Clearing the Decks

• How to Survive w/out Audiogalaxy provides a list of some of the file-sharing options available to Windoze users. Helpfully mentions whether the software loads you up w/spyware, as well as how robust the network seems to be.
• Nick Denton has a very nice, clean layout here. I know Dave (yeah, the #1 Dave on Google Dave) led me here because of Denton's speculation that the "blog bubble" is bursting, but really I just think the site looks nice. And really I do think Denton might be on to something here -- not that blogs are going to fade away or become as useless as the 90s vanity pages that were once all the rage, but I do wonder if blogs might be entering something of an adolescence or young-adulthood here where they're going to have to meet higher standards in order to merit serious attention from bigcos or anyone else. The NY Times piece a few weeks ago that supposedly pitted "warbloggers" against "techbloggers" was kind of fluffy and still mostly positive, but it does suggest that we're no longer going to be talking about "blogs" as one thing, but we're going to be talking more and more about different kinds of blogs that do different kinds of things. That means maybe that the "wow! blogs are new and different!" bubble might have burst, but that just opens up a lot of new opportunity for the power of blogs and blogging to receive (and earn) more serious critical attention. That's progress, in my opinion. Um, but like I said, I really just like Denton's look here. Yeah, that's all.
• I've been playing with pMachine as an alternative to both Radio and Movable Type. Lots of potential w/pMachine as far as creating a real community goes, but it has a few quirks I'm not excited about -- primarily the way it doesn't use standard html in posts. I'm still going to play some more.... Oh, I found pMachine via a comment at Blog Skins, which is a pretty neat idea, and mostly self-explanatory, too.
• This TCPA/Palladium FAQ seems to be super-scary stuff. Here's the ultimate example (at least for the moment), of the way "freedom" and "security" are being used to give the powers-that-be greater control than has ever been possible over every aspect of our lives. As the FAQ states, the purpose of these technologies is much more than what Intel and Micro$oft are saying:

  Its obvious application is to embed digital rights management (DRM) technology in the PC. The less obvious implications include making it easier for application software vendors to lock in their users.

  Plus, user-lock-in is only the beginning. Once everything is encrypted -- even within your own machine -- how hard would it be for someone to lock you out of your own stuff? What would the government be able to do if it suspected you of "terra" (which is what Bush and even many reporters seem to say whenever they seem to mean "terror")? Like Bush and Co. who say "we're doing this for your own good" as they take away civil rights and refuse Freedom of Information Act requests and lie to the entire world, Intel and Micr$oft are saying "we're making computing safer" so you'll be "free" to do what you want without fear, while really they're locking things down and locking us in. Aaaaarghh! [I'm sure this also came from Scripting News, where today Dave says we're always "free" to not use computers if we don't like what the bigcos are doing to them. Great freedom, there.]

• Are You A Real American? I guess I'm not, but I guess I knew that already.
• Cringely's take on the whole TCPA/Palladium deal is excellent:

  But how will this stop the "I just e-mailed you a virus" problem? How does this stop my personal information being sucked out of my PC using cookies? It won't. Solving those particular problems is not Palladium's real purpose, which is to increase Microsoft's market share. It is a marketing concept that will be sold as the solution to a problem. It won't really work.

• Salon's interview with David Simon about his new HBO series, "The Wire." Simon was also responsible for "Homicide: Life on the Streets," but says he likes working w/HBO because they don't make him rewrite his shows to be sappy sweet with happy endings. Simon's reasons for doing "The Wire" (which exposes some of the biggest problems w/the supposed "drug war" in America) are great:

  I'll tell you what, this would be enough for me: The next time the drug czar or Ashcroft or any of these guys stands up and declares, "With a little fine-tuning, with a few more prison cells, and a few more lawyers, a few more cops, a little better armament, and another omnibus crime bill that adds 15 more death-penalty statutes, we can win the war on drugs" -- if a slightly larger percentage of the American population looks at him and goes, "You are so full of shit" ... that would be gratifying.

  And speaking of the "drug war," how many "wars" can the U.S. fight before officially declaring war? How many "enemies" can Bush and Co. (and its predecessors and successors) create? How many will you tolerate?

• Salon gives the new Powerpuff Girls Movie mostly thumbs up, plus another review that's even more flattering.

  The story starts out simple and sweet: A fellow named Professor Utonium who finds himself disillusioned with the meanness and ugliness of the world throws some carefully chosen ingredients into a pot in his laboratory (sugar, spice and a dash of the mysterious chemical X) and concocts three little daughters, Bubbles, Blossom and Buttercup. All three are blessed with amazing superpowers: They can soar through the air with the speed of houseflies; after putting together a PBJ Dagwood in record time, they zip the crusts off with their laser-beam eyes.

  You know you want to see it!

• On a more serious note (again), in the July 18th edition of the NY Times Review of Books, Russell Baker reviews five critiques of the media, including Into the Buzzsaw, which I've been wanting to read. Surveying the dominant theme of all five books, Baker says:

  Glumness is the prevailing spirit here, and for good reason. This is journalism's age of melancholy. Newspaper people, once celebrated as founts of ribald humor and uncouth fun, have of late lost all their gaiety, and small wonder. They have discovered that their prime duty is no longer to maintain the republic in well-informed condition[~]or to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, as the old gospel has it[~]but to serve the stock market with a good earnings report every three months or, in plainer English, to comfort the comfortable.

  Baker's review seems curmudgeonly to me, in that he sort of dismisses the reportage of Into the Buzzsaw as unconvincing, makes fun of the use of "media" as a blanket term for "a vast mismash," and seems to be bored with the well-known fact that journalism sucks because it's all about money instead of news. Yet, he makes some good points, too. For example, he summarizes the problem w/journalism pretty well:

  And so we come to one of the overwhelming questions of the new age of unchallenged American superpowerdom: Is there anything more important than money? Since Soviet communism went bankrupt and disap-peared while trying to keep up with American capitalism, belief in the virtue of maximized profits has acquired something like sanctity in American life.

  Is there anything more important than money to the vast majority of Americans? Ask Enron, and Worldcom, and Imclone and Tyco and Xerox and Vivendi and.... Uh, the answer seems to be a clear "no," Bob. What's hilarious about this is that most people seem to agree that, yes, of course, everyone values $$ above all other things -- as if that were natural and normal and basically unchangeable. "So this profit-focus causes problems," they seem to say, "so what? It's not like we can do anything about it." Well, actually, Bob, that's not quite true... Hilarious. Sick. Sad.

  Baker's review improves as it goes along, with some good examples of how newspapers -- like The Chicago Times (owned by Tribune Co.) and the now defunct New York Newsday (owned by Times Mirror) -- work today as a result of this bottom-line obsession. Definitely worth your time.

• In Ripped, Mixed-Up and Burned, Daphne G. Carr says there's a bit of hope in the whole digital music debate:

  Whispers of "antitrust" have already begun with the two services and recent court actions have begun to consider artists' and consumers' rights before rushing to hand down major label-friendly rulings. In late February, US District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel demanded that the labels suing Napster prove that they, in fact, own the copyrights for digital use of songs. This is a major step toward restructuring artists' digital rights and suggests that artists may eventually gain the ability to license material to independent companies regardless of their label affiliation. Patel also referred to the labels' "inequitable conduct" in assuming rights over all their licensed music and noted that their consolidation into two behemoth on-line companies represents "near monopolization of the digital distribution market."

• In response to a recent David Brodeur piece in The Washington Post, Paul Andrews says:

  Patriotism is being redefined in America -- with the help of Internet mailing lists, Weblogs, links and sites in general. The new patriotism has to do less with might makes right than with formulating intelligent and responsive national policy bassed on open dialogue -- progressivism at its core. It has more to do with participatory government, in the mode of our country's founding fathers, than with follow-the-leader, top-down policy-making. Eventually the Internet will transform referenda and voting in the U.S. and elsewhere. The glimmerings of this transformation are helping arrogant, benighted, old-school pundits like Brodeur see the light. Moore is fond of telling audiences, "You live in a very liberal country. They just don't want you to know it." Maybe David Brodeur as well is waking up to the core reality of American politics.

  It's a nice thought, and I like the idea of accentuating the positive, but if patriotism is being defined, why did every politician under the sun trip over him/herself last week to praise the Pledge of Allegiance after a court said the "under God" part was unconstitutional? Andrews says the Demos are biding their time and waiting for just the right moment to critique all this jingoism and warmongering. I hope he's right.

• Think!
• How much do you know about Philip K. Dick? Take this quiz if you want to test your knowledge. I scored 7/10, but I knew one of my answers was wrong as soon as I hit the submit button so I figure my real score was 8/10. Excuses excuses...
• Boing Boing offers some good info on the whole digital rights management thing-a-ma-jig-dealy-bob-controversy, via the DMCA Index, a Harper's-style index of factoids for people who think the whole DMCA is a bad idea. (Boing Boing was also the source of the Phildickian quiz link, above.)
• President Bush, Wise and Good. Not!
• David Corn summarizes the idiocy surrounding the whole Pledge of Allegiance thing-a-ma-jig-dealy.... you get the idea. Corn says:

  Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister in upstate New York who sermonized against the materialism of the Gilded Age and who resigned from his church after businessmen cut off funding because of his socialist activities and lectures, wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892. Now his words, composed for a magazine-sponsored school program celebrating the quadricentennial of Columbus Day, are treated as a sacred writ. Holy irony!

  What follows is also a good summary of the idiotic reactions of prominent politicians. Can you say "bandwagonesque"? (Where's that Brit band when you need them?)

• Markpasc.blog covers the pledge thing pretty well.
• Movable Type, now with TrackBack.
• Rick Klau says Radio needs TrackBack. I second that motion.
• Is Salon really Living on Borrowed Time? I sure hope it finds a way to pull through. I really don't know what I'd do without Salon. [via < ahref="http://markpasc.org/blog/2002/06/27.html#i34117PM">markpasc.blog]
• They'd Rather Switch Than Fight -- some cool flash animation take-offs on the new Apple switch ad campaign. The Bill Gates one is hilarious, and the intros for all of them are worth the click and the teensy time they take to load. Ok. I've seen them all now (there are three) and they are all so totally worth the download it's not even to wonder about. Just go. Do not pass whatever. Go now. [via scriban.com]
• It hardly matters what this guy writes, it seems bound to be worthwhile. And if you don't care for the content, just dig the presentation. I've certainly never seen a Radio blog this nice. (Nothing against Radio, but I'm so totally ready to jump ship like David Watson recently did. I just would like to know how he did it and his comment system doesn't seem to be working so I can ask...)
• I think I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: Arafat Calls for Democratic Elections in the United States;World Reaction is Mixed. Check out this choice tidbit:

  "Mr. Bush is tainted by his association with Jim-Crow-style selective disenfranchisement and executive strong-arm tactics in a southeastern province controlled by his brother," said Mr. Arafat, who was elected with 87% of the vote in 1996 elections in the West Bank and Gaza, declared to be free and fair by international observers, including former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. "Our count shows that he would have lost the election if his associates hadn't deprived so many thousands of African-Americans, an oppressed minority, of the right to vote. He is not the man to bring peace to the Middle East."

• Lists are good, don't you think?
• Just one tiny glimpse at the scary Supreme Court -- something to think about as lots of lawsuits against the USA Patriot Act and other bad "security" legislation head into the courts:

  The Supreme Court has issued some of its most regrettable rulings in the name of protecting the nation from domestic threats [~] upholding the imprisonment of radicals in 1925 and the internment of Japanese-Americans in 1944.

  And if you follow the news, you know that in recent years the Court has made its most important/far-reaching decisions by a 5-4 vote, meaning that the next time a justice retires (and it's likely that will be w/in the next couple of years), his or her replacement could radically change the future of life in the U.S., for better or worse. Point being: The next few election cycles (this fall and especially in 2004) would be bad times to choose to be apathetic and remain uninformed about your candidates and choices. Oh, and just in case you missed it, Bush has made clear repeatedly what he intends to do if he gets a chance to appoint a justice. most recently, according to David Corn:

  At the [G8] summit, [Bush] opened a press conference with Russian president Vladmir Putin by saying, "We need common sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God and those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench." That is a major -- and stunning -- policy declaration. Bush was announcing a new litmus test for judges. It's not just whether you're a conservative or constructionist (or meet the political needs of Karl Rove, Bush's uberstrategist). The question is, do you believe in God and believe that secular law follows the law of God? In other words, there are no atheists -- or agnostics -- in Bush's chambers.

  Yikes!

• Are some Demos actually beginning to stand up for something other than "we support the war on terra"? Are they finally going to call The Hypocrite In Chief on his past? Perhaps:

  Gore even made a rather amazing direct comparison between White House and Enron ethics. "Look at the Bush-Cheney budget plan, and tell me how is that different from the Enron profit-and-loss statement," he said Saturday in a speech to Tennessee Democrats.

  Meanwhile, Democrats are trying to force Republicans to take what they believe are bad votes on corporate policy. House Democrats Richard Neal, D-Mass., and Jim Maloney, D-Conn., introduced a bill that aims to stop corporations from avoiding taxes by relocating to tax havens such as Bermuda. The bill was defeated on a party-line vote.

  "The Republican leadership took sides in the fight between ordinary Americans and corrupt corporate practices, and they chose the corrupt corporations," said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., after the vote.

  I could listen to a whole lot more of that!

• Bush Slashing Aid for E.P.A. Cleanup 1t 33 Toxic Sites. Oh yeah, give us another tax cut so we won't have enough money to make our environment livable. Yeah, and while you're at it, get rid fo that Estate Tax, too -- we don't need the $22 billion/year it can provide. Nah, don't worry about it. Run the country into debt to fight a "war on terra" that's only making the world more unsafe, while at the same time cutting funding for everything else. Yeah. That's fine. Thanks. Eiiiiiiieeeeee!
• Why is there a "provision in the Texas Education Code that textbooks should promote democracy, patriotism and the free-enterprise system"? It matters because:

  After California, Texas is the biggest buyer of textbooks in the United States, accounting for nearly 10 percent of the national market. In fact, conservative activists in Texas say they have already received calls from leading publishers anxious to discuss the forthcoming history and social studies adoptions. Many publishers write their books with the Texas and California markets in mind, but complain of political pressure.

  Now look way up in this way too long list at the Baker review of the media books and recall that it seems that the bottom line is all anyone cares about in our country. Where does that obsession come from? How about state laws demanding that public schools promote the "free-enterprise system"?

• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (yes, thatJonathan Franzen of Oprah-dissing fame), page 318:

  Fear of humiliation and the craving for humiliation are closely linked: psychologists know it, Russian novelists know it.

• Another great explanation of Palldium and all. [via Scripting News &emdash;again!]
• This list is officially too long and out of control.
• Wow. This is dated, I know, but this rant about the Apple Switch ads is just incredible. I really liked many of Orlowski's previous pieces, but I really don't get where he's coming from here. Talk about a screwy view of people and the world. Orlowski says:

  "You can spot life's losers a mile away: because they have a hump about something - about blacks, or Jews, or grubby proles - but they're really just rueing their own fuck-ups: bad decisions or squandered opportunities."

  Um, so I guess in Orlowski's world, if you you prefer not to use Windows you're just like a racist bigot? Hello, Mr. O? I'm earth, have we met? If you follow this line of argument, any disagreement w/the mainstream would make you an anathema. This sounds like the same "you're either for us or against us" logic Shrub has been using since 9-11 to force the planet into doing what's best for "American interests." In other words, for Orlowski (and Shrub and Co.), you're either a lemming or a loser, but not just a loser, you're a social pariah. This qualifies as what's often known as a "leap of logic."

  On a related note, John Dvorak has joined the bandwagon saying how bad these ads are. Methinks these Wintel users doth protest too much. But, I guess the truth it does hurt, no?

• And to end on a slightly more positive note, Damon Wright (one of the Apple "switchers") has written up his story of the switch ad. Very nice. He also points to another "switcher," Aaron Adams, who has more to say on the whole "switch" thang.

4:41:08 PM      comment