Because geek is cool and clever

Best book ever read April 23, 2009

Like many people I’ve read a lot of books in my life.
Between the ages of about 6 and 20-odd I probably ploughed my way through an estimated 300+ books but one of them stands out head and shoulders above anything else.

Since I first read Mission by Patrick Tilley when I was about 19, I have re-read it at least half a dozen times. It’s one of those books that you recommend to everyone and end up lending to passing friends and you never get it back.

I’ve bought six copies, usually because I leant it to someone and never got it back but mostly because I’ve read it or parts of it so many times that the spine breaks and pages end up falling out.

And so it is that I’ve just bought it once again from Amazon.

This book quite literally changed my life. It made me feel differently about everything I had previously thought.

Below is the abstract from the back of the book. It’s what first drew me to it (despite being atheist I have a total Jesus fixation). But the abstract is nothing compared to how this book ended up making me feel. It’s an incredible story, wonderfully written and full of thought-provoking ideas. It’s not a religious book in the accepted sense.

I’m always reading book suggestions, most of which are easily ignored. With Mission I urge you to read it.

Here’s what it says on the back of the book. I can clearly remember spending ages in the bookshop, savouring so many titles and wondering which I should buy. I think I’d shortlisted half a dozen before I saw this which easily won the day.

Here it is…

Easter Saturday. The naked body of a 35 year old man is rushed to Manhattan General Hospital. He has a two inch stab wound below his rib-cage and nail wounds in his feet and wrists.
The impossible has happened: Jesus Christ has appeared 7000 miles and 20 centuries away from the Crucifixion – dead on arrival.
What can the witnesses do? What would you do?

Arrrr… Jim lad April 23, 2009

I’ve been very fortunate to never having been there, but common sense tells me that on the battlefield of war, the higher you stick your head up, the more likely you are to become a target.

If you stand up in a multi-coloured suit, waving your arms around and singing at the top of your voice, it’s a safe bet that you won’t be doing it indefinitely.

You’d also be doing something suitably analogous to the stance taken by The Pirate Bay, the infamous website which indexes and lists popular BitTorrent files flying around the internet sharing files which include, amongst others, newly released films, music and software.

Back in the heady days of 2001 when the music industry went after MP3 sharing website Napster, the case was fairly clear cut because the site stored lists of the music available on each of its users computer. When you searched for a track on Napster, it was the site that told you where to get it and then hooked you up, thus it was clearly facilitating the sharing of music.

BitTorrent is different because you don’t download files from one particular place and The Pirate Bay, based in Sweden, had maintained that simply providing a way to find existing BitTorrent files on the internet is nothing more or less than a specialised search engine.

The argument seemed valid but with the might of the music and movie industry against it, it was perhaps inevitable that after a lengthy court battle, last week the two people running The Pirate Bay were found guilty of ‘assisting making available copyrighted content’ and sentenced to a year in prison.

Interestingly there seems to be no ruling made about the actual site and a week after the ruling it is still up and running.

Two things strike me as ludicrous about the judgement – which I fully expect to be overturned at the inevitable appeal. Firstly, even if The Pirate Bay closes, it does nothing to actually effect BitTorrent files which will still be out there on the net. Secondly, this means that any search engine that finds copyright material is equally culpable of the same charge.

Watch out Google.

File sharing will never go away, it will simply move places. The media industries need to understand this and use it to their benefit rather than endlessly swipe at the hydra’s current head.