Oblomovka

2002-07-03»

The DTI has issued a report that says "compelling content will drive the next wave of broadband services according to the study" and recommends setting up a "Broadband Channel", "a Channel 4 for the broadband age".

This kind of out-and-out idiocy - that broadband adoption is being held up by a lack of movies to watch - seems to be widespread on both sides of the channel. So far, I've seen it mainly trotted out to back braindead bills like the CBDTPA, or to fleece gullible ISP's (who are talked into desperately teaming up with low-grade, low-budge "content providers"). This was @Home's business plan, and BT Interactive's too. Both roaring successes.

Broadband's not being held up by a lack of bloody content. Oh yeah, I get that all the time: "Oooh, I'd gladly fork out for a 2 meg connection, but you know, I just don't think there's enough on the Internet for me right now." Broadband's being held up by simple technical reasons, and the telcos reluctance to lose their monopoly on the last mile.

2002-07-02»

He was one of the original Class of '94 UK net entrepreneurs, and now runs another.com. That boy thinks too much.

2002-07-01»

Damn. I remember Cory being so pleased with those goggles in London. The only way I can think of cheering him up is to push his story of having them stolen a little higher up the Daypop list.

I've never been mugged. Last Christmas, I was walking down Oxford Street and bumped into a young man. He got really angry (in that "I'm quite enjoying being this angry" way), and as I was trying to calm him down, his friend came from the side and punched me quickly, forceably, straight in the head. They laughed at my tottering, shocked expression, and walked on. One turned around and shouted "You'll look where you're going next time, won't you?". All of this in the middle of London's most crowded street at the busiest time of year.

It was the speed that amazed me. The punch was out of the blue, and I didn't even have time to see who did it. No-one else on the street would have spotted it, and if I'd shouted after the gang, it would have been me who would have looked strange and suspicious. It even took me a few minutes to register what had happened. I was edgy about crowds for about forty minutes afterwards, until I'd sat down with a drink with some friends. There are two times in your life when you know exactly what to do when someone assaults you on the street - every moment you live before it happens, and all the years afterwards.

One of the things I considered shortly afterwards was applying for a Data Protection Act copy of the CCTV'd videotape of the event (the DPA allows you to demand copies of any camera footage of yourself, and Oxford Street is one of the most CCTVd streets in Europe). Not for catching the puncher - CCTV's don't really help much with that, and I'm not sure the police would be that sympathetic. But just to reassure myself that it all really happened.

2002-06-30»

Previous post notwithstanding, I'm disturbed to discover that I had literal nightmares about Palladium last night. And sensible ones too (in the sense that they didn't consist of Steve Ballmer chasing me across a landscape made of giant naked librarians).

I'm still clarifying my thoughts on this, but Palladium appears to involve sacrificing liberty (the liberty to choose what runs on my computer) for some temporary security. And the more I think about it, the more I don't like it. Ryan Lackey, in more forthright terms, agrees.

In his fascinating summary of what is to be done, Ryan discusses mass public rejection of Palladium, and I currently see this as the best solution. But I'm still trying to bring together my thoughts to convey why - and I worry that many geeks don't instinctively understand the risks.

Before they were slapped into wakefulness by the wet trout of legislation, many knowledgeable people assured me that information could never be controlled, because the PC was, de facto, an open system.

Worse, there was a tacit assumption by a lot of (especially software) folk that over time, everything was an open system - that people wouldn't stand for anything else, and that if nothing else the ingenuity of the black market would guarantee our freedoms. As someone who has watched Rupert Murdoch succesfully introduce a completely closed, cryptographically secure, digital content-provision system to 40% of UK households, I know that isn't true. There's a lot of (illicit) money to be made cracking the Sky Digital box, and it hasn't been yet. Open systems are the exception, not the rule.

Palladium would install a closed environment on every usable desktop on the planet. Who entered and what exited that environment would not be controlled by the owner. Your programs would not run there, except at the behest of Microsoft. Software that did run there would be hidden from your sight by strong cryptography, so there would be no way of knowing what it was doing in the Palladium. And all the vital parts of your computer - the low-level hardware, a chunk of your RAM, a slice of your harddrive, even perhaps a sizeable amount of your networking capability - would only be accessible from within the Palladium. The Palladium is like Shakin' Stevens "Green Door". You don't know what they're doing, but they certainly are laughing a lot behind it.

Cory talks about the universal Turing machine as a unique object, that differs from the rest of our consumer electronics. Intel exec Leslie Vadasz warns of "neuter[ing] the personal computer to be nothing more than a videocassette recorder". But the hardest part of this fight will be explaining to the media and the politicians (and maybe the public, although I think they have a better grasp than the rest) what the difference is. And why putting this tiny little poisoned and closed chalice into every PC destroys what has driven so much of the innovation of the last thirty years.

2002-06-29»

You know, when people say I'm paranoid about all this surveillance legislation, I like to point them to this analysis of the RIP legislation (bottom left, near back end of cat). Now, that's paranoid. (Found on a flyer handed to Andrew Brown yonks ago).

2002-06-27»

So Oblomovka finally appeared in the Google rankings - with the cached copy containing my recent whinging. Justice!

If you do the search yourself, watch out: it's Google Dance time. That means Google will return different results depending on which set of servers you access. This happens once a month, as Google rejigs its page rankings. It's a Saturnalia for searches.

I am so shooting myself in the foot publicising this: an auction this Sunday of tinkey-toy molecular models, demonstration-size slide rules, and "portable potentiometers" from the attic of Berkeley Physics Department.

Typical Swedes: think everything can be solved with a nice sauna

A Swedish clinic says it has developed a highly effective treatment for anorexia and bulimia, eating disorders affecting many thousands of people, especially teenaged girls.

The treatment involves training patients in normal eating habits then making them sit down to rest in rooms with a temperature as high as 104 Fahrenheit.

2002-06-26»

The desperate traffic in illicit goods across America's borders continues. With Kinder Eggs.

Kinder (pronounced as in kindergarten and meaning "children" in German) can't be sold legally here because the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says the toy is a choking hazard. The Food and Drug Administration also objects, deeming the thumb-sized plastic capsule that contains the little toy an illegal, "embedded" nonfood item.

For years, Americans who returned from Kinder lands supported a small market here in the illegal eggs, and the feds were prompted to make periodic crackdowns against importers, often ethnic food shops. But in the past year or so, scofflaws have risen to a new level of Internet-fueled defiance, touching off a lucrative Kinder boom. Web sellers buy the candies -- which are the size of a hen's egg, with milk chocolate on the outside, white chocolate on the inside -- and charge from 80 cents to $2 or more per egg.