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Hexham_Dan

Listed below are comments made by Hexham_Dan between Monday, 18th May 2009 and Monday, 7th December 2009.

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Christmas shopping: Online v High Street 1:24pm on 07 Dec 2009 It's a curious thing, but now I think about it, all of the online purchases I can recall making in recent years have been from small retailers (a reconditioned Apple Mac from a specialist in Bristol, a new windscreen for my classic motorcycle from a supplier in Vista, California, an antique book from a shop in Oregon, and so forth).

The last Christmas present I bought online, was a history of my Dad's old Air Force squadron from a (very) specialist publisher in Tonbridge.

Appart from other boring stuff like Tax Discs, that makes up the bulk of my online buying pattern (i.e. it *has* almost no pattern). I'm almost certainly a complete abberation, in this respect, but I think my behaviour does prove that online sales can be made with sellers who are so far down the list, they're off the scale (precisely because they happen to stock things you'd never have a hope of finding in the big name stores - real or virtual).
The politics of crowdsourcing 12:54pm on 03 Dec 2009 Ah yes, 'online, and collaborative'... These have been the watchwords of just about anyone launching a 'Web-initiative' about anything, in the last ten years, haven't they?

The problem is that 'Online and collaborative' is all to often married with 'unaccountable and (this is the important bit) annonymous'.

Whereas in the construction of something like an operating system or a Web browser - when the identity of those contributing, is not only known, but the value of their contributions is immediately and unambiguously apparent - attempts to apply the same approach to more subjective areas of endevour, such as encyclopedias, or (in this case) future public policy, stand on weaker ground. 'Online and collaborative' can quickly morph into 'online and consensual' - or even something more sinister, if the ultimate outcome is decided by whoever is the most active and determined editor of the content.

Worse still, public policy is not even a subject of consensus, but rather of open and often hostile contention, so I realy don't see what value may be got from this notion. At best, it might dissolve into something that resembles the comments section of Youtube, and at worst... well others have already said, what it could be, at worst.
Steve Jobs: Teenage hero? 5:50pm on 15 Oct 2009 brightengineer, there is some evidence to show that Bill Gates might once have been reasonably good at writing BASIC on the Altair, but he sure as heck never wrote any 'engine' for any GUI, and he definitely didn't write a 'floating point compiler' (do you even know what one of those is? It doesn't sound like it.)

Stop saying things because you want them to be true, and you might one day get to be a real engineer.
Day Two: Water or the web? 4:15pm on 15 Sep 2009 Farmers who have to physically carry their goods to market will benefit from being able to phone someone at the market, in advance, and determine whether today's price is worth the walk. Those without that ability will have to sell their goods for whatever price they find when they arrive, and may therefore always remain hostage to the market traders. Likewise, a farmer who is having to irrigate his or her crops using a foreign-made mechanical pump, will better be able to keep that pump running if they can order parts to maintain it from the supplier, before beginning the walk to the nearest town to collect them. Being better connected has implications far more practical than some vague, general desire to be in-touch with the outside world.
The watchphone: Gadget or gimmick? 1:48pm on 20 Aug 2009 It's hideous. These things have always been hideous. Ever since Bill Gates stood on stage, at CES, over half a decade ago with a vast ugly speedometer strapped to his arm, proclaiming it to be the Shape Of Things to Come, these things have been a continual source of ridicule (for those who don't remember it, that particular 'Smart watch' was called Microsoft SPOT: in marketing terms, it proved to be the brother of Microsoft Bob, and, sadly, like Bob, it also proved to be a dog). Looking at the interface on this one, it wouldn't surprise me if you told me you could play 'Pong' on it. I think anyone who thinks that not having to carry a phone around with him counts as a 'life saver' needs to get a sense of proportion - especially when the alternative involves looking like a dork.
Ian Parry Award winner 1:13pm on 04 Aug 2009 They look posed, to me, to be honest. I make no doubt they are real people (and, to be honest, some of the most memorable images of the American working classes have been posed - Dorothea Lange springs to mind) but somehow, with these ones, I can hear the photographer's voice in the background going "Stop smiling. Stop smiling. Look sad. You're working class: I'm here to chronicle the awefulness of your lives." I wonder, did 'Autumn' see any more of the money, from these photos, than Florence Owens Thompson did, when she became The Face Of Poverty?
Stephen Fry on copyright 3:56pm on 13 Jul 2009 The problem with digital rights management, in particular, is the cynical and manipulative way in which it has already been used by the Entertainments Industry. The reason everyone knows the "You wouldn't steal a handbag" advert, is that the rights owners FORCED people to sit through it (just as they will force you to sit through endless trailers at the start of a DVD, if you want to actually watch the film you wanted to see). There is no legitimate way of reaching the content you wished to use, without consenting to being advertised at, because the maker of your player had actively coluded with the Entertainments Industry to prevent that option. You have to rip the DVD, and remove the trailers using third party software (software I'm sure the Entertainments Industry would like to see banned).

It's as if they wished to provide a sneak preview of the kind of things they would do if they had unfettered access to how you used your (sorry THEIR) media. Such artificial obstacles actually encourage people to start hacking the machine. The ripped off file ends up being more versatile, and easier to use, than the paid-for version. What other industry offers its customers a deliberately broken version of its product? It's like hiding all the biros because you have a hundred years invvested in making quill pens.
Is the web's amateur hour over? 5:35pm on 08 Jun 2009 Keen is essentially a narcisistic blogger who has worked at a string of the kinds of Internet Startups that no one has ever heard of. I suspect what he has identified, is that there is no place for venture capital-funded nothing companies, like this, to claw advertising revenue from streaming secondrate media at ever dwindling numbers of users. The extrapolation-forwards, to assert that we're all free-loaders, who are destroying what we consume, rather handily avoids the fact that the kinds of stuff he has spent years trying to make money from, isn't actually worth paying for. It does not mean that true professionals will be out on their ears any time soon. If I want a chair, I'm still going to go to a carpenter; these days I just might ask, on line, first, if anyone knew of any good carpenters, that's all.
Does Wolfram work? 1:46pm on 18 May 2009 Computers are generally bad at ambiguity. This is why most Web searches succeed after we identify some specific piece of information, to define our search. The more specific an item we are searching for, the greater the likelihood of our success. Most people search the Web by trying to second-guess the kinds of things that someone with the answers that they need might have written. When looking for a colleague's professional web page, for instance, it is often better to type in their telephone number, than their name, because the number is more likely to be unique. Human beings are often quite good at this sort of guesswork, whereas computers are monumentally bad at it.
Google is good at second-guessing certain types of action, too (by presenting us with a map, say, when we type in something like "W12 7RJ" - on the assumption that we may be searching for a postal code), but it is only good at that sort of thing, because engineers working at Google have recognised that A) people using their search engine very often tend to put in postal codes, that B) UK postcodes tend to match a general, but highly regular, pattern, and C) someone typing in a postcode probably already has the rest of the address - so chances are, they're looking for directions. The search itself, is highly specific, but it took another group of human beings to see that it represented a pattern of behaviour, and that the behaviour itself had a pattern, that could be identified and handled.

Wolfram falls over because it tries to guess what kinds of questions it might be asked, and encourages us to be vague; whereas Google is built around the kinds of questions it IS asked, and encourages us to be specific.

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