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Sorry to say MacFilos, in sympathy with Wordpress, is suffering a Distributed Denial of Service attack in the form of a large and very intimidating nurse. Recovering in hospital from a full anaesthetic and flat on my back, I was early on thwarted in using the MacBook Air I'd smuggled in. The iPhone isn't much better, especially with two jumbo sensor clips on my digits. So this post comes to you through a miasma of great sacrifice and logistical difficulties. Nurse has told me to stop and rest. How inconsiderate can this be on the day after Sir Steve gave us iPad2 and the blogosphere is alive with music (at least to my ears)?

Shortly after my piece on Alan Turing on February 25 I received a welcome note from Patrick Sammon, producer of a new documentary on the famous wartime codebreaker. Research and development for a feature-length documentary is underway with an international production team including Turing's preeminent biographer, Dr. Andrew Hodges. Funding is currently being lined up for the film, with a goal for completion in mid-2012, to coincide with the centenary of Turning's birth. Patrick says:

"Turing was the British WW II code breaker and father of computer science who faced persecution for being gay. In his short life, Turing profoundly changed our world. Historians believe that his WW2 code breaking work helped save millions of lives and shortened the war by two years. He also founded three new scientific fields: computer science, artificial intelligence, and morphogenesis. In 1952, he was arrested by British police for having a relationship with another man and eventually was forced to undergo chemical castration to "fix" his sexual orientation. Two years after his arrest, Turing killed himself at age 41. Turing is one of the most important scientists ever, yet his tragic story and lasting legacy remain largely unknown. This film will change that fact."

The Touring Documentary site contains a wealth of information on the father of computing, including a number of video links that are well worth watching. I rather like this quote from one of Turing's letters to a friend shortly after his arrest in 1952. He thought that in future the bigots of the day would say:

"Turing believes that machines think.

"Turing lies with men. 

"Therefore machines do not think

We can safely say with the benefit of hindsight that the score was Turing 1, Bigots 0.

Technorati Tags: Alan Turing, Bletchley Park

I'm really not sure if I'm doing you a favour or not by filtering out blog spam. The stuff these people (or maybe these bots) come up with is often hilarious nonsense, almost certainly in pidgin English (which is not surprising given the Chinese source of most spam) and I feel I am depriving you.

Occasionally these guys get ahead of themselves such as:

How fun! I linked to this on last weekend's weekly roundup and am just now getting around to letting you know. (I guess we were busy celebrating Easter!) Thanks so much for sharing!

They must mean last Easter unless they're on the Julian calendar. Or how about this irrelevancy:

I might truly wish to see your fridge as well. Ours continually seems to be like a bomb went off in it! We have been accomplishing a kitchen remodel so I have to have every one of the help I can get with organization. I'm also enthusiastic about the best way to organize kitchen pantry. Like your website!

or this apple polishing which they imagine could get them past the censor:

MacBook Air is lucky enough to be selected by Apple Company. Apple has now served millions of people around the world by selling out their products in millions of stores worldwide. Apple together with iPhone is an important gadget playing in the life of the people.

Sometimes, though, it's just plain gibberish with nary a trace of the elegant Lorem Ipsum...

Potential Finance,neighbour within win in software define explore due civil lay out state thank way certainly advance collect behind danger high travel religious cos expectation train down issue usual see almost need really approach talk famous estate together last activity intend nod interpretation significant garden enjoy launch investigation nose wonderful etc

Invariably these gems of comments include a helpful hyperlink which takes you direct to their on-line store where they can attempt to flog you rip-off designer gear from Coach, Ugg and others. I'm almost sorry I don't publish them.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Spam

Alan Turing's wartime notes have been saved for the nation following a public fund-raising campaign and a last-minute cash injection of £200,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. Turing was one of the founding fathers of modern computing and was instrumental in breaking the German Enigma code.

His finest hours came at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, where he helped create the Bombe machine which deciphered Germany's Enigma messages. I have a soft spot for Bletchley Park, which is open to the public and provides a fascinating day out. For anyone interested in computers it's a must.

Poor Turing. His work, which was kept secret from the British public until the late 1980s, was crucial to the war effort. It can be argued that he did more for his country than thousands of others involved fighting the war. Yet, because he was gay he was hounded by the bigots of the day and eventually committed suicide in 1954.

Two years ago thousands submitted a petition to No.10 Downing Street calling for a public apology to Turing. Gordon Brown, the prime minister at the time, could only say he was "sorry for the 'appalling' way Turing was treated".

Source: Daily Telegraph

Technorati Tags: Bletchley Park, Alan Turing

It's official: "Bloggable" (and, presumably, blog, blogging) has been added to the venerable Oxford English Dictionary. We no longer need explain ourselves when someone asks what we do. They can look it up in the dictionary. It seems, by the way, that the original weblog has gone down the same No.10 route to oblivion as the omnibus. "Blog" it now is, pure and simple. In fact, it's a  strangely appropriate little word for what we do: blog, blog, blog, blah, blah, blah. It's almost onomatopoeic.

Got to say this is a brilliant caption in Stuart Miles' Pocket Lint article reporting the Obama-Tech Titans meeting in San Francisco last night. Among the diners were Apple's Steve Jobs, Google's Eric Schmidt and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

The caption: "One of these is the most powerful man on earth, the other is Obama". 

Yesterday I was reminded by iTunes that I'd pre-ordered The Social Network, the film of Ben Mezrich's book of the same name–which I enjoyed reading last year (on my iPhone, of course). Having watched the movie, I continue to be amazed at the goings on behind the scenes as Facebook took off. You couldn't invent this stuff. Now, I see, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is one of a trinity of silicone saints invited to attend a meeting with President Obama when he visits San Francisco later today. This holy trinity of the tech world includes Google's Eric Schmidt and our own Steve Jobs in addition to Zuckerberg. It's a social network I don't think even Mark could have imagined eight years ago when he founded the world-beating site.

Technorati Tags: ebooks, Movies

Every time we up the ante in digital storage, the old "big" unit looks incredibly small. Thirty years ago when I started computing we talked in awe of kilobytes and a megabyte was something almost beyond comprehension. Now it's less than a snapshot on a point-and-shoot camera. My first hard disk, an external monster the size of small fridge, had an incredible capacity of 5MB. Who would ever need more, I wondered at the time. Now the megabyte is  almost inconsequential and we've moved to gigabytes and terabytes with petabytes (PB) just around the corner.

All this sprung to mind this morning when I read in Macworld that scientists have calculated that all the electronic data stored to date comes to 295EB or 295 billion gigabytes. The same experts also concluded that 2002 is the start of the digital age because it was then that digital storage capacity overtook total analogue capacity worldwide.

The sad thing is that our requirements in storage expand constantly in response to higher storage capabilities. Software continually bloats and data files—especially media files—are already moving routinely into gigabyte territory. Cheap computers are already equipped with 1TB disks and 4GB of RAM is now considered baseline for any serious work.

We'd better get used to petabytes and exabytes and, while we're at it, we ought to mug up on zettabytes (ZB) and yottabytes (YB). I've a feeling we're going to need 'em.

Hot on the heels of news that Apple has rejected Sony's ereader application comes a rumour that Sony are planning to pull out of iTunes. Could this be war? Who will be the loser? See this interesting item from tomorrow morning's Sydney Morning Herald.

Over the years I've sold many items on eBay and have been very happy, particularly with the strength of Mac and iPhone prices on the auction site. Recently, though, I've been having second thoughts. Costs are rising and the commission for eBay and PayPal can be a shock. Only this week I sold a 16GB wifi iPad for £362 - a very good price, I thought - but after charges I got only £309. That's a massive 15% snaffled by the two eBay-owned companies. Use my site, use my bank, if you please.

Yet as the cost of doing business rises the pitfalls are getting deeper. A couple of weeks ago a friend sold his iMac on eBay for £900. The buyer was a no-star beginner and didn't pay. After four days of fruitless emails, the £900 appeared in the seller's PayPal account. An hour or so later a man appeared at the door, claiming to be a cab driver sent to collect the computer. Very fortunately my friend decided to re-check his PayPal account and was shocked to see that the money had disappeared. Only by the merest chance did he avoid being the victim of fraud.

How can this happen? Well, if you read the small print on your PayPal payment advice you will see the following gem: "Please be aware that your payment can still be reversed, (e.g. if it is subject to a chargeback), even after you have posted the item to your buyer."

So, really, you can have no confidence in the system. Of course, if you have complied with all the guidelines and sent only to a confirmed addresses (not handed over the goods to a taxi driver) you could be covered by PayPal's insurance. I suspect, though, you would have a protracted period of uncertainty before you saw your money.

In my innocence I thought that the whole benefit of using PayPal was that once the money was in your account you could despatch the goods. It seems, though, that PayPal could reverse the payment on the word of the buyer. Everyone understands that precautions have to be taken, but the whole basis of trust in eBay transactions depends on the seller being sure of the funds before sending the goods. Once this trust is lost, the whole edifice comes crumbling down.

I have no doubt that both eBay and PayPal wage an endless war against fraudsters, but it seems to be all too easy for unscrupulous individuals to open eBay accounts and cause havoc. Apart from attempted fraud there is an increasing incidence of spoiler bidding. This activity involves winning auctions by bidding unrealistic amounts simply to annoy the seller and upset the system. No payment is ever made and the luckless seller has to relist. eBay should be doing more to weed out these unsavoury individuals. And PayPal should be unable to recover deposited cash without the agreement of the account holder. 

Incidentally, in the above case, according to PayPal's fraud department, the payment had been sent from the account of an innocent third party whose details had been compromised. Hence the need for a personal collection rather than having the parcel sent to the registered address of the defrauded alleged buyer. However, I believe that if a fraudulent account is used to pay for goods it should not be the seller who suffers: it should be PayPal. That's why we pay them a fee. They should act like credit card companies who usually take full responsibility for fraudulent card use.

Immediately after any set of Apple results there is a lot of navel searching by professional analysists and the blogosphere in general. "Why were forecasts so far out" is all too familiar when it comes to analysing Apple's figures. Sales forecasts are the biggest pitfalls and this time around some of the leading analsists were embarrassingly while bloggers, notable Horace Dediu of Asymco, called it more or less right on. According to Bloomberg Dediu is the most accurate analyst covering Wall Street. Yet he isn't on the Street, he's blogging away quietly in Finland.

Interesting article today in Fortune (CNNMoney.com) by Seth Greenstein on the subject of digital rights. In the past, before downloads because so popular, you bought a book, a CD or a book and you could then give it, lend it or sell it to whomever you chose. These says you can't do that. You buy something, such as a Kindle book, and it's yours. But it can never be lent, sold or passed on to someone else. It turns what most people consider to be common sense on its head. In future, as digital downloads gradually ease out the sale of physical media, there can be no second-hand markets, car-boot sales or, even, giving to Oxfam. It's an interesting legal conundrum and, so far, no one has even got near a solution. 

According to Britain's communications watchdog, Ofcom, the British spend three times as much online as their European counterparts and make on average 19 internet purchases every six months. It seems we are following the tradition of catalogue selling, although I remember that catalogues from companies such as Littlewoods traditionally majored on easy payments and tended to be aimed at the poorer sectors of society. The motivation was always the easy credit rather than the convenience. It was different in the USA where remote communities have traditionally bought by mail order because, in many cases, it was the only way to get the choice.

Waiting at home for deliveries has always been the big snag with on-line or catalogue ordering in this country. While friends in the USA routinely find packages left on their doorstep when they return home, courier companies in the UK would be foolish to do that here. Even a bottle of milk is in great peril, never mind a Kindle or iPod touch.

What annoys me, though, is the slavish refusal of courier companies to offer a self-collection service until they've made at least one fruitless attempt at delivery.  Apple and UPS are among the biggest culprits here. Not only do they insist on trying to delivery, but packages are whipped back to the sender in double quick time if you are not available to call or make delivery arrangements.

There would be a good demand for a collection point in most towns where parcels could be delivered for later collection by the addressee. I'd even pay a small premium for this service because, in the long run, it would work out cheaper than getting in the car and driving to some godsforsaken industrial estate in the hinterland of Heathrow airport. I breathe a sigh of relief when something is delivered by Royal Mail because, at least, I know that there's a handy place to collect from - the local sorting office.