b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Recently
Testing the Limits of the Patently Obvious
New Kids on the Blog
Liability and the Law
Why Jack Can't Count
Headed South by Southwest
Variable RSS
Why Jack Can't Read
Abominable TV Dialogue
Legal Services Anywhere Anytime
How Much RSS?
Weblogs and IM
Folk Music Goes Indoors
Thursday, February 6, 2003
Assessing Risk
NYT reports on how modeling and simulation are being used to predict everything from insurance rates to the chances of a terrorist attack.
[...] a rapidly evolving set of conceptual and computing tools allow mathematicians, engineers and insurance executives to assess the risk of what are euphemistically known as low-probability, high-consequence events.The field, known in professional jargon as probabilistic risk assessment, helps companies and government agencies decide whether they are prepared to take the chances involved.
In 1995, these tools helped a NASA consultant estimate the risk of a catastrophic space shuttle failure at 1 in 145, or about 0.7 percent, for each mission. NASA accepted that risk. Similar methods are used to estimate the health risks at toxic-waste sites, to secure nuclear laboratories, weapon stockpiles and power plants, and to determine the safety and reliability of planes and cars. They help determine home insurance rates for tens of millions of people in the United States, Europe and Japan. And now some of the techniques are being used to analyze the chances of terrorist attack. [...] via NYT via [OnDecidingBetter News]
Testing the Limits of the Patently Obvious
A patent has been granted to Cleveland based Test Central, Inc. for making tests available over the web. I've decided to apply for a patent on making advertising available over the web. Also for making calendars, photos, forms, and text in ALL CAPS available on the Internet.This patent was applied for in 1999 and makes the US Patent Office look quite foolish (again.) Test Central isn't trying to license the patent -- they have enough sense to know they would get squashed in court. Instead, they are seeking to sell the patent to a well-heeled megacorp that can afford extended legal extortion battles. They should see if SBC Communications is interested.
[...] Test Central was granted the patent, which covers "making a test and posting the test online for potential test takers," last Tuesday, Jan. 28. (Read about all the patents issued to local companies recently.) Charles Stack and John Anderson, the founders of the company, applied for the patent in February 1999. Mr. Stack also founded the Cleveland-based software company Flashline Inc.Attorney John J. Del Col, of the Cleveland law firm Renner, Otto, Boisselle & Sklar LLP, said the process to get the patent was "routine," despite taking nearly four years. Now that Test Central has it, it is up to the companys competitors to challenge the patents validity.
Under U.S. Patent law any challenger must beat the burden of clear and convincing evidence to overturn a patents validity," Mr. Del Col said. [...] via [evhead]
New Kids on the Blog
Leslie Walker of the Washington Post on how we should all be looking up to the media as our role models for Truth, Justice, and the American Way...
[...] While blogs are a significant publishing phenomenon, I see them as entirely different from professional news organizations, which have paid staffs that ferret out and vet information according to established principles of fairness, accuracy and truth. [...] via [Scripting News] via [Ross Mayfield's Weblog]
Liability and the Law
One more reason to move back to Texas -- one's homestead is protected from creditors. This WSJ article discusses the liabilities a homeowner can incur as a result of an accident or injury and you may be surprised at the things for which you can be held liable. You can find out what the laws in your state protect. I can tell you, in Georgia it isn't much.Why Jack Can't Count
More Valenti-isms. This guy is more entertaining than a presidential campaign.
Can Valenti Get Any Numbers Right?. Libraries On PBS Bill Moyers Transcripts Online "As a follow up on This One , on Friday, January 17, 2003, at 9 P.M., on PBS , NOW with Bill Moyers took a look into the digital future of intellectual property and the debate that has pit private control against the public domain. If you missed the show, like I did, you can now read all about it ." [ LISNews.com ] Question for anyone in or who has graduated from second grade - what is wrong with the following sentence?"JACK VALENTI: A 12-year-old with a click of a mouse, can send a movie hurtling to all the five continents."
Headed South by Southwest
I've been looking for an excuse to go to San Antonio to take care of some business and reunite with old friends. I think this is as good an excuse as is likely to come along. I plan on going to SXSW. Maybe I'll see Ernie there. I know I'll see lots of other interesting folks.
I'm bound for South by SouthWest - also known as SXSW, which is a gathering of techies that takes place every year in Austin. It runs from March 8th to March 11th (at least the programs part, the other parts go on longer), but I'm just going for the first two days. Basically, going for the weekend.
I'm looking forward to seeing David Weinberger and J.D. Lasica again (I met them at PopTech last October). But I am excited about the prospect of meeting other people that I have gotten to know in varying degrees from the blogosphere, such as Cory Doctorow and Michael Alex Wasylik. Then there are the people that I would be happy to just hear speak (and of course be overjoyed to meet): Larry Lessig, and Bruce Sterling. I see that the program has Dave Winer listed for Sunday, which would be great. I would love to hear him talk, and would relish the chance to meet him in person.
Anyone else, especially the lawyer bloggers, going to SXSW this year?
[Ernie the Attorney]
Variable RSS
Thanks to a spiffy upgrade to Stapler, the RSS scraper/aggregation tool by Mark Paschal, you now have a choice of just how much b.cognosco drivel appears in your aggregator:- Full, luxurious, uninhibited feed (the original, untampered Radio-generated feed)
- Truncated feed, containing only the headline and first paragraph
- Headlines only
Thanks to Mark this is a quick, brainlessly simple thing that any Radio user can do with the new Stapler blogHeadline scanner. While providing three different feeds isn't an efficient solution to letting readers have what they want (it should be done with better aggregators) it is much better than the all-or-nothing choices we've had until now.
Thanks, Mark.
Wednesday, February 5, 2003
Why Jack Can't Read
Jack Valenti fails to read the US Code for the single law that lies at the heart of his political maneuverings, yielding another fine tidbit for the Citizens Copyright Information Kit. It really is important to document these kinds of incidents, and to ensure they are as widely disseminated as possible. Public displays of ignorance are a powerful disincentive for people to take you seriously. And to have Mr. Valenti volunteer such an act is more effective than any ad hominem attack. A comprehensive collection of documented quotes from the venerable Mr. Valenti might be fun, and an excellent resource. Is anyone keeping such a thing?Thanks to Ernie for the helpful link to the Fair Use clause in the US Code. As someone once told me, "Lawyers aren't inherently bad, it's just the other guy's lawyer that's bad."
Fair Use is not the Law - noted legal scholar, and MPAA President, Jack Valenti, is now on the record stating that there is no such thing as fair use. Here's an excerpt from the Q&A interview with the Harvard Political Review, as reported by Jenny:
HPR: The MPAA has backed several bills mandating copy prevention technologies. Critics have lambasted these bills for curbing consumer's 'fair use' rights, including the ability to make back-up copies. How can we balance the interests of consumers and the movie industry?
JV: What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law.
Now I see why he has taken such preposterous positions (i.e. VCRs will destroy the Entertainment Industry and should be declared illegal). Jack has somehow not been alerted to the presence of 17 U.S.C. 107. Could someone see that he reads it before his next trip to Washington?
[Ernie the Attorney]
Tuesday, February 4, 2003
Abominable TV Dialogue
I've seen my share of B movies, dreadful SciFi, and late-night television, but I've never seen anything as bad as the cliche-ridden, over-hyped, ping-pong dialogue on the WB's Gilmore Girls. Yech. It's a "favorite" at my house and I just have to leave the room after about the third witty exchange between a group of brainless adolescents. If you took Moon Unit Zappa, transplanted her to Boston for a decade, and then gave a 20-minute recording of her voice to Sir Mix-a-Lot you couldn't get any worse than the over-rehearsed, concatenated, dialogue on this show. That my 12-year-old daughter thinks this is good is a really frightening thing.Legal Services Anywhere Anytime
I just completed my first online legal transaction: met the attorney via his weblog, discussed my needs and ordered the work via e-mail, paid for the service via PayPal on my credit card -- Damn! This is really cool.Martin Schwimmer of Schwimmer Legal and The Trademark Blog is the most aggressively e-commerce ready attorney I know. He just completed the trademark search and opinion for my new business, and we conducted the entire thing without a phone call. We had a couple of brief IM sessions. When divorces get this easy things are really gonna change!
One tip for Marty -- don't leave that money in your PayPal account too long. They've been known to do stupid things with it.
How Much RSS?
Jim McGee likes full posts in his aggregator -- but I don't; Forcing what I want on (potential) readers of this weblog cramps their ability to use info in the way that's best for them -- which is bad; I want multiple RSS feeds:- one with headlines only
- one with some arbitrary character limit -- e.g. 500 chars
- one full feed
Why can't I get that in Radio without having to be a programmer?
Confessions of an RSS bigot.Yes, I'm an RSS bigot as well. And yes, I know that I could create my own feed using something like RSS Distiller as John Robb points out. But as my own support staff, I scarcely have time to stay current with the material that already comes into my news aggregator. the time to figure out how to parse a site's html and generate a reasonable feed generally isn't worth it. [...]
Agreed. It's still too damned hard to create useful RSS feeds with scrapers. Unless you know regex it's a really frustrating, hunt-and-peck experience.
[...] It's about managing my poor, limited, attention which needs all the help it can get. For my selfish purposes, the more material that flows into my news aggregator the better. And better still if I can get full posts instead of teasers. I've yet to find a blog post that read better in context than it did in my plain aggregator. [...] [McGee's Musings]
Weblogs and IM
Paolo makes a few points about the limits of IM, and a salient point about how IM can extend traditional voice contact and internal weblogs.
IM and BlogsDave started this very interesting thread on weblogs and IM.
I use both technologies a lot. I use IM to interact with most of the people I work with, to the point that even when I talk to them on the phone we usually keep an IM window open to exchange links or images while we talk. I also use weblogs both for public and internal publishing. [...]
What I would like to have is a tool to attach IM conversations to weblog posts, just like there are comments linked to each post today.
[...]
This would probably not be applicable to public weblogs, also if it happens all the times that people ping me because they find a link to my IM address on this page and it's usually quite interesting, but it would definitely be very useful to manage internal communications on our k-logs. [Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog]
Folk Music Goes Indoors
Home concert givers better be wary -- the copyright police may be showing up at your door.I guess folk music is having some sort of resurgence -- I don't know much about it -- but there is a little coffee house in my exurban neighborhood that's been hosting live folk music for a few years. I've been told it's pretty good, if you like that sort of thing.
One thing I do know is that the little coffee house has been in a protracted legal battle with ASCAP -- the The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers -- over royalty fees. ASCAP and BMI run what can charitably be called legalized extortion rackets which operate on the same "voluntary" principles as the Teamsters Union.
Artists appearing at the coffee house play original folk music -- their own compositions -- and the coffee house plays only CDs it gets from the artists themselves. So there are no royalties owed to any Music industry extortion service. But that doesn't matter to ASCAP. As far as they're concerned, if you play music you must be infringing someone's copyright and for a flat fee they'll license you against all "piracy", passing the money along to an artist of their choice (after extracting their hard-earned service fee, of course.)
Just one more symptom of a terminally ill industry.
Private homes are nano-venues for e-folkies. Folk-music has found a renaissance is the most nano of micro-venues: people's living rooms, promoted by listservs.
Concert-goers bring the chips, dip and beer. A basket is set out for the suggested $10 to $12 donation for the musicians, and the living room, dining room and family room are filled with people wanting to hear folk music.With few venues willing to hire folk acts and few middle-class suburbanites willing to make the schlep downtown, search out parking and elbow other patrons to get the bartender's attention, folk house concerts are quietly spreading like wildfire with the help of e-mail and Internet advertising.
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This Page was last updated: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:06:57 GMT
