Saturday, October 23, 2004

Bernstein: Conductor and Great Musical Salesman. WNYC recently began broadcasting Leonard Bernstein: An American Life, an 11-part radio documentary. Today, daughter Jamie Bernstein Thomas joins us to give us an even deeper look into the life of her father. Also on the show: Greg Tate, essayist and critic for the Village Voice. [WNYC New York Public Radio] 11:16:11 PM    comment []

GE Capital vs. the Small-Town Folk Hero. Aaron M. Feuestein, a corporate folk hero who paid workers out of his own pocket during a rough patch, wants to buy his old company back. A storybook ending, right? Not quite. By By GRETCHEN MORGENSON. [The New York Times > Business] 10:40:29 PM    comment []

Wes: My wish is coming true; Apple is adding easy-to-use PKI to OS X. I wonder if they'll go all the way and allow PKI to be used as a replacement for Kerberos. [Hack the Planet] 10:40:28 PM    comment []

From Saturday's The New York Times > Opinion page, these two: How to Skew Intelligence. Thursday's Senate Armed Services Committee report is another reminder of this administration's poor accountability on Iraq. God and Sex. If we're going to cherry-pick biblical phrases, then perhaps we should just ban marriage altogether. By By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF.   10:38:50 PM    comment []

More Americans using reputations systems: Pew study. According to a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life project, Americans are increasingly using reputation systems. Users tend to be a familiar group: better educated, younger, more often male, tending to be net experienced. [Smart Mobs] 8:36:29 PM    comment []

After Terror, a Secret Rewriting of Military Law. Not a single terrorist has been prosecuted in the three years since officials gave the military the authority to detain foreign suspects indefinitely and prosecute them in tribunals not used since World War II. By By TIM GOLDEN. [The New York Times > International] 8:35:11 PM    comment []

Bang Bang Maxwell's Silver Ecomonic Model of Copyright Comes Down on First Monday (Jason Schultz). Terrence Maxwell has a new article in First Monday (Is Copyright Necessary?) attempting to model the effects of different copyright policies historically and into the future (e.g. authors wanting high-protection copyright vs. the public wanting low-protection copyright). His models are fairly abstract and complex (see image below), but his results are interesting: As indicated in the table, the desired policies of authors, publishers and public domain advocates produce very different outcomes in a 100–year simulation, some of which run counter to the protagonists’ stated goals. For instance, while the authors’ position led to the largest number of authors, it also generated the lowest sales figures, and the fewest number of volumes published. This indicates that the demand for new volumes from authors was the lowest among the three options, and points to a greater level of competition among authors seeking publication. Similarly, while the reader position generated the highest level of sales, the greatest number of different volumes, and the lowest cost for books, it also severely constrained the number of authors. This means that while a greater number of volumes would be available, diversity in authorship would be curtailed. This, in turn, would tend to diminish the likelihood of variety in information products. [Copyfight] 8:35:10 PM    comment []

geeky tech-crazy notes (Manilla and BitTorrent generation). here's some cool info about manilla and automatic torrent creation.... from Dave Winer.... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:02:52 -0400 Subject: Interesting news from the Manilla folk http://archive.scripting.com/2004/10/21#When:3:49:38AM Excerpt: Yesterday, talking with Marcus Mauller, we figured out how to integrate BitTorrent with Manila. The key is to do it through Gems. In a special Manila site on a server running the BitTorrent software, when you upload a Gem to that site, it automatically generates a meta file, and links to it in the Gems table listing. It's the perfect user interface. The content creator needs to know nothing about the difficult process of Torrent-izing a media file, the URL is handled the same way the non-Torrent URL is handled. [unmediated] 11:18:29 AM    comment []

Starting for Cardinals Has Privileges. St. Louis is a collection of superstar position players and anonymous pitchers. By By LEE JENKINS. [The New York Times > Sports] 11:17:16 AM    comment []

Wax discovery surprises: Unexpectedly, plants use a lipid transporter like those in mammalian cells to transport wax. By Graciela Flores, the Scientist. Plants export wax from epidermal cells to the surface of their aerial parts through a lipid transporter similar to those present in mammalian cells, researchers report in Science this week. This is the first component of the plant lipid export system to be characterized functionally. Up until now, we knew that plants produce this waxy coating on their cuticle, which is essential for water conservation, and for their ecology in general, but no one knew how these highly hydrophobic molecules that are made in the cells get out of the cells, author Lacey Samuels, of the University of British Columbia, told The Scientist. References from the piece: J.A. Pighin et al., "Plant cuticular lipid export requires an ABC transporter," Science, 306:702-4, October 22, 2004. http://www.sciencemag.org/  Lacey Samuels http://www.botany.ubc.ca/samuels.html  Philip A. Rea http://www.bio.upenn.edu/faculty/rea/  Wolf Frommer http://www-ciwdpb.stanford.edu/research/research_frommer.php  B. Schulz, W.B. Frommer, "A plant ABC transporter takes the lotus seat," Science, 306, October 22, 2004. http://www.sciencemag.org/  8:38:23 AM    comment []