Wired awake07/29/2004 11:32 AM Soldiers in the field go for days without rest. Now, an investigation
has found the British Ministry of Defense has been buying a new
stimulant in bulk.
I woke up at 7:30AM when my phone beeped with an incoming SMS. It
was a message telling me that Min had just checked in. I forgot to
turn off dodgeball and
the SMS was telling me where Min was in SF and that she had checked
in. Now I know why they call it "dodgeball". ;-p For those who haven't
tried it yet, dodgeball is a cool new service that is a location based
SNS that lets you "check in" and it sends a SMS to your friends to
tell them where you are. But it's not very useful when I'm in Madrid
and Min's in SF. ;-)
Will Real/IBM Deal Keep Microsoft Media Folks Awake at Night?
Will Real/IBM Deal Keep Microsoft Media Folks Awake at Night?01/10/2004 01:09 PM Other than filing a $1 billion RealNetworks
and IBM announced on Friday at the Consumer Electronics Show a deal to
provide jointly infrastructure aimed at companies who want to deliver
audio and video services to their customers. Microsoft isn't standing
still in this space, however; at the end of last year, it announced
with Loudeye a service for businesses that want to build online music
stores.
After a long hybernation, computer storage looks to be awake and ready to move in 2004. Business conditions se
My dream01/28/2004 11:22 AM Last night I had a dream that I was trying to explain to John Kerry
that the Internet is like free speech: Its value comes from its
openness to possibility, and that the government should regulate it as
little as possible. Yes, I actually had this dream....
This news hasn't exactly been a secret up until now, but it hasn't
been official either. Starting tomorrow, I'll be hanging up the
Creative Commons jersey to start work full-time at Google, as a
product advisor and eventually product counsel. Before I go, I have
plenty to say about, and many people to thank for, the amazing
experience Creative Commons has been.
Just over three years ago, I started work at Creative Commons with
little idea of what I was getting into. It involved copyright, I knew,
and it involved Lawrence Lessig, and that alone was enough to ditch my
plans to practice law in New York. (Ok, practicing law wasn't too
tough to pass up, but New York was.) It became clear shortly into the
job that the decision was even better than I'd ever imagined. It was
as if everything I'd done, in school, at work, and through my hobbies,
had culminated in this position working for an embryonic nonprofit
called Creative Commons.
Here are three little anecdotes that give a glimpse into how
winding up at Creative Commons was, for me, like making a brand-new
friend whom I felt I'd known forever.
In college, I played in a band. We weren't particularly good, but
we had a great time, and over two years I learned the single most
important lesson about creativity that I've learned to date: Next to
romance (with which creativity shares a few features), making
something with friends, with everyone contributing different but equal
parts, has got to be the most fun thing in the world. It's also, I
realized, the only way things really get made. I don't care if you're
Bob Dylan -- nothing comes out of your own head and into life without
the influence of others, whether living or dead. (Every time you pick
up a guitar, you're collaborating with the dead.) I started looking
more closely at CD liner notes, at writers' biographies, at the
acknowledgements sections of books, looking for clues into the
real story behind the creation of anything credited to only
one person. I didn't find much, and I didn't understand why.
In law school, I wrote an article about the musical Rent
-- not my favorite piece of art, by a long shot, but one with a great
joint-authorship dispute at its center. The playwright worked closely
with a dramaturge to get the show into Broadway shape, and pretty much
everyone agreed that without the dramaturge's contributions, the final
show would never have existed. Problem was, they had no contract, and
no other paperwork demonstrating an intent to share authorship credit.
So, a federal court gave the full copyright to the playwright. In the
article I argued that it was nonsense to expect artists to begin a jam
session by filling out paperwork. (If you've seen "Get Creative," our
first flash movie, the line "we interrupt this brainstorm to call the
lawyers" comes straight from that experience.) But, as sure I was that
the rules were wrong, I had no idea what to recommend in their
place.
By the time I finished school, and thanks to a lot of people at the
Berkman Center, I was fully infected with the IP bug. I was genuinely
obsessed with the riddle that we're all still trying to figure out:
How will all this stuff work in the future? How can we keep up this
technological progress without giving artists the shaft? I still
didn't have an answer. I remember very well doing my first stab at
public speaking on a panel at a conference in New York. Siva
Vaidhyanathan also spoke, as did the Dead Kennedy's Jello Biafra.
Biafra was railing against the music industry and professing his love
for Napster (which was then at its peak), but also explaining how he
didn't want his songs winding up in Coca-Cola commercials. I remember
saying something like, "Hey, Jello, you can't have it both ways."
That statement ranks right up there with the time in 1995, when I
told a scholarship interview committee that the Internet "was
overrated," as the dumbest thing I've ever said.
It wasn't until I finally wrapped my brain around the idea behind
Creative Commons, cooked up collaboratively by our board of directors,
that I felt someone had begun to crack the riddle. That epiphany was
the first of many in my three years here; over and over again I found
myself the lucky steward of other people's amazing ideas. From our
logo (thank you, Ryan Junell) to our icons (thanks, Molly) to the
vision of iCommons (Lessig, Christiane, Roland) to the Tech Challenges
page (Hal Abelson) to the sampling licenses (Negativland!) to the
WIRED CD (Conde Nast and the whole editorial staff) to CC Mixter
(Neeru) to CC Publisher (Nathan Yergler) to CC Search (Mike, Nutch,
Yahoo!) to our site re-design (Matt, Adaptive Path) -- the list could
go on and on -- I've had the chance to stand at the hub of a giant
collaborative creation without really doing much of the creating. It's
been a bit like being in a band, but I feel more like the guy behind
the soundboard than one of the musicians. And I feel awfully fortunate
to have been there to witness it all.
I'm sure that, in some form or other, I'll carry on with the CC
effort. But in any case, I like to think that like Menudo or Spinal Tap,
we're the kind of band that stays together regardless of the
particular line-up at a given time.
(This is the first of a few posts I'd like to write before
offically signing off. I'm a lame-duck with a few hours of
bully-pulpit left, so bear with me.)
I had a dream...
I had a dream...12/02/2002 01:17 PM Last night I had the strangest dream I ever dreamed before. Well, not
exactly. But I dreamt that Yahoo bought Google. That's funny for a lot
of reasons. But it was pretty cool in the dream. I'm still on West...
My quest for data comes to an end as the local 7-11 is no longer
giving out iTunes cups and I can't seem to find any iTunes Pepsi
bottles anymore. If you've
been following my progress, the final tally was 5 for 7. Only two
losers in seven outings, putting my winning percentage at 71%. Given
that they claimed 33% would win, I'm either really lucky (doubtful),
they wanted almost everyone to win, or demand wasn't nearly as high as
they thought.
My Dream Home06/24/2005 07:51 PM Like general contractors with a psych degree, the architectural firm
called fathom plumbs the depths of your soul to design the house you
want. Our writer gets the blueprints of his dreams.
Dream groaners
Dream groaners06/02/2004 08:44 AM I woke up this morning from a vivid dream. Someone had been talking
about a philosopher who liked to fast before he thought. Not for me, I
replied, or else, Rene a la Carte would have written "I think,
therefore I yam." Look, it was just a dream, ok? At least I didn't
have Jean Paul Sartre writing Being and Muffinness. Nor did Sartre say
"Hell is other Peeps." Nor did Kant issue his Categorical Aperitif. So
just leave me alone....
Acting Out A Dream
Acting Out A Dream05/25/2004 12:50 AM A few years ago, students used simple video recorders to make their
movies. Now they have access to more sophisticated technology
including green screens, sound recording music and various computer
programs -- including Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Final Cut Express and
iLife. By Erin Snelgrove, The News-Review (via MyAppleMenu)
To dream of the Turkish Guy
To dream of the Turkish Guy02/12/2004 10:02 AM Audible Revolution, in The Guardian today, talking about Chris Lydon,
Grant Henninger and Audible. Delayed for ages due to some unforeseen
actual breaking news. Meanwhile, Lydon is now at Minnesota Public
Radio, home of Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion. Keillor,...
Kids'
blogs a 'paedophile's dream': I don't think I'd ever let my kid
have a blog. We've schooled him repeatedly on never giving anyone his
real name on EverQuest.
I think he calls himself Frank on that game.
A forensic psychologist has warned that children's blogs pose new
threat to children online. She said blogs are "a paedophile's dream",
because of the insight they give into a child's life, habits and
movements.
[...] She said: "This [blogging culture] is just a paedophile's
dream because you have children uploading pictures, giving out details
of their everyday life because it's an online journal," BBC Online
reports.
Dream Bloat12/26/2004 06:38 PM Everything's bigger in Toulouse. The world's biggest plane has started rolling off
assembly lines and is expected to take its first flight in March 2005.
The quarter-billion-dollar, twin-deck, four-aisle plane can carry 555
passengers. Thanks to its design's outsized wings, future versions of
the economical plane may carry as many as 800
passengers.
With the A380, Airbus hopes to do to Boeing what Boeing did to
its competitors over 30 years ago with the 747. Already, Airbus
Industrie has outsold and out-delivered Boeing for the
last two years. But don't boycott just yet! It turns out the A380 is
51% American-made. Parts are so big they don't fit
in this whale-like record-size transporter (though this Russian monster may have a claim); they are transported to Toulouse on a barge. More pics. Let's hope this latest
high-tech aerospace gamble does better than the last
one.
Europe, of course (troll alert), already makes the world's biggest truck, the fastest trains, the best
cars (sorry Japan), and the most successfulrocketlaunchers.
On a darker topic, 10 years ago, French commandos
boarded an Airbus and killed Islamic terrorists planning to fly it
into the Eiffel Tower.
I dream of Gmail
I dream of Gmail04/12/2004 11:20 AM NOTE TO SERGEY BRIN: stop dressing yourself in drag, fire one of your
PhDs, and use the money to buy yourself a cluestick. Then beat your
developers with it until they start taking accessibility seriously.
(703 words)
Maitreya's Dream 3.2
Maitreya's Dream 3.212/26/2004 05:09 AM Software for Western and Vedic astrology (Jyotish).
Not Really Satisifed? You Can Still Dream, Can You?
Not Really Satisifed? You Can Still Dream, Can You?09/02/2004 07:21 PM Peter
Rojas, in Engadget: Here's our pet theory/secret dream: Apple
didn't include features such as TV tuner because they don't want the
iMac to cannibalize sales of an even nicer media center Mac they have
int he works.
I user a neat little application called Indy Junior to map my travels. But apparently something's
gone wrong with the XML file I output with Movable Type, because IJ
still thinks I'm in the Caribbean, where I haven't been since early
March. If only I were still on the beach. Thanks for the nice dream,
Indy!
You need a license to say "I have a dream"
You need a license to say "I have a dream"12/17/2003 02:40 AM Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech is still in copyright (as
is almost everything else familiar in our lives), and Dr King's heirs
strictly enforce the copyright. Wendy Seltzer points out what this
means for free expression and political commentary.
You can always quote a few lines without asking permission, but that's
likely to be the same few lines that have become cliched with
repetition. Quote the whole speech to make a more substantial point,
and you face thousand-dollar license fee claims from the estate. Quote
them to make a point critical of King, and you may be denied a license
entirely.
This is one time in my life when I wished I had a rich family
member who I could beg for some pocket change. Engadget has a review
of a soon to be release 1 billion LCD by NEC. All I can say is wow and
as the reviewer at Engadget is predicting the price will probably be
on the extreme high side. But it's always nice to dream. For those of
you who are design artist and photographers you need to check this bad
boy out. [Engadget]
Perchance to dream.03/13/2003 10:25 AM All week, I have woken up about 2 hours after I fall asleep. I end up
staring at the ceiling for what seems like an eternity, before sinking
into a restless slumber, waking about once every 90 minutes. I have
had terrible nightmares, from which I awake with a scream somewhere
between my stomach and my lips, depending on the severity of the
terror.
American Dream?
American Dream?11/10/2003 11:15 PM ''I lived the American dream,'' says Baglio, 70, whose last workday
was Oct. 30. ''I would have never thought I'd last 45 years here.''
That's Louis Baglio speaking, as reported in an article by Johnny Diaz
in the Boston Globe on Sunday. This guy cut hair for 45 years in
downtown Boston and he thinks he lived the American dream! What a
moron! First, not only did he stay at the same job for his entire
career, he only changed his place of employment twice. Even school
kids know that if you want to ratchet your salary, you move from...
Daniel J. Watkin (NY Times): His Moment in the Sun. It was the ultimate in surround-sound,
and not surprisingly, because I was sitting smack in the middle of the
stage at Avery Fisher Hall, an amateur clarinetist embedded in the
clarinet section of the New York Philharmonic.
Some
people wish they could play center field for the San Francisco Giants.
Watkin got his dream, to play with one of the world's great
orchestras. What a cool story.
Reading his account brought back some memories for me. My first "real"
instrument was clarinet, which I started playing in third grade. I had
to stop playing it (and the sax, which I took up in fifth grade) many
years later when a ruined front tooth, from a bicycle accident, was
replaced with a kind of dental bridge that didn't allow the kind of
pressure you have to exert when playing a reed instrument. But I've
always loved the clarinet's sound, whether it's in classical or jazz
or just about any genre where the instrument makes an appearance.
I never was nearly good enough on clarinet to have dreamed of playing
in a serious orchestra. But in seventh grade, before my voice started
to change, I was selected to join a soprano boys choir that performed
in one of Bach's many masterpieces, the St. Matthew
Passion, in New York's Carnegie Hall. I confess I was
a bit bored when we weren't singing, but it was an amazing experience
to stand on that grand stage.
The Dream Comes True
The Dream Comes True11/19/2003 08:05 AM Back in 1995, I was VP of Strategic Marketing at Open Text, which at
the time was 25-person SGML indexing company. The company had
initially built itself on a single lead project in the late '80s:
Indexing the Oxford English Dictionary. Doing a full-text index of
such a massive work was considered impossible. Who could dream of
indexing tens of thousands of pages, hundreds of thousands of words?
But under the technical direction of Tim Bray, breakthroughs were made
and full-text retrieval took an important step forward. Fifteen years
later, Tim Bray and Open Text have moved onto other...
Welcome to a narrowcaster's dream
Welcome to a narrowcaster's dream11/20/2003 12:40 AM But I've never
heard of any of these artists... Say hello to iRATE radio. The
premise is simple: mp3's collected from various free sites are
collected and indexed on a common server. You, through your spiffy
iRATE client, are fed mp3's, which you then rate. Over time, your
musical tastes are matched against others, and you are then fed mp3's
which you will like, ostensibly. [...via Bifurnicated Reinvents]
i dream of a man whose hopes never end
i dream of a man whose hopes never end12/05/2003 09:05 PM Couple of nifty news items that I think are pretty cool -- I get
mentioned in an Los Angeles Times story about blogging, and Reuters
picks up a Hollywood Reporter story about my O'Reilly deal. Even
better, both of the stories aren't framed negatively!
Keep the dream alive
Keep the dream alive06/14/2004 09:03 PM Movies for Music From the press
release: "Movies for Music" (moviesformusic.org) is
an online film contest with a simple aim: to give the public a clear
and honest look at the music industry. As more people learn how the
music business works, major label CD sales will plummet faster. The
contest launches Monday.
The short film
contest launched today, and first place is a ZVue handheld video
player. Grok Description matches for Dream while being Awake GrokA matches for Dream while being Awake
Dream while being Awake
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry:
