Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
A very refreshing change to the usual mainstream rap. The Chronicles of Narnia Rap and its west coast response Narnia rap battle. Slate covers what makes this somewhat interesting. Saturday night live and race aside, rapping about everyday things is hardly new but I've never seen it like this before. I can imagine other videos will be coming online soon.
When ever the great firewall is mentioned, everyone thinks of China. Even I have to add myself to that list. Interestingly I read a blog on globalvoices (need to find link) which was talking about the fact that filtering happens all over the world and China just happens to be the most high profile one at the moment. One of the things eating up most of my time at work has been the new BBC China site. It has no news content on it at all and it does not link to any news content, which sets its self apart from most of the other 32 language sites we run. This should be acceptable enough to not trigger any alarms on the great firewall china has deployed.
The same certainly does not look true of Iran's firewall which seems to be simply filtering BBC Persian full stop. Hossein Derakhshan has a little about the filtering and i've find some other stuff online. But this is a subset from a much larger email which got sent around
Based on past procedures, the committee in charge of deciding which websites should be filtered has announced a list of sites to the ICT (Information Communication Technology) Ministry to have them blocked and the BBC's Persian news site is one of the sites.
I won't even try and attempt to stake a view on if this is good or bad. But I will say like China information has funny habit of getting around these things. Which leads me on to one of the most interesting moves we've made recently in the Syndication space.
Now for those who do not know I work for the BBC World Service and here comes a disclaimer (thanks Ben). The views stated on this site are mine and are not endorsed by the BBC World Service. Although I am a new media developer for the BBC World Service I am not paid, hoodwinked or coerced into boosting the BBC World Service on this website. Nor does this blog form any part of their marketing strategy. I'm a big fan of Full text syndication but understand why the mainstream media do not use it. So it gives me great pleasure to say that today the Persian feeds were modified to output more content than a little teaser today (the full list is available here). This is not full text, but not your usual one line affair. I have to say its still work in progress and could be changed at any time. But looks like one in a range of innovative solutions for people seeking well written and timely farsi (persian) news content around the world. I would urge anyone who uses the feeds to give us feedback positive and negative. As it might influence what happens in the near future for not only Persian feeds but maybe other language feeds?
Lets hope I still got a job when I go in tomorrow. Although I don't see why not when both the filtering news is online already and the RSS feeds are for public consumption. I won't be suprise if someones already blogged about the change but I've seen nothing yet. Saying that I don't read Farsi.
And at long last some coverage. Iran blocks BBC Persian website on Zeropaid and Boingboing. 2 days after writing this blog post I was worried about the fact I was writing about what we were doing in the BBC World Service about this block. Well besides almost fulltext RSS were now rolling out almost full text daily news email in Persian. So I would say (not the bbc'of course), there's multiple ways around this block. It will be interesting to see if the take up of the Persian RSS and Persian email news will dramaticly increase now there is a block. Humm I wonder if there is anything else we could/should be doing?
I posted a entry about a evening with Jon Stewart a while ago. And just got back from a fantastic evening. Jon was on top form and had everyone clapping and cheering on a lot of sadly amusing blunders and failings of the American government, Mainstream media and people generally. I wont go into too much detail except to say after the performance my wife Sarah had a chance meeting with Jon Stewart while I was in the toilet. All I can say is that she was glowing all the way home afterwards. Bless…
Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far. Plain and simple, if you buy a Sony DRM CD like Get Right with the Man by the Van Zant brothers, agree to the EULA and install the DRM on your machine. Sony will also install a rootkit to make sure there XCP DRM is never removed. Is Sony taking this too far? In the words of Miles Money talks, Ian.
What makes this different from the other DRM currently deployed on CD by Macrovision, SunnComm, etc? Well a kernel rootkit will give access to your whole system and is undetectable by Virus killers and Spyware scanners. It will also rewrite the routines of your system, so you, your administrator and even the system can not see the files and/or process. Once installed, its pretty impossible to get rid of without erasing your whole system drive. As Microsoft themselves say, Be afraid, be very afraid.
Slashdotted and Digged. But Miles diggged a little deeper. Its really interesting following Ceri Coburn (a developer from first 4 internet, makers of the XCP DRM) around the internet. I wasnt sure of exact what he was doing but Miles explain some of his postings and where First 4 internet have been hacking stuff up.
Some examples, Trying to write a Snort logfile parser, maybe XCP is Ceri's first windows driver? We wonder if the XCP dll's are dialing home? Dont get us wrong, I'm sure Ceri is a nice guy but the posts and dont suggest a very well thoughout, stable and secure rootkit (if there is such a thing). And even when you read through Mark Russinovich entry, he points out mistakes and things which could have been better thoughtout to avoid detection and deletion. So Instead we're wondering how soon will it be till others exploit XCP, specially if Sony/BMG avoid being sued and other Record labels deploy XCP like have deployed DRM from Macrovision and SunnComm.
This is indeed a worrying trend for digital music lovers and does not look like ending at root access to your machine. As someone said in the comments. Forget ghosts and goblins. This scary Haloween story sent shivers up my spine.
…well do you? Why not? Is it because you failed the Geek test or more likely because you dont like the idea of being a geek? Wikipedia takes the sci-fi route but could it be the mainstream view of geeks which is putting you off? There was a short piece in the telegraph recently, which was sent to me by Birch about the fact that the UK Sci-fi Channel now has more Female viewers than Male. Ann McMeekin's quote is perfect if you swap sci-fi for geek, or even nerd, or even techie.
People have an impression of sci-fi fans being small men who sit in the dark watching Star Trek but it's not like that now
Will this perception change? knowing the mainstream media, not anytime soon. But it is certain that the old boys club of geek culture is being slowly taken apart, and I for one think its a good thing. The other day Sarah made a comment to me while I was watching Rocketboom which just celebrated its 1st year anniversary (26th October, which is also shared with me and sarah's anniversary too). Its great to see you watching a great looking geek girl for once
. After a brief discussion about what exactly she meant, I got it. Its true all the geek media I watch tends to have a strong male lead and if there are any women at all, there role is usually irrelevent or very small. And shes right, Geek culture is still mainly run by white males. Take for example Nerd TV which still has no female interview after its 8th show now. To be fair Anina is next on the list but shes the only one, not even Molly or Meg Hourihan is on there.
Yes I know theres many cultural and social reasons for this but you have to wonder how much things have changed. lets not get started on the different cultures and race point of view either, NPR has a few podcasts about this but its American focused, Reversing Technology's Racial Divide and Black Students and the Future of Technology.
So back to RachelC and number 2. Rachel says this,
No Author Photo. mmmm – not sure if I want one of those. I'm one of the people in the photo a few posts down and I'm occasionally in my own photos on Flickr. Otherwise – I'll think about this.
Well sorry to tell you Rachel, I looked through your flickr pictures and tags and couldnt find one of you at all. Dont take this to heart (take this whole blog entry with a little tongue and cheek on my behalf), its been great looking through your stuff online and its made it clear to myself what I need to do for my own profile online. I'll see you at the next geekdinner Rachel.
When I looked around for somewhere to work while still working for Ravensbourne college, one of the things which really attracted me to the BBC was one cutting edge projects they were working on and two the creative people it employed. Tom Coates was one of the those people whos name would popup at many events I attended and I became a reader of his blog well before I joined the BBC. So with all this in mind its a real shame to say he's now leaving for a job at Yahoo! Tom was monumental in pushing the BBC creatively, technically and with his stance on blogging, politically. He will be missed by the BBC, just like Matt Biddulph who only left a month ago too. You have to wonder what Yahoo! has or offered which the BBC doesnt. I could guess, but then I would need to kill you.
For those who dont know Tom, I wanted to quote a comment which was left for him in his next entry about the daily show on more 4.
I'm sorry. Was this supposed to be even remotely interesting? I don't mean to be rude but like what the **** are you writing about? Don't you have anything more interesting to say? Jesus Christ Almighty, aren't blogs supposed to be of even remote interest? Obviously not.
FA
– Posted by: Faustino Asprilla at October 18, 2005 12:07 AM
And Tom's reply
Wow. Well, you may not have wanted to be rude, but I think you kind of were anyway.
Let me make something clear. I write my site because I enjoy writing it, and because it gives me a platform to engage in conversation with my peers. I do not set out to entertain people, and I have no obligation to you whatsoever to make my site appealing to you. I'm not writing for a mass audience. I don't want my weblog to make me famous. I'm not making any money out of it – there's no advertising anywhere. I write for the same reasons I speak, to express my opinions, engage in discussion and respond to things going on in the world.
If you don't like what I write, or you find it boring, then that's fine. There are an enormous amount of other sites out there on the internet that you could explore – on every subject imaginable. I'm sure there's something there that you'll find exciting. In the meantime, you may find what I wrote dull, but at least I didn't set out to be rude to anyone, I didn't try and piss anyone off or ridicule anyone else's creative work. I have only one example of your writing to examine, and it looks like the same could not be said of you.
– Posted by: Tom Coates at October 18, 2005 01:00 AM
How could we have let Tom go?
So I went and watched Serenity the movie yesterday with a friend and Sarah. And honestly I was very suprised at how entertaining and enjoyable the movie was. A few weeks before I was reading about the movie and how it actually comes from a TV show called Firefly which was cancelled before the 1st season ended. But the upset fans and got together and planned many ways to express there views on the cancelling, including a advert in Variety magazine. Theres a better overview in this wired article titled Serenity Now!.
What I find not so much amazing, but impressive is the coordination of the 1000's of fans. Its so impressive that I was driven to watch the movie and maybe even buy the DVD in the near future. Fox were really not paying attention to the conversation happening in the long tail. And credit to Universal because they must have been, why else would you screen sneak previews of Serenity in 35 cities. Except to thank the loyal fans for a money spinning series and a movie tie in?
I didnt know till I got online again, that all the actors and actresses are the same as in the TV series. And can I just say one of the actresses, Kaylee played by Jewel Staite is one of the cutest women I have seen (next to my wife of course). Dont get me wrong Zoe, Inara and River are also beautiful.
Anyhow, back on topic. We are already seeing a hell of lot more of this grassroots driven influence, like the cluetrain says #57 – Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner. Fox just learned #60 This is suicidal. Markets want to talk to companies.. Let the revolution continue, and dont forget to check out the pictures of the UK premiere online and the personal email from Joss Whedon (the director of both Firefly and Serenity).
Maybe the reason the UK public are a little behind our Amercian cousins when it comes to being across blogging is because it’s not very ‘British’ for the common man to stand and up and ‘have his say’ on something.
And as you have predicted, I have to agree. But I'm not so sure its quite as simple as to blame our British culture. I feel Geek culture is still kinda of looked down on while America geek culture is much more prolific. I'm not saying that's the only reason either but it like broadband pentration, etc have there part to play in the sum. But lets not forget the ability for the British to quickly change like in the case of House music in the late 80's.
So life goes on. Us ‘new media’ folk continue to push the boundaries and the ‘old media’ folk continue prop up the established broadcast mediums. On the outside we try and look like we’re all connected and know what each other are doing. And most of the time it works – we appear to be a progressive organisation working together in harmoney. Inside people like myself are desparatly trying to pull the old guard, kicking and screaming, into the 21st Century.
The rest of my entry…
At which point I was effectively ostracised by the group as to these people it all appeared too radical, too unfamiliar (and probably too scary).
In my own experience, few idea are too radical and if unfamilar people will ask futher questions till it relates to something they have experience of. Even in future brainstorming sessions with language services which tend to be Radio focused. They really push the ideas out there and demand more experiences like how they use the internet.
However, it was clear how threatened most of them felt. Here was a medium they barely understood, with behaviours and opportunities they had no comprehension of, being communicated to them by someone who, for a few of them, had lived for fewer years than they had worked at the BBC.
I have not seen much of this in my away day but I know exactly what Ben means in other aspects of my work life. Miles always said the great divide going into the near future is not those with or without net access. Its those who get it and those who dont. Honestly its worrying because those who dont are really holding back those ideas from those who do. I wont go into details but just recently I had a large discussion about tagging vs categorisation. I'm fine with having such a discussion but you need to understand or at least tried both sides of the coin to really get it. So generally tagging will never be taken seriously by the old media people because they dont get Flickr, dont get social software, emergence, etc. It kind of makes things really difficult when suggesting new ideas and ways forward which really could benefit our audience.
It is quite disapointing just how much they don’t ‘get it’; that they assume that only “professional old school news people” can come up with these ideas and as such further assume no one else outside of a news background might have already thought of such an idea.
I get this all the time, but on a different take. During 7/7 (london bombs) I checked out Flickr, Googlenews, Yahoonews, the BBC, wikinews and technorati. Most of those sources are out side of the professional old school news media. Some of the people who say they get it [Type 3 if were going by Ben's observations], actually dont ever consider looking any where different. They claim to be forward thinking but turn there back on new media when push comes to shove. Ben uses the word Embrace and I really think this is key. Its like applying rock and roll values to dance music, there maybe room for overlap but you need to embrace it to truely understand it – get it!
What’s dangerous is that they tend to want to apply their old media values to it rather than embrace the already established culture of openness, freedom of expression and equality that is so much more apparent on the Internet than in the traditional broadcast industry. (This is, of course, nothing new as we’ve seen this elsewhere – for example the music and film industry taking on p2p)
Exactly… The question is where we go from now? The example of someone moving around to get experience of other professionalism is a good way forward and I would suggest that you do not need to leave your job to do so. I'm sure I'm not revelaing any World Service secrets but the attachment scheme basicly allows people to move around the world service without forsaking there jobs. I'm sure the attachment scheme isnt unique to the world service but for it to work there needs to be an embracement. Luckly there seems to be a lot more of that from where I'm sitting.
