Sunday, January 15, 2006

Iranian Says Pressure Won't End Nuclear Bid [Washington Post: Top News] 12:01:39 PM    comment []

"Citizen Media" Skeptical Questions. Dan Gillmor is speaking about "Citizen Media" at Harvard Tuesday (1/17). I did something perhaps not in my best interests, but fuelded by my frustrations, and posted a "Skeptical Questions" comment: [Dan, you're a nice guy, so I can get away with this - which is kind of a mini-point in itself :-(] 1. The journalism business is changing - GOT IT! HEARD IT! UNDERSTOOD! Now, why should anyone who is *not* a pundit (professional or wannabe), or interested in creating a business (i.e. 99% of the population), care that media people, both talent and finance, are fighting over the changes? 2. What's so superultrafantastic about being an unpaid freelancer? I grasp that there are many promoters who are very excited about the possibilities of data-mining and vanity-press business models (*cough* *cough* venture capital funds ...). Shouldn't everyone else be wary of being the chum to dream-sellers? 3. Doesn't the power-law show that ordinary citizens really have no way to effectively make their voices heard? (appealing to gatekeepers, whether they are called "reporters" or "A-listers", doesn't count). As I put it: THERE IS RE-INTERMEDIATION! 4. Given that the top-ranked blogs are full of slavering partisan hacks, outrage-mongers, and marketing hypesters, doesn't this demonstrate that, bit-for-bit, the bogosphere is hardly better than the mainstream media, and arguably *worse*? 5. Moreover, it's occasionally sometimes discussed that the politics and media top blogs are overwhelmingly well-off white males. So arguably the bogosphere is highly non-meritocratic. Again, isn't this evidence that contrary to idealism, for *effective* diversity, it's no better, and quite possibly worse? (i.e, the diversity wars are being refought, from further behind). But good luck anyway. [End comment - note for non-native English speakers, that phrase "being the chum to dream-sellers" is a play on words. In English, the word "chum" means both "friend" and "fish-bait", depending on context] Again, Dan Gillmor isn't the sort to throw a temper-tantrum over insufficient sycophancy, so I'm probably not going to suffer for a little bit of being a gadfly. But I sure wouldn't want to be saying this stuff in front of guys who want to make more than $100 million. It's perilous for a skeptic to be around large amounts of money (n.b. it's often not the big moneybags themselves who are abusive, but secondary people who want to ingratiate themselves with the big moneybags). Comic relief: Jon Garfunkel -The New Worders ("A guide to the various Worders in the New Media landscape. It's no longer just Writers and Readers. But one term doesn't fit all.") [Infothought] 12:01:35 PM    comment []

Mad Fold-In Circa. 1984.. From Mad magazine back in ‘84. Always on the cutting edge of social criticism… Print, cut and fold to share in the joy. Or, here’s one I prepared earlier. [intermaweb.net] 12:01:29 PM    comment []

Hey Baby Bells Cable, We need multiple tiers of service. . . . . Video on the net is a nice to have application. Self publishing is a nice to have application, whether video or any other format. For our entertainment driven society, it seems to be the low hanging fruit that realizes the value of the net. Wrong. The internet is a great enabler and equalizer not because if can do the easy stuff. Not because it can replace photocopied newsletter of the 70s, or provide an alternative to VHS cassettes, or provide an alternative to satellite or terrestial radio or tv,  but because it can help people in ways that can change and save their lives. Medical and home diagnostic applications require bandwidth. They also require a quality of service that cant be interrupted because little Johnny down the road is trying to download the entire NBC schedule for his freshman highschool class. To enable mission critical applications, you have to have mission critical reliability. And that mission critical reliability has to be able to reach any home that a broadband connection can reach. To do that you need multiple tiers of service. I would rather have little Johnnys grandma getting priority for her video checkup with the doctor at the hospital over  little Johnny getting his bandwidth to upload the video of the prank he pulled on his buddy.. I would rather make sure that information from life support or other important monitoring equipment, medical or otherwise is finding its way without interruption, and without the end user having to pay for an off the net solution. These are the applications that make the net great. These are the applicatins that offer equal opportunity to those who are disadvantaged. I want the telcos and the cable companies and the wireless companies to work out a way to exchange traffic at multiple quality of service levels. [Blog Maverick] 12:01:25 PM    comment []

Stardust. Recovering the canister of comet dust. NASA's Stardust Mission ended successfully early this morning when the return capsule carrying samples from Comet Wild 2 landed in the Utah desert. The sample return capsule's science canister and its cargo of comet and interstellar dust particles will be stowed inside a special aluminum carrying case to await transfer to the Johnson Space Center, Houston, where it will be opened. NASA's Stardust mission traveled 2.88 billion miles during its seven-year round-trip odyssey. Scientists believe these precious samples will help provide answers to fundamental questions about comets and the origins of the solar system. [Weblogsky] 12:01:13 PM    comment []

Making Backups. Anyone who has owned a computer knows: always make backups of important content. Do so regularly. Preferably, put those backups some place that is unlikely to be harmed in a disaster -- a fire safe, or an off-site location. Disasters happen, but they're far easier to recover from if one plans ahead. The same logic applies to other materials we hold dear. The government of Norway announced this week that it will be building an artificial cave deep in a frozen mountain to act as a storage facility for seeds collected by the Global Crop Diversity Trust.  . . . It's a bit staggering to think on this kind of scale. This isn't just a warehouse for seeds in the off-season; the Norwegian seed vault is explicitly a project meant to be used only in the face of civilization-threatening catastrophes. Less-encompassing seed banks have already helped to restore agriculture in areas torn by decades of conflict. This bank will help to restore agriculture globally after planetary-scale disasters.  . . . Here is my overly-ambitous proposal, one that makes the Norwegian seed vault look lazy: we need to create an "off-site backup" for human civilization. We should create a backup of everything that we, as a world, know and believe. This would include everything from scientific knowledge to oral histories, proprietary research to genetic maps, great religious texts to comic books. Everything. This would become an ongoing, living record of who we are as a global civilization. Once collected (which would undoubtedly take a generation or more), the backup must be updated regularly to keep it complete. And it must be someplace off-site, someplace not vulnerable to being damaged or destroyed along with the original. When I say that the backup would need to be "off-site", I mean somewhere off of Earth. . . . . [WorldChanging: Another World Is Here] 12:07:36 AM    comment []

Google Earth awe. I agree with Doc Searls who says this about Google Earth: "Google Earth gets my vote for the Best Program Ever." I downloaded the newly available Mac version yesterday and I've been in awe ever since. I'll admit, however, it can be a very disconcerting (eery?) the first time you "fly down" to your address and see your car parked outside. Bonus links: A very cool Google Earth weblog: Ogleearth. (There are many more.) And here's a a Google Earth Privacy and Security roundup on a blog called "The Map Room." [rexblog: Rex Hammock's Weblog] 12:07:32 AM    comment []

Poor diet link to rising cases of depression. Society: Increasing rates of anxiety could be due to a poor diet, according to a leading mental health charity. [Guardian Unlimited] 12:07:26 AM    comment []

Congress vs amateur content, round XVLVI. (Via Techdirt): Last month some of our elected officials put forth a bill trying to "plug the analog hole" -- a phrase that originally came up as a joke to show how silly it was to try to stop the copying of content. However, we missed Tim Lee's response soon after it came out, highlighting a particularly troublesome exception to the bill for professional devices. Since, of course, plugging the analog hole completely basically means you can't create any new content at all, the bill calls for an exception for "professional" equipment. That's obviously problematic -- because how do you decide what professional equipment is? As Tim asks, does this make the maker of any new technology liable if too many amateurs happen to buy its product? That would have a pretty major impact on product development and pricing. Today, Ed Felten takes this story and points out the next obvious conclusion. It also would make it much harder for amateurs to create content, because they couldn't buy equipment that would let them do so. In other words, perhaps the point of this bill isn't so much to "plug the analog hole" when it comes to copying unauthorized content (not that it would work anyway), but to try to slow down the somewhat rapid growth of amateur content successfully competing with professional broadcast content. We've talked, repeatedly, about how the power of internet has often been in how it has enabled anyone to become a content creator. It's no longer about "professionals" or "amateurs" because that distinction no longer matters. Unfortunately, this bill tries to bring back that distinction in a major way -- and then put up huge barriers for the amateurs. [Smart Mobs] 12:07:18 AM    comment []