Karlin Lillington reports that a new Irish digital rights and privacy group — Digital Rights Ireland — is getting ready to formally launch next week though they are already actively getting some position papers out and making some media appearances. Yippee!
Monthly Archives: December 2005
Would you like fries with that download?
The New Scientist reported, and the NYT followed up on, a Disney patent application which could lead to McDonald’s Happy Meal toys being replaced with portable media players that hold Disney movies, music, games or photos. Users could add files to the devices by earning points with food purchases. The NYT says:
The plan could work something like this: A customer enters a restaurant and buys a meal, receiving the portable media player and an electronic code that authorizes a partial download of a movie, video or other media file, which can be downloaded while in the restaurant, according to a United States Patent and Trademark Office application filed by Disney. Then, with each subsequent return, the customer earns more downloadable data, eventually getting an entire movie or game.
The report also claims that McDonalds has been kitting out its premises with wireless Internet connections since 2003, and since then has installed Wi-Fi in more than 6,200 restaurants worldwide. It charges customers for Wi-Fi usage and trades promotional coupons and prepaid cards for network access time.
I really must get out more. On second thoughts, perhaps not.
Sunlight on the bay
There’s a wonderful road which runs north to south through the Dingle Peninsula. Not for the faint-hearted (steep drops at one side), but the pay-off is a wonderful view as you come over the rise. This is what it was like this morning on the way to Inch.
Citizen journalism…?
… or just plain desperation? This appeared on ITV screens this morning after reports of the Hemel Hempstead oil depot fire.
Through a glass, darkly
Door to the cafe at Inch beach, Co Kerry, this morning. It’s run by a charming Iraqi who speaks with a broad Kerry accent. Lovely.
Wikipedia and QA
I’ve been following the arguments about the quality of Wikipedia entries and came on this thoughtful post by Ethan Zuckerman. Excerpt:
When I use Wikipedia to research technical topics, I generally have a positive experience, frequently finding information I would be unlikely to find in any other context, generally resolving my technical questions – “How does the GSM cellphone standard work?” with a single search. When I use Wikipedia to obtain information that I could find in a conventional encyclopedia, I often have a terrible experience, encountering articles that are unsatisfying at best and useless at worst. Generally, these experiences result from a search where I already know a little about a topic and am looking for additional, specific information, usually when I’m researching a city or a nation to provide context for a blog entry. My current operating hypothesis? Wikipedia is a fantastic reference work for stuff that doesn’t exist in other reference works, and a lousy knock-off of existing works when they do exist.
Old media and the Net
The most interesting question is not whether Friends Reunited will save ITV, but if ITV will destroy Friends Reunited. That depends on the extent to which Allen and his management team leave their acquisition alone.
Television people are constitutionally incapable of dealing with the web because they have been socially and professionally conditioned in the world of ‘push’ media with its attendant control freakery and inbuilt assumptions about the passivity and stupidity of audiences. Very little of their experience or skills are useful in a ‘pull’ medium like the web, where the consumer is active, fickle and informed, and history to date suggests that if they are put in charge of internet operations they screw up.
My guess is that Allen & Co will not be able to resist the temptation to meddle with their new toy…
Outsourcing fantasy
Hmmm… One of those stories you don’t know whether to believe or not. The NYT is solemnly reporting that affluent online gamers who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are willing to pay young Chinese to play the early rounds for them. Excerpt:
Every day, in 12-hour shifts, they “play” computer games by killing onscreen monsters and winning battles, harvesting artificial gold coins and other virtual goods as rewards that, as it turns out, can be transformed into real cash…
“For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters,” said a 23-year-old gamer who works here in this makeshift factory and goes by the online code name Wandering. “I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I’ve had. And I can play games all day.”
How it’s really going in Iraq
Great New Yorker piece by Seymour Hersh. The plan, he believes, is to pull out US ground forces but leave behind massive air-strike capability which the Iraqi ‘security’ forces can call on whenever they need to. If this is indeed the case then the Bushies are even more stupid than I had supposed.
Still life with jelly-beans
Brought back by Imran from his sojourn at MIT.