2006-01-10 at 9:06am
Ask MetaFilter has a post on getting in touch with old professors.
Larry Lessig has a post about presentations.
John Dvorak is reporting that a four year old is now on the ‘no-fly’ list. Because, you know, there are lots of pre-teens that work for Al-Qaeda.
Howard Stringer: King of Clueless
Techdirt are reporting on the comments of Sony CEO, Sir Howard Stringer from CES in Las Vegas.
“Clearly the perception out there is that we shouldn’t be doing too much of that copy protection stuff.”
“Clearly the perception out there is that we shouldn’t be doing too much of that copy protection stuff.”
Prevention actually, good sir. Copy prevention. It prevents me from utilising my fair use copying rights. Perhaps we should rename it “Fair Use Prevention Technology”.
“We have to walk the line at Sony between the needs and technology of the customer and the rights of the artist.”
“We have to walk the line at Sony between the needs and technology of the customer and the rights of the artist.”
Good, and I have to walk the line between listening to music and not funding companies that treat their customers like dogshit. I think, with a few ounces of PodSafe music, I’ll shoot for the latter.
If Stringer doesn’t realise, now, that digital rights mismanagement technology is about as popular among consumers as herpes, then he’s clueless.
Robert Scoble has a post on CES. A big case of “meh”, in my opinion. Looks totally unexciting, especially compared with the reports I’m getting out of PodcasterCon, and the experience at other non-commercial and unconferences.
GPRSfilter: I found out today that the £1-a-day GPRS on Orange can be set up by text message (I’m using it now, it’s all set up properly). You can do it by texting “ACCESS” to 247.
David Cameron has an article in today’s Guardian. If you want to lament the death of meaning in politics, then Cameron’s article, combined with the video that someone pointed me to yesterday on Tony Blair, are good places to start. Somebody wake me up when Mr Cameron says something interesting like “Drug prohibition sucks ass, I’m going to get rid of it” or similar.
The Grandiloquent Dictionary is a collection of “the most obscure and rare words in the English language”. I particularly like adhocracy and pelolgy - two words which are shockingly similar. (Via MetaFilter)
Carnival of the Godless #31 has just been posted. I ought to submit something to the next one.
LibriVox has a post which talks about Reverend AKMA and a brief history of LibriVox. I had been planning ‘open source audiobooks’, but nothing really happened. So glad to see that LibriVox did what I didn’t.
Looks like Tony Blair is going to kick property rights in the teeth with his new plan.
More GPRSfilter: I’ve just bought myself a Bluetooth USB adapter. That’s one less cable I have to carry every day. I’m sure they could simplify all this. With all these devices, what’s going to happen is that we’re going to get wearable computers. A few years ago, we all scoffed about wearable computing (we all scoffed at push media too, only for it to eat itself with RSS). Who’ll want to wear a computer? Well, I’m currently wearing both an iPod nano and a mobile phone on me. It’ll only be a matter of time until the one can talk to the other, and the iPod will pause when I get a phone call, and it’ll use the same headphones to pipe my call in as it will to pipe my music in. Now I need to get myself a decent Bluetooth mouse, and I’ll have the mobile setup up and kicking.
Chris Mooney has an article over at CSICOP on Kitzmiller v. Dover: “Jones’ opinion strikes a blow for the proposition that when it comes to matters of science, there aren’t necessarily two sides to every story… in their investigative rigor, their commitment to evidence, and their unhesitating willingness to decide arguments on their merits, courts certainly have much more in common with the scientific process than many of today’s major media journalists do”.
Ten Reasons Not to Buy or Ask for Diamonds. I’ve never understood the whole thing with diamonds. I don’t find them aesthetically interesting in the way I do coloured gems. Plus the practices of the industry are pretty damn evil. (via)
I’m going to test BluePhoneElite when I get home.
