Wednesday, February 26, 2003
The unwind-up, the unpitch...
The Daily Unwind is a brand new blog that just showed up in my Technorati cosmos. So blog entry number one. What's going on here? Well, I'm on my sixth beer, it's 2am ...
Uncommons thinking
On the Spectrum Policy: Property or Commons? question, Grant M. Henninger says
The leaders of the Intellectual Property fight have done a great disservice to the public as a whole by defining knowledge as a commons. The term is incorrect and politically destructive. If the public is ever to get behind a more fair and equitable system for copyrights the idea of the intellectual commons must change.
He aslo says
Intellectual Property should not be referred to as a commons (for) a more political reason. When people see the word commons in reference to an economic issue they invariably think of Communism. In the United States and in Europe no political movement can ever be associated with Communism if it hopes to succeed.
I don't agree. I think "intellectual property" conflates at least two different subjects and sets of meanings. It's a much smaller challenge to discredit IP as a label than to pry those who oppose the Great IP Land Grab away from the Commons Concept that brought them together. "Commonism" notwithstanding.
Equatorial Cluetracking
Hyperbole is a Brazilian blog whose author, Volney Faustini, wrote to me yesterday, letting me (and the rest of us) know, among other things, that an old Portuguese saying, "to miss history's streetcar," speaks of a Cluetrain-compatible culture, demonstrated by Marketing Hacker, the new book by Hernani Dimantas. The release party was amply covered (as best I can tell — it's mostly in Portuguese) in Hyperbole, Hernani's own Mercado Hype blog and others. Hyperbole does have some English explanation, however (though I can't seem to find the permalink).
Living End
Aaron Swartz in The Wireless Future:
Let me tell you how it will go:
Apple gets tired of releasing new, faster wireless hardware (AirPort, AirPort Extreme, AirPort Insane, AirPort Illegal). So they release one box, software upgradeable to use whatever new protocols and frequencies become available. As consumers clamor for more bandwidth the FCC opens up more spectrum, making the adjustable boxes more valuable.
Meanwhile the boxes are getting stronger too, able to push bits for farther distances. They’re cheap and popular enough that all of San Francisco is covered a forest of overlapping wireless. It’s time to unify them. The next software upgrade turns this collection of hub-and-spoke networks into one large mesh, letting packets bounce from one base station to another, perhaps stopping at a few laptops in between.
This giant network becomes the home to a high-bandwidth file sharing network. The RIAA and MPAA look on in horror. There’s no ISP to go after, if they shut down one node the packets just bounce thru a different path. “At least it’s just San Francisco,” they think.
Brewster buys a faster Internet connection and opens it up to this giant wireless network. Everyone in SF cancels their cruddy cable and DSL service, and uses real high-speed two-way Internet connections, running their email and web servers from home, like the creators intended.
Interesting thought about the boxes. On the Web, this little Lindows MobilePC runs rings around my Titanium laptop. And that's with either Netscape or Konqueror, while the TiBook runs Safari, a Konqueror derivative.
The LinBook is an appliance: the computing equivalent of a cell phone or a digital camera. And for a similar price: under $800.
My point: we're ready for the Net equivalent of the telephone. Does anybody care how "fast" a phone is? Bare functionality is all that matters. How much more do we want a Net appliance to do?
Clue training
Interesting story here about how a disgruntled PowerMac G4 customer took problems into his own site: G4noise.com.
Thanks to Hylton for the pointer.
The greater sucker rule
An octopus has learned to open jars of shrimp by watching acquarium personnel do the same underwater.
Observations on the verge of war
Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and the anthrax mailer are all still free to terrify.
But before you buy any duct tape maybe you should read the Department of Homeland Security's "Guide To Preparedness": "In many biological [and chemical] attacks, people will not know they have been exposed to an agent. In such situations, the first evidence of an attack may be when you notice symptoms of the disease caused by an agent exposure, and you should seek immediate medical attention for treatment."
Molly Ivins on George Will's joke claiming Paris had never been defended by the French (can't find a link, cuz it was among GW's Newsweek columns, which are nigh unfindable — help is welcome):
One million, four hundred thousand French soldiers were killed during World War I. As a result, there weren't many Frenchmen left to fight in World War II. Nevertheless, 100,000 French soldiers lost their lives trying to stop Adolf Hitler.
On behalf of every one of those 100,000 men, I would like to thank Mr. Will for his clever joke. They were out-manned, out-gunned, out-generaled and, above all, out-tanked. They got slaughtered, but they stood and they fought.
Nicolas Lemann in The New Yorker:
Has a war ever been as elaborately justified in advance as the coming war with Iraq? Because this war is not being undertaken in direct response to a single shattering event (it's been nearly a year and a half since the September 11th attacks), and because the possibility of military action against Saddam Hussein has been Washington's main preoccupation for the better part of a year, the case for war has grown so large and variegated that its very multiplicity has become a part of the case against it.
Somebody's notes from Davos:
US unilateralism is seen as arrogant, bullyish. If the U.S. cannot behave in partnership with its allies -- especially the Europeans -- it risks not only political alliance but BUSINESS, as well. Company leaders argued that they would rather not have to deal with US government attitudes about all sorts of multilateral treaties (climate change, intellectual property, rights of children, etc.) -- it's easier to just do business in countries whose governments agree with yours. And it's cheaper, in the long run, because the regulatory envornments match. War against Iraq is seen as just another example of the unilateralism.
From LGF, a pointer to War for Peace? It Worked in My Country, an op-ed in the New York Times by East Timor's José Ramos-Horta :
History has shown that the use of force is often the necessary price of liberation. A respected Kosovar intellectual once told me how he felt when the world finally interceded in his country: "I am a pacifist. But I was happy, I felt liberated, when I saw NATO bombs falling."
If we follow that justification (and others like it), the military will reportedly execute a shock & awe strategy to achieve "rapid dominance."
Help the man give his kid something to shoot
David Sifry is looking for a sub-$100 digital camera for his little girl. I have no idea (other than one of those real cheap jobs you see in a bubble pack at the drug store). Maybe you do.