Thursday, December 12, 2002

Arianna Huffington. The administration that came to power talking about humility has become gallingly arrogant and drunk with power. [Salon Headlines] 9:59:17 PM    comment []

The Once and Future Bookseller: Now profitable, VarsityBooks.com aims to replace campus stores, rather than compete with them. By Scott Carlson, CHE. This time, instead of competing with campus bookstores, Varsity hopes to replace them. Its sales pitch to colleges, in a nutshell: Selling textbooks, with their typically low profit margins, is a hassle and often a financial drain, so why bother? Let Varsity handle all that. Varsity's "eduPartners" program, as it's called, offers to sell the books for a college -- in effect, becoming the college's official, virtual bookstore. The program has worked well with the 120 private high schools for which the company provides services. But Varsity's efforts to transfer the approach to higher education, aimed mostly at small colleges and distance-education institutions, have so far been mixed. Moreover, I don't see what keeps the account for Varsity once they get it? Follett or B&N or Amazon.com can swoop right in any time this looks to become a winner. The one sneakily clever thing they're doing is arranging with colleges for students to be able to draw from their financial aid to pay for textbooks at the site, and that's an exclusive arrangment. I don't think it will be enough. There's previous coverage of the VarsityBooks saga (and related tales) at X-Ray Net: Ides of March plus One Okay, okay, a little bit about Napster, but mostly not Phreaked Out 5:15:33 PM    comment []

President Bush comments on Lott's remarks. 3:15:15 PM    comment []

Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution, by Tim O'Reilly. Pretty smart stuff. Lesson 1: Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy. Lesson 2: Piracy is progressive taxation For all of these creative artists, most laboring in obscurity, being well-enough known to be pirated would be a crowning achievement. Piracy is a kind of progressive taxation, which may shave a few percentage points off the sales of well-known artists (and I say "may" because even that point is not proven), in exchange for massive benefits to the far greater number for whom exposure may lead to increased revenues. Lesson 3: Customers want to do the right thing, if they can. Online file sharing is the work of enthusiasts who are trading their music because there is no legitimate alternative. Piracy is an illegal commercial activity that is typically a substantial problem only in countries without strong enforcement of existing copyright law. Lesson 4: Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy. Lesson 5: File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers. If we take the discussion back to first principles, we understand that publishing isn't just about physical aggregation of product but also requires an intangible aggregation and management of "reputation." People go to Google or Yahoo!, Barnes & Noble or Borders, HMV, or MediaPlay, because they believe that they will find what they want there. And they seek out particular publishers, like Knopf or O'Reilly, because we have built a track-record of trust in our ability to find interesting topics and skilled authors. Lesson 6: "Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service A question for my readers: How many of you still get your email via peer-to-peer UUCP dialups or the old "free" Internet, and how many of you pay $19.95 a month or more to an ISP? How many of you watch "free" television over the airwaves, and how many of you pay $20-$60 a month for cable or satellite television? Lesson 7: There's more than one way to do it. "Give the wookie what he wants!" as Han Solo said so memorably in the first Star Wars movie. I don't know that there's anything to disagree with in this. 2:14:57 PM    comment []

Software-Coding Costs Force Indiana U. at Bloomington to Drop a Popular Graduation Guarantee, by Florence Olsen, Chronice of Higher Education. Software-Coding Costs Force Indiana U. at Bloomington to Drop a Popular Graduation Guarantee By FLORENCE OLSEN The faculty council at Indiana University at Bloomington voted on Tuesday to cancel a popular four-years-and-out graduation policy because the university's new PeopleSoft student-records system could not be programmed to accommodate the policy except at great expense. Encoding the policy rules in software would have cost the university $230,000 in initial programming expenses and another $60,000 a year in maintenance costs, says Bob Eno, president of the Bloomington Faculty Council. . . . The university's existing computer system has helped make GradPact work by keeping track of students' progress toward graduation, and by generating reports for the students' advisers. But those reports will end when the Bloomington campus coverts to the PeopleSoft student-records system next summer, Mr. Eno says. Even though no new students will be enrolled in the GradPact program, students who pay attention to their advisers should still be able to complete their undergraduate course work in four years, he says. 1:14:46 PM    comment []

Two years ago today on the other blog: From Sonia Arrison, via politech, news of a survey saying Ranks of Privacy 'Pragmatists' Are Growing A special issue of Time Digital, edited by Bruce Sterling. Another survey: What will be the greatest challenge to IT innovation within your organization? 12:14:36 PM    comment []

Failed missile-defense test linkage, as promised earlier: R euters story AP story I'm not finding any original reporting. (Although Rob pointed out in my comments that in this case it was a failure of the rocket, not of the actual interceptor technology. I'd call the rocket a part of the interception technology, along with relevant ground-based stuff, as well.) 11:13:50 AM    comment []

Greil Marcus: Real Life Rock Top 10 -- the all-Bob Dylan edition (Salon). And http://www.bobdylan.com/ I've been listening to the new release of stuff from the 1975 Rolling Thunder tour (another beat-the-boots effort). It's really fabulous. Unlike, say, the fast renditions live at Budokan, these fast renditions mean something. "It Ain't Me, Babe," for example, comes across as a celebration instead of a rant. The duets with Joan Baez are excellent. Most enjoyable all the way 'round. 11:13:47 AM    comment []

There's a small piece -- two or three sentences -- inside the first section of the Times this morning, reporting a (nother) failed test of a strategic missile system. I'll look for a link later today. Meanwhile, here is Star Wars, on why pursuing a strategic defense, missile shield, Star Wars thingamabob is a Bad Idea. From the blog, Anonymity, strategic defense, May 3, 2001. 7:28:17 AM    comment []

Napster leftovers up for auction. Remains to be auctioned Wednesday [InfoWorld: Top News] 7:25:35 AM    comment []

Total Information Flowchart [bOing bOing] 7:24:16 AM    comment []

On the Background and Significance of Thurber's "Seal in the Bedroom" Cartoon, by Richard Raskin. immediately after it appeared in The New Yorker issue of January 30, 1932, he received a telegram from humorist atid theater critic Robert Benchley. The wire read: Thank you for the funiest drawing caption ever to appear in any magazine. 3:11:14 AM    comment []

In water transfer, farmers vs. sprawl, by Daniel B. Wood, The Christian Science Monitor. Water is the issue of the next fifty years. (thanks, Danny! (Who noted that in California, water has always been political.)) 3:11:11 AM    comment []

More on World Sousveillance Day (Noon, December 24) -- links to WSD and related stuff: CALIFORNIA, FLORIDA, JAPAN, TORONTO, U.K., VA NCOUVER, Citizen Lab, spyCAM awaREness proJECT, WiReD article, pla stic.com, word of the day, Poin dexter, moblog, Transparent Cattlecars, Critics, Spanish translation of WSD site, Live >From N.Y.: Security Cam Hams, by Julia Scheeres, Wired News, X-Ray Net coverage of the Security Cam Players and other anonymity issues The Surveillance Camera Players Web site, Mugging for the Cameras: Tune in to International Surveillance Camera Awareness Day. By Sara Rimensnyder, in Reason. Coverage of the Security Camera Players at Sa lt 11 September 2002: An International Day Against Video Surveillance Coverage of The Rubicon Project on my original weblog in 1999. That was to be an experiment that takes MTV's The Real World concept to its logical limit – 100 percent unedited voyeurism, 24-7. A group of Bay Area characters – hipsters, performers, poseurs, and artistes – will be installed rent-free in a Russian Hill house to essentially live their lives online. (I don't see what became of these plans -- anyone know? I found commentary from mission irresistable, but not much news. The Rubicon Project may have morphed into the startup SpotLife, which became a personal webcam publishing company before being bought by Logitech earlier this year.) 2:10:43 AM    comment []