links for 2009-01-23

"What's really important is to not understand how to do magical things with code, but to learn what magical things are possible, what the necessary inputs for that magic are, and who to ask to do it. Computers are really good at processing regular data, and they are really, really good at repetitive tasks. Every time I watched someone in an office doing a repetitive, regular task I despaired, because that's exactly the kind of thing we have computers for."

"Once again, Google was the elephant in the room. It makes money from all this content, but at the same time takes the advertising revenue away from the producers. But by its very global nature and its market dominance it seems to be outside of the argument."

From the comments: "Strange thing about all this is the fact that the Daily Mail managed to get Ross suspended while its own website is usually little more than a t|tfest of such lewdness that even Ross himself would be embarrassed."

"The validity of newspaper reports claiming the likes of Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson were on a terrorist death list have been questioned after it was claimed a "terrorism expert" was planting comments to back up his stories". The NME has to cover their own part on the 'hit list' echo chamber effect.