Abe Lincoln:

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - - and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don't.'

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood."

What I'm linking here is Barlow's thoughts on the matter. You are reading Tom Cross quoting John Barlow quoting Sen. Robert Byrd quoting Abe Lincoln. How is THAT for a memestream? The thing you want to do now is click on the word 'recommend.'

BarlowFriendz 8.8: Pox Americana

In Spring 2001, Virginia Tech professor Naren Ramakrishnan taught an entire course on the topic of recommender systems. Here you can browse the syllabus, review slides from the lectures, and review the reading list.

Course overview: CS 6604 concentrates on algorithms, methodologies, systems, and larger-scope issues (economic, commercial etc.) pertaining to reducing information overload. The unique aspect of this course will be how it integrates ideas from diverse areas: numerical analysis (strange but true), information systems, human-computer interaction, and algorithmics. Over the past three years, a large body of literature on recommender systems, filtering, and personalization technologies has been developed. Even though the field is driven by commercial trends and industrial developments, many of the ideas are nearing a stage of stabilization when their use is becoming common place (textbook material). CS 6604 will help illustrate the interplay between these different areas and demonstrate how ideas from diverse backgrounds can be combined in novel and sophisticated ways.

CS 6604: Recommender Systems (Spring 2001)

Decius:

This is an off shore site that is using a form of steganography to hide itself from record industry web spiders. Looks like they've had the domain since 1999. This is real crime. I definately don't recommend that you use this site. However, its existence and method of operation is interesting nonetheless. Islands in the net....

Rattle:

Tell all your friends! Download like mad!

simplemp3s.com

Bowie: "I don't even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don't think it's going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way. The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing."

David Bowie looks forward to the next music revolution.

David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur

Extreme Networks: "We will have a 10gbps module within the next few months." It will cost around $60,000.

Stick a fork in it; 10 GigE is done -- but still too hot to eat

Back in the day, phone prefixes mattered. Flat rate local calls meant the boards in your local zone were free --- not phree, which was different. I had a list of them posted on my wall, for a while, but soon enough I never really needed it. I knew my zone. 992, 667; 665; 464 --- they were my 'hood. Sometimes when I was feeling adventurous I might go beyond, out to the outer reaches of (201) --- none of that (908) crap back then --- but rarely farther. Go beyond (201), man, and you might, like, fall off the planet.

None of that 908 crap?!? What is this guy talking about?!? 908 is where all the board were! It had the biggest local calling area in the United States! There were some good boards in 201, but 908 was where it was at.. All the boards I called were in 908, even thou I was in 609. Everything was local.

This guy missed the real party. His "hood" was lame. 908 was the center of the BBS world, thats were all the non-pd boards were.. I know, I called everywhere in the state.

31337 908 4 3v3r!

When 300 baud was the bomb

In what may be a first for the recording industry, Maverick Records and Vivendi Universal's online division are asking listeners to pay just under a dollar for an unprotected MP3 version of a new single.

When I worked for MongoMusic, VivendiU always proved the most resistant of the major labels to online music distribution. They didn't want to play ball with anyone.

Vivendi Universal playing with MP3 singles

He and two partners are chipping in $300 each to purchase prime real estate on Calypso, Project Entropia's virtual world. And then they'll rent out space in these pixilated buildings to players who want to set up their own in-game stores.

Unless they rename this online world to "The Metaverse", I will have nothing to do with it.

"The whole idea is to get people to work for me. I want to be the head honcho," said Quackenbush, who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and pulls 10-hour shifts at the local Ford Ranger plant.

s/honcho/idiot/
s/honcho/moron/
s/honcho/dipshit/

... or someting like that. Pick one, or some up with your own!

I think the "sometimes it just takes an idiot" phenomenon that we saw with Napster in the P2P space has potental to create an interesting situation here. Assorted cypherpunks are going to get to say "I told you so" many times if this takes off. The potental for real crime rocks^H^H^H^H^His really high.

Coming soon: The Metaverse

urn:sha1:RMUVHIRSGUU3VU7FJWRAKW3YWG2S2RFB"

Decius:

This is awesome. I explained this concept to Jeremy about 6 months ago. Its whats needed to allow MemeStreams to be used to access and recommend p2p content. Glad I don't have to do it myself. :) Only issue is that they are looking for browser implementation. They can't rely on browsers. They need to build a driver that sits on top of your ethernet driver, looks for these urns, and modifies the access method appropriately...

HTTP Extensions for a Content-Addressable Web

In all of the time we spend observing the Rebel Alliance, we never hear of their governing strategy or their plans for a post-Imperial universe. All we see are plots and fighting. Their victory over the Empire doesn't liberate the galaxy--it turns the galaxy into Somalia writ large: dominated by local warlords who are answerable to no one.
Which makes the rebels--Lucas's heroes--an unimpressive crew of anarchic royals who wreck the galaxy so that Princess Leia can have her tiara back.

The Case for the Empire