Modulator

Where We've Been

Lists detailing what it was like somewhere in 19xx or 18xx show up from time to time in varying formats. We might be well served if we clipped and posted one next to our monitors as a reminder of how much things can change and how little someone looking back on 2004 from the future may understand us.

Tyler Cowen provides some excerpts from one version and Michael at 2blowhards provides a variant extracted from an audio Economics course he has listening to.

Read both lists here:

Continue reading "Where We've Been"

Friday Spiders

For those of you who miss Kevin Drum's cats there is some fine spider blogging today.

First, PZ Myers introduces us to his first spring visitor.

Second, Mrs Tilton presents a couple of fine arachnids in detail. Mrs Tilton is a regular Friday spider blogger who will be on vacation for a couple weeks.

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Update: In this exclusive interview with SK Bubba Kevin, now blogging at The Washington Monthly, reveals why cat blogging ended:

SKB: Have you consciously changed your blogging style? For example, do you tend towards more "serious" topics?

KD: No. ....They just asked me to keep doing what I've been doing all along.

The only change is that I don't do purely personal posting anymore. Catblogging is the main fatality.

Perspective on Fallujah

Jane Galt puts the terrible event in Fallujah in a proper perspective here and then here:

What happened in Fallujah is horrifying, and cries out for justice. But it cries out for justice precisely because that mob in Fallujah was composed of people, just like us, who should be expected not to do evil things, but do anyway sometimes, because that is the human condition. And it is horrifying in part because if America were invaded (even by a relatively benevolent occupier), it is more likely than not that we would see hungry, frightened mobs doing much the same thing.

Just go read both posts!

April 1 Foolery

Via Metafilter here is a list of many of today's jokes, traps and put ons...some better then others and some not work safe.

California Governing

It is too early to tell how the second approach will play out but it is pretty clear that the first failed:

1) Gray Davis:

“In golf, they teach you to hit one shot -- and you don't think about anything but that shot. And then you go to the next shot, and hit that shot…My natural reaction is caution. I take life a step at a time.”

2) Arnold Schwarzegger:

Everything falls into place if you look at the overall picture. If you just piecemeal it, you just look at one at a time really close and you don’t look at the other things, with blinders on, that’s when you start making mistakes and start scrambling. And you don’t want to scramble.”

I certainly prefer the latter approach.

Via Daniel Weintraub.

A Blog of Blogs

Well, really, an aggregator. I don't know whether I'll ever use Kinja as I'm quite happy with Bloglines and my blog rolls but I'm probably not in the first cohort of the target audience.

Some folks might find Kinja valuable:

Kinja is an RSS reader for people who don't know what RSS is, who don't know what a reader is, for that matter, or don't care. A Kinja digest looks much like a weblog, with excerpts arranged in reverse chronological order.

Kinja is getting a fair amount of publicity including a NYT article and lots of linkage. It will be interesting to watch and see how this service evolves and how it impacts blog world.

Oh, and you might want to read their terms of service which apparently has a lot in common with Yahoo's.

Via The Gothamist.

Out of Work?

It looks like Google is hiring.

March's Top Referrers

On the right side bar is the updated roll of Modulator's 21 top referrers (yet another tie for 20th). Number 21 produced 19 referrals compared to 13 in February. Statistics are culled from AWStats running on Modulator's server at Hosting Matters.

March churn was up from February with with 9 blogs dropped off and 9 new ones added.

Thank you one and all!

Also, I'd like to acknowledge significant referrals from some of the blogosphere's 'service' sites: Technorati, weblogs.com, blogrolling.com, MovableType, Blogdex, blogoshpere.us, Sitemeter, NZ Bear's Ecosystem, Bloogz and Daypop.

All of the blog rolls except the Base Roll are ordered by most recently updated so be sure to ping weblogs.com or blogrolling.com to push to the top of the rolls. These are certainly the sites I tend to look at first and visitors will see you at the top of the roll as well.

For a brief discussion of Modulator's blog rolls look here.

Is Your Pop-up Blocker Working?

If not you might want to remedy the situation now (R):

The banner and pop-up ads placed by the Republican National Committee on about 1,400 sites starting March 19....

I'm not a democrat but I do concur with Charles Kuff's sentiment:

Of course, as a good Democrat, I heartily cheer this effort. You go, guys! Spread those popups like kudzu!

It really is too bad they are not spending more of their money on this approach.

Via Sisyphus Shrugged.

Binary Message

Learn binary counting and send a message all at once.

Surf's Up

New computer simulations suggest that Saturn's moon Titan might be pretty entertaining for surfers:

Wind speeds of 20 km/h produce waves five metres high (16 feet). This is seven times as high as those produced on Earth by the same wind speed, although Titan's lower gravity makes the waves more widely spaced and slower moving.

However, the wind speed estimates used are conservative and could be higher, generating truly giant waves.

Some improved wet suit designs will be needed to take adavantage...

Air America

Andrew Cline has a yawn for Air America:

I have questioned the concept of liberal talk radio before...... I don't think it will draw much of an audience; it's not a good business concept.

He has quite a bit to say about this and sums up with:

What sells in electronic media is ideological validation. The right has perfected its talking points and its media personalities to such an extent that they present an entertaining product for people who wish to bask in the glory of their own ideology. I do not believe this basking is a good thing for the continued health of a democratic republic. And I do not think liberals should stoop to imitating it. It's a lot like admitting ideological defeat.

This seems about right. When I listen to the right wing talk folks I generally hear a lot of this basking and stroking and generally code words (liberal, hilory, bush hater, etc) substituting for thoughtful analysis. If this becomes all Air America offers then why bother.

But, I'ill withhold judgement until I've had a chance to listen for a few months.

Not Joining Orkut

Chris Tweney tells us why he is not joining Orkut and his reasons seem good to me.

Via The Talking Dog.

How Many RSS Subscribers do You Have?

Well, this is cool. When they pull a feed from a site both Bloglines and YahooFeedSeeker report how many folks are subscribing to the feed.

Jeremy Zawodny shows a sample here.

Now, all we need is an easy way to read this stuff from the log file and manipulate the data. My current method is kind of cumbersome: download archive file, unzip and then parse with Notepad.

Downloading has an Impact on Music Sales

The impact, though, is very small and in some cases positive:

This estimated effect is statistically indistinguishable from zero despite a narrow standard error. The economic effect is also small. Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale. We also find that file sharing has a differential impact across sales categories. For example, high selling albums actually benefit from file
sharing.

So, as has been recently mentioned here the content providers and in particular the RIAA might want to take another look at their business models. Perhaps the artists should consider whether they really want to be involved with the RIAA members.

On the other hand Newmark's Door links to this study which argues that there is a significant impact. I hope Craig does take a closer look at the two studies and write something on their comparative validity from a technical perspective.

Initial link to the Strumpf Oberholzer-gee study via Boing Boing.

Free Culture Discussion

Read along with Lawrence Solum a he discusses Free Culture:

This is the first of eight posts on Lessig's book--a sort of blogospheric book club. You are invited to read along, and to send your comments on the book, my posts, or on the comments of other readers.

The class reading schedule may be a bit agressive if you are not an academic (faculty or student) but if you are at all interested in intellectual property issues and the internet you will be well served to join in.

Via Lawrenc Lessig.

Update: Lawrence Lessig discusses the rationale for the free offering.

Update (3/31): Tech Law Advisor notes that a Wiki of Free Culture has been created.

Lucky Family

These folks are lucky that they did not end up on this list (via Say Uncle).

Wash too many clothes and expect a visit from the police. Radley asks:

And is anyone else troubled by the fact that cops are permitted to comb utilities records for suspiciously high electric bills? What other records are they allowed access to? Can they look through your cable bill to see what pay-per-view movies you're ordeing?

It seems to me that we should be more then troubled. How many more have to die before enough folks will stand up and say no?

Jammin' the Night Away

Well, I don't agree with SK Bubba's rating of the Allman Brothers Band as the greatest touring jam band Ever. Regular readers will probably know my choice.

However, Bubba's rating and Scott's review of last night's Beacon Theater show inspire me so I'll download a recent show or two for listening and plan to attend their next close by gig.

When Will Iraq be Liberated?

Or is there a new definition and this can be expected in the United states soon?

Via Hammerdown.

After Left Behind

Ezra has a suggestion for one more volume in the Left Behind series.

Office Alternative

Zombyboy has been using OpenOffice and finds it to be a good alternative to M$ Office. From his review:

If you are a hardcore user of all of Office's applications and functionality, it's probably worth the money. For the rest of us, the low cost should make OpenOffice an obvious choice, even given the large download.

I do not currently use OpenOffice but have in the past and concur with Zombyboy's review. If I were getting a new home PC I think it would be a good fit and it would be just fine for my small business as well.

Update (3/29): I should probably have rechecked at least the spreadsheet module before joining in the above recommendation. Please read Jim Henley's comment.

Free Culture

Well, yes, really free culture.

Lawrence Lessig's new book Free Culture is available both for sale and for free via download or bittorrent.

It will be interesting to see how this experience compares to these results.

Lessig's announcement is here.

Busy.....

The Modulator staff has been overwhelmed with real world work and home activities this week.

And, heck, the Clarke conversation has been well covered! If you need to catch up on this Tim Dunlop is a good place to start.

When time permits, hopefully later today, the staff looks forward to reentering the virtual world with a few thoughts on the pledge case.

Blogrolling.com Slowness

Hmmm, blogrolling.com seems to be backed up a bit this afternoon...which is causing loading problems with the sidebars. Sorry. (20:14 GMT)

It's Not There

Jim Henley helps us out by advising that this website does not exist.

Who am I to argue that you should always double check such propositions.

Sorry to See You Go

The fine blog From the margins of academe, Invisible Adjunct, is signing off.

While I mostly lurked there I still say Thanks for the great conversations!

Best wishes for the future.

A Lesson for the RIAA and MPAA

Lost in their ongoing attempt to keep the music market constrained the RIAA continues to harrass music downloaders and the MPAA is attacking peer 2 peer applications and working to have anticopying technology built into consumer goods.

They would, perhaps, be better served to look at what is happening over at that bastion of capitalism on the web: the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Amongst other activities these folks sell books and an interesting thing has happened to the volumes that they have made available on the web: the sales of paper copies improve. For example, they recently made a book called Omnipotent Government available on the web:

What happened was precisely the reverse of what the publisher expected. Instead of lost sales, the sales of the book shot up. In the few weeks since the text went online, more copies of this book left our warehouse than during the whole of the last decade.

The RIAA and MPAA folks would do well to think about this:

The point is to expand the market and not assume a fixed number of consumers. Books online and offline reinforce the viability of each other, just as movies in theaters boost movies in rental, and free radio helps the market for CDs for purchase. It takes some thought and entrepreneurial judgement to understand why, but the history of technological development informs the case.

Read the rest of the article.

Via Hit and Run.

Clarke's Book

Tim Dunlop has read the first bit of Clarke's book Against All Enemies and has a lot to say about it:

The first thing to say is that, despite all the hostility arising from the 60 Minutes interview last night, Clarke is rather more respectful of the administration than I might have anticipated.

This is in respect to both bush and rice. Sure, this impression may change after more reading but given all the ranting going on today I certainly expected readers to have a different impression.

Based on Tim's review of the first chapter that this will be a book that folks on all sides of the related issues will want to read:

I guess there are two stories being interwoven: the close-up detail of the day and of how the administration and the various intelligence and security agencies reacted to the attacks, and then Clarke's reflections on the people involved, and the broader context within which the events unfolded.

There's not much point trying to recount the close-up detail, the way planes were grounded, the air force was scrambled, the individuals from the President down were secured and the way all the actions to cope with the attack were launched, because no summary can do it justice. All I can say is, if you get a chance to read it, read it. It's a gripping account.

I'm looking forward to the reading and the discussion.