From BBC NEWS…
The BBC’s head of future media and technology Ashley Highfield is leaving to launch an on-demand video service for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.
Known as Project Kangaroo, the joint venture has been described as “Freeview for the internet” and plans to offer more than 10,000 hours of programmes…
Interesting post by Landon Fuller.
Meraki provides free wireless access throughout San Francisco, using the network name “Free The Net”. Trying out their service at a coffee shop in my neighborhood, I discovered that Meraki has adopted a location-aware advertising driven model, and are now injecting ads into every page you visit using their network. (Screen shot).
I was surprised that Meraki is adding advertising to my web site (where’s my cut?), but that’s just the beginning. Meraki is sharing your location with every site you visit.
To display their advertising, Meraki adds a small piece of JavaScript to every page:
Included in that URL is your current estimated longitude and latitude. In my case, that’s the street just outside of Cafe Reverie, where I was taking lunch — a fairly accurate reading.
This is a new twist on the cross site scripting problem — because Meraki’s script is injected directly into the site that I’m visiting, a simple piece of javascript, added by the web page’s author, can fish out your current location.
Thanks to Michael for spotting it.
One of the things that astonished me in 1999 when I was campaigning against the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill was the way it would grant sweeping powers of surveillance not just to genuine security authorities, but effectively to every jobsworth in the country. And lo! so it has proved. Here’s a fascinating Telegraph report on the latest abuse.
A council has used powers intended for anti-terrorism surveillance to spy on a family who were wrongly accused of lying on a school application form.
For two weeks the middle-class family was followed by council officials who wanted to establish whether they had given a false address within the catchment area of an oversubscribed school to secure a place for their three-year-old.
The “spies” made copious notes on the movements of the mother and her three children, who they referred to as “targets” as they were trailed on school runs. The snoopers even watched the family home at night to establish where they were sleeping.
In fact, the 39-year-old mother – who described the snooping as “a grotesque invasion of privacy” – had held lengthy discussions with the council, which assured her that her school application was totally in order.
Poole borough council disclosed that it had legitimately used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to spy on the family.
Ludicrously, the Council is correct. See here for a pdf of some of the snoopers’ logs.
This morning’s Observer column…
For some months, strange goings-on have been reported in branches of Toys ‘R’ Us. Shifty-looking middle-aged men and younger males wearing ponytails and Grateful Dead T-shirts have been observed leaving the premises with small cardboard boxes which they then gleefully tear open upon reaching the safety of their cars. Exclamations of ‘Yes! And ‘Yeehaw!!!’ have been heard by security guards, who are as puzzled by all this as their checkout colleagues.
‘I can’t figure it out,’ said one store manager, when quizzed by this columnist a few months ago. ‘The things are just walking out of the store. They sell out the minute we get a delivery.’
Martin Kettle thinks the unthinkable?
This much, though, is certain. Brown is not ready to give up, but nor is he confident he can win the public’s support back. For whatever reason, he lacks the certainty of his predecessor. Even when Blair was wrong, he was clear about where he was heading. But Brown lacks Blair’s confidence – and this is now corrosive. “The challenge is primarily psychological,” says a senior minister, “It’s about being confident.” “He simply doesn’t know what to do,” responds a senior backbencher. “There’s no sense of direction whatever. There’s nothing there.”
What can Brown do about this mood? Helpfully meant suggestions abound – be more radical, be more centrist, be yourself, be someone else, get a speechwriter, get a haircut – yet most of these miss the point. Guys of 57 don’t change much. The way people have behaved in the past, a wise minister observed this week, is still the best guide to the way they will behave in the future. A large amount of the wishful-thinking school of commentary on the Labour government’s predicament persistently overlooks this obvious point. There isn’t an Attlee or Roosevelt lurking inside the prime minister. There’s just the same old Gordon with the same old strengths and weaknesses…
Hmmm… Interesting report…
Calling the situation “untenable” and describing Windows as “collapsing,” a pair of Gartner analysts yesterday said Microsoft Corp. must make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been.
In a presentation at a Gartner-sponsored conference in Las Vegas, analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald said Microsoft has not responded to the market, is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and decisions, and faces serious competition on a whole host of fronts that will make Windows moot unless the software developer acts.
“For Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable,” said Silver and MacDonald in their prepared presentation, titled “Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve.”
Among Microsoft’s problems, the pair said, is Windows’ rapidly-expanding code base, which makes it virtually impossible to quickly craft a new version with meaningful changes. That was proved by Vista, they said, when Microsoft — frustrated by lack of progress during the five-year development effort on the new operating — hit the “reset” button and dropped back to the more stable code of Windows Server 2003 as the foundation of Vista.
“This is a large part of the reason [why] Windows Vista delivered primarily incremental improvements,” they said. In turn, that became one of the reasons why businesses pushed back Vista deployment plans. “Most users do not understand the benefits of Windows Vista or do not see Vista as being better enough than Windows XP to make incurring the cost and pain of migration worthwhile.”
You may recall that I was unable to view the celebrated Mosely ‘Nazi orgy’ video. Alexander Chancellor, the Guardian columnist and former editor of the Spectator was more persistent…
Having primly waited for permission from a high court judge, I have finally got on the internet and looked at a video of Max Mosley’s sado-masochistic sex games with a group of London prostitutes. I tried the News of the World’s website, but this was a bit of a disappointment because, while I could hear the formula one boss pleading for more punishment in a stage German accent, no pictures appeared on the screen at all.
I had more success on YouTube, which showed a woman with a rather posh English voice fiercely ordering the wretched man to “bend over, right over” before inflicting strokes of a cane on his naked bottom. The video was rather dark and hard to fathom, but it involved at least one woman dressed like a concentration camp inmate in black and white stripes as she waited for her turn to be beaten…
Perceptive column by Polly Toynbee
Why is Brown on the slide? Why has that 12% lead he earned in the early months evaporated? Those were Labour voters expecting something better, looking for the mission and vision lacking in Blairism, looking for the change, change, change that Brown promised. The mystery of this premiership deepens with every day, perplexing some who thought they knew Brown best. Now he refutes any suggestion he has changed any Blairite “reform” one iota.
Most dismayed are those who toiled for him for 10 long years, drinking midnight toasts to the king over the water, plotting and obstructing, singing the old Gordon-is-my-darling songs, and telling any of us who would listen that when the bonnie prince sails home, the egregious sins of opportunistic unprincipled Blairism would be expunged. But now the prince is here, his leadership is a pale shadow of what they promised. Inept generalship looks in danger of leading the Labour clans towards their Culloden – and they can see it coming.
Here is the puzzle. Those who know him know Gordon Brown to be a man of sincere beliefs with a profound concern for the poor at home and abroad. There is nothing showy or sham about him. But, alas, a good man doesn’t necessarily make a good prime minister. So was it right when the Blair camp malevolently tarred him as “psychologically flawed”? Well, who isn’t? There’s no reason to think him any crazier than others with the vaulting ambition to reach No 10. Blair was considerably madder and badder by the time he left office – what with war, Catholic conversion and shameless plunder from fat directorships.
Gordon Brown is certainly the cleverest prime minister in living memory – but then intellectuals rarely make good leaders. His bookishness may account for his worst failings. He has studied every aspect of every dilemma, met every global expert, perused every research paper, communed with every contrary opinion. He knows there is rarely one simple answer and the world is made of nuanced grey areas. But prime ministers have to make black and white choices every day. When he doesn’t, he increasingly ends up with the worst of all worlds, pleasing no one…
Looks like Flickr is thinking of taking on YouTube. If so, big mistake.
Walking down Trumpington Street after lunch today we came on this spectacle — an elaborate wedding taking place in Pembroke College. The bride arrived in an antique Rolls. The really interesting thing, though, was the amount of effort that went into recording every second of the event.
Note the expensive, fully-professional video camera. And the size of the still photographer’s bag.
We’re getting to the point where no moment of our lives goes unrecorded. I’m reminded of Heidegger’s crack about technology being “the art of arranging the world so that we don’t have to experience it”.
