Daily Archives: February 14, 2008

Why are governments so bad at IT?

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The Economist has an interesting survey section on this.

Why is government unable to reap the same benefits as business, which uses technology to lower costs, please customers and raise profits? The three main reasons are lack of competitive pressure, a tendency to reinvent the wheel and a focus on technology rather than organisation.

Governments have few direct rivals. Amazon.com must outdo other online booksellers to win readers’ money. Google must beat Yahoo!. Unless every inch of such companies’ websites offers stellar clarity and convenience, customers go elsewhere. But if your country’s tax-collection online offering is slow, clunky or just plain dull, then tough. When Britain’s Inland Revenue website crashed on January 31st—the busiest day of its year—the authorities grudgingly gave taxpayers one day’s grace before imposing penalties. They did not offer the chance to pay tax in Sweden instead…

Internet 2 reinvents phone network

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From Technology Review

Internet2, a nonprofit advanced networking consortium in the United States, is designing a new network intended to open up large amounts of dedicated bandwidth as needed. For example, a researcher wanting to test telesurgery technologies–for which a smooth, reliable Internet connection is essential–might use the network to temporarily create a dedicated path for the experiment. Called the dynamic circuit network, its immediate applications are academic, but its underlying technologies could one day filter into the commercial Internet, and it could be used, for example, to carry high-definition video to consumers…

This might be interesting as an academic experiment, but it’s nonsense on stilts in the context of the commercial internet. You cam imagine Hollywood and the multimedia companies slavering at the prospect of ‘premium’ Internet service “with a direct connection from our studios to your home”.

Google hijacks Error 404

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Google has released a new version of its browser toolbar designed to hijack 404 error pages. It was spotted by a blog known as Seoker.com.

As Google put it, when you use its new toolbar, “You’ll get suggestions instead of error pages: If you mistype a URL or a page is down, now the Toolbar will give you that familiar ‘Did you mean’ with alternatives, like when you do a Google search.”

In other words, if you key in a web address and the server you’re visiting can’t find that address, the toolbar will, in many cases, ignore the 404 error page returned by the server, displaying one supplied by Google instead. This Googlicious error page will give you alternative urls, but it also includes a Googlicious logo and a Googlicious search box.

Plus, as Seoker.com points out, the search box is pre-packed with words from the url you keyed in. So Google has yet another means of tracking your behavior.

Of course, Google doesn’t see the irony here. With his own blog post, Google search guru Matt Cutts said that if toolbar users and webmasters don’t like this, they can do something about it.

The only problem is that webmasters generally won’t know anything about it because they won’t know it’s happening.

From The Register.

Untruth of the day

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“For years, ISPs have built a business on other people’s music. “

Geoff Taylor, Chief Executive of the quaintly-named British Phonographic Industry, commenting on reports that the government proposes to legislate to force ISPs to monitor content flowing through their servers.

Brown & Co swallow copyright thugs’ line

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From Times Online…

People who illegally download films and music will be cut off from the internet under new legislative proposals to be unveiled next week.

Internet service providers (ISPs) will be legally required to take action against users who access pirated material, The Times has learnt…

If you wanted a case study in the naivete of British politicians, then this is it. One expected nothing more of the Brown government (which still thinks that Microsoft is cutting edge), but the Cameroonians seem to have bought the RIAA line too. At any rate, here’s what the Times report says.

Ed Vaizey, the Shadow Arts Minister, said: “David Cameron called on the internet providers to address this issue last summer. The credibility of the Government’s latest threat is undermined by the fact that ministers have spent so many years dithering on whether to legislate.”