Oblomovka

2002-11-25»

I’ve let this lie fallow for far too long, but perhaps RSS feeds mean that not watering a blog doesn’t mean that it dies beyond recovery.

Aaanyway, the BBC is looking for someone to stand up against the boys from Microsoft and Intel when they explain how great Palladium and LaGrande will be for consumers, producers, and – oh, but who else could there be? It’s for a TV interview in the UK next week, and they’ve already asked Alan Cox and Ross Anderson. I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head, which is generally an indication that I’m being dense. Do you know someone? Are you that someone? Let me know, and I’ll mail the BBC.

Hooray for the Lazyweb!

Comments Off on who would you like to talk against palladium?

2002-11-11»

I knew PK of PKZIP died in nasty circumstances. But was it all just payback for ZIP’s own dodgy past?

Comments Off on zip it. zip. it.

RTE says that Trinity College are considering suing Lucas for nicking the likeness of the Long Room Library in Trinity for re-use as the Jedi Archive in Attack of The Clones. (Thanks, Karlin!)

Comments Off on are the jedi irish?

2002-11-07»

I had no idea National Airlines went bust yesterday. Which is a bit of a pain as it strands Gilbert on the other side of the continent. I pity Dulles staff today – dealing with a squadron of stranded Bay Area sysadmins home from LISA is not going to be fun. Those people do not appreciate having their tickets marked INVALID.

Comments Off on side-effects of getting all your news from google

2002-11-06»

This falls into the blog as spare brain category. Michigan University has a great and impartial Iraq War resources page, if you’re interested in that kind of thing. Which, I guess, we have no choice but to be these days. (From the Left-Right anti-war blog Stand Down, a useful resource in itself.)

Comments Off on resources on the iraq war debate

2002-11-05»

This story – about a seemingly fake set of scientific papers that managed to get published in reputable scientific journals – just gets more and more weird. Apparently the twins appear quite sincere in their belief that their paper has legitimate merit (rather than just being the Anti-Sokals that I thought they were initially). And they even have bodacious fans!

The sociological milieu of the affair is rich in color and personalities. The Bogdanovs have been described as “charismatic” and and “persuasive.” One of the juicier details is that the Bogdanov twins actually have FANS – scores of beautiful, nubile young women – who attend their seminars thereby delighting the other physicists – distracting them from theoretical to applied pysics. The Bogdanovs have political cachet – even the support of the French Minister of education. In addition to this, because of their prominence, the Bogdanov brothers have brought various publishing houses into the fray, making for a general circus-like atmosphere in the normally subdued and monkly Ivory towers of science.

Mind you, the site that’s from also talks about a COINTELPRO conspiracy to hold back science. We appear to be entering the really dark, conspiracy-laden corners of sci.physics here. Or at least slightly more French than I’m accustomed to.

Comments Off on more on the bogdanov twins

Josh’s friend Chris got hold of his marketing data under the Data Protection Act. Now he’s selling it to the highest bidder on e-bay.

Lloyds TSB: Approximately 500 pages of personal data including an analysis of banking products they believe I might be interested in. Also includes overdraft limit maintenance history (hand written), risk management history data (93 pages) and a full list of letters sent over the previous 5 years (completed by hand). All data and codes come with explanatory notes provided by Lloyds TSB. Original cost £ 10.

Sainsbury’s: Dated 12 July 2001, this data is split into five separate reports. Report 1. Operational report (name and address etc.) Report 2. Operational report again, with summarised details and the last 31 transactions on the card. Report 3. Drawn from the main data repository and includes the ‘Acorn’ standard marketing categorisation. Includes the assumption that we are ‘better-off inner-city executives living in a partially gentrified multi-ethnic area’. Report 4. Shows the transactions made using our reward card. Report 5. This is a list of EVERYTHING we bought from Sainsbury’s over a 3 year period – where we bought it and how much we paid. This data has been co-produced with my partner whose individual data has been removed.

Comments Off on <oliver>who will buy my personal data?</oliver>

2002-11-04»

It’s the little differences that make a marriage. When I get pestered by someone phoning up all hours of the day, I try to ignore it. When it happens to Quinn, she starts up a blog about it.

Comments Off on full disclosure

Great slashdot comment by Dan “ssh ninja” Kaminsky, matching the decentralised theories of maverick economist David Friedman with the grim realities of how reputation management works. I really enjoy reading Friedman’s work, because he seems to be the only laissez-faire economist who truly believes what they all appear to be saying. Friedman genuinely does think the market is the best solution to anything – including legal systems, national defence, and the environment. I don’t agree with him, but I think his models give strong clues on how a completely decentralised, emergent infrastructure might work. He’s also much more readable than most economists (“The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.” is one of his). If you’ve read any Ken Macleod, the economy of The Stone Canal is based on Friedman’s Machinery of Freedom: the weird bit where you can kill someone legally if you get a witness is lifted from his analysis of the private law world of medieval Iceland.

Comments Off on kaminsky on friedman

1988 Economist editorial by Nico Colchester, on the advantages of crunchy over soggy.(From Tomski).

Crunchy systems are those in which small changes have big effects leaving those affected by them in no doubt whether they are up or down, rich or broke, winning or losing, dead or alive. The going was crunchy for Captain Scott as he plodded southwards across the sastrugi. He was either on top of the snow-crust and smiling, or floundering thigh-deep. The farther south he marched the crunchier his predicament became.

Sogginess is comfortable uncertainty. The modern Scott is unsure how deeply he is in it. He can radio for an airlift, or drop in on an American early-warning station for a hot toddy. The richer a society becomes, the soggier its systems get. Light-switches no longer turn on or off: they dim.

Comments Off on soggy versus crunchy