Microsoft will tell you that Vista contains code that limits the number of times the OS can be installed on a different hard disk to cut down on piracy. According to this yarn, Vista will also keep tabs on hardware changes to your PC, such as the motherboard, and aims to make this "feature" less of a headache than XP.

That’s all very interesting, but I was more intrigued by the contextual ad that Google inserted above the copy. Windows Vista = depression? Heh.

Silly me. For a moment there I believed the hype and thought Google was a verb. Wrong. Dubya knows it’s a noun, as ThinkProgress reports. CNBC Transcript:

HOST: I’m curious, have you ever googled anybody? Do you use Google?

BUSH: Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see — I’ve forgot the name of the program — but you get the satellite, and you can — like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes.

It’s classic Bush-ism material: hilarious and bewildering at the same time. Steve Gillmor nails that idea in passing during this (classic Gillmor-ism) TV is Dead missive:

Imagine a comedian becomes President, not the bonehead we’d be laughing at if we weren’t so damned angry.

United States department of the interior chief information officer Hord Tipton has just delivered his presentation at the AFR’s Government Technology Summit here in Canberra, Australia.

Interesting, smart guy. My ears pricked up when he started talking about how the government has implemented web filtering across approximately 45 categories, including all the usual areas: porn, dating services etc. Then out comes this pearler.

"We blocked the bloggers. That is a first ammendment right as far as bloggers are concerned," he said. "They have taken over in the United States."

Bloggers were apparently wasting time and not doing their ‘real jobs.’ The audience here laughed at the fact that Hord had upset his department’s bloggers. 

But seriously, blogging an elicit activity worthy of being banned like porn sites? Yikes.

If there are any blocked corporate/government bloggers out there, I like to hear how that’s affected your attitude towards your employer.

Down in Canberra tonight staying at the (slightly weary-looking) Rydges to attend the AFR Government Technology Summit this week. Check out the agenda here, it’s a pretty heavy-hitting lineup of government types.

I’m up tomorrow facilitating a panel about single sign-on and related e-government issues. But that’s not what’s got my attention right now.
I’ve got my hands on an AFR-issue notebook that the help desk kindly agreed to equip with one of Vodafone’s new HSDPA data cards (disclosure: they sent it to me for a review, and I guess I’ll have to send it back some day… ; ). That means no hassles about finding WiFi, or paying through the nose for in-room broadband.

I just ran a couple of bandwidth tests and got download speeds of 810.8 kilobits per second and 961.7 kbps. Apparently it can get up to 1.8 mbps – we’ll see.

Oh, and if you’re in Canberra swing by the conference and say hello.

If you’re in the traditional media, and your employer just happens to be the target of a stock market raid by a competitor, one thing you do – besides watching the share price and gossiping with colleagues – is check out what Crikey has to say:

There will be endless scenarios played out over the coming months – does Rural Press want the regional papers, who gets the internet properties, how would a Packer-owned AFR cover PBL — but the bottom line is that the once great independent media company John Fairfax probably won’t exist by April Fool’s Day next year.

And that will be a sad thing for Australia’s democracy – particularly if the carve-up is conceived and directed by Australia’s two richest families in concert with the utterly inappropriate Fairfax chairman, Ron Walker.

My guess is as good as yours, but you’ve got to scratch your head wonder if Howard and Coonan really saw this thing coming.

Meanwhile, there’s this little-understood argument about new media. I reckon Trevor’s on to something with this post:

The media world is going horizontal. That doesn’t mean that newspapers, television and radio are doomed. Far from it. But it does mean that we are entering a different world, a far more diverse media world and our regulators and policy-makers need to understand it.

Update: Rupert Murdoch is on record hosing down the Fairfax breakup speculation, in this yarn. "It’s just a strategic holding. We don’t have any particular plans for it. Certainly no plans to take over Fairfax, and at this stage, no plans to take over anything else out there," [Murdoch] said.

Apparently tired of making direct attacks on the media himself, Rod Bruem turns to comments made by respected telco journalist Stuart Corner to bolster his argument that the AFR and that other national newspaper are bias against Telstra. And perhaps he’s thinking it’s easier if we can get the journos to fight each other instead of Telstra?

I just had a chat with Stuart, whom I’ve known for years, and he told me a couple of interesting things you might find amusing (and btw, he said that it was ok that I post his comments).

Firstly, Rod didn’t ask Stuart’s permission to copy huge slabs of his newsletter copy into the blog, although he didn’t really mind. "If I put my words out there…they can use them," he said. Secondly, he suggested that perhaps Rod didn’t get his point about that other newspaper’s reporting of Phil Burgess. If they really wanted to make Burgess look bad they could have reported what he said in his newsletter – that Burgess was given the microphone and prattled on, rather than give the impression that he was an official speaker.

Nice try Rod. No cigar.

Cameron Reilly rightly argues that if he can’t get the correct valuation for his company, TPN, in Australia he has to go to the US because that’s where you’ll get the money. I’ve been following TPN since getting hooked on the G’day World podcast back in 2004, and have subsequently spent a decent amount of time with both Cam and his former business partner Mick Stanic. Here were two Aussies having fun, rambling about geeky stuff, interviewing interesting people, and trying to change the world. In the process they set a global benchmark for setting up a podcast network. No one had done this stuff before, and Cam has continued to build on those early days.

It follows that most startups believe sweat equity, and the accumulation of valuable online traffic, must be rewarded. The issue is finding people who believe in the vision. You also need to find people – money people – who understand the value of new media businesses and how to capitalise that on a global scale.

Josh Gliddon’s done a great job in this yarn documenting Cameron’s mission, and the broader issues facing new media startups attempting to graft themselves into Australia’s ultra-conservative investor community. It’s not a job for the feint hearted.

Is this a failure of Australia’s conservative startup mentality, or something else? Either way, I can’t help but feel Australian investors are missing out on making some important early wins in the new media sector. This is a segment of the marketing pie that is only going to get bigger – ignore it at your peril.

So good luck in the Valley, Cam, one of the few geographic localities in the world that can marry a global perspective with global results.

I just thought you should know that Tom Reynolds‘ Telstra blog On the case no longer appears on NowWeAreTalking. It was there this morning, and is not there now. If you look at this page, you’ll see a little white box where he used to live.

Cam’s got the background here. (And yes, it was Cam who broke the story online, thanks mate… ; )

Update: I’ve written a big yarn about the story behind why Tom was sacked from Telstra in today’s (Friday 13th) AFR, page 67. I can’t link to it online because AFR Access is subscriber only. Worth adding that in the process of reporting on the story, it seems to me that Telstra decided to take down the blog in anticipation of today’s piece. Over to you as to whether that was a good or bad thing.

Google just launched Google Docs & Spreadsheets, a service that combines Google Spreadsheets (formerly in beta) and Writely, the online word processor it bought earlier this year.

I’ve been digging around on the site after interviewing some Google product managers this morning about the release. A couple of quick observations.

• It’s completely intuitive and has a ‘clean’ UI like other Google services.
• The collaboration features seem powerful. Microsoft is building similar collaboration features into the next version of Office. But that’s not until January (or later??), and it costs big bucks. Windows Vista Ultimate costs AUD$751 in Australia. That’s close to the price of a desktop PC!
• Auto-save is probably its ‘saving grace’, as it were. It seems to negate the risk of an online app as it saves the document before your browser crashes, as mine just did, or if you lose your connection.
• It’s a free sign-up, unlike previous invite-only exercises. That’s Google code for "we really want you to use this thing."
• The Google product managers I interviewed said they don’t have a Powerpoint equivalent in the wings. Even if Google does, I’m sure they wouldn’t tell me. But it’s not an impossible thought. Docs & Spreadsheets already allows you to save your document as a Word file, PDF, RTF, OpenOffice etc. What’s to stop them adding PPT …
• What I really want is complete integration with Gmail, Talk etc.

What do you reckon?

btw, if you’re keen for a peek, here’s a screen shot: