Monthly Archives: September 2006

How to boost one’s sales

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From BBC NEWS…

A book by left-wing US author Noam Chomsky has reached a bestsellers’ list after Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez praised it at the UN last week.

A speech by Mr Chavez cited Chomsky’s 2003 critique of US policy, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, as an “excellent book”.

Mr Chavez also said US President George W Bush was the “devil” who had left the UN podium smelling of “sulphur”.

Chomsky’s book spent the weekend at the top of Amazon.com’s bestseller list…

Thanks to Gerard for the link.

The Net in 2020

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Hmmm… The folks at the Pew Internet surveys have done another one of their consultation exercises with various experts on the Future of the Internet. Main conclusions:

  • A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening” world.
  • Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and “smart agents” proliferate.
  • However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.
  • Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.
  • Tech “refuseniks” will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.
  • People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.
  • English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence….

    • Full results here.

    eBay Adword madness

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    I’m often intrigued by the idiocy of the eBay ads popped up by Google. This one comes from Gmail in an exchange between me and a colleague about a meeting at Cambridge. The Alumni ad is clearly relevant. The eBay one is daft.

    iPod users ‘shunning iTunes store’

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    Hmmm… BBC NEWS report…

    Despite the success of Apple iTunes, few people stock their iPod with tracks from the online store, reports a study.

    The Jupiter Research report says that, on average, only 20 of the tracks on an iPod will be from the iTunes shop.

    Far more important to iPod owners, said the study, was free music ripped from CDs someone already owned or acquired from file-sharing sites.

    The report’s authors claimed their findings had profound implications for the future of the online music market…

    How not to do it

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    I was thinking of registering to access the Irish Independent site, but decided to have a look at its Terms and Conditions first. They include this interesting clause:

    Hypertext links to this website by other users and websites are permitted provided that the link to this website is in a simple list of companies by pointing to Unison.ie’s home page http://www.unison.ie. This limited licence entitles other users and websites to link to Unison.ie’s home page only, and linking to other content on or information in this website is prohibited without Unison.ie’s express written consent.

    Translation: no deep linking to our content. The result is that the Irish Independent is effectively shutting itself out of the networked universe. What kinds of clowns would embrace such a daft strategy? If people can’t link to your content then effectively you disappear from cyberspace.

    Needless to say, I didn’t sign up.

    Anonymous browsing

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    Hacktivismo has just released Torpark, an anonymous, fully portable Web browser based on Mozilla Firefox. Torpark comes pre-configured, requires no installation, can run off a USB memory stick, and leaves no tracks behind in the browser or computer. Torpark is a highly modified variant of Portable Firefox, that uses the TOR (The Onion Router) network to anonymize the connection between the user and the website that is being visited.

    “We live in a time where acquisition technologies are cherry picking and collating every aspect of our online lives,” said Hacktivismo founder Oxblood Ruffin. “Torpark continues Hacktivismo’s commitment to expanding privacy rights on the Internet. And the best thing is, it’s free. No one should have to pay for basic human rights, especially the right of privacy.”

    Torpark is being released under the GNU General Public License and is dedicated to the Panchen Lama…

    And — right on cue — the United Arab Emirates has barred the Torpack download site!

    Kildare diary

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    Rob Hodgetts, writing in the BBC’s Ryder Cup Blog…

    K CLUB – Absorbing, illuminating, tense, amusing. And a massive privilege. Not many Saturday mornings come close to leaning against a tree just yards from the action as four Ryder Cup matches unfold in front of you.

    The tree in question, an oak, stands behind the par-three 8th hole in one of the most picturesque corners of the K Cub beside the River Liffey.

    It’s 0930, the grandstand is full and an expectant crowd stands patiently in broken sunshine waiting for the fourballs.

    Cheers and groans ring out from somewhere on the course, getting louder as the first group edges nearer.

    Photographers prowl, snapping the masses, and a tournament official practises his golf swing with an umbrella. The crowd lets out a huge cheer, and he gives them a proud fist-pump.

    But they are responding to the scoreboard, which has changed to show Darren Clarke and Lee Westwood going 1 up back at the 4th. And the official sheepishly tries to disguise his gesture as a scratch of the head.

    A couple of fish leap in the river. Someone in the crowd collapses, prompting a call for medics. “He must be American and just saw the score,” says an NBC cameraman…

    Spooks conclude that Iraq War worsens terror threat

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    Surprise, surprise! The New York Times reports that

    A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

    The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

    The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

    An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

    The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official…

    Happy birthday, hard disk drive – and my, how you’ve grown

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    This morning’s Observer column…

    …No matter how one views the impact of hard drive technology, one thing is unarguable: it’s been given a raw deal by history. The story of computing has hitherto been told almost entirely in terms of advances in processors and networks. But the truth is that nothing that we take for granted today would be possible without the vast, fast, cheap mass storage provided by hard disks.

    Not surprisingly, the Cinderella status accorded to their achievements infuriates the industry’s leaders, who feel they don’t get the respect they deserve.’Instead of Silicon Valley, they should call it Ferrous Oxide Valley,’ Mark Kryder, chief technical officer of hard disk manufacturer Seagate, complained last month. (Ferrous oxide is what provides the magnetic coating on a hard disk.) ‘It wasn’t the microprocessor that enabled the personal video recorder – it was storage.’

    He’s right. But nobody in the computer industry will thank him for saying it. Which only goes to show that if you want gratitude in this life, buy a dog…