Software review: Mac OS 10.5 Leopard

The latest edition of the Macintosh operating system -- Leopard -- has been out for a month or so now, and i've been using it for a couple of weeks. My oppinion? It seems pretty good, although certainly not a revolution in computing. It seems to introduce mainly small changes.

Best features (IMHO):

- Screen sharing. VNC style remote control of another Mac on your internal network, or even over the net (although i've not tried that). This feature works beautifully. It has saved me switching my monitor back and forward between my two computers every 5 seconds.

- PDF annotations in Preview. Circle, underline, highlight, and comment on any piece of a pdf file. I wish I had these features while I was doing my honours research this past year.

Over-rated:

- Spaces. Multiple virtual desktops. Nifty, but I can't find any useful way to use it. I can never remember which virtual desktop I was working in. Ended up turning it off.

- Stacks. Pop-up display of folder items from the dock. Looks cool, but I've not found it overly helpful. Maybe I'm just stuck in my ways.

So, I'm glad I upgraded, but Leopard doesn't seem to be anything spectacular. Although, I think we'll see Leopard come into its own when software developers begin to take advantage of the improvements to CoreImage , and the other hidden bits and pieces.

Ghost-busters: debunking of the blue petrol station ghost

There's some footage doing the rounds on YouTube that people are claiming shows a blue ghost haunting a petrol station.

Here's the video as featured on a news bulletin:



What do you reckon? I don't think it looks overly ghostly, but what could it be? It moves like an insect, but are there many blue insects? A fault in the camera's sensors could colour the insect blue, but the blueness seems to follow the insect around. It could be blue plastic, but the movement doesn't seem consistent with something that is being blown around.

Well, if it's too hard to work out in 5 mins, it's gotta be a ghost, right?

Not so fast. Here's a video that gives a brilliant explanation [via skepchick.org]:



I'm really impressed by this second video. It is very well thought out.

Recommended viewing: Angels in America

For Australians with access to digital television, the ABC is showing the Angels in American miniseries again on ABC2, tonight (November 29th) at 9.30pm. If you've never seen it before, I highly recommend it.

Set in 1980s New York, it deals with the political, social, psychological/spiritual impact of the AIDS epidemic on the gay community. The play won a Tony and the miniseries won an Emmy.

In my opinion, it's a modern classic, up there with Death of a Salesman.

(UPDATE: Erk informs me that it can also be seen via Foxtel, as Foxtel re-broadcasts ABC2)

The Answer to Pop Quiz #1

The results are in for our inaugural Pierian Puddle pop quiz.

The question was:

"A bat and a ball cost $1.10. A bat costs $1 more than a ball. So how much does a ball cost?"

The results were mixed. We had one correct answer, one smart-arse answer, and one incredibly wrong answer. However, the answer that we didn't get at all, was the answer that most participants gave in a recent study using this question (Frederick, 2005).

Most people, it seems, give the incorrect answer '10 cents'; indeed, that was my first answer too.

But think about it. If the ball costs $0.10, and the bat "costs $1 more than the ball", then the bat must cost $1.10. Together that equals $1.20, not $1.10. So the right answer is that the ball must cost "5 cents".

It took me ages to work that out. I was so sure that "10 cents" was the answer. Indeed, according to the author of the study, most people get this question wrong because the intuitive answer ("10 cents") comes so easily to mind -- $1.10 splits so easily into $1 and $0.10. Because it seems so easy, most of us fail to carefully vet the logic of our answer.

So to those of you who got the question right, it might suggest that you are quite cognitively reflective -- you rationally think through things and don't succumb to the intuitive answer.

References

Frederick, S. (2005). On the ball: Cognitive reflection and decision-making. Journal of Economic Perspectives.

The right to bare arms?

Word has it that the US Supreme Court is going to take another look at the 2nd ammendment of the US constitution and give an opinion on what 'the right to bear arms' really means. Personally, I'm convinced that the founding fathers made a typo.

Election wrap-up

Oh what a night! Labor has swept into government with a massive 6% swing, and for the first time in Australian history, the incumbent prime minister has lost his seat.

A few observations from election night:


- The Prime Minister elect will mirror the former PM in many ways. Notice that Rudd has already adopted Howard's trademark gold tie.


- There's something about being the Member for Bennelong that seems to provoke the two-arm celebratory wave.


Last night was a great night for Labor, but also a great night for 'bone-heads'. If you watched the ABC TV election coverage last night, you might have noticed the record number of people making faces, waving, and holding up giant Rudd heads in the background. The crowd in the tally room were also making a lot of noise, and at one point Kerry O'Brian got quite annoyed. In the future I think the ABC will want to do election coverage from a controlled studio, A) because of the bone-heads, and B) because the rumour is that the Australian Electoral Commission are planning to no-longer make use of an actual tally-room in the future in favour of a virtual tally room.


When the previous Labor prime minister, Paul Keating, won in 1993 he called it a win for the 'true believers'. That was code for a promise to govern from a foundation of Labor ideology. Rudd, however, borrowed Howard's line, and promised to 'govern for all Australians'. So expect to see a very conservative policy - a small target approach. The 'true believers' will have to look to Julia Gillard for traditional Labor values -- she's the 'light on the hill'.

Human Space Invaders

I'm struggling to come up with something shiny and new for today's post, so I thought I'd just go with a classic. The following is probably my favourite YouTube videos of all time.