八達通取消易辦事增值 Octopus and EPS

有人話資訊科技差不多是萬能，大部份服務都可以數碼化、自動化、電腦化，但點解八達通唔可以用易辦事增值。這個服務已經提供多年，當以前未有八達通自動增值之前我一直都是使用易辦事增值。現在的難題是增值軟件有蟲，資訊科技部門有責任解決，捉蟲照計唔會係世紀大工程。但現時的結果係全盤放棄用易辦事增值；已建立的電腦網絡，使用中的硬件，已開發的軟件要全部叮走。所有財政、物資和信譽的損失由誰負責？

又有人話現時資訊科技工程發達，沒有什麼工程是做不到，問題是需要多少資源和時間。負責軟件的技術人員無理由會作出如此決定。如果這個不是技術上的決定，就當會是管理上的決定。技術應用依附著管理，而管理的焦點是多元化的。今次的決定不知是對是錯，但肯定是一個艱難的決定。我覺得今次事件八達通面對輿論很大的壓力，現在壯士斷臂，暫時接受損失而希望早些平息事件，不失為明智的一步。代罪羔羊可能會是系統分析員和程式編寫技術員。這個故事展示資訊科技管理和技術應用的分別，和專業經理的重要。

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八達通取消易辦事增值 無法防止扣錯錢
(明報) 12月 22日 星期六 05:05AM

【明報專訊】八達通卡有限公司昨宣布，每日交易額逾100萬元的八達通易辦事（EPS）增值服務，將永久停用。八達通研究後認為，縱花錢改良系統，也無法保證類似早前的「易辦事增值扣錯錢」事件不再發生。市民今後只能以現金為八達通增值，或選擇八達通自動增值服務。

八達通昨日宣布，經專案小組的詳細研究後，認為縱使投放大量資源及時間去尋求解決方案，亦未能保證同類扣錯錢事件不會再發生，故決定永久停用易辦事增值服務，以保障客戶利益。八達通卡有限公司行政總裁陳碧鏵形容這是一個艱難決定，因對客戶造成不便。
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Dame Kiri Te Kanawa 狄卡娜娃

星期五晚聽狄卡娜娃 Dame Kiri Te Kanawa和港樂的音樂會。

Kiri Te Kanawa 於1982年獲英國封為女爵 (DBE Dame Commander of the British Empire)。她又曾在英皇儲和戴安娜的婚禮，和英女皇登基金禧紀念音樂會上演唱，並作全球電視轉播，風頭一時無兩。不過這些銜頭都只是虛名，我買票聽其音樂會是要印證傳說中的唱功和魅力。Dame Kiri 的成功，人說有兩個原因；一是美麗的聲音，被認為是像奶油般溜滑；二是神奇的魅力，使觀眾不自覺地被吸引。Dame Kiri 已於2004年從歌劇舞台退休，之後只參與音樂會演出。

我進場一看節目表，覺得曲目並不吸引，大部份的歌曲都是二十世紀作品，並沒有能特別取悅觀眾的經典金曲；而且主要是詠嘆調，即是節奏緩慢的抒情歌曲，可見 Dame Kiri 藝高人膽大，不以興奮和激情的選曲去煽動觀眾的情緒。她出場的形象優雅大方，觀感上已經令人覺得舒適。一開聲就覺得音色柔和，不算特別響亮但和管弦樂非常配合；當然作曲家在配器方面亦居功不少。她在聲音上的優點可能是天生的，只能說是得天獨厚，但她在技巧上的運用，就顯示出多年功力。我最欣賞是她在台上從容的表現，好像一切都在掌握之中。她處理每一個樂句都一絲不苟，從開始到緩緩的結束都聽不到一點瑕疵；到高音區段落時，並不見她有特別準備和用力就已經輕鬆完成。我喜歡她處理顫音的方式，頻率較低而較自然。另一個另人欣賞的地方是在於感情表達，尤其是當管弦樂轉薄而 Dame Kiri差不多是清唱時感染力更強。我想她披甲上陣在歌劇演出時效果會更理想。

她在星期日還有一場音樂會，不過現在想購票應該無望了。

Climate Change

The world could be falling apart owing to more carbon dioxide. The culprit is human activities and this makes all of us sinners. This message has been in the news for some time, and it makes you feel that it must be true. So it should be a relief that world governments gathered at Bali to work out a solution. However, the Bali conference turned out to be an arena of political game. The European Union was trying to play world leader by proposing an emission target. I just heard from the news today Germany admitted that the EU target of reducing carbon dioxide emitted by automobiles was not achievable and German automobile manufacturers would be in trouble complying. USA did not want to lose her leadership and objected, aiming to take the lead in a later conference. The tactic she used was to target China and India so as to curb them from rising to an economic power. Developing countries also raised objection for fear that the target would hinder their economic development. The jewel of the crown was Al Gore blaming USA as the leading sinner. He meant Bush Jr who defeated him in the last election. The conference achieved nothing but the convener said it was a success because a road map was agreed. There is a map but no one take the road yet.

The well being of humanity affected by climate change is a major issue. It is so important that we must not take the wrong turn and make things worse. So it is alarming when I read the open letter below signed by 100 scientists to the Secretary-General of UN and copied to heads of states of countries of the signatories. This version was published in Canada's National Post, but it is available worldwide in many websites.

There are always devil's advocates, disgruntled employees and failed researchers making noise. How could anyone object to the most important task of fighting climate change and forbidding carbon dioxide? I have read the points raised in the letter before elsewhere. But it seems IPCC was not convinced. Who are these people who think they are wiser than IPCC. It turns out many of them are actually IPCC advisors. There are 100 of them. All of them are PhD, university professors and directors of renowned scientific research institutions devoted to fields in climate, nature, and related disciplines. They come from Australia, Canada, Czech, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, Poland, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and USA. In short, they are the best brains in the world on this subject. Could they be collectively wrong, misguided or plain foolish? I think their message deserves a very serious look.

Their message is: don't fight climate change, adapt to it. The adaptation needs world effort as quickly as possible, and we may be losing time on the wrong path.

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Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations on Dec. 13, 2007

His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon
Secretary-General, United Nations
New York, N.Y.

Dear Mr. Secretary-General,

Re: UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction

It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC's conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.

The IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers are the most widely read IPCC reports amongst politicians and non-scientists and are the basis for most climate change policy formulation. Yet these Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by ­government ­representatives. The great ­majority of IPCC contributors and ­reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts.

Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports:

-- Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.

-- The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.

-- Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today's computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.

In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is "settled," significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed to consider work published only through May, 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated.

The UN climate conference in Bali has been planned to take the world along a path of severe CO2 restrictions, ignoring the lessons apparent from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, the chaotic nature of the European CO2 trading market, and the ineffectiveness of other costly initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Balanced cost/benefit analyses provide no support for the introduction of global measures to cap and reduce energy consumption for the purpose of restricting CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it is irrational to apply the "precautionary principle" because many scientists recognize that both climatic coolings and warmings are realistic possibilities over the medium-term future.

The current UN focus on "fighting climate change," as illustrated in the Nov. 27 UN Development Programme's Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems.

Yours faithfully,

[List of signatories below]

Copy to: Heads of state of countries of the signatory persons.

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The following are signatories to the Dec. 13th letter to the Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations on the UN Climate conference in Bali:

Don Aitkin, PhD, Professor, social scientist, retired vice-chancellor and president, University of Canberra, Australia

William J.R. Alexander, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Civil and Biosystems Engineering, University of Pretoria, South Africa; Member, UN Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, 1994-2000

Bjarne Andresen, PhD, physicist, Professor, The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Geoff L. Austin, PhD, FNZIP, FRSNZ, Professor, Dept. of Physics, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Timothy F. Ball, PhD, environmental consultant, former climatology professor, University of Winnipeg

Ernst-Georg Beck, Dipl. Biol., Biologist, Merian-Schule Freiburg, Germany

Sonja A. Boehmer-Christiansen, PhD, Reader, Dept. of Geography, Hull University, U.K.; Editor, Energy & Environment journal

Chris C. Borel, PhD, remote sensing scientist, U.S.

Reid A. Bryson, PhD, DSc, DEngr, UNE P. Global 500 Laureate; Senior Scientist, Center for Climatic Research; Emeritus Professor of Meteorology, of Geography, and of Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin

Dan Carruthers, M.Sc., wildlife biology consultant specializing in animal ecology in Arctic and Subarctic regions, Alberta

R.M. Carter, PhD, Professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia

Ian D. Clark, PhD, Professor, isotope hydrogeology and paleoclimatology, Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa

Richard S. Courtney, PhD, climate and atmospheric science consultant, IPCC expert reviewer, U.K.

Willem de Lange, PhD, Dept. of Earth and Ocean Sciences, School of Science and Engineering, Waikato University, New Zealand

David Deming, PhD (Geophysics), Associate Professor, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Oklahoma

Freeman J. Dyson, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, N.J.

Don J. Easterbrook, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Geology, Western Washington University

Lance Endersbee, Emeritus Professor, former dean of Engineering and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Monasy University, Australia

Hans Erren, Doctorandus, geophysicist and climate specialist, Sittard, The Netherlands

Robert H. Essenhigh, PhD, E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conversion, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, The Ohio State University

Christopher Essex, PhD, Professor of Applied Mathematics and Associate Director of the Program in Theoretical Physics, University of Western Ontario

David Evans, PhD, mathematician, carbon accountant, computer and electrical engineer and head of 'Science Speak,' Australia

William Evans, PhD, editor, American Midland Naturalist; Dept. of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame

Stewart Franks, PhD, Professor, Hydroclimatologist, University of Newcastle, Australia

R. W. Gauldie, PhD, Research Professor, Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, School of Ocean Earth Sciences and Technology, University of Hawai'i at Manoa

Lee C. Gerhard, PhD, Senior Scientist Emeritus, University of Kansas; former director and state geologist, Kansas Geological Survey

Gerhard Gerlich, Professor for Mathematical and Theoretical Physics, Institut für Mathematische Physik der TU Braunschweig, Germany

Albrecht Glatzle, PhD, sc.agr., Agro-Biologist and Gerente ejecutivo, INTTAS, Paraguay

Fred Goldberg, PhD, Adjunct Professor, Royal Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Stockholm, Sweden

Vincent Gray, PhD, expert reviewer for the IPCC and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of 'Climate Change 2001, Wellington, New Zealand

William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University and Head of the Tropical Meteorology Project

Howard Hayden, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Connecticut

Louis Hissink MSc, M.A.I.G., editor, AIG News, and consulting geologist, Perth, Western Australia

Craig D. Idso, PhD, Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Arizona

Sherwood B. Idso, PhD, President, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, AZ, USA

Andrei Illarionov, PhD, Senior Fellow, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity; founder and director of the Institute of Economic Analysis

Zbigniew Jaworowski, PhD, physicist, Chairman - Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection, Warsaw, Poland

Jon Jenkins, PhD, MD, computer modelling - virology, NSW, Australia

Wibjorn Karlen, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden

Olavi Kärner, Ph.D., Research Associate, Dept. of Atmospheric Physics, Institute of Astrophysics and Atmospheric Physics, Toravere, Estonia

Joel M. Kauffman, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia

David Kear, PhD, FRSNZ, CMG, geologist, former Director-General of NZ Dept. of Scientific & Industrial Research, New Zealand

Madhav Khandekar, PhD, former research scientist, Environment Canada; editor, Climate Research (2003-05); editorial board member, Natural Hazards; IPCC expert reviewer 2007

William Kininmonth M.Sc., M.Admin., former head of Australia's National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological organization's Commission for Climatology Jan J.H. Kop, MSc Ceng FICE (Civil Engineer Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers), Emeritus Prof. of Public Health Engineering, Technical University Delft, The Netherlands

Prof. R.W.J. Kouffeld, Emeritus Professor, Energy Conversion, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Salomon Kroonenberg, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Geotechnology, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Hans H.J. Labohm, PhD, economist, former advisor to the executive board, Clingendael Institute (The Netherlands Institute of International Relations), The Netherlands

The Rt. Hon. Lord Lawson of Blaby, economist; Chairman of the Central Europe Trust; former Chancellor of the Exchequer, U.K.

Douglas Leahey, PhD, meteorologist and air-quality consultant, Calgary

David R. Legates, PhD, Director, Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware

Marcel Leroux, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Climatology, University of Lyon, France; former director of Laboratory of Climatology, Risks and Environment, CNRS

Bryan Leyland, International Climate Science Coalition, consultant and power engineer, Auckland, New Zealand

William Lindqvist, PhD, independent consulting geologist, Calif.

Richard S. Lindzen, PhD, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

A.J. Tom van Loon, PhD, Professor of Geology (Quaternary Geology), Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland; former President of the European Association of Science Editors

Anthony R. Lupo, PhD, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Science, Dept. of Soil, Environmental, and Atmospheric Science, University of Missouri-Columbia

Richard Mackey, PhD, Statistician, Australia

Horst Malberg, PhD, Professor for Meteorology and Climatology, Institut für Meteorologie, Berlin, Germany

John Maunder, PhD, Climatologist, former President of the Commission for Climatology of the World Meteorological Organization (89-97), New Zealand

Alister McFarquhar, PhD, international economy, Downing College, Cambridge, U.K.

Ross McKitrick, PhD, Associate Professor, Dept. of Economics, University of Guelph

John McLean, PhD, climate data analyst, computer scientist, Australia

Owen McShane, PhD, economist, head of the International Climate Science Coalition; Director, Centre for Resource Management Studies, New Zealand

Fred Michel, PhD, Director, Institute of Environmental Sciences and Associate Professor of Earth Sciences, Carleton University

Frank Milne, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Economics, Queen's University

Asmunn Moene, PhD, former head of the Forecasting Centre, Meteorological Institute, Norway

Alan Moran, PhD, Energy Economist, Director of the IPA's Deregulation Unit, Australia

Nils-Axel Morner, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden

Lubos Motl, PhD, Physicist, former Harvard string theorist, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

John Nicol, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Physics, James Cook University, Australia

David Nowell, M.Sc., Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, former chairman of the NATO Meteorological Group, Ottawa

James J. O'Brien, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Meteorology and Oceanography, Florida State University

Cliff Ollier, PhD, Professor Emeritus (Geology), Research Fellow, University of Western Australia

Garth W. Paltridge, PhD, atmospheric physicist, Emeritus Professor and former Director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies, University of Tasmania, Australia

R. Timothy Patterson, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences (paleoclimatology), Carleton University

Al Pekarek, PhD, Associate Professor of Geology, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Dept., St. Cloud State University, Minnesota

Ian Plimer, PhD, Professor of Geology, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia

Brian Pratt, PhD, Professor of Geology, Sedimentology, University of Saskatchewan

Harry N.A. Priem, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Planetary Geology and Isotope Geophysics, Utrecht University; former director of the Netherlands Institute for Isotope Geosciences

Alex Robson, PhD, Economics, Australian National University Colonel F.P.M. Rombouts, Branch Chief - Safety, Quality and Environment, Royal Netherland Air Force

R.G. Roper, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology

Arthur Rorsch, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Molecular Genetics, Leiden University, The Netherlands

Rob Scagel, M.Sc., forest microclimate specialist, principal consultant, Pacific Phytometric Consultants, B.C.

Tom V. Segalstad, PhD, (Geology/Geochemistry), Head of the Geological Museum and Associate Professor of Resource and Environmental Geology, University of Oslo, Norway

Gary D. Sharp, PhD, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study, Salinas, CA

S. Fred Singer, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia and former director Weather Satellite Service

L. Graham Smith, PhD, Associate Professor, Dept. of Geography, University of Western Ontario

Roy W. Spencer, PhD, climatologist, Principal Research Scientist, Earth System Science Center, The University of Alabama, Huntsville

Peter Stilbs, TeknD, Professor of Physical Chemistry, Research Leader, School of Chemical Science and Engineering, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), Stockholm, Sweden

Hendrik Tennekes, PhD, former director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute

Dick Thoenes, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Chemical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands

Brian G Valentine, PhD, PE (Chem.), Technology Manager - Industrial Energy Efficiency, Adjunct Associate Professor of Engineering Science, University of Maryland at College Park; Dept of Energy, Washington, DC

Gerrit J. van der Lingen, PhD, geologist and paleoclimatologist, climate change consultant, Geoscience Research and Investigations, New Zealand

Len Walker, PhD, Power Engineering, Australia

Edward J. Wegman, PhD, Department of Computational and Data Sciences, George Mason University, Virginia

Stephan Wilksch, PhD, Professor for Innovation and Technology Management, Production Management and Logistics, University of Technolgy and Economics Berlin, Germany

Boris Winterhalter, PhD, senior marine researcher (retired), Geological Survey of Finland, former professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, Finland

David E. Wojick, PhD, P.Eng., energy consultant, Virginia

Raphael Wust, PhD, Lecturer, Marine Geology/Sedimentology, James Cook University, Australia

A. Zichichi, PhD, President of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva, Switzerland; Emeritus Professor of Advanced Physics, University of Bologna, Italy
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Divorce and environmental protection 要環保，不要離婚

下面的最新研究報告，說離婚最終會毀滅地球。我相信研究費用難求，加入流行的環保概念可以容易過關，但過份就使環保理想受到不必要的低眨。

新聞中沒有列出科學數據，但我懷疑為何人離婚後使用資源數量會比以前高出百分之六十一；難道離婚後會自暴自棄而亂花資源？須知有些情形離婚後生活質素會改善。研究可能引用了一個錯誤的假設，就是離婚後雙方一定會各自獨立生活而使房屋數量加倍。但離婚自有其原因，大多數人會稍後各自再組織家庭，而房屋和家居數目就不會大大增加。亦有不少人不需要婚姻的法律束縛而能夠共同居住以節省資源。

研究報告以簡單乘法，大膽估計離婚對美國的影響是七百三十億千瓦小時的電力，和六千二百七十億加侖的用水；再加上標準罪行如廢棄物污染，即固態、液態與氣態的廢棄物質，和溫室效應氣體等，就會造成諸如氣候變遷、生物多元化流失等全球環境的大改變。如果大家不離婚，地球就有救了。

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報告：離婚對環境變遷造成負面衝擊
(法新社) 12月 03日 星期一 02:35PM
根據今天發布的一項研究報告指出，全世界各地離婚率增加，導致平均每人使用能源與資源效率降低，並且導致水電用量增加，已對環境造成負面衝擊。這項由美國密西根州大學研究人員完成的報告指出，離婚夫婦通常是其中一人搬出舊家，另覓新屋，因此，對房屋土地與家用物質需求量擴大。報告說，更高的離婚率「導致家庭戶數增加，就平均家庭大小與每人使用資源效率而言，離婚家庭低於婚姻家庭。」

報告指出，在美國，離婚家庭比率升高，由一九七零年的百分之五，躍升到公元兩千年的百分之十五。甚至在中國，傳統上並不被視為尋常的離婚也在增加。二零零五年，在美國離婚家庭中，平均每人使用水電量，比婚姻家庭中的每人使用量高出百分之五十六。離婚家庭中每人使用資源數量，也比他們離婚以前的使用量多出百分之六十一。報告指出，如果離婚家庭使用能源效率和婚姻家庭類似，則美國可省下七百三十億每小時千瓦以上的電力，和六千二百七十億加侖的用水。

這項報告在二零零一年至二零零五年間，針對全美三千二百八十三個家庭進行研究，結果發現，離婚家庭登記每人使用房間數增加了百分之六十一，而維持婚姻的家庭，每人使用房間數才增加百分之六。報告說，「由於離婚家庭中每人消費量更高，也可能造成更多的廢棄物污染，包括固態、液態與氣態的廢棄物質，如溫室效應氣體等，因此也造成諸如氣候變遷、生物多元化流失等全球環境的大改變。」
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Digital TV Broadcast 數碼電視廣播

相信大家都已聽聞香港即將推行數碼電視廣播，以取代現有的免費模擬電視廣播；而這種新電視廣播模式最快會於今年底局部在海港四周播放。時間已經不多，但資訊和硬件似乎仍未足夠；亦有人說兩間免費電視臺在未來電視制式上仍有分歧，以致市場未敢落實全面生產。

下星期一 (11月12日) 立法會資訊科技及廣播事務委員會將會討論這一個議題。我已看過政府準備的文件，其中對數碼電視廣播推行進度有詳細詮釋。大家對這些資料應感興趣，一來要準備改動家中的電視機以配合，二來不少同事亦要負責提升部門內會議室和處長辦公室的電視設備；所以我將文件提及的最新資訊撮要如下。

二零零六年年底，亞視和無綫正式向電訊局長建議香港採用國家制式來進行數碼電視廣播。政府隨即作出相應決定，確定了香港未來電視廣播的方向。預計明年數碼電視廣播會全面推行，香港絕大部份地區都可以接收。而模擬電視廣播將於2012年全面停播。

數碼電視廣播有兩個層面：一是標準清晰度 (標清) 電視廣播，二是高清晰度 (高清) 電視廣播。標清電視廣播可視為傳統模擬電視廣播的數碼版本，因數碼化而使質素提高，畫面再沒有鬼影及雪花等接收問題；但解像度和現時的電視廣播相同。高清電視廣播的畫面解像度一般較高，而且通常以闊屏幕模式顯示；因此，高清電視的畫面質素遠較模擬電視及標清電視廣播的為佳。

現時兩家免費電視廣播機構須共用一條新指配的數碼頻道，以數碼標清模式同步廣播四條現有的模擬節目頻道。兩家廣播機構並各獲額外指配一條數碼頻道，作推出高清廣播和新的數碼服務之用。數碼電視節目在傳送前須進行壓縮和編碼程序。亞視和無綫已確定採用常用的 MPEG-2壓縮及編碼標準，在共用的數碼頻道作同步廣播。對於將在額外數碼頻道提供的新服務，亞視原先選擇採用MPEG-2 標準。本年十月，亞視宣布新服務會採用H.264 標準，於是兩間電視廣播機構在制式上的分歧已解決。

目前市面發售的電視機，包括較舊型的顯像管電視機及較新型的等離子或液晶體平面電視機，均不能把數碼電視訊號解碼。觀眾要為現有電視機加裝數碼機頂盒，或購置配備內置解碼器的綜合數碼電視機，方能接收數碼電視。市面上將會有兩類機頂盒，可配合兩家廣播機構推出服務的方案：
(a) 「基本版接收器」— 接收和解碼以MPEG-2 標準編碼的訊號，即亞視和無綫經模擬及數碼模式同步廣播的四條節目頻道；
(b) 「升級版接收器」— 接收和解碼以MPEG-2 或H.264標準編碼的標清電視和高清電視節目訊號。這類接收器可接收基本版機頂盒所接收的所有服務，以及亞視和無綫所提供的其他所有標清和高清節目。

在多用戶的大廈，免費電視訊號一般由公共天線接收，然後由大廈內電視電纜系統分送至個別單位。由於數碼電視訊號將經新頻道廣播，大廈電視電纜系統或共用電視天線分布系統的現有功能需要提升，以接收和分送數碼電視節目。大廈管理處須聘用承辦商檢查及按需要調整該系統。

現時必須要做的似乎是要確定大廈天線系統是否符合接收數碼電視的要求。如果你家中有自己的獨立電視天線就較簡單；如果使用公共天線就要盡早要求大廈管理處跟進。還要小心處長大人下一個月就要看數碼電視廣播。

電視機頂盒，即接收器，最遲應該會在數碼廣播啟動時同時上市。升級版接收器雖然會較貴，但因未來電視廣播會趨向高清和多用途，升級版應該是較佳選擇。

電視機反而不是最迫切的項目。如果你的電視機已經需要更換，或者你希望即時擁有大尺寸的平面電視機，又或者想看藍光高清DVD，當然要換全高清電視機；否則現有的電視機已經可以看到標清高質素電視廣播。免費高清電視廣播在開始時只有少量製作；如有耐性可以多等幾個月。

The Last Supper

For the art lovers, you may wish to see the high-resolution print of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci at this site. The original was painted with tempera on the wall of the hall of the Refectory of the Saint Maria delle Grazie Convent in Milan in 1498. The size of the painting is 29 ft by 15 ft. When I was in Milan a few years ago, I queued up for 2.5 hours and paid about HK$100 for a 20 min visit.

It is now easy to see. The size of the print on this Internet site is 16 gigabytes. You can zoom in to see the fine particles of the heavily eroded wall, which I could not see at the real location. The print was said to be composed with 1677 photographs. Please see a section I cut from the print.



This is the main area of the painting depicted in The Da Vinci Code as revealing a secret message hidden by Leonardo da Vinci. The figure on the left of Jesus was said to be John by the historians. He/she looked quite feminine. The fiction said Leonardo da Vinci was actually painting the portrait of Mary Magdalene, recorded by many literature as one of the disciples. When moved horiziontally to the right of Jesus, Mary Magdalene was leaning on the shoulder of Jesus. Also, the figures of Mary Magdalene and Jesus formed the letter M, representing the Holy Grail. This fiction has driven many millions more people to read the Bible.

Insecure mobile payments

A visiting professor of HKU, when preparing a talk on e-commerce, came across my earlier article on the Octopus card. The subject was relevant to his talk so he asked me for the source of the information. I duly referred him to the two newspaper articles I read in January this year. Professor Roger Clarke delivered his talk at HKU on 25 October. The subject of the talk was on the the security of mobile payments. I append below the main points of his presentation.

Before the age of information technology, monetary transactions depended on cash, cheques, and instructions and arrangements on direct credits and debits. These have been in use for a long time and we could fully appreciate their advantages and disadvantages. They are reasonably secure but are sometimes slow and cumbersome. Then credit card was introduced. It provides only low-grade security even when used at point-of-sale. The insecurity is much more problematic in MOTO (mail-order and telephone-order) transactions, also known as 'card not present' transactions. But the convenience of credit cards is greatly appreciated by consumers; and merchants are forced to bear the risk arising from fraud.

When information technology was mature by the end of the last century, financial institutions introduced new computer-assisted services to the customers such as automatic teller machines using account cards. Such services employ stronger form of authentication, usually a PIN in addition to the physical hard-coded cards, both need to be protected by the customers and the bank's internal system.

After the Internet was born, the first wave of Internet commerce started in the late 1990s. From the very beginning, Internet payment mechanism is a great challenge. Many approaches have been tried, but most payments continue to depend on credit cards, which is a scheme considered not sufficiently secure even in 'meatspace' with fixed-connection mainframe systems. Credit-card transactions over the Internet adopts the same low-security approach as MOTO transactions, although the transmission of credit-card details has increasingly been protected using channel encryption (Secure Socket Layer). On the other hand, Internet banking has matured into a relatively secure set of services. Financial transactions over the Internet have emerged with secure banking infrastructure that could provide most of the protections. A range of other electronic payment schemes were proposed in the late 1990s, including electronic cash, micro-payment, electronic payment instructions and stored-value cards. None survived. There are many successors and they vary from highly insecure to moderately secure.

As we enter the mobile payment era, using a wide array of wireless networks, we inherit the characteristics of the payment schemes that are already in place. Most significantly, credit card payments which are insecure become even more so when conducted using handheld consumer devices. In many cases, debit payments prove to be much more susceptible to fraud because of the context in which data is captured, and the reduced capacity of handheld devices to implement the protections that are expected in Internet banking applications.

The current wave of e-commerce is mobile/handheld/wireless. People expect everything to be done quickly, simply and intuitively. It appears that many modern consumers have a cavalier attitude to risk even when making payments, and particularly when making frequent payments of relatively small sums of money.

The chip inside Hong Kong's Octopus Card, which has been in use for a decade, is now inside many Japanese mobile phones. RFID Tags for paying road tolls are well-established. Visa has announced trials of its payWave and MicroTag technologies, embedded in key-rings. Other approaches, such as those from Paybox, PayPal and RingGo, let people use their mobile phones to communicate payment instructions. Common to all of these schemes are security weaknesses that represent risks to the consumer. The most apparent threat is unauthorized transactions, variously through errors, rogue devices, rogue transactions, and capture of authenticators by malware that has been infiltrated into the consumer device. There is an enormous range of vulnerabilities that consumers cannot be expected to take responsibility for infrastructure that they neither understand nor control. The key elements of a secure approach to mobile payment are not sufficiently satisfied by the new payment mechanisms that are currently being proposed, developed, deployed and in some cases even used.

We need to know more before we can judge whether mobile payment mechanisms are secure enough to attract consumers to use them in the first place and to keep them comfortable with using them once they have started. There is also a dire need for the providers of technology and services to take responsibility for the insecurity inherent in their schemes, and not try to impose liabilities on consumers. Mobile payments can be faster, more convenient and less of an obstacle - not only for consumers but for thieves too.

Consumer IT

I read from CNet the news that consumer IT are destroying traditional IT. The news quoted reports from the Gartner Group that consumer IT had invaded enterprises and created challenges for IT departments. Wall Street Journal even published an article aimed at helping business users circumvent their own IT departments through the use of technologies such as Yahoo Messenger, Gmail, USB drives and smartphones. Gartner Group called this Consumerization: The IT Civil War, one that the IT departments are losing.

The phenomenon is happening everywhere and IT departments have become virtually powerless to stop it. There are six consumer technologies that are causing IT the most trouble. There is something that IT should do to turn around a situation that is quickly going from bad to worse in many places.

-- Instant messaging software such as Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, or a variety of other IM clients. Instant messaging has spread to the point that as many as 20% of business users or more are now running it at work. The percentage is far higher among younger workers everywhere. Most of the IM clients send data unencrypted, and transfer files not scanned by antivirus software.

-- Personal smartphones. Lots of users who don’t have a company smartphone are going out and buying one of their own. Many of them have figured out how to forward their business e-mail to their personal smartphones, which opens up a ton of privacy, regulatory, and security issues.

-- BitTorrent and P2P. Transferring big files is very difficult for most users by email, FTP or IM. Some users turn to P2P programs such as BitTorrent, because they are much more effective. Unfortunately, these programs can also be used for hosting and transferring illegal music and video files.

-- Web mail with unlimited storage. Another method that users often employ to transfer large company files is with a consumer e-mail account, such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail, which all have much larger storage capacity and allow larger file attachments than most corporate mail accounts. These systems are far less secure than corporate mail servers.

-- Rogue wireless access points. It’s a wireless world in home networking now. If the company doesn’t offer wireless LAN access in their office, many users just get cheap wireless access points, plug into their Ethernet jack at work, and start roaming the building.

-- USB flash drives. Portable storage is nothing new. Twenty years ago, users were carrying around floppy discs full of files. With the present day large capacity USB flash drives, users can copy all of their files to a flash drive, or copy a huge chunk of a file server and walk out with it on an unencrypted USB drive.

Gartner Group advised IT departments that, “The critical thing to understand is that employees are not doing any of these things to be awkward. They’re not doing it because they’re trying to break security. They’re simply trying to get their job done." IT departments should find out what constraints are forcing employees to do something that is out of control, and then fix the problem, like giving them the option of using an in-house, secure, controlled environment that meets all of their needs.

Ultimately, this “civil war” is a sign of two larger problems that IT must address:

1. The policies and attitudes that allowed IT department to deploy important technologies while protecting users from themselves are no longer valid in a world where individual users often have newer and more advanced technologies in their homes than the IT department has in the office. IT is now entering into more of partnership with users, and policies and attitudes need to reflect that.

2. There’s a general disconnect and lack of constructive communications between many IT departments and their users. IT departments need to view themselves as customer service organizations, with their users being their primary customers. IT departments have got to lose their paternalistic approach to users and focus their efforts around serving users and enabling them to become more productive. The IT departments that make these changes will thrive. The ones that don’t will see their role within the organization diminished and become prime targets for outsourcing.

The God Delusion

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

The God Delusion was ranked number 2 on the Amazon.com bestsellers' list in November 2006. In early December 2006, it reached number 4 in the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Best Seller list after nine weeks on the list. As of August 5, 2007, it is still listed at number 29, after 43 weeks on the list.

It brings into question why such a book on this controversial topic, and which is difficult to read, can be so popular. May be it reflects a phenomenon that the uncertainty of god and the present state of religions have created doubt in the mind of many people. The title is an attractive subject to the doubtful. It is also an attractive subject to the faithful. Religious faith is so important for many that they would wish to examine the other side of the argument and ridicule it in order to confirm their faith. If you think this book is talking nonsense, don't worry. Half of the world population may be thinking that way. I am on the other half.

Dawkins said the God Delusion is mainly about the Abrahamic religions, namely religions which have the origin from the god of Abraham, including Judaism, Islam, Catholic, Christian, Orthodox and the like. He thought some religions such as Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism should be labeled ethical systems. I do not agree with him on this point. Although these ethical systems exist, they have been similarly distorted into religion per se by the inclusion of idol worshiping, rituals, blind faith and superstition.

The book shows a lot of examples that the holy books contain many passages which are contradictory, irrational and immoral. This does not come as a surprise as these have been pointed out by many for a long time. When I was in secondary school, a priest who was my teacher in biblical studies explained that the bible was not exact history. They were written by the followers of the apostles recording verbal legends. The bible was then kept by monks and was worshiped at the church. The monks read the bible and added margin notes of praise and commentaries. When the bible was copied, which was the only way of reproduction in ancient time, all the side notes were included in the text, making some of the meanings inconsistent. When students asked questions on the inconsistency, the priest would explain but usually conclude with the notion of faith, i.e. bible was to be believed, not questioned. This is the main difference between religious belief and scientific belief. When there is a mystery, religion would accept it as god's will. Science would consider it as god's invitation to learn.

The religious non-believer

Following a long period of doubtful tradition, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny during the Dark Ages and the theocratic rule of the Middle Ages, there was the Age of Enlightenment which advocated reason as a means to establishing an authoritative system of aesthetics, ethics, government, and logic, so that human beings could obtain objective truth about the universe. This movement in Europe from about 1650 until 1800 advocated the use of reason and individualism instead of tradition and established doctrine. Although many enlightened intellectual leaders including philosophers and scientists were at awe with the mystery of the universe and the origin of beings, they did not find the holy books and religions satisfactory in answering the mystery. As said by Albert Einstein, "I don't try to imagine a personal god; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it."

The God hypothesis

Many people believe god exists, and many people do not. Thus there is a hypothesis that god exists or not. The solution is to find a way to prove it. There has not been any direct proof put forward to prove the existence of god; similarly it is argued that there is also no direct proof that god does not exist. It all boils down to how one looks at this scenario.

Bertrand Russell was a strong advocate that it was not the business of the skeptics to disprove received dogmas rather than the dogmatists to prove them. He wrote a parable of the orbiting teapot to illustrate that it was irrational to look for proof that something did not exist. Suppose between the Earth and Mars there was a small teapot revolving about the sun in a elliptical orbit, and that the teapot was too small to be revealed by the most powerful telescopes. Someone could say that this got to be true because it was beyond human ability to doubt it; but this would just be considered nonsense by everybody. However, if the story of the teapot was written in the holy books, any hesitation to believe in its existence would cause the doubter to be persecuted.

Another parable on god's creation was one said by Fred Hoyle of the ultimate Boeing 747. In arguing creation by intelligent design or evolution, Hoyle likened the probability of life originating on Earth was no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard of aeroplane parts, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747. This improbability is termed irreducible complexity. Because of it, life on earth, and everything else, must have been created outright by a designer. The answer of Dawkins, being a biologist and an evolution specialist, was that such parable was ignorant of the nature of natural selection, that life was the result of numerous trials of molecular combinations over trillion of years. It was a gradual process of perfection.

Back to history, Thomas Aquinas of the thirteenth century drew up five proofs on god's existence. These proofs were adopted by the church for several centuries. According to the proofs, god was:
1. The unmoved mover - Everything moves by a mover; by regression there is the last mover that is unmoved.
2. The uncaused cause - Everything is caused by a cause; by regression there is the last cause that is uncaused.
3. The cosmological argument - Physical things exist now; there must be a time when non-physical being brings them into existence.

The first three proofs are the same, being regression to the extreme. It is symbolic of the terminator to the logic, just like positive whole numbers regress to zero. These proofs do not lead to a god with the respected properties of omnipotence, omniscience and goodness.

4. The argument from degree - Everything has a degree of goodness; there is a maximum goodness to set the standard of perfection.
5. The teleological argument or argument from design - Everything in the world looks as if it is designed; thus there is a designer of all things.

The fourth proof deploys comparison. The comparison can be used in any dimension and we cannot call the ultimate standard of anything god. These four proofs are not in use anymore. The fifth proof is the one which is strongly disputed by modern science, but it is the most controversial one as there are still many religious people arguing that, according to the bible, the universe was created eight thousand years ago and the great world flood occurred four thousand years ago created the Grand Canyon.

The roots of religion and morality

The religious explanations of the roots of religion and morality are straight forward and easy to understand. Religion came directly from god together with morality which is god's will. Dawkins proposed that religion created the god delusion, and morality is the behavioural standard mutually accepted in a community. Dean Hamer in his book The God Gene explained why human beings are susceptible to religion. He claimed that a gene VMAT2 was discovered in human DNA. This gene has the effect of a physiological arrangement that produces the sensations associated by some with the presence of god or other mystic experiences, or more specifically spirituality as a state of mind. There is no theory as to how this gene came into the human DNA. A religious perspective is that it could be implanted by god. Evolutionists claimed that it is by natural selection that such a behaviour was gradually developed among human beings as they evolved into a community having leaders, teachers and authority to be followed. The rest was the building up of hierarchy in a community and the devising of the god delusion for the strengthening of governance.

Much examples were quoted to show that morality did not come from religion. While Dawkins showed many quotations from the holy books that much immoral acts were recorded, he also proposed by scientific arguments that moral was a result of natural selection along the evolution path. In the process of evolution, good genes get maintained while bad ones get eliminated. Good or bad genes are defined by their probability to reproduce or be copied. Expanding from genetics, good genes are reflected in the behaviour of the organism in being able to survive. There are some activities that are conducive to survival and sustained existence. One important virtue is the caring for the young, which is essential in the continued existence of the gene. Such behaviour can be found in many kinds of animal, and especially human; thus there is a tendency to care for the young and to reciprocate, care for the parents who provide. Such morality is embedded in our genes and is innate. On the other hand, competition among peers is a necessary evil for survival. We can see this trait among young children where siblings could compete for food, toys and attention, sometimes by lying and violence. They have to be taught to behave well. In such case, morality is acquired in order to maintain the cohesion within a community. Whether innate or acquired, a person does not need religious belief to be moral.

Childhood and Abuse

Dawkins was very critical of the compulsory education on religion for young children. He considered this child abuse because the children were not free in being fed the doctrine of the religion of their parents. I do not agree with him in this line of thought. Children have to be educated. The education they received is the knowledge and thoughts prevailing in his living environment. Although Dawkins listed many examples of child abuse owing to inflexible and superstitious religious rules, this cannot rule out that most children are receiving proper education including a religion of their parents' belief.

The book also mentions the effect of religion on consolation and inspiration. The theory put forward for such effects is the need to fill a gap in human emotion; and this gap could be filled by other means which is non-religious. I agree that there are many ways to sooth one's spirit and motivate creativity. However, it cannot be denied that religions play a vital role on many occasions. It may be a delusion, but in this case it is a delusion for a good cause. However, most of the time the god delusion has a negative effect on humanity, including war, tyranny, bureaucracy, superstition, terrorism, and many more evil deeds. Of all the religious activities, I only admire the religious self-help groups, fellowship groups and self-improvement programmes which help people help themselves and each others. If there is a chance for people to really live a better live, it does not really matter whether it is god delusion or not.

Search engines

Research work is now quite easy with massive data on the Internet. Many people depend on the Internet for information. You can type anything in any search engine and you will be given much information related to any topic you like. It is so common nowadays that such action has become natural to us. We do not have a second thought in using the Internet as the most common and versatile source of almost all information.

We know that the Internet is not benign. It is a jungle out there and we have to be aware of all sort of traps. So, please also be aware of the search engines of large companies because your personal data is leaking while you search.

All servers of search engines log information whenever someone does a web search. The data logged are search keywords, IP addresses of the search requests and information in cookies. Cookies can authenticate the user and keep information such as the user's preferences. With such information, the identity of the user can be traced. The search engine companies may not normally do the trace, but there are incidents that assistance is given to the police for the tracking down of criminals. The companies however would do behavioural targeting for the purpose of advertisement placement and data-mine the database of search records for marketing research.

Recently, Google announced a new policy on search data privacy that the company would anonymize the final eight bits of the IP address and the cookie data of search records after 18 months. The information on specific searches would remain indefinitely. However, Google also acknowledged that log anonymization would not guarantee that the government could not be able to identify a specific computer or user, although it would add another layer of privacy protection to the user data.

CNet recently did report on the topic on the topic based on interviews with several large search engine companies on their practices. These companies are now undergoing a trade war on the front of search engine privacy policy. There are advertisements on their privacy policy to the effect that their customers are better protected. Whatever the policy, it seems personal data is leaked in the first instance when you search.

Five companies were surveyed: Ask.com, AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Ask.com appeared to be the best claiming that the search records would be deleted within hours with nothing done on them. All other companies kept the records for a year to one and a half years. Two companies linked user information to the search records and three companies did behavioural targeting.

Whether this constitutes to personal data privacy violation is a personal judgment. I think it is unavoidable to release some personal data when you use the services of others. The main issue is to defend ourselves on illegal and harmful use of the personal data. Besides the pledge of the companies on data security, we need to be alert of our assets in cyberspace and be vigilant all the time.

Illusion of freedom

In considering different views of different groups on the Queen's Pier saga, I brought up the issue of freedom in honouring opposite views on grounds of freedom of speech. Freedom is not confined to freedom of speech. Freedom of action is another important aspect. Freedom of the will also has a deep philosophical meaning. The Queen's Pier saga is a non-issue to me. Anyone these days can data-mine the internet and come up with a few pages of arguments for and against any topic. The issue of freedom that emerges from the saga is many-fold. First, the freedom of speech is well preserved. People can freely express their mind. Second, freedom of action is conflicting. It is not possible to have the best of both worlds. Third, are we really free in our stand on the issue? Are there hidden causes, or prejudice, that made us think that way?

I wrote some notes of reading on the free will from a book of rudimentary philosophy. The question of free will was well explored in the past by renowned philosophers, but the conclusions are diverse. The debate on determinism and indeterminism passed down the centuries and people just chose to believe what suited them. The notion that everything is determined and has a cause is one of the beliefs of some religions. On the other hand, many people are keen to hold their destiny themselves and consider that mankind being supreme must be free. Some religion gurus tried to explain by saying God is omniscient and omnipotent and at the same time God gives mankind a choice. This conflicting idea is a puzzle to many.

However, freedom could be an illusion which exists only in the human mind. When human being evolved to the point of attaining self-consciousness, his mind was freed to recognise himself as the first person entity. The interaction with everything else became subordinate to the first person and there were many ways available to him in dealing with everything and with different consequences; thus the unrestricted free will. Human being are able to imagine anything real or not real.

Being born free is just an imagination and exists only in the mind. As soon as human comes into this world, he is actually not free. The first hurdle is the physiological constraints. We may wish to climb over the cliff and fly to the other side, but our inability to fly restricts our freedom. Early human might be free to roam the land and go wherever he wished. However, the constraint of the landscape and the threat of other competitive wild animals, both preys and predators, dictated the movement. They could only follow food and water, and avoid dangerous ground.

Coming into the modern age of the last few thousand years, human solved the problem of food and shelter, and reasonably achieved some personal security. The mind was set to ponder the orders of the world. There was an old saying that the mind was like a white sheet of paper. Before you were free to write on it, people came write on it for you. From early childhood to adolescence, human was continuously fed one-sided knowledge and value. Experts in psychology said that family influence and education at childhood were the major factors in shaping one's character, while children did not have the freedom to choose. It will take tremendous efforts and many years of mature learning to be able to get back a little more free will. Many never do.

Perhaps the insurmountable hurdle to freedom is that it quite commonly conflicts with others. Human discovered this fact at the very early stage of evolution. Running free on your own chasing food or being chased for food was just too dangerous. Co-operating with others would be advantageous in providing better security, better chance of getting food, and improving the chance of survival. The cost of such actions was that some freedom had to be surrendered. Living in a community would mean that a member had to concede some of his freedom when it would conflict with others. A member could not have all the food but have to share it, and had to face the danger of organized fight against threat instead of avoiding it. The restriction to freedom has evolved into moral senses like co-operating with others, respecting others, being altruistic or just plain polite.

Now the difficult part. As societies evolved, there came many forms of hierarchy, from clan leaders to kings and emperors, bishops and imams. In many cases, there was an unequal share of freedom. Just over 200 years ago, we finally evolved into a form of democratic society where it was claimed that all men/women are created equal, and they are all free persons under democracy. But how can they be all free when there are so many conflicting elements around. So far, the accepted rule of the game for democracy is the majority rule, that when there is a conflict, the minority must obey the majority. This is sometimes called the tyranny of democracy. How can this be maintained? If we set aside the civilized manner of some modern human being, the majority rule scenario is a natural phenomenon because the majority usually have the upper hand in resources and power. They normally win in battles. It is a wise move not to engage in violent conflict where the majority would win anyway. Thus the minority submit freedom. In a civilized society, there is a gentlemen agreement that the view of the majority is the way to go. But is it really the case? What about the minority, and their freedom? Take for example in a free society where people have divergent views on things, the proportion of the majority to minority could be small, say only 55 to 45. If the minority value their freedom and think that they act morally, they could rebel. This is not uncommon in many democratic societies where protests are frequently seen against majority decisions. Think Gandhi and Martin Luther King, who advocated the philosophy of nonviolent resistance against the establishment. There are also many examples of coup d'etat on democratic governments; just to show some of the cases of minority rising against the majority. In any of these cases, whether for good or bad or true or false democracy, freedom was at stake, and people were not content. The Queen's Pier saga can be likened in a similar manner. It is not relevant that the issue has gone through the process of consultation, legislation, administration and judicial consideration, supposedly by the majority rule, it can still be argued on citizens' rights and freedom that the minority, self-proclaimed as majority, could take on nonviolent resistance, thus infringing the freedom of the other side. The result is that only one side could have total freedom of action. For now, at least both sides could have the freedom of speech.

Seen from another angle, public choice is another attempt to capture freedom. Public choice is an entire system of democracy where the public at large choose the direction and decide on issues concerning public sector management and public policy making. In practice, it operates under a representative system where elites get elected to act on behalf of the people. Although the people has an illusion of freedom in electing the representatives, they actually give up their freedom to the elected representatives based on empty promises and flowery speeches. The checks and balances are not very effective. Representatives may be elected on a marginal majority. Once elected, they are only required to please a marginal majority of that marginal majority. Election engineering recurs every few years and the public is again the target of freedom robbery. This is a bigger subject where we could seek better literature. However, explaining public choice mechanism could not make it better. There is a theory that we could put everything on universal suffrage. In the present world, technology could allow us to do so by recording the wish of every person on every issue. But this still could not solve the problem of the illusion of freedom because of, first, the majority rule, and second, that our freedom was already contaminated at childhood and that we may only think as we were told.

The top 10 dying computer skills

IT evolves very quickly. New products are coming into the market by the month. The skills required to handle the technology have to be updated frequently. This is always a problem for the technicians that they have to keep on learning new techniques, some from scratch. IT managers are a little bit better because managerial skills may stay a little longer than technology. Although IT managers may not be required to handle day-to-day technical details, they have to keep abreast of the development in the field and know the whats and whys.

I was amused to read an article from Network World Asia on the top 10 dying computer skills. This is the thing which IT managers have to keep in mind: to know the usefulness of the skills of your technicians. The article actually said dead computer skills, but there is still a little demand on some of the skills as there are some companies which are using old IT infrastructure set up some years ago. Technicians with old skills can still make a living, for the time being, on maintenance work.

The list of 10 may not be agreed by everybody. There are certainly more than 10 obsolete skills; and someone is certainly still using the old technology and happy about it. Just take a look below to refresh your mind.

1. Cobol - The last time the Cobol rush is the Y2K delusion when very old machines were to be rescued. Not any more now.

2. Non-relational DBMS - They have been replaced by the relational DBMS approach, embodied by SQL databases such as DB2, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

3. Non-IP networks - TCP/IP has largely taken over the networking world, and as a result, there is less demand than ever for IBM Systems Network Architecture (SNA) skills.

4. cc:Mail - This store-and-forward LAN-based e-mail system from the 1980s was once used by about 20 million people. However, as e-mail was integrated into more-complex systems such as Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange, its popularity waned, and in 2000, it was withdrawn from the market.

5. ColdFusion - This once-popular Web programming language released in the mid-1990s has been superseded by other development platforms, including Microsoft's Active Server Pages and .Net, as well as Java, PHP and other open-source languages.

6. C programming - As the Web takes over, basic C languages are also becoming less relevant, although C++ and C Sharp are still alive.

7. PowerBuilder - Today, PowerBuilder developers are at the very bottom of the list of in-demand application development and platform skills, with pay about equal to Cobol programmers. Nevertheless, PowerBuilder 11 expected to be released this year, which has the ability to generate .Net code, may still be available.

8. Certified NetWare Engineers - Everyone had Novell in the 90's. But within a two-year period, they'd all switched to NT. Novell has retired several of its NetWare certifications, including Master CNE and NetWare 5 CNE, and it plans to retire NetWare 6 CNE.

9. PC network administrators - With the accelerating move to consolidate Windows servers, some see substantially less demand for PC network administrators.

10. OS/2 - Initially created by Microsoft and IBM and released with great fanfare in 1987, the collaboration soon unraveled. IBM finally discontinued sales in 2005.

Fishing Ban 休漁的故事

兩個月的南海休漁期會於八月一日結束。在這兩個月間，除刺網、延繩釣、手釣及籠捕外，其他捕魚作業模式一律禁止在南海中國水域使用。香港漁船，尤其是大部份要外出至南中國海沿岸捕魚的漁船，在休漁期間都要停業。

在南區的香港仔避風塘可以看到南海休漁期對香港漁業的影響。這一個地點本來已經是遊客常到的旅遊點，有很多舢舨接載遊客在避風塘內穿梭參觀漁港和漁船。在休漁期間，漁船都回港停泊，熱鬧情況只有農曆新年和天后誕才可以相比。似乎旅遊協會可以將南海休漁期包裝為旅遊項目，在國外宣傳，邀請外國遊客在休漁期間組團來港參觀。

漁護署估計全港約有一千四百艘漁船受休漁措施影響。在休漁期間，一排排的遠洋漁船隊都要停泊在避風塘內。這幾隊整齊的船隊可能屬於同一間漁業公司；因要休業而致無所事事。




在休漁期內，漁民可以修護船隻。漁護署在此期間會為漁民安排一些訓練課程，又有獎學金資助漁民前往上海水產大學修讀漁業培訓課程。




當漁船密集地停泊在一起時，會產生衛生問題，而火災和罪案發生的機會亦大增。海事處、警務處和消防處在這期間都很忙碌，要於避風塘內實施特別泊船安排和加強巡邏。




其實實施休漁期，可以保育漁業資源，促進漁業持續發展。中國農業部說實施南海休漁，可以有效存護產卵群體和幼魚資源，提高漁業資源密度而使漁獲量明顯增加， 漁獲組成變得多樣化；而每年休漁後都出現魚類大量群集現象，南海漁業資源得到恢復增長。實行休漁制度，不但減輕了捕撈强度，更節省了生產成本，使漁業經濟效益好轉。作業結構的調整，亦使漁業的可持續性提高。

漁民因為切身的利益，想法並不一樣。幾年前當休漁期開始實施時，漁民因有經濟損失而要求香港政府賠償。但是休漁措施是中國政策，香港漁民因為不能到中國水域捕魚而要求香港政府負責在道理上說不通。但漁護署並沒有逃避責任；她主動協助漁民於每年籌劃作業時要考慮休漁期帶來的影響，又透過魚類統營處貸款基金提供每首船數萬元的低息貸款，協助漁民渡過休漁期。

但漁民在休漁期間當然不甘寂寞。既然不可到南中國海捕魚，就不如在香港水域捕魚；這首漁船就在離住宅區很近的地點下網。我懷疑這些漁獲是否適宜食用。




除了捕魚，漁民仍有其他謀生方法。這位漁民駕著小船，拖著幾首裝上強光燈的小艇，是準備在夜間捕捉墨魚。




南丫島的南方海面，是捕墨魚的其中一個好地方。在晚上小船開了強光燈，墨魚自然就會游上來。




不過不是所有漁民都守規矩的。我看見這兩首漁船在航道上忽然靠近接觸幾分鐘交換物件，可能是避過魚類批發市場交易的魚產，或是其他避稅的貨物。




違法的交易經常會被警察干涉。即使在繁忙的航道上亦常常見到水警輪檢查來往的漁船。




如果警方未能完全堵截非法活動就有可能要勞煩海軍出動潛水艇。

M v SJ

M v SJ is a very important case in HRM. I think it should be summarized and put in the HRM bible so that all managers could be aware of the case and its implications. It is a scenario which many managers would encounter in their daily work. The fact that it is brought to court and put under the judicial microscope has given the case a fresh perspective. The facts, actions and reactions, arguments, legal views, and legal precedents are collected and analyzed in great details.

This case was heard in the District Court. The judgment was handed down on 16 July 2007. Those interested may wish to read the judgment. But please be warned that it is a 130-page document with 292 paragraphs, sort of like a book. The judge wrote it like a story. You would be reading the scenarios, conversations, appraisal reports, expert opinion on work stress, plus the legal opinion on which evidence was acceptable or unacceptable.

Mickey (a fictitious name) was an AO. He was posted to HAB to work under John Wan, and then to TB under Patrick Ho. His performance was grossly unsatisfactory, receiving E and D gradings respectively. CSB offered counsel as grade management, with Gary Poon and Tong Cheng as the career managers responsible for junior AO. Mickey eventually resigned, upon suggestion that his service would be terminated otherwise.

This common HRM case took a turn when Mickey sued the government (Secretary for Justice) for being discriminated owing to his psychiatric illness: GAD - General Anxiety Disorder. He claimed that his resignation was a result of discriminatory and harassing conducts of the four AO involved, and claimed for damages of $20 million. He failed.

I do not wish to repeat what the judge said. But I can assure you that it is interesting and enlightening. You can read it yourself. I also think that in the hand of another judge or another counsel, the result could be the other way round. So much is my impression on how justice is practiced. There are however some points which are amusing that I highlight below.

Several psychiatrists were engaged by Mickey and SJ as expert witnesses on Mickey's health conditions. As usual, experts explained the conditions with different theories and interpretations. The judge rightly pointed out that none of them used the term mental disorder. One expert said that Mickey has obsessive compulsive personality traits, which include tendency towards perfectionism, excessive suppression of emotion, obsession with details and excessive devotion to work. The judge considered them not disabilities by themselves but only a reflection of Mickey’s personality. We frequently saw such personality in many conscientious officers and high flyers; surely they were not suffering from mental disorder.

Another point of interest is when did Mickey get the alleged disorder. This led to the argument whether he was discriminated against because of a prevailing disability or the disorder was a result of his performance at work. Dr. Lieh-Mak gave a clever explanation that his anxiety probably existed as a personality many years ago but its severity crossed the threshold of becoming a disorder when he worked as an AO.

A term "constructive dismissal" was created in the allegation. It was pleaded that CSB constructively dismissed Mickey by causing him to tender his resignation in response to “harassment and intimidation”, thereby constituting direct discrimination of Mickey. I am pleased to say that I did not constructively dismiss anyone by asking anyone to resign. I did terminate a few officers for incompetence during probation, with compensation of one-month salary in lieu. Come to think of it, many resigned to seek greener pasture, but some did so as they could not cope. All of the latter could then be said to have been constructively dismissed.

Reading Mickey's misfortune, I note two points that may be used as indicators on reflecting our own situation. The first one is that, when the boss lost faith in you, your work portfolio could be reduced. Mickey realized that and alleged that it was discrimination and an attempt to humiliate and harass. So less work is actually a dangerous sign. The other one is inefficient subordinate support. Mickey claimed that his secretary was inefficient and he sought help from the secretary of his boss, which made things even worse for him. You just cannot run away from inefficient subordinates. Motivating subordinates is an essential task for a manager. You can either motivate your subordinates to work more efficiently, or if unsuccessful, take disciplinary or performance management actions.

On work stress related anxiety disorder, I quote a few sentences in the concluding remarks of the judgment for us to be aware of.
"291. In the present case, one of the reasons why an employer may be difficult to find out whether an individual employee is suffering from any kind of psychiatric or psychological disorder is that the symptoms of such disability may just be found in any other persons who happens to work under stress. This is certainly not a healthy phenomenon. Although I do not accept Professor Lieh-Mak’s evidence in its entirety, I must agree with her observation that mental health of employees in working environment is a very much neglected issue in Hong Kong. Undoubtedly, Hong Kong is a very competitive society, and so employees inevitably have to bear with various degrees of stress arising from work. However, stress can also affect the health of individuals in various ways..."

The Traveller's Dilemma

I took a second look into the old decision making theory because of an article I read recently in the June 2007 issue of Scientific American. It is a very interesting article on a game called the Traveller's Dilemma. The study on decision making has evolved from the classical study of rational analysis to the modern science of game theory. However, the Traveller's Dilemma game, which is under much academic research, revealed a much more complex layer of the human mind. I give a brief description of the game below. If you are interested, you may try your own answer to the game.

The Traveller's Dilemma
Lucy and Pete separately went on the a vacation trip to a remote Pacific island. They both bought an identical exotic piece of handicraft as souvenir. When they returned, they found that their souvenirs were damaged in transit. They both filed a claim with the airline. The airline manager accepted the responsibility and was willing to compensate. However, there was no way to assess the value of the strange souvenirs as both Lucy and Pete did not have any receipt.
The Airline manager came up with a proposal. He was willing to pay an assessed value between $2 and $100. Lucy and Pete were asked to put down the value of the souvenir without conferring to each other. If they both claimed the same amount between $2 and $100, the airline would pay them both the amount. If their claimed amounts were different, the airline would only pay the lower amount. Furthermore, to reward honesty and to penalize cheating, the one who claimed the lower amount would get $1 more while the other would get $1 less. If you were either Lucy or Pete, what amount would you claim?

The scientific approach to this question is the use of the game theory. Based on the logical regression that the person who claimed a smaller amount would get a better reward than the other, game theory insists that rationality should lead the players to select $2. In the end, the airline manager would only pay $2 to Lucy and Pete, which would be the best choice for both of them.

When studying the payoff matrix, a table showing the payoff of each possible choice, game theorists rely on the Nash Equilibrium, named after John Nash (His story was made into the movie A Beautiful Mind). A Nash Equilibrium is an outcome from which no player can do better by deviating unilaterally. Other equilibrium concepts adopted by game theorists also come up with the same result with both players claiming $2.

However, in reality when people play this game, many of them choose an amount near $100. Many universities conducted experiments and surveys on this game. A common result is that a relatively large proportion of players chose a higher amount instead of the $2 equilibrium state. Some academics called this Sensible Irrationality. A new kind of reasoning is needed to gain a rigorous understanding of this rational choice not to be rational. The results of Traveler's Dilemma contradict economists' assumption that standard game theory can predict how supposedly selfish rational people will behave. They also show how selfishness is not always good economics.

This story illustrates an important distinction between ordinary decision theory and game theory. In the latter, what is rational for one player may depend on what is rational for the other player. For Lucy to get her decision right, she must put herself in Pete's shoes and think about what he must be thinking. But he will be thinking about what she is thinking, leading to an infinite regression. Game theorists describe this situation by saying that "rationality is common knowledge among the players." In other words, Lucy and Pete are rational, they each know that the other is rational, they each know that the other knows, and so on. The assumption that rationality is common knowledge is the source of the conflict between logic and intuition and that, in the case of Traveler's Dilemma, the intuition is right and awaiting validation by a better logic.

Researchers made some attempts to explain why a lot of people do not choose the Nash equilibrium. Some argued that many people are unable to do the necessary deductive reasoning and therefore made irrational choices unwittingly. This is not entirely satisfactory as the result is still the same with some games played by theorists. Some proposed that perhaps altruism is hardwired into our psyches alongside with selfishness. Many of us may not feel like letting down the other party just by trying to earn an additional dollar. In any case, it seems likely that altruism, socialization and faulty reasoning all play a part in guiding individuals' choices. Some people playing the game may just ignore the game-theoretic logic and select a large amount, assuming their opponents will play something similar. The interesting point is that this rejection of formal rationality and logic has a kind of meta-rationality attached to it. The idea of behaviour generated by rationally rejecting rational behaviour is difficult to formalize. It will be a subject for further researches.

Humble decision making

The reason of my search for my old article on decision making is another paper by Amitai Etzioni I obtained from the Internet just recently. It is called Humble Decision Making and is an elaboration of the decision making theory. Although it is old, published in HBR in 1989, many of the observations are still quite valid today.

Etzioni predicted that many of the decision making theories will fail owing to the world getting more complex. He observed that the flow of information has swollen into such a flood and manages are in the danger of drowning. Extracting relevant data from the torrent is increasingly a daunting task. Little wonder that some beleaguered decision makers turn to astrologers and mediums.

First back on the rational model. This is the standard type of approach by rational persons through analyzing all the information concerning the decision required. It is the military type of approach and is well known for early academic researches into the mechanics of decision making. However, in the modern age, even with the assistance of powerful computers and databases for the processing of information, such semi-processing is still unable to analyze and thus obtain complete knowledge for decision making. Furthermore, since all decisions entail risks, decision making always evokes anxiety. Decision makers respond in predictable ways which render the decisions less reasonable. Some of the phenomenon mentioned may be quite familiar to us as they reflect the behaviour of some government officials:

Defensive avoidance - delaying making decision unduly as a defense for themselves.
Overreaction - making decision impulsively in order to escape the anxiety state.
Hypervigilance - obsessively collecting more and more information instead of making a decision.

Another observation is that executives see their decisions as professional and technocratic, but rarely as political. Rationalism disregards the emotion and politics of decision making. Implicit in the rationalistic decision making model is the assumption that decision makers have unqualified power and wisdom. It ignores the fact that other individuals also set goals for themselves and seek to push them through. Successful decision making strategies must include a place for co-operation, coalition building and the whole spectrum of differing personalities, perspectives, responsibilities and powers.

The difficulty in fully adopting the rational model has led executives seeking two alternatives. The first is the incremental model which is also known as the science of muddling through. It advocates not so much moving toward a goal as just away from trouble, by taking small maneuvers without any grand plan or sense of ultimate purpose. For the bureaucrats, it has two advantages. First, it eliminates the need for complete information by focusing on limited area close at hand. Second, it avoids the danger of making policy decision by not making any. This is of course highly conservative.

The second alternative to rationalism is openly opposed to reflection and analysis. Facing the fact that information is never complete, some bureaucrats may choose not to sit back and wait, but to pick the course favoured by their experience, inner voice, intuition, gut feeling and then to commit. By pumping enough resources, dedication and ingenuity into the course, they hope to make the under-processed decision right. However, this will more often result in shipwreck.

A variation to the above, which I think is very relevant to government officials, is rational ritualism, where the executives and their staff involve in an information dance whose prescribed moves include data pas de deux (two-person dance) and the interpretation waltz. The information used is generally poor, either arbitrarily selected or from undependable source, and vastly over interpreted. Usually most of those involved know that the data is unreliable and the analysis unreal but dare not say that the emperor is naked. They just make ritualistic projections and know well enough to ignore them.

A more practical approach to decision making, which is more suitable to the world of partial information, is what Etzioni called Humble Decision Making. It is a more generalized description of the adaptive decision making model or mixed scanning model. We have to acknowledge that we live in a world so complex that it is not possible to have very sound information for rational analysis, and also that good decisions cannot be made through conservative muddling through. Mixed scanning entails a mixture of shallow and deep examination of data, which is the generalized consideration of a broad range of facts and choices followed by detailed examination of a focused subset of facts and choices.

Adaptive decision making comes in many forms. Etzioni discussed several adaptive techniques in making use of partial information in decision making:

Focused trial and error - It assumes there is important information that the executive does not have and must proceed without. It is about feeling one's way towards an effective course of action despite the lack of essential chunks of data.

Tentativeness - A commitment to revise one's course as necessary is an essential adaptive rule.

Procrastination - Delay permits the collection of fresh evidence, processing of additional data, presentation of new options. If one can make a significantly stronger case at a later meeting, the result will justify the delay.

Decision staggering - It is another form of delay. An example is the decision to increase interest rate. By staggering the increase in small steps, the central bank can see the result of a partial intervention of the market.

Fractionalizing - It is a second corollary to procrastination. It treats important judgment as a series of sub-decisions and may or may not stagger them in time.

Hedging bets - An example is the buying of stocks of several companies instead of one owing to the lack of information of a company. It is much more likely to produce long term yield and security.

Maintaining strategic reserves - Maintaining large reserve is not always good for a company. But in a world where we learn to expect the unexpected, we need reserves to cover unanticipated costs and to respond to unforeseen opportunities.

Reversible decisions - They are a way of avoiding overcommitment when only partial information is available.

Such adaptive techniques illustrate several essential qualities for effective decision making that the textbook models lack, including flexibility, caution and the capability to proceed with partial information.

Decision making

Some time ago, I had a discussion with friends on the theory of decision making. Decision making theory is one of my favourite subjects in college. In fact it is an examination question I chose to answer which helped me get good marks. My early study was based on a paper by Amitai Etzioni. The paper introduced three models of decision making: the rational model, the incremental model and the mixed scanning model. The last one is also called the hybrid model where one scans the ground with loose criteria based on incremental consideration and then zooms in for a rational analysis. I wish to use a simple example to illustrate their decision making models.

Suppose we need to organize a get-together party. The decision required is a good restaurant in convenient location, with good food and service at a reasonable price. With the rational model, we need to collect detailed information and compared them to find the best. There is an element of choice and the tyranny of choice comes in. Are we sure that we have not missed a good restaurant? What if we pick a bad one? Should we first sample the food and service of each of them, or read all gourmet magazines for commentaries. What location is convenient to all? What price is reasonable to all. Even with such a simple decision, the resource required to make a sufficiently rational choice is huge. For an extreme maximizer, he will surely get clinical depression.

Clever persons normally use the incremental model. Just find out where did we eat last time. We could just book the same restaurant and same food. But to show that we have done our job, we could consider another restaurant nearby with a slightly better reputation. Waa Laa, a job is done.

A more conscientious person but equally lazy will use the hybrid model. We could first find out comments from the last get-together. Did anyone complaint about the place, food or price? Did anyone have suggestion on improvement? We then look for a few restaurants that could avoid the same pitfall, and then make a detailed rational comparison, perhaps with some site visits, before making the decision.

Our public policy decision making is rarely based on the rational model. Although some issues are researched by academics or by our Central Policy Unit, political decisions are seldom based on the rational approach. It is too difficult, too resource-demanding, and never complete. Charles Lindblom's book of the Science of Muddling Through paints a good picture of the psychological process of decision making of an average person. Civil servants are just average at best. Etzioni does have a point. You just cannot make decision so lazily. Thus upon pressure from the public, academic and politicians, the use of the hybrid model can show that at least some work is done. If you read some of the consultation papers, white papers or LegCo papers, they all offer a few (insufficient and incomplete) choices and then do a detailed analysis on them before recommending one for final decision. That's how we run our business.

Global warming 2

There is no need to blame the G8 leaders. Politicians are a different breed of animals. Owing to the democracy platform, their paradigm is based on public opinion. Public opinion can be manipulated easily serving the interests of the dominant groups, but not necessarily the majority groups. In any case, politicians are balancing various interests on a daily basis and it is quite often a choice of the lesser evil. I would say most of us would do the same if we were in their shoes.

We may have to wait for the time when the public opinion all turn to demanding drastic actions to protect the environment, with much sacrifice. This may not take very long. We could all witness the horrific changes as they would very likely occur within our lifetime.

Last month, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) issued its fourth assessment report which is on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. If you do care, you may take a look at the 23-page report. This panel is very controversial and it is actually the battle ground of governments of the world on global warming. So please bear in mind that the observations are compromises: many horror predictions are left out. An intelligent guess is that the situation is at least 50% more severe.

The effects of climate changes included in the report are:
- Virtually certain that there will be warmer days and less cold days/nights
- Very likely more warm spells and heat waves
- Very likely more heavy rain events
- Likely more areas hit by drought
- Likely more intense tropical cyclones
- Likely more extreme sea levels

The key findings of the reports on the impacts are:
- 75-250 million people across Africa could face water shortages by 2020
- Crop yields could increase by 20% in East and Southeast Asia, but decrease by up to 30% in Central and South Asia
- Agriculture fed by rainfall could drop by 50% in some African countries by 2020
- 20-30% of all plant and animal species at increased risk of extinction if temperatures rise between 1.5-2.5C
- Glaciers and snow cover expected to decline, reducing water availability in countries supplied by melt water

We may look at these changes and impacts as a scientific experiment. But the horror will be seen as their effects on the human population emerge. When citizens of the world suffer as a result, there will be sufficient momentum for politicians to take action, although it could be too late by then. The impacts will affect residents of the areas suffering from the climate change. As a result, people will move as climate immigrants and climate refugees. USA and Europe have raised concern on the influx of migrants and refugees. But the situation will be much worse for internal movement within countries where there may not be sufficient protection and aid for the refugees.

We have already seen the situation in Darfur where drought triggered famine and then conflict. We have also seen Katrina causing the entire city of New Orleans to evacuate. Many island countries in the Pacific and Indian Ocean are already losing much land to the sea. Many areas relying on rivers fed by glacial water are having crop failure owing to irregular change of seasons. Many more countries such as Australia and those in the sub-Sahara region already have prolonged drought. The El Nino effect is predicted to be more severe, causing drought in Southern Asia and Polynesia but flooding in South America. We may be looking at a world where all the above are many folds worse in the next twenty to fifty years. Frankly I do not think there is anything we could do but to bite our teeth to adapt and survive.

Global warming

A friend asked me to sign a petition asking the G8 leaders to take action to abate carbon dioxide emission. I signed the petition. This is good consolation to quiet some of my guilts induced by environmentalists on my fault to warm the planet earth. I must confess that I live in a city for too long and I cannot survive without the polluting and global warming lifestyle. On a hot day, I cannot avoid a heatstroke without air-conditioning. I cannot go far on foot and have to take polluting transportation. I have to buy inexpensive food produced using ingredients which harm the planet as well as myself. I cannot communicate with so many people without my computer and the Internet which rely on the polluting power plants all over the world. So these G8 leaders must be worse persons than me and only if they could turn for the better and save the world for me. The gibberish stops here and here are my views on the future.

I do not have the least faith on the G8 leaders to guard the planet earth. We may call them world leaders, but they are actually only leaders of their countries, and they are elected. That means their skins hinge on the success of the next election. In the present world where there is no true democracy, their actions are dictated by the dominant opinion leaders who are not necessarily environmentalists. Any resolution reached in such forum is bound to be a watered down version, just like the Kyoto Protocol which could only slow down global warming by a few years, if ever implemented.

While the world presses the developed countries to emit less carbon dioxide, there are many folds of human beings in developing countries waiting in line to join the polluting train. Development cannot be stopped. As we speak, obsolete polluting machines are being shipped to developing countries to continue the polluting process, in the name of reduction of waste.

Man-made global warming cannot be disputed. I read from another journal that the earth has already accumulated too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is like too many blankets have been laid on top of us. The process has crossed the threshold and the warming engine has already started. The natural carbon dioxide absorbing ability by the ocean has slowed down. Even if the carbon dioxide emission by human is not increased at all as from today onwards, the global warming effect will still go on for a long time. All the predicted damages cannot be avoided.

I think sufficient evidence of man-made global warming have been laid before us, but they do not necessarily kick off corrective actions owing to the immediate pain of remedy. We have not yet reached the critical point. It will take some more catastrophes before governments of the world start taking concrete actions.

However, I do not think this will be the end of the world. Human being is the most adaptive species. We can evolve to cope with the effect of global warming, just like the poster I saw yesterday: a garment brand is already promoting its global warming series.

There are some scientists who are proposing that we should not waste time arguing the cause and effect of global warming. We should instead concentrate on the preparation to deal with the damages caused by severe climate changes. The damages will come in the form of climate immigrants and climate refugees. Without the success or otherwise on the debate on man-made global warming, disasters are now happening in many places where water shortages, sea level crises, deteriorating pasture land, conflicts and famine are forcing people to move. I think catastrophe is in the making and the human population will decrease. I hope an equilibrium with nature will eventually be found leading to a smaller human population co-existing with planet earth. This may be possible if we are given sufficient time to adapt.

Free Wi-Fi in Hong Kong 2

Following my earlier article on free wi-fi services, there are two noted development which are of interest.

The first one is the FCai on Friday (25 May) on the funding of the project to provide free wi-fi services in government premises. The total cost is $217.6 million covering a project period of three years. I am very eager to see free wi-fi services covering most areas in Hong Kong. Many ISP are now providing wi-fi services using 3G technology. If you have a 3G phone account, your mobile devices such as smartphones, PDA, notebooks are already internet-enabled. There are also many commercial wi-fi hotspots at popular locations. Furthermore, free wi-fi services are also available at the airport and some selected locations. FON the community based shared wi-fi service has already landed in Hong Kong. With the added free wi-fi hotspots in government premises, charged wi-fi services will face tremendous pressure in
competition. Is the government free wi-fi service deployment extensive enough and fast enough? This is for you to judge. The information of the project is as follows.

- June to November 2007: Procurement of services for implementation and operation of Wi-Fi service
- December 2007 to June 2008: Progressive roll-out of service to the priority sites
- July 2008 to June 2009: Progressive roll-out of service to the remaining sites

The first phase implementation up to June 2008 comprises 118 locations:
66 Libraries
20 Public Enquiry Service Centres
18 Government Joint-User Buildings
5 Central Government Offices
5 Community Halls and Centres
3 Cultural and Recreational Centres
1 Park

The second phase which will take another year is for another 232 locations:
84 Cultural, Recreational and Sports Centres
33 District Environmental Hygiene Offices
21 Community Halls and Centres
12 Job Centres
11 Visa Document Related Offices
9 Birth / Marriage / Death Registration Offices
6 Polyclinics/ Health Centres
6 Transport Licensing and Examination Centres
5 Museums
4 Stadiums
4 Ferry Terminals
3 Field Unit and Service Centres of Social Welfare Department
2 Parks
32 Other locations

I think wi-fi services are for those staying at one location for some time and wish to access the Internet for information. Some locations are weird, such as birth and marriage registries, district hygiene offices and SWD field units. But who know what internet could do in the future. The most important point on this topic is internet security. On this, the paper says: "To prevent citizens from entering into obscene web sites with the Wi-Fi facilities, appropriate filtering software will be installed. Network monitoring systems will be implemented to monitor and stop improper use of the service, such as spamming. Relevant security measures, such as user isolation and data encryption, will also be introduced to ensure the proper use of the service by citizens. Helpdesk support will also be provided to assist users of the Wi-Fi service."

Filtering is a very controversial subject. I do not know how websites are classified as obscene or impropoer. Furthermore, would adults be prevented to access sites for adults, or selected groups be prevented to access selected sites? Other security measures are virtually none. This is a worldwide situation that all systems have loopholes, including mobile phones and fixed line phones, not to mention many so-called secured systems in banks and large corporations.

The second development is a LegCo question rasied in last Wednesday's meeting (23 May) specifically on wi-fi security. I append below a gist of the reply of the government.

- OFTA has followed up the case with the ISP and required them to provide effective security measures for ensuring effective delivery of their clients' information. OFTA will consult relevant licensees with a view to setting up industry guidelines and code of practice and will also request them to conduct regular security audit for their systems.

- We will strengthen the promotion of information security to the public through existing promotional programmes and channels: dissemination of leaflets, conduct of road shows, etc.

- We will specify the security requirements for Wi-Fi services at Government premises to ensure that the contractors will provide the necessary hardware, software and technology with appropriate security features in delivering the required services.

- We will require service providers to provide various security measures so as to ensure that user data will not be stolen by others. These measures will include encryption,
intrusion prevention and detection systems, filtering software, etc.

- We will also engage security consultants to perform security risk assessment on the Wi-Fi network designs, and conduct security audit after the networks have been put into full operation to ensure that the services provided meet our security requirements.

I would say this is a typical bureaucratic type answer giving an illusion that government is doing something but in fact she cannot do anything. For the fast developing world of IT security and insecurity, I think we need to be aware of the danger and take reasonable precaution. Up to date information on how this battle is going on is essential. Besides that, we cannot do much more than to be careful about personal information, which I think is actually not a secret. We need to realise the fact that our personal information is known to many others very often for legitimate purposes. It is the illegal use or criminal use of our information that need to be guarded.