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scyrene

Listed below are comments made by scyrene between Monday, 4th August 2008 and Friday, 5th June 2009.

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Is the web's amateur hour over? 11:58am on 05 Jun 2009 If people are genuinely blogging/making films/creating music etc out of love for their art, they won't be put off by the crude economic dynamic espoused by Mr Keen. If I choose to spend time editing Wikipedia, for example, it's to correct misinformation; if I post a review of a restaurant, it's to help people who may want a second opinion, and to share my experiences. Many people get pleasure from creating content without ever thinking of financial reward. If I'm following "web orthodoxy", all I can say is how refreshing that such utopian ideals have come to dominate any sphere. Looking at other areas of society (if you'll forgive the word), I can't see how capitalist economics have been better at fostering creativity. I also doubt any recession will kill off the free exchange of ideas we see in Web 2.0.
Does Wolfram work? 11:08am on 18 May 2009 I asked some basic questions, and it understood the majority. 'When was Charles Dickens born?' yielded an answer, 'where is the Taj Mahal?' gave a map, a word-based answer, but also lots of interesting local data, such as population, time, local weather, and distance to Delhi. 'How far is Sirius from Earth?' succeeded fine, with the answer presented in a variety of units or measurement, and 'how big is Japan?' gave a similar result, including interesting comparisons with other countries. You could get this from other sources, but for simple facts, it might be quicker to ask WA than trawl through a text-based encyclopedia article.
Do anarchists tweet? 10:45pm on 02 Apr 2009 I'm with Rory, actually. Mobile phones are ultimately controlled by multinational corporations. They are agents of social organisation. I haven't studied it, but surely anarchism is opposed to social self-organisation, since politics and government are merely developments of this? On either point - signing a contract (real or, in the case of pay-as-you-go, tacit) with a phone company, or organising into groups (whether by mobiles or otherwise) - they aren't remaining true to their cause?

Twitter seems more individualistic, and therefore more anarchic. I suppose you could say 'I'll be here at such-and-such-a-time', without subscribing to a hierarchy. Still, social netowrking is largely a matter of following trends - can that be truly anarchic?
' 5:45pm on 29 Jan 2009 The Councillor was right - with regard to placenames, it doesn't make a difference to the meaning to have an apostrophe or not. The campaigner didn't see the double standard in his own viewpoint - what placename has a comma, a full stop, a semicolon, or any other punctuation apart from the apostrophe? It's not going to have an effect on general punctuation to remove the apostrophe from placenames - not having semicolons in placenames hasn't jeopardised that punctuation mark. The apostrophe is in threat more generally, but for other reasons that have been well explored in previous debates.
In search of the naked strawberry 7:01pm on 04 Aug 2008 PS - If you go for a walk in the country (or anywhere semi-rural), you should be able to collect as much soft fruit in the form of blackberries as you could want.
In search of the naked strawberry 6:57pm on 04 Aug 2008 I went to a local greengrocer (I wonder if you are from Lancashire too, given that you went to Garstang?), and they sell redcurrents in little cardboard boats (from the Netherlands, but still!). I'm sure I have also seen blueberries in card similar to egg cartons, perhaps in the Borough Market in London. I think it is possible to buy them in card from independent places like that. Otherwise, I'm sure a stallholder or greengrocer wouldn't mind if you emptied the plastic punnet into a (non-plastic) bag, box, or tray you'd taken along - I doubt a supermarket would, though.

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