The real purpose of DRM
Ian Hickson, maintainer of the HTML5 specification, argues that the real purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage over device manufacturers. Although this is true for some applications of DRM, in many cases the purpose is to lock customers to particular devices and services, and to raise barriers to entry against new devices and services. (more…)
Five plausible nightmare hypotheses
This is a list of various possibilities that could be true, and which would be very frightening if they are. They are varied in scale an effect, but are all unpleasant. I have left out nuclear war and natural disasters (such as super volcanoes) as we know they are possible. I am interested in things that have a reasonable likelihood of being try, but are not known. (more…)
Is global warming real? I fail to find out.
Having said I do not trust predictions made by climate models, I have tried looking at the data to see if global warming is happening. In principle this ought to be quite simple, but what I found was a morass of bad and missing data that makes it extremely difficult if not impossible. (more…)
Don’t trust complex climate models
My previous post did not make it clear why climate models are so similar to complex financial models, which failed so spectacularly. (more…)
Credulous police and bad English
I cannot decide whether I am more shocked by the news that the police are relying on Wikipedia, or the bad English in this discussion of it (more of the comments that attempt to use the word “credible” get it wrong than get it right).
Thomas Gall International School website
As a few people arrive at this blog searching for information related to Galle, it is worth mentioning that I have done a website for my daughter’s school: The Thomas Gall International School, Galle.
Update, Sept 2012: That website is no longer up, as the school failed to renew the domain name. I believe they have plans for a new site.
Is Ubuntu destructive?
Adam Williamson thinks that Ubuntu has been destructive, unfair competition, and that Mark Shuttleworth could have taken a different approach that would have been less destructive.
Race is arbitrary
Willem Buiter’s blog post on the arbitrariness of racial classifications are spot on. I wonder if he is too decent to realise that the whole point of the concept of race is to divide people; to provide people with a sense of belonging to a tribe. Race is purely whatever society defines it to be. Both the countries I know well, Britain and Sri Lanka, show this.
Freedom for teenagers
In an interview with Psychology Today, Robert Epstein discusses his view that adolescents are harmed by being restricted and infantilised. This strengthens some of my views about schools and over-protective parenting, which I mentioned in my post on the lies we tell children.
Sex and normality
The easy assumption that both The Guardian and Relate make when faced with men who have lost interest in sex have a medical or psychological problem seems to be to be forcing people into a mould of “normality” that is just as bad as Victorian behaviour that we would now find appalling. (more…)
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