chestnut-tree

And what about privacy? An entire OS that records everything you do online, it even records printing to your desktop printer.

Microsoft rightly gets skewered for tracking user behaviour in Windows 10. A few years ago, Canonical was heavily criticised for sending anonymous data from Ubuntu to Amazon. Meanwhile, Google captures more user data than possibly any other tech company - we're talking gargantuan levels of data - and yet on matters of privacy, the tech community gives Google a free pass. Why such double standards?

This is a quote by Niklaus Wirth, a Swiss computer scientist who has created many programming languages, most famously Pascal. It's a long quote, but I like it very much:

"Many people tend to look at programming styles and languages like religions: if you belong to one, you cannot belong to others. But this analogy is another fallacy. It is maintained for commercial reasons only. Object-oriented programming (OOP) solidly rests on the principles and concepts of traditional procedural programming (PP). OOP has not added a single novel concept, but it emphasizes two concepts much more strongly that was done with procedural programming.

The first such concept is that of the procedure bound to a composite variable called object. (The binding of the procedure is the justification for it being called a method). The means for this binding is the procedure variable (or record field), available in languages since the mid 1970s. The second concept is that of constructing a new data type (called subclass) by extending a given type (the superclass).

It is worthwhile to note that along with the OOP paradigm came an entirely new terminology with the purpose of mystifying the roots of OOP. Thus, whereas you used to be able to activate a procedure by calling it, one now sends a message to the method. A new type is no longer built by extending a given type, but by defining a subclass which inherits its superclass. An interesting phenomenon is that many people learned for the first time about the important notions of data type, of encapsulation, and (perhaps) of information hiding when introduced to OOP. This alone would have made the introduction to OOP worthwhile, even if one didn't actually make use of its essence later on.

Nevertheless, I consider OOP as an aspect of programming in the large; that is, as an aspect that logically follows programming in the small and requires sound knowledge of procedural programming. Static modularization is the first step towards OOP. It is much easier to understand and master than full OOP, it's sufficient in most cases for writing good software, and is sadly neglected in most common languages (with the exception of Ada).

In a way, OOP falls short of its promises. Our ultimate goal is extensible programming (EP). By this, we mean the construction of hierarchies of modules, each module adding new functionality to the system. EP implies that the addition of a module is possible without any change in the existing modules. They need not even be recompiled. New modules not only add new procedures, but - more importantly - also new (extended) data types. We have demonstrated the practicality and economy of this approach with the design of the Oberon System."

Taken from: http://www.eptacom.net/pubblicazioni/pub_eng/wirth.html

I agree that many non-fiction titles could be shorter (although probably not the length of a blog post).

I confess I am an impatient reader, and many non-fiction titles I read feel padded out with unnecessary verbiage. I do wonder if the tools we use to write have some bearing on this. When using a computer to write, the ease of editing means it's much easier to just write and write and write.

Imagine if you were forced to write your manuscript by hand. I'm guessing the length of your non-fiction manuscript would be shorter, sharper and more to the point.

The Labour Party's abstention on this bill is unforgivable. We need to hold the Conservative government to account for their deceit and utter incompetence. We need a strong opposition party now more than ever. But Labour have completely failed in that regard.

Yes, I realise Labour is up against our mostly Labour-hating right-wing national press who seem as culpable as our politicians in perpetuating lies and untruths to push their own agenda. (Is there any country in Europe that has a national press as vile, racist, and nasty as our national press in the UK?)

Labour should be pummelling the Conservative party for their endless lies and dishonesty. They should have ripped the Conservatives to shreds over this bill (as they should have for Brexit too).

Politics in the UK has never felt so oppressive, depressing and dysfunctional in recent memory than it is now. And it's probably only going to get worse.

The BBC recently released a video codec called Turing (named after Alan Turing):

"...an open source software HEVC video encoder that allows highly efficient compression of video content with low computational complexity."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2016/09/turing-codec

A real barrier to a decentralised web is the difficulty of installing software on a server. I know that sounds really mundane and inconsequential in the broader debate about a decentralised web, but consider the following...

Imagine if installing a server-side chat app, message board, project management app, or CMS were as easy as installing a desktop app. In a desktop app, it's usually one click to start the install and then, if necessary, you're guided through a few screens to complete the install. Want to uninstall? The OS (operating system) will provide a feature to manage that.

Now consider how complicated installing on a server is in contrast. Upload you files to a folder or directory, enable permissions, set configurations not just for your server but also the language the program is written in - the list goes on. No wonder SaaS (Software as a Service) is thriving like never before. Who, other than technical folks, could possibly have the time, interest or inclination to set up a self-hosted solution when the barrier is so high? Perhaps some in the tech field would like to keep it that way? Would Saas be less attractive if installing a self-hosted solution was simple, easy, quick and secure?

Surely an essential part of a decentralised web is that companies, organisations and individuals choose to run their own software using open protocols and data formats. But until the ease, security and simplicity of installation improves for web software, it simply won't happen on a large scale.

Microsoft has a long history of providing accessibility options in their products (long before Apple or Google started taking accessibility seriously).

Microsoft have never been very good with visual and interaction design in their desktop operating system. However, Windows Phone is the exception. It's visually attractive, and has nice, well thought-out interactions. I think it's superior to Android and iOS in many ways. It's obvious that both Apple and Google took some cues from Windows Phone in the updates to their own mobile operating systems. (Undoubtedly, all these companies look at each others products when designing new features).

The UK's NHS website is an excellent, reputable source of health information. It may not be the most attractive looking site, but it has a goldmine of info. There's information on ailments and conditions, treatments and general health advice.

Importantly, the information is written and vetted by qualified medical professionals.

http://www.nhs.uk

No real surprise. E-ink readers are still only available with black and white displays. Their screens are mostly shaped to fit a small paperback.

Physical books, in contrast, come in an infinite variety of shapes and sizes. Yes, tablets come in larger sizes and with high resolution colour screens, but they still aren't as comfortable to read as paper or even e-ink displays.

"...the US isn't particularly unique, just more public about it."

I agree. I strongly dislike the US proposals discussed here, but the fact is travelling abroad means you've already given up much of your privacy.

Those of us in Europe and the US have a somewhat contradictory attitude toward privacy - opposing certain rules or regulations, while happily ignoring others. Take the UK, where the British government has intrusive surveillance laws. A self-serving and apathetic media discourages discussion or opposition to such laws. On the other hand, there was strong opposition against mandatory ID cards when the idea was proposed a few years ago, possibly more to do with the cost of the scheme and little trust in the competency of the government to carry out such a proposal.

So, yes we do have a somewhat inconsistent attitude to privacy. Even in Continental Europe (if the country is part of the Schengen area), biometric passports are common. Applying for a passport often means providing your fingerprints - something a lot of people might be uncomfortable doing.

In the UK, the NHS website includes an excellent, regularly updated 'Behind the Headlines' section that scrutinises health stories reported in the press.

In fact the 'Behind the Headlines' site is a model of clear, factual, unfussy reporting - precisely what you won't find in the national UK press.

Sadly, the 'Behind the Headlines' site is probably far less read than the misleading newspaper stories it tries to debunk.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx

Ironically, today it's the national newspapers in the UK that play the role of the demagogue. Headlines that shriek at readers in hysterical tones. Foaming-at-the-mouth outrage deliberately manufactured to inflame public opinion. Lies, deceit, distortion - it's the stock in trade of newspapers both left and right (although our right wing press are particularly vicious and nasty). Honest, truthful reporting is barely to be seen.

This research is by the EBU (European Broadcasting Union).

Some interesting findings include:

- Overall, TV and radio are the most trusted sources of news in Europe (trust is highest in Nordic countries)

- The written press is least trusted in Southeast Europe and the United Kingdom

I'm from the UK and I'd agree with the general findings. The main TV and radio broadcasters in the UK do strive for accuracy and impartiality. They fall short at times and there is plenty of criticism levelled at them, but overall I do believe there is a commitment for the news to be accurate and informative.

In contrast, our national newspapers (both tabloid and broadsheet) have no commitment to accurate reporting. Instead, we have the most vicious, self-serving, partisan, deceitful, shrill, hysterical, nasty, racist, repulsive, ethics and integrity-free press in the whole of Europe. It's quite baffling that there is such a sharp contrast between TV and radio news and the anything-goes attitude of the national press.

A bit of a digression, but...I strongly dislike dubbing and simply cannot enjoy a dubbed drama or film.

First, you have the distracting mismatch between the actor's mouth movements and the dubbed dialogue.

Second, the way an actor speaks in their native language is an intrinsic part of their performance. A dubbed performance will be different, but can never match the original (unless we're talking about a poorly acted, poor quality production).

To give an example, the Scandinavian series The Bridge has won great praise for the performance of its lead (Sofia Helin). This has been a big international hit (in the UK it was shown subtitled). Can a dubbing actor really ever inhabit a character in the same way as the original performer? (Don't forget the dubbing actor also sits in a room performing the dub, not on location like the original actors).

There is one scenario where I understand dubbing is necessary: children's films. But even here, you can notice a difference. When Disney dubbed the Japanese animated movie Spirited Away, they did a very good job with the American voice actors. However, if you listen to the original Japanese soundtrack, you come away with a different impression of the film because the Japanese language has a very different tone and inflection to English.

If you are using Firefox, you can disable referrer info without using a plugin. Here‘s how:

In the URL bar, type the following and press enter:

  about:config

  network.http.sendRefererHeader

Note that some sites won‘t allow you to sign in or register if the referrer header is disabled (e.g. Pinterest), so you may have to temporarily enable the referrer header in those instances.

A final point is that this Firefox setting obviously has no effect if referral info is already appended to the URL (as is the case with Google search results).

Somewhat related: if you're in the UK, the BBC is currently airing a three-part documentary series called Art of Scandinavia. The series focuses on Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

It's available to watch on iPlayer (for UK residents only)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0745j6m/episodes/guide

There's also VPaint, an open source animation program (currently in beta) for Windows and Mac.

The description on their site: "VPaint is an experimental vector graphics editor based on the Vector Animation Complex (VAC), a technology developed by a collaboration of researchers at Inria and the University of British Columbia, featured at SIGGRAPH 2015. It allows you to create resolution-independent illustrations and animations using innovative techniques."

http://www.vpaint.org/

"Animation is not 'extremely' important and never has been or how would we have survived all these years?"

Animation definitely has an important role to play in interface design and it's been used in applications for decades. For example, this video snippet of Mac OS 7 (released in 1991 - over 25 years ago) shows the animation that occurs when a new finder window opens.

https://youtu.be/f_GBeKVijWQ?t=2m16s

Can you imagine minimizing and maximizing windows without some subtle effect to show the window shrinking or expanding? Without animation, the transition would feel clunky and abrupt.

Animation can be overdone of course (even for minimising a window). And that's the real problem with animation in UI design: when it's used purely for decorative puposes or if it slows you down, it quickly becomes irritating.

Previously, animations were subtle and focused on individual actions (and limited by what the hardware was capable of). Today, animations are smoother, faster but also longer (hence the term "Motion UI") and actions are conveyed with multiple, simultaneous animations. It means that sometimes the UI can feel too busy and overdone with movement.

But maybe it's also a generational thing? Taste and fashion change and perhaps users today aren't fazed or distracted by fast motion graphics?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8TXgCzxEnw

"I always laugh when I see "fair trade coffee". Is it really fair trade? Do most people care about it?"

Some people do care. Enough for an ever-growing range of products that are part of the Fairtrade scheme.

In the UK, the Fairtrade logo is almost universally recognised by consumers because you can find fair trade products in just about every supermarket (obviously the number of products varies by supermarket, but even discount Supermarkets like Lidl and Aldi stock a few items).

One major supermarket in the UK (Sainsbury's) sources all it's bananas under the fair trade scheme.

Fair trade has its critics and perhaps the scheme fails at times to live up to its ideals, but it's still a scheme worthy of support. And I'm glad it's going strong (at least in the UK - I think other countries have their own versions).

Here's an excellent blog post from the Fairtrade foundation on some common misconceptions about fair trade

http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/en/media-centre/blog/2015/july/d...

"Google uses HTTPS...Google is seriously helping to advance computer security as a whole"

I've always felt that Google sees privacy solely or largely through the lens of security. You can't have privacy without security, but privacy is more than just security. Online, it's about being tracked in the first place.

Google may have the best encryption and the most secure data storage, but that security and encryption doesn't stop Google from voraciously tracking and recording as much of your online behaviour as they can.

Google has it's digital fingerprints in every corner of the web: from analytics to CDNs, to online accounts that sync your activity on mobile, desktop, tablet, TV and no-doubt more gadgets in the future. They have an entire cloud-based OS that requires immediate sign-in on start-up (and which is heavily promoted in schools).

The amount of data they capture (much of it not even anonymous) is truly staggering. And yet on matters of privacy, they get a completely free ride from the tech community.

"Teletext is a surprisingly good internet substitute for basic information consumption"

I agree. Teletext feels like it would have been a perfect service for a mobile phone.

In the UK, the BBC stopped transmission of their teletext service (Ceefax) in 2012. One of the limitations of the service for writers was that it could only display four paragraphs of text on a single screen. This meant any news or sport story had to include all the key points in just those four paragraphs. This forced journalists and writers to be concise and to the point. (It's actually a great writing exercise to try on any news or sport story, or even essay)

Now in the digital age we have apps like Yahoo Digest/Summly that give you concise summaries of the news with large photos (after you've downloaded the 30mb phone app). But teletext did plain, concise text from the start (with real writers) because of the constraints of the technology. And those constraints turned out to be a large part of the appeal of teletext.

Here's the link to the findings on the Action for Sugar website where you can see the full list of drinks included in their survey:

http://www.actiononsugar.org/News%20Centre/Surveys%20/2016/1...

For comparison, the recommendation from UK scientists is that no more than 5% of daily calories should come from added sugar (approx 7 teaspoons):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-33551501

"apple is actually ahead of the curve here"

I'd argue that old-fashioned desktop PCs were (and are) ahead of the curve. No need to wastefully throw everything away, just upgrade the components you want. A reasonable level of standardisation has allowed this to happen.

Desktop PCs might not have the polished, all-in-one usability of an Apple device, but the ability to add or remove components from a PC make them very amenable to re-use. For example, I have an older hard drive (HD) that I removed from my desktop PC and put into an external HD case. It's now used as a backup and storage device.

ChromeOS is mostly a cloud-based operating system. Although, there is an offline mode, apps and data reside in the 'cloud' (Google's servers). Cloud-based software makes it very easy to track users.

To use ChromeOS you must sign in with your Google account. Although you can use it as a "guest", this will limit what you can do.

Once you are signed-in, Google knows which web apps you use, including when and how often you use them. It knows (and records) the websites you visit (unless you browse constantly in private mode). It even knows when you print to your desktop printer because print jobs are routed through Google's cloud print service first.

To repeat: none of this is anonymous since you must be signed into use the OS properly. A Google account = your name, date-of-birth, gender, location and (optional) phone number. In other words, some of your most private and personal details.

In my view, this all amounts to a privacy-invasive OS that tracks you by default.

"I'd also like to see a similar comparison for an average desktop Linux installation, OS X installation"

I agree. I'd really like to see an analysis of Android and ChromeOS. I'm glad to see Microsoft in the spotlight over tracking and analytics as this is a subject that gets far too little scrutiny from the tech community.

Tracking practices are widespread in the industry. Take Chromebooks for example, they are now used in many US schools. The kids have no choice in using these laptops, it's the adults who make the decision to deploy them (and Google that heavily promotes their use). The privacy implications of an OS that requires sign-in and then tracks every app and website you use are horrendous. Yet there's barely any scrutiny from the tech community.

We really need to apply this analysis of Windows 10 to other operating systems, especially ones that we know track you by default.

Yes, sorry. Corrected :-)

For those in the UK, the available Government datasets are published on http://www.data.gov.uk

The datasets are not public domain, but licensed under the Open Government Licence (which allows you to use and adapt the data for commercial use).

There's also the Global Open Data Index: a website that ranks countries by how much Government data is available as open datasets based on certain criteria. The current top spot is taken by Taiwan

  1. Taiwan
  2. UK
  3. Denmark
  4. Colombia
  5. Finland
  5. Australia
  7. Uruguay
  8. USA
  8. Netherlands
  10. Norway
  10. France

The Open University has a beginner's introduction to Babylonian Mathematics

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=...

Edit: Here's an audio interview with Mathieu Ossendrijver on this research. The interview starts at the 20:30 mark

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03g0d7b

This is no surprise to anyone in the UK. We have the highest fares in Europe[1]. Although you can buy tickets in advance at certain off-peak times for less, it's not always practical or convenient.

The problem is that peak fares can rise to astronomical levels if they are unregulated (i.e. can be freely set by the train operator).

An example: a 2 hour train journey from London to Manchester (approx 200 miles/321 km) one-way booked for a peak-time slot a week in advance can cost as much as £166 (approx €217 / $235), which is frankly ludicrous.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jan/04/action-for-rail...

There's also this 6 minute FT podcast on the worst corporate guff for 2015. McKinsey, Starbucks, Twitter, Alphabet all get a mention

http://podcast.ft.com/2016/01/04/time-to-get-stoked-by-the-y...

And perhaps I can add one too: reached out. This is used more by tech journalists than by businesses but it sounds very odd to me.

Instead of simply saying: we contacted acme corporation for comment, writers say we reached out to acme corporation for comment. When I think of the phrase 'reached out' I think of someone reaching out to another person in sympathy or support or friendship. That's why the idea of 'reaching out' to a corporate body sounds strange. Why not simply say 'contact' instead?