Dancing With Controversy

So the final of Strictly Come Dancing was on this weekend, and with it came some controversy.
Though normally not a viewer (I have a dislike for any program which involves the public voting), I happened to see the end of the semi-finals the week before, where there were three couples dancing.

The normal procedure is for one of the couples to be eliminated and for there to be a final dance-off between two couples the next week.
However, this year it was decided all three couples would go through to the final. The next day it was revealed that the reason for this was that with the way the judges scored the couples, the top two couples were guaranteed to go through regardless of how many phone votes the couple in last place got.
Unfortunately the two hosts of the show didn't know this and encouraged the viewing public to phone in anyway to try and get their favourite couple through.
Due to the toughened up regulations on telephone voting, the BBC panicked and decided to let all three couples through, then add the votes that were cast to the final in addition to the phone voting which normally takes place (the judges do not cast votes in the final, the ultimate winner is chosen purely by public voting).

In the end, the couple who should have been eliminated in the semi-final went on to win and in my opinion completely stripped the show of any integrity it may have had (for this season anyway).
Possibly the greatest irony was that the winning couple, Tom Chambers (the celebrity) and Camilla Dallerup (the professional dancer) seemed to perform better than the runner ups and had the circumstances being different would almost certainly have deservered to win the compeition. Unfortunately in these circumstances the win was thoroughly undeserved and any records of the win should be accompanied by an asterix.

The reason I feel the win is undeserved is because the competition began with one set of rules, and because of a unique set of events (the judges scoring and the hosts urging people to phone vote) ended with another.

In trying to avoid punitive action from OFCOM, the BBC failed to protect the integrity of the show, which is far more important.
What they should have done was to donate any money made from the futile public phone voting to a charity to avoid accusations of defrauding the public and braved whatever punishment OFCOM dished out.
And in this case, OFCOM should have warned the BBC over it's conduct in the future but restrained itself from imposing a fine on them, or at least only imposing a suspended fine.

Because there is no material prize at the end of the show, all the entrants are competing for is pride - something that can mean far more to competitors than anything material.
The runners up this year didn't lose to a better competitor in the end, they lost to a unique set of circumstances and to me a loss that can be hard to understand and hard to accept.
Because of this my condolensces go out to Rachel Stevens and her partner Vincent Simone.

Bangs for your bucks

In the spirit of this credit crunch bargin bin era we currently find ourselves in, I found this album on the homepage of Napster today, a greatest hits album from Cypress Hill called Original Album Classics: Cypress Hill.

Consisting of 76 tracks over 5 discs, I had a quick look on Amazon.co.uk and was surprised to see it was going for a Lidl like £17.47 (which makes it super saver eligible, ching ching!).
I haven't seen a bargain this good since Valve's Orange Box compilation.

Update (21/12/08): Since making the world aware of this bargain, I've noticed Amazon has tried to take advantage of my sway with the public and pushed the price up to £18.57. I didn't realise I had such power...

Yes I have just signed up for an Amazon Associates account. Ching ching!

Hi, I'm a Mac and I mislead people

Full disclosure: This was written on a Windows PC.

I recently watched some of the US "Macs vs PCs" ads on YouTube (embedded below - probably worth watching before reading the rest of this post), and a few of them really annoyed me.



They are funny, and the concept behind the ads (PCs for work, Macs for the home) is a good angle for Apple to take. However, I don't understand how these ads are/should be legal, because from my viewpoint some of the points they make are either factually wrong or misleading.

My first bugbear is Apple's usage of the term "PC".
As I understand it, PC stands for Personal Computer, which Wikipedia defines as “...any computer whose original sales price, size, and capabilities make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator.”

This definition, which most people in the IT industry would agree with, can apply to computers running Windows, Linux and of course Mac OS. In fact the Apple PC was one of the first mass market PC's and Apple are often credited with helping kick start the home PC revolution.
What Apple means by “PC” in their ads are computers which run Windows. They don't want to come out and say Windows, because, as I said earlier, some of their claims are either factually wrong or misleading. If they did say Windows, then Microsoft may be able to sue them for something. But by using a generic term like “PC” Apple seem to think they can claim anything they'd like and they'd get away with it (which to be fair they seem to have done).

If you skip to about 09:07 into the embedded video above, one of the ads start with the Mac claiming that he's into fun stuff like “movies, music and podcasts” and the PC claiming that he too can do fun stuff like “time sheets and spreadsheets and pie charts”.
The Mac then goes on to say that “it would be kinda difficult to capture a family vacation on a pie chart”. To me, this seems to be misleading, as the suggestion is that only the Mac can do things like “movies, music and podcasts” or handle holiday photos, which is a lie.

There are other misleading suggestions in the ads, such as Windows PC's are better suited for work environments and Macs are better for homes, that Macs handle creative tasks better than Window's PC's. This is misleading as there are very few third party applications on the Mac that aren't available for Windows, while there are hundreds of PC games released each year for Windows and very few for the Mac.

Apple, fan boys aside, make some really good products. iPods helped make portable MP3 players truly mainstream and the iPhone have shown other handset manufacturers how smart phones should be designed, so it baffles me that Apple would need to resort to such dirty handed and disgusting tactics – maybe it's Mac who's insecure about his capabilities and not “PC”.

American reactions to 9/11

I was reading an article today in Wired magazine (this one) about a woman who had just become head of IARPA, a government agency tasked with outfitting US spies with advanced technology.

The part I found interesting was the reason she gave for switching from academic work to government work:

Like many Americans," she says, "I felt a need to step up and contribute."

It seems to me her thought process was "We were attacked, how can I help retaliate?". Now, she isn't unique in thinking like this as I've heard multiple stories of people joining the military after 9/11, but I do find it interesting that there weren't more Americans who didn't instead think "Why were we attacked?" or "What was it about us that made someone want to go to such lengths to inflict pain?"

Why we need net neutrality

Last week several UK ISPs banded together to tell the BBC that their iPlayer application was "overwhelming" their networks, and that unless the BBC pay them to increase their network capacity they will start throttling the traffic being sent over their networks by iPlayer.

In the same week, in an interview with the Royal Television Society's Television magazine, Neil Berkett (the new CEO of Virgin Media) attacked the concept of net neutrality describing it as a "load of bollocks".

For those not familiar with the term (net neutrality, not bollocks), Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu defines net neutrality as "the idea is that a maximally useful public information network aspires to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally."

What the issue essentially boils down to is that ISPs around the world are starting to see an increase in the traffic being sent across their networks as bandwidth hungry applications like Bittorrent and video on demand (VOD) services break into the mainstream.

Rather than investing money in their network infrastructures themselves, ISPs seem to have banded together to try and get content providers like the BBC to pay for it instead.

Whether net neutrality is right or wrong is a side issue, as the idea of content providers having to pay ISPs to upgrade their networks is ridiculous, comparable to expecting car manufacturers being asked to pay to build more roads.

In the interview with Television magazine, Neil Berkett claims Virgin Media are already in talks with several content providers about paying for a priority service over their network.

As someone who's a supporter of net neutrality, this worries me, and using the following analogy I’ll explain why:

Firstly, imagine a scenario where you have two companies who both produce video podcasts about technology.

One is a small start-up with limited funding (let's call them Web Start-up) and the other an existing media company with deep pockets (we'll call them Old Money).
Because Web Start-up has limited funding, they are unable to pay Virgin Media for higher priority across their network but Old Money can so they do.
In this example whenever users on Virgin Media's network try to watch Web Start-up’s video podcast streaming online they find they can only watch a few minutes at a time before it pauses to re-buffer the video.
Because Old Money is paying for a higher priority their viewers don’t experience this problem.
Without even considering the content of the two podcasts, Old Money’s viewers are getting a better experience and therefore more likely to keep viewers.

This gives Virgin a lot of power, which could then be abused. This brings me onto my second point.

Now let’s imagine that despite the setback Web Start-up faced, they produce a podcast that’s so good they get significant numbers of viewers.
It’s possible that Old Money can approach Virgin and agree a deal that on top of just giving Old Money a higher priority service across their network they also agree to shape traffic in a way that also further deteriorates competing services, such as Web Start-up’s.
While competition law would make it difficult for the contract to state it in these blatant terms, I’m sure a good corporate lawyer would find a way around them.

Finally, my last point covers why even Old Money should be for net neutrality.

Even if Old Money pays Virgin Media, this would only cover Virgin Media's customers. Old Money would also have to pay every other ISP who charges for higher priorities, possibly including those from the rest of the world, to be able to provide a good service to their subscribers; the cost of this could be astronomical and probably prohibitive.
Instead of money being used to produce better content, this money goes to ISPs to basically pay for the fact their networks cannot cope with the demand their customers are putting on it.

I hope I have demonstrated that when you start charging content providers for bandwidth services, you start getting into some very murky areas.
I also believe that when you force content providers to play on a level playing field you force them to make better content, which we can all agree can only be a good thing.