Syria
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, November 6, 2022.
Debate military intervention in Syria on LikeDebate. This is a parallel debate to the Intelligence Squared US debate tomorrow.
Diary of a Living Room
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Thursday, November 12, 2015.
1,920 frames taken every 45 seconds and stitched together into a single photo. It's a single frame time lapse of 24 hours.
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(Published to the Fediverse as: Diary of a Living Room #photo #sftl Single Frame Time Lapse (SFTL) photo of a living room over 24 hours, 1,920 frames combined into a single image. )
Book reviews for July 2013
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017.
Doctor Who: Harvest of Time by Alastair Reynolds
5/5
I don't normally do SciFi series books... but this is Alastair Reynolds doing Doctor Who. Jon Pertwee era with UNIT and The Master. If the BBC had a 300 million Pound budget for a Doctor Who story line in the 70's this is what they would have made.
Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing by Po Bronson
4/5
I always enjoy Po Bronson and he's typically on form here with fascinating research and anecdotes around the topic of competition. There is a lot of new evidence on how hormones work that I'd never seen before and an interesting theory that competitive sports are a precursor to democracy. Much of this book is about how competition brings out creativity and drive. I wonder it it's missing a trick here and that the real factor is operating under constraint with competition being just one of many possible forms of constraint. In addition to the studies showing that art was better when a competition was involved I'd like to see how this worked out when one set of artists was limited to using just brown and silver... I'd bet the results would look pretty similar.
Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4) by Dan Brown
2/5
By the numbers. OK, but not great.
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Die, Software Patents, Die
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, October 23, 2022.
Eolas invalidated (some more).
Joel on Software on Destroying Patents.
(previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously)
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HOWTO: Punish Banks
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, October 2, 2022.
Barclays just got fined $453m for manipulating the electricity market in the US, following a £290m fine for fiddling Libor while HSBC is off money laundering with seeming impunity.
A $453m fine for Barclays is equivalent to $600 for the average US household, although if the average US household got caught manipulating markets they'd probably be in jail.
These relatively small fines aren't enough to really change behavior.
Unless we change how the fines are used. Put $453m in an incubator that funds banking startups and you can have 40 scrappy well funded companies trying to take the banks down. A handful of those will succeed and really do some damage. Every time a bank misbehaves it will be sowing the seeds of its own destruction.
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(Published to the Fediverse as: HOWTO: Punish Banks #politics #banks #barclays A cunning idea to use corporate fines to fund startups that will be the eventual demise of the corrupt but too big to fail miscreants. )
Finally Gmail
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, October 23, 2022.
Gmail is taking the compose window out of the corner of your window.
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Never Ending Fog
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, October 1, 2022.
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NatureBox
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Thursday, November 12, 2015.
You know what's healthy? Leaving your house to get a snack.
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(Published to the Fediverse as: NatureBox #etc #naturebox Healthy is not getting snacks delivered to your door as a subscription... )
Brexit Prize
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Thursday, November 12, 2015.
The Institute of Economic Affairs has announced the 'Brexit Prize', a competition for the best blueprint for a UK exit from the European Union. First prize is 100,000 Euros, so it's worth a shot.
My plan: Beat Puerto Rico to becoming the 51st state.
I was just about to send this in when I read the instructions:
"At both stages, potential entrants should ask Amelia Abplanalp on [email protected] – for an entry number, preferably at least seven days before the closing date. Entrants should create two pdfs. One of those documents should only have the entry number as an identifier. The other document should have the entry number, name and contact details of the entrant on the cover page..."
It goes on like this and sounds like some EU directive relating to banana curvature. And don't you contact someone at an email address rather than on one? Must be an early April Fools' joke...
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(Published to the Fediverse as: Brexit Prize #politics #eu #brexit My (strangely losing) entry for the Brexit Prize, make the UK the 51st state! )
The Economics of Digital Rights Management
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Thursday, November 12, 2015.
Cory Doctorow wrote an article criticizing SiDiM in Publishers Weekly last week:
"But the fact that the basis behind this security measure was countered 25 years ago by employing a simple tool that’s getting into its 40s is not the silliest part of this supposed new DRM breakthrough."
This misses the point about how DRM really works.
Most people are fundamentally honest but reading a book or watching a TV show or installing one more copy of a software program doesn't feel like you're doing anything wrong. If you throw up a small roadblock then this is generally enough to gently remind people that they need to cough up.
If I can install another copy of Photoshop from the shared drive to get my job done then I will. If it asks for a license I'm going to ask my boss for one rather than hunting down a cracked copy. DRM works even if it doesn't do very much.
In fact it works best when it doesn't do much. A more sophisticated DRM is more likely to go wrong and is harder to operate. Highly effective DRM starts to hurt you with support and maintenance costs. When it fails to work or to be fair it can backfire spectacularly and cause a consumer backlash.
I spent a lot of time earlier in my career developing and selling DRM and copy protection. Deals were won on security but successful relationships were built from helping publishers balance the technical possibilities with ensuring that legitimate customers had a good experience.
"The idea that copyright owners might convince a judge, or, worse, a jury that because they found a copy of an e-book on the Pirate Bay originally sold to me they can then hold me responsible or civilly liable is almost certainly wrong, as a matter of law."
This doesn't sound right either. We've had enough experience of the record labels and movie studios suing individual copyright infringers, most of whom can't afford to risk a court case even if they have a plausible 'left my laptop unlocked' defense. This wasn't a smart move before, but it doesn't mean that book publishers can't deploy the same flawed strategy.
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(Published to the Fediverse as: The Economics of Digital Rights Management #etc #drm The utility (or not) of Digital Rights Management has very little to do with the level of security provided. )
