28April

In another place, we see,

I forgot/never really knew the complexities of the Northern Line interchange at Euston.

On a complexity scale of 0-10, we rank this one a 6. (The one platform at Mill Hill East is a 0, the maze that is Bank-Monument a 10.) From the top down at Euston, there's the ticket hall (direct access to suburban platforms 8-11, escalators to the rest of the station). Twin escalators in each direction. Then there's a clockwise one-way system, really a large rectangle bridging three island platforms. In order from the ticket hall, these are:

1: Northern Charing Cross Branch, S and N. Steps at the extreme Camden end of the platform (front heading N, back heading S).

2: Northern Bank Southbound (to King's-cross, Moorgate, Bank) and Victoria line Southbound (to Green-park, Victoria). Down escalators, and further steps about two-thirds of the way along the train.

3: Northern Bank Northbound (to Camden-town) and Victoria Northbound (to King's-cross, Tottenham-hale). Down a different escalator, and further steps about a third of the way along the train.

These are all along one side of the one-way system; on the other side are escalators up, escalators down. There's a cut-through from Bank/Vic S to shorten transfers to the Charing Cross branch.

What's the best way of getting from Kings Cross to Goodge Street?

We're not convinced that there is a single best for all people, but there are degrees of ease. TFL reckons it's a 19 minute walk at a reasonable pace, and that's about the maximum distance most people would be prepared to hoof it. Buses 10, 73, 390 head in the correct direction. Tube fans will probably wish to remain on the Victoria line to Warren-street, then walk. Or change to the Northern, if it's really belting it down.

If changing from Victoria to CX branch, or vice versa, we much prefer Warren-street to Euston, as there are fewer people milling around the station, there's no one-way system to go round, and it's easier to navigate.

Finally, for those people who have found this article through search engines, and are interested in connections to Euston Square, there are none. You have to surface at Euston, walk across the station plaza and garden, cross a (busy) side-street, and then descend into the bowels of Euston Square. It's officially 200m, we allow ten minutes platform to platform.

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Geekery

29March

We have no idea who wrote the CBC's report on Toronto FC's match yesterday. We do know that the report was poorly subbed. Here's a more comprehensible rendition.

Toronto FC beat the New York / Noy Joysey Metrostars 2-1.

The victory, at the Carolina Challenge Cup exhibition tournament, was the side's first over a Major League Soccer rival. Toronto will make its league debut on 7 April.

It is always good to get a win, Toronto head coach Mo Johnston said. But pre-season is about fitness.

I applaud the guys for fighting 90 minutes, but it has to get better. We are still not good enough.

Edson Buddle scored the decisive goal in the 36th minute, breaking a 1-1 tie when he headed the ball off a free kick from captain Ronnie O'Brien.

Alecko Eskandarian had put Toronto ahead in the 10th minute, converting O'Brien's pass.

John Wolyniec equalised for the Metrostars in the 21st minute with a header that eluded the grasp of keeper Greg Sutton.

Toronto has a win and a loss in the tournament. They will next play the hosts, Division II side Charleston Battery, who lost 1-0 to the Metrostars, and drew 1-1 with the Houston Dynamo.

Toronto lost last Saturday's opener 2-0 to Houston, the reigning MLS champions.

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Geekery

19March

Hmm, it appears that Haloscan is now relying on a Javascript unescape trick to allow posting. Some of us don't allow Javascript to run without a damned good reason, and playing nice for an exceptionally flaky comment service is not a good reason.

So, one for the Bother's Bar commentariat: we worked out the probability of opening with five in a row last year, while researching a completely different matter. The chance of five in a row works out at roughly one in 1500, so to see it in game 411 is not eyebrow-raisingly inconsistent with probability - it's roughly a 3-1 shot to have seen the phenomenon by now. Odds of a seven-in-a-row: roughly one in 100,000; we would not expect to see that again before the series ends. And odds of eliminating all ten blues in 12 boxes (as happened in the previous game) is one-in-5350.

That two events of such high improbability have turned up in successive games must raise questions. We trust the auditors, but recent evidence (see: the apparent cancellation of Brainteaser) has shown that we cannot trust Endemol in general, and Endemol Bristol in particular.

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Geekery

16March

Vodex mentions information-revolution.org, a site with a marketing budget big enough to smear itself over the Palace of Westminster, yet puny enough to fly completely under our radar. (No shocks there: our advertising blindness is such that we've bumped into the equivalent of mile-high travel towers before now.)

Who is this site? Or, to be precise, whois this site:

(More, including the site's links to government propaganda. 573 words)

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Geekery

13March

The Conservatives have proposed altering the tax structure on aeroplane flights. Ideas include adding VAT to internal flights, charging fuel duty to flights within the UK, and altering the base upon which passenger duty is levied. Much of the press attention has concentrated on the end-game, a personal carbon allowance, to allow a certain distance (perhaps 2000km) per person per year at a lower tax rate, with a higher tarrif for flights over that limit. That proposal is predicated on a complex personal carbon allowance system, and is a long-term aspiration.

As an interim measure, the Conservatives say that they want to tax the flight, rather than the passenger. This makes an awful lot of sense, as it's the presence of the aeroplane rather than the passenger that is the root cause of the carbon dioxide emissions. It makes particular sense when we recall how many planes spend much of the day scuttling about half-full. May we propose a reasonably simple formulation to this end.

1) Levy a flat charge per passenger seat for each aeroplane landing at a UK airport. For the sake of argument, say this is £10. It is to be paid by the passenger on the seat they occupy, and by the airline on seats that are empty.

2) Then levy a variable charge, with three elements: the distance travelled on the flight, the capacity of the 'plane, and the cleanliness of the aeroplane. Clean 'planes might be charged at 1p per passenger per km; older and dirtier 'planes might be charged at 3p per passenger per km. Multiply these three factors together, and charge to the airline. It will then be for the airline to adjust its own prices, or substitute smaller and/or cleaner aircraft, so that it can recoup this tax.

For instance, let us consider three flights.

New Air flies from Edinburgh to Detroit, a journey of 4000km. It uses brand-spanking-new Boing 797 'planes, and fills 341 of the 375 seats.

Flat charge: £10 x 375 = £3750
Variable charge: £0.01 x 4000 x 375 = £15,000
Income from passengers: £10 x 341 = £3410
Remaining tax: £15,340, £44.99 per passenger.

Private Air charters out six-year-old planes, and is today going from Birmingham to Teesside, a trip of 200km. All four seats on board are in use.

Flat charge: £10 x 4 = £40
Variable charge: £0.018 x 200 x 4 = £14.40
Income from passengers: £10 x 4 = £40
Remaining tax: £14.40, £3.60 per passenger.

Onion Air flies from Birmingham to Paris, a journey of 400km. It uses T-reg WMPTE buses with wings, and fills 63 of the 86 seats.

Flat charge: £10 x 86 = £860
Variable charge: £0.03 x 400 x 86 = £1032
Income from passengers: £10 x 63 = £630
Remaining tax: £1262, £20.03 per passenger.

Onion Air would need to increase its ticket price by £20 in order to retain the same level of profit. But their rivals Garlic Air, also filling 63 of 86 seats, uses squeaky-clean aircraft. Its remaining tax-per-head is just £9.11. Some passengers will defect from Onion to Garlic, ensuring that the latter's tax charge drops further, to a minimum of 1p per passenger per kilometre when the plane is full. (Think why this happens.)

These are back-of-the-envelope figures - it's quite possible that a real-world application could run from 3p to 10p per passenger km, and insist that all aircraft have 10 seats, even if they don't. These are implementation details; the underlying principle appears sound.

We note that most other EU countries charge VAT on their internal flights; it would surely be possible for the union to agree to charge that tax on all flights within the EU, regardless of whether they cross national boundaries. Similarly, it would be possible for the EU to agree to levy fuel duties on all its internal flights. Both measures would push up the cost of within-EU flights by a non-trivial amount.

Nothing suggested here would stop people from having their one holiday per year, the main gripe against the plans rumoured so far. They would act as a disincentive to the frequent flyers, perhaps reducing unneccesary travel for business, or cutting people's short breaks from four to three per year. At this stage, curbing the growth is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition to reduce carbon emissions.

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Geekery

7March

While leafing through IT Veek this week (we read it for the pictures of servers on page three), our eye was caught by Tim Anderson's column. The headline..

Open Id still open to abuse

Excitement about an open-source single sign-on scheme must not trump security concerns

YADIS was nothing particularly ground-breaking, but thanks to Mr. Fitzpatrick's employment by a bunch of shysters, YADIS (since re-named Open Id) has the backing of a bunch of media harlots, and has some very moderate success.

YADIS is a back-of-the-envelope solution to a toy problem. It is not, and we don't think it ever can be, a replacement for serious two-factor authentication. We do not trust YADIS for anything involving money, for reasons well explained by Tim Anderson.

(More: Why YADIS is fit for purpose, so long as that purpose is mindlessly trivial - 809 words)

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Geekery

2March

Yes, it's that time of the month where we review our server logs, and wonder: what are these people thinking?

dana all kinds of everything score to download - nul points. That's the kind of score Dana gets here.

flying the flag scooch - covers eyes, because this will be painful.

free girls - er, we don't do that kind of pervery. Or any other kind of pervery, with the possible exception of psephology.

free online shakira naked - not here, sorry to disappoint.

free rude chris moyles songs - look, we don't do pervery.

free shoe pictures - sorry, everyone.

give me a list top ten british chart music hits on the day of 1 - a snappier query would give you results.

what airports fly to mercia spain - none. The gates themselves take to the air with ease, but those duty-free shops just don't leave.

lay down your arms by anne shelton in 33 or 45 record - you should have been listening to Russell Davies a couple of weeks ago, he played the gravel-crunching original.

ypsilanti water tower - look, we don't do pervery.

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Geekery

25February

G****e has posted an apology for being moderately accurate. When one searches the world's biggest advertising broker for jew, people are shown an apology from the information behemoth. It's not apologising for aggregating your data, or for making money off of other people's content, but for the results it displays.

G****e goes on to say, The only sites we omit are those we are legally compelled to remove or those maliciously attempting to manipulate our results. That would include certain "g****ebombs", mostly those targetting Mr. X (a drunkard from Connecticut) or Mister Tony Blair (a prochain ancien British prime minister). It doesn't reject the french military victories nonsense. Nor does it reject B&Q appliance warehouse, number 20 on G****e and position 13 on Yahoo. And rising.

Everyone's least favourite advertising agency has taken a huge tax break to employ a handful of people. The citizens of Carolina North are up in arms over a bribe of USD 250 million (€190 million) paid to G****e so that it might locate a server farm in Lenoir. The plant will employ approximately 200 people, and will be subsidised by almost €1,000,000 per job. Don't be evil? Only when it doesn't hurt the bottom line.

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14February

Reaction to yesterday's victory over the evil empire has been mixed. In Le Soir's blog du sel, commentator Julien said, Marre marre marre et vive google !. Greg took the opposite opinion, c’est un autre pas en avant dans le respect des droits d’auteurs! Somewhere between the two, but closer to the latter than the former, lies our opinion. But not that of many Sillycon Valley insiders.

(More: Reactions from the blogosphere. 849 words)

It's very hard to predict who will be the major losers from such a stand-off. The Belgian press will lose some web traffic, but I really don't think that this is as much of a loss to them as the Sillycon Valley-heads are making out; newspaper aggregators are still a fairly marginal product, and if someone really wants to know the news from a particular country, the Yankee-centric G****e is probably the worst place to start.

The wild-card, of course, is if the first news aggregator to agree to pay for content finds that this is a beneficial position. On their own, the Belgians won't make that; if other courts across the Napoleonic Code follow the precedent and half of Europe's papers are pulled, that would change matters entirely.

The Belgian press association, Copiepresse, has already started to target Yahoo's copyright-infringing news scraper. G****e's next target is to be more evil than Evil Edna.

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Geekery

13February

The world's largest advertising broker cannot steal content, ruled a Belgian court to-day. G****e, the evil information behemoth, has been found guilty of breaching the copyright of seventeen Belgian newspapers, and has imposed fines of €35 million. Under the ruling, the brokery must remove copyrighted content within 24 hours of being notified by email, or face a fine of €25,000 per article per day.

Copiepresse, the francophone newspaper collective that beat the behemoth, has said that it's happy to negotiate a mutually-agreeable settlement. Never knowing when they're flogging a dead horse, G****e has entered an appeal against to-day's judgement. This decision corresponds to the Napoleonic Code right to own information, and will pertain to ongoing actions in Austria and Italy.

The court found that en reproduisant sur son site G****e News des titres d'articles et de courts extraits d'articles, Google reproduit et communique au public des oeuvres protégées par le droit d'auteur and à tort que Google estime pouvoir se prévaloir de l'accord des éditeurs de site.

The court also criticised G****e's cache of articles; Le Soir pointed out that it stuffs old news behind a paywall, but the articles are available free and for nothing through the pirates. The court ruled, la pratique de Google consistant à enregistrer dans sa mémoire dite cache des oeuvres protégées par les droits d'auteur et à permettre aux internautes d'y accéder au sein-même de la dite-mémoire représente un acte de reproduction et de communication au public".

As ever, the dunderheads on Slashdot were last with the news, fully six hours behind the ruling. In less than half an hour, the thread had been derailed by a contribution from Dave Giggler of Leuven. Incidentally, is it just us, or should the Slashdot logo have a red dot in the top-right quadrant?

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Geekery

10February

A couple of articles from earlier this week deserve a follow-up.

On Monday, Jouez et Gagnez (3) discussed the expected value of the Euro Squillions draw last night. Ticket sales were 81,618,597. The rational sale we computed for Europe as a whole was 74,360,499. The UK-only top-up was 16.04 new pence, making the rational sale for UK players 82,312,115. Immediately prior to the draw, the expected net value of a ticket bought in the UK was 0.85 new pence; the expected net value of a ticket bought elsewhere in Europe was minus 8.9 cents. The smart move was not to play.

Firefox News

Earlier in the week, I asked what the improvement was for Firefox II.

Matttt wrote, One can now reopen recently closed tabs. Which I can already do through an extension.

Matgb wrote, the auto discover for feeds is significantly improved. Again, I can't see this as a great shake, as RSS feeds go straight to Sage, while Firefox seems to want to use online aggregators. Not a road down which I wish to travel.

(More, dissecting Firefox further 674 words)

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Geekery

7February

On an idea by Mat GB, a list of the extensions installed in my current version of Firefox. Being deliberately a touch behind the times, I'm still on 1.5. What's the advantage of 2, anyway?

(More: X marks the Firefox 876 words)

Geekery

5February

M'learned friend Jiggers points out that there's another Euro Squillions mass draw this week. An additional €100 million must be given away, cascading to lower prize pools if the jackpot is unwon. Is it worth your while entering in the UK, and is it worth entering in Europe?

First, let's look at the ground rules. There is no roll-over from last week, the jackpot was won. This makes the mathematics a bit easier. Therefore, unless ticket sales run at about two per person across the whole of western Europe, the jackpot fund will be worth precisely €100,000,000. We also note that the game rules (section H) state that exactly 22% of the 42% prize pool goes to the jackpot. Therefore, 78% of the prize pool does not go to the jackpot. That's enough to re-work Jiggers's original work, and model the situation as follows:

Let us assume that t tickets are sold this week. The total entry fee taken in is E, where E = €2 * t .

42% of the entry fees taken, plus any top-up funds, will be paid out as prize money in that draw. The total prize fund paid this time is P, where P = (0.42 * 0.78 * €2 * t) + €100,000,000 .

For the total prize paid to exceed the total entry fees taken we need P > E or
(0.42 * 0.78 * €2 * t) + €100,000,000 > €2 * t
which, subtracting (0.42 * 0.78 * €2 * t) from each side, means that
€100,000,000 > €2 * t - (0.42 * 0.78 * €2 * t)
which, rearranging, means that
€100,000,000 > 0.6724 * €2 * t
and so, dividing both sides by 0.6724 * €2, means that
€100,000,000 / (0.6724 * €2) > t or
€100,000,000 / (€1.3448) > t
and as t must be a whole number, t is no higher than 74,360,499.