Learning from eBAY

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From my column in today’s Observer…

Amid all the ponderous guff in the election campaign about ‘trust’, one interesting fact has been strangely absent from the discussion. We are all agreed that politicians rank low in public esteem, down there with estate agents, property developers and other kinds of spiv. But there is another occupational group that ranks even lower than these creatures of the deep. I refer, of course, to journalists. We are despised by the public – yet the fact that we shape the public’s attitude toward politicians remains unremarked. Thus we have a really weird vicious circle.

The public reviles politicians on the basis of images and impressions that are exclusively mediated by people who are widely regarded as equally loathsome and contemptible. This reduces the election to something akin to choosing a bride using reflections in the distorting mirrors of a funfair.

Los Alamos bloggers turn nasty

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Well, well. There’s trouble in the US’s premier nuclear weapons lab. According to the New York Times, staff are so fed up with their new Director, G. Peter Nanos, that they are posting vitriolic messages on an internal Blog.

The blogging comes at a delicate moment in the 62-year history of Los Alamos. The University of California, which has helped run the laboratory for the government since the days of the Manhattan Project, faces close scrutiny in Washington as to whether its contract should be renewed. And resignations and fears of a mass exodus have recently roiled the waters. Some analysts believe that now, given the public outcry, the university will have to abandon Dr. Nanos in order to make a credible bid to keep its contract.

Dr. Nanos would not comment. A spokesman for Los Alamos, Kevin Roark, said false rumors of the director’s resignation had circulated for months. Mr. Roark added that Dr. Nanos was extraordinarily proud of what he had accomplished at Los Alamos, which employs 14,000 people on an annual budget of $2.2 billion.

Mr. Roark called the vitriolic blogging unrepresentative of the majority of employees and said it often had the tone of a sophomoric Halloween prank. “Everybody, I think, was a little surprised at how mean it got,” he said.

Several outside experts said that the director’s quick departure was inevitable and that the blog’s attacks were playing a significant role.

Slashdotted!

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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

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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!

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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

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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

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Quentin wants one of these. But does he realise that “current pricing estimates by AirScooter Corporation are under $50,000”? Which, being translated, reads $49,995.

The Cult of the Mac

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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”.