The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
Groucho Marx, quoted in this week’s Economist in the course of a thoughtful article on Tony Blair.
A 7-point plan to save the newspaper industry
Michael Kinsley, writing about decline and fall.
Some evil force is causing people to stop reading newspapers! Newspaper circulation figures, which had been drifting decorously downward for years, have started to plummet. At the current rate of decline, the last newspaper subscriber will hang up on a renewal phone call that interrupts dinner on Oct. 17, 2016. And then it will be over.
Among his recommendations to save the industry is that the government should establish
a program of newspaper circulation supports. These would be similar to the agricultural price supports that have preserved a treasured American lifestyle (working from dawn to dusk seven days a week, except for a few brief hours a day down at the diner complaining about big government and welfare chiselers). By paying newspaper publishers not to publish newspapers, the government can reduce the dangerous excess supply and preserve the beloved journalistic lifestyle (drinking at lunch, ruining the reputations of innocent Republican politicians and filling out expense reports).
He also proposes the establishment of a Strategic Newspaper Reserve.
As with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the government would buy vast quantities of newspapers on the open market and store them somewhere for a rainy day (when they can be delivered sopping wet, as the newspaper industry prefers whenever possible). One possible location for the reserve might be my mother’s apartment, where there are already neat piles of newspapers dating back to Watergate that she is going to get to soon. (If you go to inspect the reserve, please don’t tell her how the 2000 election came out. She wants to be surprised.)
Lovely stuff. Reminds me of the young Michael Frayn.
This you gotta see
I’ve always thought that the people who work in BBC Online are the most creative folks outside of Google. Now, right on cue, comes further proof — BBC Backstage
backstage.bbc.co.uk is the BBC’s new developer network, providing content feeds for anyone to build with. Alternatively, share your ideas on new ways to use BBC content. This is your BBC. We want to help you play.
It’s amazing, simply amazing, to think of a leading content owner and creator being willing to do this. Thanks to Ben for alerting me.
Waiter, there’s a B29 over our table
After the Less is More conference, Microsoft took us out to dinner — in the Duxford aircraft museum. We dined beneath a B29 bomber of the type that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Strange experience. Nice meal though.
Costa Rich
Note huddled masses in the bus queue.
Microsoft goes for Sony’s jugular
Nice USA Today report on Redmond’s latest attempt at a pre-emptive strike. Excerpt:
To muscle Xbox into contention, Microsoft has absorbed about $2 billion in losses the past four years. Now the software giant is making a bold move to jump ahead of Sony by initiating the next cycle of gaming consoles.
On Thursday night, actor Elijah Wood of Lord of the Rings fame will host a celebrity-packed MTV special at which Wood is expected to unveil the all-new Xbox. Widely expected to be called the Xbox 360, it should hit store shelves in time for Christmas.
But much more than dominance of the game-console business is at stake. Whoever sells the most consoles in this cycle could also lock up prime access to the burgeoning digital entertainment market.
Microsoft has been on a three-year mission to ingrain Windows Media Center PCs as the nerve center for digital entertainment. And it is maneuvering the new Xbox to be a linchpin in helping consumers manage music and movie files stored on a PC in the den.
Meanwhile, Sony, in partnership with IBM and Toshiba, is developing something called the Cell processor — expected to be an all-purpose “brain” for video games and consumer electronic devices, much as Intel’s Pentium processor is for PCs.
Er, the Naughton household has had a ‘Media Center’ for some years. It’s called a Macintosh!
What goes around, comes around
You couldn’t make this stuff up. Hilary Rosen, formerly of the RIAA, is complaining about Apple’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) system on the iPod/iTunes system. Eh? Guess who created this DRM nightmare in the first place? Yep: MS Rosen and her buddies in the RIAA. Ye Gods!
What Carly did next
Remember Carly Fiorina, the testosterone-poisoned ex-boss of HP? Well, if you’re desperate to hear how she, er, revitalised HP, she will happily give an inspirational address to your AGM. At $40,000 a throw, it’s a steal. And many of your employees will be enthused and follow the example of the former Hewlett Packard workers now building exciting new careers in the fast food industry.
Firefox security
From Mozilla Details Two New Security Flaws in Firefox
Firefox creator Mozilla has announced two security alerts for its popular web browser. The new alerts pertain to security vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to run arbitrary code using the Firefox browser.
The Mozilla Foundation says that attackers through javascript could go back to a users’ prior visited web pages allowing them to steal sensitive information. This issue also affects users of the Mozilla Suite. Mozilla also has found that Firefox’s automated install function could also be compromised. Mozilla, which is updating its servers to curtail further exploitation, recommends users to disable javascript and the automatic installation feature on their Firefox browser until a fixed version is released.
Done!
The election in a nutshell
Front page of today’s Independent. Brilliant encapsulation of a crazy electoral system that gives one party the powers of an “elected dictatorship” (to use Quintin Hogg’s famous phrase) with a minority of the popular vote. Labour got 35.22% of the votes, but 356 MPs. The Lib-Dems got 22.05% but only 62 seats.