January 2011
8 posts
1 tag
Re: What would JFK have made of the Tories’...
(This is a response to Tom Watson’s post on Labour Uncut. For the record, I’m pretty politically-agnostic. This makes elections fun, but holding opinions a little easier).
There isn’t a change in policy. The policy was that the 28-day detention period should remain until 00:01 on Monday 24th January. Everybody in the house knows that they’re going to expire — it’s no surprise to...
1 tag
What Google v. H.264 means, in summary
In the short-to-medium term
As a user: nothing changes. Almost everyone will stick with Flash as a prerequisite for delivering video content, irrespective of browser capabilities, with the limited exception of mobile devices.
As a web developer: the balance is still somewhat tipped in favour of H.264. If you can support WebM, try to, but it’s going to be a lot of hassle for a lot of...
1 tag
A couple of thoughts
RDFa:
Nice idea, but brittle. Very brittle. The reality of modern web development is often not one guy writing a plain HTML page and uploading it via FTP. Instead, the person running the website may be quite separate from the person who wrote, say, the templates, and different again from the people who know how the innards (in particular, the data models) work. RDFa means those template guys...
3 tags
Could you?
The Internet (and, if you pay close attention, technology in general, but the enabling nature of the Internet means it especially applies) can be summed up in two words: “You could”.
It’s true that these two words are often followed by “…but you wouldn’t want to”, but the point stands: you could.
You could build a whole other internet. There’s nothing stopping you. I mean that: get...
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Funniest thing I’ve read all day
She added that the decision by Northern & Shell – which also publishes the Daily Star and the Star on Sunday – means “they will not now be able to demonstrate to their readers that they are committed to adhere to the set of standards which are independently enforced by the commission”.
— The Guardian
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Should ebooks be cheaper than paper copies?
On the one hand, the physical printing of a book is only a fraction of its production cost, and so only contributes a relatively small amount to the retail price.
However…
The vast majority of e-books (O’Reilly and independents notwithstanding) can only be lent to others within a specific ecosystem — and as a broad as that ecosystem is, it’s nowhere near as universal as...
5 tags
Two-tier Internet?
David Meyer mentioned to me his post about BT Wholesale Content Connect (which links to mine in a postscript).
After reading his post, one aspect of this sprung out at me, which relates to my closing paragraph.
I don’t think Content Connect will create a “two tier” Internet per se, but the effect — in much of the UK consumer space — might be sufficiently similar all the same.
As David...
1 tag
BT Wholesale Content Connect
[I believe I’m correct about the details below, corrections welcome, especially from ISP friends]
There’s a bit of a furore in the FT (registration probably required) and The Telegraph regarding BT’s Wholesale Content Connect product.
As you probably know by now, the big problem with consumer Internet access infrastructure in the UK is predominantly the leg between the local...
