If, like me, you’re struck by the fact that unsold SONY PS3s are stacked rafter-high in every computer-games shop while you can’t get a Nintendo Wii for love or money, look no further.
Thanks to Tom for finding it. He also tells me that “the tune is called ‘How To Save A Life’ by The Fray — this guy took the tune and changed the lyrics”.
James Cridland found this hilarious post by Rick Segal about an encounter he had with some network TV executives. Excerpt:
These guys were bragging about the ability to start showing TV shows online. If, for example, you go to ABC’s website, you can watch episodes of certain shows pretty much a day or so after they air on TV.
They were proud of these two key points.
They had ‘locked down’ the content. Their words, not mine.
They had ‘locked out’ the rest of the world outside the US. Their words, not mine.
Me: “Yer kidding, right?”
Them: “Not at all. We got this baby right. We’d show you but since we are in Canada, you can’t see the stuff.”
Me: Sigh
I crank up the laptop and fire up the abc.com website and we verify that I get the evil, only those in the US can see this, message.
Me: Pay attention, boyz.
Step one: Google: ip spoofer software
Step two: grab one, install it.
Step three: watch Ugly Betty.
Them: Nobody is going to know how to do that. Besides, if you were to tell people, we’d sue for damages.
Me: So, if I told the world that in order to get around websites that restrict access by IP, you could change the IP address via a zillion pieces of software freely available on the Internet, you’d sue me? Really? Like as in, say a blog entry? Can I get that in writing? As a promise?
Them: Blank stares
Lovely! This is the ‘push’ mentality personified.
Peter Preston thinks so, and quotes some findings from Ipsos Mori’s quarterly technology tracking poll.
This time last year, 60 per cent of British adults had online access. Now it’s 62 per cent, a relatively tiny shift. Three in four people over 65 have no access at all. Only one in 11 pensioners in the DE category – those most dependent on state support – can log on. Meanwhile, at the other end of the age and education range – ABs between 18 and 34 – internet penetration is actually falling back a little. Park Associates’ latest US survey may show two thirds of all adults online there, but, of those not hooked up, 44 per cent are just not interested in surfing their lives away.
We are not either on the internet or in print, but somewhere in between, and likely to stay there for years. We must commit millions to the digital future, but still cut down forests and drive distribution lorries along motorways at midnight. We must watch one pot of gold empty, but another fill up somewhat more slowly than we’d hoped…
This morning’s Observer column…
Collapse of stout conspiracy theory, then? Well, yes. But also a striking illustration of the collective intelligence embodied in the blogosphere. Memo to traditional journalists: there’s always someone out there who knows more than you…
From the New York Times
Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became well known for urging stressed-out students competing for elite colleges to calm down and stop trying to be perfect. Yesterday she admitted that she had fabricated her own educational credentials, and resigned after nearly three decades at M.I.T. Officials of the institute said she did not have even an undergraduate degree.
“I misrepresented my academic degrees when I first applied to M.I.T. 28 years ago and did not have the courage to correct my résumé when I applied for my current job or at any time since,” Ms. Jones said in a statement posted on the institute’s Web site. “I am deeply sorry for this and for disappointing so many in the M.I.T. community and beyond who supported me, believed in me, and who have given me extraordinary opportunities.”
The funny thing is that, by all accounts, she was absolutely brilliant at her job. As one of her academic friends, Leslie Perelman, director of the M.I.T. program in writing and humanistic studies, says: “It’s like a Thomas Hardy tragedy, because she did so much good, but something she did long ago came back and trumped it”.
“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat.”
George Tenet, former Director of the CIA, in his forthcoming memoirs, as described by the New York Times
It makes a perfectly serviceable residence (though tails have to remain outside in the cold).
At the ENTER_ conference in Cambridge yesterday, Bob Stein of the Institute for the Future of the Book gave a terrific demonstration of Sophie — an open source multimedia authoring tool — which he and his colleagues have been developing for some years. It looks like sensational software, but is currently only available as a fairly flaky an alpha version*. When I asked Bob about dates for likely availability, he shrugged gloomily. The project runs out of money next Monday — two days from now.
*Correction: I’ve downloaded the alpha version and although it’s got rough edges, it’s very impressive. Think of it as DTP software for creating multimedia objects. There must be lots of universities and other teaching institutions which could find many uses for this. Surely there’s a basis for finding the necessary funding support for the small team working on the code. One model could be the way my own institution (the Open University) decided to use Moodle as the basis for its Virtual Learning Environment and is now providing significant support to the Moodle developer community. I normally hate (and am suspicious of) the term “win-win”, but these kinds of arrangements seem to me to qualify for it.
