what makes you think that the opposite will hold true?

Stop swearing at others, and concentrate on your own driving, and at avoiding the people who makes mistakes instead.  The roads might not be safer, but at least you will be calmer.  (And use less fuel, according to the Mythbusters See the last myth on the exploding steak episode...)

Fuel consumption today vs two decades ago

It is almost impossible for any online car review to mention the miserly fuel consumption of their latest steed without some illiterate person making disparaging comments, implying that their Toyota/Opel/VW of twenty years ago was almost as good anyway. (See Polo Blue Motion review for an example).

What seems to be invariably forgotten/ignored in the comparison is that their old car weighed 30%-60% less - reason being the added safety equipment today.  Crash that old car at 60km/h and you are guaranteed severe injuries, if not death, whereas the modern, 4 or 5 star Euro NCAP car would let you off almost unscathed.  Assuming, of course, that you have the - surprisingly rare - ability to buckle the seat belt.  No wonder airlines feel the need to still educate us on their use today...

Another culprit is the SI unit for fuel consumption - l/100km.  A consumption of 5.1 does not sound much better than 6.3, whereas it is, in fact, a significant improvement, that can be further confused by mathematics: If car A has a consumption of 5.1 l/100km compared to car B with 6.3 l/100km, car A's consumption is 19% less than car B, but car B consumes almost 24% more fuel than car A.

Lastly, the consumption claims are always compared "on the open road" - where we spend very little time.  Compare those identical cars in congested traffic, and a different picture will emerge.

I happen to have the figures for a few cars from 1998 (only 13 years ago, but still proving my point). The modern competitors have been chose to match power and acceleration, not engine size.  The figures for 1998 are from an auto motor und sport article (1998) and the 2011 figures are from the german car websites.

Car	0-100 km/h	Power	ECE/EU urban	ECE/EU open road	% increase from open road to urban	Euro NCAP
1998 Alfa Romeo 156 2.5 V6 24V	7.7s	140kW	16.5 l/100km	8.4 l/100km	96%	N/A (YouTube videos look bad)
2011 Alfa Romeo 159 1.8 TBi 16V 146kW	7.7s	147kW	11.8 l/100km	6 l/100km	97%	*****
1998 Audi A4 2.8	7.1s	142kW	13.6 l/100km	7.0 l/100km	94%	***
2011 Audi A4 2.0T	6.9s	155kW	8.3 l/100km	5.3 l/100km	57%	*****
1998 BMW 328i	7.6s	142kW	12.5 l/100km	7.0 l/100km	79%	****
2011 BMW 325i	6.7s	160kW	9.8 l/100km	5.7 l/100km	42%	*****
1998 Mercedes C280 sport	7.8s	145kW	14.8 l/100km	7.4 l/100km	100%	****
2011 Mercedes C250 BlueEFFICIENCY (Auto)	7.2s	150kW	9 l/100km	5.6 l/100km	61%	*****

So, all the modern cars are safer.  All the modern cars are faster (except Alfa, as fast).  All the modern cars use substantially less fuel on the open road.  All the modern cars use considerably less fuel in urban conditions.  All the modern cars (except Alfa) has a much smaller increase when used in urban conditions than the old cars.

So, your uncle's 20 year old Opel can reach Durbs using only 25% more petrol, but try to commute from Fourways to Sandton every day...

Getting taxis to respect traffic regulations in South Africa

If you drive in South Africa, you have met our minibus taxis and their general disregard for traffic regulations.  I admit that they provide a service that should, in all honesty, be provided by government, but thankfully isn't.  (Imagine what several layers of government red tape and inefficiency will do - it will make taxis prohibitively expensive and late, as well as running on routes no-one needs).

As such, they do deserve certain concessions: so what if they use the emergency lane - they generally travel fast enough not to impede any actual emergency vehicles, and should they brake down, they are already in the correct place.

However, skipping red robots (traffic lights for the international readers) and stop streets, or using unroadworthy vehicles should not be acceptable.  Issuing them with a ticket does not help, as they (mostly) just ignore it.  What is needed is a new way of punishing them that they cannot ignore - make them wait.

If a taxi is found to be unroadworthy, pull them over and let them wait for an hour before allowing them to continue (empty).  Skipping a red robot (traffic light) should get them another hour's delay, etc.

Why is this effective? Well, paying passengers would get upset at the delay, and simply get out, and take another taxi, resulting in lost revenues.  Similarly, the time that the taxi is not on the road also costs both the owner and the driver more than what it would cost to comply with the rules of the road (slightly slower passenger turnover).

Bribing the traffic cop to avoid the delay would be just another form of on-the-spot fine, and would still achieve the road safety aim, in that it becomes less costly to comply with the rules than to break them.

The only possible loser would be the local authority, through a slightly smaller revenue collection, but with a vastly increased road safety benefit.

I guess that means no chance of it ever getting implemented...

Colgate vs Aquafresh

I never really cared whether I bought Colgate or Aquafresh toothpaste.  In fact, if I had to choose, it would be Colgate, since I liked their flip-top design more.
Recently, however, I noticed that Colgate has reduced the size of their tubes - the standard tubes now contain 75ml rather than 100ml as before.  The tube length is unchanged though, meaning that you only notice it if you carefully inspect the diameter or packaging.
Aquafresh is still using the standard 100ml tubes.

Why is this relevant?
Since Colgate did not reduce the length of the tubes but only the diameter, their total packaging costs (and perceived size) has remained almost unchanged.  They did not adjust the price downwards, yet you now receive 25% less toothpaste for your money.
Well, I noticed, and am now using Aquafresh exclusively.