Boring, boring

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Dave Barry wrote a nice column about why and how people are boring. Sample:

Speaking of sports, a big problem is that men and women often do not agree on what is boring. Men can devote an entire working week to discussing a single pass-interference penalty; women find this boring, yet can be fascinated by a four-hour movie with subtitles wherein the entire plot consists of a man and a woman yearning to have, but never actually having, a relationship. Men HATE that. Men can take maybe 45 seconds of yearning, and then they want everybody to get naked. Followed by a car chase. A movie called Naked People in Car Chases would do really well among men. I have quite a few more points to make, but I’m sick of this topic.

Phew!

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According to BBC News Online, Tory leader Dave Cameron has returned from his fact-finding mission to the Arctic determined to tackle the problem of CO2 emissions from cars.

The Conservative leader said he wants emissions cut from 170 grammes per kilometre now to 100g for new cars by 2022 and all cars by 2030.

He has swapped his Vauxhall Omega for a Lexus with a hybrid engine (emissions 184g per KM). Critics say he could have got a cleaner Toyota Prius (104g).

He hit back claiming a Prius could only fit four people in it and in his job he often needed more space than that but he said by getting rid of his government-provided car, the Omega, he had got rid of a “real gas guzzler”.

I’m indebted to Bill Thompson for pointing out (in an email this morning) the narrowness of my escape from ridicule. I might have had the ultimate embarrassment of driving the same car as Dave “Vote Blue to Get Green” Cameron! But I expect I will now have to put up with jibes along the lines of “Oh, I see you’re a Tory voter” when people see me getting out of our Prius. Sigh.

Update: They’re all at it! The LibDem leader, ‘Sir’ Mingus Campbell, is getting rid of his Jaguar.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell says he has given up his beloved Jaguar car to highlight his commitment to the environment.

Sir Menzies says he is “tear-stained” to admit that the 20-year-old vehicle is up for sale and being housed in a barn on a farm in East Lothian.

Bet he doesn’t opt for a Prius.

Express mail

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A colleague of mine is in Australia at the moment. This morning he emailed me with a technical query. The message came through to my BlackBerry, so I replied straight away. Back came this message:

Gosh. Allowing for the time difference, your reply came nine hours before I sent the question!

Well, you know what they say. “The impossible we do today. Miracles take a little longer.”

Gates mobbed in visit to Vietnam

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Hilarious report on BBC Online. Interesting (and significant) sting in the tail:

Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and President Tran Duc Luong had earlier taken time away from the ruling Communist Party National Congress, the most important event on the political calendar, to meet Mr Gates.

Under an agreement signed Saturday, Vietnam’s Finance Ministry became the country’s first government office to use completely licensed Microsoft software.

A statement said the agreement “reaffirms the government’s commitment in copyright protection as the country integrates into the international community”, Reuters reports.

This is significant because it shows that Microsoft is making headway in stopping people pirating its software in the Far East. So the moment when that part of the world begins to realise the true costs of running proprietary software comes nearer. And I think that is good news for those of us who are working to provide a cheaper, more affordable and sustainable alternative.

Assertiveness

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From my fellow Observer columnist, Armando Ianucci this morning…

I have an office at the BBC and so have access to lots of stuff the Beeb would be embarrassed to have leaked (for example, Nicholas Witchell has webbed feet). But, now the BBC mole is out the bag, I can’t resist letting you in on an email I saw recently. It was a round robin saying that there were only a couple of places left on an internal assertiveness training course and if any member of staff was still interested, they ought to put their name forward pretty quickly. Someone replied, not realising the email would go to everyone’s desktop. His reply, I kid you not, was: ‘I would like to put my name forward for a place on the assertiveness training course, but I need to ask my deputy manager first.’…

The Gates – Hu tapes

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This morning’s Observer column…

When President Hu Jintao of China arrived in the US last Wednesday, his first appointment was dinner with Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft, at Gates’s mansion (aka San Simeon North) on the shores of Lake Washington. They dined on smoked guinea fowl, which had been shot at by the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney. (He missed, and hit one of his friends instead; the guinea fowl was later killed by humane means.) The pair were joined by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, the Chinese ambassador to the US, a number of the President’s aides and the deputy assistant head of protocol at the White House. Owing to an unpatched security hole in Gates’s Windows-powered home-monitoring system, the meeting of the two Great Leaders was bugged and a transcript of their conversation has been obtained by The Observer …

Gates: You Hu?

Hu: I am the President of China.

Gates: Cool. I’m the Chairman of Microsoft. (Hu bows.)

Hu: Because you, Mr Bill Gates, are a friend of China, I am a friend of Microsoft.

Gates: Wow! That’s really cool. We’re very interested in China, you know. Big market. Smart people.

Hu: We are pleased that many great US companies are coming to China – for example Google.

Ballmer: (Heatedly) Those sons of bitches. They stole one of our top Chinese execs …

Gates: Cool it, Steve. Hu doesn’t know about that.

Hu: We also have Yahoo in China. They are very co-operative in rooting out undesirable elements.

Ballmer: (Mutters.) Maybe they could help root out Google …

Ask Jeeves boss recruited by Microsoft

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According to today’s New York Times,

Microsoft has hired Steven Berkowitz, the chief executive of Ask Jeeves, to run its floundering Internet division, Microsoft said yesterday.

Mr. Berkowitz became president of Ask Jeeves in 2001 and chief executive in 2003. He helped transform the service, which was introduced to answer questions posed in English phrases, into a search engine to compete with Google. Mr. Berkowitz continued to run the company after it was acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp last July.

Microsoft has been struggling to redefine its online strategy and build an advertising-based business to confront competition from Google, Yahoo and others. The company’s MSN service, which dates from 1994, has gone through a series of sharp strategy shifts as Microsoft has wrestled with whether it is a media company as well as a software vendor.

Most recently, the company decided to revive its effort to build advertising-based businesses as it sees Google give away free software, supported by advertising.

Despite a large investment to develop and promote its new search engine, Microsoft’s share of the search market in the United States has plummeted. In March, it had 13 percent of the search market, down from 16 percent a year earlier, according to comScore Networks. Ask Jeeves held its share constant at 6 percent over the same period.

Digg.com: in a hole?

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Digg.com has had a lot of adulatory coverage in the last few months, with people hailing it as the New Slashdot. Only it was supposed to be better because Slashdot has a group of editors who wield arbitrary power — in that they decide what gets featured and what doesn’t. Digg.com, in contrast, supposedly operated on a totally impartial principle — the position of an individual posting was determined solely by the votes (diggs) of readers.

So far, so interesting. But then an observant chap at ForeverGeek noticed some funny business which suggested that Digg’s editors were apparently moving postings up the list. He posted news of this discovery on his Blog, only to discover shortly afterwards that the blog was now barred from Digg.com.

Curiouser and curiouser. Here’s his account of the whole murky business.

As usual, power corrupts.

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Even right-wingers hate the DMCA

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The ultra-conservative Washington think-tank, the Cato Institute, has come out with an astonishingly perceptive critique of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Here’s an excerpt from the summary:

The result has been a legal regime that reduces options and competition in how consumers enjoy media and entertainment. Today, the copyright industry is exerting increasing control over playback devices, cable media offerings, and even Internet streaming. Some firms have used the DMCA to thwart competition by preventing research and reverse engineering. Others have brought the weight of criminal sanctions to bear against critics, competitors, and researchers.

The DMCA is anti-competitive. It gives copyright holders—and the technology companies that distribute their content—the legal power to create closed technology platforms and exclude competitors from interoperating with them. Worst of all, DRM technologies are clumsy and ineffective; they inconvenience legitimate users but do little to stop pirates…

Wow! Full report here. (pdf)

Thanks to Owen Barder for the link.