Discussions

One of those peculiarities of Capitalism... My local pound shop (and probably yours too!) will happily sell me a USB "extension cable" for £1. That's about a metre of wire, with a USB Male socket on one end, and a USB female socket on the other. If I wanted something that's just SLIGHTLY different - a USB "Laplink" cable, with a USB Male socket on BOTH ends, one might reasonable expect the price to be roughly the same: the components are effectively the same, the labour involved is the same... but no. My pound shop doesn't sell such things - but EBuyer and Aria do. And their prices are VERY Much higher; in one case £8.50, in the other £15. BUT!!! It gets crazier than that. If I buy an external drive enclosure from Aria's "Supersavers" department, I can get one for well under a fiver. (They've two models to chose between, both under £5) The puzzle is that both of these enclosures come with a FREE USB Male to USB Male cable as standard. SO I can either buy a cable for £8.50... OR an enclosure for £2.95 - which happens to include a FREE £8.50 cable. I've been telling my customers since DOS ruled the world that "if something seems logical, when it comes to the economics of I.T., then it's probably wrong". But I don't think I've ever seen a more perfect example.

Edited by author 10-27-2009 08:45 AM
I was one of the organisers of the demonstration outside Carter Ruck's offices. Here's why we did it...

Just like any company that is complicit in human rights abuse, Carter Ruck are a perfectly legitimate target for peaceful, legal, protest. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's right, or OK. Anyone who chooses to collaborate in the enforcement of an unjust law, such as the current law of libel, and the dangerously unaccountable system of 'secret injunctions', in order to suppress freedom of speech, is making a moral choice. We have every right to take them to task for that choice. It just doesn't wash to seek to absolve Carter Ruck of moral responsibility simply because they are following the instructions of a client.

The idea that targetting Carter Ruck somehow lets Trafigura off the hook is simply mistaken. By drawing attention to Carter Ruck's abuse of the law, we also drew lots of attention to Trafigura's behaviour. It was a double-win. I personally doubt we'd have got that much media attention if we'd protested outside Trafigura's office.

Campaigners are duty bound to carry out their protests peacefully and (for as long as the law remains just and fair) legally. But we are under no obligation to respect the cosy gentleman's agreement that seeks to shield law firms from moral scrutiny. If Carter Ruck (or any law firm) wants to play politics, they can expect to find themselves on the receiving end of more criticism and protest.

I've written a more detailed response to Jack of Kent here:
http://richardwilsonauthor.wordpress.com/2...fence-of-flashmobs/

Ignore the judge...

So Twitter Saves The World!

Does it rule wisely?

OK, what's the best Social Network?

It's possible, I suppose, that one day, nobody will use email but what's the alternative?

I know what I want: a robot which scans ALL my social networks, and only sends me communications which I'm interested in. How hard can that be, anyway?

"We know where your DNA lives!"

Herman The Austrian, as we like to call him (he used to have a posh Austrian accent, but English people thought he sounded German) created Acorn, and the bBC Micro. And the Active Book Company, ABC. And Plastic Logic.

But I did NOT know that he was the fourth human being to have all his DNA mapped!

What next?

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Back before Dixons transformed the UK Internet with "Freeserve" (making it affordable to stay online for more than a few minutes at a time through their flat rate charges) there was STILL piracy. Technically savvy "crews" of kids used their "phreaking" ability to log on to BBS sites in the USA (where local phonecalls were free, so BBS's thrived) and downloading any pirated stuff they could lay their hands on. When it was back on this side of the Atlantic, they compiled it into monthly "compendiums" on the new-fangled CDRs... and distributed them for about £20 a pop. Kind of like "Lucky Bags" from further back in my childhood; they contained a cheap pastic toy and a selection of sweets; but you didn't know what was in the bag until you opened it. Not knowing was part of the magic. The CDs spread by the likes of "Mr Blobby" and "Tango" would include games, utilities, apps... some of which would be useful, some not even slightly.

Just as it was then (the 1980's?) what we're looking at is what INEVITABLY happens when kids are strikingly more technically proficient than their elders. They'll find ways around the security that you never even imagined. It's what kids do... and in one way or another, it's probably what they've ALWAYS done.

You Wicked Person: sharing a home with a Downloader!

No, it makes no sense: the Government is going to lose the next election, and so it criminalises 20 million people who happen to use the same ADSL line as a file-sharing individual?

Central to the debate about "Piracy" is "Who frames the issue?" We're bombarded with fraudulent statistics claiming massive losses... Back when I first bought a PC (running DOS from floppies) my "Killer App" was a DTP package called "Timeworks". At about the time when Windows 3.0 came out, along came a rival product called "Page Plus". Timeworks refused to give obsolete copies away with magazines... Page Plus did the opposite (And have been doing so throughout the many years that have intervened) TImeworks is no more. But Page Plus - which gained market share by ENCOURAGING people to pirate it (and then offering cheap, "no-middleman", upgrades) now pretty much OWNS the budget DTP market.

Peer-to-Peer is beyond doubt the "low hanging fruit": the easiest to identify, and the easiest to prosecute. And - thanks to how it works - people who download ALSO upload chunks of files to others (Uploaders are normally treated more harshly than downloaders) But, meanwhile, in another part of the forrest, the pirates have switched to Means like "Rapidshare" and "Megaupload" to diseminate music, movies and software. Much harder to catch the culprits.

Things change. The development of the automobile put buggywhip makers out of business. Gramophones destroyed the sheet music business. The trend is clearly towards a music "market" in which recordings are merely adverts for the "Real Thing" (where the money is!) - Live concerts. The days when a musician NEEDED a recording contract, or would never get heard, are long gone. With a laptop and access to the internet, an up-and-coming musician / band can create a presence - and a following - without external help. The more MP3's they give away for free, the more seats they can sell at their next performance. But, I suppose people have been trying to halt the march of progress (for their own benefit!) since the Peasant's Revolt. It didn't work then either....

Edited by author 07-24-2009 12:08 PM

I'm a technoster...?

Techno-stress, as Wendy used to call it, has got worse with the "burden of security" which is now imposed on prosumers.

It'll all end up with our future being managed by mobile phone operators. The SIM was designed to be secure ab initio; the Internet, not so.

Edited by author 06-19-2009 01:45 PM

Laura Robson and the Press

Wendy knows more about tennis than the average bear. And she knows more about how mass media and sport interact than anybody I know.

Will people watch Wimbledon when their only access is TV, or bloggers?

There will still be Victorian houses...

Wendy puts her finger squarely on the problem with futurology: there's going to be more of the past in it than people think!

Swine flew? Sound the ReTweet!

Twitter is a fad.

Actually, I'm pretty sure it is.

So is SMS texting.

I'm gkewney, if you want to Follow me... do let me know if you do!

Data is fuzzy, not clear...

You've read Wendy's piece about Statebook but you should also read the the original Hawk-Eye critique by the team at Cardiff, which she refers to in net.wars this week.

It's all about margins of error; it's wrong to represent sharp edges for the predicted path of a tennis (or cricket) ball, when you're out by at least three inches.

Knit Your Own Ood!

"It turns out that as a legal question
rapid prototyping has barely been examined. Bradshaw found nary a reference in a literature search. Probably most lawyers think this stuff is all still just science fiction."

Would you buy a nano-manufacturing box for $1,000?

Edited by author 02-06-2009 02:03 PM

Help musicians, not recording company execs!

I should remind you, just in case you forgot, that Wendy M Grossman is almost as well known a singer as Kinky Friedman.

If she says "DON'T extend copyright!" then you really should think about it. And she's not alone, either...

Edited by author 01-16-2009 11:45 AM

Healthy Jobs markets?

Our special health correspondent reckons that the problem with Steve Jobs's health isn't his health.

It's his creation of Apple as a Jobs Cult that's the problem.