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By Sheila
Lennon
'Bottom-up'
journalism from the pros
July
26, 2002
Odd
pairing: Dolly
Parton covers Stairway to Heaven (audio) on Halos
And Horns, released earlier this month. Here's a Led
Zeppelin 1970 rehearsal tape of the original -- the sound quality
isn't good, but unlike the brief clips on the CD sites, it's the whole
song. via Patrick
Hurley
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to this item | Comment
eBay
Expands Fixed-Price Options: "The fixed-price
format lets sellers list an item at a 'Buy It Now' price throughout
the duration of the listing or until sold. Buyers will not have the option
to bid on the item," writes Beth Cox at internetnews.com. All eBay's
pricing
options are listed here.
Even more
interesting: At pbs.org, Robert X. Cringely writes about How
Auction Sites Like EBay Turn Retail Economics on Its Ear for the Betterment
of Just About Everybody. If this tempts you to jump into selling,
eBay has an audio
explanation of the process.
Link
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Mike's
Rules of the Road: A truckdriver-blogger offers 10 things to bear
in mind when driving around or near 18-wheelers. "9) If you see a
truck weaving around, crossing lanes and whatnot, get the hell away from
him as quickly as you can. He's falling asleep..."
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President
has deserted women's rights, writes the venerable Helen Thomas:
The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against
Women, "adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979, was
signed by President Carter in 1980 but has languished in the Senate since
then, although 170 nations have ratified it.
"Six
months ago the Bush administration told senators that CEDAW was "generally
desirable and should be approved." But later the administration began
equivocating. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the administration
supports the treaty's 'general goal of eradicating discrimination across
the globe'but now feels the pact's 'vagueness'and 'complexity'require
a Justice Department review.
"Translated:
The administration has reneged. Fat chance that Attorney General John
Ashcroft will give it a fair shot. He was one of the most vocal opponents
of the treaty when he was a senator from Missouri."
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Blogger
Dead Pool: Dave Weinberger asks, "Any bets on who will be
the first capital-J to be fired because of something she or he blogs?
... Unfortunately, the early adopters of bloggery among capital-J's, who
are some of my favorite and most respected bloggers, are the best candidates
because the fact that they were early adopters indicates that they are
unafraid of speaking their minds."
Heh heh.
Dave also
points us to Banner
Ads We'd Like To See at Valley
of the Geeks. Examples: "Porn: Driving the internet Economy since
1973"; "Hotmail: Now with FREE Microsoft Spam."
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House
Votes 420 to 1 To Expel Traficant: We only clicked on this Washington
Post story to see who the lone dissident was. Answer: "Rep. Gary
A. Condit (D-Calif.), who lost his primary this year after revelations
surfaced concerning his relationship with slain intern Chandra Levy, was
the only member to vote against expulsion." Empathy vote?
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Antlers
2: My projo colleague Sean Polay was a bit disturbed by one of yesterday's
links: "The Antler
Chandeliers were a little frightening. But then I dove into the site,
and made this the one new thing I learned today: http://www.antlerchandeliers.com/Facts/index.htm."
I asked if
he'd wondered what happened to the rest of the animal. "I did! I
was wondering if the antlers were hunting trophies.... and was
relieved to see it was a semi-naturally occuring phenomenon (and double
relieved to know that the animals weren't pre-wired either)."
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The
Web didn't kill libraries. It's the new draw. The Christian Science
Monitor is pleased about this, and so are we.
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July 25, 2002
Farewell
to my fellow projo.com blogger: Dave
McPherson's NetRunner
goes on hiatus as he moves to a new assignment as deputy business editor
of The Providence Journal. After he settles in, he hopes to resume his
blog. It was always a pleasure to bounce ideas with Dave, and I'm glad
he's only moving to the other end of the newsroom.
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Antler
chandeliers: For the New Englander who has everything? via
Travelers
Diagram
Pro
and con of Salon blogs: The biggest "con," I think, is the
prominence of the rankings.
This "metadata" (thanks to an email from Cory
Doctorow, I now know the name for this sort of breakout info that
computers generate so well, but do you really want to know it?)
piles on the pressure to perform. Just write, willya!
The "pro"?
The curiously refreshing (and irreverent) "people
are stupid" blog.
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ACLU
takes on the DMCA: WASHINGTON--The American
Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Thursday in an attempt to overturn
key portions of a controversial 1998 copyright law. The suit asks a federal
judge to rule that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is so sweeping
that it unconstitutionally interferes with researchers' ability to evaluate
the effectiveness of Internet filtering software.
Recording
artists slam music industry's accounting practices:
SACRAMENTO,
Calif. (AP) -- Singers and entertainment attorneys criticized California's
$41 billion recording industry Tuesday, testifying that it routinely
underreports royalties and cheats artists of millions of dollars.
The speakers
were testifying before the state Senate's Judiciary Committee and alleged
financial irregularities by the five global corporations that dominate
the music business.
Music attorney
Don Engel estimated that record companies routinely "underpay 10
to 40 percent on every royalty" and dare artists to challenge it
without killing their careers. ...
Among
those testifying, singer Sam Moore, formerly of Sam
and Dave, recalled learning in his 50s that his retirement fund
would be $67 a month because his record label never reported income
to his pension fund.
July 24, 2002
Who
owns our culture?
Dan
Gillmor and Doc
Searls are both blogging live from the O'Reilly Open Source conference
in San Diego.
Lawrence Lessig (Creative
Commons et al) according to Doc:
Disney Inc. could
borrow and build upon the works of the Brothers Grimm and many others
to create Snow White, Pinocchio and many other derivative works, because
the originals were in the Commons — a lawyer-free zone.
Now one can do to
Disney, Inc. what Walt Disney did to the Brothers Grimm: that's the
law behind the eleven extensions of the copyright duration over the
years since Disney's lawyers have gained control, ownership, over culture.
According to Dan:
Ask a venture capitalist
how much he's willing to invest in new technology Hilary Rosen or Jack
Valenti won't sign off on. The answer is zero, says Lessig.
"What have
you done?" he again asks the audience. "We're bigger than
they are. We have right on our side and we've let them control the debate."
"If you don't
do something now, this freedom you've built will be taken away,"
he says. The crowd is remarkably silent.
Back to Doc:
...Sites and blogs
and slashdot stories.
But nothing in Washington. (Lessig is apparently saying that this
fight is going on in words online, but not in Washington, where the
lawmakers listen to those who lobby.) If you don't do something
now, this freedom will be taken away. Either by those who see you as
a threat and invoke the system of law they call patents, or through
copyright enforcement.
Such niche conferences
preach to the choir, unfortunately.
Here's something anyone
can relate to, from
Declan McCullagh at CNet: "WASHINGTON--Congress is about to consider
an entertainment industry proposal that would authorize copyright holders
to disable PCs used for illicit file trading."
Put another way...
would you write to your Congressman to protest pending legislation that
would disable your car if you park in a prohibited area? We thought so.
Well, what are you
waiting for? Your PC is about to be hijacked!
Link
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Salon
hosts blogs: For the same price as getting your blogware directly
from Radio Userland, you can
have it in the Salon stable. Immediately, some people who've paid to subscribe
to Salon are making noises that they should get a discount. Salon editor
Scott Rosenberg
has become a blogger, leading his pack.
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Desktop
yoga: For stress and to prevent repetitive stress unjury, movements
you can make at work. via Judy
Watt.
July 23, 2002
Death
in the family: The blog and I are back after the death of my mom,
Marion Lennon, Thursday at 93.
Our whole family is
grateful to all who offered condolences, prayers and good wishes. Special
thanks to fellow bloggers Dave
Winer, Doc
Searls, JD
Lasica and others who gave mom a virtual afterlife on the Web. Here's
a photo of mom,
and her
obituary, which I wrote. (It was lightly edited by the obit desk.)
Link
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Oil
men's oil money: Conservative journalist Christopher Caldwell (senior
editor at The Weekly Standard),
in N.Y. Press surprises
with a scathing column about President Bush (Who
Bought Bush’s Stock?): "... It is the story of a man
who has been rewarded for repeated failures by having money shot at him
through a fire hose. It is the story of a man who talks with a straight
face about having 'earned' a fortune of tens of millions of dollars, without
having ever done an honest day’s work in his life."
He answers the question
in the headline with speculation that unfortunately makes some sense:
"Weeks
after his father was elected president, Bush got involved in the purchase
of the Texas Rangers. He would eventually sell his Harken shares to
cover the loan that allowed him to help buy the team. ...The important
issue might not be when he sold it but who bought it.
This is information that Senate Democrats are seeking desperately; Bush
refuses to reveal it, and it is not even clear if the Securities and
Exchange Commission knows the buyer’s identity from its insider
trading investigation. If they know, they haven’t released it.
"But
let’s speculate. An editorial on Harken in last week’s Wall
Street Journal noted "interesting Saudi connections on the finance
side." ... In the months after Bush came onto the Harken board,
according to a 1999 Journal report, a Saudi financier named Abdullah
Taha Bakhsh bought a 17 percent stake in the company. Bakhsh’s
American representative Talat Othman was given a seat on the board and
met with then-President Bush at the White House. And the "good
news" into which now-President Bush claimed to be selling his Harken
shares was an oil-exploration deal with the government of Bahrain–a
total (but lucrative) flop that was arranged despite Harken’s never
having done any foreign oil exploration before. In fact, the ex-president’s
ne’er-do-well son appears to have been used by the Harken board
as "Arab bait," much as Democrats sold the promise of photographs
with Clinton family nobodies for cash from Asian businessmen. ("Rook!
That’s me with Lodger Crinton!")
"To
be fair (if only for a moment), back in the early 1990s, Saudi Arabia
was known as our unsavory but solid longtime ally against communism,
not as the gang of rich fascists who spawned Al Qaeda and are now obstructing
our war against it. But until the identity of the Harken purchaser is
revealed, probing the issue will be a no-lose situation for the Democrats."
Link
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FREE
speech, and fiction too: Mike Goldfein of Belo Interactive does a
video
standup about Book
Crossing, which encourages us to set our books free in public places
to be carried away by curious readers. I'm about to do this in the name
of clearing clutter, but I wonder if setting bad books free is really
a good idea. They might mate and multiply.
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Catchup:
The Digital Entertainment
and Rights Management hearing at the Department of Commerce July 17
Grant Gross covered
it at NewsForge: "Advocates trying to speak for regular Internet
users were basically told to sit down and shut up during a "public"
workshop on digital rights management dominated by IT heavyweights and
Big Hollywood at the U.S. Department of Commerce Wednesday."
David
Weinberger, author of Small
Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web, and also a
Cluetrain co-author,
later
published an email by Gross that advances the story:
During this workshop,
the Commerce Department was just not interested in hearing from the
public. So to get the point across that the public wasn't represented,
the Free Software/Linux/fair use crowd almost had to shout and wave
their hands.
Those tactics actually
may have worked. Sources tell me that the Commerce Department is now
asking around for suggestions on consumer advocates to include in a
future workshop.
As for the EFF,
Robin Gross tells me today that they've been invited to comment in writing,
and the EFF is doing so.
Here's what I *think*
happened: The Commerce Department just didn't comprehend that consumers
might want to be part of this discussion about how to implement DRM.
Groups like EFF just didn't fit the focus of this meeting, so Commerce
set up this workshop with the goal of getting the IT people and the
Hollywood people talking again, but made no provisions for the public
to participate.
J
Thomas Vincent also attended, and offers a report
and links at Bear Droppings.
Why should you care?
"DRM takes control of your computer, and hands it over to those who
would sell you music and movies," writes
Kevin Marks, a QuickTime engineer at Apple.
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The
War For Your TV: Newsweek reports, "Digital video recorders
like TiVo let you watch shows when you want to rather than when the programmers
decide. The new Replay DVR even lets you automatically skip ads and allows
you to trade shows online. Now the nets are striking back."
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Corporate
scandal trading cards: It's conceptual art that somebody
actually made. A nice presentation, more like flash cards than trading
cards, but it's a catchy twist on a print display that would put each
disgraced CEO's factoids in a column topped by a head shot.
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Do
you know what you like? Lists make for buzz, but this one is weird.
"One
Hundred Albums You Should Remove from Your Collection Immediately"
is getting big play in the blogosphere, with bloggers confessing how many
of them they own and whether they agree or disagree with author Wesley
A. Kose's backwards logic: "But we have no intention of recommending
hot new CDs you should play -- we trust you and know that you'll make
great decisions about which albums to buy in the future."
I don't generally
make great buying decision about CDs I haven't heard (and it's harder
to hear good new music all the time). But one thing I do know is which
of my 45s, vinyl, cassette and CD recordings I like. Who's he to tell
me what to get rid of? I probably hate what he plays.
And besides, I only
own one album on the list (Jefferson
Airplane, Surrealistic Pillow) and when I play it I feel like
to going to Woodstock again.
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Blogware
roundup: Microcontent News' John Hiler summarizes and reviews the
available
options in blogging software. Then there's what I do: FTP a homemade
html page. via Steve
Outing.
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Net
radio gets fainter: Royalty
fees killing most Internet radio stations (Jefferson Graham, USA
Today, Sunday): "More than 200 Internet-based radio stations have
shut down because of a royalty fee that takes effect in September, and
more are closing daily. Most of the estimated 10,000 radio Webcasters
are expected to follow suit, "with the exception of Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft
and other deep-pocketed conglomerates who can afford a loss leader,"
says Kurt Hanson, editor of the Radio
and Internet Newsletter." Sidebar: Mourning
the end of small Net radio sites.
Also, Pioneer
FM station shutters Webcasts: Lisa Bowman at CNET wrote Friday, "The
first commercial radio station to stream its programming live via the
Web has quit, making good on threats that it would have to pull its Webcasts
in the face of royalty fees."
And RadioBoston
transmitted its last note on July 15.
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NPR's ombudsman
speaks:
Linking to the Web site: Irate Bloggers and Other New Ideas
Amazing
art: "Amazing artworks with optical illusions, impossible
objects, hidden images, upside downs, and everything that fools the eye."
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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com
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