Can you dig it?

Posted in 28 October 2010
Comments Off on Can you dig it?

From a Huffington Post comment thread:

CHANGE is a process, not an event.

I love President Obama.

++++++++++ +++++++++ + ++++++++ ++ +++++
++++++++++ +++###### # ++++++++ ++ +++++++
++++++++++ +######## # ###+++++ ++ +++++++ +
++++++++++ ######### # #####+++ ++ +++++++ +
+++++++++# ####+++++ + ++###+++ ++ +++++++
++++++++## #++++++++ + +++###++ ++ +++++++
++++++++## +++++++++ + ++++###+ ++ +++++++
+++++++##+ +++++++++ + ++++#### ++ +++++++
+++++++#++ +++++++++ + +++++### ++ +++++++
++++++##++ +++++++++ + +++++### #+ +++++++
++++++#+++ +++++++++ + ++##++@# #+ +++++++
+++++##+++ +++++++++ # ######## ## #++++++ +
+++++##+++ +++++#+++ # #+####+# ## #++++++ +
+++++##+++ +#####+++ # ++#####+ ## ##+++++ ++
+++++##+++ ##+###+++ # +++****+ +# ###++++ +
+++++##+++ ++#++#+++ # ++++++++ +# #++++++
+++++##+++ +@+++++++ + #+++++++ ## +#+++++
+++++#++++ +++++++++ + +#++++++ ## +#+++++
++++++#+++ +++++++++ + #++++++# ## #++++++
++++++##++ +++++++++ # ###++++# ## #++++++ +
++++++++++ ++++++@#+ # ##++++++ ## ##+++++
+++++##+#+ +++++++++ + ++++++++ ## +#+++++
+++++#++++ +++++++++ + ##++++++ ## ##+++++
+++++#+@++ ++++++++# # ####++++ ## +++++++
+++++#+#+# +++++++## + ++#+++++ ## +++++++
++++++#++# ++++++##+ + +###++++ ## +++++++
+++++++#++ +++++++++ + ++++++## ## #++++++
+++++++++# +++++++++ + +#++++## ## #++++++
++++++++++ +#+++++++ + +++++### ## ####### ++
++++++++++ ++#++++++ + ++++#### ## ####### ++
++++++++++ +++#+++++ + ++###### ## ####### ++
++++++++++ ++++##+++ + ######## +# ####### ++
++++++++++ +++#++### # #######+ +# ####### ++
++++++++++ +###+++## # ######++ ## ####### ++
++++++++## #####++++ # #####+++ ## ####### ++
++++++#### #####++++ + ++##++++ ## ####### ++
+++++##### #####++++

Nice. And a good forum handle: forpeace

Tech

When the brand is smokin’ hot …

Posted in 28 October 2010
Comments Off on When the brand is smokin’ hot …

You might remember my post ‘Talk about product placement!’ which featured President Obama demonstrating a new government health website on a MacBook Pro with the Presidential seal over the Apple logo…

Here’s today’s NZ Herald displaying no such coyness — in fact the article is about kids wanting Apple products for Christmas. (Enthusiastic consumers of trinkets just like their forebears.)

Product placement — what would an advertisement like this cost in the NZ Herald? (click)

As I mentioned in the earlier post, I’ve used Apple gear for decades, when only a few of us regarded it as cool — although educators have long seen the benefits of the Mac interface. I suffered through the wilderness years when using a Mac was almost an article of faith that the company would pull out of its doldrums — but always fed by finding delight in the elegance, the flexibility, the future-looking-ness of the software, and the irrepressible ‘attitude’ of the Apple geeks, hippies and aesthetes.

They made a few bum blind alley moves on the hardware front — falling into a beige box me-too bunker and sticking with Motorola 68XXX chips too long followed by the then promising but ultimately disappointing Power PC chips … before bringing back Steve Jobs, ‘buying’ his NeXT as the basis of OSX and switching to Intel and making silicon sing. Some of the software developers were geniuses, the da Vincis of our age.

Now Apple is custom-making their own silicon with the A4 chip in the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch — and it’s game on. Good on them. Apple is a business that succeeds with vision, style and substance. Not perfect, but the best, in my opinion.

Tech
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Cher Lloyd: Good on her

Posted in 27 October 2010
3 Comments »

Cher Lloyd competing in UK X-Factor (image: www.dailymail.co.uk)

A friend of mine spotted this young woman on YouTube — Cher Lloyd — she’s a contestant in the current British ‘X-Factor’. Watch her audition.

I like it that she credits the artist, Soulja Boy … and the Keri Hilson ‘version’ of Turn My Swag On she performs. Nice.

I like her a lot. She’s got courage and talent. She’s funky and entertaining.

There’s a hate campaign against her, apparently (… which the song actually anticipates: “… always getting haters like you wouldn’t believe – so wassup?”)

I wish her well. Damn the torpedos.

Video below the fold. Continue reading →

Encouragement
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Farewell Limewire

Posted in 27 October 2010
5 Comments »

Nice logo. Shame the business model is based on theft, huh?

As noted in this earlier post, high profile file ‘sharing (or stealing?) service’ Limewire lost a federal case brought against them by outraged record companies.

The death blow/shut down order was suspended in May while the victorious owners and licensees of the intellectual property at issue and the thieves who built a business distributing what wasn’t theirs, tried to see if they could work it out. From the earlier report:

The record labels and LimeWire are to meet with Judge Kimba Wood on June 1 to determine the next steps, such as a possible deal to work together going forward.

I thought at the time: Never.Going.To.Happen.

So, today:

LimeWire file-sharing service shut down by court — NZ Herald

Goodbye Limewire. Thanks for sharing. (Oh, not really.)

Media issues - Writing/Publishing
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Bruce Sheppard — closing thoughts?

Posted in 25 October 2010
3 Comments »

This looong blog post by Bruce Sheppard is worth reading in its entirety.

Part of it reflects on the baby boomer ‘inter generational wealth transfer’ conspiracy promoted by Bernard Hickey et al.

A bunch of kids were born in the 1950s mostly, and as a result nappy valleys appeared all over the western world, schools were built.

Now many schools are closing down, as we have fewer kids than we had at the peak.

Then they became young adults, these baby boomers bought cars and houses, and a consumption-led boom bedded in, the baby boomers gave the world their best shot in their 20s to 40s and produced significant wealth for the west. Now they are moving into wind down mode, and consuming their wealth.

Their kids, however, are a different bred, instead of the generation X and Y stepping into the productive cycle, many have not yet jumped out of the dependant cycle. They stay at school and home longer, and when they do work they over value their worth because PC nonsense has convinced them that everyone’s a winner…blah, blah. And they spend every dollar they earn. No wonder we have a balance of payments deficit.(Facilitating economic warfare from the surplus economies.)

Soon the baby boomers will be moving into expensive health care and retirement living, notice the booming retirement villages, in 40 years these too will be empty shells like the schools of the 50s as this wave of post war babies moves through to death.

This demographic wave combined with low birth rates is our undoing; it is the Achilles heal of our society, as the only way to keep up our lifestyle is to import labour and capital and the only way for politicians to get elected is to keep us happy by obliging. …

Sheppard has a number of other very intelligent and worthwhile things to say in the post:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/blogs/stirring-the-pot/4249073/Its-a-wrap#

Surely, even his critics wish the maverick Sheppard well in his new role as part of the establishment board of the Financial Markets Authority. I do. God knows we need to tame the frontier of our financial markets somehow, to instil some confidence in our investment and saving areas … or the future will look like the past.

I’m sure we’ll hear from him again.

Big Questions
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Feeling uncomfortable about Google, yet?

Posted in 25 October 2010
2 Comments »

Oh, life was so much simpler for everyone when Google wasn’t sending its spies out into the world, ‘sniffing’ and STORING our private data, photographing our homes and scanning our books in public libraries without apparent regard for copyright.

Now, to make it all better, they’ve appointed a ‘director of privacy’ (sigh) and say they are training their staff in ‘privacy’, according to this article in the NZ Herald. Sweet.

Google acknowledged in May that one of its engineers had created a programme that vacuumed up potentially sensitive personal information, including emails and passwords, from unsecured wireless networks while Google cars cruised neighbourhoods around the world.

The vehicles were dispatched primarily to take photos for Google’s online mapping service, but they also carried equipment to log the location of Wi-Fi networks.

Several countries have skewered Google for scooping up 600 gigabytes of data – equivalent to about six floors of an academic library – from Wi-Fi systems for more than two years before detecting a problem five months ago in response to an inquiry from regulators in Germany.

Google initially said it had captured only fragments of people’s online activities, but a Canadian investigation determined that entire emails, passwords and website addresses had been obtained and stored.

In confirming Canada’s findings, Google said it wanted to delete all the Wi-Fi data remaining on its computers as quickly as possible, but must hold on to most of the information while authorities in different countries conducted their own investigations.

Gee, it seems to me Google are either (a) enthusiastic but incompetent or (b) corrupt liars. Which could it be? Continue reading →

Tech
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Walk out. Yeah.

Posted in 24 October 2010
Comments Off on Walk out. Yeah.

Apropos our discussion of Paul Henry’s ‘No, I’m not giving you an interview’, watch how WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange warned a CNN reporter he wasn’t prepared to talk about his personal legal issues as part of an interview about the latest tranche of military leaks… and walk out he did.

Fair enough too, in my opinion. (Are you taking notes, Kim Knight?) A lot of people are too polite to the news media — and therefore become shark bait.

Assange to CNN: 'If you keep asking me about that now, I'll walk ...' (click for video)

Continue reading →

Encouragement - Media issues
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Words that may not be spoken

Posted in 24 October 2010
11 Comments »

Last week I wrote to the local Howick & Pakuranga Times about a long-running local issue of importance to me and my family. I was intrigued by some of the deletions and alterations in the resulting published Letter to the editor.
See what you think:

click to enlarge

My family and I fully support the moves to rebuild the whare in the Garden of Memories.
As a community may we, at long last, bring an end to the undignified and, by all appearances, racist opposition to the reinstatement of this community asset in Emilia Maud Nixon’s garden? Surely we can Can we celebrate her bi-cultural vision? Surely.
The opposition to Maori culture in our suburb, and the tactics adopted by a handful of local politicians — fighting the rebuilding of the whare — shows they’re out of touch. Of course they deny it’s racism, but [L]ike others, I have been appalled at what I believe are the provocative, offensive and sometimes misleading statements issued … and actions they have taken.
Men and women to whom we look for leadership have let us down. Their delaying tactics and subversive legal machinations have cost us dearly as a community. Their misguided fixation and battle against a shadowy hallucination of a ‘full-blown marae’ in our back yard brings shame on Howick’s the name of Howick.
The campaign to suppress Maori culture at the gardens in Uxbridge Road is an embarrassment. (Even more so a delusional ‘declaration of independence’ over the issue.)
We all look like racists as a result.

Peter Aranyi, Howick

Interesting, huh? I have no real complaints. It’s their paper, and the editor (rightly) has the last say about what appears in it — good on them for publishing the letter and the ongoing ‘debate’.

It’s illuminating to see what comments are, apparently, beyond the pale for that Letters to the editor forum.
Encouragement - Writing/Publishing
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Ain’t this the truth?

Posted in 21 October 2010
Comments Off on Ain’t this the truth?

An old saying and a true one … but we often learn this the hard way.

(Spotted in an Italian warehouse/cafe in Wellington this afternoon.)

Encouragement

Hacked!

Posted in 20 October 2010
Comments Off on Hacked!

I had the unpleasant experience yesterday of a website I’m involved with (not this one) being hacked and a script loaded onto the landing page to redirect visitors to a malware site. That’s the first time that’s happened to me.

OK, so why would you click 'Ignore Warning'??

As it turns out, every browser I used to try to access the (original) site warned me that ‘target’ site was listed as a malicious site. (see pic) or detected malware. Maybe, as a boffin suggested, the hackers are relying on that subset of visitors to a corrupted site that use old browsers.

It was the work of minutes to remedy the problem, but let me tell you frankly that once the surprise wears off, one does feel aggrieved when this happens. And, of course, vaguely paranoid about what ELSE they had access to while tip-toeing through the tulips in the site’s code.

A friend when in need is a friend indeed. A friend alerted me to the issue (thanks D!) and told me a website in her empire gets attacked routinely. Another friend, the boffin, help me with advice about what to do next.

Bleurgh!

Tech
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Homemade space program

Posted in 18 October 2010
1 Comment »

Nice project by Luke Geissbühler and son Max, as reported by NY Mag … from my ‘reading’ of the video, I think the iPhone was used to track his ‘space capsule’, but the video itself was taken with a different (unspecified) bit of kit — not the iPhone, despite the report.

In a burst of science-is-fun educational invention, a Brooklyn dad built a carrier for an iPhone (the current model, with video camera) out of a takeout box, tied it to a weather balloon, and let it go with the camera running. It reached a height of nineteen miles, or about 100,000 feet, which is high enough to show the earth’s curvature and a black sky above the atmosphere.

At that height, the low pressure means that the helium expanded and the balloons burst, whereupon the phone (in its little cushioned capsule) came down, down, down — and landed 30 miles outside New York, signaling to its owners via GPS, whereupon they went and picked it up. The resulting six minutes of rivetingly weird film are sure to make Mythbusters fans weep with joy.

A grab from the homemade space video via NY Mag (click to view below the fold))

REALLY NEAT (‘rivetingly weird’) video below the fold Continue reading →

Encouragement - Tech
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‘No comment’ with reasons = ‘an interview’? Nope.

Posted in 18 October 2010
2 Comments »

So the Sunday Star Times rang Paul Henry for an interview. He said ‘No, sorry, won’t/can’t talk’ (meaning on the record) or words to that effect and was courteous enough to have a brief chat with the journo… who later transcribed the discussion, and the paper published it.

image: greenwichroundup.blogspot.com (click)

THIS sort of behaviour, in my opinion, is part of what gives journalism a bad name (as untrustworthy).

Henry walks off into the sunset

By KIM KNIGHT – Sunday Star Times

WHEN the Sunday Star-Times phoned last week, the one-time Breakfast presenter’s “no comment” ran almost five minutes. On the same day his former TVNZ boss Rick Ellis went to Government House to make a personal apology about Henry’s comments on the governor-general’s ethnicity, this is the conversation Henry had when he wasn’t having a conversation.

SST: Is there any chance that we could have a catch-up?

PH: Look, I really haven’t got anything to say to be honest. I’ve made the decision that, unlike Chris Carter, I will go quietly. …

— five minutes discussion, reported in the paper despite his wishes —
… PH: This isn’t an interview now, is it?

SST: Well, I’m taking notes, but I am curious given money is no object …

PH: It’s important to me that I don’t, I don’t want to say anything now, I don’t want this to turn into an interview.

SST: Well, we didn’t say we were off the record.

PH: In which case there’s absolutely no chance that you would get the interview (laughs).

SST: So aren’t you happy for me to quote…

PH: Clearly this is an interview now so I’m going to have to end it because I don’t want to give an interview.

SST: Well, let’s just go back over what you’ve said. You haven’t …

PH: No, I don’t want to give an interview and I made that quite clear at the beginning.

SST: Nooo.

PH: So, well, we’ll just leave it there, OK?

SST: OK, thanks.

PH: OK, bye (hangs up).

Read it in all its glory here at stuff.co.nz.

He wasn’t being ‘interviewed’, in my opinion. That was clear, and the ‘interviewer’ was pretending (acting as if) that had NOT been communicated. It had. Therefore, the ‘transcript’ of his five minute ‘no comment’ explanation was obtained effectively by false pretences, in my view. Seems shabby to me.

Now of course, if the stakes were higher: if he was a financial fraudster (whether ‘dodgy company director’ or a ‘multiple welfare bludger’) or a ‘crooked industrialist poisoning a local water reservoir’, or any number of other worthwhile targets, maybe there might have been some call for this (politely:) tricky behaviour by the journo. Continue reading →

Media issues - Writing/Publishing
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A sharp foil is a wonderful thing

Posted in 17 October 2010
Comments Off on A sharp foil is a wonderful thing

I am reading and SO enjoying Your Movie Sucks, a collection of reviews by Roger Ebert. My goodness, he’s got the skills. Wonderful.

A review of the collection over at Blogcritics includes this line:

Like most critics, these negative reviews are an outlet for the creative side of Ebert’s writing to shine.

That’s well said.  Yes, there’s something about choosing a clean way to express a negative opinion that stimulates a critic’s imagination. I wish I were as good a writer as Ebert. I guess I’ll just keep practising.

Hook this book out and give it a read. There’s something for everyone, as the saying goes.

It’s worth it just for his slam-down of Rob Schneider:

Reading this [a full page ad by Schneider castigating a critic who dared pan Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo] I was about to observe that  Schneider can dish it out but he can’t take it. Then I found he’s not so good at dishing it out either. [Comment: Zing!] I went online and found that Patrick Goldstein [who Schneider had declared in his ad had ‘won absolutely nothing’ in the way of awards for journalism, and not a Pulitzer Prize, implying that thus he was unqualified to criticise the film] has won a National Headliner Award, a Los Angeles Press Club Award, a RockCrtiics.com award and the Publicists’ Guild award for lifetime achievement.

Schneider was nominated for a 2000 Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor, but lost to Jar-Jar Binks. … As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Price, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Price winner, Mr Schneider, your movie sucks.

Media issues - Writing/Publishing
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Bloomberg ‘Game Changers’ video retrospective on Steve Jobs

Posted in 16 October 2010
4 Comments »

Well worth watching…

Bloomberg Game Changers — http://www.bloomberg.com/video/63722844/

48 minutes — 227 MB of worthwhile bandwidth.

(Thanks to TUAW.)

Business/Investment

Interview with John Sculley about the genius of Steve Jobs

Posted in 16 October 2010
Comments Off on Interview with John Sculley about the genius of Steve Jobs

This transcript of a recent interview by Leander Kahney with former Apple Computer CEO John Scully about founder and rescuer of Apple Steve Jobs is fascinating, if you care.

Just one clip (seriously, go and read it):

Sculley: It’s okay to be driven a little crazy by someone who is so consistently right. What I’ve learned in high tech is that there’s a very, very thin line between success and failure. It’s an industry where you are constantly taking risks, particularly if you’re a company like Apple, which is constantly living out on the edge.

Your chance of being on one side of that line or the other side of the line is about equal. Sometimes… he [Jobs] was wrong tactically on a number of things. He wouldn’t put a hard drive in the Macintosh. When someone asked him about communications, he just threw a little disk across the room and said, “That’s all we’ll ever need.”

On the other hand, Steve led the development of what was called AppleTalk and AppleLink. AppleTalk was the communications that enabled the Macintosh to communicate to the laser printer that enabled… desktop publishing.

I have appreciated my Macs over the years — I bought, new, Aldus Pagemaker 2 which was a revolution in publishing, truly a revolution. Pagemaker, a Macintosh and a Laserwriter changed the world of print — as much for the power and simplicity of the hardware/software as the design aesthetic embodied in them.

Much of that impact was directly because of Steve Jobs — his taste and his aesthetic, his design sensibilities, as Sculley highlights again and again in the interview. That, and his persuasive charm/insistence.

Wow. What an impact.

Oh, OK, one more clip: Continue reading →

Business/Investment - Encouragement - Tech
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