Posts by Eirik Hektoen

Man coughs to sex with donkey and horse

Shame on you

For publishing this man's name and details. Seriously, this is in the worst tradition of the British tabloid media.

Photogs sue Google over Book Search culture grab

benefit vs. profit

> Are google doing this for the benefit of mankind or to make a profit?

These are not mutually exclusive. Through technological advances (in particular), mankind is reaping enormous benefit from profit-making companies and individuals all the time.

Police arrest MD of dowsing-rod 'bomb detector' firm

Boots next?

Great news. Next the police should arrest and charge the board of directors of Boots (and other chemists) for fraudulently selling homeopathic products falsely described as "remedies" and "complementary medicine", when they're neither, to vulnerable people.

New York Times builds paywall - very slowly

It could work

The knee-jerk negative reactions against this are not helpful. Newspapers do actually need to have a source of income if they are going to be able to continue to do professional journalism, and it is not clear yet if the income they can get from advertising is going to be enough.

The key question is how they choose to do it. If they require that you purchase an annual or monthly subscription in return for full access, then it will be expensive (probably comparable to buying the paper edition every day) and they will get very few buyers.

But if they set it up such that you are charged a small amount per article, and with no one-off cost for joining the scheme (so casual visitors are not put off), then it might work. I would for example find this reasonable: agency news stories free, regular in-house journalist-written articles 2-5 cents, larger quality feature articles 10 cents.

Phorm phading phast

The problem with Phorm

isn't the targetted advertising - I would actually prefer to see ads that are relevant to my interests.

The problem is that they want to achieve this by eavesdropping on private communication without consent.

Mozilla, Skype join iPhone jailbreak fight

@Bob, Donovan, Andrew, Squits, ...

The argument "if you don't agree with the lock-down don't buy the phone" is doubly wrong:

Firstly, you may reasonably choose to buy the phone regardless of your feelings about the lock-down - if in the end you prefer the design, functionality and reliability over the other phones available.

Secondly, by making excuses for the proponents of the DCMA it actually lets Apple and all the other companies off the hook.

What's important is not which phone anybody buys, but the principle. The law should not grant manufacturers the right to restrict what you may do with a product you have bought from them. It's that simple.