"an excellent, though depressing essay"
Grok Headline matches for "an excellent, though depressing essay"
Depressing
Depressing
04/19/2005 03:43 AMI was really depressed by the comments on this post that Robert Scoble
made until I read the comment by Mobile Jones, who I think stated the
point perfectly. Until people stop being defensive, I'll comfort
myself with the thought that making the assumption that a market or
conversation ought...
"Another Unix" -- How Depressing is
That?
"Another Unix" -- How Depressing is
That?
04/09/2004 04:11 PMNerds only might find this
article interesting in which Jaron Lanier laments the fact that
most of the open source effort has gone into making "another
Unix".
[And I might add not a very good one. Ever since the
photo.net Oracle database was migrated from Sun Solaris to Dell/Linux
the site has been very shaky. I'm not involved in running the
site anymore but as I understand it one of the guys has essentially
had to move into the colocation cage to keep poking at Linux.
Maybe Linux really is secretly funded by Microsoft...]
"Here's a depressing article."
"Here's a depressing article."
06/23/2004 03:00 AM"Windows - now more depressing than
ever"
"Windows - now more depressing than
ever"
07/05/2004 09:38 AMNothing Depressing Cyberonics
Nothing Depressing Cyberonics
06/16/2004 04:37 PMCyberonics Gets FDA nod; shareholder Boston Scientific gets a
portfolio boost.
Depressing piracy statistic
Depressing piracy statistic
12/31/2004 02:59 PMThis week, 90% of the attempts to activate FeedDemon have been with
cracked serial numbers.
Depressing Year for Glaxo
Depressing Year for Glaxo
02/12/2004 03:39 PMThe pharmaceutical giant forecasts three lackluster quarters as
copycats attack.
AMD's depressing flash biz set for IPO
AMD's depressing flash biz set for IPO
04/13/2005 05:50 PMSpansion to think about what it has done
Depressing Days for Drug Makers?
Depressing Days for Drug Makers?
09/16/2004 03:27 PMIs black-box labeling of antidepressants going to curtail the mammoth
industry?
Morten Singleton says 3G is still
depressing share prices
Morten Singleton says 3G is still
depressing share prices
12/29/2003 02:58 PMTelecoms.com Dec 29 2003 1:16PM ET
World's most depressing country uses the
most anti-depressants
World's most depressing country uses the
most anti-depressants
12/17/2004 06:36 PMThe headline in this article says it all... "Britain leads the world in
giving out anti-depressants"
Who would have predicted that bad weather, congested roads, and an
absurdly high cost of living would lead to unhappiness?
Nick Bradbury: Depressing piracy
statistic
Nick Bradbury: Depressing piracy
statistic
01/02/2005 04:06 PMNick Bradbury: Depressing piracy
statistic
nick.typepad.com/blog/2004/12/depressing_pira.html
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The Age of the Essay
The Age of the Essay
09/03/2004 06:21 PMPaul Graham on the writing of essays .. wonderful
essay
paulgraham.com/essay.html
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site | 4 links
Essay
Essay
01/16/2004 01:04 PMEl Nino, and other dramatic essays .. El Niño is Spanish ..
essays .. Essay
douglas.min.net/essay
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site | 7 links
"essay"
"essay"
03/16/2003 08:25 AMEssay about trends
Essay about trends
04/24/2004 04:42 AMHere are some thoughts on where I think things are going in the
mobile and content space.
I wrote this essay before reading Free Culture so
I'm saying a lot of stuff that Larry says
better...
Several crucial shifts in technology are emerging
that will drastically affect the relationship between users and
technology in the near future. Wireless Internet is becoming
ubiquitous and economically viable. Internet capable devices are
becoming smaller and more powerful.
Alongside technological shifts, new social trends are emerging.
Users are shifting their attention from packaged content to social
information about location, presence and community. Tools for
identity, trust, relationship management and navigating social
networks are becoming more popular. Mobile communication tools are
shifting away from a 1-1 model, allowing for increased many-to-many
interactions; such a shift is even being used to permit new forms of
democracy and citizen participation in global dialog.
While new technological and social trends are occurring, it is not
without resistance, often by the developers and distributors of
technology and content. In order to empower the consumer as a
community member and producer, communication carriers, hardware
manufacturers and content providers must understand and build models
that focus less on the content and more on the relationships.
Smaller faster
Computing started out as large mainframe computers, software
developers and companies “time sharing” for slices of
computing time on the large machines. The mini-computer was cheaper
and smaller, allowing companies and labs to own their own computers.
The mini computer allowed a much greater number of people to have
access to computers and even use them in real time. The mini computer
lead to a burst in software and networking technologies. In the early
80’s, the personal computer increased the number of computers by
an order of magnitude and again, led to an explosion in new software
and technology while lowering the cost even more. Console gaming
companies proved once again that unit costs could be decreased
significantly by dramatically increasing the number of units sold.
Today, we have over a billion cell phones in the market. There are
tens of millions camera phones. The incredible number of these devices
has continued to lower the unit cost of computing as well as devices
imbedded in these devices such as small cameras. High end phones have
the computing power of the personal computers of the 80’s and
the game consoles of the 90’s.
History repeats with WiFi
There are parallels in the history of communications and computing.
In the 1980’s the technology of packet switched networks became
widely deployed. Two standards competed. X.25 was a packet switched
network technology being promoted by CCITT (a large, formal
international standards body) and the telephone companies. It involved
a system run by telephone companies including metered tariffs and
multiple bilateral agreements between carriers to hook up.
Concurrently, universities and research labs were promoting TCP/IP
and the Internet opportunity for loosely organized standards meetings
being operated with flat rate tariffs and little or no agreements
between the carriers. People just connected to the closest node and
everyone agreed to freely carry traffic for others.
There were several “free Internet” services such as
“The Little Garden” in San Francisco. Commercial service
providers, particularly the telephone company operators such as
SprintNet tried to shut down such free services by threatening not to
carry this free traffic.
Eventually, large ISPs began providing high quality Internet
connectivity and finally the telephone companies realized that the
Internet was the dominant standard and shutdown or acquired the
ISPs.
A similar trend is happening in wireless data services. GPRS is
currently the dominant technology among mobile telephone carriers.
GPRS allows users to transmit packets of data across the carrier
network to the Internet. One can roam to other networks as long as the
mobile operators have agreements with each other. Just like in the
days of X.25, the system requires many bilateral agreements between
the carriers; their goal is to track and bill for each packet of
information.
Competing with this standard is WiFi. WiFi is just a simple
wireless extension to the current Internet and many hotspots provide
people with free access to the Internet in cafes and other public
areas. WiFi service providers have emerged, while telephone operators
–such as a T-Mobile and Vodaphone- are capitalizing on paid WiFi
services. Just as with the Internet, network operators are threatening
to shut down free WiFi providers, citing a violation of terms of
service.
Just as with X.25, the GPRS data network and the future data
networks planned by the telephone carriers (e.g. 3G) are crippled with
unwieldy standards bodies, bilateral agreements, and inherently
complicated and expensive plant operations.
It is clear that the simplicity of WiFi and the Internet is more
efficient than the networks planned by the telephone companies. That
said, the availability of low cost phones is controlled by mobile
telephone carriers, their distribution networks and their
subsidies.
Content vs Context
Many of the mobile telephone carriers are hoping that users will
purchase branded content manufactured in Hollywood and packaged and
distributed by the telephone companies using sophisticated technology
to thwart copying.
Broadband in the home will always be cheaper than mobile broadband.
Therefore it will be cheaper for people to download content at home
and use storage devices to carry it with them rather than downloading
or viewing content over a mobile phone network. Most entertainment
content is not so time sensitive that it requires real time network
access.
The mobile carriers are making the same mistake that many of the
network service providers made in the 80s. Consider Delphi, a joint
venture between IBM and Sears Roebuck. Delphi assumed that branded
content was going to be the main use of their system and designed the
architecture of the network to provide users with such content.
Conversely, the users ended up using primary email and communications
and the system failed to provide such services effectively due to the
mis-design.
Similarly, it is clear that mobile computing is about
communication. Not only are mobile phones being used for 1-1
communications, as expected through voice conversations; people are
learning new forms of communication because of SMS, email and presence
technologies. Often, the value of these communication processes is
the transmission of “state” or “context”
information; the content of the messages are less important.
Copyright and the Creative Commons
In addition to the constant flow of traffic keeping groups of
people in touch with each other, significant changes are emerging in
multimedia creation and sharing. The low cost of cameras and the
nearly television studio quality capability of personal computers has
caused an explosion in the number and quality of content being created
by amateurs. Not only is this content easier to develop, people are
using the power of weblogs and phones to distribute their creations to
others.
The network providers and many of the hardware providers are trying
to build systems that make it difficult for users to share and
manipulate multimedia content. Such regulation drastically stifles the
users’ ability to produce, share and communicate. This is
particularly surprising given that such activities are considered the
primary “killer application” for networks.
It may seem unintuitive to argue that packaged commercial content
can co-exist alongside consumer content while concurrently stimulating
content creation and sharing. In order to understand how this can
work, it is crucial to understand how the current system of copyright
is broken and can be fixed.
First of all, copyright in the multimedia digital age is inherently
broken. Historically, copyright works because it is difficult to copy
or edit works and because only few people produce new works over a
very long period of time. Today, technology allows us to find, sample,
edit and share very quickly. The problem is that the current notion of
copyright is not capable of addressing the complexity and the speed of
what technology enables artists to create. Large copyright holders,
notably Hollywood studios, have aggressively extended and strengthened
their copyright protections to try to keep the ability to produce and
distribute creative works in the realm of large corporations.
Hollywood asserts, “all rights reserved” on works that
they own. Sampling music, having a TV show running in the background
in a movie scene or quoting lyrics to a song in a book about the
history of music all require payment to and a negotiation with the
copyright holder. Even though the Internet makes available a wide
palette of wonderful works based on content from all over the world,
the current copyright practices forbid most of such creation.
However, most artists are happy to have their music sampled if they
receive attribution. Most writers are happy to be quoted or have their
books copied for non-commercial use. Most creators of content realize
that all content builds on the past and the ability for people to
build on what one has created is a natural and extremely important
part of the creative process.
Creative Commons tries to give artists that choice. By providing a
more flexible copyright than the standards “all rights
reserved” copyright of commercial content providers, Creative
Commons allows artists to set a variety of rights to their works. This
includes the ability to reuse for commercial use, copy, sample,
require attribution, etc. Such an approach allows artists to decide
how their work can be used, while providing people with the materials
necessary for increased creation and sharing.
Creative Commons also provides for a way to make the copyright of
pieces of content machine-readable. This means that a search engine or
other tool to manipulate content is able to read the copyright. As
such, an artist can search for songs, images and text to use while
having the information to provide the necessary attribution.
Creative Commons can co-exist with the stringent copyright regimes
of the Hollywood studios while allowing professional and amateur
artists to take more control of how much they want their works to be
shared and integrated into the commons. Until copyright law itself is
fundamentally changed, the Creative Commons will provide an essential
tool to provide an alternative to the completely inflexible copyright
of commercial content.
Content is not like some lump of gold to be horded and owned which
diminishes in value each time it is shared. Content is a foundation
upon which community and relationships are formed. Content is the
foundation for culture. We must evolve beyond the current copyright
regime that was developed in a world where the creation and
transmission of content was unwieldy and expense, reserved to those
privileged artists who were funded by commercial enterprises. This
will provide the emerging wireless networks and mobile devices with
the freedom necessary for them to become the community building tools
of sharing that is their destiny.
New essay: topology
New essay: topology
03/11/2003 03:10 PMBased on the recent discussions on verbs, it seems appropriate
to make a more clear distinction between verbs as message exchange
patterns (necessary, but as a rule, the fewer the better), versus
verbs as imperatives (generally to be avoided).
As this distinction is subtle, I decided to sneak up on the
topic.
Without further ado: I give you
Topolo
gy.
Essay: How to End Grade Inflation
Essay: How to End Grade Inflation
05/03/2004 06:54 AMsuggests .. diving
nytimes.com/2004/05/02/magazine/02ESSAY.html
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this site | 4 links
COMDEX Photo Essay II
COMDEX Photo Essay II
12/02/2003 01:35 AMPC Magazine Dec 1 2003 5:29PM ET
Reagan's Daughter Writes Essay About Dad
Reagan's Daughter Writes Essay About Dad
12/04/2003 11:55 PMReuters via Wired News Dec 4 2003 10:39PM ET
Computers Weighing In On the Elements of
Essay
Computers Weighing In On the Elements of
Essay
07/31/2004 10:35 PMWashington Post Aug 1 2004 2:23AM GMT
"TIME: Right From the Start Photo Essay
(8)"
"TIME: Right From the Start Photo Essay
(8)"
04/18/2005 04:45 AM"Photo Essay: 9 Reasons Not To Drink"
"Photo Essay: 9 Reasons Not To Drink"
04/20/2004 10:17 PMom's essay on crediting bl0ggers
om's essay on crediting bl0ggers
08/16/2004 10:39 AMlooks like it's started a good conversation, but ignore the trolling
comments
Two Part Essay on Software Piracy
Two Part Essay on Software Piracy
01/06/2004 04:25 AMI have been a firm believer in purchasing software that I like. I
really like the shareware concept and support...
Michele has a great essay of
acknowledgement and thanks up as well
Michele has a great essay of
acknowledgement and thanks up as well
11/12/2003 01:16 PMHonor to those who served .. A Small Victory .. a good post ..
list
asmallvictory.net/archives/005168.html#005168
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Essay: Perspectives of African FOSS
developers
Essay: Perspectives of African FOSS
developers
05/07/2004 01:41 PMEvolution of Portable Audio Photo Essay
Evolution of Portable Audio Photo Essay
02/05/2005 10:17 PM
I'm so glad we invented Canada. The CBC's new
Arts section has a great short feature on the history of digital
music, from the first transistor radios [pictured] to the latest in
tiny white music bricks. It's even worse than I am about the iPod,
though, so don't expect a surprise ending. Writer Matthew McKinnon
does float an interesting idea, though: if music hadn't broken free of
the 'one family, one radio' format, we might not have the endless
variety of music we have today.
Brin
g the Noise [CBC.CA via Colli
sionDetection]
21-year-old essay on copyright just as
fresh today
21-year-old essay on copyright just as
fresh today
05/04/2004 05:14 AMLuís sez: "Barrington Bayley has a *very* interesting article
written in the early 1980s about the ethics and the convention of
copyright. It's also worth pointing out that Bayley is one of the
great unheralded geniuses in the field of literary science fiction."
On the premise that graphic reproduction will eventually go the way
of sound reproduction, i.e. it will become easy and cheap and
available to all, the same is due to happen to literary copyright.
It's a-coming, boys! You'd better get used to it!
...Yes, there is always going to be a living for writers. The
consequence of the above is that a book, whether incarnated in ink and
paper, laser disk, silicon, gallium arsenide, memory bubbles, or War
and Peace encoded in DNA, will cost more than the blank on which it is
inscribed, but not so much more that it would be worth your while to
borrow a copy and duplicate it. Whatever deal authors and publishers
make with one another will have to take cognisance of that. I expect
authors will still be able to demand royalties. Whether an author will
be able to become stinking rich, as a few now can, I don't know. What
does it matter? It isn't necessary to the continuance of civilisation.
Luís adds, "This over twenty years ago."
Link
(
Thanks, Luís!)
Warren Ellis bl0g essay: The Candidate
Warren Ellis bl0g essay: The Candidate
09/14/2004 03:48 AM
Xeni Jardin:
BoingBoing reader
Don
Whiteside says,
Today, author Warren Ellis' blog has what he calls a
"One-day DPH rent-party" looking for donations to cover bandwidth
costs. It's a little essay that any fan of his
Transmetropolitan will recognize as being written by his
alter-ego, Spider Jerusalem. It's a thinly disguised bit about Kerry
and flat-out hysterical. Dunno if a non-Transmet fan will
find it as awesome -- but if they do, they should go get the graphic
novels.
Link
An Essay Toward a Real Character and a
Philosophical Language
An Essay Toward a Real Character and a
Philosophical Language
03/22/2005 07:23 PMEssay
reliant.teknowledge.com/Wilkins
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Journalism Is Itself a Religion: Special
Essay on Launch of The Revealer
Journalism Is Itself a Religion: Special
Essay on Launch of The Revealer
01/08/2004 07:08 PMThe newsroom is a nest of believers if we include believers in
journalism itself. There is a religion of the press. There is also a
priesthood. And there can be a crisis of faith. Plus, a new web
journal debuts today. The Revealer, edited by Jeff Sharlet, is about
religion and the press in a tumultuous world.
Google announces winners of essay
contest for underwriters
Google announces winners of essay
contest for underwriters
01/07/2004 07:05 PMProduction of anti-piracy standards soars: The cold war over digital
rights management standards will ratchet up another notch in February
when a consortium of ...
"Friedhelm Rathjen's essay The Joys of
Cycling with Beckett"
"Friedhelm Rathjen's essay The Joys of
Cycling with Beckett"
07/05/2004 02:41 PMESSAY- Tricky treat: Let's reclaim
Halloween from fear
ESSAY- Tricky treat: Let's reclaim
Halloween from fear
10/30/2003 07:15 PMStart with a Google search for "The Razor Blade in the Apple: The
Social Construction of Urban Legends." Two Southern Illinois
University professors researched ...
Wired: Arthur C. Clarke essay on
tsunamis, technology, and sf
Wired: Arthur C. Clarke essay on
tsunamis, technology, and sf
02/05/2005 09:25 PMXeni Jardin:
In this month's
Wired magazine, a thought-provoking essay by
Arthur C. Clarke on roles of tech and sci fi in predicting disasters.
The New Year dawned with the global family closely following the
unfolding tragedy via satellite television and the Web. As the grim
images from Banda Aceh, Chennai, Galle, and elsewhere replaced the
traditional scenes of celebrations, I realized that it would soon be
60 years since I conceived the communications satellite (in Wireless
World, October 1945 -- I still think it was a good idea).
I was also reminded of what Bernard Kouchner, former health minister
of France and first UN governor of Kosovo, once said: "Where there is
no camera, there is no humanitarian intervention." Indeed, how many of
the millions of men and women who donated generously for disaster
relief would have done so if they had only read about it in the
newspapers?
But cameras and other communications media have to do more than just
document the devastation and mobilize emergency relief. We need to
move beyond body counts and aid appeals to find lasting, meaningful
ways of supporting Asia's recovery. In that sense, the Asian tsunami
becomes a test for information and communications technologies (ICTs)
in terms of how they can support humanitarian assistance and human
development.
Link
(
Thanks, Blaise Zerega!)
Academic essay on ShitBegone toilet
paper and postmodernism
Academic essay on ShitBegone toilet
paper and postmodernism
04/22/2004 01:21 PMSurprisingly readable academic paper with more information about
ShitBegone toilet paper (which
I blogged previously).
[Jed] Ela did the reverse of DuChamp: he exhibited a
single role of a toilet paper he had thought of as a joke, called
‘Shitbegone’. The exhibit was a great success, and
Ela realised he could actually make money by mass-producing Shitbegone
and selling it in stores. What differentiates this from the sale
of other artistic reproductions is that Ela markets Shitbegone as
toilet paper, not as art: he sells it by the case (“96 double
rolls for $44.99. That's 47 cents per roll!”). What
started as something like Warhol’s soup cases turns into an
idiosyncratic case of the product development and marketing of a basic
essential commodity.
Link
Computer Program Makes Essay Grading
Easier
Computer Program Makes Essay Grading
Easier
04/08/2005 01:07 AMPower Mac G5: Excellent
Power Mac G5: Excellent
01/07/2004 02:06 PM“Power Mac G5 is Apple’s best work yet,” reads the headline on Tom
Yager’s review in InfoWorld. The story summary continues the bouquet:
“The Power Mac G5 desktop workstation presents the ideal balance of
compatibility, performance, usability, and value. It has serious
number-crunching capabilities, but this machine most clearly outshines
Intel-based systems when performing complex operations on massive disk
and/or RAM-based data sets.” Mac OS X 10.3 Panther and Mac OS X 10.3
Panther Server also are rated “Excellent” by Yager. [Jan 2]
Grok Description matches for "an excellent, though depressing essay"
GrokA matches for "an excellent, though depressing essay"
"an excellent, though depressing essay"
