How to make street renaming simple

According to the Sunday Times Metro, the Tshwane council wants street names in Pretoria to change. It doesn't really matter to me, since the only time I visit the Pretoria city centre is when I need to drive across the city (Pretoria doesn't have a complete outer ring road), or when I need to visit government departments (hardly ever).

I also think that Paul Kruger and his contemporaries are long gone, as are the people who they wronged, and renaming the streets of the city centre would be a waste of time.

Also, the potential for confusion is real, especially when street renamings are arbitrary. The ideal situation would be for a logical grid system to be used in renaming the streets - all north-south roads could be named with even numbers, and all east-west roads with odd numbers. Or something like that. And the number of street renamings should also be limited to those figures who are truly offensive.

But, politicians, being politicians, will probably opt for political names. Streets named after figures like DF Malan, and HF Verwoerd are the most embarrassing, and richly deserving of renaming. Unfortunately, these names are also often the names of main roads in many towns.

The potential chaos caused by a renaming can be mitigated if a nationwide mapping between old and new names is established. For example, all HF Verwoerd streets in South Africa could be renamed after say, Oliver Tambo. All DF Malan streets could be named after Beyers Naude, following the precedent set in Johannesburg. It will ease the transition between old and new names, and, if people are given a small list, they are more likely to adopt the new names quickly, and with minimal confusion. A lot of arguments against street renaming will also be blunted - old business cards, phone books and maps will still be valid - all the user would have to do is look at one list -valid for the entire country-, and they would know what the new street names are.

Jo'blog responds on rape post

Despite what some people think, anal rape is not supposed to be part of the prison experience, nor is it an acceptable form of punishment, in South Africa, or anywhere else.

Calling for someone to be raped is sick. I stand by my previous posting on this topic.

Why I like petrol price regulation

I don't know much about microeconomics, so I'll have to take Vaz Lube's word that government regulation of the petrol price is a bad thing. It probably even leads to higher overall prices because of decreased competition, I don't know.

And, frankly, I don't care. I like the convenience of being able to fill up anywhere, and knowing that I'm paying the same price as everyone else in the area. I like the idea of going into a garage - any garage- and saying, "full tank-unleaded" without worrying about the price. I don't need the hassle of looking for lower-priced petrol, and calculating whether the cost of driving across town to fill a half-tank of petrol will be offset by a 20 cent/litre saving. Life is complicated enough already without worrying about being gouged by petrol station owners. I don't care if average prices come down, I only care about knowing, with 100% certainty, that I am not paying more than the average price.

It's probably stupid, and economic blasphemy for me to say so, but in this case, I feel better off having the government set petrol prices using a convoluted formula, than leaving things to the whims of the market.

Local blogger advocates prison rape

"I hope he lives. I hope he goes to prison. I hope the inmates fuck him a new ass...! "
Jo'blog

• Human Rights Watch on prison rape in the US


• An article on prison rape in South Africa


• Even the normally odious National Review is on the right side on this issue.

How not to sell your products

If you sell components to developers, and build your own site using those components, you had better be sure that your site works properly.

Update - 21:00: The site is fixed, but the manual download page still has broken links, and the newsgroups load, but very slowly.

Interview tips - for interviewers

[I'm waiting for a download to complete so I can unplug my modem, and am housebound, hence the glut of posts at the moment.]

I previously wrote about a rather weird interview process I went through last year, and I got a thoughtful email from a Durban-based psychologist about the topic a few weeks ago. My reply bounced, and I just re-sent it.

The email got me thinking about the interview process, and I also found this guide to interviewing for software developer positions.

The article reminded me of a critical point:

It is important to remember that the people you are interviewing are potential clients [or competitors], and pissing them off is not a good idea.

Some examples:

• Something in the HR playbook seems to require rejections to be handled by a secretary, rather than the interviewer. That happened to me, and I thought, "WTF...he [the HR manager] phoned me twice, interviewed me twice, emailed me three times, and then pretends that his secretary is rejecting me." (I wrote about this job application previously). I later realized that it was probably a tactic used by HR people.
• Rejection is tough, and I suppose that using a secretary to issue a letter that a candidate was unsuccessful is supposed to make it seem less personal, or something, but I just found it insulting, manipulative and pointless.
• Another chap wasted my time, and money traveling for a position that was no longer available (it was painfully obvious from the way the interview was conducted). His company -I had done some research- had made a few blunders, and was having trouble with its projects. I wasn't surprised after the interview. Interestingly, I recently met someone else who went for an interview there at around the same time, and he too was struck by the incompetence of the outfit (he decided against taking their job offer). We have actually discussed the fact that it seemed that there was blood in the water, and that there is a business opportunity in grabbing the company's huge blue-chip client....

Companies that mistreat candidates develop a bad reputation and, through word of mouth, potential applicants will be scared off, or worse.

Links - 27/02/2005

• A look at how Google is led [via]
• "If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy." [via]. I agree.

Buying a new computer

I have decided that I need a new computer. I want a computer that has specific functionality. I must be able to...:

• play Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 on it, to the end, with no performance degradation.
• write DVD's
• develop and debug applications using ASP.NET and Visual Studio.NET, with SQL Server 2000.
• develop J2EE applications, if I ever need to.
• connect to an Ethernet network, the internet, and to a printer
• run MS Office 2000
• use my USB-Bluetooth adapter

I don't have the time to browse technical websites looking for benchmarks, and I don't trust any of the computer dealers in my town - they all seem to be small-time crooks.

Buying from a big chain store is not an option, because specialize in selling overpriced and under-powered computers.

I will probably get my computer from a friend-of-a friend, or a colleague who has an account with a computer wholesaler, and who will make a small profit for their trouble, but I will still probably have to give them the specifications for the system that I want. The wholesalers' price lists, although password-protected, are not too difficult to obtain, so I will be able to see if I'm being ripped off.

This is less than ideal, and if someone developed an application that let me input functional specifications like those above, produced a detailed technical quote, broken down by component, and allowed one to compare prices from different suppliers, they would remove the guesswork from computer buying, and, I think, have a killer app.

The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci code is an entertaining, fast paced read. But I can see why there was mild hysteria from certain quarters ,regarding the book.

The idea that Christianity borrowed from pagan tradition is widely accepted, however, the book seems to make a fundamentally different statement - Christianity was essentially pagan, until the Church, as part of a power grab, destroyed the "sacred feminine", in the process deifying Jesus. Or something like that.

But it's only a novel, admittedly a fast-paced and engrossing one, but still, fundamentally, a work of fiction. The plot has also got some puzzles, that if one has the inclination for that sort of thing, could be interesting diversions. I didn't bother, and let the characters solve the puzzles, although I did figure out the Westminster Abbey codeword before the characters did.

If you are a bible-thumper stay away from this book, if you want to be entertained, and understand the difference between fact and fiction, then you should read The Da Vinci code.

Angels and Demons

Angels and Demons was a fairly entertaining book. Harry Potter for grownups, with a fast enough pace to cover the implausibility and junk science that fill the book.
I finished it on Monday, so I've forgotten some of the plot already - it's not a particularly memorable novel, but still worth a read if you have nothing better to do.