The word ‘podcast’ has entered the Oxford English Dictionary. Ben Hammersley, who first coined it, is understandably chuffed.
Pubic schools
Wonderful post by Andrew Brown…
Marlborough College is trying to expel a boy merely for being thick and unpleasant. Perhaps you had to have been there to understand how absurd this is. It’s like being thrown out of Big Brother for being a shallow exhibitionist.
This is a school which has been hated by any pupil of any intelligence or sensibility for as long as it has existed. When I was there, the punishment for new boys thought clever was a kind of gang rape involving boot polish and sometimes sodomy with a broomstick. At the time, I would have welcomed, perhaps incredulously, any sign that the authorities thought anyone could be too stupid or too nasty for the school. Now I know better. If the school has shareholders, they should sue it at once for diluting its brand equity. Up until now, to be an Old Marlburian has made a very clear statement about a man — that he is at best a rather pious evangelical Christian, but very probably nastier, more fucked up or more stupid than even the average Anglican bishop. Should this change, no one will know what being an old Marlburian means, and the £22,000 a year that parents pay to brand their children will be entirely wasted.
I’m relieved to read this. I’ve always thought that parents who send their kids to public schools (i.e. ‘private’ schools in UK parlance) must hate them. Nice to have it confirmed.
Update: In a thoughtful comment on Andrew’s post, David Smith complains that I have “repeated the tired rubbish about children at boarding schools being hated by their parents”. Hmmm… I’m sure there are some occupational circumstances which might mean that a child is better being sent away to school, but those aside I’ve never seen the point of having children and then being separated from them in their formative years. And I’ve seen quite a few public schoolboys in my time who were clearly disliked — and in one or two cases even loathed — by their parents. Sending them away was just a socially-acceptable way of dodging parental responsibility. Or perhaps it was a way of making sure that they didn’t strangle their offspring.
As I was saying…
… here. Now, this from Forbes.com…
Just days after a series of worms ravaged Microsoft Windows-powered networks around the world — and made high-profile splashes at media outlets including Time Warner, CNN, The Walt Disney Co., ABC News and The New York Times — several new potentially damaging weaknesses in Windows software have been exposed.
The first problem, a weakness in the company’s Internet Explorer Web-browsing software, could allow malicious hackers to crash or even take complete control of computers using the software. In order to be affected, IE users would have to visit a specially constructed Web site, but security firms say it’s still a serious threat, and that a widespread attack is likely.
Microsoft is also catching heat over a new feature that’s been included into test versions of its upcoming Windows Vista operating system. The software — currently released only to about 500,000 beta testers and software developers–apparently comes with a built-in peer-to-peer networking feature, which would allow groups of Windows computers to automatically connect without a central server. In the beta version, the software is turned on by default. That’s a violation of Microsoft’s security principles and potentially could lead to security breaches. Microsoft says the feature will be turned off in the final software release.
Nice to know that they’ve got P2P built in, though. Wonder if it’s any good?
On the road
What if Google…?
What is Google up to? Interesting speculation in Business 2.0. Excerpt:
What if Google wanted to give Wi-Fi access to everyone in America? And what if it had technology capable of targeting advertising to a user’s precise location? The gatekeeper of the world’s information could become one of the globe’s biggest Internet providers and one of its most powerful ad sellers, basically supplanting telecoms in one fell swoop. Sounds crazy, but how might Google go about it?
First it would build a national broadband network — let’s call it the GoogleNet — massive enough to rival even the country’s biggest Internet service providers. Business 2.0 has learned from telecom insiders that Google is already building such a network, though ostensibly for many reasons. For the past year, it has quietly been shopping for miles and miles of “dark,” or unused, fiber-optic cable across the country from wholesalers such as New York’s AboveNet. It’s also acquiring superfast connections from Cogent Communications and WilTel, among others, between East Coast cities including Atlanta, Miami, and New York. Such large-scale purchases are unprecedented for an Internet company, but Google’s timing is impeccable. The rash of telecom bankruptcies has freed up a ton of bargain-priced capacity, which Google needs as it prepares to unleash a flood of new, bandwidth-hungry applications. These offerings could include everything from a digital-video database to on-demand television programming.
Why would Google want to do this? Answer, it could save it lots of money — especially as it rolls out bandwidth-hogging services.
Every time a user performs a search on Google, the data is transmitted over a network owned by an ISP — say, Comcast — which links up with Google’s servers via a wholesaler like AboveNet. When AboveNet bridges that gap between Google and Comcast, Google has to pay as much as $60 per megabit per second per month in IP transit fees. As Google adds bandwidth-intensive services, those costs will increase. Big networks owned by the likes of AT&T get around transit fees by striking “peering” arrangements, in which the networks swap traffic and no money is exchanged. By cutting out middlemen like AboveNet, Google could share traffic directly with ISPs to avoid fees.
Hmmm….
More…From today’s Good Morning, Silicon Valley
A $79 billion market value, nearly $3 billion in cash on hand, and Google needs more money? Apparently so. As the first-year anniversary of its landmark IPO approaches the wildly successful Internet bellwether is planning a secondary offering. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it plans to sell up to 14.8 million shares. Based on Google’s closing price on Wednesday of $285.09, the company could raise $4.2 billion — roughly 5% of its current market value. The move left analysts scratching their heads. “Exactly what they want the cash for will be a big, big question,”
So what do they need the money for? Something Very Big, obviously. Costing, well, about $6 billion. Stay tuned.
How the other 90 per cent lives…
Email message from my college’s computer manager…
A new virus “W32/IRCBot.worm!MS05-039” is active out there and many machines in the College are already infected. Therefore, everyone is requested to update their antivirus and windows IMMEDIATELY. McAfee VirusScan 7 does not show the infection so McAfee VirusScan 8.0i (with today’s update 4560) is required to detect and remove the worm. Hijackthis, Rootkit Revealer and FPORT are not effective with the hack.
All windows machines that have not been patched with the latest MS05-039 patch are vulnerable to this worm. Please either bring them up to date with the latest MS patches and antivirus software or remove them from the network until they have been brought up to date.
The MS05-039 patch for different versions of MS Windows can be downloaded from
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms05-039.mspx
and the VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i can be downloaded from the following site….
And so on and so forth… To a long-term Mac/Linux user, this seems, well, quaint. What baffles me increasingly though is why so many people put up with it. On my holidays, I met several non-technical computer users who are driven to the brink of hysteria either by malware attacks, or by their inability to manage the anti-virus/firewall defences needed to combat it. I’ve learned from experience to bite my tongue, and sympathise, rather than look smug and say “Well, if you must use Microsoft software…”. For some reason, most people don’t want to hear that. Weird, isn’t it.
MP3 as a liberator
Interesting (and perceptive) CNET post on the impact of MP3.
MP3 made it possible to put ALL of your music in one place and thus made it easier to access. You no longer need to dig through tens, hundreds or even thousands of CDs, tapes or records to listen to that one tune that decided to run through your head at any given moment. Just find it in the jukebox player of your choice and let the music play! You’re also spared the expense of CD jukebox players that, even in the 100 disc capacities, you’d still need to change out discs to hear all of your collection. Now you just click shuffle and play and you’re good to go.Finally, and most obviously, you can bring that huge collection of tunes with you wherever you go via an MP3 player. Again, no digging through and changing out CDs or tapes, just whatever you want, whenever you want and wherever you want. Liberation in the truest sense of the word!
Da Vinci Code film (contd.)
Well, well. BBC Online reports that
A nun is protesting outside Lincoln Cathedral over the filming of the movie of controversial bestselling book the Da Vinci Code.
.xxx domain hits roadblock
Plans for a .xxx top-level domain (effectively a virtually red-light district) were supposed to be finalised by ICANN this week. But according to Good Morning Silicon Valley, they’ve hit a snag.
In a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Michael Gallagher, assistant secretary at the Commerce Department, asked that approval of the planned domain be postponed pending further study. “The Department of Commerce has received nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails from individuals expressing concern about the impact of pornography on families and children,” Gallagher wrote. “The volume of correspondence opposed to creation of a .xxx (domain) is unprecedented. Given the extent of the negative reaction, I request that the board (provide) adequate additional time for these concerns to be voiced and addressed before any additional action takes place.” The Department of Commerce isn’t the only agency suggesting ICANN put the brakes on .xxx. ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee recommended a similar course recently as well, noting a “strong sense of discomfort” over the domain in a number of its member countries. All of this leaves ICANN in a difficult position and one for which the agency has no one to blame but itself.
Da Vinci Code film (contd.)
Apropos my earlier observations about the film, how about this from the Lincolnshire Echo?
A Corner of Lincoln was today being transformed into a Hollywood film set as the stars of The Da Vinci Code arrived.
Film-makers have moved into Lincoln Cathedral to begin filming the highly anticipated blockbuster based on Dan Brown’s best-selling novel.
This morning big name stars Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou and Ian McKellen were ushered into the cathedral under the tightest security to start filming.
Excitement in Lincoln is running high.
Butcher Kenny Roberts, owner of Elite Meats in Bailgate, said having the film crew visit Lincoln was a real plus for him.
“I’m doing the catering for 400 of the crew each day,” he said.
“Somebody called me last week to place an order.
“I’ll be supplying 400 individual pork pies, 300 Lincolnshire sausages and 500 rashers of bacon for the bacon sarnies. It’s a real coup for me.”
For weeks, it seems, an area of the cathedral has been slowly transformed into a section of Westminster Abbey. The scenes to be shot in the cathedral come towards the end of the film, when characters played by Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou finally discover the tomb of Sir Isaac Newton.
Thanks to Dave Hill for the link, though what he’s doing reading the Lincolnshire Echo I cannot imagine! And can it really be the case that it takes 400 people to shoot a few scenes? No wonder Hollywood’s in trouble.