Monthly Archives: March 2006

More tech-support transcripts

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Hilarious piece in Slate by Evan Eisenberg. Sample:

In order to serve you better, it will be helpful for us to know which order you belong to. For Primates, press 1. For Cetacea and Proboscidea, press 2. For Jesuit or Dominican, press 3. For Knights Templar or Hospitaler, Knights of Pythias or Columbus, as well as Masons, Elks, and Kiwanis, or if you are unsure, press 4. If you are a Franciscan and have a rotary phone, please stay on the line.

Please key in the model and serial number of the product you are calling about. The model number is the series of 12 letters and digits that is visible when you push the unit away from the wall, work your head into the gap using a crowbar and No. 10 machine oil, and train a beam of ultraviolet light on the lower three centimeters of the right-hand rear surface of the appliance.

If the model number is obscured by dust or cockroach detritus, wipe it with a soft, lint-free cloth soaked in a solution of ordinary rubbing alcohol, Kirschwasser, and formaldehyde. The serial number is the 37-digit number inscribed by means of laser nanotechnology on the underside of the unit and is not visible to the naked eye.

When you have entered both numbers, press the pound key. Note that at any point you may return to the previous menu by hanging up, calling again, and repeating the process until you reach the point just before the point you are at right now…

There’s more. Much more. For example:

Most common problems can be resolved at home by following a simple sequence of diagnostic tests and procedures. We will now guide you through such a sequence. If you wish to skip this section, press 1, 3, and 9 simultaneously while restarting your telephone. Please note: If, while answering these questions, you see smoke or flames or if your chest is warm to the touch, hang up and call 911.

The only thing missing is the ubiquitous assurance that “we really value your call”.

Footnote: After recovering from a bout of hysterical laughter I realised that I’m currently reading Mr Eisenberg’s lovely book, The recording angel: Music, Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa.

Gates disses $100 laptop (again)

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ZDNet.com report of remarks made at a Microsoft “Government Leaders Forum” in Washington the other day.

Gates once again let known his feelings of disdain for the $100 laptop, Nicholas Negroponte’s proposed appropriate technology for the developing world. Gates dismissed the proposed machine’s lack of hard disk, tiny screen and hand crank power supply.

“If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you’re not sitting there cranking the thing while you’re trying to type,” Gates said.

Gates questioned the choice to skip the hard disk, saying that hardware is a small part of the cost. Network connectivity is more expensive, he said.

He did not explain how you get broadband into, say, rural Somalia. But then, he’s a Big Picture man.

Technolust (contd.)

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Why, oh why, does Canon always beat Nikon to the punch? (I write as a Nikon user.) This is the EOS 5D, which I think is the first product to reach the market with an image sensor the same size as a 35mm film frame. Expensive (£1800 inc VAT for body only in the UK). But still… More detailed spec here.

Tales from the public domain

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A terrific idea from James Boyle and his law colleagues at Duke University — a comic book that explains vividly the problems that our current IP regime poses for creative people.

A documentary is being filmed. A cell phone rings, playing the “Rocky” theme song. The filmmaker is told she must pay $10,000 to clear the rights to the song. Can this be true? “Eyes on the Prize,” the great civil rights documentary, was pulled from circulation because the filmmakers’ rights to music and footage had expired. What’s going on here? It’s the collision of documentary filmmaking and intellectual property law, and it’s the inspiration for this new comic book. Follow its heroine Akiko as she films her documentary, and navigates the twists and turns of intellectual property. Why do we have copyrights? What’s “fair use”? Bound By Law reaches beyond documentary film to provide a commentary on the most pressing issues facing law, art, property and an increasingly digital world of remixed culture…

The comic is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, and can be downloaded or purchased in hard copy from Amazon.

Macho frauds

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Lovely Guardian column by Linda Colley about the weird macho strutting of Bush, Cheney & Co — all of whom shirked military service in Vietnam…

In America, the excitement about Dick Cheney’s shooting accident is over. There are no more talkshow debates about why he took so long to make a statement, and no more news reports about his 78-year-old victim. Even the delicious contrast between the vicepresident’s bravery in the face of small birds and the deferments he took to keep from going to Vietnam no longer raises eyebrows. Yet the shrewdest comment I heard on the incident was rarely touched on. What did the vice-president think he was doing, inquired a serious hunter? Real men got up early and went into the countryside hunting wild quail alone with their dog. Going in groups to a farm to shoot specially bred birds was for sissies. It wasn’t Cheney’s involvement in masculine pursuits that was noteworthy; it was that the mode of masculinity on show was bogus…

Google avoids surrendering search requests to government

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From AP Wire on San Jose Mercury News…

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal judge on Friday ordered Google Inc. to give the Bush administration a peek inside its search engine, but rebuffed the government’s demand for a list of people’s search requests – potentially sensitive information that the company had fought to protect.

In his 21-page ruling, U.S. District Judge James Ware told Google to provide the U.S. Justice Department with the addresses of 50,000 randomly selected Web sites indexed by its search engine by April 3.

The government plans to use the data for a study in another case in Pennsylvania, where the Bush administration is trying to revive a law meant to shield children from online pornography.

Ware, though, decided Google won’t have to disclose what people have been looking for on its widely used search engine, handing a significant victory to the company and privacy rights advocates.

“We will always be subject to government subpoenas, but the fact that the judge sent a clear message about privacy is reassuring,” Google lawyer Nicole Wong wrote on the company’s Web site Friday night.

“What his ruling means is that neither the government nor anyone else has carte blanche when demanding data from Internet companies.”

Don’t mention the war

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The US Ambassador came to College today, to give a talk to the Gates Scholars, and I sat in on the proceedings.

Robert Holmes Tuttle is a genial cove who apparently continues to be Co-Managing Partner of Tuttle-Click Automotive Group, described by the embassy as “one of the largest automobile dealer organizations in the United States”, while still representing his country. (Wonder what he does when questions about automobile emissions come up.) Mrs. Tuttle, a corporate lawyer, also came along and lent a touch of glamour to an otherwise drab occasion.

Tuttle’s talk was stupendously banal — partly a paen of praise to his country’s enlightened tax system (eh?), and partly a sermonette on the importance of giving (prompted in part, I guess, by the fact that most of his listeners were in Cambridge because of a huge benefaction made by Bill Gates to the university to establish the Gates Scholars scheme).

The Q&A session with the students was similarly banal. The questions were uniformly respectful and mostly vague. There was not a single mention of the war in Iraq. (John Cleese, where are you when we need you?) A question about anti-Americanism abroad was skilfully deflected by the Ambassador with anecdotal guff about how English visitors to the US are always overwhelmed by the hospitality and friendliness of the natives. He dealt rather well with a questioner who asked whether released US prisoners should have the right to vote (apparently they don’t), by explaining that sometimes there was a conflict between his personal views and the fact that he had to represent his government. Asked what he regarded as the two biggest problems facing the world, he replied “poverty and bad governance”, which I thought was a pretty intelligent answer — especially as I had expected him to trot out the party line about global terrorism.

As he gave his talk, a couple of thoughts came to mind. One was Ambrose Bierce’s definition of an ambassador as “a person who, having failed to secure an office from the people, is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.” Mr Tuttle is a substantial donor to the Republican party, and served as Ronald Reagan’s Director of Personnel. The other thought was that this genial, agreeable chap is essentially the acceptable face of Rumsfeld, Cheney and all the other right-wing nutters who have driven the US into its current cul de sac. He is, in other words, the velvet glove for their mailed fist.

Adobe LightRoom

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I’ve just begun trying out the Beta version of LightRoom and am startled by how good it is. I was initially put off by all the guff about how it was tailored to the ‘workflow’ needs of serious photographers. In practice, it’s a very neatly designed program. The ‘workflow’ idea is embodied in the notion of four main phases in the life of an image — Library (storage and filing), Develop (adjust), Slideshow (Display) and Print (see top right-hand corner of picture). Unlike most other Adobe products I’ve used, LightRoom seems intuitive and fairly self-explanatory. It’s nowhere near as powerful as PhotoShop for image manipulation, but then life is too short for most of us to learn PhotoShop. All in all, my first encounter with the software has been a revelation. No doubt more experienced and perceptive users will soon be emailing me lists of its deficiencies. But my reaction is positive so far.

The TAKEAWAY Festival

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The User-Generated Content movement continues to grow. There’s an interesting event coming up at the Science Museum — TakeAway: DO it yourself media . Blurb reads:

More and more people are transforming themselves from media consumers to producers – using the new tools, software and technologies now at their disposal.

From the expanding realm of free and open source software (FLOSS), to peer-to-peer (P2P) distribution and ‘pervasive’ mobile and locative technologies, the possibilities exist as never before to create and disseminate our opinions and experiences through our own media.
TAKEAWAY, the Festival of do it yourself Media, will help you to understand what it’s all about and how to take part in the revolution.

Wrong number

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I’m grateful to the readers who have kindly drawn my attention to this item in the current issue of Private Eye.

Only three months into 2006, there is already a hot favourite for this year’s prize for the most spectacularly dud PR puff.

The April issue of GQ carries an “article” about the new Wembley stadium which reads more like a publicity brochure for the sports venue and its management company. Hack John Naughton can barely contain his awe and reveals that “the stadium architects employed astronomers to calculate the position of the sun on May afternoons to ensure that the pitch is not covered in shadow when the FA Cuo final is played. At 3pm on Cup Final day, only two southern corner flags will be in shadow”.

Not that anyone will notice. Just after the mag went to press, it was announced that the stadium wouldn’t be ready in time for the FA Cup Final, which will now take place in sunny Cardiff instead.

Er, not guilty, m’lud. It’s another chap with the same name. He specialises in covering what might loosely be termed popular culture. My academic colleagues never tire of showing me their (lovingly photocopied and distributed) copies of his review of Stag Night Videos! The only time our paths have crossed was when a Prosperous Sunday Newspaper sent me a large cheque made out to “John Naughton” for pieces I hadn’t written. (And, since you ask, I returned it.)