dorian moore : (digital media) technologist

1 cent per mail message, you gotta be joking...

I\'ve just read this article about charging 1 cent per email and, well, I\'m shocked.

Great, let\'s charge 1 cent per email. That wouldn\'t be much for general use. For one the article is American centric, there are a couple of users outide of the USA in case you hadn\'t noticed. And if SPAM stops originating in the US it will originate elsewhere.

It would also kill all of the email lists that are run not for profit. Take one list I\'m on, the IDM list at hyperreal.org... This list probably has well over 1000 subscribers. And it has a throughput of between 20 and 100 messages a day. On a quiet day that would mean it send 20,000 emails. That\'s 200 dollars.

Another idiot thinking solely about the commerical implications of the internet and not looking at ho wit improves society. Cheaper to buy a decent piece of spam filtering software [like SpamSieve which works wonders for me] than to pay for those messages.

I\'m so glad that there is space for me to respond to this type of stupidity. I hope somebody slashdots that article and the author gets the flaming he deserves.

Posted by Dorian Moore on Monday, January 5, 2004 at 11:55 GMT
Last modified Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 20:22 GMT

From the economist

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=S%27%298%24%28Q13%2B%21%40%20%3C%0A Sorry, behind a pay barrier.
You can see the original research here: http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/

A short and curious article, this immediately changes Data from the title into a measurement of Information in the first line. This made me uncomfortable. As a programmer I know that information is structured data; a string of numbers use is meaningless unless you are told it is a telephone number, by presentation or implication.

That structuring might be the change from 0800235354 to 0800 235 5354 for some people, or to +44 (0)800 235 5453 for others. A contextualization.

On the internet the generation of context is much more complex. An HTML page containing a text article may have a considerable amount of strcuture to make it's presentation understandable [or to position adverts neatly around it's outside]. I've seen pages which are more than 50% structure in my time.

And this extends out into all media formats delviered digitally. Does a low quality image file contain more information than a high quality image, or a low quality sound file more than a high quality. It might hold a greater detail of information, but not relatively to it's increase in data size.

Further the data transfer/stored isn't quantified in the article, so I want to find out their sources. What intrigues me is how much of the wonderfully large amount of data is used in the duplication of items. Poisoned is me showing 4.898,191.48 GB of data currently available across OpenFT, FrastTrack and Gnutella... how much of that is duplicates and copies [if the music industry are to beleived, the majority of it].

If that's the case then that much information isn't created it's stored. It's duplicated.

It also makes me wonder how much of it is people saying the same thing overt and over again in slightly different words, rehashing the same arguments and saying "me too"? Or just for the sake of making a noise.

A cursory look at the source materials even imply that the figures are based upon sales of recording media, and that these include wide assumptions of what was stored on the media.

I'd stick this in the same category as one of my pet hates : Research that is announced as newsworthy after long testing when the same conclusion was painfully obvious to anyone with there eyes open, or that states statistics without qualifying their source or relative position within a field.

This article, which goes on to say that all of the figures are pretty much guesstimates, isn't really information. It's statistics for the sake of saying something. To me it's dis-information.

Posted by Dorian Moore on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 at 10:29 GMT
Last modified Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 20:22 GMT

E-commerce and it's failings.

Why is it that companies such as Dabs and MicroWarehouse can't produce websites which work. They mostly work, but if you step away from the main platform [Internet Explorer in windows] and try to use a browser remotely alternative [in this case Safari on Mac OS X.3] they fall appart. It's not the browsers fault. It's badly coded webpages.

I don't understand this. There is no reason for pages to be badly coded. It's perfectly simple to make a secure shoping system without relying on special browser features. And it's pretty damn easy to add all the javascript bells and whistles without it falling over. These companies should take a look at amazon to see how to do it. In the mean time I've got £1000 to spend on a monitor and two websites that can't take my order properly because of badly coded HTML. I bet I'm not the only one that's got frustrated with these overly complex systems.

I'm tempted to give the money to Micro Anvika, even though it will cost £100 more, as I reckon their site will work. They are retailers who understand customer service. I'm not happy supporting companies like the two above who really don't take the on-line customer experience seriously. Vote with your credit card this christmas. If there are problems with an on-line transaction, take it elsewhere. To a retailer who knows what they are doing.

You should also avoid companies who have the kind of security issues that Argos and B&Q have suffered from of late. Don't deal with these companies whose names make them think they don't have to worry about their customers, or customers rights. They are the fools.

E-Commerce, Security and website construction that work can be done well and cheaply. Companies have been fooled by vendors snake oil and they need to smarten up.

update In the end I opted for Computer Warehouse. Their sales system was simple and worked for me, there product was the same price as MacWarehouse and Dabs, and they also included free shipping. Way to go CW. Let's hope your after sales service is as good :-)

Posted by Dorian Moore on Monday, November 24, 2003 at 19:22 GMT
Last modified Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 20:22 GMT

... on the 10th floor in Tokyo.

Well, that's another experience notched up. I guess it was a little one by the way that people just kept on getting on with their business down in the street below.

[Apparently it was 6.5 on the richter scale]

Posted by Dorian Moore on Wednesday, November 12, 2003 at 10:38 GMT
Last modified Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 20:22 GMT

"Digital Media Technologist"

I was trying to come up with a description, a job title I suppose, to put on my business cards. I came up with Digital Media Technologist as it best described what I did. I work with computers and electronic equipment to develop solutions to media problems. Anyway, I did a search on it and came up with this:

http://acweb.colum.edu/curriculum.html

So be it.

Dorian Moore
Digital Media Technologist

Posted by Dorian Moore on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 at 00:05 GMT
Last modified Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 20:22 GMT

If you give a fool a tool it doesn't make him a craftsman.

Posted by Dorian Moore on Friday, October 3, 2003 at 23:41 GMT
Last modified Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 20:22 GMT

not the first and surely not the last word on this...

So I've been looking round a large number of corporate websites today to try and get information out of them, and I've been horrified about the amount of PDF files that are used in place of inline information. And how little information the PDFs contain. Now, I can see a certain use in providing PDFs, as you can download and print them and give them to the powers that be and they don't get distracted by the navigation on the page, or confused by all that complex 'internet' technology. Then again, the same could be achieved by adhearing to webstandards and using CSS for print of a page to. Obviously the PDF can also be used to read off-line. Handy if the PDF actually contains more than some horrible marketing blurb which tells you nothing about what you are enquiring. And it ruins the experienc of research, you have to move to a different application, switch context and tax your brain, to read this minimal piece of text. And that's provided the link to the .pdf even works.

Don't get me wrong. PDF's are great for print. I issue all of my invoices in PDF format, I use them for forms and for printable matter from websites. But I don't use them for small pieces of content that are a vital part of what I'm trying to find out on a website.

When will people learn? Soon I hope.

Posted by Dorian Moore on Wednesday, September 17, 2003 at 16:32 GMT
Last modified Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 20:22 GMT

A trend that seems to be building

I've noticed something new happening of late. Companies that I've used in the past, who have my email address, seem to be sending me unsolicited email. I _always_ make sure I opt out of lists, and if not I'm pretty sure to check as soon as I've regietered that there is an unsubscribe function. If I can't opt-out, or the site looks at all dodgy, I don't give them my email address, or give them one that I can block instantly without loss of other services should it start being used.

But of late I've been receiving emails from companies where my detaisl seem to have been 'reactivated'. Offenders in the last 5 days are:

192.com
GX Networks
cdzone.co.uk

All of whom I have explicitly unsubscribed from their mailing lists, and all of whom continue to send me information.

192.com seem to decide that they can send you new unsolicited email every year or so, despite asking for the complete removal of my presonal information from their system.

The GX networks one is a legacy from XO communications who I used to be a customer of. I've asked several times to be removed from XO and GX's databases. To no avail apparently

CDzone.co.uk are a horribly inefficient on-line record sales company who I _never_ permitted to send me email except regarding my order [which took 5 months to appear].

I know that what these people are doing is illegal, and indeed I intend to report them to the data protection registrar, but this seems over-reactive when these companies should just remove my information from their records [except for legacy purposes] upon request.

The trouble with a lot of these systems that I see is that it's my word against their's. I know for a fact how I've handled all of these, but it's easy for the offending companies to say I did not follow their procedure or make any number of excuses about why the behaved inefficiently. I wish there was a way of officially registering these issues with a "3 try's and your out" type system to the individuals benefit. At the moment the weight is towards the corporations and that sucks.

Posted by Dorian Moore on Friday, July 25, 2003 at 13:34 GMT
Last modified Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 20:22 GMT

I decided to publish these words shared with my bruv.

I think it reflects my sense or reality in the world and my bizzare sense of humour.

------ Forwarded Message
> From: Dorian Moore
> Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2003 13:44:14 +0100
> To: Duncan Moore
> Subject: Re: Saturday Night

> whigfield... didn't she get hyped as some sort of sex symbol when she was
> rather plain (though not unattractive)?

Yep. According to PopBitch she's been spotted in Europe working in a 'Sauna'... But then again popbitch is full of shit.

> I have come to terms with people
> loving bad music but I still have difficulty getting my head round that.

I dunno why. I've long accepted that one man's shit is another man's gold.
Doesn't matter what the context is. And the majority of the people are stupid enough to be sold shit and believe it is gold. Gerald Ratner made a fortune this way, and it seems that Jakob is doing the same for US hip-hop stars. As do EMI, Virgin, Universal et.al. with their artists. Nike, Abecrombie and Fitch, Gucci and Gap with their clothes. The emperors new clothes and all that. And here I am in my Prada shoes, Bench jeans, D&G Jacket, Muji T-shirt [Now the non-brand brand there is fucking irony!], Nixon Watch working at my Apple iBook listening to Frank Zappa on my matching iPod and syncing my diary with my latest Sony Ericsson phone on my designer influenced Orange phone network buying into the same idea, different names. Zappa's finished, it's Messiaen now. At least I know that Zappa and Messiaen weren't sold to me in the same way. Now that's a relief.

>
>> am
>> I old?

YES. GET BACK IN YOUR FUCKING EASY CHAIR AND START DRIBBLING AT THE TV AND
DON'T SPEAK UNLESS YOU ARE SPOKEN TO YOU SENILE OLD GIT. CAN YOU HEAR ME? YES? ITS ALMOST YOUR PILL TIME. NOW BE GOOD OR WE'LL HAVE TO GIVE YOU THE
SUPPOSITORIES AGAIN.

------ End of Forwarded Message

Posted by Dorian Moore on Friday, July 4, 2003 at 13:51 GMT
Last modified Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 20:22 GMT

find a decent midi file

No, really.

I just got a new phone and it came with a horribly small and annoying range of ring tones. I checked out the orange wapsite for new sounds, but £2.50 a pop for bad midi files was a joke.

So I started searching the web. I've not laughed as much in years. Currently I've got an interpretation of "Waiting Room" by Fugazi as the ring tone, but there are sooo many to choose from I'm going to have to keep changing them.

Maybe that's because these new polyphonic ring tones are just so fucking annoying. I thought that the old classic as used on Trigger Happy TV tones were bad, but these have the potential to annoy so much more.

I think Eric Satie may be in order. Music that you aren't supposed to listen to may be the ultimate solution in this instance. Thought 'Fanfare for the Common Man' by copland also has a certain sense or irony don't ya think?

I guess whatever it's going to sound really cheesy. hmmph. I wonder how long until they have .mod players in phones?

Posted by Dorian Moore on Sunday, June 29, 2003 at 00:36 GMT
Last modified Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 20:22 GMT