foreignpolicy.com reports:
The Soviet [… union …] actually built a doomsday machine that would guarantee retaliation — launching all the nuclear missiles — if the leader’s hand went limp.
Compare and contrast Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Same deal, about 20 years earlier.
I love that movie. To me it still remains a excellent contemporary commentary 45 years after it was made.
so it is the newsroom input rather than the output.
If that gains any traction, it seems to me that there are two likely outcomes:
There will be the initial (commercially driven) headline grabbing, (advertising) paid splash. Then, when the documents go public, the rest of the population/bloggers can get stuck into the debate and slice and dice the data.
Thats good - more eyeballs, more discussion, more review. Plus, just setting information free in a digital format is a huge win.
There will be the trash mags with sensational headlines. Then there will be those who are doing the old school jouralism thing. Investigating. Reporting. Doing the hard work.
Because they will be publishing their sources, those who do the best job will get the most respect.
And respect = eyeballs = profit these days. Just ask Apple (or Microsoft).
whatdotheyknow.com, who are trying to become a central clearing house for UK Freedom of information requests. Like all good mysociety.org projects, they leave me thinking that really, this is what any modern government should be doing (or using our taxes to fund people like mysociety to do) on behalf of it’s population.
Namely, that in addition to making the laws that allow the Freedom of Information thing to happen, they should also be ensuring that once the information is out, it’s available for everyone to get at. That network effect thing. One of the central problems that whatdotheyknow is solving is
if I make a FOI request, and you want the same data, you have to make the request again.
How dumb is that?
Lord Saville, the chairman of the Bloody Sunday Tribunal has said
the [final] report, which will run into thousands of pages, must be with publishers for some months before it can be finalised.
I wonder how long it will take to put online?
Gotta love a good hack:
In the UK, there is a unique exception to the usual term of copyright for the work of J.M. Barry - the author of Peter Pan. His royalties are collected in perpetuity by Great Ormand Street Childrens Hospital
Aside from generally loving the man and all he’s done and stands for, Fry was also an early mac-head and early on the internets doing the online thing. Then he vanished for a few years, and now he’s back and it’s lovely (a delight) to see.
which links to
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/96631-story-collection-soars-after-fry-tweet.html
which to summarise:
A book of short stories has leaped up Amazon's book charts [rose by
nearly 250,000% in the Movers & Shakers list] to become second only
to Dan Brown after Stephen Fry endorsed it on his Twitter feed.
And here is the thing - he’s got this huge following, invests his own time (and money) in his online presence, but doesn’t really benefit from it financially all that much, at least not directly.
On the other hand, he presumably doesn’t really need the money, seems to enjoy it, and it surely helps the Fry brand.
Yet the interesting thing is surely that one human, acting alone, via a free twitter account and without any organisation behind him has such influence.
It reminded me of one of my favourite Ted talks by Clay Shirky on institutions versus collaboration and following on in a similar theme Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody
ps. Thank you Mr Fry for your continued good will and wit :-)
pps. I wonder if Mr Fry would make more money in Amazon Associate referall fees from linking to his works or from the royalties?
3W Philips Econic GU10 replacement for the 35W halogen bulb. [via becky!]
£25, but a “glowing” review. Very exciting. Where do you buy?
Different, but related currentcost.com allows you to measure the electricity usage in your home without needing any electrical wiring - it is very very easy and safe to setup. Available via ebay.co.uk. Depending on who you get your electricity from, you might be able to get one free/discounted too.
It’s not an exact science, but it really does focus the mind and for nerds like me they are great. We’ve had one for about a year, and I love it.
Robert X Cringely on good perspective form again:
in dealing with the [financial] crisis in 2008. Instead of pumping $700 billion to $1.3 trillion (nobody knows the real number) into economic stimulus and bail-outs, the U.S. government could have simply paid everyone’s mortgage — EVERYONE’S — for six months.
