Carr on Google

Posted on by

Nicholas Carr is a very perceptive Blogger. He’s just posted posted two intriguing pieces about the Google AdSense program. The first explores the fine print of the AdSense contracts (which basically threatens dire legal retribution if a blog “reflects poorly on Google or otherwise disparages or devalues Google’s reputation or goodwill”).

Hmmm…, quite a few of mine could be said to be critical of Google.

The second of Carr’s posts examines the huge amount of free capital Google stacks up as a result of its rule that AdSense bloggers don’t get paid until their fees add up to more than $100.

Jane Jacobs…

Posted on by

… has died at the age of 89. Her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities changed the way most of us think about urban life. Not many people have that kind of long-term impact. Nice overview of her thinking here.

Da Vinci Code judgment decoded

Posted on by

From The Register …

Disappointingly, the hidden message inserted by a High Court judge into his ruling on the Da Vinci Code copyright trial has already been solved. Mr Justice Peter Smith’s code, reported yesterday, has been cracked by a London lawyer.

It reads:

Jackie Fisher, who are you? Dreadnought

Rather than a clue to the lizard conspiracy that probably permeates every level of the judiciary, Smith’s message actually promotes his personal hero from British naval history, a long standing hobby interest.

John Arbuthnot “Jackie” Fisher sailed the seven seas in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. He’s considered a forgotten hero of naval history and is the Judge’s pet admiral. Fisher was a big reformer and chairman of the committee that commissioned the groundbreaking battleship Dreadnought.

Smith used the Fibonacci Sequence, which appears in The Da Vinci Code to encrypt the historical nugget. Under the Fibonacci Sequence each number is the sum of the previous two numbers thus:

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…

Some arithmetic gymnastics based in the sequence was used to rearrange the italicised letters in Smith’s judgment to decrypt them.

Going phishing

Posted on by

This arrived in my email. Apart from the fact that I don’t bank with HSBC, you only have to hover over the URL to know it’s a scam.

(The actual URL is:
http://69.6.186.47//images/.www-hsbc.co-uk.uk-co=HSBC.personal-1-2/www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/personal/pib-home/).

WhoIs indicates that 69.6.186.47 is an ISP based in Amarillo, Texas.

Why do people fall for this stuff? (They wouldn’t if they took our course.)

What knowledge workers need

Posted on by

Very thoughtful essay on the software tools people need to escape the ‘data smog’ that envelops most/many modern organisations. The nub is that:

Today, many knowledge workers feel overloaded because they are forced to react to a constant stream of email, phone calls and instant messages. Email, the phone and instant messaging have one thing in common – they are all push work flows. In other words, they interrupt what you are doing. Theoretically, people can ignore all three, but generally, socially, it is difficult to get away with ignoring all three when you are at the office.

That sums up my own experience. Institutional email has become dysfunctional. In my university department, for example, a conscientious person who read, reflected on, and replied to every email addressed to him or her could easily spend the entire working day doing email rather than reading, thinking, teaching or researching. This is nuts. And my personal strategy for coping — which is to ignore most of the email flow — is unfair to my more conscientious colleagues, who sometimes really do need me to pay attention to something they’ve sent. In other words, the strategy works — for me — but is anti-social.

We have to find or develop IT tools that help rather than swamp us. The key idea — encompassed in the quote above — is to step back from push technology and use pull technology which brings stuff we need or regard as important to our attention. The RSS feed is a metaphor for what I have in mind. I need to spend some time thinking about all this (which means that even more departmental emails will go unread).

Resignation logic

Posted on by

I’m quietly pondering the intrinsic logic of Home Secretary Charles Clarke’s position. He admits that there has been a gigantic cock-up on his watch, one that has put the public in danger. The honourable thing for a Home Secretary to do in those circumstances is resign. But rather than resign, it’s vital — Clarke says — that he stays on to ensure that the problem is fixed.

So… to ensure job security, you arrange a screw-up so that you can stay on to fix it.

Hmmm…. shome confushion here (as Bill Deedes might say) between being part of the problem and part of the solution.

Actually, I rather like Clarke. I met him first when he was Neil Kinnock’s Chief of Staff, and admired the stoical way he carried out that thankless task. I later locked horns with him over the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), which he piloted skilfully through Parliament. He was a formidable opponent.

He was an excellent Secretary of State for Education. But as Home Secretary he’s scary — seems to have bought into Blair’s authoritarian agenda. It is said that Clarke and Gordon Brown loathe one another, so his future under a Brown premiership would have been decidedly dodgy — so much so that I had a hunch that he might have run against Brown for the leadership. Can’t see that happening now, somehow.

Mad car disease

Posted on by

In the old days, chaps used to boast about the size of their engines, bhp at peak torque and other arcane measures of the relative potency of their vehicles. But Dave ‘Green Boy’ Cameron has really started something with his guff about hybrid cars. Now, the Editor of the Guardian is getting in on the act with a piece saying that his electric car is even greener than Dave’s hybrid Lexus — so yah, boo sucks to Cameron. Where will it end?