Sunday, December 12, 2004

Man, haven't heard anybody float the idea of licensing software engineers for a long time! The Boom must really be over: time for the guilds. Zittrain on the De-Evolution of the Net (Donna Wentworth). David Weinberger blogs Jonathan Zittrain's thoughts on the de-evolution of the Internet: "[Why] won't we require licensing of [software developers] so they can't produce apps that destroy entire industries?" [Copyfight] 11:44:09 PM    comment []

In the Age of the Wireless Phone, a Louisiana Town Awaits the Real Thing. It's no secret what the 15 householders in Mink, La., want for Christmas: the same thing they have always wanted year round - telephones. By RALPH BLUMENTHAL. [NYT > Technology] 11:43:06 PM    comment []

Philosophy Graduate School and the Teaching Jobs Really Out There. Reader B.J. Robidoux writes:I read your article about landing a faculty philosophy job, and this is what struck me as strange, not being in either philosophy or academia. You say that the research universities produce metaphysicians who aren't prepared to... [Leiter Reports] 11:42:57 PM    comment []

Amartya Sen interviewed. Asia Source has an interview with Amartya Sen , which touches on the record of the World Bank and IMF, the evolution of Sen’s ideas on “capabilities”, democracy, the postwar histories of India and China, anticolonialism, and much else. (Found via INBB , which looks like a really interesting blog.) [Crooked Timber] 8:48:23 PM    comment []

The Cure for Infringement (Donna Wentworth). Kill the Internet as we know it. Ban all technologies that capitalize on the Internet's basic end-to-end architecture. Reshape the network so that ISPs or other traffic routers could have certain controls that would discriminate between types of traffic. Monitor all the traffic and restrict anonymous communications so that we can track the source of distributed content. That's the Swiftian solution proposed by Derek Slater in a post echoing and amplifying the point Fred von Lohmann is making repeatedly to the press folk covering MGM v. Grokster: This case isn't about the future of peer-to-peer technology. It's about all the other technologies that will be impacted by the effort to control it: Making "P2P networks...illegal" involves more than flipping a switch and banning P2P networks narrowly. As Ed Felten explains, crafting a definition that includes P2P and leaves out most other Internet technologies is basically impossible. A result against Grokster would thus affect myriad other technologies. But would it affect P2P? Not really. As the Darknet authors conclude, "the darknet-genie will not be put back in the bottle." [...] Which is not to say that there would be no way to eliminate P2P. Let's not rehash the old "can we regulate the Internet" argument - sure we can. No matter how the Supreme Court rules, P2P file-sharing software will continue to be available from distributors around the world, many of whom are beyond the reach of US laws. But the Court's ruling will shape the future of companies like Apple and products like the iPod and TiVo -- that is, any company that makes/wants to make/would have made a technology that enables infringement. [Copyfight] 1:44:48 PM    comment []

Can For-Profit Schools Pass an Ethics Test?. Profits are up, but recently, a number of for-profit colleges have faced inquiries concerning the way they pursue federal funds. By ERYN BROWN. [NYT > Education] This is a big issue. Two big issues in the story, really. One issue -- one of the reasons an education story is in the business section of the Sunday Times -- is whether (or how) the for-profit colleges are going to be able to sustain their phenomenal growth rates. The other, clearly related issue, is one of quality control. If growth at the for-profits comes by ignoring quality (hence, ignoring education) in order to grab more federal dollars, there will be eytch ee double toothpicks to pay. 9:39:36 AM    comment []

My kingdom for a time machine!. Let’s go back exactly 17 years - to November 30th 1987. You want to register a domain name. To date, only 99 .com domains have ever been registered. Yours will be the 100th. So, what do you get? Music.com? It’s available! Games.com? Available! Loans.com? Drugs.com? Cars.com? All unregistered! Take your pick. Think carefully now… which will you choose? Decision made; it’s got to be… nynexst.com. Can you believe it?! Check out the full top 100 list. [Jottings.com] 9:36:31 AM    comment []

Around Tweeners' Wrists, a Fad of Many Colors, By Fern Shen. [Washington Post: Top News] Clutching his dollar bills, his reedy voice trembling, 10-year-old Sergio Contijoch had an urgent question to ask the clerks at a Rockville girls' clothing boutique one weekday last week. "Do you have the bracelets?" the Gaithersburg boy said, gravely. "The pink ones and the blue ones?" Every 10 minutes or so, the phone at Cloud 9 rang with people asking the same question. From the moment school let out, boys and girls about Sergio's age (accompanied by their wallet-packing mothers) mobbed the store in search of bracelets. During one recent four-week period, it sold more than 10,000 of them. Sergio grinned with relief when told the store still had the bracelets; he purchased five of them, at $2.50 apiece. Also relieved was Liliana Torres and her 10-year-old son, Gabriel. Knowing a fresh shipment of bracelets had come in, Gabriel "brought me flying here, to get the blue one," said the Germantown mother. "I almost ran out of gas." Why all the desperation for these trinkets, basically fancy rubber bands? The ones at Cloud 9 are stamped with slogans showing support for people with breast cancer (the pink ones) and autism (the light blue ones). Did Sergio buy them to support these causes? Did the fourth-grader buy the dark blue one he also wears to show he wants to "Stand Strong for Israel"? The boy's explanation was pretty much the definition of a schoolyard fad. "Every kid I know has at least one. Most of them have 10 or 11," Sergio said. "It's fun to try and get all the colors." "The mothers always ask if [the money] is going to a good cause," said clerk Rebecca Hartman. "The kids never ask." 9:32:54 AM    comment []

A look at referers today (yeah, I read 'em for the stories) showed me a great post of xian's from two Christmases ago that I'd missed 'til now. 9:17:09 AM    comment []

NYT > Business doesn't say these are related stories, but they are: Social Security Reform, With One Big Catch. The idea that letting people invest some of their Social Security money in the stock market will allow for higher returns is as flawed as a perpetual motion machine. By EDMUND L. ANDREWS. How Consultants Can Retire on Your Pension. Nowhere are the conflicts of interest for financial services conglomerates more potentially lucrative - and more obscure - than in the management of pension assets. By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH. 9:11:26 AM    comment []