St Edward’s Passage, Cambridge, photographed by Brian at the weekend.
Rent a mug
Here’s a story from today’s Irish Times which restores one’s faith in human nature. Or human nature as viewed by H.L. Mencken anyway…
Prospective tenants arrived at an apartment in the Sweepstakes in Ballsbridge [a high-status residential area on the south side of Dublin] on Tuesday, Wednesday and yesterday with keys to the two-bedroomed apartment they had been given by a man who claimed to be the landlord. They discovered that the keys did not fit.
The tenants had responded to an advert on popular accommodation website Daft.ie offering the apartment for a rent of €1,150 a month. A man calling himself Alan Grogan invited them to view the fully furnished apartment on Good Friday.
A large number of people attended the open viewing. Those who were interested were told to contact Mr Grogan on his mobile phone.
He offered each prospective tenant the apartment and arranged to meet each of them at a different location. He asked for a cash deposit of €1,150 plus a month’s rent in advance. He provided each tenant with a set of keys, a lease agreement, which he signed, and a receipt for the money paid out.
It is understood that some 15 couples arrived over three days to move into the accommodation.
Er, daft, isn’t it?
Quote of the day
From a Technology Review interview with David Allen, author of Getting Things Done…
Technology Review: Computers and the Internet let us do more things, but can they really help us get more things done? How does technology fit into a good time-management system?
David Allen: First of all, you don’t manage time. Time is time, and it can’t be managed. What you manage are commitments. The calendar will let you manage, at a maximum, three or four percent of what you have to do. What you really need is a way to keep track of your commitments. Then you start to get a sense of the huge volume of commitments you’ve made, and you are able to review those commitments.
Which reminds me… I bought a copy of Getting Things Done a while back, but I’ve been too busy to get around to reading it yet.
Iran: war by October?
Paul Rogers, writing in OpenDemocracy.net says:
The US political leadership, especially in the form of the office of the vice-president, may consider that a concerted US military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities is likely to be highly effective in the short term (in a similar way to the termination of the Saddam Hussein regime, with George W Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech following three weeks later).
Iran certainly does have a wide variety of opportunities to retaliate – in Iraq, the Gulf and Afghanistan for a start – but these would take weeks and months, rather than days, to develop. It follows that the most likely period for US military action would be in late October, just before the mid-term elections. The scenario would be of US attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, declarations of success, plenty of TV footage of destroyed nuclear plant, and a “mission accomplished” speech -all in the space of a week or so, culminating in the elections. It is, in (Republican) political terms, a seductive prospect.
The prospect of war with Iran happening at the moment when it is least expected cannot be discounted. Yet if any rational calculation can be made about the likely trigger-point for a major conflict between the United States and Iran, late October 2006 is the prime candidate. It also follows that if such a conflict can be avoided throughout 2006 and the early part of 2007, there is more chance of sanity prevailing and more positive relations developing between Washington and Tehran. For the present, however, that is the less probable outcome.
The decision to put Karl Rove in charge of the Republicans’ mid-term election campaign seems to me to make war more rather than less likely. That guy would do anything to gain a short-term electoral advantage.
Timelessness
My colleagues and I were working today on revising one of our most successful courses. It’s amazing how quickly stuff begins to look dated, especially if it relates to the Web. Afterwards, I mused about how satisfying it would be to write something that didn’t date, and we fell to wondering what works would pass that test. One of my colleagues had just been to see the centenary production of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at the Barbican, and said that it struck him as being just as powerful now as it was when it was first performed. So perhaps that is the test of great art — that it never dates.
The only thing I cannot resist…
… is temptation (said Oscar Wilde).
Which is why it is most inconsiderate of Nikon to release this just now.
iTunes To Sell You Your Home Videos For $1.99 Each
Apple’s latest wheeze: iTunes To Sell You Your Home Videos For $1.99 Each. Nice satirical piece in The Onion.
CUPERTINO, CA—Apple Computer, producer of the successful iPod MP3 player, is now offering consumers limited rights to buy their own home movies from the media store iTunes for $1.99 each.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the future of home-video viewing is now,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said at a media event Tuesday morning. “As soon as you record that precious footage of your daughter’s first steps, you’ll be able to buy it right back from iTunes and download it directly to your computer and video iPod.”
Jobs emphasized that the videos will be presented unedited and in their original form, save for a small Apple logo in the lower right-hand corner of the image to protect the company’s copyrighted materials from Internet piracy.
Added Jobs: “No more searching through your movies folder for that footage of your 50th wedding anniversary. Now all you need is a 768Kbps broadband connection and your credit card, and every timeless personal memory you’ve ever shot will be right at your fingertips.”
“Apple has always been about access,” said MacAddict editor Ian Smythe. “Thanks to this revolutionary new software, all your clips—from your son’s bris to your father’s dying message—are available to you, your loved ones, and the 20 million iTunes users, who will be able to view them on up to five different computers.”
Thanks to Pete for the link.
Guess who came to dinner.
Well, well. Who was the first guy the Chinese president went to see when he touched down in the US today? George Bush? No way. Hu dropped in on Bill Gates at his lakeside mansion (aka San Simeon North) in Seattle. Here’s an excerpt from the Bloomberg report:
April 19 — Chinese President Hu Jintao pronounced himself “a friend” of Microsoft Corp. as he toured the largest software maker’s headquarters and dined on smoked guinea fowl at Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’ lakeside home. “Because you, Mr. Bill Gates, are a friend of China, I’m a friend of Microsoft,” Hu told Gates yesterday during a demonstration of new software at the company’s Redmond, Washington headquarters. “Also, I am dealing with the operating system produced by Microsoft every day,” he added, drawing laughter from Chinese officials.
Wonder what’s the Chinese for “Fatal Error”.
Philips files for patent to stop people skipping ads
More insanity. According to Ars Technica, the troubled electronics giant Philips has filed a patent application for a device which prevents a user from changing the channel during commercials.
It’s a given that the TV networks need to somehow generate revenue in order to produce content. With commercials becoming less lucrative, TV has borrowed a dirty page from the movie industry and begun engaging in product placement within the programs themselves.
As a result, in the past few years, we’ve seen sitcom plots involving competition for a role in an Herbal Essences TV ad, various characters discussing how much they enjoyed “Memoirs of a Geisha,” and a wife waxing philosophical about a Wal-Mart perfume as her husband lays dying a few feet away. Enter Philips, a company prepared to put its foot down on that sort of artistic compromise.
The device Philips envisions would scan any broadcast or recording for digital signals labeled as commercial content. Just as many new DVDs begin by displaying ads that the viewer cannot bypass, a channel running a commercial would be locked until that commercial was over. Similarly, the fast-forward or skip controls on your digital video recorder would be disabled while a commercial is playing…
Yahoo’s squalid collaboration with the Chinese regime
From Reporters sans frontières – China…
Reporters Without Borders has obtained a copy of the verdict in the case of Jiang Lijun, sentenced to four years in prison in November 2003 for his online pro-democracy articles, showing that Yahoo ! helped Chinese police to identify him.
It is the third such case, following those of Shi Tao and Li Zhi, proving the implication of the American Internet company.
The verdict, made available and translated into English by the human rights group, the Dui Hua Foundation, can be downloaded below.
“Little by little we are piecing together the evidence for what we have long suspected, that Yahoo ! is implicated in the arrest of most of the people that we have been defending,” the press freedom organisation said.