Brown’s Big Idea?

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Matthew d’Ancona thinks that Gordon Brown may have some genuinely Big Ideas.

Stand by for a huge constitutional debate: that was one of many messages to be drawn from Gordon Brown’s launch this morning. Asked whether his plans included a written constitution, he would only say that he favoured a “better constitution”. But there was an explicit promise to curb the Crown prerogative, make Parliament more powerful, submit certain government appointments to parliamentary oversight, and (less overtly) entrench citizens’ rights and responsibilities in some way. Gordon left us is no doubt that he is thinking big.

Meanwhile, over on OpenDemocracy.net, Anthony Barnett sets out a list of what a new constitutional settlement would have to cover.

Er, remind me again: what happened to the Sioux?

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I rubbed my eyes when I read this Reuters report

At a panel discussion on the second day of the 56th annual National Cable & Telecommunications Association conference, top executives said talk of the demise of traditional media in the digital age was overblown.

While new distribution technologies like the Internet and mobile phones are siphoning television audiences, media companies argued that the Web also brings new revenue streams.

But the discussion quickly moved to criticism of the perception that traditional media businesses are dead, and to the rampant copyright offenses enabled by new digital technologies.

“The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation,” Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Richard Parsons said, referring to the Civil War American general George Custer who was defeated by Native Americans in a battle dubbed “Custer’s Last Stand”.

“They will lose this war if they go to war,” Parsons added, “The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion.”

Google’s strategy: order out of chaos

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From today’s New York Times…

Speaking at the annual shareholder meeting on Thursday, Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive, said Google’s long array of initiatives was organized around three ideas.

“Our next strategy evolution is to really think about three components,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Search, ads and apps,” he said, using a common shorthand for applications, or software programs.

The move is less a strategy shift than a new message — a way for Google to talk about its disparate initiatives in a way shareholders and the public can readily understand.

“It is worth saying that our underlying mission has not changed,” Mr. Schmidt noted.

The first two — search and ads — are well known to shareholders, and they account for virtually all of the company’s success. The third — apps — puts under one umbrella Google’s growing business of offering an eclectic mix of software.

Mr. Schmidt said the unifying theme behind the seemingly disparate programs was that they resided on the Web, rather than on users’ PCs, and were available wherever there is an Internet connection.

The programs include photo storage, social networking, online calendars, e-mail, instant messaging, word processing and spreadsheets. Most are free, and many compete with paid offerings from Microsoft. But Google has started charging businesses for some of them. “That is a business that looks like it is going to grow very nicely for us,” Mr. Schmidt said.

But a shareholder proposal to force Google to resist censorship in countries with authoritarian regimes like China was defeated “by an undisclosed tally”.

Surprise, surprise. Corporations don’t do ethics, any more than my cats respect fledglings’ rights.

The 4-hour working week

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Hmmm… I like the sound of this. But I’m afraid it will be like one of those diet books which show how you can eat all the steak frites you want and still fit into size 10 jeans.

Bet Prez Sarkozy takes a dim view of this kind of thing. After all, he disapproves of the 35-hour working week.

Get your number now — and protect it using the DMCA

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Sometimes, satire is the only way to deal with oppression. Ed Felten’s been working overtime after the AACS claimed that it ‘owned’ a decryption key.

Remember last week’s kerfuffle over whether the movie industry could own random 128-bit numbers?

Now, thanks to our newly developed VirtualLandGrab technology, you can own a 128-bit integer of your very own.

Here’s how we do it. First, we generate a fresh pseudorandom integer, just for you. Then we use your integer to encrypt a copyrighted haiku, thereby transforming your integer into a circumvention device capable of decrypting the haiku without your permission. We then give you all of our rights to decrypt the haiku using your integer. The DMCA does the rest.

Here’s mine:

5A 3F 7B A3 1C 75 88 F6 18 53 C6 09 75 83 CC 71

I will be Very Cross if you use it!

Thanks to Bill Thompson for the hint.

(Bill’s number is 7E 3D 4C 5A 75 37 5D 28 82 1B 95 D5 D3 AF CB 3B and he’s equally possessive of it btw.)

Join the Marines, see the world

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A new kind of user-generated content — video from a US Humvee on patrol on a dirt road in Iraq. Contains strong language and is best avoided by readers with sensitive dispositions. But it provides a vivid illustration of why US military power is so impotent in Iraq. This is what Donald Rumsfeld & Co never reckoned with.

[Source]