WIKIs - a tipping point for the Web?

"Is the Web just a hyperlink's way of making another hyperlink in the same way that a chicken can be viewed as an egg's way of making another egg?" --
WIKIs - a tipping point for the Web?

Just for fun: World Cup Final Prediction

About this time during every world cup I get fed up listening to the predictions of the experts on the telly. Football is a simple game and anybody can play the pundit. That is part of its attraction.

Apparently a billion people will watch the game today. They can all laugh in unison at my prediction after the game if they want :-)

Here it is:

World Cup Final Prediction: Italy 1. France 0.

• Fabio Grosso to score early in the second half.
  
• Cannavaro to be man of the match.
  
• Henry to miss a sitter to equalise in the dying seconds.
  
• Zidane to be substituted after a bad knock to his right knee in a foul by Pirlo.
  
• Scattered showers in Berlin, Mostly in the first half.
  

Google/Plone

Google hires Plone founder. It would be easy to read to much into this and I probably have :-)

Calling fellow Leonard Cohen fans in Ireland

I know that some readers of this blog are fellow Leonard Cohen fans.

Hal Willner's Came So Far For Beauty - An Evening of Leonard Cohen songs.

The Point, October 4th.

Tickets on sale from today.

The pain of threads

"When I am down in the bowels of a software development project, I can easily spend 50 hours a week pounding at a keyboard. My wife tells me that when I am doing that, I wear a permanent look of complete puzzlement on my face." --
Pain/Gain Thresholds in Software Engineering.

Proof (if proof were needed) that the English language has got some serious thrill issues

autoantonyms. [via Bill de hÓra]

Soccer 2.0

Is it just me or has this soccer world cup shown up an enormous disparity between the quality of the football and the quality of the refereeing? Games that are much more complex to referee such as Rugby Union are brilliantly refereed by comparison.

Look. It is a fast game. It is impossible for the ref to be ball-side of the action all the time. Suggestions for a Soccer 2.0:-

- Two refs - one in each half. That way, a lot more difficult to "blind side" the officials.

- Video playback ala Rugby Union when the refs are in doubt. It is ridiculous to have all this technology available and not use any of it. Tight offside decisions should be deferred until the ball goes dead and then adjudicated via video.

- Ex post-facto yellow and red cards where video evidence shows diving, head butting etc. etc. If players know that they will suffer for it if it is caught on video, they will change their behaviour. (No point in fining these guys - must use red/yellow cards that cause them to miss games. If you earn 100k a week as a basic wage, financial fines don't amount to much of a disincentive.).

- Ban players for long periods for persistent cheating. Nothing annoys me more than the "its fine to cheat as long as the ref does not see it" ethos of Soccer. Compare golf for example.

Finally, back to Rugby Union for a moment. In soccer, players regularly leave the field of play after a tackle or a bad fall. Michael Owen managed to badly mess up his knee without another player going anywhere near him!

I cannot help but contrast this with the likes of Peter Stringer. Here is a whippet of a guy, five seven in height. Not only does he regularly get positively pummelled in tackles but it is not unusual for a few 16 stone front row players to then sit on top of him.

He invariably just gets up and gets on with the game.

The contrast with soccer is striking. At least some of this must be psychological. Stringer goes into a game knowing he will be pummelled. I think that has a lot to do with it.