Monthly Archives: April 2008

Airy reflections

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From David Pogue’s latest column in the NYT…

After having used Apple’s loaner review unit for a couple of weeks, I reached over to pick up my existing Mac laptop, the five-pound MacBook. After the Air, it felt like a piece of Soviet Army field equipment. When I tried to pick it up one-handed, I thought I’d break my wrist.

So that’s it: I bought an Air for myself.

When I was getting it loaded with my programs and files, I deeply mourned the lack of high-speed file-transfer options like FireWire. A couple of times, I was seriously grateful for the optional Ethernet USB dongle — in hotels with wired Internet but no wireless, for example. And I’ll repeat my advice from the original review: this machine doesn’t make a great primary computer, thanks to its smallish hard drive.

Otherwise, though, I’ve lived and flown with this machine for a month, presented nine talks on it, and have not missed its missing features one iota. It’s plenty fast and capacious as a second machine.

Meanwhile, when your laptop has the thickness and feel of a legal pad and starts up with the speed of a PalmPilot, it ceases to be a traditional laptop. It becomes something you whip open and shut for quick lookups, something you check while you’re standing in line or at the airline counter, something you can use in places where hauling open a regular laptop (and waiting for it) would just be too much hassle.

Yep. My experience too.

On this day…

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… in 1948, President Truman signed the Marshall Plan, which allocated more than $5 billion in aid for 16 European countries. [That’s upwards of $100 billion in today’s money.] It was an extraordinary act of enlightened self-interest which enabled a democratic, pluralist Europe to arise from the chaos and destruction of 1945. Nobody who was in Germany in 1945 could envisage that a prosperous liberal democracy could be built on such shattered foundations. And yet it was.

And the deliberations within the Truman government (especially the State Department) which led to the Plan provide an instructive comparison with the gibberings of the fanatical ‘war lite’ neo-cons who planned and executed the fiasco in Iraq. Marshall, Acheson, Kennan & Co were serious people.

And to think that — according to the Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz — Iraq has already cost upwards of three trillion dollars. Ye Gods!

Bertie quits

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Well, well. Bertie Ahern, the well-known sterling magnet, has decided to step down. His statement says (after an interminable prologue about his magnificent achievements) that

It is a matter of real concern to me that the important work of government and party is now being over shadowed by issues relating to me at the Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters and Payments. The constant barrage of commentary on Tribunal related matters has and I believe will continue to dominate the political agenda at an important point for our country.

We face uncertain economic times and challenges and we are soon to cast our vote on the Lisbon Treaty. The vital interests of Ireland demand that the national dialogue of our political system address these fundamental issues and not be constantly deflected by the minutiae of my life, my lifestyle, and my finances.

The decision I am announcing today — like all other decisions that I have taken in a lifetime in politics – is solely motivated by what is best for the people.

He goes on to say that he has “no doubt that a simplistic analysis will suggest that my decision has been influenced by most recent events at the Tribunal”.

Simplistic, my eye. Last Saturday’s Irish Times had a scarifying analysis of all the money that has cascaded into his many bank accounts over the years.

So that’s one down. Now for Robert Mugabe…

So did BT break the law?

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From The Register…

BT secretly intercepted and profiled the web browsing of 18,000 of its broadband customers in 2006 using advertising technology provided by 121Media, the alleged spyware company that changed its name to Phorm last year.

BT Retail ran the “stealth” pilot without customer consent between 23 September and 6 October 2006. The technology was approved, pending a further trial*.

Documents seen by The Register show that the companies used the secret profiles to target advertising at broadband customers when they visited certain popular websites.

Phorm had purchased commercial space on these websites, although their URLs are not included in the documents. The groups targeted included people interested in finance (for an Egg credit card campaign), weight loss (a Weight Watchers campaign), and jobs (a Monster.com campaign).

The technical report drawn up by BT in the wake of the 2006 trial states: “The validation was made within BT’s live broadband environment and involved a user base of approximately 18,000 customers, with a maximum of 10,000 online concurrently.

“The customers who participated in the trial were not made aware of this fact as one of the aims of the validation was not to affect their experience.”

The cant implicit in that last sentence is breathtaking. But the more important question is whether BT has committed a criminal offence. Effectively all 18,000 test subjects were ‘opted-in’ without their knowledge.

BT has not answered The Register’s question, posed on Friday morning, over whether it believes intercepting and profiling the web traffic of 18,000 customers without telling them was a lawful act.

BT also refused to reveal where in the national broadband network the thousands of guinea pigs were sourced from.

One senior source in the broadband industry we spoke to was appalled by BT’s actions. “This is extremely serious,” he said. “Data protection errors are generally viewed as a potentially bad thing by the industry, but not a real threat to an ISP’s reputation. This seems like a breach of criminal law, which is much, much worse.”

Meanwhile, Don Foster, the Liberal Democrat shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport, has written to the chairman of BT asking him to explain his firm’s secret trial of Phorm’s advertising technology last summer. And William Hague, the Conservative’s shadow foreign secretary, has written to the Department for Business, Employment and Regulatory Reform, voicing constituents’ opposition to the deals signed by BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse to spy on the web browsing of millions. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

If you’re thinking of signing up to a new ISP, you know which ones to avoid.

Thirty years on

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Thirty years ago today, at 7.15am, my father died.

This is a photograph of him as a young man — around the age when (as I recounted in my book) he was teaching other people Morse and dreaming about becoming a radio ‘Ham’. The photograph was in my mother’s possessions when she died in 1989. My youngest sister, Margaret, discovered it and sent it on to me. It was the first time I’d ever seen the picture, and it moved me beyond words because of the way it captures the essence of his optimistic, phlegmatic spirit.

How are the mighty fallen — sometimes

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It’s not often that Quentin falls for hoaxes, but the USB pregnancy testing kit caught him fair and square!

The other neat April Fool’s caper was Gmail’s new feature which enables you to send email into the past.

How do I use it?

Just click “Set custom time” from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient’s inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.

Is there a limit to how far back I can send email?

Yes. You’ll only be able to send email back until April 1, 2004, the day we launched Gmail. If we were to let you send an email from Gmail before Gmail existed, well, that would be like hanging out with your parents before you were born — crazy talk.