Brooks' latest column

Grok Headline matches for Brooks' latest column

David Brooks' latest column

David Brooks' latest column 11/12/2003 01:17 PM
Cynics Without a Cause .. drivel of the day .. Interesting .. PLUGGED

nytimes.com/2003/11/11/opinion/11BROO.html
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Tom Friedman's latest column

Tom Friedman's latest column 03/16/2003 11:07 AM
Friedman has given up .. Sunday's N.Y. Times .. Repairing the World

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Fareed Zakaria's latest Newsweek column

Fareed Zakaria's latest Newsweek column 11/10/2003 11:37 PM
Bush€™s Really Good Idea .. column

msnbc.com/news/991191.asp
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Rodney Brooks' Office

Rodney Brooks' Office 09/24/2004 06:03 PM
CareerJournal.com is featuring a short article that describes Rodney Brooks' office at MIT's new Ray and Maria Stata Center. The new home of MIT AI and Robotics research was designed by postmodern architect Frank O. Gehry. CareerJournal describes it as a collection of "mismatched materials and cockeyed towers" that "give the building a haphazard look".

David Brooks' wonderful world of
WHAAAA??!!

David Brooks' wonderful world of
WHAAAA??!! 12/17/2003 06:07 AM
tries to get me to like Dean more .. nytimes op-ed page .. hits like a girl

nytimes.com/2003/12/16/opinion/16BROO.html
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"column"

"column" 11/16/2003 05:08 PM

Worthwhile mag column

Worthwhile mag column 06/17/2005 04:25 PM
I write a column for Worthwhile magazine and occasionally blog there as well. The magazine has posted a pdf of my column in the current issue; it's on why "Don't be evil" doesn't do much for me as a slogan. Hey, I just realized that in the photo of me, they airbrushed out my moles! I knew I looked funny! [Technorati tags: worthwhilemag marketing]...

NewsForge as you like it, one column or
two

NewsForge as you like it, one column or
two 12/19/2003 03:43 PM
You can now choose several different ways to view NewsForge. The default will continute to be the single-column "narrow" layout you see if you're not logged in (or if you're logged in and don't know how to change it), but you can now have a two-column layout if you like, with NewsVac links appearing at the top of your main page, next to our own features. And there are other things you can customize, too.

today's column

today's column 01/11/2004 07:09 PM
about Turkey .. Tom Friedman .. To wit

nytimes.com/2004/01/11/opinion/11FRIE.html
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Read the column

Read the column 06/17/2005 03:19 PM
CIO Jun 15 2005 10:37PM GMT

Eight column inches cut

Eight column inches cut 03/30/2005 01:12 AM
Im bedded backdoor reporter - I like it below the fold! AMERICAblog is soliciting suggestions for protest signs to commemorate the national Press Club's panel on blogging and journalism. Dirty cracks abound. Surely some of our resident wits can add to the ribaldry. (NSFW)

"today's column"

"today's column" 01/12/2004 02:57 AM

Another Column to Cringe About

Another Column to Cringe About 01/17/2004 11:07 PM
Bob Cringely writes a follow-up column about his WhyFi idea, this time spelling out the impractical details more impractically: Cringely comes clean with the details of his WhyFi idea to spread free Wi-Fi hotspots nationwide. I ripped apart his previous column because it was long on bad ideas, short on execution strategies. He expects that every participant in the project who offers free Wi-Fi will eat the bandwidth bill in exchange for free equipment, which will be loaned not given to them. Only those providing hotspots get free access to the network. (Original business models of Joltage [dead], SOHOWireless [apparently dead], and Sputnik [now an enterprise software developer].) The free hotspots will apparently be part of a nationwide authentication network that will only allow members of this club to get in for free. Otherwise, users are charged for use. Cringely estimates the cost of a million hotspots at $150 million. He suggests someone underwrite this project to make a pile of money. So now I can tell you exactly why this idea doesn't work, especially now that he's dropped the whole part from his first column about requiring special firmware or MAC filtering. Hotspots cost more than $150 each. As I noted in my response to his first column, Cringely has magically eliminated the overhead costs for running a national network with a database of legitimate users. There's no dollars in here for running the backend, shipping out products, helping with installation (even by phone), dealing with customer/technical support ("my account doesn't work," "the hotspot is dead"). I would estimate given his plan that the cost per location for a million locations is about $300 per location for a single access point (which many won't be; see below), and about $20 to $50 per month for all of the associated support. More likely, the support costs are about $10 per month per free user on the network. It could cost more to support the paid users, and Cringely doesn't postulate a payment. Hotspots aren't a single access point and you can't put them just anywhere. If you exclude homes and coffeeshops and a few small retail establishments, locations that have value and lots of traffic control their spectrum and require expensive or at least complicated, multi-AP installations. A mall or an airport can prevent tenants or airlines from installing APs. This is an ongoing battle right now in airports. Arbitrary...

Here's Dowd's column

Here's Dowd's column 01/18/2004 08:08 AM
what makes them angry .. Meow, b*tch.....Meow .. MoDo

nytimes.com/2004/01/18/opinion/18DOWD.html?hp
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whole column for the lowdown

whole column for the lowdown 09/11/2004 03:36 AM

nytimes.com/2004/09/10/opinion/10krugman.html
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"Sunday column"

"Sunday column" 01/03/2005 05:15 PM

gist of the column

gist of the column 01/18/2004 11:34 PM
What you get .. Maureen Dowd

nytimes.com/2004/01/18/opinion/18DOWD.html
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"column on bl0ggers"

"column on bl0ggers" 11/04/2003 04:10 AM

Text-Column-0.05

Text-Column-0.05 04/29/2004 04:29 PM

"in Molly's column"

"in Molly's column" 03/25/2005 06:44 AM

"this column from the Boston Globe"

"this column from the Boston Globe" 02/11/2004 09:43 AM

Column one: Of intellectual bondage

Column one: Of intellectual bondage 12/27/2003 04:20 AM
How depressing

jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Show Full&cid=1072326002827
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New York Times column

New York Times column 05/24/2004 03:55 PM
Frank Rich piece

nytimes.com/2004/05/23/arts/23RICH.html
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Ebook column that gets it all wrong

Ebook column that gets it all wrong 07/29/2004 02:52 AM
Gizmodo has a new column called "Feature Creep," and they kicked it off with an editorial about the future of ebooks that is striking for its complete disregard for the actual marketplace experiences with ebooks. It's full of hoary chestnuts about ebooks that have been emptily mouthed for 10 years ("Call it digital paper or electronic ink, it's the future of eBooks.") and aside from the occassional iPod comparison, there's hardly a paragraph in there that couldn't have been written in 1997 -- nor one that takes note of any of the events since then (well, to be fair, there's also a lot of puffery stuck in there to promote an ebook company called Vertical that probably didn't exist in 1997, but that's beside the point).

Take DRM. The author asserts on the one hand that DRM can work, and that it won't be so invasive that it turns customers (which the author insists on calling "consumers," an odious buzzword that invokes Gibson's description in Idoru, "...a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.") off.

This despite the actual marketplace fact that all DRM becomes invasive (ask any copyright policy maker in a country that allows parallel importing how he feels about the "lightweight" region-coding DRM on DVDs that reverses the laws he was elected to enact).

This despite the actual marketplace fact that DRM is generally broken within a few days of engagement with the public, often by teenagers, grad students, or people with ready acccess to sophisticated DRM-cracking tools like Google and the sinister Shift key (for more on DRM, see my DRM talk)

But the author goes further and asserts that without DRM, there will be no market for entertainment product ever again ("If publishers stop wanting DRM, it's the end of popular creative arts. Not as we know them, but period.") despite the fact that the software industry got bigger when it abandoned DRM, and despite the fact that no new medium has ever succeeded by appealing to the virtues of the medium before it (there're very few ideas more goofy than the idea that people will start buying ebooks just as soon as they have fewer features and more restrictions, provided that the ebooks can be played back on special-purpose devices with sharp screens). He cites Sony as proof of this ("Sony may be nuts, but they're not that nuts."), despite the fact that Sony was forced out of the walkman market by its failure to deliver the DRM-free devices that its customers demanded. Yes, Sony is that nuts.

He doesn't even touch on the marketplace experience of every published writer who's tried giving away DRM-free ebooks -- me, Lessig, Jim Munroe, the Baen authors, Orson Scott Card -- universally, the experience is that we sell more books (Lessig's latest just went into its third hardcover printing, for chrissakes). This of course echoes the experiences from elsewhere: the movie studios' box office revenues appear to be increasing as a function of the amount of movies being shared on P2P nets and the only quantitative study of music downloading and music sales concluded that the effect was usually neegligible, rarely negative, and sometimes positive.

He does, however, take time out to snidely dismiss blanket licensing schemes -- like the ones that enable radio, live performance, covers, lending, coursepacks, jukeboxes, rentals, etc etc etc all over the world -- as a kind of pipe dream ("When the visionary of all visionaries develops a model for all-you-can-eat media consumption that provides for the artists to actually eat, perhaps I'll change my mind; until then, we are what we are, and we'll have to play nice within the confines of the present system.") despite the fact that these systems have been employed to universal good effect whenever new technology makes exclusion too costly to work effectively. It's like he's totally missed the fact that trillions of dollars go right into the pockets of creators and rights-holders through these schemes.

Bizarrely, he asserts that people might buy periodicals that expire off their players in 60 days -- despite the fact that every one of us has a friend or relative with a giant stack of old computer mags, or National Geographics, or colorful Wireds, sitting on a shelf.

Really, it's as though he sat down and called an ebook startup's PR guy, then reasoned out all of his conclusions a priori, without reference to any of the activity in the field.

I believe fiercely and passionately in ebooks -- that's why I give talks like this one -- but articles like this do nothing to advance the discussion. They're echoes of the dotcom snakeoil that dominated the ebook discussion five or ten years ago, and it's a disappointment to see this kind of editorial-in-defiance-of-facts on a hip net-zine like Gizmodo. Link

"Washington Prowler" column:

"Washington Prowler" column: 08/10/2004 09:50 PM
two intriguing anecdotes .. The American Spectator

spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=6955
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Report column names

Report column names 08/12/2004 08:48 PM

"Here's a screenshot of the original
column"

"Here's a screenshot of the original
column" 11/02/2003 09:45 PM

"outstanding column by George Will"

"outstanding column by George Will" 05/04/2004 09:00 PM

this interesting column by Kristof

this interesting column by Kristof 03/19/2003 10:46 PM
interpretation is wrong .. Baghdad and Troy .. New York Times .. separate .. helenic .. Troy

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David Brooks column

David Brooks column 05/05/2004 04:04 AM

nytimes.com/2004/05/04/opinion/04BROO.html
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Dan Gillmor's last Merc column

Dan Gillmor's last Merc column 01/02/2005 01:44 PM
Cory Doctorow: Dan Gillmor's final column in the San Jose Mercury News runs today, marking the end of a ten-year career in reporting on tech journalism -- Dan's leaving to start a company that will enable "grassroots journalism," capitalizing on a trend that he's very parrionate about. The final column is a lovely bittersweet end to an amazing run.

And, as always, the people and institutions currently holding the clout don't cede it willingly. Governments are clamping down on us in all kinds of ways. Incumbent business powerhouses are trying to hold back the tide as well, not just to keep their positions but also to thwart new innovation that might threaten them.

These reactionary encroachments and retrenchments are not surprising. They always occur in times of swift change and challenge. In the end, they are almost always unsuccessful, because progress ultimately finds a way around barriers, and because people challenge the reactionaries.

But we need to keep the pressure up, as citizens and people who want the freedom to use these new tools and live in liberty. The stakes are high, and liberty takes work.

Link (via Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism)

"PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column"

"PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column" 12/02/2003 12:28 AM

Maureen Dowd's column

Maureen Dowd's column 01/11/2004 07:57 AM
just cold

nytimes.com/2004/01/11/opinion/11DOWD.html
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David Brooks's column

David Brooks's column 06/20/2004 06:44 AM
among other things .. Brooks .. not

nytimes.com/2004/06/19/opinion/19BROO.html
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PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column 01/11/2004 03:51 AM
Bob Cringely says the problem with WiFi aggregators is there aren't enough of them .. his idea for a killer WiFi aggregator business model .. January 8, 2004 WiFi column by Robert X. Cringely .. Cringely's WhyFi: .. real industry

pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040108.html
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Agony Column on Cory's next novel

Agony Column on Cory's next novel 01/05/2005 03:58 PM
Cory Doctorow: Rick Kleffel's "Agony Column" has a fun piece on my next book, and the thing I'm working on these days:

Now however, Doctorow has taken a very different track. His forthcoming novel, 'Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town' (Tor Books / Tom Doherty Associates ; May 1, 2005 ; $24.95) is in the first place coming to town a bit later in the year. The early draft I first read of this novel was nearly three times as long as 'Eastern Standard Tribe'. But the big ch-ch-ch-changes come as Doctorow turns to face the strangeness not of a science fictional future, but instead a fantastically rendered present. Alan, the protagonist of 'Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town', is a middle-aged man who moves into a bohemian neighborhood of Toronto. He only barely fits in with the college-roomie types next door, and that's even before the gal who lives there reveals to him that she has wings that grow back even if she cuts 'em off.

Alan is a sensitive guy, and he understands, because, we're told, his father is a mountain and his mother is a washing machine. This is clearly the type of reproduction that will not be taught in your hygiene classes. So, you know, when one of his brothers, a set of nested Russian nesting dolls, shows up on his doorstep starving because the innermost doll has disappeared, you can imagine that the whole family relationship issue is a bit more complex than usual. Especially since brother Davey, whom Alan and his other siblings killed years ago, may have returned, bent on revenge.

What's a guy like Alan to do but hook up with a cybergeek who plans to blanket Toronto with free wireless Internet access? I've got to admit that under the circumstances set out by Doctorow, that seems like a more than reasonable reaction. Now as to how readers will react to the novel, well, that's a different matter entirely. I'm totally engrossed by this slight shift for Doctorow from the purely technological to the absurd and fantastic. That's because Doctorow writes with the kind of hardheaded humor and logic that makes one suspect this book will be a mind-boggling delight. And perhaps a bit of a revelation for Doctorow's audience, which could really grow to include a swathe of readers who enjoy literary fantasy.

Link

"Paul Krugman?s column"

"Paul Krugman?s column" 06/29/2004 08:19 PM

Reactions to the Whither Mono? column

Reactions to the Whither Mono? column 03/19/2003 10:26 PM
Jacques Surveyer has posted a thoughtful response to my Whither Mono? column. His item, entitled "Mono is eerily like the disease," says in part:

Take a gander at http://gru nge.cs.tu-berlin.de/~tolk/vmlanguages.html and the number of languages that use the Java JVM - about 3-4 times as many languages that use .NET. But the really insidious notion is that .NET is "language neutral". As Visual Basic and Cobol developers have learned to their dismay - adopting a language to conform to the CLI/CLR/.NET Libraries means a number of Frankenstein-like cut and add operations. In the case of VB it is so bad that Microsoft's own enginers started to call VB.NET Visual Fred because it is so different from its predecessor, VB6.

Adds Kevin Altis, in an email quoted with permission:

We do have examples of other languages running in the JVM. Jython in particular works great, I don't know of any "scripting language" that works well in the CLR, only the early proof-of-concepts which aren't viable for real work. VB.NET is basically C# light, so maybe only one language works in the CLR.

...

His column today is right on target

His column today is right on target 02/10/2004 10:36 AM
Brooks: Bush On Bush, Take 2 .. Bush really meant to say .. Brooks

nytimes.com/2004/02/10/opinion/10BROO.html
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Grok Description matches for Brooks' latest column
GrokA matches for Brooks' latest column

Brooks' latest column

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