Status-Q

Here's some Net folklore....

On BBC Radio 4 this morning they were discussing Alan Turing, and said that the Apple Computer logo was actually a tribute to him. He committed suicide by taking a couple of bites out of an apple which was laced with cyanide. I read elsewhere that this is apparently repeated by Sadie Plant in her book 'Zeroes and Ones', with the additional assertion that the rainbow background is the symbol for homosexuality, accusations of which drove him to it.

Now this is a good story, but there's a different account in the FAQ on the rather good www.apple-history.com site:

Steve Jobs had worked during the summer at an apple farm, and admired the Beatles' record label, Apple. He also believed Apples to be the most perfect fruit. He and Steve Wozniak were trying to figure out a name for their new company, and they decided that if they couldn't think of one by the end of the day that was better than Apple, they'd choose Apple. They couldn't think of anything better, so on April 1, 1976, Apple Computer, Inc. was born.
But they needed a logo. The first design included Sir Isaac Newton, a tree and a banner that said "Apple Computer." Jobs decided they needed a less busy logo, one that would signify a brand. The second logo attempt was very similar to the current logo, but without the bite taken out of it. Jobs thought this logo looked too much like an orange. The third attempt was the logo that Apple still uses.

Take your pick. Somehow, to me, the latter sounds more plausible, if only because it's not quite so neat. If it happened today, of course, Jobs and Wozniak would have discovered that apple.com was already in use by a record company and would then have had to think of something much less elegantly simple.

Disposable cellphones are almost with us. If that sounds ridiculous, think what people would have said a few decades ago if you'd suggested a disposable camera. More info on how they are made can be found here. Apparently, they'll be available within a month or so. Some models keep costs down by using speech recognition instead of a keypad and display. They only need to understand a few digits, of course, but this may be the first significant mass-market use of embedded speech recognition technology?

Yesterday I wrote that it is only a belief in an afterlife that can give any comfort to those involved in the tragedy. John Naughton referred me to Richard Dawkins' article, which points out that belief in the afterlife caused the tragedy in the first place.

Jenny McCartney is rightly cynical about the condolences from Gerry Adams.

On a cheerier note, this can't be true, but it's a great story. Apparently the Advertising Standards Authority have told Möben Kitchens to remove the umlaut from their name, because customers might be fooled into thinking it's a German company and that the products are therefore of a higher quality than is actually the case.

The web address of www.moben.co.uk is a dead giveaway. They should have registered www.moben.de. It's still available...

Few events have demonstrated the power of modern media more than those on Tuesday. We're used to receiving entertainment, sport and even news events from the far side of the world, but on Tuesday a tidal wave of shock and grief was transmitted around the globe. In the past, one would read about such events in the newspapers, several days after they happened, possibly accompanied by a black and white photograph or two. Now, we sit mesmerised by multiple repetitions of high-quality colour footage from all angles only minutes after the tragedy. We've even actually heard people's final phone calls. Many of us walked around in an unbelieving half-dazed state for several days.

Is the world better as a result of this huge multiplication of grief? Of course, it also generates a huge multiplication of sympathy and support - I'm very proud of the way my country and others have stood side by side with America in so many symbolic ways - but since there's very little practical action that even people right on the doorstep in NY can take, there's nothing but a multiplication of frustration for the rest of us. Yes, we can donate money, but, frankly, that's not what they need.

Perhaps the greatest good that can come from the media coverage is this: What was probably intended as an attack on America is being interpreted as an attack on the whole civilised world. That might just be more than the perpetrators, and others of their kind, had bargained for.

Have just returned from a long weekend in the Lake District, my favourite place on the entire globe.

As my brother, my 6-year-old nephew and I skimmed stones on the surface of Derwent Water, I wondered about this curiously male pastime. I don't think I've known any women, young or old, who were enthusiastic stone-skimmers. Why is that? Is there something in it that harks back to our primitive male hunting role, when the best stone-throwers would probably bring home the best food, attract the best wives, etc? Or is it just that women have more sense than to partake in such a pointless activity?

At 10.54 this morning, Dan Gordon, Martyn Johnson and I finally switched off the Trojan Room Coffee Pot camera, seven years and nine months to the day after it was first connected to the web.

The official website will be updated in due course, but since the Computer Lab is in mid-move, it might take a little while. Until then, you can read more about the life and times of the Pot.

Article on webcams in general, and the coffee pot in particular, in yesterday's New York Times.

Well, I wrote that 'Zen' piece on the 14th without much careful thought, and in particular before I had seen John Naughton's pointer to Richard P. Gabriel & Ron Goldman's remarkable essay "Mob Software: The Erotic Life of Code", of which it is not worthy to be a minor sub-paragraph. And while a skeptic might say that the word 'erotic' is in that title more to attract attention than because it's a major theme of the essay, the attention is certainly deserved. Recommended.

Recommended, at least, if you have the time to read over twelve and a half thousand words. There's an assumption, built into most types of writing, that what you are saying is worth the time and effort of the person reading it. The longer the piece, the better it needs to be, either in terms of the enjoyment of reading, or of the knowledge gained by doing so.

Weblog entries tend to be brief. Quick to write, quick to read. While in general I dislike the trend towards a sound-bite culture, I would argue that weblogs are important chiefly because of their brevity, and this is not just because of the ease with which they can be jotted down and the speed with which they can be skimmed. It is because many of us are not sufficiently confident in the value either of our ideas or of our writing skills to feel comfortable imposing large quantities of text on our fellow man. By publishing just a couple of paragraphs we can try out an idea and see if others find it worthwhile, without imposing too great a burden on them if it isn't. The timid publisher has had very few such opportunities in the past. Publishing pamphlets was too expensive, writing to the newspapers was too subject to editorial rejection, and creating websites required too many specialist skills. This, I think, is part of why weblogs are a genuinely interesting new medium.