b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Recently
File Trading Manifesto
Space Shuttle Lost Over Texas
New EC Anti-Piracy Proposal
Distributed Internet Backup System
WWE Employee Satisfaction
End Referer Abuse in Radio
Radio Improvements
Everyday Thong
Murderer Owns Remains
No Pity for Hilary
P2P Portal
Abbyy FineReader
Blog Reorganization
Defining and Building an Information Strategy
Google Grows
Saturday, February 1, 2003
War On Drugs
America's three most important domestic issues today do not include abortion, faith-based initiatives, prescription drug prices, tax cuts, corporate reform, social security, the stock market, affirmative action, or any other news-driven sound bite topic. The three most important domestic issues are:- the Homeland Security Act
- the War on Drugs
- the Copyright Cabal
Why are these so important? Because they affect every American without regard to race, gender, religion, or status. Each is an attempt to criminalize, a priori, huge segments of the population. Each is a legislative fiat aimed squarely at individual freedom. Each has been accepted by large portions of the population as right and good despite the abuses that are already occurring. And each is a wholesale transferring rights from legal citizens to a handful of unelected bureaucrats.
Recently a US District Judge attacked one of these issues. For once I agree with the judiciary.
Denver U.S. District Judge John Kane Jr., who has been speaking and writing against the nation's drug policy for about five years, won a standing ovation from a packed City Club luncheon at the Brown Palace Hotel."I don't favor drugs at all," Kane said. [...]
"Our national drug policy is inconsistent with the nature of justice, abusive of the nature of authority, and wholly ignorant of the compelling force of forgiveness," he said. "I suggest that federal drug laws be severely cut back." [...]
File Trading Manifesto
The best summation yet of the current case against the Copyright Cabal, provided by one of their own -- Artist House Records President John Snyder, and his son Ben. I'm adding this piece to my Citizen's Copyright Information Kit, a collection of the articulate, impassioned, and well reasoned arguments being made against the usurious and demeaning tactics of the RIAA and MPAA. I plan to eventually create hard-copy output of all the pieces (thereby creating something even a politician can read), organize them into a proper presentation folder, and hand deliver them to the local office of each of my representatives.Snyder quotes lots of third-party statistics, summarizes many of the earlier pieces such as Tim O'Reilly's essay on piracy, the EFF article on unintended consequences, and the Janis Ian interview. He also cites, quotes, and links to numerous other resources. Powerful stuff.
"Embrace file-sharing, or die". This from Artist House Records' President, John Snyder, and his son Ben, in response to the National Association of Recording Artists [algorhythm]
Space Shuttle Lost Over Texas
I remember vividly the 1986 loss of Challenger -- it's the only event in my life that is etched as clearly as the fall of the World Trade Center. Ironically, I was driving east on Hwy 183 in Irving, TX when it occurred.This is a tragedy, but not very likely a terrorist attack. Far more likely is that this is the result of a misguided, misdirected space program that has been sending people into space in the equivalent of a 30-year-old school bus. The space shuttles were all built in the 1970s, with technology from the 1960s. They are outdated, outmoded, decrepit, and worn out. It costs billions to refurbish them every time they're used.
It's charming to watch Han Solo or Captain Malcolm Reynolds fly around in interplanetary craft held together with bailing wire. But that's entertainment. It's entirely another matter to be sending our own people off in such things. Yet that's what we do, every time we launch a space shuttle.
I don't want to see the space program shut down. We need the space program. But we need one that isn't technologically out paced by Nintendo. A lot of smart people have given NASA plans, concepts, and road maps over the years. None have been used. How many more must die before we get it together and stop trying to fly school buses?
New EC Anti-Piracy Proposal
New EC anti-piracy directive starts to recognize consumer rights. After failing to gain much support among EU nations, the commission submitted a new draft that focuses on commercial and large-scale piracy, not legitimate owners engaged in personal activities.
[...] The proposed directive, meant to harmonize intellectual property right enforcement laws in the 15-nation European Union (EU), aims to strike "a fair balance" between interests of right holders and the opportunities the Internet offers to consumers, according to Commission documents accompanying the draft.No tougher sanctions are introduced against individuals who download tracks for noncommercial use. Criminal sanctions only apply when copyright infringement is carried out intentionally and for commercial purposes, the Commission said. [...]
That the proposal has infuriated the Copyright Cabal is encouraging.
[...] The industry in a statement issued jointly by 10 organizations, including the Business Software Alliance (BSA), International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and Motion Picture Association (MPA), blasted the proposal, calling it "inadequate" and "unambitious." [...]
Europe rarely leads the US in intelligent technology law. Maybe this is one time they will. We certainly need some common sense interjected into this argument.
Slashdot | Your Rights Online - Finland Drops EUCD For Now.replicant_deckard writes "Electronic Frontier Finland just got a huge legal victory. They report the local DMCA-copy (based on EU copyright directive) was dropped today at the parliament after heavy criticism. So far just two EU nations have accepted the innovation threatening law. Campaigns go on in different European states. They need your support!" cabra771 writes "The European Commission has put up a new proposal dealing with online music piracy that appears to have slightly upset a few people." [Privacy Digest]
Friday, January 31, 2003
Distributed Internet Backup System
Another driver for home servers, the two-way Internet, and legitimate P2P. This is a very early effort, but is emblematic of the power in P2P and grid computing. Given the right sort of front-end and controls, a similar system could work for distributed document and content management systems, ensuring availability. I'd set aside 10GB-20GB of disk space in return for similar space scattered across the Net.
Slashdot | Distributed Internet Backup System.deadfx writes "Since disk drives are cheap, backup should be cheap too. Of course it does not help to mirror your data by adding more disks to your own computer because a fire, flood, power surge, etc. could still wipe out your local data center. Instead, you should give your files to peers (and in return store their files) so that if a catastrophe strikes your area, you can recover data from surviving peers. The Distributed Internet Backup System (DIBS) is designed to implement this vision."
Note that DIBS is a backup system not a file sharing system like Napster, Gnutella, Kazaa, etc. In fact, DIBS encrypts all data transmissions so that the peers you trade files with can not access your data. [Privacy Digest]
WWE Employee Satisfaction
This is not something you think about every day, but World Wrestling Entertainment employees seem happy as clams. I have a colleague who recently did some work at the Stamford, CT headquarters and came back amazed at the facility, the atmosphere, and the genuine enjoyment people seem to get out of their work there. And no, I don't think the threat of body slams colored the observation...End Referer Abuse in Radio
Quick Script to put a Radio Userland signature in your aggregator queries.
End referrer abuse in Radio. How not to spam folks' referrer logs with Radio's aggregator.[...] Change
aggregatorData.prefs.appSignatureUrlto the empty string. A Quick Script ofaggregatorData.prefs.appSignatureUrl = ""will do it. This is actually all you must do to stop referrer abuse, but continue if you want to include your URL in the user-agent header like l.m. orchard did. [...] [markpasc.org]
Radio Improvements
John Robb gives a tip as to what's next for Radio users, all very nice additions -- but I'd rather have rock-solid stability, a simple health check for root files, and a decent ftp driver.
FYI to Radio users. We are working on three things right now:
- A back-up system that makes it easy to reinstall Radio after a crash on a local PC.
- More storage space.
- A synchronization system that makes it possible to post to your Radio weblog from more than one PC (solves the work / home problem some people have).
More is on deck (however these are more complex projects and require zealous caveats): a snazzy Windows interface (potentially an OSX interface too) that takes advantage of slick OS enabled capabilities, a faster comments server, and P2P multimedia weblog publishing.
[John Robb's Radio Weblog]
Everyday Thong
Products that change your life and improve the view -- can't beat it.
Product designers are finally ready to acknowledge that women are wearing sexy underwear everyday, all month long. Announcing: the long-overdue advent of sexy feminine hygiene products....
Murderer Owns Remains
More bizarre news from Tyler, TX as a judge rules that the remains of 8-year-old victim belong to the convicted killer instead of the family.
Killer refuses to release boy's remains for burialAssociated Press
TYLER, Texas -- A convicted murderer being held in Atlanta is refusing to sign a waiver the district attorney says it needs to release the remains of an 8-year-old East Texas boy. [...]Chad was shot in 1991, and buried in a shallow grave behind a house where Horn's family lived. Horn then tormented the Choice family for years, sending ransom notes and placing Chad's skull on the doorstep of the Choices' home on the fourth anniversary of the boy's disappearance. [...]
Assistant District Attorney Ed Marty said if the remains are granted without the waiver, they may have to be exhumed sometime in the future.
Marty said Thursday he fears Horn, deemed a psychopath and sociopath by experts, realized the importance of the waiver after the first one was lost and is using it as a control factor. [...] (via Fark) [Boing Boing Blog]
No Pity for Hilary
Listen up, Hilary Rosen apologists: yesterday's Real Time column in the Wall Street Journal [subscription required] contained an insightful reader response to Hilary Rosen's departure from the RIAA.
Christine Reed writes: As a 20-year-plus veteran of the music industry, I can tell you that while you may think that Hilary Rosen only did what she was told to do by industry executives, you are sorely mistaken. She's first of all a lot smarter than most of them, and far more savvy about related policy and Capitol Hill. She's the one with the whip in her hand, trust me. [...]Hilary Rosen deserves every bit of the criticism she's getting. She has done nothing to turn the situation into a win/win for everyone when she had the power and intelligence to do so. She has had advice, suggestions, plans, outlines... hell, a road map of what to do to keep everyone happy and has ignored all of them. For example, the industry has known for years that work had to begin untangling the licenses for publishing rights, and many of the labels have still not begun to do so. It's no wonder the artists are upset and the public ends up paying for the problem. They have also known that unless they learned to cooperate and work together they would all be doomed -- and now, unfortunately, that is the direction they are heading. [...]
Reed was responding to the January 27 column in which the authors conjured an image of Rosen as hapless lapdog of industry tycoons. Bah. Ptooey.
P2P Portal
No way to know how this is gonna work out, but worth checking into. The sooner we can build large-scale P2P structures that focus on sharing public legitimate public content the quicker we squish the idiotic idea that P2P technology is some sort of Devil's plaything.
P2P files. The first P2P Web portal. Here's the FAQ. It was built by a classmate of mine from Yale. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
Abbyy FineReader
Abbyy FineReader -- "You'll love it like a pinky ring!" This program is sweet, easily the equal of many professional-grade OCR packages. OmniPage? You must be joking. Adobe Capture? You obviously haven't looked at their licensing. TextBridge? Nice, but no cigar.According to my knowledgeable, experienced sources FineReader leaves all these programs in the dust, especially if you're into making docs into PDFs.
Need some info on how to get your docs scanned in the first place? Visit Document Scanners to get the low-down on the high-end of scanning perfection. If you have lots of docs (like maybe a lawyer) you'll want a good scanner that can compress on the fly because you'll be wanting to keep the original image file as your copy of record. But you'll also want all those images converted to text for indexing, searching, C-n-P, etc.
So dump that old fax machine and move into the less paper office.
Blog Reorganization
Lots of testing here in the next few days, getting ready to rid myself of Radio's inefficient Category structure and install topic-based organization with liveTopics.Topical Categories such as Collab.klog.km, Strategy.manage.ent, Radio.active, and Patento.absurdium will be removed as separate HTML/RSS feeds. Instead the post will be on the Home page and will be mapped to Topics with the same (or similar) names as the old Category.
All audience Categories such as Author.create.art, Reader.listen.watch, and Publisher.promo.own will disappear entirely, hopefully to be replaced at some future date with liveTopics Themes.
This <strike>seems to be</strike> is an ongoing theme with me -- reorganizing the site. I suppose that damages my Googlability, and perhaps I should care. But after all, this is an experiment and a place to learn. So I'm learning again. Here we go...
Thursday, January 30, 2003
Defining and Building an Information Strategy
I am constantly amazed by Martin's ability to find free, first rate research on the web. That's why he's one of my favorite SMEs. Both of these papers are excellent summaries of what an information strategy is and why it is important.1, 2.
The benefits of an information strategy. I am constantly amazed by the generosity of management consulting companies in publishing first rate research free on the web. An example is a report I have just come across from Accenture, though it was published in August 2002. Entitled Uncover Hidden Competitive Value Using Information Strategy it comes from... [Intranet Focus Blog]
Google Grows
Two separate thoughts on Google's growth -- expanding into Government and moving toward the siren-song of the IPO. From evhead:
InformationWeek > City Ogles Google Impact:. "It's difficult to imagine getting more from a $23,000 investment in search technology than the city of San Diego has gotten from its deployment of a Google Inc. search appliance." It's difficult to imagine a better article written about your product. Wha [evhead]
And from Ross Mayfield:
Google IPO.Tony Perkins: My prediction is that, in the middle of 2003, Google will take its handsome profit margins and roll out its IPO, which will be the most successful one that year. [AO]
Wouldn't that be nice.
[Ross Mayfield's Weblog]
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This Page was last updated: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:06:57 GMT
