On the last day in Benalmadena Max and I took the cable car up the mountain- where they have a falconry centre. A great display, including a Golden Eagle. And a friendly Harrier Hawk…
Olympic Gold
I don’t really care about the Olympics, but thought I’d have a look to see how well the broadcasters were doing with their online coverage. Having spotted this interesting comment on news.com I followed the link, installed the latest Silverlight, restarted my browser and…
So good to see the IOC understands the global importance of sport… and making money out of it.
Core Problem for Apple
[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website. And it was picked up on the MSDN Developer blog]
The computer manufacturer formerly known as ‘Apple Computer’ changed its name to Apple Inc. eighteen months ago, reflecting the growing importance to its profitability of consumer gadgets like iPods, shiny toys like iPhones and of course music sales from the iTunes Music Store.
It was a sensible move, since the real money is no longer in powerful multi-processor servers for high-end graphics, video and music production but in laptops for the Vista-resistant masses, phones to keep workers connected to corporate servers and music devices for the kids.
Being a cool brand really helps in this, of course. Apple’s reputation may be built on high design, functionality and usability, but a big part of its current success comes not from the quality of its products but careful control of all aspects of the message.
Excellent image of Capena
Just back from two weeks in the remarkably lovely town of Capena, north of Rome, and found this great faux image of the fountain at the end of Via Capena.
I saw this…
Here’s what I’ve tagged on del.icio.us:
- Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet – the only sensible option…
- Reporters sans frontières – Beijing Games 2008 – Advice from RSF
- Test: Silicon Swings and Silicon Roundabouts – read and digest before taking any action
- Cory Doctorow: Filesharing deal will drive swapping underground | Technology | guardian.co.uk – Cory speaks the truth, but underestimates just how painful, protracted and destructive the battle will be.
- Media face web censorship at Beijing Olympics | Sport | guardian.co.uk – Indeed
My del.icio.us bookmarks for July 23rd through July 30th
Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between July 23rd and July 30th:
- Web curbs for Olympic journalists – What a surprise…
- Plenty of Blame to Go Around in Yahoo Music Shutdown – Ed Felten knows who to blame, and I agree with him entirely.
- Exploit code targets Mac OS X, iTunes, Java, Winzip… – nasty little piece of software called Evilgrade that uses a man in the middle attack to exploit automatic update code.
- Consultation on legislative options to address illicit P2P file-sharing – BERR – UK government consultation opens..
- How to make our newspapers profitable again: David Aaronovitch Simulator | The Wardman Wire – ah, how entertaining…
- Google Knol is evil | Seldo.Com Blog – Hard-hitting analysis: is Knol Google's 'IE vs Netscape' moment?
- Rocque London Index Map – Useful for anyone reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Trilogy, especially The System of the World
- AWS Service Health Dashboard – Amazon S3 Availability Event: July 20, 2008 – "With a large number of servers gossiping and failing while gossiping, Amazon S3 wasn't able to successfully process many customer requests" Excellent explanation, and good communication with customers
- xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language – By Randall Munroe – Ah yes… 🙂
- Ofcom report into Social networking usage – some reading for us all I think
- DRM still sucks: Yahoo Music going dark, taking keys with it – And yet the music industry wants ISPs and government to sustain their broken business model…
- Announcing the Open Web Foundation – Open Web Foundation – Could be useful
- Read Giles Coren's letter to Times subs | Media | guardian.co.uk – I didn't expect to, but I agree with him
- Cuomo strong-arms Comcast over Usenet | The Iconoclast – politics, law, and technology – CNET News.com – Nice analysis of a dangerous tactic
- MySQL forks: could Drizzle be the next of the new generation of relational database? | O'Reilly News – Seeing a major system fork is like watching close friends divorce. Wish them both well…
Watching the Olympics
[As ever you can read this on the BBC News website – and it seems the story is already moving on, with reports that press access to the net will be filtered by the Chinese]
I won’t be going to Beijing for the Olympic Games next month, and in fact I probably won’t even be going to London in 2012 when it’s our turn to host the festivities.
I don’t watch athletics or any of the other events that will be taking place. I don’t support a football team either, or have much interest in cricket despite being an English male. Sport just doesn’t excite me at all.
But even though I don’t care which country wins most gold medals or whether world records are broken for running, jumping or throwing odd-shaped objects, I’ll be watching what goes on around the Olympic Games with keen interest, because this world-wide sporting event offers a fascinating perspective on the state of the internet today.
Shouting ‘bug’ on a crowded Internet…
[As ever you can read this on the BBC News website, and it’s also on CircleID]
In the last few weeks we’ve seen two very different approaches to the full disclosure of security flaws in large-scale computer systems.
Problems in the domain name system have been kept quiet long enough for vendors to find and fix their software, while details of how to hack Transport for London’s Oyster card will soon be available to anyone with a laptop computer and a desire to break the law.
These two cases highlight a major problem facing the computing industry, one that goes back many years and is still far from being resolved. Given that there are inevitably bugs, flaws and unexpected interactions in complex systems, how much information about them should be made public by researchers when the details could be helpful to criminals or malicious hackers.
My del.icio.us bookmarks for July 17th through July 22nd
Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between July 17th and July 22nd:
- Matasano?s ?blunder? « Ars Militaria: Research Institute of Systematic Misanthropy – Outline of what is believed to be Dan Kaminsky's cache poisoning finding
- RANDOM.ORG – Coin Flipper – I really like this… especially the older coins
- Techdirt: A Detailed Explanation Of How The BSA Misleads With Piracy Stats – Excellent dissection of the dodgy stats used to overstate the financial impact of unlicensed software
- how carphone warehouse took my iphone & ruined my credit rating – I'm so glad I didn't try to get myself an iPhone. I don't think I ever will
My del.icio.us bookmarks for July 13th through July 17th
Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between July 13th and July 17th:
- iPhone problems – how carphone warehouse took my iphone & ruined my credit rating
- Mac vs PC – YouTube – Mac vs. PC – Halo Style
- Android – Google’s Android platform: not so open after all
- Schneier on Security: Man-in-the-Middle Attacks – We need a firefox extension to display certificate details in the address bar
- The fake-space race: Design and the future of travel – Excellent reflection on the failures of telepresence and what we could do instead
- EXTRA LIVES: INTERSECTIONS OF VIDEO GAMES AND FILM | AAIFF08 – Interesting event – planning something similar for the Cambridge Film Festival in September