Monthly Archives: March 2006

Think before you chat

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This is interesting — as significant in its way as the original Demon Internet precedent. From Guardian Unlimited…

A landmark legal ruling ordering a woman to pay £10,000 in damages for defamatory comments posted on an internet chatroom site could trigger a rush of similar lawsuits, a leading libel lawyer warned today.

Michael Smith, a Ukip activist who stood for the Portsmouth North seat last year, became the first person to win damages yesterday after being accused of being a “sex offender” and “racist blogger” on a Yahoo! discussion site.

Mr Smith, 53, from Fareham in Hampshire, sued Tracy Williams, of Oldham, for comments posted after she joined a rightwing online forum in 2002.

Judge Alistair MacDuff said in the high court that Ms Williams was “particularly abusive” and “her statements demonstrated that … she had no intention of stopping her libellous and defamatory behaviour”.

The judge ordered Ms Williams never again to repeat the “unfounded” defamatory remarks, which included calling Mr Smith a “nonce” and accusing him of sexual harassment.

Although ISPs have paid out for hosting defamatory comments, this case is thought to be the first time an individual has been found to have committed libel on a internet chat site.

Good news from Iraq (not)

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Stung by complaints that the media report only bad news from Iraq, the ABC News Baghdad bureau went looking for something cheerful. Its reporters found a new romantic television comedy, “starring the Danny DeVito of Iraq”. Sadly, while they were recording this upbeat tale, they were interrupted by the news that the impresario behind the show had just been shot dead.

The Economist, March 18, 2006, page 43.

Email me at bureauguy@gmail.com

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No, you couldn’t make this up. Good Morning Silicon Valley reports…

Good thing the FBI teaches agents Morse code because chances are they may need it. According to Mark Mershon, the assistant director in charge of the agency’s New York City office, budget constraints have deprived some FBI agents of e-mail accounts.

“As ridiculous as this might sound, we have real money issues right now, and the government is reluctant to give all agents and analysts dot-gov accounts,” Mershon told the New York Daily News yesterday. “We just don’t have the money, and that is an endless stream of complaints that come from the field.”

Those peerage loans…

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Lovely piece by Marina Hyde.

Charles Falconer’s tour of the breakfast studios yesterday contrived – almost unthinkably – to take the mental cheating that has characterised the party’s handling of the donations affair and so many before it to a new low.

The government welcomed people’s concerns, explained his Lordship. Good heavens, they were concerned themselves, and wished to take this chance to take a close look at party funding, to further “clean up” the system, adding that they would most certainly be making it compulsory to disclose any loans in the future.

So, if we are to understand him: a tiny cabal of New Labour figures sought a loophole in legislation they had fashioned entirely themselves, exploited it ruthlessly in total secrecy, were exposed, and now seek to have a “public debate” about it, proposing to outlaw a practice that was personally sanctioned by the prime minister in private barely one year ago.

Did you ever hear anything so intellectually weak in your life?

Since you ask, Marina, no.

The 10/20/30 rule for PowerPoint

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I loathe and abominate PowerPoint, but sometimes am obliged to use it because the conference organisers go bananas with anxiety if you don’t give them a presentation in advance.

For those who are obliged to use the infernal tool, here’s a great rule invented by Guy Kawasaki, a Venture Capitalist.

Before there is an epidemic of Ménière’s [disease] in the venture capital community, I am trying to evangelize the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. While I’m in the venture capital business, this rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc.

Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting—and venture capitalists are very normal. (The only difference between you and venture capitalist is that he is getting paid to gamble with someone else’s money). If you must use more than ten slides to explain your business, you probably don’t have a business…

Thanks to Quentin for the link.

When we say “voluntary” we mean “compulsory”

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My Observer fellow-columnist, Henry Porter, has been conducting a valiant campaign to stir people’s interest in the ID Cards Bill that the Blair regime is trying to force through Parliament. He’s written another excellent piece this morning…

I would feel a bore and an obsessive if I hadn’t pored over the ID card bill last week and read Hansard’s account of the exchanges in both houses.

One of the most chilling passages in the bill is section 13 which deals with the ‘invalidity and surrender’ of ID cards, which, in effect, describes the withdrawal of a person’s identity by the state. For, without this card, it will be almost impossible to function, to exist as a citizen in the UK. Despite the cost to you, this card will not be your property.

My only quibble is that, technically, UK inhabitants are not ‘citizens’; they’re subjects of the Crown.

Invasion of the oxymorons

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This morning’s Observer column…

Ask a liberal to give an example of an oxymoron (a contradiction in terms) and s/he will invariably say ‘military intelligence’. Ask an old-style television executive and you will get the reply: ‘user-generated content’. That’s because in the glory days of broadcast TV, viewers were assumed to be incapable of generating anything, with the possible exception of subscriptions to sports channels. The idea that couch potatoes might create content was deemed ludicrous. And even if the saps could create something, there was no way of publishing it. QED.

So here’s your starter for 10. Who said this?

‘Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry – the editors, the chief executives and, let’s face it, the proprietors. A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it. This new media audience – and we are talking here of tens of millions of young people around the world – is already using technology, especially the web, to inform, entertain and above all to educate themselves. This knowledge revolution empowers the reader, the student, the cancer patient, the victim of injustice, anyone with a vital need for the right information.’…