Daily Archives: May 21, 2006

Quote of the day

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Hanks seems constantly perturbed, behaving as if Forrest Gump had been cast as Sherlock Holmes.

Philip French, magisterially reviewing the Da Vinci Code movie. It’s a lovely piece, marred only by the use of “millenniums” as the plural of millennium. (Tut, tut.) Also contains a useful summary of the plot:

After working out the clues with the speed of a stockbroker doing the Telegraph crossword on the 8.15 from Tunbridge Wells, they go on the run together. Over the next two days, they brief each other on matters of cryptology, the Holy Grail, the birth of Christianity, Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion, while escaping from the British and French cops and various would-be assassins with the ease and ingenuity of Harry Houdini. The cryptographers are constantly creeping into crypts, talking crap and copping out as clues lead to bizarre discoveries and encounters in churches in France, Scotland and England, including Westminster Abbey.

AdSense nonsense

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Just noticed (Sunday 21 May, 10:30am) that Google has started placing occasional Flash ads on this page, rather than the text ads I signed up for when I embarked on the experiment. That’s naughty, because I detest Flash ads, and I wouldn’t knowingly inflict them on my readers.

The whole experiment has been instructive. First of all, it’s clear that the contents of this Blog poses real difficulty for the Google AdSense system, because it has always struggled to find ads that are even vaguely relevant to the content. Every time I wrote about the iniquities of the copyright thugs, for example, or my support for Open Source, the system would place ads for law firms offering to “help protect your intellectual property”!

And as for my ‘earnings’, that’s been interesting too. As of today, my total take (which I haven’t claimed yet) is $24.59!

Clearly, I’m not cut out for business.

Another success story in Iraq

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From this morning’s New York Times…

Three years later, the [Iraqi] police are a battered and dysfunctional force that has helped bring Iraq to the brink of civil war. Police units stand accused of operating death squads for powerful political groups or simple profit. Citizens, deeply distrustful of the force, are setting up their own neighborhood security squads. Killings of police officers are rampant, with at least 547 slain this year, roughly as many as Iraqi and American soldiers combined, records show.

The police, initially envisioned by the Bush administration as a cornerstone in a new democracy, have instead become part of Iraq’s grim constellation of shadowy commandos, ruthless political militias and other armed groups. Iraq’s new prime minister and senior American officials now say the country’s future — and the ability of America to withdraw its troops — rests in large measure on whether the police can be reformed and rogue groups reined in…

Whirlygigs

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If you find someone whirling his/her new Apple laptop around and are wondering why, look no further.

Thanks to Bill Thompson, whose laptop is too ancient to be serviceable in this way. Thankfully, so is mine!

En passant… I overheard a conversation recently in which people were talking about the government’s policy on so-called “Faith-based” schools. One mother said ruefully that her little darling had declared that the only faith-based establishment he was willing to attend was a Jedi school.

Later… Quentin (who has one of the fancy new MacBookPro machines) writes:

I can confirm that this works as advertised, and should be a source of concern to any companies who insure laptops :-)

Reminds me of a sign I saw once in a US petrol station….

Duct tape is like the Force
It has a light side, and a dark side
And it binds the universe together.

Targeting insanity

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Wonderful column by Simon Caulkin on why the New Labour regime’s obsession with ‘targets’ is nuts. Excerpt:

Because they are products of one world view applied to another – reductive mechanical measures applied to non-mechanical systems – targets have unpredictable and quickly ramifying consequences. To cut waiting lists hospitals do easier, rather than more urgent, operations; to meet exam pass rates schools exclude difficult students or encourage them into easier subjects; and to hit City earnings targets companies overstate profits or cut advertising or R&D budgets. Enron was the most target-driven company on earth, and to meet its targets it tore itself apart. The reply to ministers’ repeated refrain that ‘the private sector has targets’ is: look at Enron…

Trolling for business

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This morning’s Observer column…

Question: Six months ago you set up a technology company in your garage. You’ve got your first round of serious funding and can hire people. Which of the following do you employ first? A software engineer? An office manager? A book-keeper? A salesman?

Answer: none of the above. What you may need most of all is a patent lawyer. Otherwise in two years’ time – just when you’ve had the first really big order for 200,000 units of your new gizmo – you may find yourself opening an unpleasantly worded letter from a company based in Virginia or Delaware claiming that the aforementioned gizmo infringes one of their patents and threatening legal action unless you pay them whopping royalties. You have no idea whether this claim would be upheld by a court. But it will cost at least $100,000 in legal fees to find out, and even the hint of litigation will scare off the venture capitalists you desperately need to provide the second round of funding needed to fulfil that first big order.

Welcome to the world of high technology…

Amazonian tricks?

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According to John Sutherland,

The American economist R Preston McAfee, for example, suggests that hip book buyers should “try logging into Amazon with your own identity and asking for a price on something. Then clear your cookies (so Amazon cannot access your personal information and purchasing history) and search again anonymously for the same item. Sometimes you will be quoted a different price, because when Amazon looks at your past spending pattern, and sees that you have not always gone for the lowest price, they will treat you as a poor searcher – a more inelastic customer – and make you a less attractive price offer.”

Hmmm…. Wonder if this is true or just another urban legend. At least it’s an empirical question. Must have a go…

The prolific Professor Sutherland, incidentally, resembles the Chicago meat-processing industry — which, famously, “used every part of the hog except the grunt” — in that he allows nothing to go to waste and extracts maximum value from every snippet he finds. Thus, the McAfee quotation is used again in Sutherland’s entertaining ‘Diary’ piece in the current issue of the London Review of Books.

Amazon’s 1-click patent under review

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Intriguing news, this: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office plans to review Amazon.com’s overly broad and decidedly unoriginal 1-Click business method patent after a New Zealand actor successful raised a “substantial new question” of patentability. Irked about a slow book delivery, actor Peter Calveley went digging in the USPTO archives and uncovered a patent describing a “single action” to be used in ordering an item, a method very similar to Amazon’s 1-Click. That patent, written up by a company called DigiCash, was filed in 1996 — years before Amazon was awarded the patent that would inspire its infamous infringement suit against rival bookseller Barnes & Noble.com…

Calvely posted news of this potential prior art to his blog and sparked enough interest that he was able to raise the USPTO’s $2,520 re-examination fee. And now the USPTO has decided to follow through. Watch this space.