Good point from No Rock’n’Roll Fun:
Ed Stourton summarised the position of the Digital Britain report as seeing access to broadband as being on a par with access to power and water: an essential service for the way we live now. It’s impossible to see how you could square a belief that broadband is an essential service with arbitrary removal of that service on the whim of a record company.
A whole bunch of things are going up today. First, If Macs are so great, why isn’t everybody switching?
Design, reliability, security… we all know why Apple addicts love their Macs.
But despite fawning press coverage and the bad publicity surrounding Vista, Macs are still very much in the minority.
So, why are PC owners sticking with Windows? Do Macs cost too much, or are PC owners masochists?
Also, Think before you link:
More often than not, we – that is, bloggers, forum users, Twitterers and the like – will link to an interesting or scary news story when it’s first published. How many of us go back to check whether the story stands up, and rewrite our blog posts if the story turns out to be wrong?
And later on, some stuff about Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report. I’ll update this post with a link when that one’s up. And by “when that one’s up” I mean “when I’ve written it.”
Update: here’s the Digital Britain piece: The Good, The Bad and the WTF?
Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report isn’t an easy read, not least because some of it appears to have been written by aliens.Cut through the bureaucratese, though, and there are some interesting plans up the Government’s sleeve. Some of them are good, some of them are bad, and some are just weird.
It’s that time of the week again:
In the beginning, there was the Asus Eee PC. And the masses looked at it, and they found that it was good. Verily, they said, this Linux thingy isn’t half bad.
And there was much rejoicing in the land of the penguin, for Linux had the market all to itself. A pox on all your houses, Microsoft, cried the penguin lovers. We have found a category in which you cannot compete! Your Vista is too bloated! Your XP is too dead!
Aha! Said Microsoft. We will resurrect Windows XP and give Vista a child, which will not be rubbish, and which will be pretty nifty on a netbook! Screw you, hippies!
I’ve been reading Q Magazine for as long as I can remember, but last year I finally stopped buying it. That was partly because I’d reached the age where I had absolutely no idea who any of the bands in it actually were, but it was mainly because Q became crap. Lists of songs are funny when you’re doing a collaborative playlist on Spotify; they’re dull as ditchwater to read.
But now – as Smash Hits might have put it – it’s back! Back! Baaaaaack!
Credit where credit’s due: rather than head further into Heat territory, editor Paul Rees (formerly of Kerrang, I think) has taken the magazine in the opposite direction. I’d hate to see the freelance bill, but Rees seems to have looked up the Big Book of Good Music Writers, hired them, and given them enough space to do something interesting. The result is a magazine that’s as good as, if not better than, it was in its heyday.
If you’re a lapsed Q reader, it’s worth picking up again. The current issue even manages to get an interesting feature from a Take That interview. Really.
PC Plus has revamped its website, and while content’s pretty thin at the moment – it’s a start-from-scratch job rather than a makeover – it’s looking good. A few long articles are already up, including one I did a few months back comparing the technology, business models and opportunities for iPhones and Google’s Android.
If you’re interested in the background to the new site, the gorgeous, pouting Richard Cobbett talks about it on his blog.
Also online: some Windows 7 features Apple could steal and improve upon.
Another of my .net columns has made its way to them thar internets:
There were four interesting news stories this week. The Home Office decided that it fancied a giant central database of everybody’s internet activity, something that would be perfect for data mining in search of thought crimes. A student was detained for six days under antiterrorist legislation for downloading documents from the US Department of Justice website. A well-intentioned but badly drafted new law could put manga fans in prison as suspected kiddie-fiddlers. And Boris Johnson banned booze on the London Underground. Only one of these caused UK internet users to take to the streets in mass protest. Can you guess which one?
Me, on Techradar: Twitter’s about to be invaded by the masses. We have a cunning plan.
Techradar again: Steve Jobs is sick. Leave him alone.
Imagine you’d had a close encounter with cancer a few years back. You turn up to work with a bit of a cold, and your boss gives you a worried look. “Is the cancer back?†Er, no. I’ve got a bit of a cold. You go for a coffee. “Oh god, is the cancer back?†asks the bloke from sales. No, you say. I’ve got a cold. Back at your desk, somebody accidentally CCs you on an email. It turns out that everybody in the company has become a doctor, they’ve all diagnosed you with cancer, and they’ve emailed your family to break the news.
…that’s exactly what elements of the press pack and blogging crowd have been doing to Steve Jobs since June.
The inimitable Ian Betteridge argues the exact opposite.
Steve Jobs is also a senior executive of a publicly-traded company, and with that role comes certain responsibilities. Steve has responsibilities to his shareholders – and, importantly, so do Apple’s board of directors.
The illness of a senior executive is a classic area where boards need to be strong, and work for the shareholders. It’s a tough time for everyone, but the role of the board, as I’ll explain, means they have to look at things in a way which is impersonal – and which some might find insensitive.
So who’s right? There’s only one way to find out…
I’ve been looking for an excuse to embed a Harry Hill video for ages.
With Steve Jobs on a leave of absence, Tim Cook is running the show. I’ve written a profile of him over at Techradar:
He wears blue jeans and trainers. He’s a workaholic. He’s incredibly intelligent, doesn’t miss a detail, and can destroy you with a single question.
He’s had a brush with mortality. He’s intensely private. He eats, sleeps and breathes Apple.
Does Tim Cook remind you of anybody?
I’m also writing a column about the Jobs-related press coverage. I’ll post a link when it’s done.
A few months ago, I wrote a column for PC Plus suggesting that bandwidth was a utility that should be available to everybody.
If unrestricted, fast internet access is something we need – and from where we’re sitting, it is – then perhaps the solution is to expand the USO, the Europe-wide Universal Service Obligation that means every EU citizen must be able to get a landline if they want one. It doesn’t cover broadband, but it could – and if it offered financial sweeteners to providers while mandating net neutrality, it could deliver unfettered high-speed access to everyone.
Today, The Guardian reports:
[Lord] Carter is understood to be considering replacing the universal service obligation under which BT must provide all with a phone line, brought in when BT was privatised, with a new industry-wide obligation to provide broadband for everybody.
In other columns I’ve suggested making the Internet nicer by automatically emailing every post, email and comment to your mum for approval. I’ll let you know if the government goes for that one too.