|
December
20 , 2002
| Open
the Spectrum: It's time to decentralize the ether.
The problem in a nutshell is that we license
access to frequencies as if the spectrum of frequencies
were land that has to be apportioned. While this may have
made some technical sense seventy years ago, it doesn't
makes sense technologically or economically now. The metaphor
is wrong. We need new metaphors that are closer to reality,
and then we need new policies that will open up the ether.
Spectrum is ubiquity
Open Spectrum is freedom...
Talking
to Librarians: Random notes about information.
I gave a talk to a library association
and pretended I knew something about the history of information.
Among the factoids me and my pal Google
dug up:
While I knew that Herman Hollerith,
inventor of the punch card, had been inspired by the way
in which some looms were "programmed," I didn't know he
was also inspired by...
Moral
Fiction: Why do Pulp Fiction and Grand
Theft Auto feel more moral than watching Ahnuld kick
bad guy butt?
I watched Pulp Fiction again the
other night. I don't want it to be one of my favorite films,
but it is.Pulp Fiction accomplishes a true suspension
of moral belief...
Reflexology:
What's wrong with having the right moral reflexes? Nothin',
that's what.
The
Anals of Marketing: We're all in the sights of marketeers.
Might as well enjoy it.
Digital
Rights Liberation: News from the war we're losing.
Google
Google Google!: Morsels, tidbits and three tips.
Paging
Dr. Freud: I seem to be making more Freudian slips,
perhaps because I want to sleep with my mother. Oops, I meant
"because of the stress I'm under."
Misc.:
Misc.
Walking
the Walk: Maids Home Service discovers that portals
are not read-only.
Cool
Tool: DVDme lets you make little Timmy's dance recital
look as slick as a corporate sales video.
What
I'm playing: No One Lives Forever 2.
Internetcetera:
The sudden decrease in dot-com failures must indicate a comeback!
Links:
You found 'em.
Email,
Advice and Time-Delayed Stinkbombs: Mail from the
smartest readership on the planet! (And the least able to
detect pandering.)
Bogus
contest: Wireless Oxymorons
|
October
25 , 2002
Digital
ID: Four lessons from the DigitalID World conference, including:
IDs are nice but not the center of the universe
The sign on the banner in the conference hotel
said that Digital ID is at the center of it all, but I'm still
not convinced. Yes, a digital ID would let me avoid multiple sign-ins
as I traverse various Web sites, but the convenience isn't worth
the illness-at-ease that registering with Microsoft Passport would
cause. And even without a digital ID system, I can use my credit
card right now and buy anything I want online (up to my $125 credit
limit, of course)....
The
Need for Leeway: It's the only way we manage to live together,
and computers are eating away at it
Let's say you a sign a lease for an apartment.
It stipulates that you are not to paint without explicit permission.
But your dog scratches the bottom of the door, so you buy a pint
of matching paint and touch up the dog's damage. You are technically
in violation of the lease but no one cares...
Educational
Leeway: A Personal Addendum: Grading kids sucks
It's a bad thing when you come back from the
feel-good Meet the Teachers night at the local, progressive public
school and need a drink.
Hope
on the copyright front: Multiple news items actually offer
some hope. But don't get your hopes up about hope.
Notes
and Disclaimers Pertaining to the Above Material: Covering
my ass when it comes to using words
How
to Become a Guru: Ten steps to financial freedom.
Why
Google Totally Sucks! Really!: Nah, not really.
Misc.:
Misc.
The
Anals of Marketing: Jumping the Loan Shark and Yahoo the
Censor
Walking
the Walk: Timex finds the Web changes time
Cool
Tool: Picasa organizes your pictures
What
I'm Playing: Grand Theft Auto 3 - reprehensible but so damn
much fun
Internetcetera:
Broadband vs. cell phone adoption rates
Links:
You send 'em, I run 'em
Political
Links: Hey, you get ready to start a war, you get a few
links
Email,
Arbitrary Insults, and Suspicious Hacking Coughs: Where
are you bastards?
Bogus
contest: My brain on the Net
October
21 , 2002
Special
Issue - Letter to FCC: Fail Fast!:
A bunch of netty women and men have sent a letter
to FCC Chair Michael "Son of" Powell. The basic message
is: When the telecommunications industry goes bankrupt, don't
try to resuscitate the corpse. Let it go. Its infrastructure and
the business model based on it are obsolete. It can't be fixed.
Instead, let the market bring forth a new era of innovation and
connectivity, let a hundred flowers bloom, let the moon enter
the house of Aquarius, etc....
September
12 , 2002
Palladium
and the Real World: Microsoft's bid to make our computers
secure will also make them vulnerable to stiff-fingered copyright
holders.
There are two problems. First,
our computers keep getting infected with viruses, including the
intentional virus called "spam," because they have no
way of knowing which incoming stuff to trust.
Second, people who want to sell us content and
keep us from redistributing it have no way to stop us cold.
There's a way to solve both these problems at
once. But there's a price...
The
3 Rules of Digital Rights Management: There's nothing wrong
with managing copyrighted materials, if you do it right.
I've got no problem with a company selling me
a work of creativity according to whatever rules it wants to establish.
I have no problem with companies making the rules they've established
enforceable. But I do have a problem with fundamentally degrading
the openness of the Internet ...
Real World End User Licenses: Defaulting to Stupidity: The
importance of leeway.
Ed Foster writes in InfoWorld on the spread of
end user license agreements to printed material. His example is
a book on "Geriatric Care Guidelines" from Omnicare, sent unsolicited
to physicians. A label warns you not to open the shrink-wrapping
unless you agree with the license which, basically, forbids you
from telling anyone what's in the book.
Lots of printed documents have had conditions
attached to them...
The
Pop-under that Saved the World: Find Osama!
Why
Vacations Suck: Ten reasons no one likes vacations.
The
Anals of Marketing: Stamps,
End
User Abuse License, and protecting Godzilla
Walking
the Walk: Maybe conversation actually is important.
Cool
Tool: LeXpert and StartUpManager
What
I'm playing: Clive Barker's Undying
Internetcetera:
Spamming the dead
Scandal
Central: A picture is worth 10-20 years.
4
Conferences, No Wedding: I'm plugging them, even if I'm
not going to them.
Links:
You found 'em.
Email,
Random Slights and Unsightly Growths: Your excellent emissions.
Bogus
contest: Open Source Conspiracy Theories
July
24, 2002
Dreyfus
on the Internet: Hubert Dreyfus, philosopher, has written
a monograph about the Net that is profound and off the mark.
First let me say some positive stuff because
I'm about to disagree with most of Hubert Dreyfus's attempt to
deflate the Web in his book "On the Internet,"
in particular his assumption that we are still in an age of information
scarcity, rather than information abundance...
Bluetooth
Pro and Con: How do you want to go wireless? There's no
simple answer yet.
Bluetooth is a wireless standard created to enable
very local devices to work together: your computer can talk to
the printer, and your PDA can talk to your computer, and your
fax machine can talk to your coffee maker if it feels like making
prank calls. It's USB without the wires.
But Bluetooth wants to be more...
Sham
compromises: We're losing the Digital Rights Management
battle
Keeping
Telcos Simple, Stupid: How do you explain the telco mess?
Pocketful
of Standards: A bluffer's guide.
Blogger
Dead Pool: Who will be the first journalist fired for what
s/he says in his/her blog?
The
Anals of Marketing: Stupid, stupid marketing.
Walking
the Walk: Automated integration: Boring but helpful.
Cool
Tool: Multi renamer.
What
I'm Playing: Jedi Outcast.
Internetcetera:
News on the Net and off.
Eighth
First Name Award: Google searching for first names.
Links:
You suggest 'em, I run 'em.
Email:
You write 'em, I run 'em.
Bogus
contest: Tomorrow's Moral Monsters
June
26 , 2002
The
Semantic Argument Web: Tim Berners-Lee's dream of a Web
of meaning is unlikely to happen, at least the way he thinks.
Tim Berners-Lee, blessed be his name (and shortened
be his name to TBL for now), has been pondering what the Web could
become. His vision is that it spawns a "Semantic Web." I
don't believe this particular vision is going to happen. And it's
not going to happen for the very reasons that the Web did
happen.
I get such a feeling of deja vu as I read about
the Semantic Web, at least the bits I can understand...
Office
of Homepage InSecurity: We should use the Web better than
this.
I hadn't been back to the home page of The Office
of Homeland Security since I went to get a copy of the color-coded
alert system to make
fun of it. Have I mentioned that it sucks? And in this case,
sucking isn't a laughing matter...
Clueful
Marketing: Could you find a better example?
Blogthreads:
We need a way to refer to 'em. Shelley is going to give 'em to us.
A
Small, Necessary Gesture: A hand signal for when you've
been a jerk.
The
Invalidator: The official HTML validator ought to loosen
up
Walking
the Walk: Macromedia and a game maker seek advice from outside
their own conference rooms
Cool
Tool : Pockey stores 10G USBly
What
I'm Playing: Serious Sam: Second Encounter. Too much fun.
Internetcetera:
Why am I still using Office?
Anals
of Marketing: Mainly bad ideas.
Links:
You found 'em, I intermediate 'em.
Small
pieces: Alex Golub engages with it.
Email,
Arbitrary Insults, and Suspicious Hacking Coughs: More lovely
messages from y'all.
Bogus
contest: Upcoming Books
May
11, 2002
Pope
on the Internet: The Church's message on the Internet gets
it surprisingly right ... and unsurprisingly wrong.
The Pope is way ahead of many others, including
Leading Businesses, in seeing the Net as a new public place —
actually, a new place for a new public — rather than as
a lower-cost broadcast medium. And yet the broadcast model of
evangelism still holds sway...
Bombastic
Truth: Christopher Locke's new book is brave personally
and...
Christopher Locke is a brave writer...The Bombast
Transcripts is RageBoy and Chris Locke by turns. It's RageBoy
interviewing Mr. Ed (yes, the horse) about ecommerce and postmodernism
and RageBoy ranting about the demonic master he served
Getting
Personal: ...the personal on the Web connects in a way that
broadcast can't.
Something remarkable is going on at Chris'
newsletter, EGR,
because something remarkable is going on with Chris. Chris has
broken up with Laurie, the love of his life...
Why is this any of your business? It's not, of
course. Yet it's there as if it were. That's what's remarkable.
The
Gift of Lying: Honesty is overrated.
...If you didn’t know any better, you’d
think that by and large 21st century Americans are the most truthful
people in history, we’re so shocked and outraged that someone
might lie to advance his interests. We've developed a zero tolerance
policy for lying.
But of course we all lie all the time...
Stop
me before I'm inconsistent again!: Noting the inconsistency
of the previous articles
Walking
the Walk: the Navy gets all KM-y.
Cool
Tool: Mitch Kapor may have something for us, and Kanguru
storage.
Now
Playing: The games people, um, I , play.
Internetcetera:
CIO survey.
Beijing
and Peru Escape Hostage Plot: Two slip past the Microsoft
sentries.
Why
Search Engines Suck: They just do. Except Google, of course.
Virtual
Everything: On the heels of the virtual keyboard, our labs
have been busy...
The
Anals of Marketing: Why marketing sucks.
Links:
Your contributions, outstanding as always
Email,
Scurrilous Attacks and Premeditated Insults: Must get more
email!
Bogus
contest: Kids Versions
Browse
back issues...
|
