Archives for September 2005
19 Professors and the Music Business
Canadian law professors have produced a 600-page book that is being made freely available under a creative commons license in which they make the point that “The public’s interest in copyright, something inconceivable even a few years ago, is the result of the remarkable confluence of computing power, the Internet, and a plethora of new software programs, all of which has not only enabled millions to create their own songs, movies, photos, art, and software but has also allowed them to efficiently distribute their creations electronically without the need for traditional distribution systems”
UK-Design: Another Cracker!
Not as cerebral as last time, but just as amusing: the UK’s oddest design-geek mailing list crackles back into life this week and sees me encountering one Neil Gibb: ex-Oyster honcho, CV-flinging new media giant and free-thinker. A little too free, in fact…
Running Vista
OK, slightly misleading title: I’m not actually running Vista, I’m thinking whether I’ll ever run it. The other day I tried to think of one thing that WindowsXP Home Edition (the on that came with my new Dell) gives me that Windows98 didn’t have. I don’t consider myself a computer geek, just an interested party – but I could not think of a single thing.
Visual Media “Not That Bad” Revelation
“Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people!”
Right on! I have a gun, I’m wearing a beret, and my daddy’s the richest man in America!
Guardian ’94 Tabloid Irony Mashup!
“At The Guardian,” writes today’s Sunday Times, “…they claim that they came up with the idea of a compact newspaper long before The Independent.” Well, I can confirm that it’s not just a claim, it’s a fact. What’s more, they even put out a prototype in 1994.
Trying Tor Again
Earlier this year I took down the Tor server I was running, mainly because it was hoovering up rather a lot of bandwidth and throttling it down to the trickle that would have been necessary to keep under my bandwidth cap seemed a bit silly. I’ve now set it up again (nickname “Doormouse”) on one of our Hatters servers for the continuing good of all mankind (huzzah!). Wonder at the graph and bask in the glow of pure freedom – or something.
Windows Presentation Foundation: It’s Not Flash
I went to the Microsoft Campus yesterday to have an informal preview of some of the new Windows UI things to be announced next week (technically under NDA – so sue me).
Her Heart’s In the Right Place
This blog post shows how chaotic the discipline of IA is (see the comments in particular). There’s not even a pretense of union, agreement or even polite tolerance of divergent views amongst the practitioners. I look at designs by other people and I feel almost bound by duty to pepper them with criticism. I even expect it in others: a senior colleague recently reviewed some work I’d done and drew large rings around some elements, writing the words “awful” in large red ink next to them. Two months later, and after much fruitless experiment, the same interaction he so abhorred has now been deployed. The belief that there’s a mythical “true way” promotes the idea that the one who puts their idea across with enough force wins. We’re no worse than cowboy builders or politicians. Oh, and Euro IA rejected my application to give a presentation. Bastards.
Britt Allcroft: I Am Angry
Laurence Lessig’s written a great short piece (I didn’t know Americans could do that!) for Foreign Policy on the death of the public domain. He’s great at hitting the nail on the head.
