Confirmed: a plausible rumour isn’t actually a fact

It’s an Apple scoop! From Forbes.com, on Saturday:

Confirmed: New iPhone Will Be Longer and Thinner and Have Smaller Dock Connector

Confirmed? Not so fast. iLounge editor Jeremy Horowitz posted some rumours, and…

These details match up with and expand upon his earlier reports, so this is seeming pretty credible.

That isn’t confirmation, and the Forbes piece was quickly and rightly mocked for its headline. The writer was quick to publish an apology:

Confirmed or Not, New iPhone Screen Size Makes Sense for LTE and Personal Cinema

Skipping gaily past the bit where the writer says that of course, nothing is official until Steve Jobs unveils it — a task that, as we know, has become more difficult since his death — the writer then explains all.

The old model of journalism, which I am as steeped in as anyone (even if I have spent most of my career on the visual side of the equation), was great for absolute quality, but tended to suppress individual voices in favor of institutional ones. What’s great about the blogging model, which Forbes.com has embraced full force, is that we are all out here trying to add ideas to the news cycle.

For fuck’s sake.идея за подарък

ViaGoGo, now with added evil. And cuckoo clocks

Controversial bunch of bastards – sorry, secondary ticketing agency – ViaGoGo has decided that it needs to make some changes to its operation. Changes such as, er, shutting the whole thing down and restarting as a Swiss company, far away from UK consumer protection laws and legislation against reselling Olympic tickets. As the consistently wonderful No Rock’n'Roll Fun puts it:

if Viagogo say you don’t need to worry about any silly laws guaranteeing your rights, why would you worry, eh? It’s not like they’re the sort of company that would suddenly vanish from the UK and turn up wearing lederhosen claiming there’s always been a cuckoo clock element to their business, is it?

“Gun hats? What a brilliant idea!”

Another week, another faintly frightening bit of proposed state surveillance. Me, on Techradar:

What’s happening here is a classic bit of political manoeuvring. What’s supposed to happen is this: the security services ask for the power to do anything they like, plus some satellites with giant lasers and hats that can be used as guns, because that’s what the security services are supposed to do.

The government then tells the security services to get stuffed because we can’t afford gun hats, and because privacy is a fundamental human right.

Like Labour before them, the Tories have forgotten to do their bit. Instead of saying “get stuffed, you power-crazed doom-mongers!” they’ve said “Gun hats? What a brilliant idea!”

“One, we are not doing the right things. And two, the things we are doing are wrong”

Bruce Schneier talks about post-9/11 airport security.

Airports are effectively rights-free zones. Security officers have enormous power over you as a passenger. You have limited rights to refuse a search. Your possessions can be confiscated. You cannot make jokes, or wear clothing, that airport security does not approve of. You cannot travel anonymously. (Remember when we would mock Soviet-style “show me your papers” societies? That we’ve become inured to the very practice is a harm.) And if you’re on a certain secret list, you cannot fly, and you enter a Kafkaesque world where you cannot face your accuser, protest your innocence, clear your name, or even get confirmation from the government that someone, somewhere, has judged you guilty. These police powers would be illegal anywhere but in an airport, and we are all harmed—individually and collectively—by their existence.

“If a few drunken tweets merit prison but harassment doesn’t, something’s going wrong here”

I’ve been thinking about Twitter racists and other unpleasantness. Techradar:

I’m no friend of racists, but the sentencing of Liam Stacyworries me. Stacy, as I’m sure you know, trolled Twitter users over Fabrice Muamba, posting vile racist crap when they responded, and as a result he’s been sentenced to two months in prison.

I’m not suggesting for one moment that what he did was acceptable – but two months in prison? For tweeting?

The point of the piece isn’t to justify what Stacy posted – it was vile – but to ask whether we’re throwing the book at the right people.  As I’ve said in the comments:

It’s an interesting area of law: how do you protect free speech (even if you loathe that speech with every fibre of your being) while cracking down on the harassers and scum like the people who troll the recently bereaved?

I don’t know what the answers are. Fines? Community service among the communities being abused? Electronic ASBOs and cyber-curfews banning them from social media?

Can you trust Kindle reviews?

Someone I follow on Twitter posted this earlier (sorry, I can’t remember who it was): a big list of people offering to post reviews of Kindle books for money.

I don’t recall hiring this guy:

For only 5 bucks I will buy your .99 Kindle ebook, provide a 1 star rating and write a negative review that may demotivate customers from buying your book. This will allow you as the author to help further alienate potential readers by taking the unfounded criticism way too personally. I may also click the “Yes” helful button on other negative reviews of your book to dramatically decrease your books credibility, sales and exposure.

Gags aside, I wonder how much work people like this get:

I will review up to TWO different products. I will give a 5-star positive review for your kindle, book or whatever product you have on Amazon. We all know Amazon is the number one outlet for people buying books, CDs, kindles etc and it is vital that customers see favourable reviews. My reviews will be tailored to match your product and will have a “genuine” feel to it and not appear spammy, such “cool book” or “nifty product, go and buy one” etc

I wrote a column about this kind of thing, but it hasn’t made its way online yet: if it’s worthwhile to game a system, the system will be gamed.

I know it’s illegal for companies to pay for this kind of thing. Does anybody know whether EU anti-astroturfing laws apply to individuals?

10,000 dangerous drivers

My brother David told me about this and I didn’t believe him: thousands of dangerous drivers should have been banned from driving, but haven’t. According to road safety pressure group Brake:

Brake and Direct Line analysed data provided by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) [1] and found that 10,072 drivers whose risky driving totted up 12 points or more have kept their licence and are still driving

The reason? They’ve used the “unnecessary hardship” defence, in some cases again and again. For example:

There are five drivers in Great Britain with 30 points on their licence. They are from Stoke-on-Trent, Northampton, Nottingham, Blackburn and Derby. These drivers have received points for driving uninsured, speeding, failing to give the identity of the driver, red light running and mobile phone offences. One of these drivers was caught speeding seven times, as well as driving uninsured and running a red light.

I’m all in favour of taking people’s circumstances into account when deciding how severely they should be punished, but surely the unnecessary hardship defence should be a one-time option followed by an instant ban and/or a custodial sentence if the person offends again? The laws aren’t there for a laugh; they’re there to ensure the safety of the rest of us.

Sky-high ticket prices: there’s no shortage of bad guys

Me, on Techradar:

Truly, these are wonderful times: never in human history have there been so many places to pay ridiculously inflated prices for tickets.

…is your favourite artist ripping you off?

Screw you, Yahoo!

Mic Wright has got his hands on an email from Yahoo! that the firm doesn’t want widely circulated: it’s going into the “crappy articles for insulting rates” business.

As he writes in a related post: “It is the mark of a dysfunctional industry that the senior executives of major newspaper groups retain salaries touching of £500,000 and above while they tear down freelance rates and slash jobs in the newsrooms.”

Cynical book-flogging bastards

One of my friends has discovered the dubious joys of Young Writers’ literary competitions for children. Young Writers and similar programmes are well known in some circles, but parents’ knowledge of them tends to begin when their excited offspring tell them they’ve won a writing competition of some sort:

Having been showered with congratulations by her proud parents, your child heads off to school on cloud nine to tell her friends and teachers of her success. But her mood is less jubilant, when she discovers that she’s by no means the only “winner”. Most of her friends’ parents have received the same letter.

Your mood takes a further dive when you read the letter in more detail and find that it’s going to cost you £14.99 plus £2.50 postage to buy the book containing your child’s work. OK, the price comes down the more you buy – “a great keepsake for other family members, capturing a snapshot of Julie’s work at this age in a format that will last for years to come” – and postage is free if you buy four or more. But it seems a ghastly amount to pay for something where your true interest lies in only 50 precious words written by your child – the rest won’t hold quite the same fascination, let’s face it.

I need to word this very carefully, because the child’s inclusion isn’t dependent on buying the book. That means it isn’t vanity publishing, where you have to pay someone to print your (or your child’s stuff). What to call it, then? Cynical, pester-powered publishing? Bastard publishing?