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Irish dropped Bollocks

sexpistolsA thoroughly entertaining snippet in the Gruaniad this morning (nicked from the Irish Times) on the reception of Punk and the Sex Pistols by the Irish authorities and how Anglo Saxon ribaldry upset their Celtic delicates. Recently released Irish government papers reveals what in 1977, the Garda Síochána thought about that Situationista masterpiece: “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.

With shades of Flann O’Brien one Garda Sgt wrote that although he hadn’t actually heard the album:

The title on the sleeve . . . would indicate that the contents of the record is obscene…

Although the Sgt’s missive reached the deputy assistant chief state solicitor, it was decided that murky legal waters were ahead and that in any event the maximum fine would be £2…

In the UK, plod was not so wise and a Nottingham policewoman on seeing a giant poster for the album in the Virgin record store, drew its attention to her superiors. The resultant court case was defended by John Mortimer QC who brought in a lecturer from the University of Nottingham (known as ‘Beeston tech’ by their colleagues over at Trent), one Reverend James Kingsley, professor of English studies.

Having personally studied Heretical Studies Critical Theory at said university, I can vouch that this might have been an unwise move, but the old duffer renowned expert in middle ages literature, proved sound value for money. Kingsley explained that the word ‘bollocks’ had been in use since the year 1000 and:

The word has been used as a nickname for clergymen. Clergymen are known to talk a good deal of rubbish and so the word later developed the meaning of nonsense. They became known for talking a great deal of bollocks, just as old balls or baloney also come to mean testicles, so it has twin uses in the dictionary…

Mortimer’s summing up for the defense is also worth quoting at length, where he asks:

what sort of country are we living in if a politician comes to Nottingham and speaks here to a group of people in the city centre and during his speech a heckler replies ‘bollocks’, are we to expect this person to be incarcerated, or do we live in a country where we are proud of our Anglo Saxon language? Do we wish our language to be virile and strong or watered down and weak?

Bravo Mr QC, those were the days. I can feel a trip to Discogs coming on, the nostalgia has gotten the better of me.

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Communications Enterprise 2.0

Into the cool

Thanks to Todd Defren for finding this chart and telling us about it on Twitter. Todd wonders if:

This is either really cool or complete B.S. Hard to tell.

I think it’s defintely the former – some richness here that will supply a long musing:

Download this version (Large ) Download the Large size – All sizes of this photo are available for download under a Creative Commons license.

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Enterprise 2.0 Theory

Duck Rabbit, Duck!

Over at the Sun Babelfish blog there’s an item on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Duck-Rabbit. This image is always generous in its usage and in this instance is allowed to mull creatively on the SSL and on Public Key Cryptography (PKI). 

wittgenstein_duck_rabbit
Duck Rabbit

For Wittgenstein the ambiguity was its richness:

I am shewn a picture-rabbit and asked what it is; I say “It’s a
rabbit”. Not “Now it’s a rabbit”. I am reporting my perception. I am shewn the duck-rabbit and asked what it is; I may say “It’s a duck-rabbit”. But I may also react to the question quite differently.
The answer that it is a duck-rabbit is again the report of a perception; the answer “Now it’s a rabbit” is not. Had I replied “It’s a rabbit”, the ambiguity would have escaped me, and I should have been reporting my perception.

One thing I like about the Duck-Rabbit is that it shows how our perception is boolean – we can only see either animal at any one time and never both. But our understanding is dialectical and we can comprehend the duality of 2 opposites, a duck and a rabbit in the same place.

This points to a tension between the hard binary of logic and the fuzzyness of human understanding. Both of which are a ‘flagrant contradiction’ at the heart of social media and the reason maybe, why so many of us enjoy its actuality and potential so much. 

More to the point, it leads to a need to at some point rework logic. Maybe Hegel will come back into fashion one day.

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Communications Enterprise 2.0 seaport.exe

Windows Live Groups: Battle of the Cloud

Following on from my post about Seaport.exe, one of Microsoft’s Live Writer software developers Joe Cheng has been in touch. Joe’s Whatever blog covers Live Writer in development and action and looking at the screenshots and integration with Twitter maybe I should give it another go. Joe also left a link to a blog on Windows Live Groups: http://windowslivewire.spaces.live.com/blog/cns/ and the screenshots / descriptions look impressive too. Readwriteweb says this is all about integration of our digital lives and yup don’t we need it. I’m going to explore a bit more as this whole area looks very tasty. The Battle of the Cloud is shaping up nicely in the social media, UI as well as Search space.

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Communications Enterprise 2.0

Passion 2009

The return of passion.

1st Micah:

There is only one thing that breeds success, and that is passion. Hire people that are passionate about your product; that can talk about your product with passion. Remember, its not your call as to whether you are passionate or not. Its the people listening.

If you are an SEO or SMM consultant, you have three years. Three years to adapt or be out of work. Learn how to be passionate and breed passion or find another line of work…

and now Seth:

Best of both worlds: someone who has passion (and skill and insight) about their task and passion about the mission. The latter can never replace the former. Organizations staffed with sports fans or true believers worry me, because they often use their passion as an excuse for poor performance. What worries me more are the employees who have neither expertise nor passion.

Another for the list, Audiophilia adds Passion in their A list by which to live and love.

Also, now Valerie Maltoni at the Conversation Agent:

Performance is a highly emotional business. Emotion (Lat. ex = out + motio = movement) leads to action. Passion leads to performance.

I like that one!

Watch this chart, 2009, passion is back in fashion:

passion

My one and only prediction for 2009, it’s going to be a year of passion.

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Communications Enterprise 2.0

Customer Engagement : Employee Engagement

Some fab data in from eMarketer/Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) over at Mashable on Social Media Marketing and the benefits thereof. Customer engagement and customer comms comes tops. Be really useful to see how this compares within the firewall, especially with employee engagement and internal comms.

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Communications Enterprise 2.0

Twitority, Twitter Internal Communications

Just did a quick check on the Twitority of the term ‘Internal Communications’ on Twitter. Of dubious merit methinks- firstly, for a quirk of data, I actually get a mention because of my Top 10 Internal Communications people to follow on Twitter; but hardly any of that list who should be there, actually make it directly into the Twitority posting. But, saving grace, @csaba81 does get mentioned in dispatches and he certainly has genuine authority not to mention generosity, in the sphere of internal comms and Twitter.

I know this was knocked together quickly in reponse to a post from Loic, but hey ho, it still produced some questionable results:

twitority

For more seasoned analysis of Twitority and Authority see:

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Uncategorized

The CD is dead, long live the…

Those creators of the future Gartner have posted a valediction for bidding mourning for the CD. The precogs say that this should be the last christmas for the format: 2008 Should Be the Last Christmas for Retail CDs. Having spent a most pleasant time with the people at Dada Records in Chiswick just before said Xmas I do hope not. Whilst Dada specialise in CDs, there is still a certain pleasure from actually going shopping for music and one amplified by the vinyl shopping trip. But say Gartner, the profits of physical media spell the end of industry practices:

As a percentage of total revenue in the U.S. market, physical media (CDs, LPs, DVD-A and so on) have gone from 91 percent of revenue in 2005 to 77 percent in 2007 and there is also evidence that physical retailers are even reducing the physical floor space dedicated to CDs.

Instead Gartner say, the makers of CDs should abandon the traditional launch, release digitally first and then burn content to order. But what then of the LP? I wish too, but does Gartner’s bell toll the final end of vinyl and the arrival of digital lossless formats such as FLAC? Nano technology aside, LPs are of course still beng released and are getting heavier – 200g plus Japanese imports. Manwhile lossy MP3s still dominate in the overall market.

So what’s going on? Maybe the best barometer is a site such as Linn Records. Linn are offering music in 3 formats – CD, Vinyl and Download. As a hifi manufacturer Linn produce the whole top-end gamut from record players to digital streamers. My Well Tempered turntable already hosts a Linn Archive cartridge (now the Arkiva) and if I ever had to replace the Tempered deck then the Sondek LP12 would be top of my list. Top of my wish of wish lists would be the Klimax DS.But, a big but, at $20,000 a pop, it’s not likely to be in next year’s Xmas goody bag. For this year, I’ve still got some £5 blues CDs to listen to, courtesy of Dada.

Are Gartner right? This is my precog moment…All said, vinyl aint about to disappear, it’s far too high fidelity. Digital will prevail. But the CD? The death knell for the compact disk is when network distribution takes its next leap into uber-broadband and the home becomes a network. People will want HD quality video as downloads and easy streaming across their living spaces. Given the currently immense bandwidth that this takes it will still need a choice jump in bandwidth to become fully effective and accepted. This will/is happening. For musical formats this is fab as it heralds FLAC etc as transportable. All we need then is storage tech to continue its unstoppable trajectory and the 1st fully lossless iPod will be out. A few thousand albums stored in FLAC on a portable player will be fun. That then will see the final end of the MP3. What will be of note at that point, will be the reaction of all those who realise that their entire music collection is in a legacy format. Possibly, maybe, they won’t believe their ears.

Dada Records phone number: 020 8747 9790

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Enterprise 2.0 seaport.exe

Seaport.exe, a battle of the cloud

Noticed this morning after my PC ran to a crawl that a new app was running – seaport.exe. A quick Google (no I didn’t use Microsoft Live search) revealed that quite a few people thought is was spyware and even their tech advice advised so. However, it turns out that this thing lurking as seaport is actually a Microsoft app and more specifically a Search Enhancement one. 

Far from being one of those loathers of the Redmond lot I was nevertheless a bit put out to learn this. It was apparently installed along with Windows Live Writer, an app which I installed but have so far not got on with – I’m typing this directly into Chrome. Either way, I hadn’t asked for this app and didn’t have a perceived need for it either. So some further searching revealed the basics on how to remove seaport.exe – see below.

 

The author of the piece a certain Mr or Ms Improbulus I duly thank. But what is Microsoft’s motive here. Ms Improbulus is in no doubt:

I know Microsoft are trying to catch up on the “browser as desktop” / “cloud computing” front especially after the release of Google’s Chrome browser, but forcing Office Live Add-in etc onto Windows users really isn’t the way to do it.

I fully agree with the latter sentiment. Also, if Microsoft is to catch up here, let alone take the lead in this battle of the cloud, then these sort of subterfuges are not the best way forward. Far better to court our cooperation with transparency and not quasi secret bundles.

Update: How to stop seaport.exe

 

Here’s the basics on stopping seaport.exe

For Vista go to Start and Start Search and enter  “services.msc”

 

For XP go to Start Run 

run

and enter “services.msc”

services

Click OK. Next you’ll get this screen pop up:

services1

Scroll down do seaport.exe, right click and select Properties – a box like this will appear:

properties

Go to Startup Type and select Disabled

This should stop it hogging up your machine working.

See also for more details and Live Add-in too.