Posts from 2008

A penguin president

There's been some chatter recently about how Barack Obama isn't really black. The claim is that he's basically a privileged white guy.

I've a proper problem with that, and my basic difficulty is with a classification that is so damn crude.

Why try and jam Obama into one of the pigeon-holes of being exclusively white or black, but never both? I'm sure a large part rests with the media, in wanting a story that is simple to tell; I fear that a greater part is playing on America's more fragmented, near segregated culture when it comes to colour. Growing up as a kid with a mixed background made me feel no less British. I have a great love of Irish and Indian culture, but they aren't quite home to me. I'm not sure America, or perhaps just public identity there, allows such a tick-all-that-apply approach to cultural identity. I'm pretty sure living in London makes that much easier, which is why it is home now.

I hope people start the more nuanced conversation about Obama. He is black and white. He could be their first penguin president.

Words I use

I'm sure I'm fairly late to the party tinkering with Wordle, but I found running the text I've written here quite insightful:

Generated with Wordle (and a little bit of sed, naturally).

Nick rightly points out that the word BEER should appear in large letters somewhere. Unfortunately, I generated this just from these posts, not the entire site and crucially not these places.

Using secure Web sites more frequently

I've got a little more diligent recently about using encryption where I can. In particular, several sites allow you to use an encrypted connection, but don't force it:

• Google Reader
• Twitter – including for their fine API, so I no longer send my credentials in plain text every few minutes
• Newzleech – a handy index of downloadable content on Usenet
• The Pirate Bay – although these days I go there more often for the amusing legal threats than for anything else

More on Using secure Web sites more frequently…

Oyster annoyance

Mary & I were both overcharged on a recent jaunt around London. The barriers beeped and didn't let me out, so the station staff opened the barrier to let me through. The barriers did let Mary out, but it turned out she had been charged two lots of the we-didn't-see-you-touch-out-so-we'll-take-four-pounds.

(Oyster is London's RFID-based ticketing system. You can put travelcards on them, but I use it as a pay-as-you-go card. It charges you for each journey and they promise not to charge you more than the equivalent travelcard. In practice this goes wrong a bit: it's a very complex system, and the software must be a nightmare.)

More on Oyster annoyance…

Telephone spam

I've always been quite wary of the Telephone Preference Service (and its sibling the Mail Preference Service). It makes me nervous that the do-not-spam list is held by an organisation that promotes direct marketing.

After getting more marketing calls, and this weekend a spam text message from Firezza (a local pizza firm, no link-love from here), I finally signed up for the TPS for my mobile number and our home number.

More on Telephone spam…

DRM not dead – just resting

The RIAA's head of technology deployed some twisty logic at a recent trade event:

(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music, and 20 of them still require DRM.

… Any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead.

So, because he cannot think of very many ways to do without, it must be workable as a technology. In the sense that they'll keep pushing it, I'm sure it isn't dead yet. For customers who just want their media to just work, however, DRM isn't really going to cut it.

More on DRM not dead – just resting…

Choosing the London Mayor

London votes today in its local elections, electing the Mayor and London Assembly.

By any account the race between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson is very close, with the polls and bookies making Johnson the favourite, but not by a massive margin.

Each voter gets two choices for Mayor, with the second votes being used for candidates that are not in the top two based on the first choices.

This 'simpler' version of expressing preference is actual a little subtle, and in a race where second preferences are likely to be crucial, I fear we're going to get quite a lot of wasted votes.

More on Choosing the London Mayor…

Comcast's 'HD' quality

PVRblog points to an interesting and quite thorough comparison of Comcast's recent drop in HD quality, including some pretty damning screen captures.

There's a real problem with defining 'HD' as at least a certain number of dots and damn the compression. Quality is a richer game than that. I think we may also need a THX-style, "does this look crap, call this number", and a meaningful, policed brand that means High-Quality, High-Def. Do content owners care when their programme is beaten up so badly it appears on the consumer's television as a bruised and battered mess?

More about 'HD' quality

Stopping home copying, not pirates

Digital Spy are reporting that Sky have recently dropped component video out from their new HD set-top boxes.

More on Stopping home copying, not pirates…

DRM fails disgracefully

After reporting that some people were seeing harsh restrictions on their TiVo for HBO's new (fantastic) John Adams mini-series, Molly Wood has a response from TiVo. It was all a mistake, apparently.

This highlights how it is very hard to make DRM fail gracefully, certainly from the end-user's perspective.

More on DRM fails disgracefully…

SFV Check script

Here's a handy little script for checking Simple File Verification (SFV) files. These are commonly used when distributing files over Usenet, where a large file is sliced into many parts and posted separately. It is just a list of checksums of the smaller parts of the file, so doesn't guard against evil-doers, just random errors.

I used to use a GUI program on the Mac, but it started misbehaving and I'm much happier at the command line.

More on SFV Check script…

Harvard Business Review Fuckwittage

It's a little thing, but if we are to have a hope of educating users to protect themselves online that reputable sites don't behave just like the fraudsters.

Here's a quick spot of fuckwittery from Harvard Business Review.

More on Harvard Business Review Fuckwittage…

Towards signed television

When you tune in to a programme, you want to know that it is the programme the creators intended you to see. Television, like so many things in public life, is still a trust thing.

I believe in our broadcasters, whatever the rumblings last year around a few cases of misbehaviour. But being able to trust what we're watching goes well beyond production.

We receive our programming by more routes today than ever before. Moreover, some of those routes can't necessarily be trusted.

With a little mathematics and a little programming, we could be sure that the recording we borrow from a friend, fetch from an archive, or record from a cable company, really is the genuine article.

We can reinforce trust in what we're watching, however it happened to arrive. Signed television could enable distribution that embraces, rather than fights, the ability of modern technology to make fast, perfect digital copies. Swarm technologies make it easy – and cheap – to send the same digital file to lots of people, especially if it is at all popular. Broadcasters could release material more widely, knowing that it would be seen in the proper context. They would save themselves the headaches of using a DRM-speedbump that has never kept a piece of content off the pirate networks, but that does prevent a significant number of viewers from using legitimate sources.

I have a design for a fairly simple scheme for cryptographically signed television, be it downloaded or streamed. I plan to post that very soon, but first I'd like to run through a few ways this could make television distribution online more potent, for viewers and producers alike.

More on Towards signed television…

Halifax Stupidity

Argh.

The front page of Halifax's online banking has an extravagantly stupid 'feature'.

Somehow, they have managed to publish their warnings about phishing attacks so that they look like, well, a bit of a phishing attack!

Pictures of the stupidity

SemanticCamp London

The sign-up for SemanticCamp London is open.

If you are near London and interested in using the Web with meaning, then grab a spot before they are all gone. It'll be on the 16th and 17th of February, at the Department of Computing at Imperial College (or 'work' from my point of view).

We also have some good pubs nearby, for refreshments afterwards.