a-cubed.info

The Counter Terrorism Act 2008 includes the provision:

76. Offences relating to information about members of armed forces etc

(1) After section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (collection of information) insert:
“58A Eliciting, publishing or communicating information about members of armed forces etc

(1) A person commits an offence who:

(a) elicits or attempts to elicit information about an individual who is or has been:

(i) a member of Her Majesty’s forces,

(ii) a member of any of the intelligence services, or

(iii) a constable,

which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or

(b) publishes or communicates any such information.”

This is in addition to a prior claim in December 2008 where the Home Secretary informed the National Union of Journalists that photography in public places may be restricted when it “may cause or lead to public order situations or inflame an already tense situation or raise security considerations”.
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OK, I admit it. I was ego-surfing Pandora’s Box on various Amazon sites. While looking at the list of other sellers on Amazon.co.uk, I found somewhere that’s selling our book, published in November 2007 and still fully in print, at over £130. The new retail price is less than £30. Do people really buy things listed at such outrageous prices, when one can get it for less than a quarter of the cost direct from Amazon (and over 30 other sellers). This is bizarre.

Amazon.com have an “editorial review” by Karl Jones of Liverpool John Moores University (why this is only on .com and not also/instead on .co.uk I’m not sure) which says: “This book provides a breath of fresh air in the subject… with numerous examples. Further, it provides a nice link between ethical behaviour, professionalism and the law.”

I’ve painfully pushed my way through “Cult of the Amateur”, despite its huge flaws. As mentioned last time, the author constantly follows the “broken window fallacy” in all his economic arguments so far.

A couple of sections cover the issues of accountability in the press and the undermining of advertising. Keen offers up examples of where mainstream media have been caught out, including outright lies, poorly researched stories etc. He offers these up as examples of the higher quality of the infrastructure because of the sanctions then applied. However, the very fact that these failings exist in the mainstream media rather undermine his case, particularly as there’s no way of knowing how many flawed articles aren’t spotted. He also excoriates the self reinforcing groups “talking only to themselves”. These groups are no worse than the existing examples of biased media, for example “Fox News”. One of the differences between mainstream media and the new online media is that new media does not generally make the same claim to lack of bias, or claim to “authority” made by existing media. (more…)

While writing my earlier post criticising Keen’s Cult of the Amateur, I looked up Pandora’s Box on Amazon. I found the “Customers Who Bought Items Like This Also Bought” list interesting. It mostly included work by or about Dawkins’ radical atheism. From my point of view, not bad company to be seen in.

Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen looked like an interesting counterpoint to another book awaiting my reading, Wikinomics. I’m only about 10% of the way through Cult of the Amateur, and I’m finding it hard going. Not that it’s badly written in terms of the phrasing; that’s probably the best thing about it. Keen had a Saul on the road to Damscus moment and turned against “Web 2.0” a few years ago and this is his poorly researched and badly thought out screed against the Web 2.0 ultra partisans. He makes so many mistakes it’s hard to pick them out for scrutiny. Here’s just a couple (I’m using wikipedia links here because it’s one of Keen’s biggest targets and he fails to acknowledge its utility as a starting point):

• Zork and Myst are not MUDs. The closest they come is later episodes in the series being MMORPGS. Zork, of course, derives from Colossal Cave Adventure, and the original MUD was partially derived from Zork.
• He entirely fails to address any real economics, despite the subtitle claiming the book is about how new web technology is “assaulting our economy”. In fact, he follows the typical Broken Window Fallacy in claiming that changes to the economy which undermine the profits of certain players must be bad.

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Another positive review (scroll down to the third review) of Pandora’s Box has just appeared. This one is in the Engineering & Technology magazine of the IET.

Toshiba announced today that it will pull out of producing the HD-DVD format, which leaves the way pretty much clear for Sony’s Blu-Ray to become the standard high definition physical distribution medium. This is a much quicker solution than the earlier format war (VHS v Betamax).

Some claim that physical distribution is now dead, citing declining CD sales (particularly among the young). However, even peer to peer systems struggle to compete with the simplicity and reliability of DVDs for most. So far, at least, easy playback of downloaded TV/movie content on HD home display screens mean that Blu-Ray will probably be quite successful. Only when both bandwidth and ease of display catch up to distributing the 1Gb needed for your average TV episode in HD format, and then showing it in good quality on your home LCD or plasma TV, will physical shipping of TV and Movies become truly obsolete. Video on demand has been “coming but not yet here” for so long now I’m not holding my breath for DVDs following CDs in decline any time soon.

In this article, which misses one major economic element of the current decline (that the previous high was partly based on the 15-20 years it took music lovers to be able to afford to replace all their vinyl on CD) the following comment comes near the end:

“By mid-2007, when the majors realised that digital downloads were not growing as quickly as they had hoped, they landed on a more adventurous digital strategy. They now want to move beyond Apple’s iTunes and its paid-for downloads. The direction of most of their recent digital deals, such as with Imeem, a social network that offers advertising-supported streamed music, is to offer music free at the point of delivery to consumers.”

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A colleague sent a link to a Japan Today article, which seemed of interest, so I followed it up. The article was indeed interesting, but one of the side-bar adverts was amusingly bizarre. It’s an “Ad by Google” and looks something like this (best I can do in WordPress to duplicate the formatting).

Hot Japan Girl
Thinking of buying?
Compare 100s
of retailers’ prices at
Shopping.com
uk.shopping.com

I got an email from my editor at Wiley on Thursday 13th December to confirm that Pandora’s Box is actually available from Friday 14th December. She’ll be shipping our author copies to us tomorrow and the book is now available for ordering. Amazon, unfortunately, are showing it as “out of stock” but 697,474 in their Sales Rank (hey, it’s a start and must mean they’ve got some pre-orders for it). I don’t think I’ll actually believe it’s real until I’ve got my copies in my sweaty paws next week, but it looks like it’s finally made it!