Tuesday, March 19, 2002
Net R Us
David Isenberg's latest Smart Letter offers highly annotated commentary on a bunch of buring issues, including a mini-essay on packet-relay networks, which potentially offer scalability to wi-fi:
Wireless packet-relay networks solve the problem of multiple, powerful, overlapping transmitters. A network of weak transmitters (with routers attached) can send a packet a long way without unnecessarily trampling on the spectral commons. Multiple hops replace additional amplification.
Packet-relay radio networks have some other nice properties, too. They solve the line-of-sight problem that restricts single-hop 802.11b transmissions. Multiple hops can get around a large building or over a hill. In addition, packet relay does not have the problems of large, capital-intensive buildouts, because customers own most of the infrastructure. When you want to connect to a packet-relay network, you go down to Radios-R-Us, bring home a unit, and plug it in. When you connect, you beef up the network infrastructure — adding redundant routing and increasing the potential throughput of the entire network.
Dance, pardner!
Andrew Orlowski: Microsoft killed Dell Linux. In The Register. A sample:
"I'm thinking of hitting the OEMs harder than in the past with anti-Linux. ... they should do a delicate dance," Kempin wrote to Ballmer, in what is sure to be a memorable addition to the phrases ("knife the baby", "cut off the air supply") with which Microsoft enriched the English language in the first trial. Unlike those two, this is not contested.
What was music's first social contract?
Tale of Three Cultures is my retrospective at Linux Journal on last week at SXSW and ESC. Maybe I'll get the pix up later.
By the way, the first comment at the bottom of the piece is terrific. One sample:
The only reasons the "Eisners", and others will continue to copyright, control, and cheat the artist (by taking proceeds for doing nothing but controlling distribution channels), is because the NEW artists are signing New contracts.
Fast Layne
The more I read Ken Layne, the more I like him. There's his blog (just inked) and his "dumb new column at Fox news". Both terrific. After reading Who Can You Trust? Dave Letterman, I realized why I like Letterman so much and find Jay Leno, an equally funny guy, insufferable:
Letterman went on television last night and explained his contract negotiations. It was funny, unscripted and honest. Serious news anchors can't do that, due to some ethical something-or-other. Paula goes to CNN, Greta comes over here to Fox News, yet they can't talk about it on the air. But I read it in the New York Times or New York Post or from Jim Romenesko's Media News.
Ken's Music Fans Must Rebel Against Greedy Movie Industry is also one of the betst pieces I've seen on that subject yet. That was apparently Ken's inaugural Fox Weblog. The Editor's note says, "A weblog is a tour of the Net guided by a pilot you will come to know over time. We hope you enjoy the tour." Appropriately, Ken's text is full of links. Good stuff.
Not speaking of which, do you actually care if CNN changes for online video? I'd love it if everything on satellite TV was a la carte. I'd end up paying less, so maybe that's the problem.
Just in time for that HP-Compaq thing to take over
Dell reaches its goal and shuts down, The Onion reports.
As in think
Gary Turner is expanding his momentary lapses of dilution to include the all-new Blogtank. You're invited.
You can't take the id out of identity
It isn't who you are, it's how you look. After all, who cares who you are?
Blog on'
Here's Halley's Comment on What Blogs Are Like. My link gets "quilting bees." There are many others, all good.
Sisters shuffle
The Blog Sisters have held their first reorg.
All look, no feel
iMac therefore iBong
Commit this to meme-ry
Today's Bizarro makes a familiar point.
Letter storm
My sister just gave me (now us) an idea. Since we're unlikely to march on Washington in the next several weeks, and since emails and electronic petitions have the persuasive heft of dandruff, how about printing out our favorite pieces about What the Net Is, Why it Matters, and Why We Need to Save Internet Radio, etc. — and mail them to our congresspeople?
To find your congressperson's address, start here.
Meanwhile, let's keep planning the march.
Where Cinderellas die last
SatireWire: Global March Madness. "Just like the NCAA's, except for the part where the losers die."
How can we keep borrowed ideas if we give them back when we're done?
Here's C.W. Nevius on plagarism. Good piece. It was easy to knock the San Francisco papers when we lived up there, but I miss the columnists. Lotta good ones there.
Speaking of columnists, if you just go to SiiconValley.com, you get redirected to a page of blogs, sort of.
Today's TOP STORY is Weblog: Fiorina's feet put to fire, a "Mercury News Staff Report." I can't read the piece yet because (the browser says) my system memory (374 Megs of it) is too low.
Dan's blog loads, though. No permalinks. At least I have some hope that Dan's CTIA Wireless Weblog will stay up for awhile. Check it out. It's good stuff.
Interesting layout: TOP STORY; then a banner ad; then BLOGS (Just Dan's and Good Morning Silicon Valley — the above staff report); then BREAKING NEWS, with LATEST HEADLINES; then SILICONVALLEY.COM (from the Dept of Redundancy Dept), with TECHNOLOGY/BUSINESS/SV LIFE; Then COLUMISTS (three, including Dan); then PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY; then ROAD MAP TO YOUR TAXES; then a banner ad; then BREAKING NEWS (again), with MORE BUSINESS NEWS; then SV SPONSORS (six little text ads at the bottom of the page).
Archives? Heh. Remember, "Searching is always free."
Clueless doesn't cover it. Clueproof is more like it.
Blogalization
Blogger is Kiwi for toilet, David Williams reports. I like his permalink: readyToTalkShit.
This reminds me of the big laugh I got on a bus in Australia when I talked about my "fanny pack."
I've touched him, but I didn't notice anything
So I've decided to patent the color orange
In Tech Review Seth Shulman explains how patenting fruit has gone nuts.
Microsoft loses one, sort of
It's a Blogrogator!
From Corante: Microcontent News: The Online Magazine for Weblogs, Webzines and Personal Publishing.
Irony-deficient?
Check here.
Turns out we just wear the fuck out
Says here male menopause is a myth. Thanks to Nonharmful for the link.
Excuse us while we take over. Thank you.
The new (April) issue of Fast Company is thick with pieces about blogs, plus a nice interview with David Weinberger.
Not quite speaking of which, Chris Pirillo likes David's book too.
By one conservative estimate
Jonathn V. Last gives his thoughts on blogging in The Weekly Standard:
Well, if blogs aren't a fad (and that's a big "if"), it means that as more people become connected to the Internet, the printed word will become increasingly important again. Broadcast news will recede into the background because it's too unwieldy to index and too expensive to produce (a reporter with a laptop beats an Ashleigh Banfield with a camera crew every time).
Which would be a big deal. The ramifications of returning to print are too big to get into here (but just to get you started, think of what it would mean in terms of making English an even more globally dominant language; or what would happen to politics if TV shrunk to pre-JFK levels of importance), but on first blush, they would seem to be mostly good.
I don't buy all of it
Here's DigitalConsumer.org, and what Walter Mossberg says about it in the Wall Street Journal:
If you want to preserve both the music and movies we enjoy, and your rights to use them freely, there are several things you can do. First, stop stealing music online, and stop condoning the practice. Second, boycott copy-protected CDs. Third, start paying attention to the coming fight over copy-protection, and speak up for your rights as a consumer.
I like DigitalConsumer, but I'd like them a lot more if they called themselves DigitalCustomer. Same goes for Walter's last word as well.