If you want a really expensive laptop, buy a Vaio.
Sony Chairman, Howard Stringer, speaking at CES yesterday. Thanks to Paul Boutin for blogging it so brilliantly.
Daily Archives: January 6, 2006
Four reasons to be glad Bush is still President
Following on from my thoughts about Cheney, here’s some more consoling thoughts.
Thanks to Bill Thompson for the link.
Dave’s domain name
Hmmm… The domain www.davidcameron.co.uk is taken. The WHOIS database says “The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service.”
Google Ad(non)sense contd.
The logic behind the Adsense engine is truly weird. As I write this, the top posts on this Blog are:
So what ads does Google Adsense put up based on the above content? Answer: one link to a site dealing with the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and three anti-piracy sites. It’s idiotic.
Two hours later: It gets worse. Two of the piracy-related ads have been replaced — by one for “Jewish Tours of Berlin” and one for “School History Software”. Could it be that the Google engine is somehow inferring a link between the Economist story about population shrinkage and the Holocaust?
A neat trick
If you highlight a word in Text Edit or Microsoft Word running on a Mac and then drag-and-drop it onto the Safari icon in the dock, a new browser window will open with the results of a Google search on the word. Neat.
Thanks to Pete for the hint.
Two cheers for Gutenberg
Simon Jenkins thinks that some types of newspaper have a healthy future.
British popular newspaper sales have continued to fall, from 13m overall in 1965 to less than 9m today. But they are a separate publishing market. Upmarket newspapers show a reverse trend. Their daily circulation has defied every pundit, rising by a third since 1965 from 2m to close to 3m. The figure for the serious Sunday titles is the same today as it was then, 2.7m. Add the Economist, which calls itself a weekly newspaper, and the figure would be 1m higher.
This growth in serious newspaper sales is unique. Britain has a wider choice of national titles at this end of the market than ever – and than any western country. America’s five leading papers have lost more than 7% of their gross circulation in the past decade alone.
There is one reason for this. Elsewhere in Europe and America publishers are trapped by archaic unions in a quasi-monopolistic market stripped of any zest to compete. Try to start a new newspaper in an American city and you will be met by a wall of monopolistic behaviour, from unions, advertisers and usually an existing dominant title. America has ignored British experience, but people will go on buying newspapers provided they keep updating their content and presentation.
The population implosion
From this week’s Economist…
Russia’s population is expected to fall by 22% between 2005 and 2050, Ukraine’s by a staggering 43%. Now the phenomenon is creeping into the rich world: Japan has started to shrink and others, such as Italy and Germany, will soon follow. Even China’s population will be declining by the early 2030s, according to the UN, which projects that by 2050 populations will be lower than they are today in 50 countries.
Microsoft shuts down Chinese dissident’s Blog
From today’s New York Times…
BEIJING, Jan. 5 – Microsoft has shut the blog site of a well-known Chinese blogger who uses its MSN online service in China after he discussed a high-profile newspaper strike that broke out here one week ago.
The decision is the latest in a series of measures in which some of America’s biggest technology companies have cooperated with the Chinese authorities to censor Web sites and curb dissent or free speech online as they seek access to China’s booming Internet marketplace.
Microsoft drew criticism last summer when it was discovered that its blog tool in China was designed to filter words like “democracy” and “human rights” from blog titles. The company said Thursday that it must “comply with global and local laws.”
“This is a complex and difficult issue,” said Brooke Richardson, a group product manager for MSN in Seattle. “We think it’s better to be there with our services than not be there.”
The site pulled down was a popular one created by Zhao Jing, a well-known blogger with an online pen name, An Ti. Mr. Zhao, 30, also works as a research assistant in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times.
Lots of stuff on the Web about this. Here, for example, is a translation of what Zhao has said about the experience on his blog-city site (mirrored at ZonaLatina.com):
On the afternoon when Microsoft deleted my space, I did not feel anything at all. A few days ago, I was at Peking University speaking to students and someone asked me whether MSN Spaces would be shut down on account of me. My response was, “When the warning comes, Microsoft will sell me out first. So everybody should feel free to use MSN Spaces.” I sensed that the day will be coming. Over the last days, the daily traffic was about 15,000, and then everything was deleted. Damn Great Wall, damn Microsoft. I will make Microsoft pay.
That night, I felt bad and I cried.
It is so hard to be a free Chinese person. This year, my blog was shut down twice because I supported media (Chinese Youth Daily and Beijing News). When I was in Hong Kong, I told the reporters that I know where the bottom line is. The problem is that when my fellow media are in trouble, it is my obligation as a member of the news media to offer support immediately. Under this type of moral obligation, personal bottom lines are irrelevant. One can continue to live meticulously and technically, but one must also have another side that puts everything aside to express true feelings.
One of the most interesting developments is a post by Microsoft’s most famous Blogger, Scobelizer, in which he says:
OK, this one is depressing to me. It’s one thing to pull a list of words out of blogs using an algorithm. It’s another thing to become an agent of a government and censor an entire blogger’s work. Yes, I know the consequences. Yes, there are thousands of jobs at stake. Billions of dollars. But, the behavior of my company in this instance is not right.
Some people within the Microsoft chain of command are reported to be taking this issue up. So they should.
A picture is worth a thousand pounds
Hilarious story on The Register. A guy offered a picture on eBay of a 42-inch Panasonic plasma TV (which retails at about £3,000). Bidding had reached £1,020 before it was rumbled by a Register reader. In the end, the seller ended the auction saying
I had to bid on the item myself and end the listing early. the price was getting rediculous. There was no way that I was going to allow someone to pay £2000 for a picture. I couldnt live with myself with that. Also an ebay [official?] told me that I needed permision from panasonic to sell a picture of their item, which I did not know.
Other than the permision that I needed, there was nothing wrong with what I was selling as far as I can see. It was listed under home and garden: decorative items and there was also another note further down the listing that said ‘note: you are bidding on a picture of the plasma being described and not the actual plasma itself’. And no where on the listing does it say that you the buyer is bidding on a plasma screen.
Caveat Emptor and all that; but it does make one wonder about some of the emptors on eBay. Apparently some bidders have paid serious money for photographs of Microsoft XBoxes!