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 Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Merge Left [TOMPAINE.com - Features]
Some interesting discussion of what the Left needs to do. Although there is some pratting on about becoming just like the conservatives (i.e. think tanks, fundraising), the part I liked best is this: 'I think there's a lot more collaboration these days among the various organizations on the left,' believes Nan Aron. 'I know there certainly is on the issue we address, and that concerns judicial nominations. The groups involved include ours, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, People for the American Way, the Sierra Club. I think these organizations have developed a very effective coalition. Recently, a large number of organizations pooled their money and put out an ad supporting the filibuster against Miguel Estrada. I think, in fact, we're going to see much more of that, only because, frankly, if we all want to win, we know we all have to work together. Coalitions are difficult ventures but I think we all recognize how incredibly important they are.'
This is an approach that any group can use. The coalitions that can harness this and use it will be more successful than others. Keep a look out to see if it really works or not. 11:41:33 PM 
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We Found Them! [TOMPAINE.com - Features]
A few weeks ago, I wrote about some interesting work on my Corante blog. It showed that a mutation found in a single gene could have dire effects on a person's ability to detoxify nerve gases, as well as the drugs used to help protect against these toxins. Perhaps this will be discussed. The government has gone from saying a few hundred soldiers to almost half of all those serving in the Gulf War I were exposed. No wonder I can be so cynical about our government. 11:28:31 PM
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Guess What? People Communicate Online. It appears that people are finally realizing what makes the internet useful. It's not "yet another broadcast medium" or "a giant searchable catalog" as many seemed to assume for years. From the very beginning, the feature that made the internet something useful is that it allows people to communicate better. Business Week has a fairly long article looking at the rise of the "social web", as more people realize the true benefit of the internet. Thankfully, the article stays (mostly) away from overhyped topics surrounding blogs and social software (though, they do have the obligatory article about blogs and social software that quotes all the exact same people as every such article does), but focuses on more real-use examples of how people and companies are really leveraging what the internet is good at doing.
[Techdirt]
All the killer apps of the Internet age have been social ones, programs and applications that increase the social interactions of humans. That is what is changing the world. 11:18:17 PM
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KMart Mass Arrest Trial Update. No blue wall of silence here. Mark Aguirre is the former police captain on trial for official oppression in last... [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]
I never knew there was a crime called official oppression. I wonder if anyone is sueing the city over this. the police went far beyond the pale on this one. 11:03:18 PM
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Creativity and Innovation. Renee Hopkins discusses the differences between creativity and innovation, quoting Arnold Wasserman of The Idea Factory:
People always tend to use the terms innovation and creativity interchangeably. We're very clear about the linkages and the distinction. Creativity is getting the great ideas, it's sort of the R&D, and everybody is creative, everybody has got great ideas, every organisation has more great ideas than it can ever implement or bring into the marketplace. Innovation, however, is 'creativity implemented. It's taking creative ideas and bringing them into the world so that they change lives, and so they also change the organisations that bring them into the world.
Say that again: Innovation is creativity implemented. [E M E R G I C . o r g]
I like those definitions. Creativity can be a solitary process but innovation needs people. 10:34:31 PM
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Lawsuit against Apple for use of term 'Unix' in Mac OS X marketing winds through courts. "Apple Computer is being sued by The Open Group, the San Francisco company that claims ownership of the Unix trademark, for using the term Unix in conjunction with its Mac OS X operating system without a license. Apple has countersued, asking a judge to declare that the trademark is invalid, because the term Unix has become generic. Though initiated nearly 18 months ago, the case has not yet gone to trial. According to a motion filed with the court Tuesday, both companies want to have... [MacDailyNews]
Lawyers are just having so much fun. We will know that this has all come of age when we see a TV show dealing with an IP lawyer. 10:28:21 PM
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On his last day in office as Director of the OMB, .... On his last day in office as Director of the OMB, Mitch Daniels gave up on his attempt to let federal agencies outsource their printing jobs and bypass the Government Printing Office (GPO). This is a victory for open access to government documents, since many agencies wanted to bypass the GPO precisely in order to bypass its open-access and library deposit policies. More coverage. [FOS News]
This is good news for continuing easy access to our documents. When the government wants to make it more difficult to read what it is doing, we should be afraid. I would not be surprised to see this reintroduced. 9:58:31 PM
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KMPro with Mark Clare. Mark Clare argues that KM needs to step back and define knowledge before plunging forward with the "next wave" of knowledge management approaches or applications. [Knowledge Jolt with Jack]
I have my definition. Knowledge allows a business or organization to make a decision. Good KM systems allow you to make good decisions. Decisions require an interaction of human beings, with each other and with the environment. KM systems need to get information to people, allowing them to create knowledge which can lead to decisions. No information, no people, no knowledge and no decisions. 7:48:54 PM
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Not Buying Revisionist Sales Job on Iraqi Weapons... (Jules Witcover). Not Buying Revisionist Sales Job on Iraqi Weapons... (Jules Witcover) [Common Dreams]
This column also asks the question Ihave been thinking. The administration said we had to attack now, doing everything in its power to indicate that WMD were an imminent threat. Now they are being as legalistic as Clinton. Only he was trying to hide an affair. I fear that the administration may be hinding something worse. But they are so much smarter than they were during GBI and Iran-Contra, when they almost got caught. I am sure that there will not be any sort of smoking gun this time. 7:42:25 PM
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ReplayTVs Regress But Still Rock!. ReplayTV Puts Ad Skipping on Pause
"The company said its upcoming ReplayTV 5500 boxes, which are expected to be released in August, will not contain the Send Show and Automatic Commercial Advance tools as the company tries to 'address the concerns of copyright holders....'
A representative for ReplayTV's new owner said the company made a business decision not to offer the disputed features in future products after reviewing the matter, but current models will still have them.
The company also said it will maintain offerings such as QuickSkip, which lets people fast-forward through programs in 30-second increments. In the future, it hopes to let consumers use their ReplayTV units to send non-copyrighted materials, such as home videos, across the Internet to other ReplayTV units and computers." [CNET News.com]
Whoo-hoo, I get to keep my features! Run out and by one now!
Actually, as long as I get to keep my QuickSkip button, I'm happy. I could live without the automatic commercial skipping, although it is amazing how quickly you get used to no commercials. In fact, just yesterday Kailee was watching a show on Animal Planet and I was surprised to see commercials on the screen. I said, "Kay, fast-forward through the commercials." "It's live," she groaned. I was actually shocked to find her watching live TV in our family room. It's positively unheard of these days. When Replay records a show overnight, it tunes the TV to that channel, so my guess is that she got caught up in the live show when she turned on the TV to watch Replay.
I'll have a black market winner here, baby! Maybe I'll be able to finance the kids' college education with it! [The Shifted Librarian]
Tivo works the same. And if they ever try to stop us, we will just run it off of our compuetrs. I never will go back to the old way. I want the ability to skip commercials on recorded material. I want to be able to watch in slow motion of rewatch something I like. 7:23:53 PM
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The Impact of Permalinks. Tom Coates provides an interesting discussion of the emergence and importance of the innovation that came to be known as the permalink.
It may seem like a trivial piece of functionality now, but it was effectively the device that turned weblogs from an ease-of-publishing phenomenon into a conversational mess of overlapping communities.
[...]At the time they were a tiny paradigm shift in a tiny community of committed web-weirdos. No one thought that they might be one of the fundamental structuring principles of half a million sites.
Very well put. [Corante: Social Software]
Little things can have a huge effect if you are in the middle of a phase shift. This is how biology works. As you add substrate to an enzyme, nothing happens for the longest time until the substrate concentration gets to s certain point. Then a small increase in the amount of substrate can result in a huge amount of product being formed. All biology works by tipping points (only we call it Km). 6:44:12 PM
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WiebeTech adds new addition to DuoGB family. WiebeTech is offering a new 500GB, 7200RPM spindle speed version of the DuoGB, a dual FireWire drive in one enclosure. The US$999.95 system joins other configurations already shipping in the DuoGB line. The DuoGB products use an Oxford Semiconductor OXFW911 FireWire bridge, which can handle two drives with ATA-6 support. The DuoGB systems sport an aluminum/metal enclosure and low noise fans. Prices range from $449.95 to $999.95. [MacCentral]
I really want one of these. 500 GB. Wow!! I used to have a Mac SE with just 20 MB. 6:34:57 PM
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Comcast Bundle Shakedown - Part II. A few months ago we had a post on the Comcast bundle shakedown where they raised prices significantly for anyone who was using their cable modem service, but not their cable TV service. Now that the price increase has gone into effect, plenty of customers are pretty angry and accusing Comcast of abusing monopoly powers. The typical response from Comcast and their supporters is that this is just reasonable bundling, and people should get a "discount" for buying multiple services. There are a few problems with that argument. First of all, this isn't a discount for bundling - it's a significant price hike for something people ordered at a much lower price... Thus, it suggests a bit of "bait & switch". If this really is a "discount" for bundling how come no one received any lower prices? Second, in many areas Comcast is really a monopoly provider of high speed internet access. That means that people really have no choice but to accept this higher priced deal if they want high speed internet access. If there were true competition, then it wouldn't matter so much and people could vote with their money and move to another option. Hopefully, over time, the market will become more competitive, but for many people, Comcast is their only real option.
[Techdirt]
Ahh, but isn't that what monopolies do? Shake down their customers. I'm waiting for TCP/IP over power lines. That should be interesting. 12:59:55 PM
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Reporting Or Theft?. Now here's an interesting legal question. Is it reporting or is it theft when a news organization gets its hands on an early copy of a book and writes articles about the content. That's exactly what happened with the Associated Press and Hilary Clinton's new book. Simon & Schuster is now threatening to sue. The argument for "reporting" says that if you've obtained the book legally, and the story is newsworthy, then it's their obligation to print it. The side arguing "theft" says that it's an intellectual property violation. The article linked to above is an opinion piece and comes with clear biases towards the "theft" side. It rambles on about how the threat to intellectual property is an economic threat to the US - which is a tangent not worth bothering with right now. His argument is basically that the law needs to protect this business model, and the idea that the press might report on a story and harm a business model worries him. Of course, we do have freedom of the press in this country, and (last I checked) we live in a capitalistic society that doesn't guarantee the "right" to a business model, so I have to side with the Associated Press who has the right to print their story. It's not as though they republished the entire book - but just wrote a story about some of the topics in the book. That's journalism. If that, alone, is going to harm the sales of the book, then I doubt that the book is very good anyway. It's a business model issue of producing books that are well written and interesting and worth buying even if you know what they say, and has nothing to do with the "theft" of intellectual property.
[Techdirt]
Wow, if only Nixon had thought of theft of intellectual property with regard to the Pentagon Papers. I somehow think that this will not get far but you never know. Reasonableness is not too common these days. 12:58:25 PM
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