NSW premier Morris Iemma says we’re at “war” with the railway unions. I presume that means he’ll arrange for the army to be sent in to deal with the unionists, their welfare payments withheld, alcohol and pornography banned and their land repossessed. Oh, sorry, that’s for aboriginals.
John Howard’s “Margin of Terror”
According to an analysis at Possums Pollytics, the latest polls show a 14% swing to Labor in safe Coalition electorates. That means in the forthcoming federal election some 40 government seats could come into play. Would Howard be quaking in his sneakers or what? Thanks to the Snarky Platypus for the pointer.
China’s online population explosion
China now has 137 million Internet users. With this level of growth, in the next few years there’ll be more Chinese on the Internet than Americans. How will that change things, eh?
The Internet, 1994
“A global electronic mall is under construction,” enthuses this wonderful promotional video from 1994 extolling the virtues of the Internet.
“Come, take a look at the future we can build together,” says Digital Equipment Corporation, once one of the world’s most important computer companies.
Here [on the Internet], the smallest of companies can search and shop on a global scale for the best resources and products at the best prices. Here those same small companies can market their own abilities and products in a global marketplace. This means a new array of risks and opportunities. In the future you’ll be forced to compete with distant companies you’ve never encountered before. And you’ll be able to expand to new markets at low cost.
Only 13 years on, watching this video is already a retro experience. The grey pages of the Mosaic web browser were state of the art in 1994 — pictures as well as text! 1994 is still a year before the Internet exploded into popular awareness. A year before Netscape and Yahoo! and Amazon.com and Windows 95. A year before I was headhunted to move to Sydney to play in the dot.com boom.
For me, there’s two levels of nostalgia in his video — nostalgia for the Internet before it really did become that “shopping mall”, and nostalgia for Digital.
Digital Equipment Corporation made the most popular scientific computers from the late 1960s. The PDP-10 mainframe (later DECsystem-10) was at the heart of every decent computing science department in the 70s.
But what every programmer wanted was the coolest toy of all, the PDP-11 minicomputer. From a programmers point of view it was well-engineered, it was designed for mass production — and it just looked so goddam cool.
I never encountered a PDP-11 in real life, so I never saw those glorious purple buttons with my own eyes. But at university I did play with its successor, the VAX-11 — essentially a souped-up PDP-11 with integrated circuits instead of transistors — and soon understood why programmers thought it was so good. It just worked.
The BSD Unix operating system which underpinned the Internet and which inspired Linux was first written for PDP-11s and Vaxen (the accepted plural of “VAX”). They inspired the design of Motorola’s microprocessors — clean and simple to program — which were used by Apple’s early machines right through to only two years ago. Much cleaner and more logical than the clunky Intel processors which powered IBM’s PC and its clones.
Digital made computers designed by programmers for programmers — it was as simple as that.
“Digital is here already as a leader in the field,” boasts the video. But alas Digital is no more. “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home,” said Digital’s founder, Ken Olsen. But he was wrong. The minicomputer market disappeared as the PC revolution took hold. Digital was bought out by Compaq, who in turn were bought out by HP.
Look at that video a couple of times. Remember, that’s only 13 years ago. Now look at the Internet available right in front of you now — and try to imagine what it’ll all be like in another 13 years.
Thanks to Memex 1.1 for the pointer and further observations.
Optimal copyright only 14 years
In most countries, copyright in creative works lasts for 50 years after the death of the creator. In the US, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 extended that protection to 70 years for works created by individuals and 120 years for corporations. But a new paper by Cambridge University PhD candidate Rufus Pollock reckons copyright terms should be reduced, not extended [PDF file, 256k] — to just 14 years.
The US copyright extension was widely criticised as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. Walt Disney’s Micky Mouse would have otherwise entered the public domain in 2003 — depriving the Disney corporation of income. Critics said the Act was nothing but more corporate welfare from the Bush II government.
Pollock’s paper argues that the optimal duration of copyright falls as the cost of producing and distributing creative works goes down. But since copyright laws are created through political lobbying rather than “a benevolent and rational policy-maker”, copyright terms steadily increased through the 20th century.
Politically it’s hard to remove rights which have already been granted — unless, of course you can pretend there’s some terrible threat such as terrorists or black paedophiles — so Pollock notes:
It is prudent for policy-makers to err on the low side rather than the high side when setting the strength of copyright.
Somehow, given the media industry’s current terror (!) of falling revenues thanks to that very process of falling distribution costs, and their close connection to political power, I just don’t see Pollock’s arguments winning any time soon.
Thanks to Ars Technica for the pointer.