Monthly Archives: November 2005

Saeva Indignatio

Posted on by

Fine example of savage indignation in the current issue of The Economist. Excerpt from a rant, er, Leader on the importance of free trade:

In Washington, DC, home of a fabled “consensus” about poor countries’ economic policies, a bill before Congress devised by one of New York’s senators, Charles Schumer, threatens a 27.5% tariff on imports from China if that country does not revalue its currency by an equivalent amount. In Mr Schumer’s view, presumably, far too many Chinese peasants are escaping poverty. On November 4th George Bush will escape the febrile atmosphere along Pennsylvania Avenue by visiting Argentina to attend the 34-country Summit of the Americas. There he will be greeted by a rally against “imperialism”, by which is meant him personally, the Iraq war and the Free Trade Area of the Americas which he espouses. Among the hoped-for 50,000 demonstrators will be Diego Maradona, who as a footballer became rich through the game’s global market and as a cocaine-addict was dependent on barrier-busting international trade; and naturally his fellow-summiteer, Hugo Chávez, who is using trade in high-priced oil to finance his “21st-century socialism” in Venezuela.

I like that, er, crack about Maradona.

London’s flooding, London’s flooding…

Posted on by

This image, from Andrew Hudson-Smith’s fascinating Blog, shows the output of a 3D simulation of what would happen to London in the event of a rise in sea-level. The commentary says:

South London is built on marsh land and is thus more prone to flooding. We have produced a movie that illustrates sea level rise in metres. It clearly picks up the moat around the Tower of London within a metre increase and then follows on to flood most of the Waterloo/South Bank area of London. The movie does not take into account flood defences, merely a direct sea level rise.

Setting a price

Posted on by

Fascinating meditation by Matt Webb on the dilemma that faces all freelancers — how much to charge:

There’s a civil engineering company I’ve been told about, which internally audits all its projects for profitability, interestingness, and how easy the client is to deal with. If it’s not marked well on two of those, future projects are turned down.

It’s this second one that interests me. Not using money as a way of explaining how much a project costs, but using money as a way of influencing what kind of work you get, and as fair compensation.

Work must be fun. If I didn’t believe that, I’d have a highly lucrative job in the City. And work must be fair. I don’t want to charge people too much for what I do for them, or too little. There must be a lot of different work, because our expertise comes from using a large variety of ideas and skills. Also, work creates more work: You get what you do. I’m on a trajectory away from programming, for example. I still do it, but I don’t discount my day rate for programming work. The last thing: Money buys freedom. It’s good to take well paid jobs, because that gives you the time to pursue the less obvious ideas, and room to develop your own products.

This means that my freelancing banding system still works: Charge more if there’s a lot of value being extracted, if the work is dull, and if there’s risk involved; charge less if the work takes the company in good directions, if it’s really interesting, and if it’s for people we like.

Don’t bother with the book, I just want the juicy bits

Posted on by

According to Good Morning Silicon Valley …

The publishing industry may have finally found its iTunes. Amazon on Thursday rolled out a micropayments program for books in an attempt to do for literature what Apple has done for music. Under the company’s new Amazon Pages program, readers can purchase online access to as much or as little of a book as they’d like — a chapter or even a single page. A second program, dubbed Amazon Upgrade, allows readers to add complete, perpetual online access to the purchase of a physical copy of a book. `We see this as a win-win-win situation: good for readers, good for publishers and good for authors,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told the Associated Press.

Posted in Web

Quote of the day

Posted on by

“In our system, each individual is presumed innocent and entitled to due process and a fair trial.”

President George W. Bush, speaking about Lewis Libby, the White House official indicted over the Plame affair.

Er, could this be the same President Bush who has no compunction about locking people up indefinitely in Guantanamo without trial?

Sony resorts to malware techniques

Posted on by

Fascinating technical analysis by Mark Russinovich of what happened to his PC when he inserted a copy-protected Sony music disc into his machine. Basically, it installs a ‘rootkit’ — the kind of covert software used by malware authors (aka ‘hackers’ to the mainstream media) to compromise computers they have penetrated. Ed Felten has posted several thoughtful updates and comments on this unsavoury discovery. And Andrew Brandt of PC World is absolutely incandescent about it. Here’s what he has to say (en passant):

The bigger question people have got to ask is, does Sony not respect the integrity of the computers of its customers? This cavalier act of sneaking software onto PCs not only violates our own Prime Directive — it’s our PC, dammit — but threatens the entire music industry.

After all, if you suspect that a commercial CD will install software secretly, which you won’t be able to remove and which, itself, may increase the already-great security problems of your Windows PC, would you continue to buy CDs?

I’ll tell you right now, I won’t. I’d much rather buy an unrestricted copy of a song electronically, using iTunes, or Rhapsody, or one of the other music services that offer this feature, than take a chance that some music disc will stick some hidden files in my Windows folder, which I can’t see or remove.

Sony has dealt itself a serious blow, and the best thing it — and the rest of the music publishers — can do right now is condemn this practice, apologize to the customers that were affected, provide a method to get this junk off affected PCs, and make declarations that they will never, ever do this again.

I don’t think they will. And if they don’t, I simply won’t buy CDs anymore. Period. From any publisher. And I recommend that you don’t, either. As a fan of music who respects the need for artists to make a living, and a security-savvy PC user, I’m incensed that Sony — any company — would think it’s OK to do this. It’s not. But the only way (I can see) to send that message effectively to Sony BMG executives is to vote against CDs with my wallet.

Iran and the US

Posted on by

Sobering OpenDemocracy piece by Paul Rogers about the escalating conflict between Iran and the US. Excerpt:

This fundamental clash of perceptions between Washington and Tehran shows no sign of diminishing. Indeed, the current Iranian rhetoric simply makes it easier for the United States (or Israel) to consider the use of force if diplomacy fails to fix the nuclear issue. The problem for these prospective assailants is that any such action might entail serious and unexpected escalation.

Iran would have several options in the event of a US or Israeli attack: direct Revolutionary Guard involvement across the border in Iraq, making the predicament of US forces almost impossible; encouraging Hizbollah to open a “Lebanon front” with Israel; even the temporary closure of the Straits of Hormuz to create an oil-market panic. The stakes are therefore very high and it will take some extraordinary efforts by diplomats, mediators and others – including the Russians – to encourage the Washington and Tehran administrations to acquire a realistic sense of each other’s point of view…

Google Print

Posted on by

Is online. Distinctly underwhelming, so far. But it’s early days. And there are all those pesky lawsuits from publishers to be sorted out before anything much happens.