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Monday, February 25, 2002 |
Jack Valenti tries to spin the current backlash against the MPAA in his Washington Post letter to the editor, Movies Get Framed. In fact, there's soooo much spin in this article, it's difficult to decide what to refute first. However, I feel compelled to quote from the last paragraph:
"Movie producers are eager to populate the Net with movies in a consumer-friendly format. There is a way to achieve adequate security for high-value movies on the Net. Computer and video-device companies need to sit at the table with the movie industry. Together, in good-faith talks, they must agree on the ingredients for creating strong protection for copyrighted films and then swiftly implement that agreement to make it an Internet reality." [via Scripting News]
What Mr. Valenti leaves out from his letter is what the movie industry will bring to the table as its "good-faith" gestures. Anything at all?
11:46:08 PM Permanent link here
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Mark made my day by sending me the following. He was cool enough to send me the entire article, although I don't think I can post the whole thing because I'd be breaking copyright law. Sigh. Anyway, the cite is below in case you want to find the rest yourself. The gist of it is how humans have recorded knowledge throughout history and the major pitfall of each technique. You don't get the full humor without the first part, but here's a liberal quote:
Why Learn to Use a Library Anyhow?
By Harold J. Ettelt
Analog, May 1983
The Connecticut Libraries, Volume 17, Number 2, 1975
"So man made his greatest invention: libraries (ask a librarian if you don't believe me). In libraries he stored the writings, and later, copies of the writings. They got bigger and bigger and more and more complex and gave him a headache.
To solve this problem, man inadvertently invented his greatest headache: the librarian (there are many "greatest" headaches, but this is the right one). The librarian could organize the writings so that they could be found easily; he could protect them against fires and rats and stuff. And he could even help others use them. He could remember where things were written up and what books held what bits of information, and he did it all for a ridiculously small salary. But here we were relying on a man's memory again.
So man made his greatest invention: the index (there are many "greatest" inventions, but this is the right one). Sometimes called an index, bibliography, catalog, or abstracting service, the purpose of any of these is to tell you where the writings you want are to be found. Because the accumulated writing are so enormous, using these indexes is about your only hope man has of being able to find out what has been written up. Without them, much of those writings are as effectively "lost" as if the library had burned down.
That's what libraries are, then: vast accumulations of writings in an orderly arrangement. Using them consists of knowing how they're arranged and how the indexes work. None of which answers the question this essay is supposed to answer, except that if you don't learn how to use a library, you're effectively back to having a few writings in your hut and hoping it won't burn down."
Thanks, Mark!
11:32:31 PM Permanent link here
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Since I'm sooooo far behind right now, I did just find this page in the Radio docs, How to link to a category from your home page, so I thought I'd point it out. I'll still write up a wrapper for this because it needs screenshots and examples, but maybe this will get you started until I have time to get back to my own docs.
11:06:15 PM Permanent link here
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Also, Eric adds yet another ingredient to the potential software solution for the ILA RTSF - Scoop. Just noting it here for future research purposes. On a side note, Eric is posting some great stuff on his blog about Radio now that he's drunk the Kool-aid. Based on his notes, I know I can't install rssDistiller tonight or I'll never get to sleep. Maybe tomorrow....
10:26:13 PM Permanent link here
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Just now catching up on some email and comments from the past week, one of which has Mark suggesting the following:
"A library could make use of web services for almost any service currently offered via their website. For example, a service to to query the status of a given title. The difference here is that you are providing a service that I can build my own front-end for, allowing me to incorporate your service (and info) into my own app. For example, maybe I want to build an app that lets me locate a book. I decide I am going to check in with local libraries and then amazon and then barnes & nobles. By providing a web service you make it easy for me to do this in one 'screen'."
A-ha! I think this is what I was trying to get at with my earlier posts - providing results from queries without have to actually press a button to run a search. Plus, results can be updated on the screen automatically without having to refresh the page. This would be great for webliographies that point to VIC results, too, if it weren't for the session IDs. Thanks for sharing, Mark!
10:15:56 PM Permanent link here
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Wearable computing in Japan
"Twenty-five-year-old Mari Taniuchi enters Tokyo's ultra-hip Shibuya district and glances at a tiny computer screen bolted on her jacket sleeve. A map of the area lights up. She sifts through information on places to eat and shop, tapping a key pad woven into her cuff, as music plays from headphones wired through her collar. Her padded white jacket reflects the latest in Japanese streetware -- a hybrid of fashion and technology that has its roots in a concept that has never quite worked: the 'wearable PC....'
A key challenge is to develop a water-proof fabric-like display that can be folded up without losing its functionality. To that end, Pioneer Corp sees Sone's project as an outlet for 10 years of research on ultra-thin displays that are flexible enough to be embedded in clothing. It plans to showcase its latest heat-proof organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen at a November 2002 'media fashion' show backed by Gifu prefecture." [at Reuters, via ia/]
At SLS, we've been waiting for the release of the ElekTex fabric PDA keyboard. Fascinating, this stuff... pervasive computing embedded in your everyday clothing.
7:18:33 PM Permanent link here
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This is what happens when you filter your TV life through ReplayTV at home - you suddenly find out that there's a kids show called Butt Ugly Martians and that your kids have seen it at someone else's house. Questions abound.
- When did it become okay to have the phrase "butt ugly" in the title of a kids show? I don't think of myself as a prude, but seriously, why? Guess what the kids think it's okay to say now?
- There's a section of the site called "Start Hacking" (I can't link directly to it because it's done in Flash). It's not meant in the real-life sense but again, is this a good message to send? Am I being overly sensitive here? I can just imagine one of the kids going to school, talking about hacking a Web site, and the teachers calling the FBI. That's all we need!
- Do we really want them playing with Butt Ugly Martian action figures? Maybe these aliens are considered cute on their planet now, eh?
- Has anyone seen this show? Is it okay for a seven- and six-year old to watch?
6:55:09 PM Permanent link here
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Steve's feeling frustrated about customizing Radio, and that's very understandable. I've got a lot going on right now, but he's inspiring me to try to get back to doing some documentation tonight. My suggestion though, is the philosophy we live by at SLS: baby steps.
So Steve, rather than trying to transform everything at once, go live with your site again and take it one step at a time. That's what I'm doing, which is why I'm still using the Transmitter template. Rome wasn't painted in a day. :-)
6:42:44 PM Permanent link here
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One of the great things about referrer logs is finding cool pages you didn't know existed. Today I found the Leddy Weblog, "an experiment in a local current awareness service" from the University of Windsor's Leddy Library, although perhaps it's a "successful experiment" since they've been doing this since September, 2000. The very first link on today's page is yet another story about When Cheating Becomes a Way of Life.
"Information has become promiscuous. Everyone can have as much of it as they want. People cut, paste, attach, copy, forward, cc, group mail. It's a miracle....
But there are fewer information workers to process all this information. For the past 10 years, all the major media organizations have been stripping down their work forces, even as the urgency to get the product out has accelerated in the wake of ever-fiercer competition, proliferating specialty channels and on-line newsrooms. The magazine and book markets are under similar pressure....
So what is really converging here is exploding information, a shortage of information processors, and the rise of the information star. The students at Piper High claimed they didn't know that all the stuff pouring onto their desktops had to be cited when pasted into a project....
But let's understand what's happening here. Morals are not in general decline. We are all simply trying to come to grips with a sudden excess of information and a shortage of information labourers who, when they read of these public humiliations, think 'there but for the grace . . .' " [at The Globe and Mail]
As Mita notes, "information worker = librarian?" Which is why we'll always need librarians, whether we realize it or not. I think I will lobby to have my job title changed to "Promiscuous Information Star," which would surely require a rather large raise.
FYI, I couldn't find a single reference to a library or librarian on the Piper High Web site.
6:36:09 PM Permanent link here
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If you're like me and you're still trying to find your way around Radio, check out Andy Sylvester's Getting Started with Radio Userland collection of links to relevant docs for newbies. Hopefully I'll be able to add to his list this week. Mine will be archived on my site via the Radio 101 Docs page, so check there for new additions. (I'll also announce them here, but just in case....)
11:47:16 AM Permanent link here
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I had just naturally assumed that the Library of Congress was subject to Section 508 rules for accessibility, but a post on the AXSLIB-L mailing list suggests otherwise. Does anybody have any further information about this?
BTW, I was looking through the Trace site for information about this, and I came across a link to a Quicktime video called Introduction to the Screen Reader with Neal Ewers. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but it could be quite useful for teaching others why accessibility is so important. I hadn't been to the Trace site in a while, but it looks like they've added quite a bit more (and done a re-design) since my last visit.
11:39:25 AM Permanent link here
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The Future of Music by Matt Haughey [via CamWorld]
An excellent overview and proposal for a solution.
"Five years have passed since then, and in that time Apple has fully embraced the format, putting playback, ripping, and recording features deep into their digital hub as lifestyle philosophy. Along with iPods, Rios and Nomads adorn the hips of many geeks. PDAs and even cell phones tout mp3 playback as features. Everyone with a computer I know uses them, rips them from their CDs, and shares them with others. Napster (and later on, Kazaa) built massive worldwide networks based on the sharing of these files, spreading terabytes of files to millions of users. And yet, you can't walk into a store anywhere in America and buy a physical form of media embedded with mp3s.
Imagine if DVD players worked on the same philosophy. Imagine if you couldn't ever buy a DVD movie on disc, and the only way to get content was to use cumbersome software tools in your PC, with an attached VCR as input. Now where would DVDs be if that were the only way to get new content? Looking at the world of mp3s, you see that even despite that daunting hurdle, they are everywhere. A whole industry has blossomed to sell players for your pocket, your car, and your home. Computer companies have embraced it, Apple the most unapologetically, with many an iBook destined for music ripping, playing, and burning.
Five years of the record industry ignoring the problem, then trying to stifle and silence it, and it is easily the most popular method of listening to music on a computer. Five years of combating piracy by the RIAA and the "virus" has spread to everyone and everything. Even as the recording industry admits defeat and tries their own approach, they continue to stick it to artists and do everything wrong....
An ambitious and courageous band or artist could single handedly bring the whole system crashing down by going internet-only, and selling mp3-only, at a reasonable price. They would have to do a few things to accomplish this, and each step would entail great risk. Given the potential benefit, it's only a matter of time before someone successfully goes through with it."
9:56:11 AM Permanent link here
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On the Brink of Idea Burnout? [at USA Today Life]
This article is trying to lump together two completely different issues. Here's the first one, which seems to me more like information overload and the spread of digital intellectual property.
"America has 'a technology base that is absorbing culture, ideas, bons mots, faster than they can be produced,' he says. It began in the 1980s, when cable TV became widely available and 'we upped the information outlets to such an alarming rate....'
Thompson argues there are not enough new ideas being generated to fill all that time. 'The non-renewable resource of cultural expression is being strip-mined,' he says. 'When you've worn out new ideas, you have to recycle. What we're seeing, with all this copycat culture and plagiarism, are the equivalent of those blue bins on the curbside for recycling.' "
On the other hand though, they're trying to link this concept to plagiarism on college campuses, which I think is a dubious connection at best. Like plagiarism is new (hey, I'm recycling that idea!).
"In a survey of 4,500 high school students last year, McCabe found that only 46% thought cutting and pasting text from the Internet without attribution was cheating, and only 74% thought copying a paper in its entirety was cheating. In the students' minds, McCabe says, 'what's on the Internet is public knowledge.' "
Are college students really saying to themselves that it's okay to copy off the Internet because Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin copied from another source some passages in their books without providing proper attribution? That's too much of a stretch for me. Each point above is valid on its own, but let's not try to tie them together just to come up with... a new idea?
9:35:39 AM Permanent link here
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Too damn cool!
Definition of Blogcast:
"Blogcast is a content aggregator for independent short-form narrowcasters using the latest web technologies to deliver decentralised and distributed audio content.
Or
Blogcast is a place that lists recently updated audioblogs, streamed music tracks, and other cool stuff to listen to over the web. It uses shiny stuff to do it." [via Rogi]
9:23:03 AM Permanent link here
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Of course, librarians are already accused of providing access to pornography anyway, but I guess we can't really consider Erotigo an alternative to Avantgo, eh? [via MeFi]
9:18:24 AM Permanent link here
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And I thought things were bad in the U.S. Big Brother Award Nominees Pile in
"Privacy International has shortlisted the UK government agencies, civil servants, companies and initiatives which have done most to invade personal privacy for its fourth annual "Big Brother" awards....
Among the projects attracting the opprobrium of Privacy International is The National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), for its proposal to archive and warehouse all email, internet and telephone call traffic records. Brickbats were also thrown at the Electoral Reform Society for the way it plans to introduce electronic voting which provides "woefully scant assessment of the substantial privacy and security threats", according to Privacy International....
The awards will be judged by a panel of experts, comprising lawyers, academics, consultants, journalists and civil rights activists prior to an awards ceremony at the London School of Economics on March 4." [at The Register]
8:52:39 AM Permanent link here
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Online Group to Give Advice Regarding Copyrights
"Now, concerned that corporations are using the notices to intimidate sites whose content may be protected by the First Amendment, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several law schools have created a searchable cease-and-desist database to inform recipients of their rights....
The first entries in the database, which is scheduled to become available starting today at www.chilling effects.org, include line-by-line commentary and analysis provided by law students at Harvard, Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley." [The New York Times: Technology]
It's available now at http://www.chillingeffects.org/. Yet another reason to support the EFF, because unfortunately, I'm sure their database is only going to grow.
7:45:35 AM Permanent link here
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Video Game Music Mixes
"A group of video game music fanatics and musicians have opened up a new website at VGMix.com. If you're like us, sometimes you can't get the snazzy tunes of today's video games out of your head. Also, if you're up for a bit of nostalgia, this is certainly the place to go to relive the days of youth when you hummed the Super Mario Bros. theme under your breath during class grade school." [via Slashdot]
Here is a perfect example of a new genre that is currently against copyright law, which means its major "input" process is illegal. (In reference to yesterday's post about artistic inputs and copyright law.)
7:38:24 AM Permanent link here
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"Dave says: 'I want a way to do a query on DirecTv's listings. Show me all commercial-free movies on channels I subscribe to airing in the next 30 days that were nominated for or won an Academy Award.'
And this is exactly where the axis of interactivity lies between traditional broadcasters and whatever it is we do.
The European high court recently passed a series of laws determining TV listings are 'content' until the day of broadcast when the information suddenly necomes 'news'...." [Adam Curry]
That's an interesting distinction because the information itself doesn't change. Instead, the court based its decision on the currency of the information. Possible model for the U.S.? You make the call!
Question: what is it called after the day of broadcast? Does it go back to being "content?"
7:31:30 AM Permanent link here
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Knowledge management: Can information be counterproductive?
"Historically, many societies and economies suffered from a lack of information. Today, information flows at an unprecedented rate. We have thus moved from scarcity to, in some cases, glut. How to deal with too much information is a major challenge for knowledge management.
Knowledge is what we know. Information is the communication of knowledge. In every knowledge exchange, there is a sender and a receiver. The sender does the informing; the communicating. The receiver takes in the information and, hopefully, turns it into knowledge....
Time is the oil of the new economy. Attention is the car. Knowledge is the destination. Information is the map.
It is an increasing challenge to get people into their 'attention cars.' Unfortunately, too many communicators of information are driving people around in the wrong direction, wasting their time and attention.
I'd like you to ask yourself the following question: 'How much of my information is getting to its knowledge destination?' " [via ia/]
An interesting take on information overload that compares our responses to the problem to three different metaphors: a cup, a bottomless pit, and a throat. You should head over and read it, but I'd just like to make one point.
You know when people tell you to "live in the moment?" Well, you are living in the above moment, but it will change. The computer has wrought quite a change on our culture, our economy, and on us. We're just now starting to truly understand this (kind-of-sort-of) and to adapt (kind-of-sort-of). But our kids will grow up adapted. In other words, shifted. It will be interesting to watch what their metaphors will be. In many ways, they will live in their "attention cars" because they will live in information coming to them. Hopefully, we'll create the tools and teach them how to filter it to keep them sane!
7:27:14 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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