Apologies to all my readers - I have been “off air” for a week or so due to a technical hitch but all should now be well… Unfortunately, I am about to go on holiday for a week so there won’t be updates for a while. Fortunately, there is a bit of a back catalogue that has built up…
A TV appearance See me in the flesh as I appear on Network of the World to discuss virtual communities.
BBC Radio’s Pick of the Week which highlights and samples programmes from across the BBC is now available via realaudio whenever you want to listen.
The Sunday Times publishes weird 1999-era tech-strapolation. Within the next three years, “cities will begin to change into collections of villages. Phones will disappear, to be replaced by multi-function communication devices that talk to each other without wires and use voice-recognition and thumbprint identification. Notes and coins will become scarce and credit cards nonexistent as people switch to e-cash.” blah blah blah…
GreaterGood.com closes down The dotcom downturn claims one of the most innovatively-funded charities I have run across - the Hunger Site (and several derivatives). By clicking once a day on a link that displayed several sponsor banners you could give cups of food to the starving.
Beware the thought police Let’s be clear here - I find paedophilia utterly revolting. However, this latest development is also pretty disturbing - “a man named Brian Dalton was put in prison for writing down his sexual fantasies. He’d written them in a secret journal. There was no evidence that he’d acted them out. He’d never even shown them to another person.”
Freedom of speech on the Web - a qualified boon. Two stories today in Salon point out the problems - anti-abortionists use the web to broadcast video of people entering clinics while some anorexics use the Net not in order to beat their illness but to conceal it from those who would help them.
I am... if not actually a fan of Microsoft then at least less of a detractor than many online it seems. However unless they back-pedal fast on their hassling a kid's charity to pay for new licenses for software on recycled PCs they are going to lose a lot of my sympathy. Mind you, Microsoft isn't actually threatening legal action at this point and I suspect this might just be an over-zealous copyright protection officer at work...
Acorn Profile of my area Interesting to see that the marketers really do seem to know about my area in detail. Even though Islington as a whole is one of Britain’s poorest boroughs this organization has correctly identified my area as “Type 21: Prosperous Enclaves, Highly Qualified Executives” and the habits identified are pretty spot on - at least for me. Quite a step up from my last abode - “Type 53: Multi-Ethnic Estates, Severe Unemployment, Lone Parents”…
Promote smoking to boost your economy It seems that Phillip Morris has done a study to show that the health care cost of smoking is more than offset by increased taxes. “However, cited among the ‘positive effects’ were savings from not having dead smokers drawing pensions, occupying hospital beds and living in old people’s homes.”
Have they no shame?!
ConnectNet.org An index in the US organized by ZIP code of where you can get free Internet access and/or training. There is an attempt at a similar service here in the UK - the UK Online Centres site but the search engine doesn’t work properly yet and the database needs quite a bit of tidying.
Turns out Michael Lewis has written more about child Internet imposters to promote his book. There is an adapted extract of his profile of a 15-year-old stock manipulator and a chance to talk with both him and the make-believe legal expert on the New York Times site. There’s also an interview with the author at Salon.
Felix Dennis profiled… I worked for this man’s company for two years - I dread to think I helped to keep this guy in crack cocaine or pay to maintain his harem of mistresses.
...and other real old wives tales clueless teens believe... [free registration required to view]
Birds feel the rub Nature gets down and dirty with what I am sure is at least a partially tongue write-up of research into birds with a false phallus. The first known orgasm in the bird world… and there is real video red-billed buffalo weaver action!
P2PQ - an interesting open source application that encourages users to answer questions on areas they know about using a peer to peer application (there is no cash or recognition reward system available with it though which I think is a weakness).
FARK is a weblog run by a couple of guys collecting links to stuff that is “funny or outrageous without being too obscene”. Nearly every time I visit it there is something weird on this weblog that makes me smile - today it is the story about the Penny Pincher of the Year competition. Personally I think that the second place person should have been the winner - “Instead of buying me a birthday card, my husband will take me to Wal-Mart, pick me out a card and show it to me. He then tells me to read it, and when I finish reading he proceeds to put it back in the card rack.” !
Also see Metafilter and Memepool…
At last a new debate on my message board - a belated start to a discussion about the relevance of Linux to the third world. It stems from my earlier criticism of the idea of supplying Linux-running Playstations to Africa and an earlier piece by a Linux evangelist who worked in Africa. Why not join the discussion?
Political Compass An interesting site that measures your political views on two axes - left vs right and authoritarian vs libertarian using some more interesting than usual questions designed to tease out personal views rather than the answers to specific issues. There is also the opportunity to compare yourself to their interpretation of various UK politicians. I am Economic Left/Right: -2.04 Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.50 it seems ( a left libertarian).
The decline of Russia - don’t blame capitalism (?!) A pundit says that a) things in Russia aren’t so bad and b) where they are bad it isn’t due to the sudden introduction of capitalism in the 1990s - it’s because it wasn’t introduced fast and thoroughly enough. The political axe he is grinding becomes clear early on when he says,
“The obvious solution that emerged [to the difficulty of collecting taxes] was a low, flat tax rate. As of this year, Russia introduced a flat income tax of only 13 percent (a rate that the United States and Western Europe could only dream about).”
One man’s dream is another’s nightmare… Similarly this statement:
“Privatization and market pricing have revived much of the country’s infrastructure. Free-market competition has fostered an incredible expansion in the telecommunications industry. Airports and airlines have likewise improved. Road construction is up. New ports have been built around St. Petersburg. Whereas ruins once blighted the landscape of even the Soviet capital, modern-day Russia has initiated a widespread building boom.”
… reminds one of the “see no evil” attitude of communist sympathisers visiting Stalinist Russia in the 1930s (only in reverse).
Still it is interesting to see things from a different perspective (and I haven’t been to Russia so my own unwillingness to believe this man may be because of my own prejudices).
Streaming classic films including one of my favourites, The Third Man and the novelty film Reefer Madness.
Losing money the Marc Andreessen way It seems he shorted technology stocks in the summer of 1998 and then bought them again just at the top… And the Netscape browser he helped to create is now nearly dead. I’m sure he still has a few dollars under his mattress, though. And had he not created a terrific early browser the Internet might have been significantly slower to take off, so we all owe him a vote of thanks (and shouldn’t laugh too hard at his expense!)
Psion quits handheld organiser market Terrible, terrible news for me, a loyal Psion customer. Fortunately the OS lives on through Symbian via products like the Nokia 9210 but I don’t trust a phone company to make a PDA properly…
Most of Europe wanted to make businesses ask permission from consumers before sending them email but our representative Michael Cashman persuaded them that it would be better to make consumers "opt out". That said, I have looked at what I believe is the relevant document
and I can't see that anything important has changed. It could be that one of the other documents listed contains the sinister amendment. The reporter says that the information was sourced from Michael Cashman's office and from EuroISPA, so I guess we'll just have to see how things pan out.
Common sense from a judge about the Internet? It’s a miracle… Instead of making UK ISPs legally responsible if their pages hold information about the appearance or whereabouts of a pair of released child killers, they will only be found negligent if they fail to take “all reasonable steps” to avoid publication.
The Perfect Book Machine I thought that people had already invented a machine that would print a book quickly and easily from a digital file. Apparently not… until now. But it sounds as if there may be a few legal issues to solve (let alone funding and marketing ones) before this device becomes widely available.
UK cable groups agree broadband marketing link
and it is about time! Both of the biggest players are going to offer customers a broadband connection for £25 a month, compared with the £39.99 charged by BT.
On the same day, Oftel (the UK telecomms regulator) published a report patting itself on the back because 10m UK households are on the net while mentioning in passing that only about 1-2% of net users have broadband. The report is coy about the reasons why but muses,
“Although based on a small sample, ADSL users seem to be under the age of 34 and amongst the AB social grades with higher household income, which perhaps indicates that the cost of this service continues to play a major part in uptake.”
Well, duh!
CNN.com - Modified game consoles to narrow digital divide I think John Gage may have a screw loose with his assertion that we should supply the developing world with modified Sony Playstations just because they are cheap and can run Linux. It seems he has found support for this plan:
“Gage said he has discussed the plan with the chairman of Sony and the president of the World Bank and decided that at least 100,000 modified consoles should be installed in schools and people’s homes in poor country’s such as Uganda and Mali. “It should be a number above 100,000, but under a million,” he said.”
Well, I suppose that if he could get old stock of un-saleable Playstation 1s for free they might do some good but I believe that a multi-function device like a PC would still be more use.
Really Basic Origami If you can't manage a little paper crane or swan you can at least manage this!
Thanks to NTK for the link
Sweet Nothings Are Better Heard in the Left Ear according to a study involving 62 people.
“Scientists have also found a left-ear advantage for stimuli including musical chords and melodies.”
Thanks to the Follow Me Here weblog for this link.
TigerDirect is selling the Mako (a re-badged Psion Revo Plus) for the amazing price of $99. It’s the “junior” version of my own favourite PDA, the Psion Series 5mx. The mail order price of the Revo Plus here in the UK is the equivalent of $350 (!)
Got a light [for my spliff], officer? It didn’t take long for the newspapers to rush off to Brixton where a new “total tolerance” policy for cannabis smoking has recently been introduced. The cops, it seems, will not offer you a light for your joint but they’ll certainly leave you alone…
Oh, so soft and cuddly—he will rule the world - you too can own a 9” tall plush Cthulhu doll…
The Standard: Man, Plan, Canal The Suez Canal was a disaster… at first. The Internet is another big infrastructure project which appears to have foundered commercially. But Larry Downes thinks that like the Suez it will eventually prove its worth.
Vive the 35 hour week It seems that the French state-imposed shorter work week has not had the catastrophic effect that was at first feared and an official report (while likely somewhat biased) says that it and it has created 285,000 jobs over five years.
Internet users more tolerant than other Americans Interesting in that it backs up assertions long made about the Internet as an enlightening force. Also interesting in showing just how amazingly illiberal the average American appears to be. Only 56% of non-net-using Americans believed communists should be allowed to speak out in public? And only 33% of nonusers said women should be able to obtain a legal abortion?