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Friday, July 08, 2005 |
- The Terrorist's Rationale. The purpose of terrifying us is to turn us loose among our own emotions, to undermine our ability to reason with ourselves and with each other.
- Our Faith-Based Train Rides. Does it really make sense for Wyoming to get more money per resident from the Homeland Security Department than New York? By SARAH VOWELL.
- When Fear Stalks, Tune Out. Instead of talking about the need for Britons to move on, British Prime Minister Tony Blair moved on. By JOHN TIERNEY.
[NYT > Opinion]
11:23:54 PM 
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Looking on the Bright Side. When is a bubble not a bubble? A contributor to TheStreet.com's RealMoney points out the differences between the stock prices of the late 1990's and the rising home prices of today. By DAN MITCHELL. [NYT > Business]
11:21:28 PM
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Breaking News: Amazon Acquires CustomFlix.
I was just informed by a trusted source (also confirmed by a call to CustomFlix) that Amazon.com has acquired CustomFlix, a company that publishes on-demand DVD titles.
From the CustomFlix Web site: The CustomFlix mission is to help independent filmmakers, content owners, educators, and video producers make their programs available to a worldwide audience. With its unique on-demand video publishing service, the company has brought together the best components of duplication, encoding, DVD authoring, streaming video preview, e-commerce, and the Internet to give video professionals a revolutionary new way to bring a few or a few thousand copies of...
[Hacking NetFlix]
11:21:22 PM
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Grok on.
Re-grokking Grokster is my latest essay on the Grokster decision, which I first wrote about in Grokking Grokster. Note: there are plenty of links, but they're all at the end of the piece, which began as yesterday's SuitWatch (a plain text email newslettter), from Linux Journal.
The bottom line:
The only sane outcome of this mess is for innovative companies to press ahead without worrying about whether somebody will accuse them of being another Grokster. Invent and innovate without fear.
Because fear is the enemy here. Not P2P.
Peer-to-Peer is fundamental to the Net. It's the bedrock of the largest and most open free market the world has ever known. The best way to keep that market free is to exercise that freedom. That's a job for engineers and business people. Not for their lawyers.
By the way, SuitWatch archives are here. And yes, the missing ones from April-June will be restored soon. [The Doc Searls Weblog]
6:06:42 PM
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Mark Cuban on Podcasting.
Do you remember the Dan & Scott Show ? It started on Audionet way back in 1996 as the very first original comedy show streamed on the net. The guys were crazy, working out of their basement and basically willing to do anything to get people to listen.
They were one of thousands who decided to jump on the streaming bandwagon as it was starting to blossom in the mid 90s. Anyone and everyone could have their own live streaming radio show and it seemed like just about everyone did.
All it took to create your own live radio show was a PC, a microphone and either an encoder to send the show to a host site, or your own server connected to the net. It seemed like every day ”the next” Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh (it was the 90s) was putting up a website and a live show. If you missed the show, the archives were there to listen to on demand.
. . .
Podcasting is right where streaming was about 10 years ago. Before you dive into podcasting as”the next big thing”, you would be wise to do some homework on how the streaming industry evolved.
Try to find any of the many that created original content for PSEUDO.com , TSN , EYADA.com, Broadcast.com and others that i have long forgotten.
There is a good chance that their history is your future. [Blog Maverick]
6:03:36 PM
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Nose Job.
A crew began washing the granite faces of Mount Rushmore today to remove decades of dirt, grime and lichens that can damage the complexion of the four presidents.
(via: AP)
[rexblog: Rex Hammock's Weblog]
7:34:52 AM
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Why podcasting will succeed.
The best point, though, and the one that is going to keep the throttle back is bandwidth. If you become suddenly popular you could be facing a huge bill from your host.
Solutions? OurMedia.org sounds good, but I have some questions. I think we'll just have to wait and see.
7:28:17 AM
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alternative freedom (in progress).
There's a cool new documentary brewing about the free software, free culture movement. I don't like to point to media with me in it, and this does, but I am very funny looking in it, and there is a fantastically moving set of quotes by RMS. Check it out here.
[Lessig Blog]
7:28:00 AM
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London Bombings and Blog Evangelism.
I never know what to post about events such as the London Bombings. The perpetrators sure don't care what I say, and there is hardly any debate over sympathy for the victims. Though aspects of the coverage of the tragedy seem to have touched a nerve.
Shelley Powers wrote:
I won't point to the sites, and I won't repeat the exact words. But now is not the time to point to a 'wiki' setup to collect information about the bombs in London, and smugly say how much better it is at covering the news than the New York Times. ...
[snip]
Don't use this event to promote weblogging.
I've seen similar sentiments even by some A-lister's.
I suppose there's value in raising the costs of being crass. But there will always be a certain percentage of the population that will take self-promotion over solemnity. And if any of the evangelists were by chance shamed into reverence, there would be plenty of hungry evangelist-wannabes to try to exploit the PR opportunity (i.e. "If I didn't do it, somebody else would").
I think the end result is the point I make about the deep unpleasant structural similarity of high-attention blogs to mass media - with many of the same imperatives, here, ambulance-chasing. Yet another instance of meet the new boss, same as the old boss. [Infothought]
7:27:13 AM
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Guns, Germs, Steel and Now, TV. Jared Diamond, author of the controversial book and upcoming PBS series Guns, Germs, and Steel, shares his thoughts on why civilizations rise and fall. Some lessons from history seem eerily relevant today. Wired News interview by Jason Silverman. [Wired News]
7:25:59 AM
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Joel:
This is when you give up and realize that something that could take you 10 seconds to fix in person is about to become a two hour nightmare during which you'll alienate your family, lose sleep, tie up the phone line while your Auntie Marge is stuck on the turnpike with no gas and can't get through to your uncle to come rescue her, and curse your lot in life. Just because you're a programmer doesn't mean you have to be the help desk for a dozen friends, relatives, and the people in the apartment next door. Does it?
Project Aardvark Midterm Report [Joel on Software]
7:18:53 AM
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Political texting in Iran.
 From Yahoo News (thanks, Katie!):
An Iranian Shiite woman takes pictures with her mobile phone in February 2005. The use of text messaging by Iranians to send often highly acerbic comments on their presidential election choice has worried the authorities, who are threatening to prosecute mobile-addicts who insult the candidates [Smart Mobs]
7:17:18 AM
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