Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Court nixes RIAA subpoenas. Appeals court in Missouri says RIAA must file suits before obtaining names of alleged copyright infringers from ISPs. [CNET News.com] 10:56:42 PM    comment []

Henry: System Error. The Washington Post finally gets around to reviewing Neal Stephenson’s The System of the World, but makes a blunder. The reviewer, Gregory Feeley, commends Stephenson for his anachronisms. Stephenson’s tongue-in-cheek verbal anachronisms can be witty, as when he manages circumstances so that a character can speak plausibly of a “Routine Upgrade” or name a private tavern the “Kit-Kat Clubb.” But the Kit-Kat Clubb isn’t an anachronism; it was a real institution, and the epicenter of Whig debate in the early eighteenth century. That said, Feeley shouldn’t be chastized too harshly for his mistake. It’s exactly this collision between present and past, so that you really can’t tell the one from the other, that makes for the fun in “System of the World.” And indeed, Stephenson’s depiction of the Kit-Kat as a sort of elevated girly-bar may not be entirely true to history. To repeat myself Stephenson uses anachronisms to jar our sense of the seventeenth century as a fixed stage along the progression that has led ineluctably to the modern world. He wants to bring home to us how the past was, like the modern age, a ferment of possibilities. It could have developed in many different directions. In Quicksilver, the past and the present are related not because the one has led to the other, but because they are both the same thing at different stages; vortices of possibility. The plot creaks, the characters are a little thin, and (as always) Stephenson isn’t very good at endings, but there’s still a zip and verve to the book. It’s ambitious, chaotic, and sometimes falls flat on its face but picks itself up again by virtue of its sheer exuberance. The combination of geek sensibility and economic history and both entertains and enlightens. Addendum: since I’m linking to the Amazon page in this review, I should say that I’ve earned approx $100 through the Amazon link in the last several days, which I have sent on to the Red Cross. Not as much as John (no terabyte drives alas, although I’m grateful to the person who bought several classic movies) . I’ve decided to make this into a permanent feature, all earnings from links from my posts will be donated to charity from here on in. [Crooked Timber] 10:53:32 PM    comment []

Few Takers for Payments From Microsoft Settlement. Only a small percentage of customers eligible to receive part of an antitrust settlement with Microsoft have filed to claim their share. By LAURIE J. FLYNN. [NYT > Technology] 10:52:15 PM    comment []

Grey Album Named Best of 2004 (Donna Wentworth). Fred von Lohmann, on Entertainment Weekly's choice for Album of the Year -- DJ Danger Mouse's The Grey Album: "The Grey Album phenomenon will be remembered as a watershed moment for the music industry, putting the lie to all the industry wags who defend the old distribution mechanisms with the tired claim that 'no artist has ever broken out through P2P.'" [Copyfight] 1:59:49 PM    comment []

Stopping the Bum's Rush. Privatizing Social Security is a fake solution to a fake crisis. By PAUL KRUGMAN. [NYT > Opinion] 6:53:35 AM    comment []

Mega Movie Guide. Get ready for Oscar season (and for a trip to the video store) with reviews of all of 2004's film releases. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories] 6:44:47 AM    comment []

Pew study: Blogs busted out in 2004. Last year proved big for blogs and bloggers, according to data released from The Pew Internet & American Life Project. Blog readership jumped 58 percent between February and November, and comprised 32 million U.S. citizens in 2004. More than 8 million U.S. citizens have created a Web-based diary, and one in 10, or around 14 million U.S. Internet users, has contributed thoughts or comments to a blog. More than 62 percent of those surveyed said they do not know what a blog is, Pew said in a statement. Pew began surveying Internet users about blogs in the spring of 2002, and has charted a steady growth in blog readership since 2003, from 11 percent of U.S. Internet users to 27 percent in November 2004. Most of these readers, 57 percent, are male. Less than half of the surveyed blog readers, 48 percent, are under 30, and a whopping 82 percent are long-time Internet users, with more than six years experience online. [InfoWorld: Top News] "The state of blogging," by Lew Rainie report main page View PDF of Report 6:44:22 AM    comment []

Reporter Tests Netflix, Blockbuster & Walmart. A reporter for the Orange County Register signed up for the top 3 dvd-by-mail services (Netflix, Blockbuster & Walmart) for four months and wrote about her experience at "Netflix licks the competition in online DVD rentals - but just barely, a movie fan finds". [Hacking NetFlix] 6:40:29 AM    comment []

Dan's settling into his new blog: Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism. 6:39:52 AM    comment []

Why Blogs Can Boost Your Business. In the last couple of weeks, I was invited to join a new group called the Professional Bloggers Associaltion. One of its new members, who joined today, is Thomas Pierce. He is the author of How to Blog for Fun and Profit. He has a terrrific post titled "5 Important Reasons Why Blogs Can Boost Your Business." It's worth reading. "The Internet is an active and real-time communications medium. Blogs are types of web sites that now have the same characteristic of instant messaging and real-time communication. Static is out and active is in."   Here are the five reasons.    #1 Your Markets Are Getting Smarter, Faster, And More Organized   #2 You Must Deliver Genuine Knowledge  #3 Your Competition Is Using Blogs And RSS   #4 Speed Of Business  #5 Blogs and RSS Represent Social Networking At Its' Most Powerful Read the full article here. [Qumana Blog] 6:38:41 AM    comment []