Musings from Bill
Here’s what I’ve tagged on del.icio.us on February 28th:
Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between February 24th and February 25th:
Pakistan is blocking YouTube because the site, a bastion of free expression, mashups, flexible attitudes to copyright and many other fine things – including me with Gu Pots on my head – contains material that is “blasphemous” and considered offensive to Islam.
It is yet another example of the way in which the world is dividing between those cultures and countries that are able to accept the existence of values that diverge from those they espouse and those which would like to remove all, those which are open and those which are closed.
It’s becoming clear that countries are the unit of network censorship, that the tales we told back in the 90’s about the end of the nation state were foolish dreams.
It’s also becoming clear that there is a price to pay for allowing nation states to assert their borders in cyberspace, a price that may in fact be too great.
Because soon almost all the places on the Internet where I spend my time and meet my friends will be off-limits in those countries, and I can’t help thinking that is a very bad state of affairs.
On Saturday I headed off to Bristol with Max and his mates Adam and Ryan. We were off to Watershed for a UK screening of ‘Rock Paper Scissors, Way of the Tosser’, a fantastic and funny Canadian film made by our friends Tim and April (who came over to Cambridge for last year’s film festival and charmed us all).
The film was great, the crowd was friendly and Max managed second place in the RPS competition held after the screening! It was worth the drive and the late night…
Here’s what I’ve tagged on del.icio.us on February 22nd:
Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between February 19th and February 21st:
Unlike some of my friends and family I’m not a heavy user of online auctions, and although I have an account on eBay my reputation as a seller or buyer doesn’t really matter that much to me.  At the moment I’ve got 100% positive feedback but the number of transactions is so small that it doesn’t really signify.
However heavy sellers and those who make a substantial proportion of their income from the site care deeply about the reports they get from other buyers and sellers.
Their concerns about negative feedback are well-grounded: in 2002 Paul Resnick and his colleagues did a proper randomised control experiment to assess the value of an eBay reputation, looking to see how much people would bid for articles from sellers with different scores. They found that sellers with established reputations can expect about 8 per cent more revenue than new sellers marketing the same goods.
I’m at a two day seminar in London, and it’s taking place – strange as it may seem – in the conference room on the third floor of the north tower of Tower Bridge. And fortunately the hotel has a nice view 🙂
Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between February 13th and February 17th:
It was foggy today. This was taken walking across Parker’s Piece – you can just make out Reality Checkpoint.
