Thursday, February 28, 2002

Patent Pending

Steve MacLaughlin

For some time now I've been trying to think about where all these digital devices and technologies are headed. Both from an evolutionary perspective (where's it going) and from a speculative perspective (who's gonna make the real money).

I would be thrilled if I could get rid of my CDs. As it is, I rarely listen to music that isn't on my computer - even though the sound quality is pretty lousy, the convenience more than makes up for it. But I can't get rid of the CDs, because the hard drive might fail - correction, it will fail. Backing up the mp3s isn't really that great of an option, because the compression gives me, what? a ten-fold savings - I'd still need to keep track of a bunch of little shiny things. And hunting down all that music wouldn't be much fun - IP issues aside, the quality of many encodings I've encountered through Napster and its descendants leaves much to be desired. The snap, crackle, and pop of a vinyl record may sound quaint (well, sometimes, anyway...), but the squeak of a bad rip is just plain jarring.

posted at 3:13:37 PM — permalink

Ashcroft sings

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft ended a speech at a Charlotte, North Carolina seminary with a rousing rendition of a song he wrote called Let The Eagles Soar

Oh. My. God. How did I miss this? He's actually got a pretty good voice. (Well, much better than Spock...)

This country's far too young to die...

For more of the lyrics, check out this story. (Scroll down to the end, or read the whole story and be prepared to be creeped out.)

posted at 10:50:06 AM — permalink

Music Fans Must Rebel Against Greedy Record Industry

Editor's Note: Fox News is bringing some of the web's newest voices under its wing with the addition of the Fox Weblog.

Two reasons why I linked to this story.

  1. Ken Layne has lots of interesting things to say about the RIAA, the Grammy's... well, pretty much the whole music industry. Too much for me to even begin to absorb.
  2. It's cool that mainstream media is jumping onto the weblog bandwagon. But if Fox is really going to bring the far-flung corners of the Internet to [my] desktop,* how do I find these stories? (Other than by chance?) I searched all over that page for a Fox Weblog link, or something like it, and I couldn't find anything that looked promising. It might actually be there, but if it is, it's sure flying under my radar. And those indecipherable Vignette StoryServer urls don't help, either.

* With apologies to Brent Simmons, it may be true that commas go inside the quotes, but that's stupid. (And with further apologies, it looks like he's quoting someone else, so maybe he also thinks it's stupid?)

posted at 10:25:04 AM — permalink

Save Your Pineapple Top

If you happen to have a pineapple on hand to eat, then why not take a few minutes and grow your own pineapple plant from the discarded top?

This doesn't seem too hard. Definitely not for instant gratification types though. Lots of interesting stuff at this site.

posted at 9:58:54 AM — permalink

ICANN: It must take responsibility for its own failure

Bob Frankston

ICANN seems to be unwilling to appreciate how well the Internet has acted as a marketplace and is trying to fix what is not broken rather than providing simple and boring services. By confusing stable handles with commercial identifiers ICANN helps assure that the Internet cannot be stable since the handles all expire and, worse, can be reused.

posted at 1:03:33 AM — permalink

How Weblogs Influence A Billion Google Searches A Week

John Hiler

Google Loves the Links in Weblogs & Google loves Fresh Content.

Oh, and by the way? Critical IP sucks.

posted at 12:42:31 AM — permalink