Best article yet on the F1 Ferrari allegations. Note that through it McLaren have no other mud thrown at them – but Ferrari and Benetton (both who employed Schumacher) have guilt at their door.
Monthly Archives: July 2007
Back home
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Another great week in San Francisco ends. It was excellent to meet everyone be it the first or subsequent time. A few photos I took are up here.
It was a very long 10 hours back on the plane, then the coach was delayed a bit and as I write in 15 hours we are on our way to Gran Canaria. Somewhere my sleep will catch up. I am amazingly tired. I’m not complaining about it at all, but I’m pretty done in right now.
(And no, I didn’t go in. I’d bought yet another Zen at Best Buy the day before. That photo is a perfect rectangle too.)
Back from the beach
They sell vanilla diet pepsi at Walgreens just up the street from the hotel. A bottle of that while wandering around Union Square was perfect. I think I left my camera at the pier earlier so I wasn’t able to take any pics of this herd of cyclists who came down one side on the Sq and headed along another. I caught some of it – I’d been sitting high facing Macy’s – but the tail end, followed by 2 police cars and a police van, looked good. Some sort of organised parade I think it was.
Most of the others are at a TechCrunch party tonight. It would have been cool to blog that I’d been but it would have bored me senseless and I’m not up to that. Hence my sitting in 506 at the Chancellor Hotel on Powell.
And tomorrow is the last day in San Francisco. I have a list of a few things the girls want so hopefully that will be fulfilled.
Ferrari cheat?
“Ferrari … finds it incomprehensible that violating the fundamental principle of sporting honesty does not have, as a logical and inevitable consequence, the application of a sanction,” the team statement said.
A google search for ‘ferrari cheating’ scores over 540,000 hits. McLaren cheating? A quarter of that number.
Seems they want their justice on their terms at the times they set these things up.
The bowling bomb
Last night we were playing Wii Sports bowling. I happened to mention that I’d heard of a ‘bomb’ when playing the power bowling. Mike said how to do it and he took the floor to try. He didn’t get it but I saw how he lined things up. I youtube’d for a video and when I found one emailed home with the info for my youngest daughter who is good at the bowling – the last game I saw she got 8 strikes, a spare and 2 more strikes. She beats me pretty much every time. After the email was sent I had a go. And I did it – I got the bomb. All 91 pins at double points. I had several witnesses to this feat. I emailed home with the news. This morning I got the reply from P – she won’t take hearsay as proof.
And to think she should trust her father :)
Be nice to Judges.
Back in mid-2006 a nasty scrap of humanity was sentenced for abducting and sexually assaulting a toddler. Craig Sweeney was sentenced to 18 years but told he could possibly walk free after 5 years. Understandably, everyone outside the judiciary was angry at this, but the judge was – in the opinion of the Lord Chancellor – exactly right with the judgement. (This means that Lord Falconer agrees that a known predator of young children will be free to start all over again in less than 5 years from now.) At the time, the media reacted with the indignation felt by everyone other than Lord Falconer and his wig-wearing cronies.
Today there was a judgement about the way that other judgement was handled.
The media, particularly the tabloid press, was also criticised and was asked to restrain from attacking judges.
What? The media is meant to just agree? How can you attack a sentence and not attack the idiot who used his own judgement to arrive at it? Maybe the media should just be quiet and in doing so be seen to be in total agreement.
Judges are phenomenally well paid and are meant to be intelligent. They know exactly what they are getting themselves into and with the trappings of their career come the barbs. Cope with it.
In that same link above:
The constitution committee also looked at the creation of the Ministry of Justice when Mr Reid split the Home Office in May.
It said it had “significant constitutional implications” but that ministers had tried to dismiss it as simply a machinery of government change.
The government was criticised for “failing satisfactorily to consult the judiciary on the proposed changes”.
What this means is “Damn! More work!”. It also means “Politicians should not interfere with the judges but the judges can interfere with the politicians” (unless Cynthia Payne was in charge of course). So the judges want to have complete control and be protected from anyone saying anything bad, but in the meantime they will allow people out of jail who are known to harm children and can be absolutely guaranteed to do it again.
Does anyone not a judge agree with this? I seriously doubt it.
So we had the uncaring Judge John Griffith Williams who was joined by the incompetent Judge Francis Gilbert and this particular diabolic trinity was completed with the bleeding heart Judge Julian Hall. And if the Lord Chancellor had his way then the media would not report the public feelings on the matter, then the politicians would not try to enact new laws (which is NOT the remit of the judges) and the judges could continue in their strange world where they are the sole arbiters of good and bad.
But…… go back to 2005 and decisions were taken to increase the sentences handed out to men who kill their wives. Would this have happened if the media had been quiet? No, of course not.
There were more sentencing guidelines issued in 2006. Here are a few words from that report:
The guideline which was drawn up after a major consultation
Feeling let down / angry / sad or many other emotions is difficult to do in isolation. Ideas about what else could be done are also difficult to express as you only have your own experiences to go on. Which is where the media comes in. Parts of the media can and do accurately reflect the feelings people have over many things and if a judge thinks it’s okay for someone else to be attacked then they should expect equal treatment. But the media also functions as a megaphone and of course that will cause a louder and harsher voice – people like me saying that the likes of Sweeney should be executed. Does that mean it will happen? No – just like Sweeney’s mother probably thinking of her son as someone who would not harm anyone and should be freed will not happen (for 5 yrs anyway). So the media magnifies but in magnifying it also communicates other ways of dealing, other voices that can be more objective, other voices that urge change by process. Do not judges praise the media for their help in solving crimes? (so should they not be criticised for also causing it?). The media are a vital part of the judicial process. Without the media we have no review, no feedback, no change, no presentation of the people.
Judges, by their actions and inactions have a direct and profound impact on society. For that their every ruling should be put under public scrutiny and society has every right to praise, criticise and castigate as the public and media see fit.
Wisecraft? Not really.
So back home in Leicester there are a bunch of witches that have declared victory in their battle to have a multi-million pound development renamed. Their ‘spokeswoman’ (shouldn’t that be ‘spokesperson’ or are male witches not allowed?) going by the completely made up name “Morrigan Wisecraft” apparently said they have used the proposed name for a series of websites.
This just screams fraud and complete garbage.
“It was our only wish all along, to be left in peace ..”
Well if you hadn’t (1) contacted the company (2) presumably rattled at them repeatedly and (3) gone running to the Press then (a) no-one else would know, (b) the ‘peace’ would be undisturbed, (c) we might have more space for actual news and lastly (d) people who do follow wicca and other ‘alternative’ faiths would not be held up to further ridicule by Ms M Wisecraft’s complete stupidity.
As you had immediately guessed… this website is clearly not connected in any way with the Leicester City Centre “Highcross Quarter Leicester” retail, entertainment, and leisure development.
it says on their site. Maybe on the new commercial centre it should have
Not connected to a bunch of small-minded shallow individuals known for sensationalisation and a desire to wring money from companies because we all know that was their real motive
Morrigan Wisecraft – can a fellow wiccan throw a “Clue Replenishment” spell her way? She seems to be in need.
Clouds over the beach
The sea was really cold but on the way back to the house the sand was extremely hot – this was some hours before the image was caught. Right now there are a series of wii tennis games happening which is being shown on a projector screen which is very cool.
Lots of work done today too. And Ryan can indeed cook damn fine steak.
YAMCR
I’m sitting here writing an email to my wife. The screen darkens from top to bottom like a blind being pulled down. It gets to the bottom and I get a warning that I need to power down to restart. It’s not like I really have a choice. So I do. On restart the computer tells me that os x quit unexpectedly and would I like to see the report or send it to apple. I click to see. The dialog disappears. I see no report.
Nice.
But it won’t be a crash because everyone knows macs do not crash.
Must be my fault.
Cutt-ing Text Link Ads
Yesterday at WordCamp Matt Mullenweg asked Matt Cutts about Text Link Ads on blogs. I have Text Link Ads and have done for some time. I never thought that they wanted me to link because my content matched theirs – to think that is stupid. It’s Page Rank all the way and to be honest I didn’t care (still don’t) because they are paying me to occupy that small space. But because these people pay me money and those people have PR in mind Google doesn’t like it. Google’s ball park, Google’s rules and the rules are going to apparently hit sites who have these links.
So Google knock me down to a 6 or a 5. The link buyers don’t want me and go – I lose money. I decide to not renew ads to keep my PR and I lose money. It’s not a huge deal as it was never counted into any budget but I lose either way. Google does not want me to get money to promote something that would not get that exposure without the money being behind it.
So a site that does figure in their results is not allowed to try and get higher by paying a blogger for advertising space. But what about a site that does not figure at all in their results paying someone else to get not just some exposure but the most visible exposure?
Their game, their rules.
Right now it’s really easy to see the TLA but would they know if I slotted them into my blogroll? Yes, of course they would. Google has the technology to come to my site and figure out that my link to Podrunner is a genuine link but the one to some directory is not. It could penalise that directory in some way that allowed the blogger to make cash but which did not harm the PR. It has that power. But it does not want to share that pie. It wants it all and it will take it. Their games, their rules.
It’s telling of course that the very people who work for TLA will not have their sites using their own product but that is not the issue. The issue is that Google are saying that they want the ad cash and bloggers shall not be allowed it.
Do I care about PR? Yes because the cash is nice because I’m a 7. No because when I search for it I have to wade through a heap of junk to find the results I do want. And it’s not sponsored links that are causing the junk (what is does not matter right now) so if sponsored links are not impeding my experience of using Google then why hit me with that stick just because it’s an incredibly easy stick to use? How many bloggers actually use TLA? Is blogging really hurting Google (because by definition PR is Google) to the point that they do this? Is blogging – or rather a few links on well-structured sites – so powerful that Google cannot do anything else? Are they backed into a corner? No – they just cannot be bothered / don’t care / want to be greedy.
Better people than me will have dissected and argued this and this post is not going to change a damn thing but I’ve always hated hypocrisy despite Matt Cutts being a nice guy and a very entertaining speaker what came out of those last few minutes of presentation seems wrong.
(The two ‘sponsored links’ above I cannot find in a Google search with 100 results for ‘text link ads’ if I block ads.)