Monthly Archives: May 2013

Channel 4 on demand

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In the past I’ve really appreciated the first series of Black Mirror that was briefly available on youtube.

As I was recently in the UK I decided to give a try to the second series as the streaming is not available in Italy.
The experience was far from stellar.

Channel 4 asked for a registration (a couple of minutes as email confirmation is needed) and then I got access to over two minutes of boring advertising (not something like the Superbowl ads) that I could not skip.
Fair enough as I was not paying.

Finally the show.
Actually the first 10 minutes, then again over two minutes of advertising.
The rate of advertising to content is really excessive: I’m never going to use the service again.

Thistle City Barbican in London: just a bit better than sleeping under a bridge

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This week I had to be in London for the second time in one month and my experience was to some extent even worse than the previous one.
Apparently the city was packed and room availability scarce so I had to deal with a hotel that I would normally not pick up on the basis of the reviews: Thistle City Barbican.

The first night I was in the Thistle Kensington Park: my room was facing the HVAC cooling section that produced a continuous hum during the night and the bed was fairly uncomfortable: for 226£ expectations were higher.2013-05-22-095[1]

The very bad experience was the second night with the City Barbican: the room needs a major renovation for at least 10 years now.
In the bathroom a tile was missing from the floor and the chrome of the tap (two separate ones) was just a distant past.

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Wood panels and water don’t play nicely together and it is was clearly a bad decision to heavily use them in a bathroom.

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Tapestry on the wall was bulging, the desk finish was of low quality wood-like hard plastic and some large patches were missing altogether.

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No need to say that the carpet has made his time and the rest of the furniture was not in great shape either.

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I was lucky to be very tired and able to fall asleep without thinking of the cleaning.

226£ for a room that would be just ok for a free emergency shelter is absolutely a shame even if the personnel was very kind: in the end it’s 20 minutes dealing with them and 8 hours dealing with the room.

Stay away from the Barbican.

Leap Motion should learn to better manage customers

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Leap Motion has presented a very intriguing device and made a great marketing of it.

I’ve tried in the past a number of relatively unusual pointing devices (the white and blue original Logitech trackman, the trackman wheel, a Wacom Bamboo, a 3DConnexion serial 3D mouse and a serial SpaceBall 3003) and so far I settled with the trackman as the device that serves me the better way.
But Leap Motion device really looks great so I decide to preorder it.
$97.68 on January 10, 2013

Then I’ve sent it in the back of brain where things get forgotten.
On March 5th I get a remainder of the fact that I have this preorder ongoing and that it will begin shipping on May 13th: some fuel to restart the excitement.

The excitement goes down big time a month and a half later, April 25th: shipping target date is delayed by over 3 months.
From May 13th to July 22nd.
Leap Motion’s email states “We’ve manufactured over six hundred thousand devices and delivered twelve thousand to amazing developers”
“The reality is we very likely could have hit the original ship date. But it wouldn’t have left time for comprehensive testing”
“We will also invite some people who are not developers to join the beta test”

But there it is hope.
I’m told that I can write to them.
Even better: to Michael Buckwald directly.
“If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact our support team at support@leapmotion.com or my personal email (buckwald@leapmotion.com).”

So I went that route a couple of day later: after two weeks no answer, but a new generic email of update sent to all the people.
I should have read better the email and Leap Motion should have written it more carefully because the expectation generated is that someone will actually answer the email that was elicited.
This is a bad way of managing the customer relation.

At the end of the day what I read is that they are sitting on a pile of over half a million devices that supposedly work fine and that they are not giving to the people who preordered.
In the meanwhile they are getting “great apps coming to Airspace”.

Looks like sometime in the future instead of simply a great new pointing device I’ll get a software ecosystem to get me entangled.
Not what I wanted.
Maybe I’m better canceling the preorder and get a proven device like the Spacenavigator?

Mariage homosexuel, homoparentalité ed adoption. Essay by Gilles Bernheim

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This booklet was recently translated in italian and was recommended to me by a friend.

The purpose of the book was to put together a strong argument against the law on the subject that was being discussed at the time of publishing by the French Parliament.
The law was recently approved hence the book was not able to steer the vote away from the promised outcome of the election campaign.
Even if the political target was not reached still the book was a contribution to the ample discussion that happened in France after the general election and before the vote of the law.

It’s a very easy reading as anyone would hope for if a book has to make an impact on a wide audience and is without religious references.
The strongest arguments, in my opinion, are the ones that are centered about whether or not a baby can be considered an object (of someone’s right) instead of a subject (with his own rights).

This same caveat about object/subject can be applied (either implicitly or explicitly) in relation of abortion.
In a number of legislations there it is a limit to the time when an abortion is legal: at some point in time the fetus is considered a person (hence a subject) and before is considered only an object.
I think that either a foetus is a person from time 0 of no one is ever a person: putting an arbitrary term for the switch is subject to a strong attack with the logical paradox called sorite.
This problem is somewhat limited in practical application in the case of abortion: after the fact there it is no more evolution of the foetus from an object to a subject.

For an adoption and assisted procreation this is different.
Even assuming that at the time of the decision the baby is an object this will not remain true as the time moves on: at some point in time the baby will become a subject with rights and the law should really deal with this fact from day 1.

For this argument to be effective it’s clearly necessary to have an agreement on whether or not a person has the right to have a mother and a father and this is only slightly easier to agree upon than the other one: quite a few people disagrees with the idea that “natural for a human being” and “right” do match.
How could we get away from this problem?
In my opinion by taking into account the wider and more general question: a human being can be an object (or a mean to someone else’s end)? (1)
Here the number of persons that would say yes goes down: as it’s often the case it’s easier to be conservative when we have a direct interest.

The implication of (1) applies clearly not only to the specific scenario of the book but to the parenthood in general.

I was overbooked :-(

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It’s widely common knowledge that airlines sell more seats than available in the airplane.
Maybe it’s because sometimes in the airport you hear the request for volunteers that are available to take a later flight (happened to me last year in Copenhagen) or because it’s frequent enough that it happened to a lot of people.

What is less common knowledge is that it might happen with hotels too.

I was in London 3 days ago and after a long day of traveling and business meetings I reached my booked hotel (Holiday Inn Express Park Royal) at 11pm.
I was warmly greeted and told the news about my missing room; I was then offered something to drink and invited to wait for the taxi that would bring me to a hotel with an available room with the reassurance that the complimentary taxi would be made available to me also the following morning to bring me where I needed to go.

The taxi arrived and after about 15 minutes I reached my new hotel (Holiday Inn Express Brentford Lock).
The clerk told me that the next morning there was no issue for transportation in the morning as a bus stop was near the hotel and would make me able to reach a tube station: no reference to the complimentary taxi.
I was very tired and simply went to my room to get some rest without arguing.

In the morning a different clerk mentioned the taxi (good move) but also told me that it would take 15 minutes for the taxi to arrive at the hotel and that using the bus would have worked fine and without additional cost for me as I have an Oyster card.
Unfortunately the part about the additional cost was not true (bad move): it costed me extra £ on top of the tube ticket. And clearly the hotel change costed me extra time (more train stops as I moved from zone 2 to zone 3 and a dozen bus stops not needed in the booked one) and discomfort.

No discount or complimentary benefit (WiFi, drink from the minibar) was offered to me.
I’ll think twice before booking again with Holiday Inn and I suggest that you do the same.