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| Tuesday, November 6, 2001 |
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There are alternatives 
| | You can boot (and reboot, and reboot) ernie. Or just go straight for the profanities at Swear-O-Tron. Thanks to Tom for those too. |
Getting it from both ends
| | Politics is about deals as much as anything else (and, most of the time, far more than democracy). Dave wonders (along with others) what the Microsoft settlement conceals (and at the same time suggests), deal-wise, between Microsoft and the Justice Department, which desperately wants to increase its surveillance powers to the absolute, especially in Our Time of National Crisis. What better wire to eavesdrop with than the one right there in everybody's Windows desktop, hm? And here's Microsoft, already threatend (found guilty and urged toward the guillotine by its trial judge), conveniently in a position to rationalize all kinds of Faustian bargains. |
| | Larry Lessig, who speaks often of the end-to-end nature of of the Net, has a new book out — to almost no fanfare, which boggles me. It's titled The Future of Ideas: the Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. Larry's worries are about the entertainment industry, which wishes to preserve its distribution model at all costs, including the Internet that suddenly appeared, as a new Commons, in its midst. |
| | But the worry is the same. Powerful forces with political partners are now doing their best to eliminate the Net. That may not be their stated intention, and it may not be their ultimate effect, but the fact remains that the Net inconveniences them to an extreme that approaches the absolute. |
| | And therefore they inconvenience us to an extreme as well. |
| | Hollywood and the record companies would like the Internet to be a "read-only" medium, where the only interactivity consists of you and me clicking on a button that says "Buy this." The multi-directional Web is a threat to that online-TV vision. |
You don't say
| | According to this piece in New Statesman, American faux-happy corporate customer service talk has taken insideous hold in Great Britain, of all places. |
| | Thanks to Tom for the link. |
Making the reward fit the crime
| | Imagine a court letting a convicted thief keep the items he stole if only he promises never to steal again. That's the "justice" this settlement foists on the people of America and the world. True justice addresses the people the crime hurts--in this case, Microsoft's competitors, partners, and users--and punishes those who commit the crime. This settlement lets Microsoft retain its illegally gained market power, along with most of the advantages that come along with that dominance. |
| | RealNetworks' MacArthur is right. This agreement isn't a remedy--it's a reward. |
| | My bet is that the states and the judge won't let it fly. The Bush administration would never have been interested in proscecuting the case if it had come up under their watch, and they're certainly not interested now. |
| | That leaves it up to the rest of the justice system. |
Bright people
Loyal Opposition
| | And it is still possible to feel unified and spiritually connected to all that is good and righteous about your generally nonviolent Americanism -- you know, wine and sex and good music, large dogs and literature and clean water and tongue kissing in the streets -- and still be depressed when our famously nonintellectual president talks to the country like we're all five years old and heavily dosed on Ritalin. |
Go team
| | Congrats to the big guy. I'm sure he'll make the company rock. |
Market forces vs. Forced markets
| | In Taking Microsoft to the Hoop, Mike Sanders expresses his agreement with Cluetrain on the matter of market power, encouraging me (and everybody) to have more faith and "lead the market based charge." |
| | I believe I expressed more doubt than I had intended in the item he quotes from a couple of days ago. But I don't have time to explain right now. Meanwhile, read Mike. |
Who knew?
Grr
| | I canceled going to the P2P conference in D.C. — I was scheduled to be on a panel about P2P journalism — after they rescheduled it to to coincide with ALS. Found out last week I didn't need to go to ALS after all. Reading Meg and Wes, I am hugely bummed. I shoulda been there. |
Here's a tip
| | While Netsurfer and Slashdot think about going to a "subscription model" (which risks burying everything they write where links can't reach them), little Radio Paradise rakes in thousands a month (not a lot, but we are talking upwards of three zeroes here) just from their PayPal tip jar. Maybe it's time to raise that "business model" (I hate that term) again. I've gone into it before here, here and here. |
| | By the way, in the Netsurfer issue linked to above, the authors also recommend Chris Locke's Gonzo Marketing, so maybe they're worth keeping around. |
Because they like their gurus wet and their humor dry
| | Chris Locke asks, Why do business authors feel that overwrought superlatives and intensifiers will spice up their leftover ideas? That and other mysteries are visited in St. Anthony's Fire, RageBoy's latest EGR. |
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