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The last week has seen some interesting progress for the n900. Firstly it was great to see
phototranslator finally being availiable in
extras-devel. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about having lost patience waiting and played
with OCR myself. However phototranslator has put it together in a slick package and combines
with google translate api to provide a pretty cool application.
Obviously it is of most use if you are travelling to a foriegn country, translating signs and
menus as you go, but it is still interesting to play with and just show off the capabilities of
the device (without having to drop to a terminal).
Perhaps the major new item this week is sygic’s mobile maps being released
for sale. There was much rumour that they had been waiting to release via Nokia’s ovi
store. However, they have made it aviliable for sale via their own site.
I purchased it on Friday after some of the initial rush had died down, and sygic had some chance
to get their servers working properly. Some of the first off the mark reported painfully slow
downloads which dropped and they had to use resuming downloaders to get all the way through. At
1.8gb I didn’t really want to deal with download problems. Given that the program requires
activation via their site, it’s not clear why they didn’t just torrent the file and
save their servers a lot of problems.
Nonetheless when I came to make my purchase I got about 200kb/sec and it downloaded in about
90mins.
I had read the maemo forums and seen people had trouble with segfaults if the data folders
weren’t in the right place. So I copied to the /home/user/MyDocs folder as instructed. What
I didn’t do was unplug my usb cable, just unmounted the n900 and left it charging only. I
got a segfault running the application
I rebooted the phone, unplugged the cable and then it ran fine to the point of product
activation. Where I selected ‘automatic’ and entered my product code. Only to find it
sat doing nothing for a minute then segfaulted….
At this point I was a little concerned about the quality of the app. It’s response to the
unexpected seems to be to segfault, which doesn’t seem like good code to me.
However, after actually reading some instructions I realised I should go through manual
activation, and that product code != Activation code. I went via their site and got my activation
code and at last I was up and running.
Once going, I’ve had no further problems. It’s a fast application and seems very
good. I’ve only used it to route me home from work, but it did so well. The thing I noticed
was how fast it recalculated when I intentionally deviated from the route. No sooner than I made
the turn than I looked down to see new route laid out. To be fair I’m comparing to a now
pretty old tomtom, but it’s recalculation always took a few seconds of processing.
The other thing I noticed was that the map has a housing estate in my town that was built perhaps
5 years ago, but does not have some mini roundabouts on my route home from years before that.
I also note that it doesn’t seem to care about traffic lights. By which I mean it gives no
indication that it would consider them as a factor in routing decisions. I don’t know if
any do, but I hold out hope one day to get routing that knows that 9am on a weekday could mean
several extra minutes going through traffic lights.
The maemo forums where quickly full of interesting tips/hacks to enable fullscreen operation
& open up more menu options. This allows for portrait operation and more controls. I
don’t know why sygic didn’t have these enabled by default, perhaps they are not fully
tested so have been left in an implicit ‘unsupported’ state, but easy to switch on.
Some think it’s crazy to pay €59 for something nokia might do for free in
ovi maps. However given nokias track record so far I’m not at all convinced they are going
to give away anything even close to as good as sygics offering. In terms of price, I paid more
for just the France maps addition on my old tomtom, so €59 for the whole of
europe seems very good value to me. Now I just need my brodit active holder to ship…
Rumours have increased that firmware release 1.2 is imminent. Based on some wishful thinking and
the fact that the UK has finally gotten the 1.1.1 release that the rest of the world got weeks
ago. Along with a number of bugs being marked explicitly as in pr 1.2. Neither of these things
need have any baring on the release of the next update, but wishful thinking is hard to put down
.
I also became aware this week of TweeGo, a new twitter
client. This one written with c++/qt and looking very nice. A much slicker ui than my own witter.
I am really glad to see more options being actively developed, bringing more choice to n900
users.
Perhaps more significantly than the other things this week… I wrote the code to add avatar
support to witter. Though as yet it’s not ready to release, it should be reasonably
shortly. (Perhaps this should really be something for next week rather than last)
For a long time I pretty much refused to consider avatar support. I figured it would do nothing
but take up memory, use up screen space, and slow things down. And it would cost time in coding I
was unwilling to spend. However, this week I came accross a thread on maemo forums with some good
examples of what I would need. So I had a play and found it didn’t take too long to get
basic support working. Although it must make the memory footprint bigger, it doesn’t appear
to hurt performance. So at somepoint soon witter will look something like this:
To have a few new things arriving for the n900 in a short space of time really gave me the
feeling that it is gathering momentum. Getting better and better all the time.
This momentum enourages more development, and hopefully more good information such as the thread
I found, which in turn leads to more, better applications.
With a cool new technology demo in phototranslator, a great pay-for gps option from sygic and a
slick new twitter client in TweeGo, it’s hard not to feel optimistic about the future for
the N900 after a week like this.
Generally, I do not think you should go into such detail and try to workaround issues with your
version control using TeamCity. Moreover, the concrete behavior depends on the version control
you use.
I agree that ideally I should not care what TC does with the VCS, but at the moment we are
experiencing major issues with the load TC is exercising on our VCS, and we have to find a way to
deal with it. Our code base is pretty big, and checking it out completely might take tens of
minutes, which is something we cannot deal with. So any advice on this side is welcome.
In general, in case of server-side checkout, TeamCity caches the sources on the server per VCS
root checkout settings and goes to the version control server for the clean patch only once per
day with all the rest builds only retrieving incremental patch from the VCS server.
So, as far as I understand, if I have several build configurations sharing the same VCS root but
each one with different checkout rules (which we set up with the aim of improving checkout
performance), do they share a common clean patch or does each one of them require a standalone
patch? In the second case I guess our decision to fine-tune the checkout rules per build
configuration is counter productive then, and we better remove them completely, can you confirm?
In this case, however, we need to configure build triggering rules, since we don't want to see a
build starting because something has been checked in which doesn't have anything to do with this
build configuration.
However, sometimes building incremental patch can be not quicker then building a full one. e.g.
AFAIK for TFS there is no full patch cached by TeamCity.
Can you explain this?
Do you really need to use non-default checkout directory? This note relates to the case:
I do. Please take into account that certain codebases might be very complex, and while removing
the need for a special checkout directory might be very simple in most cases because of well
factored code which doesn't need to know where it's running, it other cases, when you have to
maintain large chunks of legacy code, this might just not be possible. This is our case, where
the code - test code - needs to be running in a specific location on the file system and
considering to make it independent of this constraint requires a lot of work.
- a build A with certain VCS settigns is build in the directory X
- whan a build B with different VCS settigns is going to build in the same
directory X, TeamCity first deleted the content of the directory and performs clean patch.
BTW, luckily we are in a situation in which different build configurations use the same checkout
directory but with same VCS settings.
dogbolter writes "South Australian Attorney General, Michael Atkinson, infamous for the banning of
R18+ rated games and the censoring of political comment in Australia, has quit. The recent South
Australian election provided a massive swing against Atkinson's governing labor party. As a direct
result of the South Australian election result, he is standing down. Hopefully someone with half a
clue will assume the vacant post and overturn the decision to ban adult oriented computer games."
dogbolter writes "South Australian Attorney General, Michael Atkinson, infamous for the banning of
R18+ rated games and the censoring of political comment in Australia, has quit. The recent South
Australian election provided a massive swing against Atkinson's governing labor party. As a direct
result of the South Australian election result, he is standing down. Hopefully someone with half a
clue will assume the vacant post and overturn the decision to ban adult oriented computer games."
Gamers4Croydon has hailed the decision by South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson to
step down as "fantastic", as the party nervously waits to find out if it won a Legislative Council
seat in the state's election yesterday.
If the rumors and speculation are correct, Google.cn may shut as soon as this week.
Most pundits will likely praise Google for staring down the Chinese government and choosing
“doing good” over “doing evil”. To help Google shareholders and the rest
of the world better understand this decision (assuming it occurs of course), would Google please
answer the following questions?
This year's Emerald City Con was... an extraordinary experience.
Truthfully, I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around some of it. Doing our Artist's Alley
table as a fundraiser for the Cartooning Class was very much a last-minute, spur-of-the-moment
decision, we weren't organized about it at all... and I was very moved, and a little awed, at how
well the kids came through. Not just the current students but many of our grads, as well.
The experience could be summed up in this exchange between our friend Lorinda and myself. At one
point, I shook my head and muttered, "This is so amazing... I mean, teaching, it's like putting a
note in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean, you never really know how it's going to work out."
Rin replied, "Well, you sure had a lot of bottles come back this weekend."
We took a lot of pictures and I think I'll just run those for you and talk a little bit about
each one.
*
This is what it looked like before we opened.
And another.
This is the last time we would experience quiet until Sunday evening. LATE Sunday evening. My
ears are still ringing a little.
Outside, the crowd was milling around panting to get in.
Clearly, convention security was going to be overtaxed so the stormtroopers thought they'd assist
with crowd control.
And then we were off....
This may give you a little bit of an idea of the swarms that descended once the doors were open.
Saturday, in particular, was Hell Day.
Fortunately, we had a great crew. I honestly don't know how Julie and I ever used to do this by
ourselves. It takes a teenage metabolism to keep up with the Saturday hordes at a convention.
In the rear we have Rachel, Aja, and that's Katrina under the mop, with our friend Rin in the
front. Rachel decided to be Rogue again this year, as you can see. Katrina wanted to dress up too
but couldn't decide on an outfit (she'd brought a couple.) This is the one she started with, a
character of her own named Connor, but Connor only lasted till noon or so.
Once again this year, we won the lottery by having awesome neighbors. One one side we had Jeffrey
Ellis and the crew from Cloudscape
Comics, a small-press artists-collective outfit based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
I bought their anthology book EXPLODED VIEW partly to say thanks for putting up with us but it
turns out that I really like it.
It looks a lot like a grown-up version of what we do in class, actually -- every member of the
group contributes a few pages' worth of work and then there's bios in the back. Same basic
format, just with real production values. A lot of good stuff in here.
They do a raunchy humor self-published book and a podcast as well.
I'm so embarrassed I can't remember their names -- I know I introduced myself at some point, but
I couldn't really hear them very well. The echo chamber in the hall, once the crowds were in,
made it nearly impossible to converse on Saturday. But they were great, swore up and down they
loved being next to us and claimed we brought them a lot of extra traffic. They were especially
hilarious about pretending to almost-swear in front of the kids but they never actually did.
Since we were doing a for-real fundraiser, and thus actually accepting money, our setup changed a
little this year.
The idea was that we had students on the left, alumni on the right. As people would approach, the
kids would offer them a giveaway book, and if they stopped, then they'd volunteer to sign it.
Ben, Marie, and Eileen, working hard.
Then Katie or myself would explain about the budget shortfall and collecting for donations, and
add that anything over $10 got you a custom sketch from an alum. More often than not, they'd at
least stop and admire the sample sketches we had up, and put a couple of bucks in the box.
Here's a customer getting The Spiel. Marie, especially, was really good at explaining to people
what we were doing.
Many did in fact commission sketches.
Once we were set up it went fairly smoothly despite being a bit cramped, up against the wall as
we were.
That's me and my boss, Katie. For the last seven years I've exhorted my various supervisors at
school to come to the convention and really see how hard the kids work, but this was the
first time anyone took me up on it. It really was a lot of fun having Katie there as she knew
nothing about comics, conventions, or geek culture in general. But she adapted quickly. Watching
her take in the experience was a lot of fun, and by the end of her day there she was a complete
convert. At one point Katie was even speculating on the possibility of doing this kind of thing
more often and wondering what other shows there were that we could attend as a class. The
Stumptown Festival in Portland, especially, was a possibility we talked about quite a bit. (Katie
was also interested in hearing about WonderCon and APE, but I told her, "Baby steps. I'm only
just now getting to a place where I think I know how to get us to THIS show.")
The alumni were kept very busy sketching all day both days.
Fortunately they love to draw but my GOD they worked hard. I wish I'd gotten more shots of their
work, it was of an extraordinarily high level, especially the high school kids. I was so proud of
all of them and the way they've all kept learning and growing as artists, years after leaving my
charge.
I did get a few. Here's one of Aja's.
And this is one of Katrina's custom commissions. She asked the lady what she wanted and the woman
said, "Well, I like octopuses." (Yes, I know it's octopi but that's what she said.)
For a second I thought Katrina was going to be stuck but then she blew out this caricature of the
woman herself with an octopus on her head. Yeah, the kids are THAT good.
Some people were kind of crass about it. This mother, especially, was really annoying. First she
wanted to know what she'd be getting for her ten dollars.
It takes a special kind of chutzpah to haggle with a sixteen-year-old volunteer over your
CHARITABLE ACT.
Katrina rather helplessly pointed to the samples, but it developed that this woman wanted to see
the actual sketch before she would pay for it.
And this woman wanted something special, too-- a caricature of her two boys... an action pose of
the two of them in their martial arts class. Geez lady, demanding much?
Here's Katrina working on the commission -- I cropped her out, but cheapskate Mom is hovering
just out of frame, watching like a hawk to make sure she gets her money's worth.
Katrina was amazingly diplomatic about it. I thought Rin was going to go ballistic on the woman
and I had to squelch a few sharp remarks myself. She deserved some kind of smack.
The two boys with the final product. I think they were a little embarrassed over how their mother
treated Katrina.
Fortunately, the finished product satisfied everyone and we got the ten bucks.
But most of our visitors were much nicer. You remember Rachel's shot of the X-Men at the beach?
Guess who got that one.
Yeah, that's Matt Fraction, proud new owner of Rachel's X-Men Beach Party. This may be my
favorite photo from the show. Only in comics do moments like this happen: my former student
Rachel, the world's most ardent fan of the X-Men, posing with Matt Fraction, current writer of
the X-Men comic, who's just told her that her cartoon is brilliant, that he would love to do a
scene of the team at the beach and that she's caught all their personalities perfectly.
Matt was great with all the kids. He signed autographs, talked with them about comics, and
generally was awesome. Here he is signing an autograph for Emma.
It was only a couple of minutes out of his day but I know how hard it can be to
get away from your table when you're working a show, and it really meant a lot to the students to
have a pro take such an interest. Even my students, whose comics fandom usually begins and ends
with manga, know who Iron Man and the X-Men are. They were thrilled that he stopped by.
Michael Alan Nelson also visited our table briefly.
The kids loved him too, though they had only the vaguest idea of who he was -- I explained he
worked for Boom! Comics and I think many of them had the idea he worked on the Muppets or
something, since that was always where the line was over there. I enjoyed getting to meet him at
last -- I interviewed him here a while back, but it was via e-mail and we'd
never met in person. I am a big fan of his Fall Of Cthulhu series, and I got
Swordsmith Assassin at the show as well, since Chip Mosher sent us the first issue for
review and I liked it quite a lot, I'd been meaning to pick it up for a while now... though I
forgot to ask Mr. Nelson to sign it. Too busy chitchatting.
I was mostly at our table all weekend, but Julie got out some. There was no way she was missing
Leonard Nimoy.
She was actually in panels for most of Saturday, she also went to see Wil Wheaton and Stan Lee.
Of them all, I think Julie was the most impressed with Nimoy's, she said he was "inspiring."
As for me, well, I was enjoying my time at the table because it was turning into old home week.
We had many visitors from past classes -- Amethyst, Jessica, Shane, Andrew, and Jay, among
others. Some I hardly recognized because they're, you know, adults now. (The
last time I saw Jay he was a scrawny little soft-spoken kid. Today he's in his twenties, six feet
tall and ponytailed, very outgoing with an infectious laugh. And of course his voice is an octave
lower.)
Some even volunteered to put in some time sketching for us, which melted me. Lindon popped up out
of nowhere and immediately wanted to put in some table time. Of course I agreed.
A lot of the kids dressed up this year, too. Saturday Lindon was in street clothes, but Sunday
she was Pikachu.
I took this one just because it made me laugh.
That's right, Pikachu supports Cartooning in schools!
This is Lindon and Devon. I shot this because when Lindon has her head down -- even today, she
always draws with her nose to the paper like that, it can't be comfortable but she always has to
get way down there -- anyway, it tickles me because it looks like Pikachu is sitting at the
table.
Lots of parents volunteered time too.
That's Marie, Ben, and Eileen, under the watchful eye of Gus' mother Marilyn. She looks a little
annoyed, not because of the three kids but because her own son has abandoned his post again.
I get three kinds of students -- the ones who want to write, the ones who want to draw, and the
ones who just want to geek out and be surrounded by comics. Gus is one of the geeks. He will
produce drawings if you lean on him, but for him the point of being at a con is to get
cool stuff. All I ask of the kids is to put in a ninety-minute shift at our table on the
day they attend, but Gus could hardly bring himself to even do that much, he'd brought money and
it was burning a hole in his pocket. First it was Leonard Nimoy's autograph -- even if you
brought your own item for him to sign it was still a wince-worthy forty dollars -- and then he
negotiated an advance on his allowance to go buy some comics.
Marilyn has always been one of my favorite parents and her reaction to this was completely
charming. She ordered Gus to stay at the table and do his job. Then she went off to go
get her son's comics herself. Naturally, not being an expert, she consulted me.
"Randy's Readers," I told her. "He's your guy. He sells comics that aren't collectible, just in
average shape... his market is people that don't really Collect with a capital C, but only want
to read comics. If I ever get a chance to take a break I was thinking of stopping over there
myself, to be honest."
Marilyn agreed that was the place to go and the girls were exhorting me to take some kind of a
break, and Marie wanted to come too, so off we went.
Marilyn explained that Gus wanted war comics. "So violent," she said, ruefully.
Gus did the tank for the group poster. He's all about the war comics.
I laughed. "Well, I grew up on blood and thunder myself, it's not all that damaging really. The
key is that there has to be a story, I try to make sure they aren't just doing a videogame
shoot-'em-up. There's a fine old tradition of war comics that did great stories, Sgt. Rock,
G.I. Combat, Unknown Soldier.... we'll find him some of the good stuff."
Marilyn perked up. "Yes, I know Gus liked that Unknown Soldier book you loaned him. I
was going to try and find some of those."
I brought this to class to show the boys that even hardcore shoot-em-ups still had to have a
STORY. For Gus it was love at first sight.
Mission defined, we now moved with a clear purpose. Once we were at Randy's booth Randy himself
stepped in and was very helpful, explaining to Marilyn that there was the Unknown Soldier series
from Star-Spangled War Storiesand then there were the ones in his own book.
"What's the difference?" Marilyn wanted to know.
"Later ones are probably cheaper," I told her, smiling. "But I don't think Gus will care that
much, he'd enjoy any of them."
As for me, in showing the various war series to Marilyn I stumbled across this one and decided I
couldn't pass it up for six bucks.
Sorry, Gus, I got this one.
Our Army At War #269, a reprint of stories featuring work by Joe Kubert, George Evans,
John Severin, Russ Heath, and even Mort Drucker (!) I could spend hours just looking at the
pictures in this one.
I also fell for a couple of Superboy Giant reprint collections from my childhood that
I'd been trying to replace for a while. Mostly these days I'm a trade paperback guy, but
nostalgia can still get me.
Marie said curiously, "I know who Superman is, but I never heard of Superboy."
"It's like Smallville, only he actually wears the costume," I heard myself say, and
suddenly felt a hundred years old as i realized there's probably two generations of schoolkids
now who know Smallville as 'their' Superman the way I think of Bates-Maggin-Swan
Bronze-Age Superman as 'mine.'
When we got back I told Gus he had the coolest mother ever. "At your age I'd have killed
for a mom who said, 'you finish your work, I'll go make sure you get your comics.' That's unheard
of."
Gus blushed, grinned sheepishly, and gave his mother a hug. Marilyn beamed and said, "I have my
moments."
There wasn't time for me to do a whole lot of shopping -- there never is -- but Rin found a
dealer who had a big box full of graphic novels and trades for $5 and I fell for a couple of
those, too.
Empire is one of those late 1970s Byron Preiss productions where he was deliberately
trying to move comics into a bookstore market -- about twenty-five years too soon, it turned out,
but he produced some handsome books when he was trying. This one was an original piece by Samuel
Delany and Howard Chaykin, hoping to scoop up some of that newly-minted SF audience that Star
Wars created back then. I'd never actually read it and I've always been curious about it.
Holliday I've never heard of, but I'm always up for a Western comic, and for a $5 trade
paperback it's hard to go wrong.
Most of our shopping, though, we tried to do in Artist's Alley itself as much as possible. We
like to support the creators. Julie picked up the new Muppet book from Boom! where Amy Mebberson
was -- you should pardon the expression -- doing a BOOMing business.
Possibly the most popular artist at the show this year.
She was kept busy all weekend. A lovely lady, she was great with all the kids that came up to her
and sketched Kermits and Animals and Miss Piggys till her hands were raw, most likely. I don't
think a single kid went away empty-handed.
And I made it a point to pick up a bunch of stuff from Camilla d'Errico on Sunday morning. I was
able to catch her a few minutes before the show opened, when it was actually possible to have a
conversation.
Camilla's a favorite with my kids.
Camilla has been a great friend to my students for many years now... they don't remember her name
but they all know the Awesome Manga Lady From Vancouver. I bought about $25 worth of stuff from
her because A) I can use it in class and B) she deserves to be rich and I do what I can. She had
a line all weekend but I did get to chat with her for a few minutes on Sunday morning. Largely on
what became the typical Sunday conversation topic in Artist's Alley, "Great to see you, sorry I
didn't come by earlier, we were stuck at the table.... My God! Wasn't yesterday hell? How many
people did YOU get?" Everyone loved the increase in business but hated fighting through the
crowds on Saturday.
Sunday afternoon I did get around a little bit. I got a couple of books signed from Kurt Busiek
and Len Wein, and I had a flattering couple of minutes with Les McClaine, original artist on
The Middleman. He saw my badge and said, "Hey, Greg Hatcher! I love your column!"
Seriously. I was shocked speechless. I spluttered and fumfuh'd and blushed like a schoolgirl,
finally managing to choke out that I was a huge fan of his, that my students and I all adored
The Middleman. This pleased him, and we agreed that it was a shame it didn't last but it
was great to have something that cool exist at all.
And I got to say hi to Pete and Rebecca Woods, from Periscope Studios. We hadn't seen Rebecca in
about six years, she hadn't come to ECCC in a while, so it was great to catch up. Rebecca
immediately wanted to know how Brianna was doing, since when Bri was my student years ago she
practically camped out at the Periscope Studios table, and Rebecca happily adopted her. I told
her that Bri wanted desperately to come this year but she had finals up at Bellingham, she was in
college up at Western. Then we had a mutual groan about how old we are getting.
Because Bri couldn't make it to the convention this year, we wanted to at least let her know she
was missed.
When I got the idea to recruit additional Cartooning alumni to do charity sketches for our
fundraiser, my first two thoughts were Brianna and Nadine. They're both in college now, and
they've kept up with their comics work as well. They were pretty amazing in the seventh grade,
and they've only gotten better.
Here's what Bri was doing when she was in my class...
...and here's a more current piece.
Sadly, Brianna had finals or she'd have been there with bells on, she assured us.
Nadine had finals too but she did make it down, which delighted me. She was probably the single
most gifted student I've ever had. Her serial "Mermaid's Touch" still gets gasps of awe when the
kids go through the old books.
In fact, when Katrina joined my class when she was in middle school, she was so inspired by
Nadine's work that she took the same pen name, "KittyBell."
· Liberal Democrat 'ready to be chancellor'
· Whitehall mandarins prepare for coalition
Vince Cable has held unprecedented and detailed talks with the top official at the Treasury about
the Liberal Democrats' economic policies – and declared himself willing to
serve as chancellor after the next election.
As Whitehall gears up for a possible hung parliament, Cable told the Observer that he
had been questioned by Nicholas Macpherson, the Treasury's permanent secretary, about what the
Lib Dems' demands would be in a coalition with Labour or the Tories.
Cable was unaware of such meetings having taken place with Lib Dem shadow chancellors before
previous general elections. The talks were a sign that the Treasury was "taking seriously" the
prospect of his party playing a leading role in economic policy in what could be the first hung
parliament since 1974.
"He wanted to know what we attached priority to. He wanted to know what we felt strongly about,"
Cable said, adding that his ideas on tax and spending were well received. He didn't say to me:
'Yes, minister, but you can't do that'."
Cable, whose credibility has grown throughout the economic crisis, made clear that, if he was to
be offered the chancellorship in a hung parliament, he would jump at the chance. He did not want
to be "the most unpopular person in Britain" as public spending is slashed, he said, but added:
"I wouldn't be in this business if I wasn't willing to take the responsibility if it was to come
my way."
It comes as two more opinion polls point to a hung parliament. An ICM survey for the News of
the World puts the Tories six points ahead on 38%, and research by YouGov for the Sunday
Times suggested the party enjoyed a seven-point advantage.
David Cameron and his shadow cabinet have already held talks with senior Whitehall mandarins in
preparation for a likely handover of power. But talks with a third party take place only where
there is a serious prospect of it holding the balance of power.
Downing Street and the Treasury said Alistair Darling would present a "budget for growth" on
Wednesday, portraying Labour as the party to nurse the economy back to health, with investment in
jobs and industry, and warning that the Conservatives would jeopardise that with premature
spending cuts.
The chancellor has little room for manoeuvre in pre-election giveaways, but one idea being
seriously considered is to delay a 3p rise in petrol duty. Darling will announce a £1bn
green infrastructure fund to invest in low-carbon technology and extend job schemes to help
unemployed young people into work.
While the deficit is expected to be as much as £10bn below the £178bn forecast in his
December pre-budget report, the Treasury stresses the focus will be on the chancellor's
commitment to halve the deficit within four years. "It's a boring budget," said a No 10
source. "He may extend the odd payment here and there, but it is about stability and jobs."
In his weekly podcast, Gordon Brown states today that the recovery remains "fragile and in its
infancy". The prime minister says that Labour's commitment to cut the deficit is
"non-negotiable", but stresses that investing in jobs and programmes for industry is a way to
reduce it in the medium term.
"It means not taking away the extra support too soon, which risks setting back the recovery and
tipping us back into recession... If we allow unemployment to run riot, as happened in previous
recessions, that will cost us more and add to the deficit," he says.
Cable made clear he would have serious reservations about working with either Labour or the
Conservatives. "I'm worried about both," he said. "If either of them came back, Gordon, given his
history, will be in denial about difficult decisions, and the Tories are in danger of doing
foolish, precipitate things that could make the situation a lot worse."
Cable was noticeably more critical of the Conservatives' response to the financial crisis, saying
that they should score "nul points" for failing to grasp the seriousness of the situation. "They
haven't done anything to attract praise, because they completely and totally misunderstood the
problems."
By contrast, Labour had had a "purple passage" in the autumn of 2008, when Brown led
international efforts to recapitalise the banking sector after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
The Conservatives sought to seize the initiative on reforming the bloated financial sector this
weekend, promising to implement a US-style tax on banks if they win the general election, instead
of waiting for an international consensus to emerge, as Labour has promised to do. Cameron
spelled out the measure in a speech about taking on the "vested interests" in society, comparing
the battle to constrain the banks today with Margaret Thatcher's attack on union powers in the
1980s.
Lord Myners, the City minister, said: "This ill-thought-out Tory briefing has all the hallmarks
of a plan made up on the hoof."
The favourite new drug of clubbers and schoolchildren hit the headlines last week when two young
men died after taking it. Sold under a range of street names – meph, miaow
miaow, MC, drone and bubbles – and easily available on the web, mephedrone is
not illegal. But should it be? Here, four people from different sides of the debate
– a user, a mother, a dealer and a doctor – have their say
on 'the poor man's cocaine'
The user: Jack Starks
The first time I encountered mephedrone, meow meow, plant food or whatever you want to call it,
was about a year ago at a friend's house in south London. We were back from a night out at the
student union and all wanting to continue the party when my friend's flatmate, Brandon, got back
from work and, with a sly smile, disappeared into his bedroom, to return with a huge box. He
dumped the biggest pile of powder I had ever seen on the table. "This, my friends, is
mephedrone," he said with relish. "And this is the future."
Like many students, I've never been one to say no to a new experience. We all end up running into
drugs at some point, so I decided to see what all the fuss was about. I've always enjoyed a
spliff and, on occasion, a little more, so I assumed this was just another casual substance I
would be bumping into.
Nicknamed by users as "poor man's cocaine", mephedrone has swept through our nation's youth like
a strong dose of salts, permeating every aspect of the party and night club scene. In less than
six months, it has come from obscurity; everyone knows someone who's on it. Paradoxically, it was
given a chance to become popular because of an EU restriction that prevented the importation of
two substances necessary to the production of MDMA (ecstasy to the layman) that made it
impossible to make or purchase any MDMA in Britain from late 2008. Mephedrone filled the gap in
the market, and at half the cost of MDMA; it was everywhere.
You can snort it, drop it in "bombs" (rolling papers filled with it), and I've even come across
people who eat it. The effect is euphoric, in some ways similar to ecstasy but much
shorter-lived; you need to take a lot more of it a lot more often. The first time I took it, I
could feel my heart pounding; everything seemed as if it was about to explode into life and I was
up till the early hours in a wild rampage of excitement. But there any comparison ends. With
mephedrone, the romance period is very short: after taking it just a couple of times, your
tolerance increases dramatically, to the point that you're doing three or four times more than
you were in the beginning to get high. Your appetite for the stuff also increases.
Brandon was well ahead of the curve. He was importing it from China at about a £1 a gram
and selling it to students at £15. By mid-October, when our student loans had still failed
to appear and finance was getting tight, we hit on the idea of doing the same. We could simply
make a trip down to a seedy office in Victoria where we could buy it in bulk at wholesale price
and then sell it on to our friends at a profit. Doing this you could turn £100 into
£400 in a weekend and have a bit left on the side for yourself.
It became a crash course in drug dealing for beginners, and we weren't the only ones at it.
Hundreds of students had spotted the gap in the market. You couldn't set foot in a club or
house-party without someone walking past offering you "drone".
Whether or not this was legal is a good question, because although mephedrone isn't covered by
the Misuse of Drugs Act, it is illegal to sell it for human consumption. Companies get round this
by putting stickers on their product saying just that. When selling it, we would always tell
people that it was not to be used to get high – it was almost a running joke.
A very dangerous joke indeed.
When on it, you get very edgy (hence the comparison to cocaine) and you constantly crave more. It
is possibly the most addictive substance I have ever come across. What makes it far more
dangerous is that it is the first of a new breed of designer drugs, made purely to evade the laws
surrounding controlled substances.
No one has considered what this will do to people in the short or the long term, and no one
cares. Mephedrone might be called "plant food", but it is a plant decomposer, so what it does to
your insides I dread to think. I once accidentally left a spoon in a bag of the stuff and came
back three days later to find it had stripped off the outer coating and my mephedrone scattered
with tiny silver bits of spoon. We still snorted it.
My stance was changed dramatically by my experience of prolonged use. After three or so months of
using it at least a couple of times a week, I found myself in the darkest depression. I stopped
taking it and suddenly found myself looking round at my friends with their eyes rolling in their
heads and realised how much rubbish we had all been talking to each other. Good, straight-edge
kids who barely used to drink have become crazed drug fiends, sitting in their house snorting
plant food five days a week.
One friend of mine took it once and now has to use an inhaler, because he has permanently damaged
his lungs. Another has almost ceased to be a friend, and is now a socially apathetic zombie,
chasing mephedrone around London with his girlfriend, no longer able to interact without it,
constantly asking if he can borrow 20 quid.
We've always been happy to get wasted on a night out, but I've never seen anything creep into so
many everyday lives like this. I am horrified by the effect this drug has had on the people
around me, and would urge anyone thinking about taking some tonight to change their plans.
Jack Starks is a student in his early 20s who lives in south London
The mother: Sophie Radice
For all those parents who have read with sadness about the deaths of an 18-year-old and a
19-year-old in Scunthorpe, but allowed themselves to be even slightly reassured that their own
teenagers can't have come across mephedrone because they are so much younger, not yet clubbing
and living very different lives, think again.
I first heard about mephedrone six months ago, at first from another north London mother whose
son had ordered this "plant food" off the internet and who had roused her suspicions when he
couldn't explain why he had suddenly developed an interest in gardening.
Then from my own daughter, aged 14 at the time, whose friends had discovered this legal high. She
described them as "talking rubbish as if it is the most interesting thing in the world, and that
they dribble and lick their lips and gurn and grind their teeth".
She said that people shook, bit holes in their lips and cheeks, were unable to feel their legs,
were frightened because their heart was beating too fast and that their skin looked grey.
This might seem like any teenage group that has discovered harder drugs. It is rather like a
description of my own group of friends at that age. What is different is that, in those six
months, those friends who thought they were just experimenting seemed to need to take greater
amounts of mephedrone on more and more occasions. Mephedrone is often sold in five gram bags and,
as it is so "more-ish", it seems to be easy – even common –
for a user to go through a whole bag.
Surely that kind of ever-decreasing, short-lived high is what makes dealers extremely rich and
leads to the kind of desperate endless addiction of the crack-user?
Should all of this mean that we should immediately ban it? Well, I have always had a liberal view
about drugs, believing that the criminalisation of drugs just creates an underground. I look at
how making ketamine (a horse tranquilliser) a class C drug didn't stop its use among the young.
On an intellectual level, I agree with Professor David Nutt's measured suggestion of creating a
"holding" class of D drug category. Within this category, sales would be limited to over-18s; the
product would be quality-controlled, at doses limited as far as possible to safe levels; and it
would come with health education messages. I also agree with Nutt that what we should look into
is why teenagers are so drawn to taking drugs and why binge-drinking is so prevalent in this age
group.
On a much more visceral, instinctive level, this "let's wait and see how harmful this drug is" D
category doesn't comfort me at all. For this younger age group, the legality of mephedrone is a
real attraction. While they can get hold of "weed" to smoke (mostly through older siblings, and
even parents), because they are not yet going to clubs but to each other's houses or private
parties they are rarely able to get their hands on harder drugs.
They can buy mephedrone off the internet or from headshops (shops selling drug paraphernalia) or
stalls. Teenagers of this age seem to think that its legality means that it is safer than other
drugs, which might also contribute to the wild abandon with which it is taken.
Health warnings wouldn't do a thing (my daughter says that, perversely, the deaths in Scunthorpe
have made her friends even more determined to take the drug) and surely an over-18s rule on the
net would be just like those porn sites that ask you to click a button to say that you are over
18 and that's all the proof you need. Prosecution of those selling to under-18s would be almost
impossible in cases of website dealing.
For this age group, making mephedrone a class B drug would at least put up some sort of
substantial hurdle and make it much harder for them to get hold of.
Just making it so much more difficult to track down may cause enough of a pause for some sort of
easing-off from the enthusiastic consumption of what seems to be a particularly addictive drug.
Oh, and while we are waiting for a decision on this, look out for a fishy smell in your
teenager's sweat, nose bleeds, restlessness, headaches, insomnia and a traces of yellowy powder
on the surfaces in their room.
Sophie Radice is a journalist and mother of two who first came across the drug last year
The dealer: Mark
I have no background in narcotics. My worst offence is a puff on a joint in college, which I
found unpleasant. I am at heart "anti" substance abuse, though I am in favour of free choice.
I own and run three normal, legitimate businesses, all of which, thanks to the recession, have
had their troubles. Have you ever laid off a loyal member of staff? It's the worst feeling in the
world. I was looking for a lifeline.
I first heard of mephedrone in September. A friend heard about a new chemical that was originally
a kind of plant food. It was legal and its effects mimicked cocaine and MDMA. I started searching
for information on Google and within an hour I knew this would be a winning business.
From the start, I wanted to run this completely legitimately. No shady cash deals, pay tax, give
excellent service with a quality product at the right price. Was I comfortable with the concept?
No. Did I want to lose my home to the bank? No. Decision made.
In the first weeks, I bought my stock inside the UK, but very quickly I began buying direct from
a manufacturer in China. I registered a company and contacted a web designer.
This is where the problems started. Even before the press discovered mephedrone, it was not
possible to find good professional help. Undaunted, I built my own website. No banks would touch
the credit card side of the business. I fudged round this and I was up and running. I launched
the website and within an hour had five sales. My first week I turned over £8,000; the
second, £10,000.
Then, last November, mephedrone hit the headlines. Its use was blamed for the death of a
14-year-old girl, although this turned out not to be the case. I thought it was the end. How
wrong I was. That week, sales doubled. When mephedrone is in the news, demand rockets. Last week
came the death of two boys. (I cannot comment on this tragedy, except to say I do not believe
mephedrone was the cause.) One of my websites, which usually gets around 1,200 hits a day,
received more than 20,000. The media have made mephedrone what it is.
Before you leap to judgment, do you drink alcohol? It is deadly, with 8,000 deaths directly
attributed to it in the UK in 2008. There is a huge trade in illegal drugs in the UK. But people
do not have to be criminals. They don't have to buy bags of drain cleaner from dodgy blokes in
pub car parks.
The process of importing has become difficult lately, as UK Customs has begun withholding
shipments. I have had 40kg seized. No explanation has been given and Customs has made no contact.
This is surely illegal.
Mephedrone looks likely to be banned. This is the most dangerous thing that can happen. It is
essentially a very safe substance. There is no addiction and to date I know of no deaths directly
attributed to it. There are suppliers online such as me who treat this as a genuine business and
supply a quality product pure to the customer.
The day mephedrone is banned, I will shut up shop. The taxman will lose hundreds of thousands of
pounds and the criminals will step in. Prohibition has always failed. And the genie is really out
of the bottle this time. Millions have used mephedrone in the UK. If they are stopped from
getting it legally, they will either buy illegally or, even worse, try something new.
No British government would have the courage to exercise the level of common sense needed to keep
it legal, what with an election looming and swarms of horrified Daily Mail readers to
impress. This government has already sacked the moderate, sensible and knowledgeable Dr David
Nutt. Mephedrone will be banned – and be dammed.
Mark is a businessman and owner of several websites that sell mephedrone
The doctor: James Bell
I first heard about mephedrone last July. The young man sitting opposite me told me that it had
just arrived on the nightclub scene. He had tried it at once. He was well-educated and from a
prosperous and stable family (who knew nothing about his drug use). He was in my clinic to
withdraw from another "legal high", GBL. After using GBL for a few months, he had been dismayed
to discover that he had become dependent. His lament "I didn't know it was addictive" could have
been uttered by most doctors and policy-makers.
We are all playing catch-up as new compounds are recognised, banned – and new
drugs appear, the risks of which slowly become apparent. Legal highs are mostly compounds closely
related to known (and banned) psychoactive drugs. Mephedrone is chemically very similar to
ecstasy. The slight variation in structure makes it legal, but also means that mephedrone has
different pharmacological effects and toxicity.
This makes difficulty for the advisory council on the misuse of drugs, which advises the
government on whether a drug should be banned, as it has little information to go on. It takes
experience to find out about the harms of particular drugs. It was only in the late 1990s, after
years in which cannabis was regarded as a fairly harmless drug, that studies demonstrated it
caused the development of psychosis in some vulnerable adolescents. News that two people died
after using mephedrone suggests it may be dangerous, but we don't know enough. Mephedrone can
cause cardiovascular problems, but I suspect that the post-mortem findings will identify other
contributing drugs.
GBL, which was classified in December 2009, is a case study in legal highs. Many users overdose
inadvertently and a small proportion progress to dependence. On trying to stop, users can
experience severe withdrawal symptoms. Throughout 2009, most GPs and drug services knew nothing
of GBL, and were unable to offer treatment. It was to catch up with this need that a "party
drugs" clinic was established in south London . Attendees have reported that, since being banned,
GBL is still readily available for same-day delivery, from internet sites outside the UK.
Mephedrone and GBL both enhance confidence and sociability and reduce sexual inhibitions.
However, it is easy to lose the plot. The first dose of mephedrone produces intense euphoria, but
repeated dosing produces decreasing pleasure and increasing paranoia and irritability
– yet some people keep chasing the initial high until exhausted. This binge
pattern of use maximises risks and minimises benefits of drug use.
A pre-election environment is a bad time to initiate a discussion about drugs policy, as there is
a risk that any debate will degenerate into which party is going to ban more drugs, more rapidly.
"Legal highs" are an easy target for moral outrage, precisely because they are legal and
something can be done about that. More difficult is trying to address Britain's prodigious demand
for drugs, legal and illegal. A non-partisan debate about reducing the harm would be valuable.
Dr James Bell is an addictions consultant at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust
Letter accuses leading Catholics of 'grave errors', but campaigners say it is not enough
Pope Benedict XVI yesterday rebuked Irish bishops for the negligent way they have handled sexual
abuse cases in the Catholic church and issued an unprecedented public apology to the victims of
paeodophile priests.
"You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry," Benedict wrote in a pastoral letter released
yesterday, which will be read at Catholic masses in Ireland. The letter also announced the
setting up of a Vatican investigation team. "Many of you found that, when you were courageous
enough to speak of what happened to you, no one would listen," he added. He accused bishops in
Ireland of "grave errors of judgment" in their handling of thousands of "sinful and criminal"
cases of abuse spread over decades.
Split into sections, the letter addresses victims, Irish bishops, abusive priests and parents.
"There has never been a letter like this," said the pope's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi.
The letter does not admit any responsibility on the part of the Vatican in relation to the
scandals, nor does it specify punishments for Irish bishops who covered up for paedophile
priests, moving them from parish to parish.
Following revelations that he swore abuse victims to secrecy in 1975, Cardinal Seán Brady,
the head of the Irish Catholic church, has said he will seek guidance through prayer before
deciding on his future. Benedict has yet to accept the resignations offered by three Irish
bishops. Following the release of the letter, Brady said that all Irish Catholics should reflect
upon it. "I welcome this letter," he said. "I am deeply grateful to the holy father for his
profound kindness and concern."
It is evident from the pastoral letter that Benedict is deeply dismayed by what he refers to as
"sinful and criminal acts and the way the church authorities in Ireland dealt with them".
Lombardi said yesterday there were no pointers to be found on Brady's future in the letter, which
did not have an administrative or disciplinary function. "This is a pastoral letter... That is
not touched on here," he said.
The letter comes as a new tide of sex abuse allegations threatens to engulf the Catholic church.
Benedict himself has come under pressure over the explosion of abuse revelations in his home
country, Germany, following a wave of cases in the US. Maeve Lewis, the Irish director for the
campaign group against child abuse, One in Four, said she was "deeply disappointed" by the
letter. "It falls short of what victims want, since it only tackles failures in the Irish church
and not the failures that go right to the top of the Vatican, such as the 2001 ruling on
secrecy," she said. "The church is still in denial."
Reports on abuse commissioned in Ireland have singled out a letter written by the current pope,
then Cardinal Ratzinger, in 2001 instructing bishops to report all abuse cases to his office at
the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for confidential handling. Vatican
officials have said the measure was designed to prevent cases being covered up at local level,
but Irish bishops reportedly understood the letter to mean they should not report cases to the
police. In yesterday's letter, Benedict urged Ireland's bishops to "continue to co-operate with
civil authorities".
"That could be interpreted as an instruction on mandatory reporting of abuse to the police, and
this is welcome, although it is not clearly stated," said Lewis. "But where the pope goes on to
deal with the proper application of canon law in these cases, it suggests he has no idea that
civil law supersedes canon law, that bishops should abide by civil law like any citizen."
The letter announces that a Vatican investigation, or apostolic visitation, will be carried out
at a "certain diocese" in Ireland, as well as in seminaries and religious congregations. Such
investigations are carried out when the Vatican believes a local church is unable to put its own
house in order.
"A lot of people will be quaking in their boots in Ireland as they wait to see which diocese the
pope means," said one church insider in Ireland.
But Benedict also sympathised with Irish bishops, telling them: "I recognise how difficult it was
to grasp the extent and complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the
right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice."
Rather than blaming abuse on an oppressive, conservative environment within the Irish Catholic
church, Benedict singles out the creeping influence of liberal, secular society for weakening
resolve against it. "In particular, there was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid
penal approaches to canonically irregular situations," he writes.
Lewis added: "We are astounded that the pope links the problem to secularisation. It shows a
misunderstanding of the dynamics of sexual violence and suggests there is little hope the church
will ever know how to respond."
The French four-piece talk to Hermione Hoby about ants, surrealism and creeping success
In a bar in the Opéra district of Paris, brothers and guitarists Laurent Brancowitz and
Christian Mazzalai – also known as one half of French band Phoenix
– are reflecting on a cover version of the band's single, "Lisztomania".
"It would... bring a tear to the eye of an SS officer," says Brancowitz, shaking his head with
wonderment. Later, speaking from New York, singer Thomas Mars agrees: "We all had tears in our
eyes when we watched it." Google "PS22 Chorus Lisztomania" and you'll find a video of an American kids choir whose members
look and sound like they've never loved a song so much in their lives.
It makes perfect sense that a bunch of elementary schoolchildren should have made such a
brilliant cover. As Brancowitz himself explains, the band's fourth studio album was written
without ties to a record label or manager because "we wanted to do something like kids again.
That's always what we're looking for."
The album's reception last year suggests they found it. As you might guess from the title (in
their words, "an equally glorious and stupid" one), Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is a record
blessed with a breezy playfulness, though its songs are meticulously crafted. Ten years on from
their debut, the album has earned Phoenix two rather different badges of distinction: a Grammy
for best alternative album, and the perhaps even greater accolade of being the most blogged-about
band of 2009 (according to website the Hype Machine).
The band also has a fearsome reputation as a live act, something you can judge for yourself on
the Observer's live album giveaway (see panel, left), an exclusive recording of the band
performing in Sydney a few weeks ago.
They could be forgiven a spot of bumptiousness, then. Instead, they seem genuinely surprised that
their London Roundhouse dates later this month sold out so fast. Brancowitz jokes that "there's
been a lot of resistance from your little island; we feel like Napoleon trying to invade". Mars
agrees: "It's a mystery in the UK. I feel like it's a love and hate relationship. Most of the
things we were listening to come from the UK. But maybe before we weren't in sync with the era we
were living in..."
Brancowitz has another theory as to why this album has been such a success: "It was the album we
made with the most humility. The good things we do are the product of luck and not from our
personal songwriting genius." So modest! "No, but it's true," he protests gently. "It takes a lot
of courage to admit it. It's a long, chemical process. We just sit and a few thousand tries
later..."
That slow-burn approach to songwriting (they took two years to make the album so "a few thousand
tries" perhaps isn't too outrageous an estimate) is mirrored in the steadiness of their rise.
Gradual success has been, as Mazzalai puts it, "a pure pleasure at every step".
When I ask whether their inclusion of musical "naffness" (Alphabetical, their second
album, betrayed a penchant for 70s soft rock, for example) has been a conscious thing, Brancowitz
replies with a typically rococo turn of phrase. He concedes it's semi-conscious, but is, he says,
always based on "an instinctive ravishment".
Such un-English wording possibly accounts for the charm of their (English) lyrics. As Mars
explains: "We like doing lyrics that are cryptic and abstract, we leave out all the in-betweens,
everything that makes sense. That's impossible to do in French, because every word betrays what's
going on. In English you can put all these pieces together and create this weird, poetic thing."
He pauses. "It's very like French surrealism in a way."
As that mental leap from truncated English to French surrealism indicates, the band remain
utterly Gallic, despite their formative diet of My Bloody Valentine, the Smiths and any other
British band that, as Mars puts it, have "something about them that makes me lose my balance".
The two brothers, plus Mars and bassist Deck D'Arcy (all four are in their early 30s), grew up in
the conservative Parisian suburb of Versailles, a place where, Brancowitz says, "it's really easy
to be a rebel without a cause – you don't have to have a very crazy haircut.
It's very Catholic, so there are a lot of families of old nobility..."
"They're scary," adds Mazzalai.
Scary though it may have been, there's no question that being four kindred spirits in what they
paint as a cultural wasteland has gone a long way in binding them together. "Alone we are poor,
but together..." Mazzalai trails off.
Brancowitz, a man of many metaphors, continues: "You know ants? They have very minimal tasks but
in the end they build these very complex structures. That's the same for us. Really, I don't
remember taking creative decisions, they just happen."
They also insist they're "really bad musicians in terms of technique". "I don't even know how to
do a scale," claims Brancowitz, prompting Mazzalai to add: "We don't know how to play with other
musicians. I tried with friends to do sessions a few times and it's always a disaster."
Touchingly, Mars echoes many of these sentiments when we speak later. While the other three live
in Paris, he's now based in New York with his film director girlfriend Sofia Coppola, who is
expecting their second child in May. His relocation hasn't put any distance, musically, between
him and his bandmates though.
"On our own we are not really great," he tells me. "It's not that I don't believe in my friends
but the four of us have this thing, this balance of us all together."
Accounting for that balance, Brancowitz says: "Thomas has a very abstract vision of everything,
and Deck is more of a mathematician – when there's a decision about harmonic
complexities, he's there. He knows every equation."
There's a certain indulgent affection to the way they talk about their bassist, I suggest. "Ah,
but we're all weirdos," smiles Brancowitz. Mazzalai takes up the theme: "We're all fascinated by
mathematics, we love it. But you know," he adds with a shrug, "even beats are mathematical
– it's mathematics that makes people dance."
This is as perfectly Phoenix-like a sentiment as there can be. Cerebral precision and mindless
abandon are an irresistible combination – and those jiving elementary school
kids aren't the only ones to know it.
I've spent the last day in a funk at the news that my friend, Canadian sf writer Peter Watts was
convicted of obstruction for getting out of his car at a US Border crossing and asking what was
going on, then not complying fast enough when he was told to get back in the car. He faces up to
two years in jail. David Nickle, a mutual friend who worked with Peter on his defense, has a very
good post on the subject, including a quote from one of the jurors: The job of the jury was to
decide whether Mr. Watts "obstructed/resisted" the custom officials. Assault was not one of the
charges. What it boiled down to was Mr. Watts did not follow the instructions of the customs
agents. Period. He was not violent, he was not intimidating, he was not stopping them from
searching his car. He did, however, refuse to follow the commands by his non compliance. He's not a
bad man by any stretch of the imagination. The customs agents escalted the situation with sarcasm
and miscommunication. Unfortunately, we were not asked to convict those agents with a crime,
although, in my opinion, they did commit offenses against Mr. Watts. Two wrongs don't make a right,
so we had to follow the instructions as set forth to us by the judge. That's apparently the
statute: if you don't comply fast enough with a customs officer, he can beat you, gas you, jail you
and then imprison you for two years. This isn't about safety, it isn't about security, it isn't
about the rule of law. It's about obedience. Authoritarianism is a disease of the mind. It
criminalizes the act of asking "why?" It is the obedience-sickness that turns good people into
perpetrators and victims of atrocities great and small. I don't know if Peter will appeal. I hope
he does. I hope he gets a jury who nullify the statute. I hope he brings a civil action against the
officials who clearly played fast and loose with the truth (From David: "Under cross-examination by
Mullkoff, the border guards had conceded that Peter hadn't assaulted anyone; hadn't threatened to
assault anyone; and that his aggressive stance was nothing any reasonable person would consider
aggressive. The allegations that he had somehow choked border guard Andrew Beaudry while Beaudry
was hitting him, were demolished."). I don't know if he will. He may decide to take his chances for
a suspended sentence and forswear ever visiting America again, opting to be a writer instead of a
professional litigant. I'd understand. But tonight, I'm understanding that dark place that so many
of Peter's books seem to come from. I think of myself, fundamentally, as a optimist and a believer
that justice can and will prevail. But in the face of that jury's decision, in face of the
dishonesty of the officials, in the face of the absurdity of the statute, I feel like justice is a
joke and hoping for it is a waste of time. I'm sorry that the system failed you, Peter. Guilty
Previously:Peter Watts found guilty Dr Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and ...
Peter Watts's wonderful dystopias under a CC license...
Mac
users of Google Chrome finally got a
solid bookmark system in Google Chrome...but the dev team isn't stopping there, of course. In the
last week or so, several updates have been made to the Chromium source code which will bring a
better -- and more Chrome-y -- bookmark manager to the browser.
The new 'tabbed bookmark manager' currently looks like what you see in the screenshot. Rather than
spawning a new application window as Google Chrome does, the new version opens alongside your
current set of tabs (like the new tab page). Items can be dragged and dropped and you can create
new folders and items via the tools menu. You can also sort and search your bookmarks.
The manager can also be accessed by typing chrome://bookmarks in your Omnibar,
though I wasn't able to set it as my new tab page -- Chromium simply loaded the default one
instead.
While the update is a welcome one for Windows, Mac, and Linux users of Chrome, it is an ideal
feature for Google Chrome OS. Spawning additional windows isn't the best UX decision on a
browser-based operating system.
Like most new additions to Google Chrome, the new bookmark manager is only currently available in
the Chromium buildbot releases. Download a
current snapshot build and try it for yourself, or check out a screencast after the
break!
When I
came to the U.S. in 1980, I was young and naïve. I used to think that corruption and ethical
lapses were just a third-world ill. Eventually, I became a tech CEO and learned the harsh
realities of American business. Yes, standards are much higher, and breaches are punished, but
the temptations are just the same here as they are in any other country. Ethical lapses (which
are a form of corruption) are quite common. You watch stories about these on TV
every other day and read about them on TechCrunch. It was the ethical lapses of our
financial institutions that threw our economy into a tailspin, and for which we are paying the
price, after all.
It is best to be aware of the temptations and to prevent the lapses from occurring. As Enron,
Bernie Madoff, and Lehman
Brothers have shown, it’s a slippery slope. Once you start compromising your values for
short-term gains, there is no turning back. Business ethics are not something you need to start
worrying about when your company reaches a certain size; they need to be sewn into the fabric of
your startup from the get-go. The lessons are the same for tech businesses as they are for
investment banks and for third-world economies.
Harvard Business School professor Michael Beer
researched the difference between companies that perform at high levels for extended periods and
those that implode when they reach a certain size. When analyzing the spectacular failures in the
recent financial meltdown, he found that:
· Of the original Forbes 100 (named in 1917), 61 had ceased to exist by 1987.
 Of the remaining 39, only 18 stayed in the top 100, and their return during the
period 1917 to 1987 was 20% less than that of the overall market.
· Of companies in the original Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index of 1957, only
74 remained in 1997; of these, only 12 outperformed the S&P 500 in the period 1957 to 1998.
· The average CEO tenure in the U.S. is 4.2 years, less than half the 10.5-year average in
1990.
Beer posited three core reasons for the failure of so many Wall Street firms in the fall of 2008:
the firms lacked a higher purpose (in other words, they were focused on short-term gains,
profits, and bonuses); they lacked a clear strategy; and they mismanaged their risk. Companies
like Charles Schwab and US Bancorp were able to avoid the fallout by having a laser-like focus on
customer service and on honesty and transparency. Neither company touched the subprime mortgage
securitization market, because they saw it as risky and simply not the kind of business that
served the company’s long-term interests.
Even outside Wall Street, companies like Cisco Systems, Southwest Airlines, and Costco Wholesale,
with the strongest sense of higher purpose, achieved the greatest success. Take Costco. Wall
Street analysts have long chastised Costco’s management for paying high wages and keeping
employees around for a long time, because this results in higher benefits costs. But the
company’s CEO, Jim Sinegal, lives by his belief that keeping good employees is strategic
for Costco’s long-term success and growth. The company’s per-employee sales are
considerably higher than those of key rivals such as Target and Wal-Mart; customer service at the
stores is phenomenal and fast; and Costco continues to expand, both in number of warehouses and
in products and services for business and consumer customers. The culture of the company flows
downward from Sinegal and his focus on employees and, by extension, to customers.
One of the problems that Beer found with the failed banks was that their employees lacked the
ability to “speak truth to power”. Employees felt intimidated by superiors; the
institutions’ internal voice of conscience and purpose was silenced by a maniacal focus on
short-term profits and whatever scheme would bring them in. The silencing of employees who sought
to challenge strategy and risk-management practices likely also undermined the banks’ moral
authority and emboldened those who already felt inclined to do the wrong thing. With a muted
internal voice, these organizations lacked a moral compass. As a result, they drove off a cliff
with astonishing speed.
The same things happen in Silicon Valley companies. Â I asked
management guru — and head of the CEO
Institute of Yale School of Management — Jeff Sonnenfeld for his advice on how
startups can sow the seeds for building a Cisco or Costco. Here is Jeff’s advice:
1)Â Create a culture of openness and welcome dissent
– Internal constructive critics are your best friends — too
often, founders are blinded by their own enthusiasm for their creative vision and then are
surrounded by sycophants, kissing up. Founders who fall out of touch rapidly lose their ethical
bearings. At Intel, founder Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore did not look for sycophantic followers
in selecting the brilliant, contentious, but relentlessly honest Andy Grove as their colleague
and successor. Similarly, Craig Barrett and Paul Otellini have consistently fought for different
points of view internally — without undermining the enterprise, and always
reinforcing Intel’s self-critical core ethic.
2)Â Lead by example. Â The authenticity of the
leader’s character is essential — if colleagues don’t believe you,
they will not take needed risks on your behalf — such as training subordinates
to be able to do their own jobs. Â Startups are often defined by the hip
clichés of VC firms, adoring press, and HR consultants — but the
startups don’t really practice what they preach.
3)Â Learn from immediate peers or distant models. Too often,
founders atrophy because they believe that the unique quality of their business or technological
mission means that they too are truly unique in leadership values. Steve Jobs has
patterned himself after Polaroid founder Ed Land — and tried to learn from
Land’s strengths and weaknesses. Henry Ford regretfully once claimed
“History is bunk” but in reality revered Thomas Edison. Michael Dell put
legendary tech entrepreneur (Teledyne) and educator Dr. George Kozmetsky on his board right from
the start to learn from this brilliant then septuagenarian.
4)Â Recognize your own fallibility as a leader, know your limits, and beware
of the myth of immortality. Entrepreneurs often are horrified at the
thought of leadership succession. The founders of great firms such as Google, Cisco, Amgen, and
Microsoft have known that they would need to prepare for a day when they no longer could be the
lone day-to-day internal boss, primary external ambassador, and symbolic cultural icon. The
founder of the original (pre-Starbucks) coffee house chain Chock-Full-o-Nuts started his first
café on Broadway 43rd Street in 1923 and was a great national
success. Sadly, sixty years later, as a dying man who had been flat on his back for
two years at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, he still clung to the job of leader of the
enterprise, his full-time physician serving as acting president.
5) Remember that institutional character — like a liquid
cupped in your hand — is fragile; easily lost; and hard, if not impossible, to
regain. Egomaniacal moves, personal grandiosity, greed, and deception create impressions
that are hard to erase. Whole Foods founder, John Mackey, sabotaged the integrity of
his own exalted brand, damaging the company’s internal pride and customer admiration far
more badly than any competitor could have, due to his self-inflating and his misleading
“anonymous” blogging, hiding his identity through an anagram of his wife’s
name, “rehodab.”
I’ll add another very important point: Establish an independent board.
Venture firms often demand a majority of board seats as a condition for their investments.
Conflicts invariably arise. The board begins to serve the needs of VCs and management, rather
than of the company itself, which loses the independent voice to warn it not to do the wrong
things. The inconvenient truth is that all board members have a fiduciary duty to act in the
interests of the company, and not in their own interests. Board members must not engage in
transactions in which they or their partners stand to gain. They are legally required to avoid
these conflicts of interest.
Finally, remember that in business, you have to make tough choices at every juncture. Though
business decisions usually have clear consequences and outcomes, ethical decisions are always
hard. Making the right choice doesn’t always bring success, but ethical lapses almost
always lead to failure. No matter what the consequence, doing what’s ethical and right is
always the better long-term strategy.
Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned
academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law
School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization
at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.
"Thirty-Six Stratagems" refers to thirty-six war strategies in ancient Chinese ,which language
comes of the Northern and Southern Dynasties and the book was completed in Ming and the Qing
Dynasty.This books is summarized by the military thoughts and rich experience in the struggle in
ancient China and was on of the Chinese culture heritages."Thirty-Six Stratagems" is a masterpiece
which fcous on the scheme of the war and the strategies and reveals how to make a right decision
correctly and quickly and how to win the enemies in a right way.This book can not only be used in
the military war in China and other countries in the world,but also used in political, economic,
diplomatic, intelligence, etc. Thirty-Six
Strategies
It took a
little longer than expected, but the first major docking solution to transform ones iPod touch into
a full fledged navigating machine is now shipping directly from Apple. Dual Electronics' XGPS300 was originally
announced way back in November of last year, and after a
minor hiccup in January, we're finally able to plop down $199.95 to snag a window-sucking
cradle with an inbuilt GPS receiver, rechargeable battery, amplified speaker and NavAtlas US /
Canada map app. So, what'll it be? This, or one of those perfectly acceptable
$99 PNDs? If you're smart, you'll tune in next week for our review before making any rash
decisions.
Yes, this is quite belated. I’ll explain why in a subsequent post.
linux.conf.au this year was in
Wellington, New Zealand. It just keeps getting better! It’s always great meeting people you
otherwise only know online. I was especially impressed by the OLPC NZ team.
Immediately following linux.conf.au, I jumped on a plane to Christchurch to embark on a week-long
tour of
the South Island. Long story short, it was the time of my life! I made some amazing friends. I
also saw and did incredible things, including:
awe-inspiring views of glaciers, glacially-formed landscapes, turquoise-coloured rivers and
lakes, beautiful skies and more
helihike: a helicopter
trip onto a glacier, then hiking on it
a night on a boat on Milford Sound, probably the most beautiful place on Earth
every extreme activity I could get my hands on, including:
I think what surprised me most was how adventurous I can be when I’m not in my
‘natural habitat’. I’m not normally a thrillseeker at all, but in NZ I made the
decision to take a holiday from myself as well as from work and home. I even made a
concerted effort to not touch computers at all. My phone was offline for most of the trip (I was
using it as a camera). I never thought that being cut-off could feel so liberating.
We
wanted to tell you what Spike Jonze's new web film I'm Here is all about, we really did,
and not just because it reportedly has robots in it
-- though that was certainly a major factor in the decision. But after we crossed the virtual
street to the virtual box office, we were informed that there were no seats left in the virtual
theater. Imagine that. So instead of providing our impressions here, we'll just give you the facts.
I'm Here is sponsored by Absolut Vodka; I'm Here is a 30-minute love story about
humanoids living in Los
Angeles. I'm Here can be viewed alongside
Facebook friends; I'm Here can only be seen by 5,000 viewers a day. I'm Here
promises a "striking online cinema experience," and we were struck by just how lifelike waiting for
tickets could be. And if you, too, can't get "in" to see it, I'm Here can satiate you
slightly with a one-minute trailer after the break.
Summary In all biological systems, the information content of hormonal signals is conveyed by the
modalities ofpulsatile hormone secretion. New mathematical tools for the analysis of pulsatile
behaviour and increasing knowledge of the sources of signal variability have enabled us to
recognize altered hormonal pulsatility associated with human disease. Its consequences for our
understanding of disease mechanisms, for diagnostic procedures and for therapeutic decisions are
discussed at the level of single hormones. Increased disorderliness of hormone secretion is a
hallmark of pituitary adenomas, indicating functional subsystem autonomy. The effects on target
tissues of changing growth hormone therapy from low-frequency administration to long-acting
preparations are still incompletely understood. In contrast, the gonadotropic axis is a paradigm
for the successful therapeutic use of induced pulsatility changes, where therapy with long-acting
gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists suppresses endogenous gonadotropin pulses and
gonadal function, and pulsatile GnRH administration is used to restore normal gonadal function.
Future development of endocrine therapies will depend on our knowledge of hormonal pulsatility. B Hauffa
I haven’t done much blogging about the “progress” of the book I’m
writing, but I have been writing it. I think. That is, I haven’t re-read the chapter I just
“finished,” so I may be unwriting it tomorrow. Also, there’s been a lot of
other stuff going on.
The new chapter, version #1,017 of Chapter 2, is about networked expertise. This was originally
what the entire book was going to be about, but the book’s scope expanded somewhat. (If you
want to squint your eyes at the book, you could still see the whole thing as being about
networked expertise.) In Chapt 2, I talk about hedgehogs vs. foxes and what happens when they
both get networked. Each of them is in fact a way of dealing with the overflow of knowledge by
narrowing the scope of their inquiry: hedgehogs dig a small area deeply and foxes scrape a large
area superficially. Network them and the network has a different strategy for dealing with the
overflow of knowledge.
I also spend some time on a history of expertise. Pretty straightfoward, but then everything is
if you’re willing to oversimplify it enough.
Much of the chapter goes through a sort of taxonomy of networked expertise. This gave me a lot of
trouble, because, as everyone knows, taxonomies force unrighteous decisions. So, I tied the
classes of networked expertise to simple topological properties of the Net. Artificial, of
course, but it is better than just giving the reader a long list of undifferentiated examples. It
also dropped the number of classes from six to four, eliminating two particularly troublesome
ones that refused to actually exist.
I end the chapter by making a case for expertise taking on the qualities of the Net. As of now,
the transition at the end is to a discussion of knowledge being about settling matters. But that
means I have to rethink Chapter 3, which is what I’ve been doing this afternoon.
We shall see. Especially once a couple of days have gone by and I re-read Chapter 2. Ulp.
I should perhaps note that if I were trying to lay this book out as an argument, I would switch
chapters 3 and 2, so that I first cover the basics about the nature of knowledge before going on
to those who profess to have knowledge, viz experts. But I have C2 where it is because I
don’t want to make the reader wade through two chapters of theory and background before
getting to something that seems practical and relevant. So, I talk about many examples of
networked expertise before I’ve framed knowledge. I’m pretty convinced this works
better for the reader, because (if it works) it will be a sequential revelation of a deepening
ground. That’s so very different from how I was taught to write in philosophy grad school.
About three years ago my wife and I made the rash (and wise) decision to buy a 17th century home in
Southwestern France . Puy L’Eveque is a 13th century medieval town situated on a hill
overlooking the Lot River. Its narrow streets all lead upward to the summit - where the Mairie (the
mayor’s office) and the church occupy...
The shortest way to describe this is that Google is no longer a verb. It's becoming
a noun. Not just the few clicks to find information, but the information itself and the
experience surrounding it.
Today, we get to add Google's chapter to "Will One Company Dominate
the Cloud" introspective series and take a glimpse of the silent revolution from "index" to
"be" that is transforming the company and it's products to the default way to engage the
Internet.
As fate has it, Google done us a big favor in preparing for this piece. The company has launched
an assault on the enterprise with its movement in the Google App Engine, having a
stand-off with China, and negotiating with the EU. And that was
just a bit of Google
news from this week.
Sponsor
Whereas it's a bit more clear where Amazon and Cisco win (our
recent analysis) as they head towards the cloud, with Google it takes a bit more expansive view.
We have to take the focus out a bit, to be able to dial in on the details.
Acknowledgment: Developers are the Products they Build
We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Tim Bray. He has been a key contributor and thought leader
in key areas of interoperability and information design, including his leadership in bringing XML
to the world. He recently announced that he's joining Google and focusing on Android in a
transition from Sun.
Several things struck us about our dialog that we think are key for Google.
First, when Bray described his new job at Google, he talked about what he wanted to do and what
he saw that needed to be done. Within three days of being there, he has a sense of ownership of
the companies products and mission. In some organizations, you may never get such a luxury.
Second, Bray described his opportunity to "roll up his sleeves" and get back in the groove as a
developer on a project he feels passion for. He mentioned his desire to take the open APIs of
Android and expose some of the information in a more portable way, for example to transfer a call
log from one phone to another. A very interesting project, with tangible results. This type of
innovation lives on top of all the work the company has done to make the API exist, and to
attract individuals who are willing to rethink how it should really work.
We think that this is the most interesting thing about where Google is right now. It's "open"
mantra gives the company the ability to see a whole generation into the future of information
channel disruption. And, by bringing in "no holds barred" developers like Bray and a legion of
others, the company is patiently solving problems that many of us don't even know exist.
Lastly, Bray said something that caused us some deep thought.
His comment, "when the Drizzle team was moved into Google, they
just kept working on the their open source project and things stayed nearly the same."
What caused us to pause was that open source development, whether Linux or XML, gives the
developer, as a person, a way to contribute to the world. And it's documented. If the Internet
was the Bible, leading a key open source initiative, is like getting your own chapter in the
book, where time will be the judge of your actions. Much better than your manager alone.
To know that hard work, intellectual capital, libraries are available to the world after the
contract is complete. This really speaks to the artist in us, in a way, the paid open source
developer is using Google as a canvas.
If working at Google offers this emotional spark to employees, it will gain entirely new
efficiencies in solving the big problems, in the context of individual efforts. Maybe this open
source spirit is embedded into Twitter, and is why it works. We like to contribute to our version
of the greater good...and want fans to cheer us on.
What we learned; acknowledgment matters, and connections to the whole population of people is an
amazing vehicle. Google: become an indie rock star - with the strength of grep.
All of the Information on Earth
Google's destiny to become the hub of the worlds information is
intertwined with history. And this comes with artifacts of policy and posturing. To start with,
not everyone agrees that Google should achieve a dominant cloud position. As we're noticing,
stopping it is another matter.
We'd like to suggest that in 2010, the company is not shy about stepping towards its future and
will use its power, technology, and cash to stir it up. Here is our list of organizations in the
world that Google has, is, or will be, continually bumping into in its quest for cloud
information dominance.
China (counties own the filters for the people)
ATT (service providers own consumer on the network)
Penguin (book publishers own the words in the texts)
Visa (financial institutions own the digits in the transactions)
Facebook (social networks know the details)
Amazon (commerce sites own the decision point)
Twitter (owns "what's happening")
Microsoft (owns the computer applications and files)
Open can be a Key to Unlock Doors
We see both practical and strategic reasons that Google has a
deep connection with the open source movement. Strategically, being the new optimized layer,
removing all historic barriers to information give the company more leverage. Practically,
solutions can be built where information is free.
Reviewing a few examples, such as Google Earth, Android, and even GMail and we see that where
there are open protocols and information disruptive products can be built. Once they are built,
the Google wields a significant economic advantage in binding the worlds information assets and
converting them to eyeballs.
Here, we take a quick look at the information assets that Google is investing the global cloud.
Results: Google has moved away from Page Rank to "Closest Object" in it's
default results. What this means is that many businesses today show up as widget in the results
in google with embedded links, maps, and other efficiencies.
Ads: This is perhaps the best known and most valuable insight and unique
asset, who wants to pay for what customer
Realtime index: Google has worked to keep up with Twitter's realtime firehose
Semantic index: The company continues to add more and more microsyntax parsers
into its index, giving more controlled tools for publishers
GMail: It had to be done. And it is monetized.
Documents and files: Google Docs and the Apps Marketplace create a whole new
stream of information about an individual. Private, personal, and shared.
Mobile transactions: This is an interesting sample of where Google's strategy
to build the Android OS pays off in the cloud. Not only does Google get to connect mobile to
the rest of the offerings, but also to be able to dial in on movements, calls, and other
critical tasks in our real-time lives.
Books: Indexing all of them, first is an interesting piece of the strategy to
break apart historic containers of knowledge. Is the book copyrighted? How about the quote?
Browsers: The browser knows a lot. Google's Chrome moves it from being default
search, to being default experience. This was a great example of where access to information
"Faster pages" is the simple value proposition for consumers to switch.
Filters: Protecting companies, trademarks, and interpreting the legality of
free speech. Someone has to do it, if we're all one people.
Health transactions: Google has even taken on one of the most sensitive
challenges, private health information. And, it's connections to legacy systems that prefer EDI
to JSON.
It's clear that Google is making progress. What we've also learned in this review is that the
companies biggest asset - people - may scale to solve problems in lightweight ways that entire
teams and companies haven't been able to in the past. Perhaps being open, or transparent, gives
the company a unique advantage in being prepared for a cloud future.
Is the cloud where the action is?
What verb would you be if you were hired at Google?
Microsoft just launched a
new version of its Bing iPhone app. The iPhone app gives you comprehensive
access to Bing's core services, including Bing maps and
directions, as well as news and image search. Besides offering better stability and a few
interface tweaks, the new version of the Bing app also integrates more tightly with the iPhone by
giving you access to your contacts in the mapping feature and making it easier to copy and paste
URLs and share interesting results through email.
Sponsor
Releasing Bing for iPhone Worldwide was an Accident...
Just as it launched this new version of the app, however, Microsoft also
pulled the Bing applications from all the non-U.S. versions of the App Store. According to a
statement Microsoft
sent to Neowin, the company "inadvertently made it available to all countries in which the
Apple Marketplace has a presence." Why it took Microsoft three months to pull the app, which was
released in December 2009, remains a bit of a mystery.
New Features
If you are in the U.S., however, the Bing iPhone app remains to be the best way to access
Microsoft's "decision engine" on your phone. The new version now includes a number of interesting
new features. One of the most useful features is the app's ability to let you bookmark maps,
websites and direction. Sadly, however, this feature isn't integrated with Apple's Safari, so
your bookmarks don't carry over to the iPhone's default browser.
Other new features include better parental control settings, private search and the ability to
edit your search history and support for first generation iPod touch devices.
The FCC is working on a plan that would sell a chunk of spectrum in the first half of 2011 that
failed to be sold in 2008 because of the strict conditions of use.
The spectrum, which was earmarked for public-safety use, may now have different terms and
conditions, if any are to be attached. Jamie Barnett, chief of the FCC Public Safety &
Homeland Security Bureau, told Reuters that the FCC could issue a notice of inquiry “early
summer” but a final decision has not been made.
An auction would help T-Mobile USA, which doesn’t have the capacity on its current networks
to roll out 4G services, like its major rivals AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless.
The FCC is working on a plan that would sell a chunk of spectrum in the first half of 2011 that
failed to be sold in 2008 because of the strict conditions of use.
The spectrum, which was earmarked for public-safety use, may now have different terms and
conditions, if any are to be attached. Jamie Barnett, chief of the FCC Public Safety &
Homeland Security Bureau, told Reuters that the FCC could issue a notice of inquiry “early
summer” but a final decision has not been made.
An auction would help T-Mobile USA, which doesn’t have the capacity on its current networks
to roll out 4G services, like its major rivals AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless.
When you watch Stupid
for Movies, an independently-produced movie chat show live-streaming weekly on Ustream
at 8 PM PST, you see Los Angeles-based film critics Mark Keizer and Wade Major sitting side by
side on a red-curtained set that invokes the golden days of Siskel and Ebert at the
Movies, reacting to an enthusiastic audience’s applause. Keizer and Major banter back
and forth about the week’s new releases and films the audience should “Buy, Burn or
Rent,” while director Mike Rotman chimes in occasionally on the banter.
With five cameras, a small crew and live-streaming technology provided by NewTek, Stupid For Movies has been running for two months
now, with the live episodes archived on Blip the following day. Last night’s
episode’s stream received a total of 5,799 views, with 300 live viewers tuned in around
8:40 PM PST — a viewership number that is only built upon once the episode is archived and
spread around to its distribution partners.
The magic all happens in a converted garage up in the San Fernando Valley — one of Los
Angeles’ most suburban sectors, where most of the houses look the same. Inside that garage,
though, is a surprisingly professional operation crammed into a space that would barely be able
to fit two Volvos.
The exterior of the studio/garage.
The production behind-the-scenes was a mix of laid-back and professional, with the breaks
provided by short clips from films used to adjust camera angles and touch up makeup. On screen,
that attitude carried through: Both hosts were confident and relaxed on camera, with only the
occasional moment of hamming on the part of Major. (Mocking Major’s shirt appears to be a
running theme.)
I consider myself a movie nerd, but watching Keizer and Major identify random obscure films from
the last 40 years made me feel ignorant — their film knowledge is wide and
all-encompassing, to the point where it seemed that many of the films suggested by viewers for
the Buy/Rent/Burn segment were submitted just in the hopes of stumping them (which only sort of
happened once with the old Wes Craven film Deadly Friend, though they quickly recalled
it once given a hint).
Major and Keiser get ready for their close-ups.
The key to Siskel and Ebert’s dynamic was always that they weren’t prone to agreeing
with each other, but while Keizer and Major (who also host IGN’s Digigods podcast) do demonstrate some distinctively
different taste in films, Major estimated in a post-shoot conversation that they agree with each
other about 65 or 70 percent of the time. What that contributes to, though, is a very distinctive
point-of-view about the film world, one that has no patience for video game movies and dismisses
the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films out of hand — but does genuinely love film.
The audience attracted to such a perspective is thus pretty specific, but with real potential for
loyalty.
Rotman, who’s known Keizer and Major for years, has been working in web video for some time
and currently directs The Kevin Pollak
Chat Show on Sundays. When he came up with the idea for Stupid For Movies, he
shopped it around to a few different parties but wasn’t happy with any of the deals he got
— hence deciding to produce the show on his own, a decision made easier when he found a
house for rent that had a soundproofed garage, thanks to its former tenant, a musician.
Chad Vader waits to chime in via Skype.
Currently on Stupid for Movies, online video
legend Chad Vader does a weekly news rundown and at least once so far, Kevin Pollak has
Skyped in to give the guys grief. Future plans for the next few weeks include bringing in
celebrities to discuss their favorite movies ever, more giveaways, and possibly a sponsorship by
one of the obvious movie-related brands online, leaving Stupid poised to become a much
bigger player in the live-streaming world — especially for those who love movies.
Conference organizer Leipziger Messe will no longer operate its GC Asia event,
originally scheduled for this September in Singapore, citing the "overall currently prevailing
economic situation." "It is a regrettable, but necessary decision", says Jorg Zeissig, managing
director of LMI Asia. "We will continue to keep an eye on the Asian games market so that we can
pick up again with new concepts if this becomes appropriate." The event and its associated
developer conference ran ...
The key issue at the heart of Viacom's case against Google and YouTube, filed in March 2007,
concerns whether an Internet service that probably knows that files are traded or shown
illicitly or without license there, deserves the "safe harbor" provisions of the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act that protect ISPs from liability for their customers' actions. In a
summary judgment motion filed yesterday with US District Court in New York and unsealed this
morning, Viacom is bidding to have the judge wrap up the case -- an obvious signal that it
believes its case is already strong enough.
As US law stands now, a service such as Grokster or the original Napster (not the Best Buy
division that today uses that name) is liable when it intentionally establishes its service for
the express purpose of trading in illicit files. It's especially liable when it finds some way to
advertise itself for that purpose. An Internet Service Provider such as Comcast or Cox is not
liable when its service is used for accessing one of these sites, when it doesn't advertise or
offer these services explicitly, and when a customer can access them without direct intervention
from the ISP. And a video site such as Veoh
is not liable when any measure it might take to stop customers from sharing illicit files may
also conceivably infringe upon the free speech rights of other customers who may not be trading
such files.
Google, the current owner of YouTube, has been arguing the Veoh case in its own defense. But
Viacom's argument -- which courts have been wrestling with for over two-and-a-half years and
which we now know today -- is that YouTube is a different, special case. It's more like Grokster,
it argues, in that it was founded on the principle of gathering an audience around illicit files.
"Defendants are liable under Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster Ltd., because
they operated YouTube with the unlawful objective of profiting from (to use their phrase)
'truckloads' of infringing videos that flooded the site," reads the opening passage of YouTube's
founders single-mindedly focused on geometrically increasing the number of YouTube users to
maximize its commercial value. They recognized they could achieve that goal only if they cast a
blind eye to and did not block the huge number of unauthorized copyrighted works posted on the
site. The founders' deliberate decision to build a business based on piracy enabled them to sell
their start-up business to Google after 16 months for $1.8 billion. The Supreme Court in Grokster
found no legal or societal justification for such intentional copyright infringement."
In a talking points document released today (PDF available
here), Viacom cites various e-mails from various YouTube and Google executives, including
YouTube founders Chad Hurley (CEO) and Steve Chen (CTO). Assuming these excerpts were not taken
out of context, which is possible, they indicate that YouTube's founders were clearly building up
a high-audience business with illicit files at their core, with the intention of selling out to
somebody as soon as possible.
One excerpt has Chen suggesting that YouTube, apparently during its startup phase,
"...concentrate all our efforts in building up our numbers as aggressively as we can through
whatever tactics, however evil." Another suggestion, by an unnamed YouTube exec in response to an
non-excerpted suggestion -- apparently asking, where should be get all this content -- reads,
"Steal it! . . . We have to keep in mind that we need to attract traffic. How much traffic will
we get from personal videos?"
And one excerpt attributed to Chen suggests that the whole legal process of handling DMCA
takedown notices is so long and dragged on, that by the time YouTube should ever comply with one,
it would be too late anyway: "But we should just keep that stuff on the site. I really don't see
what will happen. What? Someone from CNN sees it? He happens to be someone with power? He happens
to want to take it down right away. He get in touch with cnn legal. 2 weeks later, we get a cease
& desist letter. We take the video down."
Viacom's argument that Google knows what kind of trafficking goes on via YouTube is substantiated
by evidence in the form of e-mails, evidently sent prior to its acquisition of YouTube, from
executives objecting to elements of what they perceived to be its business model. One message
from Google's then-VP of Content Partnerships David Eun (now with AOL) to CEO Eric Schmidt
cautioned, "I think we should beat YouTube . . . but not at all costs. [They are] a video
Grokster." And in another excerpt, an unnamed Google executive asks, "Is changing policy [to]
profit from illegal downloads how we want to conduct business? Is this Googley?"
Evidence cited in Viacom's motion for summary judgment tells the story of how Google Video failed
to be competitive against YouTube, even though its engineers persisted with efforts to filter out
illicit content. One memo cited says Google Video may have been throwing out 90% of its uploads,
for containing suspected copyrighted material or for being generally indecent.
"But Google's good intentions and compliance with the law were not paying off," Viacom argues.
"YouTube was way ahead of Google Video in the race to build up a user base. Google executives
understood that YouTube's success was largely due to what they euphemistically labeled its
'liberal copyright policy' of freely allowing infringing material. Losing the user race to
YouTube because of the latter's copyright infringement, Google Video executives engaged in a
'heated debate' in 2006 'about whether we should relax enforcement of our copyright policies in
an effort to stimulate traffic growth.' A top senior executive, Peter Chane, Google Video's
Business Product Manager, argued point blank that Google Video should 'beat YouTube' by 'calling
quits on our copyright compliance standards.' Chane specifically advocated switching Google Video
to YouTube's 'reactive DMCA only' policy because 'YouTube gets content when it's hot
([Saturday Night Live's] Lazy Sunday, Stephen Colbert, Lakers wins at the buzzer)' and
it '[takes us too long to acquire content directly from the [legitimate] rights holder.'"
It is that statement which Viacom appears to present as a smoking gun: a suggestion from a Google
Video executive that it should acquire its competitor solely because its allegedly illegitimate
business model is more successful than its own, legally compliant one.
In Google's memorandum in support of summary judgment in its favor, filed after Viacom, its
attorneys do not take the tack or rebutting Viacom's scorching citations -- which, if
substantiated, could theoretically become the basis for future criminal complaints.
Instead, Google reiterates the argument that it's a service provider which, like Veoh, is
entitled to safe harbor since it looks the other way, and does not actively seek infringing
uploads.
Citing the Veoh finding, Google's attorneys argue, "What matters is that Veoh 'established a
system whereby software automatically processes user-submitted content and recasts it in a format
that is readily accessible to its users...Inasmuch as this is a means of facilitating user access
to material on its Web site,' Veoh did not lose the safe harbor 'through the automated creation
of these files.' YouTube is indistinguishable from Veoh in these respects."
YouTube, Google argues, did not have direct knowledge of the circumstances whereby the specific
content Viacom claimed was infringed upon (much of it from Paramount) was shared with YouTube
users. Since Viacom's arguments must, at some point, focus themselves upon the specific
infringing of the content in question, the DMCA protects YouTube on that count as well, Google
continues. But all that may be moot, Google points on, by virtue of the fact that under current
US law, the alleged infringers must have directly profited from their actions. YouTube gains
revenue through advertising.
Writes Google, "A service provider loses safe harbor eligibility only if the plaintiff can show
both that the service provider had the right and ability to control the alleged
infringements and received a financial benefit directly attributable to those
infringements...As with knowledge, the DMCA's control inquiry is specific, not general. The
analysis focuses on the service provider's legal and practical control over the particular
infringing activity at issue. The statute's text makes that clear: The question is whether
the service provider has the right and ability to control "the infringing activity"
alleged by the plaintiff and to which a financial benefit is directly attributable."
A number of declarations in support of both motions were filed today. One supporting Google was
particularly interesting, because it goes to specifically that last paragraph: It's from the
owner of a marketing firm who promoted the works of recording artists who appear on MTV, a Viacom
property. He claimed that some of the very works Viacom claimed were infringed upon through
unauthorized uploading to YouTube, actually were authorized by none other than MTV
itself, as part of the promotion of the artists under his contract.
If Google's interpretation of the law is affirmed, and if this gentleman's claims are proven,
then this whole case could become history faster than a judge can even say "summary
judgment."
Researching topics such as health, diet, and
(especially) the effectiveness of dietary supplements can be hard and time-consuming. Obscured by
thousands of marketing tricks, finding the truth takes days, if not weeks of research.
So, when someone puts in the time to do the research and create an infographic that makes certain
aspects of these topics easy to understand, it can be a huge time saver. Read on for some of the
best health-related infographics we’ve found online.
As always, consider the figures in these infographics with a grain of salt. No one guarantees
that the numbers are correct, and some of them are definitely open to interpretation.
1. Dietary Supplements
This is, without exaggeration, the most amazing and useful infographic I’ve ever
encountered. It looks fairly simple, but it took many hours of research to create it, and it is,
to my knowledge, the best resource about the actual efficiency of various dietary supplements out
there. From the author:
“This image is a “balloon race”. The higher a bubble, the greater the evidence
for its effectiveness. But the supplements are only effective for the conditions listed inside
the bubble.”
The graphic shows the effectiveness of health supplements on the Y-axis (higher is better), and
uses the size of the bubbles to illustrate the popularity of that particular supplement among US
adults. Anything below the “worth it line,” doesn’t have enough evidence of
medicinal benefit and is probably not worth your time, according to the graphic’s creators,
who looked at data from over 1500 studies on both PubMed (US National Library Of Medicine) and
Cochrane.org. The infographic effectively
combines data on both popularity and medical benefits to create a resource that points out the
best health supplements, as well as which ones American consumers believe in the most.
Check out the interactive version, which lets you filter the supplements by function, here.
2. Should You Drink Tap Water?
This is a look at five most and least polluted water systems in America (in larger cities),
showing that not all tap water has been created equal.
If you’ve been struggling with the issue of drinking tap or bottled water, this info might
help you make a decision. Of course, the data in this infographic, created by GOOD, covers only 10 cities, but it
highlights an important point – not all chemicals that can appear in tap water are
regulated. The graphic illustrates how many pollutants are found in each water system, how often
they’re found, and what type of bacteria exists.
Obesity is a known problem in the USA, but which states are affected the most? This is the most
recent infographic on the subject we could find, listing obesity rates in all US states, as well
as obese and overweight children rates in the USA.
Besides these numbers, this attractive infographic highlights several important points; such as
overall high rates of obesity among high school students, as well as the direct and indirect
costs of obesity to the US budget.
Right now, one of the most debated topics in the USA is health care reform, and how much the
proposed health bill will cost individuals and business. But how much are people paying for
health care in other countries around the world?
This infographic, created in a collaboration between GOOD and Way Shape Form,
shows the average life expectancy in various countries (indicated by the fullness of the IV
bags), as well as several other health-related stats, such as infant mortality rates, and the
cost of health care.
This visualization was created by David
McCandless, the creator of the Snake Oil infographic mentioned above. It’s a slightly
morbid chart, showing the average fatality rates for known diseases — the size of the
bubble indicates how likely you are to die from a given disease (larger is more fatal).
It comes, however, with an optimistic second chart. The X-axis shows the fatality rate, but the
Y-axis shows how long the cause of the illness can survive outside of the body in ideal
conditions. Lesson: wash your hands!
Know of any other great health-related visualizations or infographics? Let us know in the
comments!
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Description:
The shortest way to describe this is that Google is no longer a verb. It's becoming
a noun. Not just the few clicks to find information, but the information itself and the
experience surrounding it.
We recently had the opportunity to sit down with 
His comment, "when the Drizzle team was moved into Google, they
just kept working on the their open source project and things stayed nearly the same."
Google's destiny to become the hub of the worlds information is
intertwined with history. And this comes with artifacts of policy and posturing. To start with,
not everyone agrees that Google should achieve a dominant cloud position. As we're noticing,
stopping it is another matter.
We see both practical and strategic reasons that Google has a
deep connection with the open source movement. Strategically, being the new optimized layer,
removing all historic barriers to information give the company more leverage. Practically,
solutions can be built where information is free.
Microsoft just launched a 
Conference organizer Leipziger Messe will no longer operate its GC Asia event,
originally scheduled for this September in Singapore, citing the "overall currently prevailing
economic situation." "It is a regrettable, but necessary decision", says Jorg Zeissig, managing
director of LMI Asia. "We will continue to keep an eye on the Asian games market so that we can
pick up again with new concepts if this becomes appropriate." The event and its associated
developer conference ran ...
Recommandations
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and reject those that you are not interested in
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