|
by Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
March
29, 2002
Wireless
instant karma:
Newsweek senior editor and chief technology writer Steven
Levy, writing
about last weekend's PC Forum conference in Scottsdale,
Ariz., notes the instant impact of all attendees having wireless net access
all the time:
"During
Tuesday morning’s session with Qwest telecommunications CEO Joe Nacchio,
several conference participants were typing their impressions into personal
'Web logs,' online diaries available to all on the Internet. One
of these 'bloggers,'
Doc Searls, got an e-mail from a friend across the country, who noted
that Nacchio — who at that moment was onstage complaining about how tough
life was in telecom — had sold huge amounts of stocks over the past two
years. Searls located a page from Yahoo Finance with the particulars (probably
this one) and linked it to his log. Another blogger in the room read
Searls’s log, and copied the link to his own site, acidly commenting on
the inappropriateness of Nacchio’s whining. Though it’s not clear how
many in the room were reading the Web logs, apparently there were a lot.
In any case, it seemed that the room palpably chilled toward the pugnacious
executive. This is a dangerous trend for public speakers everywhere. "
Searls
(one of the authors of The Cluetrain
Manifesto), offers a slight correction of the source, adding,
"In the world of online journalism, we're all stringers for each
other." (Stringers are freelance correspondents, reporting only when
news breaks in their neighborhood or on their beat).
The fight
for the future (continued): Dutch
Court Clears Web Music Swapping: "In a setback for efforts to
halt copyright abuse, a Dutch appeals court on Thursday told a technology
firm it could distribute a software program that is designed to let users
share music and films on the Internet. The ruling in the case between
Internet software company KaZaA
and Dutch music rights organization Buma Stemra overturned a decision
in November in favor of the music industry. "
Meanwhile,
from Wired: Another
Punch for Copy Protection: "A Democratic legislator from the
home of the Walt Disney and Warner Bros. studios is drafting a bill to
reduce online piracy by implanting strict copy controls in digital devices."
It's the House version of Sen. Hollings' bill.
The Kentucky
navy? A Kentucky
bill would have the state buy a submarine,
form a Navy and go after riverboat gamblers. The proposal concludes, "Section
2. The House of Representatives does hereby authorize the notification
of the casino riverboat consulate of this Resolution and impending whoopin'
so that they may remove their casino vessels to friendlier waters."
March
28, 2002
Stairway to
heaven evolves: The space
elevator would be a smooth 62,000-mile ride up a long cable. Taken seriously
at the 2002 Space and Robotics Conferences earlier this month in Albuquerque,
the gizmo is allegedly 12 years and $5 to $10 billion away from making a run
every 3 days. Hey, it makes as much sense as riding in a tin can atop burning
rocket fuel.
One question: What's
62,000 miles from earth? The moon is 239,000 miles away, on average. The satellite
belt is a bit more than 22,200 miles. When you run out of cable, where are you?
Hot new toy
in in the air: Inventor
solves bursting bubbles problem
The fight for
the future (continued): Business
Week: Guard
Copyrights, Don't Jail Innovation
Trade me:
They come with bubble gum, but nobody on these trading cards has won a World
Series. Ordinary Joes grace these People
Cards. If you're ordinary enough, you
too might be chosen to star in an upcoming set.
March
27, 2002
Company anthems:
ZD Net UK hosts a priceless collection of digital music: The
Top 20 anthems of information-tech companies. You can thrill to the strains
of the Madras, India, employees of McKinsey & Co.singing such
lyrics as "Hey! MCKC is the place to be The team is great, one goddess
- C! You've got gritty, you've got a request MCKC gonna give you the best!"
IBM is on the list -- a singalong of Ever Onward (lyrics)
-- and there's a link to the entire
IBM songbook.
The fight for
the future (continued):
(Disney CEO) Michael
Eisner invokes Abe Lincoln
The Observer (U.K.) Limit
copying and we may end up copying the USSR
Roger Ebert: Don't
Confuse Fans With Pirates
Web
radio's last stand: A new ruling involving the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act is set to wipe out independent online music stations.
SaveInternetRadio.org
is the Net's rapid-response page
Updates:
From home last night, DALiWorld
site (reported yesterday, below) was fine. Here at the Journal, I can't access
it. Go figger...
AP |
| Safiya Husaini
plays with her daughter Adama at the Sharia appeals court in Sokoto, northern
Nigeria, after her appeal was upheld. Husaini had been convicted of bearing
the child out of wedlock and was to be stoned to death. |
The
whole world is watching: Last week, we reported on a petition to the
president of Nigeria on behalf of a Muslim woman who had been convicted of adultery
under Islamic law and sentenced to death by stoning. BBC reports that Monday,
with the international press packing the courtroom, a Sharia court in Nigeria
upheld Safiya Husaini's appeal. ... But as the verdict was announced, it emerged
that a second woman has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.
Woman
who got stuck in news box gets a month's free subscription
Follow the flowers: Wordsworth
Fans Get Daffodil Hotline "Tourists wandering through Britain's Lake
District hoping to spot 'a host of golden daffodils' can now call a telephone
hotline to identify the best place to see the wild blooms." Here's Wordsworth's
daffodil
poem.
Philadelphia's
phrugal contest: "There is the granny who has
her chauffeur circle the block to find a meter with time left on it . . . The
man who goes to Phillies games free by rushing over during rain delays . . .
The woman who gets mulch and clothes by gathering discarded scarecrows after
Halloween . . ." Cheapskates
entered the Inquirer's contest in force.
March
26, 2002
 |
 |
| DALiWorld:
Not
a great screenshot of the virtual ocean, but it conveys the idea. Above,
a fish's "passport" indicates who created it, where, and how many
computers it has visited. |
Napster with
fish: DALiWorld
is not about Salvadore, but he'd love the idea:
DALiWorld
(the name derives from "Distributed Artificial Life") looks like an
underwater webcam view of a reef teeming with tropical fish -- the Indonesian
Ocean, say its authors. Some fish are generic, but each
user can create new fish of one specific type. My fish swim off my screen
and are replaced by fish created by others who are using the program at the
same time. We are networked in a virtual ocean.
Fish
are files, and we're exchanging them. Right-click on a fish and you see its
"passport" -- my first visitor was created by "Coyote in Vienna";
my second by "Kurt in Switzerland." (Because this was 3 a.m., most
of my incoming fish were European. By afternoon, most are American.) And fish
from me, in Providence, Rhode Island, were appearing on monitors all over the
world.
The authors' mission
statement: "Our aim is to be the first company to realize the living global
digital Gaia: a virtual ocean distributed across machines that span the entire
non-virtual world; a community of millions of users all taking part in building
this virtual ocean, creating the ecology and the life forms that inhabit it;
the life forms seamlessly swimming from one machine to the next... And we want
you to be our co-creator. "
Despite the lofty
language, it's Napster with fish, although simpler: You can't control the type
of fish you get. But if you could, if you could search the network for angelfish,
for example, and even peek at what other fish the angelfish-owners might harbor,
and bring them to your system, you'd have Napster. Fish files, music files,
video files, it's all just data.
But you don't really
need a central hub. Napster could be targeted because it functioned as the server,
and all its users were clients. Knock out the hub and file-sharing ceased.
But now the technology
has routed around the flaws of Napster: True peer-to-peer networking allows
every networked machine to connect to any other machine on the network, and
different programs approach the task differently. As a CNN
special on different types of peer-to-peer software explains, "When
it reaches a computer that has the file, Gnutella connects the two computers
directly. The program also handles file downloading by sending the request for
a file in the same way a browser sends a request for a Web page."
In a world where
all users are connected, you can give it all away and still have it all. This
is what the fight for the future is all about: There won't be any middlemen
any more. But there might not be anybody creating art or music any more, either,
if there's no way to get paid for it.
In DALiWorld, you
can make an unlimited number of fish. But nobody's coming after the fish distributors
waving a lawsuit.
" 'The idea,'
says DALi cofounder Scott Yara, "is to create an experience that reminds
Web users they're rubbing virtual elbows with millions of people around the
world,' " A.S.
Berman reported in USA Today. ( Berman also asked about the potential for
picking up a virus from a fish. DALiWorld's creator says "Java's own inherent
security combined with the limited set of instructions each fish carries leaves
him "fairly confident" that DALiWorld will remain virus free.")
DALiWorld is written
in Java, and may be a bit buggy on your system. It's a memory hog on mine. Nevertheless,
you should enable all the graphics options if your system can stand it. The
fascination is not really with the fish but with the exchange, and one
reviewer's suggestion that we be able to exchange not just fish but a message
in a bottle as well is a cool extension of the concept. ("Email me if this
floats onto your screen.") DALiWorld is free, and can be downloaded
here.
The fight for
the future (continued): "I've bought my last CD from any major label
or independent label that puts copy protection on any of its music...I'm not
a thief. I'm a customer. When you treat me like a thief, I won't be your customer."
-- San Jose Mercury-News technology columnist
Dan
Gillmor: Bleak future looms if you don't take a stand.
Congress is calling
for public participation on the future of digital music.
At The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which opposes the Consumer
Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) introduced last
week, you'll find email links to key members of Congress and sample letters.
Over
the weekend, a panel composed of Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Intel V.P.
Les Vadasz, Lotus founder (and EFF co-founder) Mitch Kapor and Hilary
Rosen of RIAA, the
group suing Napster, discussed "Control Over Information - The Battle
for the Soul of the Net." Here are rough
notes of their discussion from audience member Michael
Sippey.
The panel took place at PC Forum in Scottsdale, Ariz., an annual
conference organized by Esther
Dyson, founder of EDventure
Holdings.
From
Wired: What
Hollings' Bill Would Do.
March
25, 2002
Photo weblogs:
Digital cameras make it easy to shoot dozens of photos, see them instantly,
discard the bad ones and never worry about wasting film, since there isn't any.
Photo "blogs" let anyone display their work on the Web. One of the
largest of these is Photografica.org
(a blog of few words) where clicking on a link pops up a photo. There are
also specialized collections, such as The
Mirror Project, "a growing community of like-minded individuals who
have photographed their likenesses in a variety of reflective surfaces."
I'm one
of them. Speaking of photos, can you find
the hidden bird in this one? via
Camworld
Time lapse:
The award for best still-photo documentary goes to...: Tugboat steams toward
drawbridge, which fails to open. What
happens next is documented in an eloquent series of photos, with a surprise
ending. Oh, those Finns.
More free
music: House
of Blues has more than
700 concerts archived, some with video. Free registration required. You
can listen to live radio from all over the world at TVRadioWorld.com.
I chose Jamaica
last weekend, listening to Radio2 from Savannah-La-Mar, just southeast of Negril.
For jazz fans, broadcasts of Jazz from Lincoln Center at
jazzradio.org are
archived here, and include a program devoted to the work of late Rhode Islander
Tommy Flanagan
and more.
The
Museum of Hoaxes:
Maybe Marco
Polo didn't go to China.
Back
issues: Week one
Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com |
