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Thursday, September 25, 2003 |
More and more CEOs say meditation helps their businesses. Do you agree? Let us know by taking our short survey. [Inc.com]
5:02:34 PM 
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Restore a sense of balance to your workspace with the ancient Chinese discipline of environmental design -- feng shui. [Inc.com]
5:02:10 PM
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More lunacy on the music front.
Music Biz Drills into Dentists for Royalties "The group that collects royalties for songwriters is taking aim at an unusual source: dentists. It's not just dentists, but chiropractors and opticians -- any kind of office space that plays CDs.... SOCAN is the Canadian copyright collective for the public performance of musical works. The group administers the performing rights of composers, lyricists, songwriters and their publishers. It says that every time a dentist or other health care practitioner plays music for its patients, he's stealing. The group wants the doctors to pay up for the right to play their songs. Some will not like the stance SOCAN is taking. However, there are some who welcome the idea. 'Songwriters are hurting because of the perception it's the public domain ... it's about time this happened,' said Johnathan Simkin who runs '604 Records' and is the lawyer for the rock group Nickelback.... SOCAN doesn't want to press charges. It just hopes businesses will voluntarily come up with the cash -- so musicians can continue to make life a little more enjoyable." [CTV.ca, via MP3 Insider]
I can't decide if I hope this is a joke to highlight the absurdity of the music industry's position or if I should hope it is for real in order to highlight the absurdity of the music industry's position! [The Shifted Librarian]
4:50:29 PM
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Hey Sprint , get a clue! I'd love to switch or upgrade my phone to a camera phone and yet the cell company that I've been loyal to for nearly three years blocks my every move. Not only me but 4 others in my family are Sprint clients as well. Don't they get it, I'd be using the phone much more and therefore their service as well. Apparently not. Maybe it's time that we begin to look for another service?
The manufacture of mobile phone/camera handsets surpassed that of ordinary digital cameras in the first half of 2003. Thanks, Udhay! [Smart Mobs]
4:48:03 PM
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Seth Godin Liars, cheats and fools
The record industry sued a "little old lady" named Sarah Ward. She's not that old, but she's little and she's not a pirate. She's never even downloaded the software you need to download the music. The RIAA has dropped the suit, but Amy Weiss, their spokesman, says, "We have chosen to give her the benefit of the doubt and are continuing to look into the facts... This is the only case of its kind."
Now, regardless of how you feel about litigation as a business strategy, refusing to apologize is just a bad idea. This is clearly NOT the only case of its kind. Instead of stonewalling, why doesn't the RIAA say, "This is terrific! She's an honest citizen and we're proud of her. We made a mistake and we apologize. We're sending Ms. Ward a hundred CDs to apologize for bothering her. If there are any other cases like this one, we'll drop them immediately."
Totally agreed. Now all of you who supported the RIAA suing the 12 year old girl, do you think it's cool for them to be suing people who haven't done anything?
Being sued isn't like, "oh sorry... wrong number.." [Joi Ito's Web]
4:23:45 PM
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Britt Blaser: Publicize the Internet. He begins with five points...
- Powerful forces will profit if the Internet is privatized
- Companies and governments that benefit from a privatized Internet will support this "improvement"
- Others will be frozen out of the standards process designed to "upgrade" the Internet
- The only force strong enough to keep the Internet free is the police power of the U.S. Government
- Which of the current 11 candidates do you most want in command of Federal Internet policy?
When you make a public good private, it's said that you privatize it. So if you rescue a public good for the continued use of the public, doesn't that mean that you publicize it? Yeah. It's time to publicize the Internet...
The Internet must be publicized because it's way too vulnerable to privatization. It's encroached upon more each week, with the latest assault being the awful Verisign dereliction of its stewardship of .com and .net domains. We know that Microsoft will do everything it can to make the Internet its private sandbox. Telecoms have proven that they will do anything they can to avoid commoditization. The only force on earth that can stop it, sad to say, is the police power of the state. Lilly-livered libertarians like me hate that truth, but truth it is.
Big bonus link: John Walker's How big brother and big media can put the Internet genie back in the bottle. A sample:
Earlier I believed there was no way to put the Internet genie back into the bottle. In this document I will provide a road map of precisely how I believe that could be done, potentially setting the stage for an authoritarian political and intellectual dark age global in scope and self-perpetuating, a disempowerment of the individual which extinguishes the very innovation and diversity of thought which have brought down so many tyrannies in the past.
Walker is the founder of Autodesk, an iron-livered libertarian, and one of the world's most articulate iconoclasts. His dispatches have always made excellent and mind-opening reading, and this one is no exception.
Back to Britt, who has a "Virgin's Plea":
I've never done anything with politics, except given money to the Repubs when strong-armed by business associates. But the Internet is the right cause and it turns out that this week is the last minute.
| This is the quarter that can demonstrate to the public and the press that the Internet candidacy is serious and inevitable. The leading Dem candidates are inside-the-beltway pros looking to put another notch in the handle of their ego. If one of them sneaks past Dean and beats a declining Bush, the Internet is just as vulnerable as if Rove keeps calling the shots.
So I've put up a Free the Internet donation site at Dean for America . That's a big step for a guy like me. My habit is to sit on the sidelines and pontificate on how things ought to be done. I've primed my Free the Internet contribution site with $1,000. That sounds grand, but it's about a year's worth of lattés or of a broadband blogging presence.
If you're reading this, that's the level you need to be standing up for. 3 bucks a day. Do the math.
So it's up to us to put up some serious money. Your limit is $2,000. Contribute as an indicator of your clue inventory.
| If you comprehend the threat, you know it's real. If you understand this race, you know that just one candidate stands to gain from a free Internet and all the others can only lose. Free the Internet!
[Doc Searls]
4:16:44 PM
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From Kevin Kelly's Recomendo e-zine:
My Jeep is camouflaged to look like a commercial fleet vehicle. I made up a fake company name, appropriated a 1950s-era logo that once belonged to a nuclear energy mutual fund, painted safety stripes on the back, and plastered a fake vehicle number all over the place. I also added flashing yellow lights in the rear window, and a police-style spotlight and rubberized push bumper to the front. VERY FUN accessories ... and useful too (when used with discretion). The spotlight is incredibly versatile -- you can point/rotate it while sitting in the driver's seat -- and it's come in handy countless times for roadside emergencies, setting up campsites, or finding house numbers on dark streets. This urban camouflage guise is very useful for parking in yellow zones, urban/industrial exploration, and crime deterrence. And the thing is... it really works!
The spotlight, bumper, and rear flashers came from my *all-time favorite* mail order catalog: Galls, "The Authority in Public Safety Equipment and Apparel." It's a gold mine, full of handy things that you didn't think you were allowed to buy.-- Todd Lapin
Galls catalog, The Unity spotlight, The Federal Signal flashers, Unruly crowds? Need riot gear? Link [Boing Boing]
3:56:14 PM
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So who's the MBA weenie who came up with this idea and is now sucking wind?
Zed sez, "WKRP in Cincinnati (which was shot on video instead of film because RIAA's licensing fees were more favorable for programs on video) has, in syndication, had all the original music replaced with generic music because the RIAA's license fees to keep the music were outrageous. Other shows in which music plays an important role never see syndication for that reason. So instead of getting some money, they succeed in getting no money."
Link
(Thanks, Zed!) [Boing Boing]
3:54:43 PM
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See the post, "Throwing off the Data Miners," on how to mess this up.
[Privacy Digest]
3:48:05 PM
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How long before these begin appearing here in the DPS and surrounding counties? We have plenty of Casino's here in the area to fund just such a project.
[Privacy Digest]
3:46:16 PM
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Maybe this is the reason they don't have a presence here in the Rocky Mountains. They are to dumb to realize there are plenty of people here for their market.
Cingular must really be getting scared about the impending imposition of phone number portability, because they're throwing out lots of pathetic and condescending excuses for why it shouldn't go through, like that the process might be too "complicated" for most people. Spare us. Read... [Gizmodo]
3:41:37 PM
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This is becoming a broken record, Denver Downtown Partnership, are you listening, is anyone home?
Well, part of downtown Pittsburgh is going wireless: Telerama, an ISP, made a deal with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust to cover 14 blocks downtown with Wi-Fi. Users will be able to access info about theaters and other cultural spaces in the area for free and full Internet access will cost $5 a day or $30 a month. While clearly business people can use the network, Telerama specifically targets neighborhoods and campuses for the more "casual" user. It already offers service in coffee shops, bars, restaurants, theaters and health clubs in Pittsburgh. I think they'll really have to spell out why people other than business users will want to use the networks because I don't think Joe laptop user walking down the street will understand why he would want to get online in the health club. Unlike some of the big hot spot operatorsm, Telerama actually pays hot spot locations to become hot spots. I wonder if that means Telerama has a different revenue sharing model than some of the other folks.... [802.11b Networking News]
3:32:50 PM
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I'm not sure why this would bother anyone. Maybe only the technophobes, luddite, or those tech challenged people. I'd love to have something like this available. There are a couple of stores I frequent, yes I'm a guy and I like to shop so get over it, where I do have a good sense of where things are in the store due to the number of times I've been there. However, there are stores I've stopped in where I'm clueless, given I've not been in the store before or the store layout is not at all shopper friendly or intuitive.
This trial Wi-Fi application in a German grocery store would make me nuts : When regular shoppers walk in the store they pick up a Tablet PC, swipe their affinity card across a bar code reader on the PC and hang it off their cart. When they swipe their card, the PC receives info via Wi-Fi on what the person has bought historically. Then as they walk into an aisle the PC gets info about things the shoppers have bought before in that aisle so the PC can "remind" shoppers of things they might be forgetting to buy. And it displays advertising about items in the aisle. The one cool thing about the application is that shoppers scan products on the PC as they put them in their cart. It's not totally clear how this works but it sounds like the PC sends the total cost of the goods via Wi-Fi to a special check out line so that when the shopper checks out their tally is already there and all they have to do is swipe their card to pay.... [802.11b Networking News]
3:25:02 PM
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© Copyright 2003 Paul W. Swansen.
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