Archive for June, 2007
It was a hard decision for the BBC’s subed for England / Kent. Should we go with the scared hairdresser or the wriggling child? See for yourself:
‘Child escaped’ in £53m cash raid
‘Child escaped’ in £53m cash raidA
hairdresserchild held captive in Britain’s biggest cash raid was“too scared”small enough toname four men she disguised, the £53m Securitas heist jury hears.wriggle through a cage, jurors hear.
On 19 June in the early morning hours a certain Gabriel aka “go harry” sent an email to seclists.org (a hacker mailing list), allegedly disclosing the ending of the yet to be published next sequel of Harry Potter.1 He claims to have got acces to several computers at publisher Bloomsbury (“It’s amazing to see how much people inside the company have copies and drafts of this book.”) and briefly outlines the plot. “We make this spoiler to make reading of the upcoming book useless and boring.” Gabriel calls it the “Harry Potter 0day” (zero-day-exploit).
Fellow hackers don’t seem to be impressed too much. Scott writes: “Who are you people and why should I care? Maybe a new exploit would be more useful.”
But there is a good chance, that this whole story is a hoax …
- http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2007/Jun/0380.html [↩]
The Register carries a story on the success of UK Newspapers and their online editions … readers stay faithful to their paper. And online content attracts up to 20 % extra audience … who are, however, not buying the paper (or any paper, for that matter).
Read the whole story here: Newspapers not killed by net – shock!
“Dummheit ist nicht strafbar”, so in kurz das Verdikt des Bülacher Bezirksgerichts zu den Strafanklagen gegen die Grounding-Piloten der Zürcher FDP. Dummheit aber hilft: Positionen bewahren, Recht zu kriegen, ungeschoren davon zu kommen. Denn dumm war nicht nur die Swissair Führungsspitze, damals von 6 Jahren. Dumm war wohl auch die vorgelegte Klageschrift: zu hoch gepokert, zu viel gewollt, und damit auf die Nase gefallen. Dumm isch gange.
It’s not a crime to be stupid. That (or just about that) is the verdict of the criminal court of Bülach in the case against the former business pilots of the bancrupt airline Swissair. However, the verdict also shows that it helps to be stupid; it helps to get jobs, and it helps to remain innocent. Not only these business leaders were stupid, some 6 year ago. The public prosecuttion was, most probably stupidly too, aiming too high. Tough shit, Paddy…
Die Teilnehmer arbeiteten als Experten-Panel auch inhaltlich. In Mini-SWOTs ermittelten sie, in welchen Bereichen in den nächsten 10-15 Jahren Innovationen im Automobilbau zu erwarten sind: Bekannte Technik und Materialien und Kostenminimierung werden Themen bleiben. Lösungen sind nötig, um das Gewicht der Fahrzeuge zu reduzieren und die Komplexität zu meistern. Alternative Kraftstoffe und Antriebssysteme und aktive Sicherheit sind Innovationsthemen. Wenig Chancen räumten die Experten dem Leichtfahrzeug ein (Stichwort «totales Plastikauto») und dem fahrerlosen Auto.
Inhaltsübersicht (Beiträge im passwortgeschützten Memberbereich):
This is probably the silliest story that came in today: Book publisher steals Google laptops. The CEO of Macmillan Publishers, Richard Charkin, boasts in his blog1 how he nicked two computers from a Google stall at Book Expo America in New York. He admits of feeling “rather shabby playing this trick on Google”. Poor boy.
Reading through the comments at The Register summarizes all the good and bad old arguments and misconceptions about what Google actually does. We’ve touched on the subject elsewhere2.
On Charkin’s blog comments tend to be a bit more diverse. Somebody remarks the difference between criminal law (which deals with such things as theft, murder, etc.) and civil law (which deals with copyright). An important distinction. As is the distinction between authors’ rights and publishers’ income. Charking was not exactly “standing up for authors’ rights”, as one commentor likes to see it. His point was most probably much more about his own business, guessing from the number websites that in one way or another belong to Macmillan3.
On a different note, however, Charkin leaves me wondering — is there really no difference between texts and computers…?
- The heist [↩]
- Google Book Search ‘auf Deutsch’ [↩]
- http://www.macmillan.com/websites.asp [↩]
Blog schreiben ist erheiternd. Blog lesen noch viel mehr. So kommt zum Beispiel des deutschen Perlentauchers Bücherschau des Tages von heute daher, wenn man’s geeignet liest …
WerDie SZ wälzt 1700 Seiten Dokumente zum Fall des Amerikaners Noel Field, an dem sich dieKunstersten Schauprozesse in Ungarn entzündeten: Fünf Jahre saß der unerschütterliche Kommunist dort im Gefängnis und beantragte hinterherAbschweifungAsylliebt, dem empfiehlt! Außerdem liest sie die Feuilletons und Reportagen "Zwischen Erdbeben" des schillerndenMichael Lentzin der FAZ wärmstens ein Hörbuch mit Karl ValentinCurzio Malaparte.Die"Exzentrischen Existenzen" begegnet dietazFAZvertieft sichin"Die Charaktere"Herman Bangs gleichnamigem Band mit Erzählungen und Reportagen. Als sensationelle Entdeckung preist die NZZ den erst jetzt veröffentlichten, sehr scharfsinnigen Debütroman Jeande La Bruyeres, gewissermaßen der Rainald Goetz des 17. Jahrhunderts.Betörende PoesieAmerysund komplex gezeichnete Menschen – für die NZZ ist Aharon Appelfelds neuer Roman "Elternland" ein Meisterwerk. Vorgestellt wird außerdem der erste Roman der israelischen Journalistin Avirama Golan,"DieRaben".Schiffbrüchigen".So also machen die das, hier nochmals zum mitlesen
Die SZ wälzt 1700 Seiten Dokumente zum Fall des Amerikaners Noel Field, an dem sich die ersten Schauprozesse in Ungarn entzündeten: Fünf Jahre saß der unerschütterliche Kommunist dort im Gefängnis und beantragte hinterher Asyl! Außerdem liest sie die Feuilletons und Reportagen "Zwischen Erdbeben" des schillernden Curzio Malaparte. "Exzentrischen Existenzen" begegnet die FAZ in Herman Bangs gleichnamigem Band mit Erzählungen und Reportagen. Als sensationelle Entdeckung preist die NZZ den erst jetzt veröffentlichten, sehr scharfsinnigen Debütroman Jean Amerys "Die Schiffbrüchigen".
Closed Published by Peter Troxler June 5th, 2007
As a maverick between arts and culture, business, IT, and many more topics that are of minor or even major interest to me I also read the occasional business analysis piece. This morning an essay by Nicolas G. Carr, contributing editor to strateg+business1. The essay is a review of one famous paper by Eric S. Raymond2 entitled The Cathedral and the Bazar.
To fill you in briefly on Raymond’s paper: it was first presented at a Linux conference in Würzburg, Germany, on 22 May 1997. And it caused a major stir; Raymond for the first time put into writing the ethics of the open source community — the bazaar model — where many people contribute to one product, say Linux for example, with seemingly no central control. Raymond contrasts this to the cathedral model where there is a closed group of developers (or authors).
In his review of the paper, 10 years after its initial publication, Nicolas G. Carr says: ‘ The open source model has proven to be an extraordinarily powerful way to refine programs that already exist (…) but it has proven less successful at creating exciting new programs from scratch.’ This is not a new critique, Lawrence Kesteloot noticed the same in an email to Raymond in March 1998.
Actually, even Raymond himself — if one is inclined to actually read the paper — noticed this quite explicitly indeed: ‘It’s fairly clear, that one cannot code from the ground up in bazaar style. One can test, debug and improve in bazaar style, but it would be very hard to originate a project in bazaar mode.’3
So, after ten years of bazaar-hype — which has only recently been picked up by corporations and guru writers4 — it is about time that people actually acknowledge that the bazaar is all about debugging and not about creating, and that there is — despite all the advantages the bazaar model has over the cathedral model (imho) — such a thing as individual creativity.
One last thought — individual creativity is sometimes best harnessed in a collective setting. Or isn’t that how authors publish their books — in exchange with agents, lectors, publishers (call it ‘debugging’ if you want) — or how Brecht wrote ‘his’ plays?
- http://www.strategy-business.com/ [↩]
- http://www.catb.org/~esr/ [↩]
- see http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s10.html and also Raymond’s discussion here [↩]
- Don Tapscott’s and Anthony D. Williams’ Wikinomic is just one example [↩]
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