Blog

Posted on

Magazine about open source, made with open source

Here’s an interesting concept: a magazine about open source in the enterprise that’s been put together using only open source software.

That’s the claim anyway. Given that there’s no print version, only a PDF version, I imagine they could just about put the whole thing together without needing a Mac; since The GIMP can’t handle CMYK and spot colours, it would have been tricky doing image editing anyway (there are plug-ins, I know, but they’re rudimentary at best. Any duotone as long as it’s red and black?).

There are two problems with it:

  1. It looks rubbish. That’s true of most US trade mags, but this has the design quality you’d expect of something put together with Microsoft Word. Two column layouts with a third, bastard column: fair enough. But if you put a subhead in the first column and don’t calculate the leading and spacing correctly, the second column’s baselines won’t match up, which is exactly what’s happened throughout. The designers appear only to be able to cope with pictures running over two columns, as well, turning most articles in swathes of impenetrable text. This is not a good advert for open source DTP software.
  2. The writing is awful. Most of the content is written by CTOs and techies and I fell asleep within seconds. For a magazine supposedly aimed at CIOs, there’s an amazingly large amount of material covering installing from source, the size of downloads and so on. And an article covering Boolean syntax in Google metadata searches? WTF?

Most trade mags get sent through the post, so require minimal effort on the part of the reader to obtain the latest edition. O3 may be free, but people will have to want to download it to read it. That’s not going to happen, based on this issue. Maybe it’ll find its feet with later issues, which is the usual pattern of most mags.

I suspect that O3 is either going to have a short lifespan or it’s going to have one of those slow, protracted deaths where people keep providing copy and working for nothing – the magazine keeps getting produced but the quality is so poor, no one ever reads it.

Posted on

Sucking in three languages. Or maybe four.

So I’m on the phone, trying to set up an interview – in French. It’s going well. I can understand her, even though she starts our conversation off in German, just to throw me. She can understand me, even though she’s French and normally only non-French French speakers can understand me.

Then she hits me with the double-whammy of “Your French is very good” (why, merci beaucoup!) and “You can speak in English if you want” (if my French is good, why would you say that?) then starts speaking in English. So now I’m having trouble “code switching” and can speak neither French nor English – I hate it when that happens.

But then things get worse. She asks me a question and instead of “Yes” or “Oui”, I say “Si”. Normally, I’m pretty much guaranteed to start speaking German accidentally at times like this, but I actually started speaking Spanish. How odd is that, given I’m still on “Week 4” of Instant Spanish? It wouldn’t have mattered so much if it weren’t for the fact “Si” means something almost completely the opposite in French.

So now I suck in four languages, including English. Brilliant.

Posted on

There’s no free speech in Britain

Just in case you thought we lived in a free society, here’s a little something to put a damper on that thought. The government is threatening to sue newspapers under the Official Secrets Act if they reveal the contents of a memo that reveal a disagreement between Tony Blair and George Bush over the way the Iraq war is being conducted. That seems a worthwhile use of the Act, doesn’t it? That’s the kind of thing we need to clamp down on or else our enemies will destroy us. So much for our so-called Freedom of Information Act, which seems to be more or less voluntary at times (Give us the information. No. Okay).

In case you’re interested about some of our other free speech limitations, there are also D-Notices, our blasphemy laws and our libel laws.

Posted on

Gullible people required

If you don’t live in SE London, you probably don’t get this rubbish through your door:

Mr. Yousaff

International Spiritual Healer God Gifted

Born with this Knowledge

I can give help and advice no matter what your Problem is,

I can solve them with one visit. I can help you with Practical solutions concerning marriage, business and court cases and sexual problems. I can improve your life and I can bring back your lost friends, loved ones and relations, I can make your marriage better and I can give instant good luck in family Problems, I can remove from your life black magic, illness and eliminate habits like Drinking and smoking etc.

Anyone who has these problems contact

Mr. Yousoff Now

QUICK RESULTS GUARANTEED

First thing this guy needs is a magic wand to fix his punctuation and capitalisation. If he can bring back the dead, a full stop shouldn’t be too hard. The second thing he needs to do, of course, is decide whether he’s Mr Yousaff or Mr Yousoff.

However, my burning question is: “Does Mr Yous(a/o)ff actually make money?” If he fixes everything with just one visit, he must have higher call-out charges than the average plumber, just to break even. And are there really enough staggeringly gullible people to support him? Sure, there’s a reasonable number of Africans living here, who I’m guessing are his target market (insert disclaimer about Africa not being a single country, all have different cultures, etc). But they can’t all believe this stuff surely, any more than 100% of the locals round here watch Second Sight on Living or the French are a homeopathy-only nation? I could do a vox pop to find out, but that would involve stepping out into the oh-so-cold air. So maybe I won’t. (Gosh, what a fantastic journalist I am. In mitigation though, I wouldn’t be paid for it and I do have a lot of deadlines to meet right now – all of which will pay me.)

Even if any of them do believe, though, is a psychic sticking his badly phrased flier from the 18th century in someone’s letterbox the cultural equivalent of an undertaker driving around town in his hearse, shouting into his loudhailer about two for one offers – that is, possible but not the done thing? I’m sure there’s a case study for a marketing mag in there somewhere.

Posted on

Sunday magazine round-up

It’s Sunday, so why don’t we look at what’s been in some of this week’s magazines?

The Economist and the New Statesman both had articles on Venezuela which came to surprisingly similar conclusions in some respects. Both magazines concluded Chávez’s treatment of the foreign oil companies drilling in Venezuela was reasonably justified. Odd that, given that New Statesman’s article was written by the highly left-wing John Pilger and The Economist is pretty much a standard-bearer for right-wing neo-liberal economics. I guess the one thing we can conclude is the oil companies had it coming.

New Statesman is an odd magazine that proves the rule that 90% of everything is rubbish. Apart from the Pilger piece, there were only a couple of stand-out pieces: new columnist Ziauddin Sardar’s look at Hizb ut-Tahrir; and Charlotte Raven’s review of Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit? a book I suspect, despite my best attempts at sunniness and optimism, will be a must-have on my Christmas present list. Otherwise, pretty much everything in NS was as the book suggested. It’s the first time I’ve ever read it through, other than to skim bits in WH Smith, so I might try their trial offer (13 issues for £4.99) and see if it grows on me.

The ever-excellent Economist also had an intriguing article on language development, which raises as many questions, if not more, than it answers. The only thing more surprising was that New Scientist didn’t cover the study to perk up what was a relatively limp issue this week.

Last item of note this week was from The Guardian’s Bad Science, looking at why the BBC’s science coverage in the news is so embarrassingly bad. The particular story cited took my breath away in its science-fiction stupidity. How can they let this rubbish on the air?!

Oh well.

Posted on

Irresponsible journalism?

I’m not one to throw charges of “irresponsible journalism” around and I’m in favour of freedom of speech in all its glory, but even I have qualms about an article on Slate explaining how to set fire to a Peugeot.
I doubt there’ll be many rioters and rioters-to-be that will read it. But all the same…

Posted on

The cost of Vegas

Ah, there’s nothing I like better than mocking an organisation that’s thought about its needs enough to put together a press pack, yet hasn’t bothered to update it in two years. Congratulations, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority! You’ve managed to create a dozen or more inaccurate articles by now that no doubt you’ll have to correct, if ever you hear about them – which is unlikely.
Anyway, there are some fun nuggets of information in this particular press pack, including the fact the Venetian hotel (my favourite) cost $1.5 billion to build. That’s a lot of money.