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Monday, July 11, 2005 |
Two pieces that are too looooong even to try to excerpt (or I'm too laaaaazy right now), but which I commend highly:
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The Big Hump over at unmediated takes on The Long Tail by comparing Zipf's and Pareto's laws. It's one of those clearly reasoned, challenging-the-going-wisdom essays.
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eXquisite Moderating Logic over at Escapable Logic is about dealing rationally with terrorism either by taking on the root causes or else getting on with life. It riffs off of both Tim Bray and Tom Wolfe and, oh, okay, I'll quote a bit but warn that there's more message here than I'm going to get in in this one juicy bit, and it isn't all a repeat of this, so play it Cliff's Notes style at your own risk:
Do the Math
The D.C. sniper has an entire region hunkered down.
What are the odds any individual person in the area will be shot?
Next to zero.
What are the odds that anyone you know will be affected?
Next to zero.
What are the odds that the Nightly News will tell you anything of real use?
Next to zero.
What are the odds that, if you quiet your mind and attend to the work in front of you - or maybe blog a little - you'll come up with something of surprising value, or do something nice for someone you care about?
Huge.
Our brain - specifically the reticular formation (so-called "reptile brain") is set up to face threats first and only seek opportunities when not threatened. That bias for threat info sells stuff to us. To that end, the media has grabbed and holds our attention, robbing us of the chance to pay attention to something other than the media. The coverage has no content relevant to personal safety. Our obsession with every imaginable "threat" to our person has overwhelmed our ability to maintain our personal compass in the life we really live in.
8:54:18 PM 
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Canadian Judge Issues Harry Potter Gag Order (Donna Wentworth).
Should people who bought the latest Harry Potter book before the release date be forced not only to return the book but also turn over "any photocopies, photographs or electronic copies of any portion of that book," as well as take a strict vow of silence about any elements of the story? A Canadian court thinks so. University of Ottawa law professor/uber-copyfighter Michael Geist thinks not:
People have legitimately purchased the book, yet now face violation of a court order if they fail to return it immediately, discuss it, or do anything else with the book. While a court might look skeptically on an attempt to bring an action against a purchaser who fails to return the book, why the court would grant such a broad order that reaches down to the underlying purchasers suggests that this could turn into a real horror story. The order could have been a simple injunction covering the bookstore in question; instead, it sounds like something from the PATRIOT Act. Is this truly necessary?
[Copyfight]
8:42:45 PM
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Stumble Upon Math.
I recently got 'acquainted' with Stumble Upon, a free tool which gets a random link from a large set of categories at the click of a button. It's way more addictive than it sounds (so don't install it if you have very little time!), and there's a large Math-section.
[GalaxyGoo Blog]
8:42:16 PM
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If You Put Your Fingers In Your Ears And Sing "La La La!" Very Loudly....
...you might not notice that there are sites on the Web that are offering downloadable MP3s. Some of these sites reside in countries that have different copyright laws, or laxer enforcement of laws, than the US and other Cartel-dominated countries. So everyone pretend you didn't read this blog posting, ok?
One site that is raising the ire of the Germans is AllofMP3. In particular, Web sites in Germany have been asked to take down links to the site. This puts news sites in a particular bind. Take the story from heise online covering this takedown notice. They are, themselves, German. They've been asked to "remove all links to www.allofmp3.com" (sic - no using your copy-and-paste functionality there, kiddies). In the story covering these events they have one hyperlinked word and one literal reading of the URL. Which of these will be considered "objectively supporting the illegal dissemination of copyright protected sound recordings" is anyone's guess.
Next, I'm sure, the Cartel's lawyers will be asking Google, Yahoo! et al to edit their search results not to return hits to these sites. It feels like we keep revisiting this "Is Linking Legal?" question every few months. [unmediated]
8:37:50 PM
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Negativland's "No Business".
 One of our favorite copyfighting groups, Negativland, has a new, long-awaited about out, No Business. Most Negativland albums are concept albums and this one is no exception; No Business focuses on music industry politics, which it skewers with brains and wit. I love any band that loves Ethel Merman, so I was especially happy to hear the title track, a collage of Merman singing about the joys of stealing. Video and audio of said track are online for the taking. Or you can buy the real deal via Stay Free! mailorder for $15 (includes free shipping). That includes the CD, a whoopee cushion emblazoned with the (c) symbol, a booklet/essay, and a video short ("Gimme the Mermaid"), in a handsome package by Sean Tejaratchi.
Also, the Onion's AV Club has a great interview with Don Joyce and Mark Hosler.
[Stay Free! Daily]
8:28:45 PM
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NewTek TriCaster: A TV Studio in a Box.
"For years any fool with a guitar and a PC has been able to make a CD, and now that same fool can pick up a cheap video camera and produce an award-winning documentary for just a few thousand bucks. Until now, though, live TV production has remained the domain of professional studios. No more. The new TriCaster from NewTek puts an entire live television control room into a customized PC for just $5,000. Add in the overpriced optional switching keyboard and a decent monitor, and the full package costs under $6,500—replacing hardware that can cost ten times as much. The TriCaster itself is built into a customized Shuttle small-form-factor PC, which makes it portable as well as powerful. The TriCaster includes NewTek's VT4 video production card and a 250 gigabyte hard drive."
No one has been able to channel the power of the PC to multi-input, live-switched video events at less than $10,000 so far. This looks like a really good solution for about half that cost. And from this Extremetech review, it looks like a very stable, powerful and portable solution.
Via Digital Media Thoughts [unmediated]
8:28:10 PM
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Dave:
It's really great to see the press finally press the White House on Karl Rove's crimes. Isn't it clear by now that he's going to jail? Isn't it high time they cut their losses. And they should never have been allowed to hide behind the reporters unwillingness to expose sources. The Bush control of the press may finally be crumbling and not a moment too soon.
8:27:41 PM
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Old News Baby Update.
Last April I covered OldNewsBaby, which allowed you to submit links and then get mad guru cred when the links got hot.
One of my complaints about it before is that there were no descriptions. Now there are resource descriptions as well as screen thumbnails. And there seem to be more people using it, though I'm not sure it's at "critical mass" yet. One thing to watch -- the content isn't necessarily SFW; be careful. Interesting discovery tool....
[ResearchBuzz]
8:26:02 PM
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Why Karl Rove must go. Whatever becomes of the grand jury proceedings, this much is clear: Rove revealed the identity of a CIA agent for the president's political gain. [Salon.com]
8:25:00 PM
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Vietnamese Writer Won't Be Silenced. Duong Thu Huong has been arrested and has seen her books banned. Despite all this, her priority is to denounce the Hanoi government as irremediably corrupt and abusive. By ALAN RIDING. [NYT > Books]
7:51:24 AM
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Manuel Castells et al on mobile communications research.
Rich Ling, who ought to know, says this long PDF is "a pretty massive analysis of research on mobile communication. If you don't have any books for the beach, this might be the one." I know Castells to be thoughtful, insightful, and thorough. Castells, M., Fernandez-Ardevol, M., Qiu, J. L., & Sey, A. (2004) The mobile communication society: A cross-cultural analysis of available evidence on the social uses of wireless communication technology. [Smart Mobs]
7:46:14 AM
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Dave:
Rogers discovered RSS feeds at the People's Daily, the newspaper of the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China.
7:45:19 AM
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