Thursday, March 20, 2003

Who Lost The U.S. Budget?. The simple truth is that the Bush tax cuts have utterly transformed our fiscal outlook, for the worse. By Paul Krugman. [New York Times: Opinion] 10:33:25 PM    comment []

Cory: United Way will provide cheap WiFi and PCs to Philly's poor [bOing bOing] 1:46:50 PM    comment []

Cisco heads home with Linksys buy. The networking giant says it plans to acquire Linksys, a manufacturer of networking gear for consumers, in a stock deal valued at $500 million. [CNET News.com] Also, Cisco snaps up Linksys in home networking assault, by John Leyden, in The Register. 1:41:08 PM    comment []

So, You're In A Band?. Plastic::Music::Plastic: We already know we're the web's smartest readers. Are we also the web's most tuneful musicians? [Plastic: Most Recent] 1:40:10 PM    comment []

Why Am I Getting All This Spam? Unsolicited Commercial E-mail Research Six Month Report, Center for Democracy & Technology. Every day, millions of people receive dozens of unsolicited commercial e-mails (UCE), known popularly as "spam." Some users see spam as a minor annoyance, while others are so overwhelmed with spam that they are forced to switch e-mail addresses. This has led many Internet users to wonder: How did these people get my e-mail address? In the summer of 2002, CDT embarked on a project to attempt to determine the source of spam. To do so, we set up hundreds of different e-mail addresses, used them for a single purpose, and then waited six months to see what kind of mail those addresses were receiving. It should come as no surprise to most e-mail users that many of the addresses CDT created for this study attracted spam, but it is very interesting to see the different ways that e-mail addresses attracted spam - - and the different volumes -- depending on where the e-mail addresses were used. The results offer Internet users insights about what online behavior results in the most spam. The results also debunk some of the myths about spam. CNET News.com story: Study suggests spam-stopping tricks, by Lisa M. Bowman. One criticism of the report's approach -- not, mind you, of the study itself -- is its apparent failure to recognize that the ecology surrounding Spam has consequences for spammers' tactics. Spamming evolves, in response to Netizens taking steps such as suggested in the report. 11:56:25 AM    comment []

Two years back, on t'other blog, Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most featured: German armed forces ban MS software, citing NSA snooping Not precisely the same topic: Microsoft Confronts Privacy Fears But the situation is complicated by the Legal storm brewing over Microsoft's HailStorm (story by Aaron Pressman and Keith Perine, The Industry Standard). (See also Microsoft’s Strategy Shift Creates New Antitrust Concerns, by Alec Klein, Washington Post.) As so often, Dan Gillmor nails it: [T]he other critical mass Microsoft plans to capture, beyond its Windows desktop monopoly, is you and me in new and different ways. Now we're getting into a matter of trust. Microsoft hasn't earned it. Microsoft wants us to essentially move our lives onto its computers -- financial transactions, calendars, address books, documents, you name it. This is the ultimate in centralization. Leaving aside the unreliability of the big computer systems the company now runs -- think of the outages and problems with Hotmail, MSN and even Microsoft.com -- the idea of confiding in Microsoft with my most personal information is, well, nutty. Well before MS announced its ".NET" initiative, I was worrying about its intentions and the prospect for Microsoft re-centralizing computing. See my Tailoring the Web for Profit (June, 1998). [D]emocracy does not guarantee profits, and that's been part of the problem with the Web for corporate America. Profits roll in when you can start controlling things. . . . . . . . . The Web comes under the centralized control of a company that programs what you see, whether that be Web sites or TV channels. It permits you to respond only in limited ways that are of interest to the sponsors paying the freight. Which brings us to Spy TV: Programming that Watches You. Civil liberties groups and libraries plan to file suit Tuesday to stop a recently passed law that would require schools and libraries to install Internet filters on public computers. USING computers in a local library, a Brooklyn busboy pulled off the largest identity-theft in Internet history, victimizing more than 200 of the "Richest People in America" listed in Forbes magazine, authorities say. PC usability for seniors still an issue Some Professors Are Surprised to Be on a University's Roster . . . because they don't work there! End of free? Salon to start premium service. I think I may sign up. It's truly one of the best things on the Web. Reader reaction. This in from St. Louis: By next year, Biggs hopes to have cut a disc of rap songs based directly on Homer's "Iliad." The rapper has a Ph.D. Lots of old that's new again in there. 8:55:31 AM    comment []

Connected to the Future: A Report on Children's Internet Use from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Great increases in Net use, especially among African-American kids. Fully two-thirds of kids from two to seventeen used the Net in 2002, and 78% of kids' homes have access. Kids 2-5 online at a 35% rate (up from 6% two years previously). Digital divide in broadband access. Parents are more involved in kids' use than previously: they are more likely to be present, they know what kids are doing, and they influence where kids go online. Both the report (PDF) and a separate one-pager on methodology (also PDF) are available. See also Kids Online: Advice for Parents. 8:55:22 AM    comment []

New Columbia President Has Ambitious Arts Plan. Lee C. Bollinger, the new president of Columbia University, has long been known for his advocacy of the arts as integral to the university experience. By John Rockwell. [New York Times: Education] 6:25:13 AM    comment []

Laughs Key to Terror Survival Kit. A wave of online parodies send up terror-attack readiness tutorials on the Department of Homeland Security's Ready.gov site. They give political satirists a voice and help ease the tension Americans feel on the brink of war with Iraq. By Mark Baard. [Wired News] 6:24:09 AM    comment []

Online Journalists Jailed in Cuba. The Cuban government has arrested 10 independent journalists, most of whom publish their work on the Internet. Havana says the reporters are part of a U.S. effort to foment political opposition in the country. By Julia Scheeres. [Wired News] 6:20:51 AM    comment []

A Clear Channel With Nothing On: The high cost of corporate radio. By Danny Duncan Collum, in Sojourners. THIS HOMOGENIZATION eventually will be the death of the musical culture that has been among America's greatest gifts to the world. The emergence of rock and roll was one of the most significant cultural events in the last half of the 20th century, and by now the origins of rock are thoroughly documented. The process began way back in the 1920s when the biracial musical culture of the Southern states began to be recorded, but the great synthesis of the 1950s happened because black and white people were hearing each other's music on the radio—at first in the South, then nationwide. This outsider music reached the mainstream through regionally based independent record companies—Sun in Memphis, Chess in Chicago, King in Cincinnati, etc.—and through a handful of disc jockeys, including Symphony Sid in Boston, Dewey Phillips in Memphis, and Alan Freed in Cleveland and New York. These DJs weren't corporate functionaries. They were cultural visionaries who heard the sound of a new America and gave it form on the air. At its heart, the cultural revolution called rock and roll was locally rooted in the relationship between performers, audience, and entrepreneur. It was not an efficient business model; it was an organic, communal process. This was true in the beginning, and it was true of every subsequent creative development in American music. They all emerged from a specific community in a specific time and place. If you think about it, most of them are identified with place names—Memphis soul, Motown, New York punk, Midwestern metal, L.A. gangsta rap, Seattle grunge, etc. Such cultural insurrections will continue to happen as long as America remains relatively free. But the monopolization of the record and radio industry seems to ensure that none of them will ever reach a national audience again. HOW DID THIS happen to us? 3:14:57 AM    comment []