Monthly Archives: January 2006

Photo arcade

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Behind the facade of these buildings in St Andrew’s Street in Cambridge, there’s a huge retail development under way with the optimistic name ‘Grand Arcade’. In a smart move to counter public dislike of the disruption caused by a massive building project right in the heart of a medieval city, the developers commissioned Martin Parr, the populist Magnum photographer, to do a series of photographs under the general heading of “The Cambridge Portrait” which will be displayed over coming months on the hoardings round the site. So far the pictures have been quite nice but not really outstanding. But they do provide opportunities for interesting juxtapositions — as, for example, here,

or here.

Note for photography buffs: Looking at the images, I had concluded they must have been shot with a Hasselblad, but a visit to Parr’s web site suggests they were made with a truly recondite instrument, the Plaubel Makina 67. Now there’s a really obscure camera for you.

Parr describes himself, btw, as a “mischievous ironist”.

“Microsoft Would Put Poor Online by Cellphone”

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This hilarious NYT headline goes over an equally hilarious report about Microsoft and the $100 laptop project.

Mr. Negroponte has made significant progress, but he has also catalyzed the debate over the role of computing in poor nations — and ruffled a few feathers. He failed to reach an agreement with Microsoft on including its Windows software in the laptop, leading Microsoft executives to start discussing what they say is a less expensive alternative: turning a specially configured cellular phone into a computer by connecting it to a TV and a keyboard.

Translation: Negroponte doesn’t want to clobber his laptop by getting it to run proprietary bloatware and had the temerity to say so to Gates & Co. So they’re going to teach him a lesson by, er, launching a mobile phone which runs Windows CE. Ho, ho. Wonder how you get Ctrl-Alt-Del on a mobile keyboard? Ah, I see. Like this:

Divine (IP) Rights, contd.

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Further to my comment about whether the pope is entitled to assert IP rights over papal encyclicals (on the grounds that he is merely a conduit for the Word of the Lord), Joe Newman writes,

Encyclicals do not necessarily constitute ex-cathedra pronouncements, invested with infallible authority (see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05413a.htm).

Further, according to that inerrant source of all knowledge Wikipedia “papal infallibility is the dogma that the Pope is preserved from error when he solemnly promulgates, or declares, to the Church a decision on faith or morals.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility

i.e. he isn’t acting as a conduit, but is creating an original attributable work (hence copyrightable), on his own behalf. Whether it is divinely free of error (hard to digest I admit) or not is neither here nor there where the intellectual property rights are concerned.

Er, amen to that. Mark Stephens, a lawyer with a big London firm, wrote to the Creative Commons mailing list pointing out that while the Vatican is defending its imposition of a copyright on papal pronouncements it is placing no bar on dissemination and publication of the pope’s works by the news media, so it would be most appropriate for His Holiness to use a Creative Commons licence! (Might I humbly suggest the Attribution, No derivative works, no-commercial-use version.)

Tiffany sues eBay

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The New York Times reports that Tiffany & Company is sueing eBay for facilitating the sale of counterfeit goods over the Internet. Undercover agents working for the company secretly bought 200 ‘Tiffany’ items in eBay auctions and found that 75% were counterfeited. The case will go to trial later this year. If Tiffany wins, the implications for eBay would be dire: imagine the costs of policing all those auctions.

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Google falls at first moral hurdle

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This morning’s Observer column.

In the longer term … the commercial logic that led Google to capitulate may turn out to be counterproductive. The reason is that – in contrast to companies like, say, Halliburton – Google’s ultimate fate depends on trust. Its corporate mission – to ‘organise the world’s information’ – means that it aspires to become the custodian of immense quantities of private data. Already, it holds the email archives of millions of subscribers to Google Mail, plus records of every web search they ever made. And although it is resisting the attempt of the US government to mount a fishing expedition through those data, nobody doubts that, in the end, Google will comply with the law.

But that’s different from making a strategic decision to compete in a space dominated by an evil political regime. Google could, after all, have said that if the Chinese authorities demanded self-censorship then it would not play. One only has to put it like that to imagine the incredulity of mainstream media reaction to such a proposition. Imagine standing up at a CBI conference and declaring that one is not going to do business in China until it makes serious moves towards becoming an open society! By joining the Gadarene rush into the Chinese market, Google may have gained short-term advantage. But it has also forfeited its right to our trust.

More: Just seen this post on Brad DeLong’s Blog. It compares the results from an image search for “tienanmen” on (1) Google.cn and (2) Google.com.

Yet more: Bill Thompson (who is less censorious of Google) sent me a link to this Geekculture cartoon!

Divine IP Right

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Andrew Brown draws my attention to the fact that the Vatican is now claiming IP Rights over papal encyclicals. According to the Times story,

For the first time all papal documents, including encyclicals, will be governed by copyright invested in the official Vatican publishing house, the Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

The edict covers Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, which is to be issued this week amid huge international interest. The edict is retroactive, covering not only the writings of the present pontiff — as Pope and as cardinal — but also those of his predecessors over the past 50 years. It therefore includes anything written by John Paul II, John Paul I, Paul VI and John XXIII.

Ahem, but isn’t there a small problem here? Encyclicals are utterances ex cathedra: in them the pope claims to be speaking as the ‘Vicar of Christ’ — i.e. he is a mouthpiece for the Lord. So logically, the IP Rights, such as they are, belong to the author, not to the conduit. Hmmm…. time to call for Professor Lessig.

Kissing the badger

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Wonderful column by Harry Pearson. Sample:

The radio filtered alarming news to my vantage point high above. From what I could make out from an incoherently angry caller to 6-0-6, it seemed that the Manchester United right-back Gary Neville had taunted visiting Liverpool fans at the final whistle by standing in front of them and kissing – and here was the shocking bit – his badger.

That, at least, was what it sounded like. Many would instantly have dismissed the idea as implausible. Those who have been around football as long as I have, however, know better. If we were to eliminate things in football just because they were implausible we’d have to chop out huge chunks of the game’s history – Graham Taylor’s spell as England manager, for example, or Jorge Campos’s shirts, or Rio Ferdinand.

In football you learn to trust Sherlock Holmes’s maxim: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Steve McClaren is favourite to become the next England manager. I rest my case.

Quote of the day

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From a CNN report on Microsoft’s latest results…

Microsoft, which in addition to Xbox 360, recently released its new SQL Server 2005 database software, is expected to see a pickup in growth thanks to these new products as well as the upcoming release of Microsoft’s long-awaited new operating system, known as Vista, and the latest version of Office: Office 12.

“I’m excited about the second half of the year,” said Michael Cohen, director of research with Pacific American Securities. “That’s when we’ll likely see Vista and Office 12, some of the most significant releases in the company’s history. I think that will lead to a PC upgrade cycle in the second half of the year.”

Translation: if you want to run the next version of Windows, you will also need to buy a new PC! Verily, Moore’s Law giveth and Bill Gates taketh away. It’s almost enough to make one feel sorry for Windows users. But resist the temptation: they only have themselves to blame.

Nasty Sony kills off robotic bow-wow

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Such cruelty! Good Morning, Silicon Valley reports that,

The Aibo lived seven years — or 49 if you count robotic dog years.

On Thursday, Sony pulled the plug on Aibo, its peppy robotic dog with a software-controlled personality and abilities that has entertained thousands of faithful owners. The dogs, which cost upward of $2,000 each, can dance, whimper, guard and play, developing personalities based on interaction with their owners. Sony has sold more than 150,000 Aibos since launching the product in May 1999.

The Tokyo-based consumer electronics giant is restructuring under new Chief Executive Howard Stringer. Sony said Thursday that it plans to focus on three core businesses — electronics, games and entertainment. Its two robotics efforts, the Aibo and the Qrio humanoid robot, got the ax.

And to forestall all those kind readers who will write in to point out the misspelling of “axe”, it’s in the original quotation and follows American usage. As Oscar Wilde observed, “England and America are two countries divided by a common language”.