Thought Nectar
{ Monthly Archives }
Recieved an email this afternoon…
Hi Senior Sophisters of all disciplines
If you are interested in a life less ordinary, then you should visit the Irish Army Stand in the Foyer of the Arts Building, College next Tuesday 5 December 2006 from 12-2pm. For further information visit: www.military.ie/careers
Given the increasingly incredible state of Irish neutrality, shouldn’t that read, a life less lengthy?
In John Barnes dystopian novel ‘Kaleidoscope Century‘, the protagonist occupies a 21st century a million miles away from the ordinarily rosy scientific positivism of most Science Fiction. In Barnes’s future, rival armies systematically utilise rape as a weapon in continually escalating conflicts, and alienated soldiers move as mercenaries from one side to another, too damaged to consider the impact of their actions. When we read articles like the following from Newsweek, detailing the horrific injuries inflicted on women by combatants in the Congo conflict, it’s difficult to consider such predictions pessimistic.
“When we see a lesion, we can tell who the perpetrator is; there are special methods of each group, types of injuries. The Interahamwe after the rape will introduce objects; a group in Kombo sets fire to the women’s buttocks afterwards, or makes them sit on the coals of a fire. There’s another group that specializes in raping 11-, 12-, 13-, 14-year-old girls, one that gets them pregnant and aborts them.” The youngest victim of fistula from rape his [Dr. Denis Mukwege, medical director of Panzi Hospital.] hospital has seen was 12 months old; the oldest, 71.
The saddest part is that such injuries continue to be inflicted, almost five years after this conflict officially ended.
Read the article on MSNBC.
I don’t buy the argument the the iPod - iTunes packages own the digital market due to the wonderful convenience of the iTunes store. Yes iTunes is one of the major reasons for the iPod’s success. The same is not necessarily true of the iTunes store, at least not in Europe, where the store didn’t even open for a full year after the US version, long after iPod units began flying off the shelves in 2002.
Frankly, I don’t know anyone who buys music from the iTunes store, even now - perhaps because it’s far less common for Irish students to have credit cards, than their American contemporaries. Using the iTunes store has never made sense from a behavioral economics perspective; as purchasing a CD through Amazon or Cd Wow is just as easy, cheaper, and provides access to the original media to rip, mix, burn as much as desired. More importantly for students, CD’s (and Mp3’s) are much easier to share and borrow. 200 million songs sold in two years might seem like a lot, but it’s still a drop in the ocean next to the tracks purchased on CD and traded on file sharing networks.
The iTunes software is on the other hand, ubiquitously used to rip and burn CD’s, manage Mp3 / M4a collections, and most importantly to sync iPods. It’s this - the convenience and usability of the iTunes - iPod combination, that has given Apple such a lead. Hell, the store is a loss leader. Would this integration be so difficult to mimic?
Interesting! It appears Microsoft’s new Zune player is nothing more than a repackaged Toshiba Gigabeat. This from Wikipedia, by way of Gadgetell.
[Toshiba] “1089″ and The Zune
Microsoft’s Zune is a branded version of the new “1089″ model of the Gigabeat. Due to a very tight release schedule, Microsoft worked with Toshiba to modify the Gigabeat firmware, outer-casing and user interface…The Zune is identical to Toshiba’s 1089 model’s specifications… After the initial launch, Microsoft will take-over production and manufacturing of the Zune from Toshiba.
Hilarious. Despite reading about the Zune’s many glaring limitations [1][2][3][4], I’d managed to miss this. Microsoft didn’t even make the damn thing! This explains so much. Why Zune doesn’t integrate with Windows Media Player, doesn’t work with Windows Vista, and why it’s apparently so well designed (the crippling un-features are afterthoughts). Hardy har har, Microsoft can’t even build it’s own Mp3 player!
It does make you wonder why the hardware companies who produce these wonder machines don’t just go their own way and get them into the market. It’s an open secret that Apple didn’t design the original iPod, but instead adapted the design from a prospective product from a tiny company called Portal Player.
Another interesting line from the Wiki..
The Gigabeat line was chosen because of its tight integration with Windows Media Player and its support for the PlayForSure DRM standard.
Makes you wonder why the finished device doesn’t support PlaysForSure.
I’d been wondering why our download speeds had halved, and why, for the first time since signing up with Digiweb, we’d exceeded our monthly (20 gig) download limit. I did some back of the envelope calculations and even including generous alotments of guestimation for Quicktime trailers from Apple and flash video from Youtube, it didn’t add up.
I ran a virus scan with AVG, and spyware scans with the old faithfuls AdAware and Spybot, which uncovered nothing. So I just assumed Digiweb were going through a rough patch, and we’d downloaded more than I was accounting for. Then today, IE 7 crashed (forgive me, I occasionally open the beast when I don’t want to risk real work crashing in Firefox from a time wasting flash game), and I Ctrl+Alt+Delete’d to kill the process. Low and behold Veoh, a video sharing service, whose client I had installed - grudgingly, and after checking a couple of spyware databases - to download Japanese cartoons for my girlfriend, was running a service, one not explicitly mentioned in the installer. The Veoh service was not only chewing up bandwidth, but resuscitated itself - Trojan like - every time I killed it, and insisted on being manually deleted.
Joystiq have a neat shockwave toy that let’s you demo the buddy character functionality of Nintendo’s new Wii console.
Courtesy of Wiffy.
Just came across this article, via the swearing lady. Apparently Technolotics was mentioned in ye olde paper blog, The Irish Times.
If many young students are not yet using modern technology to express themselves, three have done so successfully. Technolotics.com is billed as an irreverent look at technology, politics and the media by three Irish students and for a year it stood as one of the few Irish videoblogs.
Technolotics is cheap and cheerful and it proves an important point. Viewers don’t need RTÉ-grade production values to engage with new personalities. Technolotics found an audience.
Makes me happy and sad at the same time. At last a media mention from someone we hadn’t met personally, but unfortunately a little after the ship has sailed. Sadly it doesn’t look like a Trinity Digicast society is going to become a reality this year, but who knows, perhaps after this whole final year project ship has sailed, I’ll have the energy for another podcast or vidcast project. There are definitely more avenues to explore in this space than are currently getting attention, particularly in the sketch comedy area.
Photo taken in a car park in UCD. For the non geeks ‘Gears of War’, is the best selling computer game of all time, currently out on XBox 360.
I’d be interested to know how this effect was accomplished. As its unobtrusive, impermanent, and for a product I’d enjoy, it doesn’t bother me. The trend to occupy public space for commercial gain however, does.
Discussing online communities today with one of Trinity FM’s up and coming editors, the problem of data migration came up. Web 2.0 services are fantastic, but what happens when we want to leave their walled gardens? As it stands right now there exists no feasible way of say, carrying an identity from Bebo to Myspace, complete with user information, photographs and more importantly ‘friends’ (correct me if I’m wrong, but such a service would undoubtedly violate the TOS of one or both sites).
So far, so minor, a problem easily soluble, or at least survivable - on the user end through the duplication of accounts, on the social network provider end through competition. Just as Yahoo and Google trump other web based email services by allowing free forwarding and address book export (effectively providing a jumping off point for users - one I found convenient recently when switching from the increasing bloat of the new Yahoo mail to Gmail, privacy be damned); and just as websites which link to other sites gain links in return - so a truncated form of universal Darwinian selection will eventually cull social networks based on the criteria of connectivity and selectivity. To rephrase, only the most flexible networks, allowing (and encouraging) interconnectivity with other social networks, mashups, linking with mobile / cellphone accounts, and connecting users to their butcher, baker and candlestick maker, will survive in the long term as social networks become truly mainstream. [Thankfully the web currently lacks implimentation of the bandwidth protectionism (read Net Neutrality) which has allowed Murdock Media to become an exclusive supplier of Digital Satellite television in Ireland and the UK. But don't be surprised down the road, if services like MySpace lobby to restrict access to 'unpoliced' social networks]. Think about it, who’d use a telephone which could only call one set of friends? By contrast, services which provide selective connection will also find an evolutionary niche - humans love elites, and expertise is quantitatively valuable.
Back on the air tonight..10pm to 12pm GMT, on Trinityfm - available online or on air on 97.3FM in Dublin city. Also I have a cold, so be prepared to enjoy a nasal whinny from time to time.
I’ll be playing a couple of tracks each from Joanna Newsom, Final Fantasy, John Darnielle and Tom Waits, then moving on to some electronic stuff (think Art of Noise, and Homogenic Bjork) and whatever else I can did out of our digital cupboards. Fingers crossed I’ll have a new (thus far unnamed) ‘oldtime’ country / Appalachian band in the studio doing their thing. Listen up.
Update: Well the show turned into a bit of a shambles, primarily due to some drunks turning up and stumbling about and not taking the hint to leave *cough*, but Fergus and Dearbhla were great, playing something across between Appalachian and Calypso, and they’ll be in The Blue Note Cafe on Caple St, next Wednesday from about eight thirty, at the first regular TFM Session. I also had an interesting time trying to tell samples of Irish and Klingon apart. Without further ado, here are the show notes for Thursday night.