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I'm probably going to leave this LJ behind and move over to Wordpress.
My Diary of a Nobloggy can be found there. Comment
The mash-up of two popular tv shows Dragon's Den and Pop Idol that was the 'Finale' of Idea Idol rocked Oxford last night for the third year running.
This event set eight finalists -- six commercial enterprises and two charitable organisations -- in head-to-head pitches to a panel of four judges for a total prize money of £12,000.
The selected ideas were pretty varied, ranging from designer cast covers and slings (the eventual winner) through a student betting website and feedback-responsive keyboards to grand visions of private initiative overhauls of NHS blood analysis. Refreshingly there was a complete lack of web2.0 ideas (blogging, IM, and podcasting still yet to be moulded into commercial ideas it seems, Yahoo buyouts excluded), the betting website being perhaps the only idea verging on the vacuous, and the word 'synergy' was mentioned only once (yes, by an MBA student).
Sadly, but maybe predictably, the use of Powerpoint slides by practically all of the contestants was shocking: some fell into the trap of having slides and slides of detailed bullets (unforgivable really in a five minute pitch) and others seem to be taking the new web2.0 wave of clear bold colourful designs to new levels (or had they just made their slides in a shorter time than it took to give their presentation). Over all, one presenter had no graphic aids, one team just had a map, and four pitches used one overhead with just title.
Perhaps disappointing too was the number of MBA business development projects in the final. These were obviously team efforts directed towards developing full business plans, and all certainly gave the most polished and best directed talks. But I thought these went against the nature of the Idea Idol competition of giving people with little business background the chance to consider their mettle and pitch. There were apparently 75 entries altogether and it would have been nice to see some more promising undergraduates up there (the blood analysis and casino guys were the only UGs, if I remember correctly). A little nurturing of the contestants, if possible, could have dramatically improved their pitches and everyone's take-home experience of the contest. Even if the organisers had just sent a five minute email to all the entrants -- or just finalists -- explaining the sort of process that might be successful, then great ideas, such as feedback keyboard, could have been given much better wings to fly on. In these respects the contest was very different to last year, which I'm sure had a number of great pitches from undergraduates, e.g., BOSO, who won that year.
Full round-up
Commercial Enterprise Winner: Medical Style LLC (£5000 prize)
Commercial Enterprise Runner-up: Carbon-Market.com (£2000)
Social Enterprise Winner: 'HIV & AIDS Prevention' (£3000). Comment
Anita Roddick spoke yesterday at Said Business School as part of Oxford Entrepreneur's Game Changers series.
In a very different occasion to Alan Sugar's appearance earlier this term, she gave a polished empassionated talk, as might be expected, as this event appeared to be part of her latest book tour.
She started by very fairly turning on the OE's obsession with the term 'entrepreneur'. Describing herself as an activist and agitator, she talked of the media's unbounded obsession with the phrase, the success of which only seems to be measured by profit alone. People were confusing entrepreneurship with opportunism, and success was inflated and depressing.
Challenge Everything
Dame Anita is trying to help the World enter a new era where money is not the end. An entrepreneur, as she sees them, should be more of a social change agent than a business person; following a calling, not a career. They should be like a crazy person and believe the idea so passionately that they talk about it in the present tense; they will it into existence with the zealousness of a religious convert. She admitted that she has learnt a lot from Quaker business models.
The four key things are:
1) Idea
2) Self
3) Money is necessary to make it happen, but should not be the motivator; it is more about freedom [although not as we learnt later in her case with Body Shop's public floatation]
4) INTEGRITY
Critical is the belief that anything is possible; essentially patholigically creative; vomitting ideas.
Bravely she dismissed society's love of business schools, which she saw as being controlling and obsessed with the status quo. What she wanted was a marketplace for feedback and ideas. Her idea: being twenty times bigger is not a goal; being better by being values-led is. This is why the Body Shop, for her at least, was a conduit for areas and issues she believed in.
Talking about the Body Shop, she told us of its beginnings: her husband, Gordon, was about to leave to travel through America on a donkey, and founding the business was a way of securing financial well-being for her family. The first shop was in Brighton, in an out of the way location, but drew a committed customer-base: it had to, as it was on a road full of undertakers (apparently). Her early -- and continued -- success is in part due to her uncoventional, inexpensive, eye-catching marketing techniques, what she describes as guerilla marketing. She saw standard marketing as ineffective: we are all nowadays very over-marketed too, and thus have become very cynical. However, working with NGOs she was able to target an idealistic sort of consumer. She described the best marketing as the one that your competitions is either unwilling or unable to follow.
"We were searching for employees but people turned up instead."
But it is clear that her consumers are not the most important people in all this to her. It's her employees. She expressed sadness that businesses are no longer about job creation, only wealth creation. The Body Shop seems to be a conduit not just for her, but she thinks that it's critical to empower her employees; nothing being more motivating as the chance to express their idealism.
Then it came down to her leadership style.
Leadership is Communication
There is no more powerful an institution than business; so it has to assume a moral leadership. It's most effective tool is communication, integral to which is the language of leadership: community involvement and social justice. Activism, she claimed, is the price we pay for being on this planet.
UPDATE: The Independent on Sunday has an interesting profile of Dame Anita in light of l'Oreal's rumoured bid for the Body Shop. Comment
This idea may be unoriginal but what about a podcasting service for unsigned bands? Wouldn't people subscribe to a daily podcast of new and interesting music from exciting fresh bands?
With feedback about what previous tunes you liked, a tivo-esque podcast suited to your tastes could be built up.
That could be podmusic.us.1 comment | Comment
One of the latest Web2.0 startups, and one of the few with an original, well-executed idea, is CoComment, who kindly offer to track and aggregate all your comments scattered across the Blogosphere.
I'll add to this when I've built up a hefty wad of inane unfunny missives myself. Comment
The countdown to Idea Idol 2006* has really begun in earnest.
This competition is really the showcase of the Oxford Entrepreneurship* Society, where simple ideas can be pitched to judges in an attempt to win up to £5,000. A sort of Dragon's Den for back-of-the-envelope fantasies.
Last year's winners included Boso.co.uk, the first (they say) online student marketplace, which has received a wealth of high-level national media coverage.
The Final is on the 27th February at the Said Business School. The finalists were due to be announced on the 4th of this month, but I suspect that something has gone wrong with the administration, because on the 12th people were asked to resubmit their ideas, suggesting that entries were lost (or not submitted?).
Let's look forward to the canapes, anyway!
* Note about the links: apologies to sensitive souls for including those links, but I include them for good reason. The websites, which -- in case you're too scared to see yourself -- fall into some of the easy traps of Flash (not at all Web2.0):
Fancy transitions, colour effects and fonts are easily seen as a synonym for good design. It's a common aphorism that 80% of the users of MS Office use only 20% of the features (or at least it should be if we follow an interpretation of Pareto's rule), but I think we could easily formulate one for Flash, namely:
80% of the users of Flash should only use 20% of its features;
or going further:
You'll be right 80% of the time if you only use Flash 20% of the time you're tempted to.
Hard to find content. The site has a clear menu, but it's hard to find what you're looking for and to leap from one bit to the next. Of course, none of it is actual text (presumably people of limited sight or using older machines can't have ideas). For example, while writing this I knew I had seen a page of previous winners, but couldn't find it again for ages.
MUSIC! The web was never intended to be a multi-sensory experience.
Now this may all seem harsh -- and I don't want to get into a CrunchNotes/Fooky-esque debacle -- but I've resisted making blink tag gags and I fully accept that I made all these mistakes back in the 90s, before the World had speeded on into Web2.0 clarity. The issue is that OE is supposed to represent a dynamic professional bunch of people, and that is not what bouncewithit.com and ideaidol.com suggest. Sorry. Comment
Best...ad...ever: Ellen Feiss Switch Ad.
If you don't remember back to 2002, Wikipedia can come to your rescue, although Wired has a good contemporary summary of her rise to stardom.1 comment | Comment
Not only does Comedy Central offer different browsers, but it refuses to work with Flip4Mac, the WMV-QT plug-in.
The only solution at present seems to be to disable the plug-in in the Flip4Mac Preference pane.2 comments | Comment
Strange fact: there are no words in that OED that end in "sius", apart from two foreign names (Celsius and Cassius). Struck me as unexpected. But then most things do past 1am, I find.1 comment | Comment
Thinking about a logo for my new business ideas ... Web2.0 Logos Comment
FIB have announced some more of their line-up for this Summer's festival. In addition to the history-making electronic pop of Depeche Mode, we will be joined by the vibrant pop of both Franz Ferdinand and The Rakes, the unmistakable sounds of Echo And The Bunnymen and the smooth elegance of Jay-Jay Johanson.
Franz Ferdinand, of course, appeared during the wonderful FIB 2004, when they were a strong up-and-coming act among a musical "sky of stars". The line-up for 2006 is, though, looking as weak as that for 2005, but it is always difficult to tell, with the very drawn out process of confirming/announcing acts.
Doubtless there will be continued speculation on the eFestivals forums. Comment
All-in-one digital cameras
Top three:
Fujifilm S9500 (S9000 in the US) Reg Review DP Review from $503
Panasonic FZ30 Camera Labs DP Review from $501
Sony DSC-R1 DP Review Camera Labs from $7981 comment | Comment
William Rees-Mogg has an interesting Comment piece in today's Times on the future of the fastest-growing company ever entitled Grow up, Google.
He describes his small academic publishing company and claims that Google is threatening to overthrow the whole concept of copyright and thus put him out of business. Not only is the big G on a course to crush poor Lord Rees-Mogg's livelihood, but apparently put and end to all innovation ("No copyright — no revenue — no innovation.")
Much has been written about Google, and more specially Google Print, and their regard to copyright law. In one of the first legal tests of their technology, last week a US district court ruled in their favour in respect to their cache. The use of the material in a cache was deemed fair in a case that has a number of similarities to Google Print: selected copying and holding of copyrighted works where it is up to the author to opt-out.
This strikes to the heart of the matter as I see it: copyright is a privilege granted to creators of works, in that society agrees to afford them certain rights for a period of time, in return for public use after that period has expired. It must have a sensible framework that responds to the needs of society and the artists, and, if last week's ruling is anything to go by, the courts agree on this.
It is not as if Google is actually threatening to end copyright; by employing the fresh technologies and a rather radical approach to information, they are stretching the possible realm of copyright into new paradigms. But, content creators have to realise that there must be limits to their control. There must be possibilities for fair use.
It would be nice to see content creators and artist groups realise that the new possibilities for using and accessing their material offers a realm of new possibilities for them and consumers may be fight back against over-zealous control [Sony?].
Google Print should mean more and more people finding the value in established print media. In the days of misleading blogs and suspect entries on Wikipedia, the public will probably finally get better at judging value and authority. This can only be good for society, informed debate, and quality publishers.
Forgetting about all these grandiose ideas, Google is essentially applying the rules that have evolved in the online world (caching, linking, listing, implied permissions of use) to the print world. That can only be a good thing (dependence on sensible thinking implied). Comment
Cambridge in the 20th Century Comment
Scanned in a couple of the more interesting adverts from the various things I've picked up from charity shops over the years. They are available via Flickr.
1 comment | Comment
The Word: Truthiness.
Fact, as has been often said, is stranger than Fiction. Or that is at least what I feel. In my gut.
Earlier this month, the American Dialect Society announced on that 'truthiness' was being voted 2005 Word of the Year, amazingly beating both 'podcast' and 'sudoko' in the process. The ADS announcement even referenced the Colbert Report, Comedy Central's lastest and greatest 'fake news' show. [For those that haven't seen it, both t's are silent, a la the French pronunciation.]
The scandal is that when AP picked up the news story and released a short piece on it that was reprinted by all the major media, from CNN to Yahoo!, they failed to mention the Colbert Report entirely, citing some (Visiting Associate) Professor, who -- if later investigations by Colbert are to be believed -- hadn't even heard of the Colbert Report. The Prof even denied that Colbert had 'pulled it out of his ass', saying that the OED had citations back to the 1800s.
Colbert replied in a subsequent show, where he proclaimed AP to be the biggest threat to America (naturally just beating bears, at least for this week, in the Threatdown), that it was "like Shakespeare still being alive and not asking him what `Hamlet' is about," and that:
The fact that they looked it up in a book just shows that they don't get the idea of truthiness at all. You don't look up truthiness in a book, you look it up in your gut.
AP have finally covered the whole sorry truthiness tale.
Now for the original citation. It's actually from the very first Colbert Report, and, from having seen most of the first series, actually one of the funniest sections that stuck in my mind. Here it is in full...
( On this show, your voice will be heard... )1 comment | Comment
A pair of second year students -- why is it always second years? -- at Churchill College have been fined for sending a live hamster through the post.
Along with fresh (and misleading) coverage of the whole gay police horse debacle, one wonders what image Oxbridge really paints to the World. Comment
End of Oxford Colleges as they have always been known and loved....
Or maybe just the end to Merton (and Christ's).
UPDATE: Letters in response to this article appeared the following Monday.1 comment | Comment
The founder of StyleBible, Amanda Zuydervelt, writes in today's Independent about her experience on the BBC2 show Dragons' Den.
She didn't get the quarter million she was after, but says that this was not her primary motivation for appearing. One wonders just why therefore she comes across as so bitter: attacking the BBC and the show's producers, before singling out Doug Richard, chairman of Library House, for some special attention.
This is one crusading, feminist* entrepreneur, who -- for some reason -- thinks that this perfect world owes her something. She seems determined to overlook the fact that society is far from ideal (thankfully), so people, as they are perhaps entitled (it's their money, after all), will make snap judgements; but, crucially, it's up to the 'salesperson' to sell the idea effectively. In the article she criticises the Dragons for not grasping the potential for her idea; is this not, at least in part, her fault for failing to explain and pitch it properly?
Maybe she's cleverer than all that: she admits that she's after PR, so what better way than pitching an aggressive article to the editors of the Independent? Hits a go-go. Or, as they would say on /., Step 2: ???; Step 3: Profit!
She's also written a letter in her company blog claiming heavy editing bias (as there may be) and even more bitterness towards Doug Richard. She even seems to gloat about the poor viewing figures. Admittedly these difficulties may not be entirely down to her: I can certainly see why 4m people (presumeably 2m men, therefore) would prefer the disarmingly charming Sarah Beeny to the impoverished Rachel Elnaugh.
* - I say this only because of her attack that she thought she was being branded as 'blonde', when -- out of some respect -- she may credit those potential investors with the ability to see beyond that.1 comment | Comment
Facebook or (CIA) Factbook?
I've just come across a rather disturbing article by Marie on Common Ground Sense analysing Facebook.
Not only does she highlight some very strange clauses in Facebook's privacy policy, most notably the collection of 'information about you from other sources, such as newspapers and instant messaging service', but she also suggests the whole enterprise is funded by the CIA. Admittedly, she stretches the argument almost to the full six-degrees of separation, but it still raises interesting issues into this vast database Facebook seem intent on developing.
Another article can be found on Prison Planet. Comment
I hope I'm not being snobbish, but I really can't see the 'scandal' behind the disclosure in today's Independent that students at Oxbridge stand twice the chance of getting a first. Now, that's twice the chance (22%) of getting a first over a student at Newcastle.
In the days of online application forms that introduce grave prejudice against graduates with 2:2s, or even 2:1s, thanks to inane filtering by HR departments, moves to try to standardise class marks across the country are very welcome. So, while not wanting to put down students from Newcastle too much, it seems reasonable that Oxbridge graduates, who one can fairly reasonably assume are among the brightest in the country, do deserve a better chance of getting a first.
In fact, given the general fears of grade inflation, I would be more interested in the grades awarded by those universities that have to fiercely compete for students in order to survive: an unscrupulous department in such a place could very easily guarantee sufficient numbers by gaining a reputation for inflated class marks.
Rather than focusing on Oxbridge for an easy headline, the article should really have emphasised the disparity between Imperial and King's Colleges, which offered the most firsts (25%) and fifth-bottom (13%) respectively. There is your story Ms Woolf.1 comment | Comment
Facebook me!
The Facebook is an online directory that connects people through social networks at schools. Unlike Friends Reunited it aims to bring present student communities online together with features like party announcements, listing of current classmates for each course etc.
According to their website, they were launched to the public on 4th February 2004, but maybe not at their current address, as the Wayback Machine seems to suggest it was occupied by another company until the end of 2003.
It was initially limited to 'elite' American schools and I joined in May 2004 when it became popular among MIT alums. Since then, it has blossomed across the U.S. and (maybe after my recommendation and submission of lots of student/college information) now over here to major universities in the U.K., including Oxbridge.2 comments | Comment
Attended the Oxford Forum on Entrepreneurship and Innovation last night for the annual Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford jamboree. This year's focus was Networks in the 21st Century and there were some impressive speakers and thoughts on business taking advantage of online social networks.
The theme running through the evening was that social networks were simply, like the internet itself, as Bob Young kept saying, a tool, and not an industry or VC-fundable idea. The power of these networks to develop communities, identities, and (something that has plagued the interweb since its populist foundations) trust was discussed. Case studies mentioned included, rather naturally, ebay's feedback system and wikipedia, although, frankly, there wasn't enough discussion of the weaknesses of social networks and collective work as typified by what goes on in those wikis. (Jane Fonda, anyone?)
Mirroring the Q&A with Alan Sugar last week, talk ultimately turned to Apple, and there were some interesting thoughts as to why, when they seem to try to totally ignore the social networks build around the company, they are so successful in developing this community of followers. I think the conclusion was that when you have as good a product designer as Steve Jobs, coupled with excellent marketing, a company can succeed no-matter how little attention it pays to social networking.
Other coverage: Michael S. Malone (abc)1 comment | Comment
Off to Szczecin, Warsaw, and Berlin over New Year: strange places, I know, but that is part of the fun of cheap flights across Europe these days.
The popularity of Eastern Europe meant that practically destinations were already very expensive throughout the holiday period -- hence the flight with ryanair to Szczecin, on the Baltic coast, after Christmas.
Travelzoo then presented us with a 75% discount and free upgrade at the Sheraton in Warsaw, an offer one could hardly refuse, so a 12 GBP train-ride there was called for.
Finally, we found our escape route from the East, as perhaps historically has been the case, out of Berlin, again with ryanair.
It was only difficult for us to avoid further complications: ferries from near Szczecin to Copenhagen and Sweden are extremely cheap, and easyjet were offering some cheap flights out of the former Comment
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On a day when we hear of another engagement between friends, I coincidentally came across this quote from Lupin Pooter in a Diary of a Nobody:
To my mind a wedding's a very poor play. There are only two parts in it --the bride and bridegroom. The bestman is only a walking gentleman. With the exception of a crying father and a snivelling mother, the rest are SUPERS who have to dress well and have to PAY for their insignificant parts in the shape of costly presents.
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Dr Good was kind enough to take a handful of physicists that visited MIT on the first year of the CMI UG exchange up onto the roof of King's Chapel on a bright but frosty Monday morning.
We were fortunate to be able to enjoy some wonderful views of Cambridge and the surrounding area, capturing this photo of Churchill's Moeller Center in the distance beyond the Senate House flag and St. John's.
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Comment
Sir Alan Sugar spoke at Said Business School last night as part of the Game Changer series arranged by Oxford Entrepreneurs. In a strangely organised affair, Sir Alan spoke about his inspirations, his dislike for management consultants, his early reticence for firing people (something he seems to have overcome in The Apprentice), and his views on everything from Sir Richard Branson ('a great brand-manager, but no salesman') to the success of the iPod.
Most gut-wrenching of all was that stupid 'Bounce with it' Flash movie that gets played at all OE events: it's completely amateur and the swirling text with fuzzy banging soundtrack is not exactly the stylish dynamic image the committee like to portray. Comment
Just returned from the excellent GRADschool run by CRAC at the Hydro Hotel, Windermere.
Four days of challenging tasks were made easier by the excellent tutors and facilitators and -- most of all -- the interesting, intelligent and entertaining PhD student attendees.
Memories of my experiences with the fabulous group W will probably, as the Poet once said,
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory ---
...
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
[Life] itself shall slumber on. Comment
A certain Mr Lowell from Salford makes an excellent point in yesterday's DT with his letter regarding the poetry in song lyrics.
Sure, Dylan's lyrics are magnificent, as exemplified by the quotation given from Mr Tambourine Man:
To dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands...
But, Jilted John, frankly, capture the essence of Life and Love just so much more....
( Here are those JJ lyrics in full... )1 comment | Comment
One for the theoretical lawyers/historians/politicians...
What if bin Laden had formally requested asylum in England? And, if 9/11 still happened, how would the Labour government have coped with the problem deporting him to the US, where surely the Federal lawyers would push for the death penalty?
Given the current floundering to deport terrorist suspects back to their countries of origin, even with 'memoranda of understanding' that torture and capital punishment would not be used, could we have come to some sort of similar agreement with our Atlantic Cousins? One probably feels not. So, probably with considerable grinding of Cherie's teeth, we would either have had to find some way of conveniently by-passing Osama's human rights (if you believe such things exist at all, even for suspected mass-murderers) or faced the most insurmountable diplomatic pressure imaginable. I would not have been too surprised to see photos of US Navy Seals raiding HMP Belmarsh.1 comment | Comment
The Emperor of Sound are playing at the Elm Tree, Cowley Road tonight at 8pm.
They are supporting Porker, who are apparently a popular blues-rock group. Comment
eBay have a few interesting pages that are hidden away from view:
eBay pulse gives a daily snapshot of current trends, hot picks and cool stuff, e.g., the top ten popular searches at present are: psp, ipod, caravan (?), laptop, mini moto, e (?), ipod mini, samsung d500, lacoste, and cars.
Common Keywords gives a directory of all keywords listed alphabetically, products only, by category or by shop (although the products only option seems to be broken by poor server configuration).
I've written a perl script to parse all the common keywords and have a text file listing them here: ebay common keywords.1 comment | Comment
During the down-periods at work, I'm busy writing Perl scripts that return the results of completed listings on eBay.
Joining the excellent eBay developers program, which can give one access to back-end data and applications, didn't really help, as eBay seems to hide away the completed data.
As such, I had to write a rather rough-and-ready solution using HTML::mechanize to query the site through the HTML interface, mainly because eBay only returns completed item search results (it would seem) to registered users. I've finally got the parsing of the results sorted, so now just have to arrange the passing of the results to a suitable database. That will give me the recently completed listings for any particular search.
To narrow down the searches to particular products, I may have to make better use of eBay's pre-defined specification searches, where one can specify, say, the desired hard disk space or shoe size. Alternatively, I may require a catalogue of model numbers, manufacturers, etc., which maybe accessible from eBay, in order to devise well-formed searches (with additional front- and/or back-end filtering, if required) to only return the desired items for particular products.
I'm sure I'll have more soon....1 comment | Comment
Google have released their new Blog Search service. The goal of Blog Search is to include every blog that publishes a site feed (either RSS or Atom); so, given that it also has data from June 2005, means that this has been no small undertaking, but I just wonder how useful this really will be.
Right now there are, for example, 11,485 results for 'wimax', 2,161,552 for 'google' and 684,243 for 'katrina', which can be returned in order of 'relevance' or date, from one hour ago. Comment
Now that Macs are becoming so popular, security in OSX is becoming increasing critical (and tested).
Here is a very interesting white paper on securing OSX Tiger.
While most of it is obvious common sense, things like setting of the BIOS firmware password are often over-looked by even keen computer users. Comment
"There is no part of the body which varies so much as the human ear."
Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of The Cardboard Box
Holmes, it seems from a recent BBC article, was right after all: the human ear provides an excellent way to identify people. It was hardly, therefore, an original idea when a scientist in the UK proposed that the unique pattern inside each individual's ear could be used as a biometric identifier, in the same way fingerprints are used.
All I can say is, quite expectedy, that it may be time for us all to get those Spock ears out to avoid government spying.
___________________
"Imagine my surprise, then, when on looking at Miss Cushing I perceived that her ear corresponded exactly with the female ear which I had just inspected. The matter was entirely beyond coincidence. There was the same shortening of the pinna, the same broad curve of the upper lobe, the same convolution of the inner cartilage. In all essentials it was the same ear."
Full text of The Cardboard Box available here. Comment
Did Conan Doyle poison his friend to cheat him out of The Hound of the Baskervilles? Apparently some people think he did. According to a Telegraph article, a team investigating claims that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle murdered the true author of The Hound of the Baskervilles, a Bertram Fletcher Robinson, is to apply to exhume a body from a churchyard in Devon.
Earlier coverage from the BBC is available from the authorwriting blog, which adds more information about the supposed plagiarism.
Wannabe-forensic scientists will note that laudanum was the supposed toxin.1 comment | Comment
In recent times I've become increasingly attracted to eBay for more and more of my online purchases: clothes, shoes, computer bits; with a bit of effort I was able to get a lot at really good prices.
But one thing struck me this weekend as inherently wrong about the bidding system: why are the identities of the bidders open for everyone to see? I can understand why the seller should be able to see the member names of the potential buyers in order to help try to weed out phoney bids, but for people completely unconnected with the auction to be able to see the member IDs is rather strange.
Yes, I have occasionally researched competing bidders on some items to try to guess their bidding strategy (or whether they were interested at all), but -- naturally -- new bidders so often win anyway, so it rarely pays dividends.
But the disclosure of bidders IDs to everyone leaves the door open to fraudulent attempts at Second Offer Option emails from unconnected parties, such as I received on Sunday and friends have received before.
Given the general mistrust of auction sites and eBays constant struggle to portray themselves as a secure, safe way of buying online to the wary public, why do they disclose more information than is necessary? I doubt it's a law that requires open auctions; so why? why? why? I hope to find out soon.2 comments | Comment
This may be the first DoaN-related post, but it struck me today how Ms Caplin of lifestyle-consulting fame, who has come out with more relevations this weekend, is really some Mrs James of Sutton character to Cherie 'Carrie' Blair.
We've seen Mrs Blair in awful smocks, hats, and the like; we've heard tell of the use of magic crystals (senaces anyone?); so what else is left for us?
And what, if anything, has Mr Blair painted red? Comment
On the new proposals of a smoking ban:
I am expressing my freedom of choice.
You are giving into a dirty habit.
They are intent on giving us all lung cancer. Comment
First post! (from a new LJ desktop widget on Tiger) Comment
With the recent death of George Dantzig still on the newswires, I thought I'd add to last weeks oh-so-fascinating 80s film facts with some 90s film tid-bits.
It is perhaps little known that in Good Will Hunting Will (Matt Damon) was originally going to become a physicist, at least according to Prof. Moniz, who was then head of the physics dept at MIT and is credited in the film.
The story, as told in the last lecture of 8.05 in Fall 2001, goes that he was approached by the producers and helped develop a storyline where Will went on to work in some General Relativity field and the film would feature images of galaxies etc. All this was devised when the mathematics department caught wind of this Course VIII coup and managed to convince the producers that the final storyline of Will getting a job wasn't plausible as a physicist and that he should naturally be a mathmo. The producers took the bait and the rest, as they say, is history...
...and frankly the film is far better for this little twist of fate.1 comment | Comment
Apologies for another Euro rant: it must be the product of being off on Friday for another Anglo-American love-in. Perhaps this isn't really a rant; more of an interesting fact.
George Trefgarne claims (and this may or may not be true) in today's DT that the Euro is the only currency which doesn't have a signature on its notes (thereby implying that it's not backed by any sustainable government structure and is there unstable).
To be fair, however, I'm not too fused about the Euro. I only wish that the Pound would recover to the rates seen against the Dollar in March.1 comment | Comment
Today I'm launching an irregular, soon-to-be-dropped feature: 80s Film Trivia!
Fact #1
John Hughes has appeared in three of his films. He ran between some cabs in an uncredited role in Ferris Bueller and played Brian's Dad in Breakfast Club, presumably at the end of the film: from what I remember his Mother drops him off at school, famously in the EMC2-plated car.
Robert Zemeckis, according to IMDB, has no on-screen appearances. Comment
There's a story in today's DT about the grounding of a B17 at an American tribute because of a new EU rule.
Obviously, as the story points out, the B17 Sally B is flying to recognise the sacrifice of all those airmen that gave their lives to liberate those countries that form of the core of EU.
But what is most pertinent, while the Dept of Transport is refusing to exclude the plane from the EU rule that demands increased insurance, the plane's sister, Pink Lady, will be happily flying in France, because their government are (in this case) sensibly ignoring the ruling.
It would seem that the easiest solution to the massive overburden of EU legislation, but perhaps not the cheapest in light of fresh demands to review the British billion pound rebate, would be to overlook most of the new regulations with a new relaxed continental attitude. Comment
Banksy, Bristol's famous son, has made the nationals, this time for one of their treasure hunts.
Banksy announced on his website at lunchtime yesterday that "Early Man", painted on a piece of rock 10in by 6in found in Peckham, had "remained in the collection [the BM] for quite some time".
He announced a treasure hunt, saying that the first person to photograph him or herself next to it would win an original Banksy painting of a shopping trolley.
Alerted, museum staff quickly found the rock in Gallery 41 at 3.45pm but admitted that they had no idea how long it had been there.
See coverage in the DT. Comment
Finally some welcome news from Europe: apparently everyone does hate the French. Comment
Just been to vote this morning in the Oxford East constituency. Coming back I saw a hearse on Hollow Way with one of those little white signs on; it read: 'Co-operative Funeral Services', and I thought.... at least they must never get any complaints!
There. The first bit of Pooterish humour in the LJ of a Nobody. Comment
http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/05/01/0415248.shtml?tid=160&tid=126&tid=14 Comment
Oh, dear, that story this week in the DT (can't find it right now) about Labour fears of a media-savy Tory mole somewhere in government must have been right, as more leaks have hit the Sunday papers (which the article cannily predicted).
See here for an example.
Update: (02:19) The minutes seen by the Sunday Times, as detailed in this article. Comment
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