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Thursday, April 18, 2002 |
"Apart from cheering at the march of progress, there’s another reason for taking a closer look at the evolution of the disk drive. Storage capacity is surely going to continue increasing, at least for another decade. Those little gray boxes will hold not just gigabytes but terabytes and someday maybe petabytes. (The very word sounds like a Marx Brothers joke!) We will have at our fingertips an information storehouse the size of a university library. But what will we keep in those vast, bit-strewn corridors, and how will we ever find anything we put there? Whatever the answers, the disk drive is about to emerge from the shadows and transform the way we deal with information in daily life....
The rise in density has been mirrored by an equally dramatic fall in price. Storing a megabyte of data in the 1956 RAMAC cost about $10,000. By the early 1980s the cost had fallen to $100, and then in the mid-1990s reached $1. The trend got steeper after that, and today the price of disk storage is headed down toward a tenth of a penny per megabyte, or equivalently a dollar a gigabyte. It is now well below the cost of paper....
There’s no guarantee that any of these ideas will succeed, but predicting an abrupt halt to progress in disk technology seems even riskier than supposing that exponential growth will continue for another decade. Extrapolating the steep trend line of the past five years predicts a thousandfold increase in capacity by about 2012; in other words, today’s 120-gigabyte drive becomes a 120-terabyte unit. If the annual growth rate falls back to 60 percent, the same factor-of-1,000 increase would take 15 years....
Suppose I could reach into the future and hand you a 120-terabyte drive right now. What would you put on it? You might start by copying over everything on your present disk—all the software and documents you’ve been accumulating over the years—your digital universe. Okay. Now what will you do with the other 119.9 terabytes?...
One certainty is that you will not fill the void with personal jottings or reading matter. In round numbers, a book is a megabyte. If you read one book a day, every day of your life, for 80 years, your personal library will amount to less than 30 gigabytes, which still leaves you with more than 119 terabytes of empty space. To fill any appreciable fraction of the drive with text, you’ll need to acquire a major research library. The Library of Congress would be a good candidate. It is said to hold 24 million volumes, which would take up a fifth of your disk (or even more if you choose a fancier format than plain text)....
The fact that video consumes so much more storage volume than other media suggests that the true future of the disk drive may lie not in the computer but in the TiVo box and other appliances that plug into the TV. Or maybe the destiny of the computer itself is to become such a “digital hub” (as Steve Jobs describes it). Thus all the elegant science and engineering of the disk drive—the aerodynamic heads, the magnetoresistive sensors, the ruthenium film—has its ultimate fulfillment in replaying soap operas and old Star Trek episodes.
David Thompson, now retired from IBM, offers a more personal vision of the disk drive as video appurtenance. With cameras mounted on eyeglass frames, he suggests, we can document every moment of our lives and create a second-by-second digital diary. 'There won’t be any reason ever to forget anything anymore,' he says. Vannevar Bush had a similar idea 50 years ago, though in that era the promising storage medium was microfilm rather than magnetic disks....
Still another nagging question is how anyone will be able to organize and make sense of a personal archive amounting to 120 terabytes. Computer file systems and the human interface to them are already creaking under the strain of managing a few gigabytes; using the same tools to index the Library of Congress is unthinkable. Perhaps this is the other side of the economic equation: Information itself becomes free (or do I mean worthless?), but metadata—the means of organizing information—is priceless.
The notion that we may soon have a surplus of disk capacity is profoundly counterintuitive. A well-known corollary of Parkinson’s Law says that data, like everything else, always expands to fill the volume allotted to it. Shortage of storage space has been a constant of human history; I have never met anyone who had a hard time filling up closets or bookshelves or file cabinets. But closets and bookshelves and file cabinets don’t double in size every year. Now it seems we face a curious Malthusian catastrophe of the information economy: The products of human creativity grow only arithmetically, whereas the capacity to store and distribute them increases geometrically. The human imagination can’t keep up." [American Scientist, via Slashdot]
This is a truly fascinating article. Although I've quoted quite a bit from it, there's even more to spin your brain around so make sure you read the whole thing. Librarians should read this as job security!
11:57:02 PM Permanent link here
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The Future of Virtual Kiddie Pr0n and Other Notes on Ashcroft v. Free Speech
"The more interesting point of this case with regard to copyright law is the strong position the Court sets out with regard to total prohibitions and affirmative defenses. In this section of the opinion, the majority eviscerates the government's argument that since actual and virtual child pornography will soon be indistinguishable, both must be banned....
Seems to me, this is precisely what the DMCA and the proposed CBDTPA (the bill formerly known as SSSCA) do. In order to stamp out unlawful speech (copyright piracy) the government has suppressed lawful speech (Fair Use). Furthermore, the law in question in this case only applied to visual depictions of sexually explicit conduct. It did not apply to texts. It did not apply to music. It did not apply to visual depictions of anything other than sexually explicit conduct. How much greater then should the First Amendment scrutiny be for a law that implicates the entire realm of human expression as the DMCA does?" [LawMeme]
There are just so many reasons the DMCA and CBDTPA is wrong, but Ernest provides an interesting angle, as well as a round-up of articles about the Supreme Court's decision to overturn a ban on virtual child PrOn.
11:43:26 PM Permanent link here
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This morning I was driving to work, listening to the radio, which I sometimes do in order to be able to authoritatively deride it. I was flipping stations when I heard Eric & Kathy on 101.9 The Mix promo an upcoming segment in which their news anchor, Barry Keefe, would translate some of the things Ozzy had said on Tuesday night's episode of The Osbournes.
A while back I had heard them asking Keefe on to define some rap terms they threw out to him, and it had been fairly humorous, so I decided to stay with the station and wait for the segment. Little did I realize that it was more than a half-hour away. While I waited, the hosts started talking about the idea that whatever song was #1 when you graduate from high school sets the tone for the rest of your life.
I hadn't heard this before, so I started trying to remember what my song would be. Luckily, Eric graduated the same year I did, so I immediately learned that the song governing my life is Tears for Fears' Everybody Wants to Rule the World. I love that song (especially an extended mix I picked up in Mexico a couple of decades ago), but I don't find it especially applicable to my life. Maybe politics on a global level, but not me personally.
What was truly funny, though, is when they asked another person in the studio when she graduated, and I think she said 1995. The song governing her life? Bryan Adams' Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman. They thought it was perfect for her, but I just felt pity. Here's the funny part - Eric pressed some buttons and tried to play a snippet of the song because the woman couldn't remember it. But some other song came on instead. Eric commented that well, it was supposed to be the Bryan Adams song... that's what it said in the computer. Ha!
Remember the Chicago Tribune stories about Clear Channel and the conglomeration of radio stations? Well, today I heard what must have been the wildest PR spin on their approach to national channels customized with a local voice-track. While flipping, I heard a guy on 103.5 KISS FM (a Clear Channel station) note it was rush hour and that we should call in to tell him how traffic is where we are right now. He called it our "big chance to be the traffic reporter."
This is what it has come to - using your audience to fill in the blanks locally because you don't have any presence there. Radio Blah Blah.
11:30:25 PM Permanent link here
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Wedding cake Couture
"Pastry chef Michael Baugh spent a little time in a pet store last week inquiring how long goldfish could live without a fresh supply of oxygen.
Baugh, owner of Let Them Eat Cake in Tampa, had an idea for Lisa Linville's wedding cake, and it involved live marine life. He envisioned the three-tiered cake sitting on a base of 10 glass globe vases, each containing two frisky goldfish. On top of the vases would be a round mirror, cutting off the air to the fish, and holding the cake....
Even Krispy Kreme Doughnuts is getting into the wedding cake act. A trickle of a trend began last year with word spreading that doughnuts could be fashioned into a cake by making a pyramid and then adorning it with ribbons and flowers. Mary Ellen Norton, Krispy Kreme spokeswoman in Tampa, says there haven't been any doughnut wedding cakes locally, but plenty of brides have given out two-pack boxes of doughnuts as wedding favors." [St. Petersburg Times Online Taste, via brucecumming.com]
I just had to note the Krispy Kreme wedding cake. One of the few good things about using OCLC's SiteSearch software for the VIC project was going to Dublin, Ohio, for training and meetings with their staff in 1998-99 because Krispy Kreme had not yet come to the Chicagoland area. We were the envy of all.
10:42:38 PM Permanent link here
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Kalamazoo Public Library Digital Audio Final Report
"The Kalamazoo Public Library feels this has been a highly successful experiment that needs to be pursued beyond the first year. We suspect that, if we can find a successful loan model, digital audiovisual will have a real future in public libraries. This report will summarize our experience and outline some of the issues we feel need to be addressed to keep libraries on the cutting edge of supplying digital content....
This is an opportunity for libraries to be on the cutting edge. Only by experimentation and making our intentions known to industry content providers can we insure that we will be one of the leaders in determining how to provide digital content to the public. If libraries do not embrace digital downloads of audiovisual material, we are going to be left in the dust. It is our challenge to figure out reasonable loan patterns where vendors can make a profit, libraries are not left bankrupt, and our patrons get a product that enhances the services they receive." [via LibTech Weblog]
Naysayers, take note. The MP3 service at the Kalamazoo Public Library has been a resounding success. After finishing the first year of their experiment, this final report notes that the players circulated 310 times, 133 titles were purchased, those titles circulated 773 times, and all for a total project cost of $7100. Of those 133 titles, only one didn't circ at all. Amazing!
Today, I talked to Brad at NOLA about their ListenOhio service that circulates Audible titles at ten public libraries. He, too, was very positive about the service and proclaimed it a success, noting that they've circulated their titles 2000 times since September!
My only sidebar to all of this great news is that I hope these libraries are constantly updating their legislators about these services and noting that if the CBDTPA becomes law, they won't be able to provide this service anymore. Libraries could embrace digital content to our fullest extent, but we will be left in the dust if the technology prevents us from lending digital materials to our patrons.
9:39:08 PM Permanent link here
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"Each evening, thousands of Americans drift into Chinese restaurants or, if they are too lazy to go out, pick up the phone and order one of the most popular dishes on the menu: General Tso's Chicken, a sugary-spicy melange of dark-meat tidbits, deep-fried then fired up with ginger, garlic, sesame oil, scallions and hot chili peppers....
General Tso Tsungtang, or as his name is spelled in modern Pinyin, Zuo Zongtang, was born on Nov. 10, 1812, and died on Sept. 5, 1885. He was a frighteningly gifted military leader during the waning of the Qing dynasty, a figure perhaps the Chinese equivalent of the American Civil War commander William Tecumseh Sherman. He served with brilliant distinction during China's greatest civil war, the 14-year-long Taiping Rebellion, which claimed millions of lives....
Is it possible that, struggling to carve out a new life in America under backbreaking adversities, and having heard of the sword skills of the remorseless General Tso (who had the top leaders of the Nian Rebellion executed with the proverbial "death of 10,000 cuts"), the overseas exiles indulged in some gallows-humor about their old enemy? That the chopped-up chicken dish may have gotten its name from the sliced and diced victims of Tso's grim reprisals?
This might conceivably explain why General Tso's Chicken is very much an overseas Chinese dish, filtering the hot, peppery taste of Hunan cuisine, through the sweetening process of Cantonese cooking. Most of the immigrants to America came from coastal regions: Shanghai and Canton....
If Tong's tale is true, General Tso never ate the dish named after him. The great warrior, the prop of the Qing dynasty, the subduer of rebels and uprisings who carved his name into Chinese history at the point of a sword, had to wait more than 100 years for an inventive expatriate chef to award him his American triumph and make his name famous in the West.
General Tso, most likely, was a man ahead of his dish." [WashingtonPost.com, via Memo To Myself]
General Tso's Chicken is my all-time-absotively-positutely-favorite Chinese dish when it's done right. Luckily, there are many places in the Chicagoland area that know how to properly make it. It is the burnt ends of the Barbeque world and the dolmades of the Greek world. In other words - it's the best!
1:37:51 PM Permanent link here
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"Music copyright infringement suits often involve unknown musicians seeking compensation from financially successful songwriters and performers, for alleged misappropriation of the intellectual content of musical numbers that were never published, or that enjoyed limited circulation. Judicial opinions typically turn on the court's musical analyses of the works in dispute, but these analyses are not meaningful to the reader without audio and visual representation of the musical numbers under scrutiny....
To improve access to this information -- access particularly helpful to legal scholars writing from a historical perspective on music copyright issues -- this on-line archive will present audio and graphic representations of musical works that are, or have been, the subject of adjudicated music plagiarism cases. Text files summarize and comment upon each case, and contain the full text of the court’s opinion. Image files provide representations of pertinent segments of the musical works in question through standard music notation; sound files include both MIDI files with non-stylized renditions of the purely musical content of relevant portions of the disputed numbers, and also streaming audio clips taken from analog and digital recordings of performances that were intended for public delectation.
We believe that this on-line archive will be useful to copyright academics, attorneys practicing in this area, and to musicians seeking insight into an entertaining though cabalistic topic. It will offer new means of accessing and analyzing information that pertains to an area of law that now begs inquiry into the issue of how changes in the creation, content, dissemination and consumption of popular music in America in the 20th Century which have not, for the most part, been acknowledged by the copyright bar should inform music copyright infringement judges and litigants, who tend to approach their work with the paradigms developed for disputes involving Tin Pan Alley numbers in the early decades of this century." [via MetaFilter]
This archive isn't about file-sharing, but I find it fascinating they they're trying to archive cases of "music plagiarism." I'll have more time to look through it tonight in order to pick out specific cases.
12:25:22 PM Permanent link here
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"Kazaa users, angered by the network's inclusion of secretly embedded spyware, can now connect to the peer-to-peer network using a hacked version of the application called Kazaa Lite.
Kazaa Lite is a software client that provides access to the same FastTrack network as the peer-to-peer program, Kazaa Media Desktop, but does not require users to install any third-party software or view any banner ads....
In a statement forwarded to Kazaalite.com, a website dedicated to the software program, a Russian programmer known only as "Yuri" outlined his motives for creating Kazaa Lite: 'It is not my intention at all to stop Kazaa from earning advertising revenue. In fact, I am thankful to Kazaa for creating their great software and the FastTrack network. I only want to make it clear that Kazaa has to stop misleading the people who use their software....'
Sharman Networks did take the step of asking that Kazaa Lite be removed from CNet's popular Download.com site. Kazaa had been removed from the site on April 4, after CNet determined that its failure to more clearly disclose the third-party software bundled with Kazaa constituted a violation of the site's terms of service...." [Wired News]
Similar to when Napster cried foul when someone was selling unauthorized t-shirts with the Napster logo on them, it's ironic to watch Kazaa huff and puff about Kazaa Lite. To append to my previous post on the Sun-Times article about Kazaa and spyware, I'm not in favor of spyware, but I do think that you should either read the license agreement carefully (I don't) or recognize that you're getting what you pay for with a free program (I do). Now if I was paying for Kazaa, then I'd be furious.
I wanted to see if I could download Kazaa Lite using Kazaa, but when I launched Kazaa, I had an old version that wouldn't let me search the network until I upgraded to a newer version. So I upgraded, and the license agreement screen now states very clearly:
"IMPORTANT NOTE: This installation includes KaZaA Media Desktop plus integrated advertising technology provided by Brilliant Digital and Cydoor. This page includes:
- : KaZaA Media Desktop Terms of Use
- : Brilliant Digital End User Agreement
- : Cydoor End User Agreement"
So to give credit where it's due, the company is at least responding to criticism. BTW, I was indeed able to download Kazaa Lite from Kazaa. :-)
How much Kazaa could a Kazaa user Kazaa if a Kazaa user used Kazaa Lite?
9:32:54 AM Permanent link here
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BTW, when Will noted that he only buys music he can listen to first, he's not alone. Mary Wehmeier read through the Gateway press release proclaiming that Gateway Supports Consumers' Digital Music Rights. It includes the following statistics:
- Of consumers who say they have downloaded music from the Internet, 73 percent say they now spend the same amount of money -- or more -- on music purchases.
- Fifty-three percent of computer owners say they'd be more likely to buy a CD if they could first download one track from the Internet. Only 10 percent say they'd be less likely to buy given this ability.
The internet is such a natural marketing tool that one of the saddest things about the whole copyright debate is that the marketing and PR departments for the entertainment industry are either being thrown by the wayside or they're too burned out to use the medium effectively. I'd have more faith in a record label if they had worked with sites like Emergent Music to put their new artists on the radar. Or work with internet radio. Or with the file-sharing companies. Or, or, or. It must be a sad state of affairs at the label PR departments. They need some new blood in there.
7:28:50 AM Permanent link here
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Gary sends along a pointer to an article for which the title just doesn't sound quite right:
Microsoft Security Holes Leave Macs Vulnerable
"A flaw that could allow an attacker to take control of a user's system exists in Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Office for the Mac, Microsoft warned late Tuesday.
The Redmond, Washington, software giant released a cumulative patch that fixes all vulnerabilities affecting Internet Explorer 5.1 for Macintosh and Office v. X previously identified by Microsoft, plus two new vulnerabilities....
The most serious of the two new vulnerabilities is a buffer overrun flaw that affects both Internet Explorer and Office for the Mac. An attacker could run arbitrary code on a user's Mac by creating a specially formed Web page. The user would have to visit that page, view it as e-mail in Outlook or Entourage, or open a Mac Office file with the page for an attack to be carried out, Microsoft says....
The second newly patched vulnerability allows an attacker to run AppleScript on a user's machine, without first launching the Helper application. This flaw affects Internet Explorer for Mac OS 8 and 9 only, Microsoft says. An attacker could craft a Web page that would, for example, shut down a vulnerable Mac if its user were to visit the page containing the malicious code." [PC World]
7:20:38 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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