For sale: grey VW Golf, 75,000 kilometres on the clock, one careful gentleman owner.
Thus begins Luke Harding’s lovely report of how Cardinal Ratzinger’s wheels wound up being auctioned on eBAY.
Slashdotted!
Since there are no Nobel prizes in my line of business, the next best thing is to be Slashdotted. And it happened today! That’s twice in one lifetime (the first time was when I wrote about the leaked Microsoft memos on the threat to Redmond’s business model posed Linux and Open Source software). Maybe I should quit while I’m ahead!
Later: And now we’re on BoingBoing. Verily, my cup runneth over.
There is no real alternative, alas
For once, I agree with the Economist…
IF BRITAIN’S general election were simply a referendum on Tony Blair and the Labour government he has led since 1997, then there would be a real possibility that the voters would give him, and Labour, a slap in the face. That would also be The Economist’s instinct, though no doubt for different reasons. But it isn’t a referendum: it is a choice, one about which of the three big national parties offers the most credible and suitable government for Britain’s next four or five years. On that, our answer is the same as the one suggested by the opinion polls: the winner should again be Labour, led by Mr Blair.
Here we go!
For the last two years, I’ve been working with a group of colleagues in Cambridge on a project which has the modest aim of changing the world. It’s called the Ndiyo Project. (‘Ndiyo’ is the Swahili for ‘yes’.) Our aim was to rethink computer networking to make it much more affordable, environmentally sustainable and supportable than conventional PC-based networking. Why? Because the way we currently do networking is so wasteful and expensive that poor people will never be able to afford it. Yesterday, we presented a paper on our work at a big conference sponsored by (nice irony this!) Microsoft Research in Cambridge. BBC Online picked up the story and have reported it today. Our email inbox is already creaking at the seams. Stay tuned.
Quote of the day
Jonathan Freedland, writing in today’s Guardian on the implications of the leaked document giving the Attorney-General’s advice about the legality of going to war against Iraq.
The result was a surreal circularity, whereby the attorney ruled that war would be legal if Downing Street was sure Saddam was not complying. Downing Street said it was sure and so the attorney was satisfied. The war was legal – because Tony Blair said it was legal.
Sky High
Quote of the day
Absolutely not.
Bill Gates, responding to a question about whether his new friendship with U2 singer Bono would entice him to buy one Apple’s black-and-red U2 edition iPods.
The Cult of the Mac
Lovely essay by the BBC’s North American Business Correspondent, on the Apple religion. He even brings up Umberto Eco’s insightful religious metaphor for the Mac/PC schism:
The Italian philosopher, Umberto Eco, once wrote, tongue only partly in cheek, that Macintosh is Catholic while Microsoft computers are Protestant.
Macs, Umberto Eco opined, were “cheerful, friendly, conciliatory,” traits he associated with Catholicism. More to the point, though, their way of operating was different from Microsoft’s, giving more guidance to users.
Macs would, as Umberto Eco put it, “tell the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach – if not the Kingdom of Heaven – the moment in which their document is printed”.
He saw that as like Catholicism, in contrast to the Protestant faith which he thought, like Microsoft computers, would “allow free interpretation of scripture, demand difficult personal decisions… And take for granted that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself”.
On this day…
… in 1916, a group of Republican dreamers and rebels led by Patrick Pearse launched the Easter Rising in Dublin, seizing control of the GPO and declaring a Republic. The revolt was not widely supported and was easily crushed by the British, who then — with exquisite incompetence — turned victory into defeat by the way they treated the insurgents, thereby engendering a 180-degree turn in public support for the nationalist project. Yeats wrote a wonderful poem — Easter 1916 — about it, and lodged the phrase “a terrible beauty” in our consciousness.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse –
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
The BBC’s Creative Archive
My Observer column on the significance of the Creative Archive is here. The Open University, for which I work, is one of the Creative Archive partners, and is currently mulling over how it should contribute to it. In the meantime, one of my colleagues, Ray Corrigan, has released the materials for his course on Law, the Internet and Society under a Creative Commons licence. The course started life as part of my Relevant Knowledge programme, but was dropped when it came to the end of its designated life. It seemed crazy just to bury something that could be useful and interesting to many people simply because the university didn’t have space for it in its curriculum. So now it has a new lease of life, courtesy of the open content movement.