Groove

I started playing with Groove this afternoon, still looking for a collaboration platform that’s a) usable offline and b) realistically usable over a 56k dialup link. Much to my suprise, it does both. Even more to my suprise, it’s the brainchild of Ray Ozzie. I’m sure he’s a fine bloke, but he’s also responsible for the interface abomination that is Lotus Notes…

Musical crimes

Spotted on the BBC News site - the short headline for this story:

Sting was ’state-created’ crime

I hought this was a bit harsh at first, but then I remembered some of the more self-indulgent stuff that he’s put out over the years and wondered if the headline writer might have a point…

Results

Finally the Semester 2 results have been released. Only at least three weeks late, and with the usual amount of cockups - including a half-hour queue outside the office before they deigned to hand over the paperwork. British Rail at their finest couldn’t have been more disorganised and less customer-focussed.

Having said all that, the results themselves were roughly as I’d expected - although the distribution of marks made for interesting reading, and make me wonder if there hadn’t been some exam board-adjustment going on. I pulled off a 75 in Strategic Management, which means either that a) I completely misread my performance in the multiple-choice section and did better than I realised; b) crashed and burned in the MC section but then produced two Oscar-winning performances in the essay questions; or c) did as well as I thought I had in the essay questions and the MC scores mysteriously disappeared. Draw your own conclusions, I know which one I suspect.

So overall, I’m pleased - I’m still on-target for a distinction, and should have maintained my #2 position in the cohort as far as I’m aware. It takes the pressure off to an extent as far as the dissertation is concerned, which has to be good news if recent progress is anything to go by.

Oftel - or is it a chocolate teapot?

Hurrah for Oftel! The fearless telecomms regulator has waved its mighty sword, and commanded BT and Kingston to ensure that poor hapless customers must be able to get net access at a reasonable speed. Fantastic! What a fine example of regulatory intervention standing up for the rights of the little people!

Err - not exactly.

What Oftel has actually done is to insist that BT and Kingston are now obliged to provide a network capable of supporting a minimum dial-up speed of 28.8kpbs. Yes, that’s right - 28.8Kbps. I had to check my calendar to make sure that I was still in the year 2003, but yes, I am - and our fearless regulator is demanding a connection speed that would have been regarded as slow in the last millennium.

This tends to sum up Oftel for me - had it not been for their spineless incompetence in the face of a obese and complacent former state monopoly, we might now be in a position where broadband at 512Kbps and above was regarded as the minimum acceptable connection - but instead we’re now able to insist, nay demand of our right to dial-up at 28.8Kbps. How proud they must be…

Film soundtracks for imaginary movies

From CD Baby (the site with possibly the ugliest logo on the net) - Flavor, or “CDs to match your mood or occasion”. Officially, a bloody good idea. Now if only Amazon would do the same thing - “books about technical things written in a slightly populist way to appeal to the proto-geek in you”. I’d spend a lot more with them.

In related news, Slashdot are reporting that independent bands are now able to flog their tracks through iTunes. Again, a bloody good idea - hopefully one in the eye for the dinosaurs of the RIAA. Stand by and watch their business model shrivel…

Telecomms uptick?

Good news, it seems, as Electronic News reports that the telecomms recession that resulted in 500,000 layoffs is over. Good news for me and the other 499,999? Probably not, if the spend only increases to $53bn in 2004 - compared with $100bn in 2000. But if my experiences were anything to go by, a significant proportion of that $100bn was a complete waste of money - I look back now at the way we behaved in awe and wonder…

(Via Techdirt)

ukblogs live

The ukblogs rss feed seems to be alive again. Although I still don’t fully understand how it works - the chances of an individual post being caught and propagated seems to be fairly random…

Recycling

The blue wheelie bins have been introduced in Sheffield to recycle paper. Obviously not the only use…

Who owns your name?

This post from Doc Searls pointed me in the direction of another post by Tom Matrulo about the whys and wherefores of changing email addresses. It got me thinking, and I eventually worked out that on average I’ve changed my primary email address about every 12 months for the last eight or nine years. It also connected with a discussion I’d had about three years ago with the people at the Austrian Government Portal, who have forgotten more about authentication and signon issues than I will ever know.

Their point was that an email address is one of the easiest personal identifiers that can be used for access and authentication purposes - the vast majority of the time it’s something that points to a single individual, it’s easy to remember (unless you’re in the habit of using a snugglywuggly78@hotmail.com-style address), and it’s something that most people are familiar with. Contrast that with something which is genuinely unique - like a national insurance number - and ask yourself how many people can readily quote theirs.

About two years ago I needed to change my email address to something personal (i.e. not belonging to a company), and started looking to see what combinations of my names were available as domain names. It turned out that most had already been regisitered, which suprised me greatly given that I’m not exactly a Smith or a Jones. What suprised me even more was that most had been registered speculatively by firms that would then supply email services using that domain - for a price. Suprised, because if they’d got as far as my name, they must have registered a shed-load of domains on the pure off-chance that someone would want them later.

The Angstrom unit

is 10 to the power minus 10 metres, or 0.1 nanometres.

It’s also approximately twice the distance between boiling point and freezing on the thermostat of our shower…