False Positives , Ian Irving's Adventures in Tech, Toronto (and HK), Sci and SciFi

Thursday, June 17, 2004

The straight goods on DRM

Cory Doctorow talks (via Boing Boing) to Microsoft Research about the problems with DRM (Digital Rights Management) and why DRM is bad for society, business, and artists.
The Short answer is :

  1. That DRM systems don't work
  2. That DRM systems are bad for society
  3. That DRM systems are bad for business
  4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
  5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT
Cory explains each point in a easy to understand manner, with small words even a elective representative can follow. The straight goods in ~17 K. Let's see if Microsoft and others are listening....

Update : The straight goods on DRM, now print-centric and polished

Reason to ReJoyce : clevercactus

clevercactus is in first public beta release, even if it missed Bloomsday by a day.

clevercactus share is a private and secure environment to share files with people you know. It is simple and easy to use, it is free for individual users, educational institutions, and non-profit corporations, and it runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Groover for the rest of us?

one of 2 very anticipated tools (Chandler being the other)

Creating Liquid Layouts with Negative Margins

Via A List Apart, a very nice and practical example of using CSS to get that 2 or 3 columns look (Look Ma, no Tables!) which is so very suitable for most Content web sites (Blog or regular marketing content site), and 99% of the rest of them too.

So well explained even I think I know what's going on.

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

The Two Things

For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important.
So here is The Two Things

A few favorites :


The Two Things about Accounting:
1. The trial balance must balance.
2. There's a lot of "grey area."
...
The Two Things about Software Engineering:
1. There is no such thing as bug-free software.
2. Adding manpower to a late project makes it later.
...
The Two Things about Teaching History:
1. A good story is all they'll remember, not the half hour of analysis on either side of it.
2. They think it's about answers, but it's really about questions.
..
The Two Things about Engineering:
1) It's all about tradeoffs.
2) The tradeoffs are all about money, time, and quality.
..
The Two Things about Economics:
1. Incentives matter.
2. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
..
The Two Things about Blogging:
1. Everyone who runs one is a kook.
2. Everyone who reads one is a kook.

New and Improved, Now with Non-Sense

I've been accepted and have added Google Adsense see Lower right)

Let the hundreds of nano-dollars roll in!

Monday, June 14, 2004

Monty Python: Fellowship of the Ring

Monty Python: Fellowship of the Ring

A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat! ...SAY NO MORE!!

A fresh look at the waterfall

Via The Bitter Endl






Development phase, by its old name Truly representative name for the phase
Analysis Dream
Design Guess and Waffle
Build Hack and Play
Test Wobble and Groan
Deploy Push and Pray
Support Duck and Deny


All too true

Sunday, June 13, 2004

How Google Took the Work Out of Selling Advertising

VIa the The New York Times (free registration required) is a interesting article on Googles AdSense.

The article starts about how technology has changed how we measure and think about intelligence : speed and accuracy in handling numbers was a mark of intellectual distinction until the appearance of calculators. No more. And retaining facts, names, and dates still is (hence "Jeopardy"), but Google and the Internet is quickly eroding that. The article does not mention that this has been going on for a long time; Homer no doubt complained how reading and writing was destroying civilization as evidenced by the decline of 6 hour memorized poetry. And remember how Chess was the mark of "smartness", well your likely too young to remember how 40 years ago Chess playing and AI were linked together. And I'm not even going to touch spelling and spell checkers, in case my own spell checker takes offence.

The article then goes to the heart of the article; the board ways computers are changing our mode of thought and interactions in unexpected ways.

As Ebay is changing the small business - by changing the smallest business of all: the yard sale, and blogs are rewriting the rules of publishing and journalism, so to is AdSense changing the rules of Advertising and the business models that make the small scale publishing/journalism business possible. And it does so by connecting web sites with ~150,00 potential advertisers without adding sales staff, or prepare media kits. Hers the key paragraph:

Why does that matter? It completes the publishing revolution brought on by the Internet. The first stage was the liberation of the reader, who, thanks to browsers, could look at publications in any part of the world. Next was the liberation of would-be publishers. Thanks to blogging tools, anyone can present his or her views online. And now, thanks to automated ad sales, small publishers have a more viable hope of creating a business, and keeping independent voices, than they did even a year ago. A. J. Liebling's wisecrack that "freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one" takes on new meaning when technical and financial barriers to creating a Web-based press drop so low.


and to close:

"Free expression" has always been freest when it has rested on a solid business base. Technology's latest unexpected effect on culture may be to help revive a diverse exchange of views.


In a way the article title is wrong. Google's AdSense has taken the work out of "Buying" Advertising for those who sell something other the Advertising. And made Google heaps of money in the process.

Should I give Adsense a spin here?

Campaigning for Copyright in Canada

Via Slashdot comes "Campaigning for Copyright in Canada" from Digital Copyright Canada (tag line : All Canadian Citizens are "Rights Holders" ) and Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic with a List of Issues and Questions to button hole your candidates

They has responses from 2 parties out of 5 (so far) on these issues and questions.

They also provide background details on the questions raised, but in the Time Honored Tradition of us ADD internet types here's the list :

  • What is your position on the issue of file-sharing in Canada - should it be illegal?

  • What is your position on using legislation to prohibit circumvention of TPMs (Technological Protection of Copyrighted Materials)?

  • Do you support an amendment to the Copyright Act to allow for the use of freely available materials on the Internet by participants in an educational program?

  • * Should ISPs be protected from liability for copyright infringement when others merely transmit copyrighted materials over their facilities, or when others post copyrighted works on websites that the ISP merely hosts?

  • What is your position on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage's proposed "notice and takedown" scheme requiring ISPs to remove content on the sole basis of alleged copyright infringement?

  • What is your position on increasing or mandating the use of open source software in government operations?

  • How do you propose to approach the problem of spam?

  • What is your position on National ID cards?



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