SATNAC Reflections Part 2

So SATNAC is finally drawing to a close - there were more academic presentations yesterday and today. Unfortunately the bad Internet connection situation has continued - although it has improved dramatically from Monday. The download speeds are still rather crap though. To be honest, there has been very little value from SATNAC - most the work is either uninteresting (because its not our field) or seems rather poor. That is not saying that there are no good papers; but they seem to be too few. Maybe if SATNAC was about security or DRM I would be more interested.

The closing function was in an "English Pub" theme - i.e. the food was not that great (although there was malva pudding) and it was not as well decorated as last year's District 6 theme. More on the entertainment on a later post ...

SATNAC Reflections

So SATNAC started officially on Sunday evening with a very flashy, techno-rave style opening dinner. Most importantly, the food was good, and we all stuffed ourselves (except Paul, who does not like to eat too much in the evenings). And we all got a lot of freebies - a bag, a sweatshirt (which everyone was asked to wear to the opening function), a jacket and a mug. I also got a Huawei radio this morning ... not sure if everyone else got that one ....


SATNAC is not really an academic conference - if one looks at the program for the first day. The majority of the sessions involved corporate big wigs discussing technology using huge buzzwords like convergence. It was boring, somewhat dumb and more or less a total waste of time.

The academic presentations at the end of the day was not much better - except for Paul's presentation, none of the presentation really had much substance. Take for instance the presentation "Detecting Uncooperative Ethernet Elements using Accurate Round-Trip Time Measurements" - how this project differs from the "ping" command is yet to be established.

Surprisingly, even though SATNAC is a telecommunication, the Internet connection is very unstable (or maybe unsurprisingly considering that we are talking about Telkom). Another interesting fact was that, Windows machines had difficulty in using the WiFi, but Linux didn't have any such problems.

Finally, another addition to the Appletiser index - and a cheap entrant at that. Last night, we had supper at the Monk's Cowl Country Club (there seem to be a number of sports facilities in this part of the country, much more than the number of people living in the area). The food itself was good, although I did get my food very late (every one finished before I got my food ....). We all put it down as a mistake on the waitresses part and she was very embarrassed. Appletiser index entry:
Monk's Cowl Country Club: 6.50

The Appletiser Index

You have heard of the Mac index; I now give you the Appletiser index. The Mac index gave an index on how expensive a country is based on Big Mac prices. You can do the same regarding how expensive a restaurant/take away is comparing the price of drinks - hence the Appletiser index. This was primarily motivated by the cost of Appletisers at the Chapagne Castle Sports resort - the domicile of SATNAC 2005.

So the first entry - Champagne Castle Sports resort: R13

For comparison, the cost of an Appletiser at Loxley's in Rondebosch is R11 and the Independent Armchaoir Theatre is R9.