Tipping point for the music industry?
After years in denial, are major record labels removing their blinders? 

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25 Things To Like About Radio UserLand 8
Found these two nice stories from Robert Scoble.
Reasons 1 to 11 and Reasons 12 to 25. 

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Ginger's blog policy
Unfortunate that such statements are necessary. Ginger does a good job helping the clueless arrange their first purchase. 

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Radio UserLand Configuration Changes
I have not kept this blog up-to-date as I experiment; big mistake. Modified home page and main templates again to fix table position for open links and search box mods. Began content relocation from my old site and set URL redirection. The more I use the Radio UserLand 8 content management system, the more I like it. However, it feels easier to manage blogs than static content... maybe because I haven't spent much time trying static management yet. 

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It takes big bucks to beam up Kirk's chair
For the latest in "must have" Star Trek antiques... 

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Blogging Stories
Stories about blogging in the mainstream and off-beat press:
http://www.executivesummary.com/blarchive/2002_06_16_blog-archive.shtml#77909713 

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Who's Minding The Store Now?
A Bad Scene: When the SysAdmin Is Forced to Leave the Building

Been there, done that. Good advice.  Read the story.

[The FuzzyBlog!] 

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But Don't Quote Me On That

The following is from Ernie the Attorney

Maybe NPR's linking policy is actually a small part of a bigger problem

Reading George Will's column (which I found via Instapundit), makes me think that, these days, we have a more fundamental problem than just failure to understand the purpose of hyperlinking...  

Will is drawing attention to ordinary speech issues, but I see it applying to the problem of linking and copyright law too.  After all, unless the lawsuit that Will describes is immediately dismissed with scorn and derision, the message will be sent that --even in ordinary speech-- the person who says something can control how others use that statement.

If I say Joe Blow is a good guy, then Joe should be able to quote me on that and shouldn't have to ask for my permission.  If the law allows me to inhibit Joe's ability to quote me then what chance does hyperlinking have when NPR and others claim they have the right to control that form of speech?  None.  And that's not good... 

[Ernie the Attorney] 

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Who Cares? They're Only Customers...
Yahoo Kisses It All Good-bye
The secret of Yahoo's original success was that it committed itself to standing shoulder to shoulder with its customers. So what made the company turn its back on them?
[John Ellis, Fast Company, issue 60 via InstaPundit] 

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Brass Spittons 1, Laptop Computers 0 - Your Tax Dollars At Work

Senator Asks Permission to Bring Laptop to Work

"You can still find brass spittoons on the floor of the United States Senate, but don't look for personal computers -- they're not allowed in the historic chamber." [Story Link] via [New York Times: Technology]

Interesting article that talks about how wireless would help the senators and congressmen get up to the minute information on bills and roll calls etc.  It never ceases to amaze me (although I guess it shouldn't) that government is so behind the curve on this sort of stuff.  The local federal court (and I suppose all of them for all I know) doesn't allow you to bring a laptop to court, unless you get permission from the judge.  Most of the judges will give you permission, but you have to know that and ask for it ahead of time.  And the local federal court also doesn't allow cellphones (supposedly due to a fear of explosives).  Sigh....

[Ernie the Attorney] 

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Q&A With Lawrence Lessig
Reason: Cyberspace's Legal Visionary. Q&A with Lawrence Lessig. The thing I'm most worried about is what happens as the network moves from an essentially common carriage-regulated medium to pipes that are unregulated and increasingly encouraged to discriminate for or against the content they serve. [Tomalak's Realm] 

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Claire Braz-Valentine's Open Letter To John Ashcroft
Thanks to Judith for her 13 Jun 2002 post.

The following is a letter read by Claire Braz-Valentine, the author, at this year's "In Celebration of the Muse", Cabrillo College. It is worth knowing that the author is a woman of 60+ years, conservatively dressed and obviously quite talented.

AN OPEN LETTER TO JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES

On January 28, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that he spent $8,000 of taxpayer's money for drapes to cover up the exposed breast of The Spirit of Justice, an 18 ft aluminum statue of a woman that stands in the Department of Justice's Hall of Justice.

John, John, John, you've got your priorities all wrong. While men fly airplanes into skyscrapers, dive bomb the pentagon, while they stick explosives into their shoes, and then book a seat right next to us, while they hide knives in their luggage, steal kids on school buses,take little girls from their beds at night, drive trucks into our state capital buildings, while our president calls dangerous men all over the world evildoers and devils, while we live in the threat of biological warfare, nuclear destruction, annihilation, you are out buying yardage to save Americans from the appalling alarming, abominable aluminum alloy of evil, that terrible ten foot tin tittie. You might not be able to find Bin Laden, but you sure as hell found the hooter in the hall of justice.

It's not that we aren't grateful. But while we were begging the women of Afghanistan to not cover up their faces, you are begging your staff members to just cover up that nipple, to save the American people from that monstrous metal mammary. How can we ever thank you?

So, in your office every morning, in your secret prayer meeting, while an American woman is sexually assaulted every 6 seconds, while anthrax floats around the post office and settles in the chest of senior citizens, you've got another chest on your mind.

While American sons arrive home in body bags and heat seeking missiles fly around a foreign country looking for any warm body, you think of another body. And you pray for the biggest bra in the world. John, you see that breast on the Spirit of Justice in the spirit of your own inhibited sexuality.

And when we women see our grandmothers, our mothers, our daughters, our granddaughters, our sisters, ourselves, when we women see that statue, the Spirit of Justice, we see the spirit of strength, the spirit of survival. Every day we view innocent bodies dragged out of rubble, and women and children laid out like thin limp dolls and baptized into death as collateral damage, and we see the hollow-eyed Afghani mother whose milk has dried up underneath her burka in famine, in shame, and her children are dead at her breast.

While you look at that breast, John, that jug on the Spirit of Justice, and deal with your thoughts of lust and sex and nakedness, we see it as a testimony to motherhood. You see it as a tit.

It's not the money it cost. It's the message you send. We've got the right to live in freedom. We've got the right to cheat Americans out of millions of dollars and then just not want to tell Congress about it.

We've got the right to drop bombs, night and day, on a small country that has no army, no navy, no military at all, because we've got the right to bear arms. But we just better not even think about the right to bare breasts.

So now John, you can be photographed while you stand there and talk about guns and bombs and poisons without that breast appearing over your right shoulder, without that bodacious bosom bothering you and we just wanted to tell you in the spirit of justice, in the spirit of truth, John, there is still one very big boob left standing there in that picture.

 

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Vannevar Bush
Boxes & Arrows: Foreseeing the future: The legacy of Vannevar Bush. It is because of this article that Bush has been hailed as the conceptual creator of "hypertext". The article is at its most innovative and interesting in the description of how the memex device was to work for the reader. [Tomalak's Realm] 

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Hello? Media Moguls R Us? Care To Purchase A Clue?
Mmmm... That Coffee Sure Smells Good.

The Trail of Dead: Let’s Save Pop Music … and Hollywood Too

"The music industry is not going to win this, because, like alcohol during Prohibition and satellite TV in heartland, millions of people want it. And when you have a market that size, especially young people, it will be served, legally or through a black market.

The music industry doesn't seem to get this, but apparently believes that through litigation it can hold back the tide and maintain its wildly lucrative status quo. It's not going to happen. Technology keeps moving forward.

And it's not going to stop at music either. Already places like Morpheus are offering movie files, including first runs like Spiderman. These are pretty crude , mostly filmed off a mallplex screen, but you can see the future roaring down the tracks.

One of these days the black market will figure out how to monetize this process, and the music industry and Hollywood (and books and magazines and pay-per-view TV and computer games) will find itself under assault by thieves and hijackers. And it'll be real easy to divert the movie of the future as it is being wirelessly transmitted in digital to the local moviehouse.

The answer, the one the entertainment industry doesn't want to face, is to embrace this technology revolution. It means beating the Napsters and Morpheii (and not the current half-assed industry alternative) at their own game.

By that, I mean putting the entire catalogue, including new releases, online. Put them on in higher quality and with faster download speeds (through compression, etc.) than anything out there right now....

Whatever the amount, a new payment system has to be put into place. The pieces are already there — online micropayments, debit cards for young people, security passwords for security, but no one has put them all together.

A hundred million dollars and a task force of financial institutions, online service providers and entertainment executives ought to be able to iron out standards in six months and have the system in beta in 18....

Meanwhile, the music industry could go back to doing its real job: finding and developing talented, less-predictable, new bands. And who knows, perhaps Hollywood could even start taking risks again....

If the music industry won't create this new industry, then the pirates will. And, after a decent interval, the pirates will be rehabilitated as the new establishment." [ABCNews commentary]

[The Shifted Librarian] 

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Making Fun Of Music
Am I Right? Making fun of music. One song at a time... 

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Classic Dilbert: Cubicle Life Force
 

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Test of Radio To The Past
[Re-post to Day 1]

Test Radio To The Past feature in the Kit Suite from Mark Paschal. Made a backup before and after the original post. Sent post back to the day I downloaded the Radio UserLand evaluation copy.

Radio UserLand Day 1: Redwood Asylum goes on-line.

If you found this web log, you can probably find my others. New tool, new direction. New attitude? People tell me change is a good thing. People have been known to be wrong. Time will tell... 

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