Free books and media - days 10 to 13
A long hiatus because a lot of distractions prevented me from reading very much, and watching any films at all. It still goes well, just a bit slowly.
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Free books and media – days 8 and 9
Another uneventful days as far as the books go, but music is going better than I expected.
Free books and media – day 7
A full week gone, and things are going well. I am still reading SF, and found more films/video worth watching.
Free books and media - day 6
An uneventful day. No video and just one book finished.
Free media only - days 4 and 5
Not much happened, just more good books, a burst of SF and fantasy, and a surprisingly good comedy film.
Free media experiment - day 3
More great reading and some interesting discoveries on video (although I did not actually watch anything on any length) yesterday.
Free media experiment - day 2
The second day of my experiment in reading, watching and listening only to free stuff went fairly well. I discovered one author I had not appreciated, and watched another OK video.
Free ebooks and video, first day
Yesterday was my first full day of consuming only free media, Its a day and a half since I started. So how is it going?
A month of only free content
For the next month (i.e. from 16th July 2011 to 15th August 2011) I will only read/watch/listen to legally free media (audio, video, books, whatever). The biggest changes will be reading only free ebooks (something I have been doing a lot of lately, anyway) and listening only to free music.
So I bought a tablet PC
I finally bought myself a cheap Android tablet. My experience so far has pretty much confirmed my expectations: it is a great device (and class of device) for consuming media on, but not for working or creating. It is also locked down and inflexible. While its inflexibility is supposed to be part of its appealing simplicity, I find it actually undermines it, especially when things go wrong.
The website owners guide
It is an unfortunate fact that many websites work badly, from individuals’ blogs to small organisations’ simple sites to expensive sites belonging to large enterprises. The problem is that the managers of the organisation do not understand the web. This is my attempt to provide what they need to know without getting too technical.
Governments should promote OSS
One would imagine that economists would have learned by now that they need to check their theoretical models against the real world. A recent article arguing that governments need to promote a “balance” between open source and proprietary software, rather than promoting open source, rests on no fewer than five incorrect assumptions, and is easily rebutted by what happens in the real world.
Was Marx right?
One reason that Marx’s prediction that capitalism would lead to increasing inequality, and then failure, was wrong, was that advancing technology lead to increases in prosperity for almost everyone. Slowing technological change will mean an increase in inequality, so Marx may have another chance to be proved right.
Nokia + MS: two failures do not make a success
There are two things that strike me about the alliance agreed between Nokia and Microsoft:
- Combining Nokia’s failed smartphone strategy, with Microsoft’s failed smartphone operating system, is not a receipe for success.
- Nokia will now have three smartphone platforms, possibly falling back to two. This continued fragmentation is hardly a great way to get the critical mass then need.
Are newspapers content farms?
I disagreed with a recent blog post by Alan Patrick which described the Huffington Post as a content farm. I do not think that the alleged lack of original content at the Huffpo is any worse than at many newspapers: so I concluded that it is not a content farm. It could be interpreted the other way: newspapers are content farms too.
The Huffington Post and AOL
The Huffington Post may not be a bad buy at the price AOL is paying, but that does not mean that AOL is right to buy it.
The plutocracy is no meritocracy
Many of the spate of recent articles on the super-rich, such as the influential one in The Atlantic have accepted the idea that the plutocracy is meritocratic: the wealth is earned. I have my doubts, and had a look at how and where the richest of the super-rich made their money.
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.
Why democracy will die
In the 1990s it looked as though democracy was spreading irresistibly. Not only do I think this trend has reversed, but that there will be very little public objection to it, and the push-back against it will be comparatively little even from those who seek to oppose it. It will happen slowly, but democracy is dying.
The internet as an instrument of control
Conventional wisdom has long been that the internet (and IT and modern telecommunications) are hard for governments to control and empower anyone willing to use them — activists and protesters in particular. I have long been sceptical, but I think its now clear I was right.