Marie Le Conte is one of my favourite panelists on the Oh God What Now podcast. I thought I should make an effort to read one of her books, hence “Escape” (affiliate link). It is about how Millennials were the first generation to grow up with the internet and how they shaped it.

Whatever you make of the ideas or commentary¹, one thing is abundantly clear: her personality shines through. You can hear her speaking every sentence. Fast, slightly scattered thoughts with the occasional random aside. In books of this type, it’s rare to come across lines such as:

I recently shared a blog post entitled “The Most Successful Developers Share More Than They Take” with the comment:

I try to practice “public by default” though, because of my work, it’s often “on the internal wiki” rather than fully open.

Unfortunately the article spends a lot of time talking about blogging and podcasting which, perhaps, undermined the point I was trying to make. If you want to write blogs, speak on podcasts, and present at conferences, good luck to you¹. Not everyone will want to do those things, and that’s fine. I’m not advocating for that. I think most people can do what I meant.

Blocking content from the Internet is getting a lot of press of late. The last couple of weeks has seen the Pirate Bay being blocked by a number of large ISPs and debate over whether the blocking of “adult” content should be opt-in or opt-out.

Unfortunately the enthusiasm to “protect the children” and “protect the copyright holders” seems to have pushed aside much of the debate of whether we should be doing this at all or whether it’s practical.

You’ve almost certainly seen that Wikipedia is kinda-sorta offline today protesting a proposed US law that would effectively give copyright holders the ability to blacklist pretty much any website without judicial review.

While rights holders do have legitimate concerns over people taking content without paying for it — I don’t like to call in piracy or theft — this really isn’t the answer. Wired sums it up nicely:

• Social Media Propaganda Posters – “Be brief! The enemy might be listening in!”
• Norway attacks: Oslo hit by bomb explosion and youths shot at camp – Shocking. Both because it’s Norway and because it’s a city that I’ve spent a lot of time in.

Rumour has it that Yahoo! are looking for a new CEO. Some people have been putting their name forward for the role, or at least offering suggestions for Carol Bartz’s successor. This post is in response to Joe Stumps list of ideas.

To be clear, I know that list is not completely serious. I know that he’s not really angling for the CEO role and I understand that many of the options would not be achievable even if they were the best thing for Yahoo! That’s not the point I’m trying to make.

• iCloud’s real purpose is to kill Windows – “What this requires from Apple is a bold move that Microsoft would never make: Jobs is going to sacrifice the Macintosh in order to kill Windows. He isn’t beating Windows, he’s making Windows inconsequential.”
• Microsoft joins pre-emptive patent protection program – Software patents are not really popular, even with companies that (in theory) should benefit from them…

• How the iPhone mail app decides when to show you new mail – This is a really cool, very subtle detail seen in the Mail app on the iPhone.
• The end of the net as we know it – “ISPs are threatening to cripple websites that don’t pay them first.” ISP’s want to be considered common carriers (i.e., not responsible for the content on their network) when it suits them and also charge more for some data. Surely they have to pick one?

• BT Content Connect service faces ‘two-tier net’ claims – “BT supports the concept of net neutrality, but believes that service providers should also be free to strike commercial deals, should content owners want a higher quality or assured service delivery.” I’m not sure I can parse this. BT both supports net neutrality… and also doesn’t?
• Demolition of the Paris Metro – Great images of the Paris Metro.

• 10 cheap and cheerful city breaks – Some ideas for next years November trip…
• Schneier on WikiLeaks – “Just as the music and movie industries are going to have to change their business models for the Internet era, governments are going to have to change their secrecy models. I don’t know what those new models will be, but they will be different.”
• Publishers take note: the iPad is altering the very concept of a ‘book’ – The future of publishing?
• eclipse of 2010 – Great images of the recent eclipse.