Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Author: Carrie

  • Why Police snooping powers are a step too far

    The nice people at Techradar.com have kindly given me a regular blab slot to talk about tech, and the first one is up: it’s about the powers that will enable the police to install keyloggers and other spyware on people’s PCs without a warrant.

    Imagine if the Home Office decided that the best way to fight terrorism was to ban curtains.

    “Hang on!” we’d say. “That means Creepy Dave across the road will be able to see me in my underpants!”

    The Home Office would nod sagely. “That’s true, but you know who else has curtains? Terrorists! Terrorists and gangsters! So it’s curtains for curtains!”

    The Home Office hasn’t banned curtains just yet, but it’s getting closer.

  • Hallelujah

    Popjustice nails it:

    The fact of the matter here is that the best ever version of ‘Hallelujah’ was by Jeff Buckley and the worst ever version of ‘Hallelujah’ is Bono’s. Every other version of ‘Hallelujah’ between now and the end of time will sit somewhere between those two recordings.

    As for whichever ‘crusades’ are currently running regarding the Buckley version – apparently there’s one in The Sun – we fail to grasp how any of this is a ‘real victory for real music over Simon Cowell’s plastic pop rubbishzzzzzz’ given that none of it would be happening without The X Factor. “Readers! Let’s really teach Simon Cowell a lesson and show him that he’s powerful enough to get Jeff Buckley in the Christmas Top 5 without lifting a single finger.” “Oh and let’s show that The X Factor is manipulative and not about music by making people buy a song not because they like it but as a token of their dislike for something else.” LOGIC FAIL.

  • Evening Times: and this is *before* the layoffs

    etcrap As mentioned previously, Glasgow’s Evening Times is laying off a whole bunch of people because, apparently, they’re no longer needed in today’s multi-platform media world. Looks like they’ve already sacked the subs.

  • WordPress 2.7: “Free software doesn’t get much better than this”

    I’ve been playing with WordPress 2.7 for a wee while now, and my first impressions are up on Techradar:

    Moving from 2.6 to 2.7 is no mere point upgrade: it’s more like moving from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. For beginners, it’s easier than before; for existing WordPress users it’s more flexible and considerably less annoying.

  • HMV: sales are up, but music’s dying

    Mark Mulligan takes a look at HMV’s latest results:

    music’s share of total sales is declining sharply and is strongly outweighed by DVD, which itself is now losing share to games and electronics.

    … those responsible for in store CD sales are scared of accelerating cannibalization of their dwindling sales by driving people online. It’s too late for those kinds of concerns.

  • Glasgow’s CCA is looking for fiction writers, artists and critics

    I don’t know anything about this so I thought I’d post the email I’ve just received:

    Here at CCA (Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow) we are launching a new quarterly publication named 2HB for which we are seeking contributions from writers and artists. The focus will be on short pieces of fiction and also creative critical pieces on the themes of eroticism, sci-fi, philosophical fiction, art as writing and detective fiction.

    We are looking for brave writers who are able to step outside the ordinary and command their readers to take note of a new perspective of reality.

    If you have any such contacts, please could you direct them to the 2HB page on our website
    www.cca-glasgow.com
    There they will find directions for submissions as well as details of deadlines and publication dates.

  • BBC to ITV and C4: fancy some iPlayer action?

    Blimey.

    The BBC is planning to offer Channel 4 and ITV the free and open use of its iPlayer online video technology, according to sources close to the corporation.

  • Mobile Flickr brings video to the iPhone

    Flickr has updated the excellent m.flickr.com, and you can now view video on your iPhone or iPod Touch. The quality’s superb – the clips play as stand-alone videos, presumably via Quicktime – but for now the changes only apply to videos uploaded in the last day or so. Previously uploaded videos will be “supported at a later date”, Flickr says.

  • From the archives: The Seven Deadly Sins of Apple Ownership

    Another old MacFormat one – this one predates not just Leopard, but Vista too – but I’m amused by the intro, which is a load of old bollocks. Fun bollocks, I hope.

    Mac ownership is often described in religious terms, but the link between Macs and the heavens goes back further than you might think. In the Garden of Eden, Eve took an Apple from the Tree of Knowledge (pedants say it was an Apricot, but what do they know? They’d probably argue that the serpent was a Dragon 32) – and of course her partner was the proud owner of Adam’s Apple. The links continue to this very day: every time you buy a Mac an angel gets its wings – but whenever a Mac runs Windows, an angel is twanged into a tree.

    (more…)

  • From the archives: Has Privacy Croaked?

    [Originally published in PC Plus. Some of the privacy options mentioned in this article, particularly for Facebook, have changed since this piece was originally published – Gary]

    Never mind ID cards: social networking sites are creating a data mine governments would kill for. As Gary Marshall discovers, the devil’s in the details.

    In July, US security services’ plans to harvest massive amounts of information about air travellers caused an outcry. “That’s terrible,” everybody cried, before handing over their most sensitive personal data to a plastic frog.

    The frog was on Facebook, the social networking site where more than 30 million people share all kinds of information from their educational and career histories to their sexual orientation. As security firm Sophos discovered, while many of us worry about ID cards, government databases and anti-terror watch lists, 41% of Facebook users will happily share their secrets with Freddi the Frog – and thanks to social search engines and database diggers, privacy is increasingly looking like a thing of the past. (more…)