Monday, October 24, 2005

Benton Headline: POOR NATIONS ARE LITTERED WITH OLD PCs, REPORT SAYS [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Laurie Flynn] "The Digital Dump: Exporting Reuse and Abuse to Africa," a new report to be released today by the Basel Action Network, finds that unusable computer equipment is being donated or sold to developing nations by recycling businesses in the United States as a way to dodge the expense of having to recycle it properly. According to the National Safety Council, more than 63 million computers in the United States will become obsolete in 2005. An average computer monitor can contain as much as eight pounds of lead, along with plastics laden with flame retardants and cadmium, all of which can be harmful to the environment and to humans. NYT story The report itself 10:06:55 AM    comment []

Google and the Publishers: A Test. On balance, I tend to take Google's side in the huge fight it's having with publishers over the Google Print Library Project, the indexing of the collections of five major libraries. Publishers and authors are suing Google to stop the thing from proceeding. I think they're mistaken, but I do understand why they're upset. Google's pretensions that this is all to make the world a better place are insulting to the intelligence of the average 5-year-old, much less the PhDs who litter the company's campus. The point is to make Google an even more profitable money machine; if the project also helps the world, well, that's nice, too. But Google's fair use defense (which I agree with) for the library project raises a corollary issue. Why just printed material? Why not music, movies and video? After all, Google claims this is designed to make it easier to find relevant books. I'd like to find relevant movies and music, too. Maybe there's an alternative explanation. Perhaps the ferocious clout of the Hollywood-led copyright cartel too daunting for Google to challenge. So this is a test for Google. When it starts making copies of all the copyrighted music and movies out there, and offering up snippets for the rest of us -- something I would strongly endorse, incidentally -- then I'll start believing that the company truly believes its own pieties. [Dan Gillmor's blog] 7:10:14 AM    comment []

Forget Class, Just Get The Podcast [unmediated] 7:04:25 AM    comment []

Why You Should Pay to Read This. In giving away content to match the Web's unrecompensed goodies, traditional print media is eating its own lunch. [NYT > Business] 7:03:18 AM    comment []

LAYING DOWN THE LAW: THE NOTARY PUBLIC OF THYRIS. Creating your own virtual John Hancock-- notarized and XML-enabled. If you want a government that's for the Residents, by the Residents, do you call an in-world Constitutional Convention and begin drafting a grand document for a majority to ratify-- or do you just start by figuring out how to stamp a contract? "I had read some posts in the [Second Life] Forums about various ideas for self-government," Zarf Vantongerloo explains. "There are tons of ideas floating around there, of course. What struck me was that everyone was talking abut major systems to put in place. And I thought I... [New World Notes] 7:02:51 AM    comment []

G.O.P. Testing Ways to Blunt Leak Charges. Allies of the White House may pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities. By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DAVID JOHNSTON. [NYT > Washington] 7:02:35 AM    comment []

The Village Voice, Pushing 50, Prepares to Be Sold to a Chain of Weeklies. The company that publishes The Village Voice and five other alternative newspapers is to announce an agreement to be acquired by New Times Media. By RICHARD SIKLOS. [NYT > Business] 6:59:31 AM    comment []

Testing Flock. I thought I might as well have a go and try out Flock, the new browser that integrates social software - so rather than having bookmarks, it hooks up directly to my del.icio.us account, and rather than having a “blog this” bookmarklet on the toolbar, there’s an icon of a pen that lets me blog through the browser, even offering to set me up a blog if I don’t already have one. If this publishes, I guess that worked. So far (after about two and a half minutes) it seems pretty cool. I’ve seen lots of criticism of doing this as a whole new browser (a “fork” of the Mozilla code) rather than continuing to work within the mainstream of Mozilla development, doing this as extensions or something. I like the idea of “The Shelf”: “a scrapbook for interesting web content that you want to blog about later.” And apparently it’ll track pages I visit often, so that when I’ve been using the browser for a few days I’ll be able to quickly look at my actual favourites rather than what I think are my favourites. That might be interesting…. But later: Untitled. I think my biggest problem with Flock is that it connects the aspects of my digital life too much. I removed my Flickr feed from my blog because I don’t want my students and colleagues and neighbours to find my photos. I use del.icio.us for links that I’m happy for the world to see - if it’s integrated with my browser, I’m going to need an option for private links as well. [jill/txt] 6:57:39 AM    comment []