Not directly, anyway.

Television in most of the world is utter crap because it is funded by advertisements. The ad market doesn't work by crafting entertainments that people pay for directly (and, if it's not to their likely, they don't). Television shows exist as ad delivery vehicles or as something that resembles a gaudy variation on popular entertainment from state-sponsored, tax-funded stations.

Television will work again only when one buys direct access to a show (or series of shows). Unpopular shows that can't make their production costs back won't be on the air for long.

Advertising can so very quickly debase the relationship between purchaser of content and its creator. That link needs to be restored. Quickly.

The pipe-owners - Comcast, Sky, TimeWarner - can only further distance us from choosing our entertainment with our money.

This works at the cinema and it's the way television should work, too.

"Work is the best antidote to sorrow" suggested Sherlock Holmes to a shocked Watson upon his reappearance in London in the story "The Adventure of the Empty House". This morning I feel creative and it's time to make something insanely great. How about you?

I'm rather saddened by this news. Jobs' attention to detail and intolerance of crap amazes and inspires me.

It's simple, really. We should all have such high standards, perhaps then the world would be full of more exquisite and useful things.

Learning and education. Highly contentious topics infused with politics and the corrupting influence of money sloshing around the system (e.g., textbooks, student loans, tuition fees).

Humanity has passed knowledge on for millennia and what's required is a willing student and a knowledgeable, savvy, patient, rigorous teacher. What our American and British institutions of higher education really are trying to achieve is the ability to instruct the maximum quantity of people at the lowest possible cost with a reasonable degree of effectiveness as measured by testing scores/graduation rates.

I think the open publishing of these courses and course materials is a wonderful thing that could possibly enhance mass literacy and allow curious people access to the finest knowledge pool in the world. It's what a global network should be about: to freely connect people thirsty for knowledge with all the information humanity has accumulated.

After working on technology in higher education for 11 years, I sometimes think all we're doing is tinkering around the edges and using technology as a distraction from addressing the real challenges in educating humanity.

I suspect his bland style of pastiche adventure would work fairly well as a 60-minute limited series of, say, 15 episodes, but 100 hours? Good lord, Lucas should just call it a day and direct cut scenes for any of the Star Wars spinoff video games. I suspect they'd be far better received than his recent ghastly, leaden feature films.

I've used iTool/.Mac/MobileMe since its inception and used a password-protected public folder for work over the past couple of years. Although I found it extremely useful to have all my business documents in the Apple cloud, the WebDAV performance was/is rather poor. I could mount the share, but actually opening the files from the share was a glacial process.

Despite the upgrades over the years, the cloud storage of MobileMe remains sluggish to access from anything but the fastest of connections (though the iOS app is rather nice).

But what I haven't seen so far in this Slashdot article is a discussion of how well Dropbox integrates into iOS. There are quite a number of interesting Dropbox integrations with more on the way.

I've been using Dropbox for the past four months on a variety of collaborative projects and I'm finding the biggest challenge is to correctly parcel out permissions so that users are appropriately sandboxed in their respective areas of competence. It's also heaven to be able to work using the Finder on my Mac, the work MacBook and the occasional Windows XP box when I must.

Repeal The Treaty of Paris of 1783, the Treaty of London of 1794 and The Treaty of Ghent.

The queue in Hampstead this morning was 23 strong at 6.30 this morning (I was number 23), though by 7.00 it extended fairly far down Hampstead High Street. Mercifully, Samir in his white Apple iPhone 4 t-shirt came around, checked we were O2 customers and fetched everyone tea, coffee and juice from Gail's on the other side of the road. I didn't dare ask for one of Gail's scrumptious cake (had a slice of birthday cake there a few weeks ago and it was heavenly). I wasn't blessed with the Divine Device until a little past nine, but it all went smoothly with nary a cross word. That's a lie, a rather brash young lady sashayed up and attempted to sweet talk the two chaps behind me into allowing her to queue jump. Her lousy manners were challenged by a whingy American-sounding fellow. She then said "what are you going to do about it? Hit me?" She was Spanish and looked for all the world like some demented Almodóvar-esque creation. She had the good sense to eventually leave. So far the iPhone 4 has been brilliant. Fingers crossed the decent reception will last!

I do wonder what exactly one thinks Apple is looking to control beyond their devices and the user experience of those devices? As far as I can tell, the only evil Apple does is in their desire to control the use of those devices once they've been sold. I see no evidence that Apple seeks to dominate the entire media landscape, nor whole computer market. Apple is in the business of making the "best" devices possible - no more, no less. The control freakery is all about producing superb, useful products.

Of course there are knock-on effects in some areas and Apple isn't terribly interested in being anyone's partner. Nevertheless, every day I appreciate the user-focused design of their devices.

I do however miss their maker/creator-centric perspective regarding the iPhone (and presumably the iPad). Still, my iPhone is an indispensable navigation/information/communication tool when I'm out and about (I live in London and whenever I travel beyond the M25, O2 do a pretty good job so I can always figure out where I am and where I need to go).

So Apple will dominate the non-crap devices and Apple market, right? Sounds ok to me and very much in the spirit of free-market capitalism.

... creating Photoshop mockups of advertisements in the late 1990s. I remember being in a bullpen with a bunch of underdressed young folk who did little but check the stock price obsessively. It was a strange time and I created more than a few Director-generated .exe screensavers.

To say nothing of the unorthodox eBay shop I set up, only to be shuttered by The Man.

Oh those heady days ...