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Friday, October 04, 2002 |
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Cisco CEO draws $1 salary. Chief Executive John Chambers joins Apple CEO Steve Jobs and former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale to be among tech executives to see a $1 salary. [CNET News.com] The article describes this as a largely symbolic gesture - wish I could afford to make such gestures. 10:10:48 AM 
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According to Clay Shirky, weblogs make publishing a financially worthless activity. Saying that blogs are facilitating the mass amateurisation of publishing, the writer suggests that there's no point trying to find ways of making money out of blogging. I agree entirely - blogging is about writing for the sake of it, about enjoying the conversation and don't even think you'll make a crust out of it. As one of the fortunate people that gets paid to write, I never regarded blogging as a means to establishing myself as a professional writer - why would anybody want to pay me for the self-indulgence that is my blog. My professional writing is enjoyable and challenging but I can't indulge in the luxury of personal commentary and the creative freedoms I can take with my blog. That's personal and I thank Dave Winer/Radio and all the other blog inventors for this freedom. 9:52:15 AM
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Burning Bird says that spam is starting to appear in her weblog comments. Picked this link up on Scripting News. A brief observation that a piece she blogged about hefty phone bills generated spam in her comment box. One of the comments to this new piece points out that it is not spam but "viral marketing" - well here we go inventing the language of technology again. Seems you can buy a custom google thingy which searches for key words on blogs and auto posts comments for you. This is marketing, as insidious and driven by money as all other forms of marketing. Why call it viral? Why discriminate between one form of marketing and another? 9:36:04 AM
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started the day with a spoof on Bush at the UN on The Onion. The link was sent by an american colleague which is kinda cool - nice to see some real americans working with real brains in these trying times - I was beginning to fear that resistance was only a blog phenomenon. Yesterday I caught (or rather Norton caught) bugbear worming its way into my mailbox. Despite the fact that I have the PATCH I was still vulnerable and the damn thing replicated itself twice into my temp internet folder even though it was quarantined. Only reason I caught it is that I've got my Norton set for auto live update. So, I'm doing all I can and yet I feel so weak and vulnerable. Coming to the point where I'm almost afraid to give people my email address. Someday I'll get around to writing a story about our emotional involvement with and dependence on our computers. We all know the symptoms of this rapidly spreading disease - that sense of withdrawal when there's a power cut and we can't check email, the sense of fear and impending doom when a bug strikes, the overwhelming depression when the hard disk dies. Dave Winer blogged recently that one possible response to Microsoft's ever-increasing dominance and control of our lives is to switch off and take up pottery. Now if I could only figure some way to work remotely without the wires and CPU I'd be laughing. 9:22:42 AM
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Thursday, October 03, 2002 |
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Feeling all freaked out and like you're living in the X-files (thanks Ron), air your anger at Angrydot. The "chief editor" (strange important sounding title for an anarchist) sums his anger up as follows:
10:31:02 AM
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Seems they're tinkering with the copyright laws in Oz as well. And, as the saying goes, where there's a will there's a loophole, on the web, where there's copyright debate there's a blog. 10:05:26 AM
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Today I designed a typeface - well not quite, I was number 7000 + who contributed to an online collaborative typeface design process on the typophile site. Quite a funky, well-coded site full of little tricks and trucs. Typophile is a site for free and open typographic development and forums etc. and I read an interesting article there about the rights and wrongs of it all. Seems that US copyright laws don't protect typefaces - Bembo would be turning in his grave. I thought US copyright and patent laws protected everything down to the washer in the kitchen sink - why is typography not considered worthy of protection? 9:50:11 AM
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Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren represents San Jose and has introduced a bill designed to protect consumer rights in the great copyright debate - http://www.house.gov/lofgren/press/107press/021002_release.htm 9:22:38 AM
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Tuesday, October 01, 2002 |
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Finally, I managed to get a free the mouse button onto my home page. I was using the picture tool that comes with radio and my images were disappearing into ether - or not, they were actually disappearing into a Userland/Radio Clean folder on my hard disk which is where wily Dave Winer had programmed them to go. Why? Anyway - October 9 is D-Day for the mouse - it's when Lessig and co. appear in the Supreme Court for the Eldred v. Ashcroft case. Public domainers v. copyright shysters. On a related theme, this week Dan Gillmor states that the studio's goal (i.e. Hollywood et al) is total copyright control - this following his fair-minded presentation last week of Valenti's case. 10:17:54 AM
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Wednesday, September 25, 2002 |
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How a Bank Got E-Mail Scammed. A Detroit secretary is the latest to fall for an 'urgent business proposition' and requests for 'urgent assistance' from an official-sounding foreigner, becoming another victim of the ubiquitous e-mail scam. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News] The 59 year old secretary transferred over 2 million dollars of her bosses money to the fraudster before she landed in court for her sins and now she's in it up to her neck. They reckon that one in a hundred people that receive the email scam go for it - are people that stupid, that greedy? 9:47:11 AM
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Sunday, September 22, 2002 |
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American democracy RIP is a fairly scary summary of what's being going on in the US since Bush got (s)elected. Drawing references to the rise of Hitler and the Stasi, the article reviews the erosion of freedoms since 911 as well as the alliances forged between state, military, and corporatism. The fundies aren't forgotten either in the analysis. What's scary about reading stuff like this is that it's only reiterating your own thoughts but when you see it all assembled in black and white, using highly emotive terms, it sounds like a great big conspiracy theory and you have to think: it's deluded. But it's not. Help. 11:11:57 AM
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The Decline Of The Meal. Plastic::Etcetera::Living: "Famed historian of food Felipe Fernandez-Armesto offers a wonderful essay on how the disappearance in modern days of proper family meals has brought with it catastrophic social effects, ranging from fragmentation of family life to disease." [Plastic: Most Recent] This article, that appeared in Saturday's Guardian concludes that when we stop grazing we will stop gorging. The author attributes modern western crisis of obesity to the fact that we don't eat together en famille anymore. When I came to France I couldn't get my head around the lunch ritual. At the stroke of noon everything stops for two hours. People sit down and eat big - starter, main course, cheese, desert, wine, water and coffee. Every day not just special occasions. But, you could die of starvation if you miss the 12pm - 2pm window - not a snack to be had in rural france outside of MacDonalds. Even MacDonalds in France takes a more civilised approach to eating - they serve salads and good coffee and beer! This is another aspect of french eating that amazes me. While the rest of the "civilised" world has shunned a drink with lunch and turned instead to designer water, the french always drink (alcohol) with their food. But not for the purpose of getting drunk - just enough to help digest and relax the soul. My children eat a three/four course lunch at school each day. For 2.58 euros a day (less than three bucks) I am assured that they are eating well. This service is a community-based service and we received a leaflet about it at the start of the school year. The purpose of the lunches is not only to feed the children but is designed with a pedagogical approach to introduce them to new taste experiences and valuable social skills. Given the french approach to food - the live to eat as opposed to eat to live approach - they seem remarkably unfat and healthy on it. And they will eat just about anything - nothing goes to waste. I have stopped short at some of the local delicacies, including tete de veau and andouille (my local town) which lends its name to the tripe sausage. 10:48:00 AM
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Timeless Words: Fundies: LET ME BE. "People are people, so why should it be- you and I should get along so awfully?" - Depeche Mode [Morons Dot Org] Long article by a gay writer who is sad and fed up at being the target of fundie propaganda. Things are going from bad to worse when the gays of San Francisco feel frightened and abused - it was the mecca for gays worldwide when I was growing up - what happened? As a heterosexual I've always thought that the saddest thing for gays must be the issue of parenthood. When extolling family values, shouldn't christians recognise this overwhelming personal loss in gay family structures and show some sympathy? 10:11:14 AM
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Last update: 10/4/2002; 10:10:49 AM .
