January 2004 Archives
Tim says I missed his point
, but I think he's the one who's just off center here. When I say "The Man" I don't mean the advertiser but the engine. Google and Yahoo! are The Man.
Continue reading "Impending heat-death of nutch" Redux.
Furdlog point to this essay that makes the interesting claim that copyright is more like real property than some of us like to think.
Continue reading Intellectual property is a lot like real property.
Tim Oren asks an interesting question about the viability of nutch, an open source search technology project:
Can a pro bono effort hold its own indefinitely against the grind of standing off those with an ongoing monetary incentive to do ill by polluting metadata?Yup
Continue reading Can popular power defeat corporate might?.
Scoble's found the magic formula for traffic: poke the hornets' nest of open/free computing and Apple fandom with a Microsoft-brand stick. Ouch. Still, it has a welcome side-effect: it gets Cory to write things that I believe, but don't really have time to say.
Continue reading BoingBoing: Buy Open.
Robert Scoble uses his blog to remind us that Microsoft is actually a collection of human beings. In this post reminds us why geeks don't make great consumer products.
Continue reading Scoble drives a Yugo and uses Linux.
RipDigital's been getting some play in the blogosphere today, thanks to a Wired News article. They exist to serve the busy music-lover with more CDs than time by offering to rip your collection to MP3. It's some of their less-publicized services that interest me.
Continue reading OK, but does RipDigital respect privacy?.
Apple has a handy bunch of product support RSS feeds. Nice.
Continue reading More RSS from Apple.
Andy Herzfeld's Folklore project is currently hosting people's recollections of the making of the original Mac.
Continue reading Nifty group proto-memoir of the making of the Mac.
Companies with something to sell want to be able to target individuals with their advertising. Companies that gather an audience (like Google) want to know everything about you. What if your data had the same kind of DRM as a digital download from iTunes.
Continue reading One good use for DRM?.
BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis has a good idea for a new kind of Friendster ripoff.
Continue reading Finally, social networking I can get behind.
Continue reading Sincerest form of flattery?.
Complementing their Orwellian vision for self-destructing, self-policing content, the mothpieces of big content have an incredible capacity for Orwellian doublethink. This time the RIAA tries to spin a rise in file sharing as a validation of their endless war on consumers.
Continue reading Sharing rises, RIAA still claims victory.
I don't usually blog the political stuff (unless some pinhead in government is doing the bidding of Big Content) but this piece about the Bush administration's propensity to rewrite history to suit its needs got me thinking.
Continue reading The importance of open history.
Some people never give up on a magnificent obsession, including some friends and former colleagues from the heartbreak that was OpenCola. They've put some of the lessons from the original OC to good use in a new crazy idea: Dude, Check This Out!
Part blogging tool, part social network, part plot to take over the world, it's a way to harness your interests and connections to suggest new and cool things.
It even allows you to post to your MT or Blogger blogs, like I'm doing right now.
Fascinating bankruptcy auction of Beastie Boy-run label Grand Royal.
Continue reading For Sale: defunct hipster label.
Things are looking grim for intellectual property policy. The new acting head of the USPTO is one of the prime culprits behind the DMCA, and the PTO's proud as heck.
Continue reading DMCA shyster now running USPTO.
Because people like this braniac are in charge:
"It's kind of a chess match to see who blinks first."
Continue reading Why does Big Content suck?.
Funny addendum to the Apple/HP hPod and iTunes deal: a Microsoft media exec's saying that the deal will limit choice.
Continue reading Microsoft: Options "Limit Choice".
Several legislators used this week's CES as a venue to express their positions on some important consumer technology issues, including Big Content's propensity to sue their customers. A couple of Republican congresscritters put the RIAA on notice for their abuse of the DMCA.
Continue reading Congressmen to Big Content: Drop Dead.
Apple, not known to be a big player as either a licensor or in the Windows software world, has swung a pretty big deal with HP. HP's digital music efforts will essentially be built around a re-branded iPod player and the iTunes for Windows jukebox and Music Store.
Continue reading hPod? Apple gains iPod, iTunes, Music Store distribution thru HP.
There seems to be a lot of discontent among bloggers with yesterday's Stevenote at Macworld Expo SF 2004. Specifically, people are steamed that the iPod mini is $249. I actually think the product's going to be a huge seller.
Continue reading The sound and the fury.
Like 1913 Europe (or a 1970s key party) technology companies are constantly coupling and decoupling into grand alliances designed to dominate the market for copy protection and transaction management.
Continue reading DRM battle lines drawing up (again).
