] The mobile phone industry has already agreed on a DRM
] standard for locking down media - and it'll cost $1 per
] handset, plus a percentage of each piece of media
] downloaded.
]
] ...
]
] Agreement has been rapid, taking less than four months. But
] it's nevertheless a considerable burden to cost-sensitive
] manufacturers, which often balk at paying more than a few
] cents for essential software. Handset vendors only pay
] around $5 to license the air interface. The costs will
] indirectly be born by the consumers, who as always in a
] lock-down regime, end up paying more for less.

[ Sweet. -k]

Phone biz agrees on $1 DRM levy | The Register

] Conservative commentator Armstrong Williams admits he was
] paid to provide favorable coverage of the No Child Left
] Behind Act and Education Secretary Rod Paige through a
] contract between the Department of Education and a public
] relations firm. NPR's David Folkenflik reports.

[ Listen to this. Particularly outstanding is the quote from CNN founding president Reese Schoenfeld : "A whore is a whore, and when you're paid to put out an opinion without announcing to the world that you've been paid, that's not only whoring, but pretending to virtue while you're doing it." Damn. -k]

Contract Tied to Coverage Promoting Administration

For each week of 2004, we provide a graph of that week's social network activity, the most popular discussions, and the most popular users. Every link between people in the graphs represents at least one blog entry that was read and re-recommended; hence propagated further through the network. The arrows point to sources; they represent the flow of reputation. The users in each graph are those whose memes were re-recommended in the preceding two weeks. Users are colored depending on their popularity that week, with the highest scores getting the brightest colors. Links are only mapped for memes posted on a user's MemeStream. Replies in threads are not graphed.

[ Check it everyone... this is good stuff. Your Industrial Memetics team has put a great deal of effort into putting together this week by week view of site activity. It's been a hell of a year, as evidenced by the data here... read it, know it. -k]

MemeStreams - Year in Graphs 2004

] Seeking to build support among black families for its
] education reform law, the Bush administration paid a
] prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his
] nationally syndicated television show and to urge other
] black journalists to do the same.

[ Aren't you glad to see your tax dollars at work propagandizing No Child Left Behind? Yeah, me too. -k]

Education Dept. paid commentator to promote law

] Maskin comes from mask: it's about switching identities
] in virtually no time. But with Maskin, changing the looks
] of a vehicle with individual designs also means extra
] protection by a "second skin" %u2013 made by Maskin.

[ Peel off auto paint, for temporary identity shifts. If it were cheap enough, an extra clearcoat of this stuff might be really useful. Let it take the pebbles and so forth, then peel it off when it's damaged enough to make you look bad. -k]

Maskin; Discover a new dimension of paint.

] "Apple has unlawfully bundled, tied, and/or leveraged its
] monopoly in the market for the sale of legal online
] digital music recordings to thwart competition in the
] separate market for portable hard drive digital music
] players, and vice-versa," the lawsuit said.
]
]
] Mr Slattery called himself an iTunes customer who "was
] also forced to purchase an Apple iPod" if he wanted to
] take his music with him to listen to.

[ Only a matter of time, i guess. Does iTunes music store really have a monopoly, though? The argument seems tenuous to me. -k]

ITunes user sues Apple over iPod

] The woman told my wife what the fine is (about $135), but
] told her that she could not accept payment for the fine,
] because the ticket is not in the database. My wife is not
] allowed to attend driving school, either, because the
] ticket isn't in the database.
]
]
] The woman instructed my wife to call the court every day
] week, to find out if the ticket had been entered into the
] computer yet. Once it shows up, she is supposed to drive
] to the ticket office the very next day to take care of
] it. And once the ticket has been entered, she is going to
] be hit with a penalty and possibly a warrrant for her
] arrest, because once the information goes into the
] computer it'll see that she hasn't paid the fine yet, and
] it will be flagged as delinquent. My wife will then have
] to explain the situation to another helpful city
] employee.

[ Sadly, this kind of complete bullshit hardly even surprises me anymore. -k]

Boing Boing: A Kafka day at the Los Angeles traffic ticket office

A sampling of noteworthy memes in the year 2004, loosely ordered for effect. Enjoy.

The most important -- and interesting -- questions are structural.

"Fuck yourself," said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency. "We don't play games at The Washington Post and use dashes." "I felt better after I had done it."

Teenagers nowadays are both more connected to the world at large than ever, and more cut off.

cellphone-based alibi clubs

More research anywhere creates more possibilities for innovation everywhere.

Do you understand the difference between "Is it worth buying?" and "Can it be sold?"

The era of cheap oil is over.

The Internet peering model is fundamentally broken.

"The thing is, this is a lousy business."

Let's talk about the consequences of the aging baby boomers.

Relationships can be hard work, but they are worth it.

When was the last time a talk show changed a mind?

Intelligence is moving to the edges and the edges are found on the Asian mainland.

In China, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America, Britney Spears is Britney Spears.

All entertainment concepts must be run through the Vulgarizer.

"I need to be managing a sexier project."

Values Voters Are Prone To Sinful Behavior.

Its sole function is to sell the naughty lifestyle.

Why the granny panties?

The Middle East must be Born Again!

War may be hell, but infowar is making a bid for heaven.

Personality is destiny.

"There's a certain tone in politics that I aspire to, that allows me to disagree with people without being disagreeable."

"chicken hawks"

Saudi Arabia is the golden egg.

Powell: "Very embarrassing. I am not a happy camper over this. We were wrong." Bush: "I wasn't happy when we found out there wasn't weapons, and we've got an intelligence group together to figure out why."

"It takes half a second for a baby to throw up all over your sweater. It takes hours to get it clean."

typical postwar "untidiness"

Bush: "I've made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them. I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV."

"No. No. I'm not going to be your monkey."

America, partnering with the best-armed insurgents, allying with the weaker against the stronger.

"You can't talk sense to them," Bush said, referring to terrorists. "Nooooo!" the audience roared.

Moore unfurled what is perhaps the central insight of his oeuvre, that Americans are kind of crappy.

"Bush might be unpopular in Italy, the Iraqi war is not popular in Italy, but Italians know damn well that in 1944, they were liberated by America from the Nazis."

Fight the cult of process.

"You can't fight here! This is the war room!"

It is definitely interesting getting shot at for the first time.

"If you go ahead, we will do everything possible to discredit you... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

2004 - It Was a Very Noteworthy Year

eiron wrote:
] In Memestreams, each link is considered a seperate Meme,
] despite the fact that two links may be involved in the same
] concept or idea. For example, the recent tsunami disaster has
] generated a wealth of links for donations sites, news updates,
] weather data, etc. It would seem that many of these links are
] part of a larger Meme, a greater idea. Despite this, the
] memes, that is, the individual links, as represented by
] Memestreams, remain separated, independent of one another.

[ This is a general issue, i won't say problem, necessarily, which Tom and I have talked about before. I have an interest, though not a great deal of actual expertise, in the application of knowledge management technologies to collections of raw data. It's something I've encountered in my work, and something I've devoted a good deal of time thinking about for personal use. The concept here would be that the greater Meme, as you call it, is a somewhat emergent property. In the best possible scenario, the software is intelligent enough to group data (links, commentary, or articles) based on recognition of common topical elements. Of course, and this is why KM is so necessary when dealing with a large corpus of information, a Meme of this sort can, and will, have multiple facets. The stories, and subsequent discussions, linked up regarding the tsunami cover matters related to Aid Organizations, Disaster Relief, Missing Persons, Philanthropy, Human Trafficking, GeoPolitics, Geology, Earth Science, etc. These all, generally, tie back to what is effectively a single event, which occurred, but I don't really see that as the meme. Rather, the memes are the things people are thinking and, more measurably, saying about the event. Thus, each discrete aspect of the story is a meme in and of itself, once it attains the critical mass to have a distinct existence.

As it turns out, this stuff is all pretty hard, and completely different than the existing infrastructure. Not to mention, the things I'm describing may not actually be the vision for this community. As it's not my project, I wouldn't presume to argue strongly for such a shift. As a concept, only a bare germ at this stage, i think there's merit, but I know there are other priorities right now, even if this was a direction for the future.

Anyway, I found your proposal interesting -- essentially a non-automated version of what I'm describing, in which the users, by grouping links, are responsible for building up the larger context. As a purist, and based on my experience and minimal research, i think this mechanism is fraught with peril, because people tend to be, fundamentally, bad at handling complex categorization tasks. Actually, that's not true. People have trouble, particularly when faced with the vast quantity of data they see daily, maintaining an object in multiple contextual frames. This leads to strict hierarchical scheme... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

RE: Links, Memes, and Memestreams

] Today, we can do more. And do more, faster. And do more,
] faster, from anywhere, all the time. You can work at home
] or the coffee shop or even the beach. Is this a good
] thing? How do we navigate these rapids without eventually
] drowning? Are we allowing life to be the sum of tasks,
] the short term always the priority? Are we so connected
] that we're actually disconnected? And has anyone had
] enough time to focus long enough to mull a question that
] requires a long, complicated answer -- if there is
] one?
]
] ...
]
] Gloria Mark, a UC-Irvine professor, has been studying attention
] overload and multitasking among workers in a financial-services
] office. So far, she's found that the average employee switches
] tasks every three minutes, is interrupted every two minutes and
] has a maximum focus stretch of 12 minutes.

[ Fascinating, and hugely relevant, article. Gold star. -k]

The Seattle Times: Pacific Northwest Magazine