Category: Uncategorized

I think that the Aussies chances of retaining the Ashes have been scuppered by bad light and the bowling of Andrew Flintoff and Matthew Hoggard. They failed to turn they excellent 277-2 into a decent score and the bad light allowed the England batsman to choose not to play.

So into the final day and Australia are faced with the daunting task of bowling out England quick enough that they have enough overs remaining in which to beat the English run total.

They have the bowlers to do it certainly but will their drive to get wickets cause them to give away runs and thus increase the total necessary once they’re into their batting innings to take the victory. It is a fine balance they need to take, as it is for England also who are faced with the decision of batting carefully but not getting runs or getting the runs but risking their wickets.

Tags: sport

The Guardian newspaper has changed it’s format and updated the way it presents the various sections in the paper. It is now in the Berliner format that is popular in Europe that is a midsize between Tabloid and Broadsheet, curiously no newspapers in Berlin are printed in the Berliner format.

I’m usually quite wary of change but I like this new format and I think the new masthead is far better than the old one which appeared very eighties to me. Now I feel that the print edition has caught up with the excellent Guardian website.

Here we are at the Oval for the fifth and final test match of the Ashes series and Australia would seem to be in a dominant position with a score at the start of the fourth day of 277-2 in reply to England’s 373 all out.

But the Australians still have a lot to do in order to win this match. They are still trailing by about 100 runs and so would need to be scoring another 300 runs in this innings in order to get a decent total in which to bowl England out in.

I think it will ultimately come down to a lack of time to finish the job, what with the interruptions by the weather. But there is still a lot of cricket to be played here in the final two days so anything could happen.

Tags: sport

Guardian: Music file sharing to be offered legally

Online music fans will for the first time be able to legally share tracks by big names such as Oasis, Beyonce, David Bowie and Elvis Presley after the artists’ record label signed a ground-breaking deal with a new internet service provider.

In what some see as signalling a dramatic shift in the way consumers buy music, the provider, Playlouder, has licensed acts from SonyBMG, the world’s second largest record label, and is confident that the other two big record labels, Universal and EMI, will follow suit…

Because there will be no restrictions on the format in which the traded music is encoded, users will be free to transfer songs to any type of digital music player, including the market leading Apple iPod, or burn them to CD…

Because all Playlouder subscribers will share tracks over its own network Mr Hitchman said that the company could track the files and, through digital fingerprinting technology, make sure that record companies were remunerated accordingly from money set aside from Playlouder’s revenues each month.

I find this newspaper report to be very weird if it is entirely accurate. I cannot see how this service can function in the way it is intended if users truly are allowed to trade files in any format without restrictions. If true then a typical music track could be digitised and formatted in many different formats at various different bitrates and shared over the network, yet through digital fingerprinting the service is able to ascertain what music track it is and pass on appropriate payment to the copyright owners.

Such a file could even be concealed through a steganographic type application to resemble some other file such as a movie file of a home video that has no licensing problems as the user is freely allowed to share what they themselves have created.

Furthermore record corporations seem to be heavily in favour of DRM technologies in order to add restrictions to prevent piracy their willingness to license their music to Playlouder without the DRM technologies would seem to me to be counterproductive to their aims. Any non-DRM file that is legally shared using this service can in the future be illegally shared in the way that current legally downloaded files from services such as iTunes cannot.

But then again they may have read Chris Anderson’s fascinating piece on the economics of “piracy” and whether a little piracy can actually allow for more net revenues to vendors. Via BoingBoing and Waxy.

Tags: copyright, music

BBC News: Pope warns against ‘DIY’ religion

Pope Benedict XVI has warned of the dangers of secularism and of “do it yourself” religion, as his visit to his native Germany draws to a close.

It has been true for many years that more people visit one of the various DIY superstores that flourish in this country on a Sunday than visit church. Finally it seems that the Catholic church has decided to attack their opponents in the battle for the Sabbath. Down with the false gods of flat-pack furniture, water features and neutral shades of paint, do not get drawn into this false religion of DIY.

Tags: religion

Recreation of the music video for Fatboy Slim’s Weapon Of Choice starring Christopher Walken using stick figures.

Tags: music, video

It has come to the attention of many people that the books 1984 has been erroneously misshelved under fiction in literally hundreds of bookstores across the world. The Ministry of Reshelving aims to reshelf said item under it’s correct classification of current affairs, not only that but they intend to do it gratis and without bothering the storeowners who clearly have more important things to be doing.

I think that this is a noble cause that I shall sign up to.

Tags: books

Documents relating to the investigation into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes by officers of the Metropolitan Police have been leaked and dispute the story of events we had previously been led to believe. It is claimed that Mr de Menezes:

was never properly identified because a police officer was relieving himself at the very moment he was leaving his home;

· was unaware he was being followed;

· was not wearing a heavy padded jacket or belt as reports at the time suggested;

· never ran from the police;

· and did not jump the ticket barrier.

I wrote earlier that there must have been a clear breakdown in communication for him to have been misidentified as a terrorist suspect and this seems to have been the case. In addition the shoot-to-kill policy may have been misinterpreted by the officers on the ground as this clearly was not a case of requiring a last resort measure if he had been restrained prior to being shot.

It is perhaps due to this apparent gross mishandling of the situation that the Metropolitan Police did nothing to correct the misinformation that was widely reported following this tragic incident. The Guardian reports that the Police are under pressure over Menezes leak.

Tags: police, errorism

Congratulations to Ricky Ponting for a truly admirable performance if even if did rob England of what could have been a good victory in the Third Test match.

Very frustrating to be only one wicket from victory but I suppose the Aussies must have felt the same after the second test ending only a few runs from victory themselves, although they were lucky to get that close in the first place.

So all square and all to play for in the final two matches. The Ashes really is turning out to be all that I had hoped.

Tags: sport

Last night Channel 4 screened the Dispatches documentary Why Bomb London? which sought to uncover the events and decisions that led unto the attacks. Had we brought the bombings on ourselves?

Through investigating the divisions within the British Muslim community, reporter Deborah Davies asks whether the British government – or Britain’s Muslim establishment – fully understand them. While prominent leaders are meeting with Tony Blair, younger Muslims are watching violent Islamist videos on the internet and listening to veteran Jihadists from Afghanistan and Iraq on recruiting drives. While their elders voice fears of a backlash after the London bombs, many youngsters are being drawn into a pattern of extremism which includes violence, expeditions to foreign wars and even, potentially, suicide.

The programme shows how, during the 1990s, the British government allowed known terrorists and extremists to settle in London and build up an underground network, despite the warnings from, and much to the alarm of, governments overseas.

It is to be broadcast again on Friday 12 August at 4.10am

Tags: politics, terrorism