There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs.
YouTube - Introducing the book
Topic: Technology
9:00 pm EST, Feb 15, 2007
This video makes fun of modern newbie computer users. It's from a show called Oystein & Meg (Oystein & I) produced by the Norwegian Broadcasting television channel (NRK) in 2001. The spoken language is Norwegian
Let’s examine the current situation and how we got here, then look at three possible alternatives for the future.
The first alternative is to continue on the current course ...
The second alternative is for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology ...
The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely.
The problem with this pitch is that he frames the debate in a way that excludes certain business models from the discussion. In particular, he ignores the music-as-service model as implemented by his rival, Real, with Rhapsody (and Rhapsody To Go).
A DRM-free music rental service would be a hard sell to the big four.
MemeStreams response to Georgia Senate Bill 59 - 2007
Topic: Society
6:45 pm EST, Feb 4, 2007
A bill has been proposed in the Georgia State Senate which would require social networking websites, possibly including MemeStreams, to verify that minors who create accounts have parental permission. In practice this would mean that any Georgia website, no matter how benign, which allows users to create profiles, would be required to implement as yet undefined age validation procedures for all new users.
We believe that this proposal is a bad idea for a number of different reasons. We composed the following open letter to the sponsors of the legislation in an attempt to articulate our concerns.
Welcome to being misunderstood, demonized and wanted by the law.
This is a video put together by the marketing team that hung the ATHF signs around Boston. The style of this video is VERY similar to that of the Graffiti Research Lab, but it is not...
This film is excellent. I saw it a few weeks ago and should have posted about it then. Highly recommended.
Decius wrote:
If you haven't seen Pan's Labyrinth you should catch it while its in theaters. A positively creepy film in which a little girl intertwines her fantasies with the tragic reality around her. Very well done. (Do not bring children.)
The film is set in post-Civil War northern Spain, in 1944. A young girl, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), moves with her pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil), and her stepfather Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez), into a new home in the countryside. Vidal and his small army have been sent to the remote area to rid it of a small Republican militia.
Ofelia, who often immerses herself in ancient stories and fairy tales, finds an immense and ancient labyrinth near her new home. There, she meets a faun (Doug Jones) who reveals that she is the long-lost daughter of the King of the Underworld, and that to regain entry to her kingdom she must carry out three tasks. The faun gives her a storybook, which will tell her the details of the tasks.
Nanochick wrote: I think its about time that the Memestreams Community and the people who work hard coding Memestreams in their free time get the recognition they deserve. Therefore, I have nominated memestreams for a "Weblog Award", and I hope others in the community will do the same.
Thanks Nano! I don't think anyone has nominated us for a Bloggie before. Frankly, if everyone who regularly reads this site nominates us, we stand a reasonable chance to get past the first round. That would certainly be fun. Apparently you can nominate a blog to multiple categories. I think "Best Community Blog" and "Best Kept Secret" are probably the best two for us, but I won't discourage other nominations. :) Just do it quick. Voting closes on January 10th.
Update on 2007-01-25: The nominations have been announced. MemeStreams is not on the lists.
The op-ed page of the LA Times solicited commentary from a full slate of futurist technology pundits who, as it turns out, have nothing but good things to say about the year ahead. The future is so bright, I've got to go buy some tech stocks! Most of them are plugging specific products or services; either that, or analysis has devolved into the old tired/wired dichotomy. Aside from the one-phrase bylines, there are no financial interest disclosures here. I thought those had become de rigueur in the business and financial press, but apparently not so for editorials.
Aside from Ballmer, none featured here are in the hardware business. None are in the infrastructure business. Is this a signal? Are we done there? What of Intel, AMD, Motorola, Broadcom, etc.?
I am especially struck by the pundits' more-of-the-same ideas; perhaps this is partly due to the too-near horizon established by the paper. Ballmer is spun up about policy-based ring-tones; what is that, like, a few hundred lines of code? Sherman is touting Second Life. Several are enamored of YouTube and the slow collapse of broadcast. Barry sees nothing but upside -- freedom! -- in having your entire life's "state" on a memory stick; not content to simply ignore the question of risk, he concludes that the lowest risk option is to carry your digital medical records, tax returns, and a lifetime of recorded communications (voice, video, text, other) in something that could drop from your pocket onto the city sidewalk without notice.
Where are the new applications, the new ideas? The "personal genomics kit" is tantalizing, but Brockman offers no explanation. You can find more here and here. I think people might be as much or more interested in a kit of the variety described by Freeman Dyson -- more of a "toy with consequences", along the lines of a high school chemistry set. (I note that there are as yet zero Google hits for that phrase.)
A few thoughts:
The Internet may start to experience some major growing pains in 2007. IPv6 has been stillborn, known routing problems remain unresolved, and the IPv4 address space is nearing its limits. From the consumer perspective, we are nearly at the end of end to end; by the end of 2007, we may see the start of a trend in which residential broadband Internet service ceases to include a public IP address. 2008 could bring the era of double- and triple-NATted networks.
Vista enhancements notwithstanding, and the industry alarmists put aside, Internet security is in a rather dismal state.
