Y'know, every so often I read a well-done Weblog like this one, and I say to myself, "Self, you should write something up like that." But then I envisualize it looking like a "Hunt The Wumpus" game where I forgot to add the Wumpus.

Then I notice how fine that Quake III icon is lookin'. Oh yeah, baby, come to papa....

--Transmission Interrupted--
11:55:43 PM     Discuss: []


Yeah, Yeah, everyone else is linking to it, so I might as well, too. Information wants to be worthless.
3:22:24 AM     Discuss: []


Ballmer: Sanctions would ruin Windows. Microsoft's CEO says the company would have to withdraw Windows from the market if a federal court approves sanctions sought by nine of the states in the antitrust case. [CNET News.com]

I can't figure this out...is this supposed to be a Threat...or a Promise?

Obviously, this is one of those blustering, negotiation threats, but if it makes anyone nervous about what it would imply for our economy, then, well, it's time for Microsoft to go. Bye bye.
2:39:42 AM     Discuss: []


They are playing with the nuclear weapon we call The Market, and they will die 

Tyromaniac quotes Robert Heinlein from 1939:

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped or turned back, for their private benefit.

Also Steven Levy, who says...

The Disney Corp. was once celebrated for its crowd-pleasing recipe: underpromise and overdeliver. But Eisner and his copyright-holding counterparts, drinking deep from the fountain of fear, seem to have adopted a new motto: overcharge and disable. Things wonÕt get better for them until they realize that even for copyright holders, the Internet can be a Magic Kingdom.

To which we offer Shakespeare, from Richard III:

So now prosperity begins to mellow and drop into the rotten mouth of death.

The Mystery of Stephen James 

Here's Deborah on Journalistic identities, among other things. One sample:

Apparently lying to your customer is considered smart marketing so there's no real reason why I should have my knickers in a knot over a columnist I believe is imaginary.

Strong shit. If I were Mr. James, I'd blow my own cover right about now. I mean, check out what's tops on a Google search for Stephen James Upside.

Life from below 

Digging John Perry Barlow's Death From Above. Still one of my favorite essays. It begins...

Over the last 30 years, the American CEO Corps has included an astonishingly large percentage of men who piloted bombers during World War II. For some reason not so difficult to guess, dropping explosives on people from commanding heights served as a great place to develop a world view compatible with the management of a large post-war corporation.

It was an experience particularly suited to the style of broadcast media. Aerial bombardment is clearly a one-to-many, half-duplex medium, offering the bomber a commanding position over his "market" and terrific economies of scale.

Now, most of these jut-jawed former flyboys are out to pasture on various golf courses, but just as they left their legacy in the still thriving Cold War machinery of the National Security State, so their cultural perspective remains deeply, perhaps permanently, embedded in the corporate institutions they led for so long, whether in media or manufacturing. America remains a place where companies produce and consumers consume in an economic relationship which is still as asymmetrical as that of bomber to bombee.

The lop-sided character of this world view has been much on my mind lately with regard to various corporate projects on what they are all too pleased to call the "Information Superhighway" (evoking as it does the familiar comforts of Big Construction by Big Government in cooperation with Big Business). The cable companies and Baby Bells have a model for developing the next phase of telecom infrastructure which, were it applied to the design of physical superhighways, would have us building them with about five thousand lanes in one direction and one lane in the other.

Related: Marek on The Bravery of Being out of Range with The Big Red Button.

Also Jacob's response on Fuzzy Blogic.

The Ghost in Turing's Machines 

Here's Kevin Marks in an Open Letter to Jack Valenti and Michael Eisner:

Turing's Universal Machine means that you cannot have a software or hardware protection scheme that is secure. Whatever scheme you come up with can be simulated by another computer. The computer industry are not opposing your bill because they want to encourage copying, or because they are bloody-minded, they are not opposing you because of your self serving rhetoric about rewarding artists (remember Peggy Lee, Michael?), they are opposing you because what you want is provably impossible. You can only succeed by making all Turing machines illegal.

Kevin was quite properly set off by Jack's and Michael's aggressively delusional lobbying of congress for lawmaking intended to make the Net and its instruments into a supply-controlled plumbing system for the routing of paid content from a few Big Suppliers to billions of powerless Consumers.

Flacklash 

In Pulling a Clue Train, Phil Cubeta, aka The Happy Tutor, shows that we on the Cluetrain list do not all, as an old Australian friend of mine used to put it, "blow up each other's asses with a short straw" or "piss in each other's pockets."( I still don't know what either expression means, exactly, but perhaps those among us who speak Stryne can provide a correct interpretation, in case we're wrong here.)

Speaking of which (sort of), Phil points toward Jonathon's blog on blogging decorum for guidance in responding to blogs that might, in a less civilized places ÷ like, say, Usenet or Slashdot ÷ bait flame.

BLAMe-O 

Who started this google bombing stuff? Look up "dumb motherfucker" and find this story from more than a year ago, in the Web's Pliocene Epoch.

Thanks to Don Marti for the history.

Priceless  [Doc Searls Weblog]
2:34:48 AM     Discuss: []


The Bravery of Being out of Range with The Big Red Button
2:16:57 AM     Discuss: []


Slate Gets Duped. You know, this is probably the first article I've ever read on Slate, and I'm impressed that they fessed up to it. I guess that says something about my implicit trust in the "news" media, huh?
2:09:15 AM     Discuss: []