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Friday, June 7, 2002
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 Friday, June 7, 2002
started 6/7/2002; 1:41:36 AM - last post 6/8/2002; 12:54:04 AM
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Doc Searls - Friday, June 7, 2002 
6/7/2002; 5:41:36 AM (reads: 4971, responses: 1)
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What would AKMA do? 
That's a t-shirt I'd like to see. Meanwhile, we'll have to settle for a real good interview of AKMA by the Head Lemur.
Unrelated
A haunting (or haunted) poem by Chris Locke.
I feel safer already
David Weinberger: Homeland Security Page Sucks.
Survey
How about a blog cruise?
Can you hand me my arm please? No, I'm not bleeding.
Pubdomain Bread: You know you're doing the right thing when studio execs go out of their way to tell the world that "there's nothing to see here, move along."
Learning to cook outdoors
Dave started a bit of a ruckus yesterday. J.D. responded here. I've got a few things to say too (mostly about the economics of big-J journalism, which to me are the deeper issue and which are far more threatened than they appear); but while I'm busy getting that (and other stuff) together I'll point to Eric Norlin's latest, where he says,
| | Simple fact, journos (as doc said yesterday) are most comfortable when reporting becomes conflict. That conflict must (in almost all cases) be external to the organization they work for. How does this get fixed? Not by them, that's for sure. Blogging is a start. But its an incremental start. This won't be some revolution -- it'll be an evolution....slow spurts and fits and starts. Lay back and enjoy.
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Meanwhile, Dave adds this:
| | While the media industry is working in Washington to dismantle the Internet, we can't depend on the pros, who work for them, to investigate. Let that sink in. Maybe it's not news to you, but it should be discussed. Is anyone watching them?
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That appears to be the case.
I'm wondering, though: is the whole "media industry" trying to kill the Net? Or is it mostly the MPAA and the RIAA? I think most newspaper publishers don't understand the Net well enough to want to kill it. Magazine publishers are too varied for a single characterization. Commercial television is hostile to the extent it's controlled by the Disneys of the world, but those people don't control it entirely. Cable TV is partly hostile, but not across the board (Cox, my own provider, is possibly the most enlightened among a bad breed). The phone companies are too busy trying to unfuck themselves. Commercial radio is dominated by the Clear Channel, one creepiest companies on the Big Board, but I'm not sure any of the big radio broadcasters, including NPR, have a clue to what the Net is about. Echostar seems to be the only satellite company with any mojo these days, and all they seem to care about is distributing TV.
This may seem a bit off-topic, but it isn't: we need to be clear about the difference between real venalities and gargantuan cluelessness. What Eisner, Rosen and Valenti want to do to the Net verges on the satanic. What Knight-Ridder did to their their papers' Web sites, including all their journalists' blogs, was just flat-out fucking clueless. It deserves a corporate Darwin Award.
Eisner & friends aren't stupid. They got the DMCA passed, they're controlling more than a few agendas, and their attitude toward the Net is paranoid and murderous.
What they're up to is the real story. It'll be interesting to see who covers it, and how.
Blogjam
I just like that headine and wanted to use it somewhere.
Unrelated: Kevin Werbach on The conseusus that no one agrees on:
| | ...secretive, extreme efforts to impose absolute control by law will only retard innovation and harm the very industries proposing them.
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Along those same lines, Cory wonders what we think about Michael Wolff's predictions for the music industry:
| | Where before you'd be happy only at gold and platinum levels, soon you'll be grateful if you have a release that sells 30,000 or 40,000 units -- that will be your bread and butter. You'll sweat every sale and dollar. Other aspects of the business will also contract -- most of the perks and largesse and extravagance will dry up completely. The glamour, the influence, the youth, the hipness, the hookers, the drugs -- gone. Instead, it will be a low-margin, consolidated, quaintly anachronistic business, catering to an aging clientele, without much impact on an otherwise thriving culture awash in music that only incidentally will come from the music industry.
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I agree. I also think there will still be livings to be had in live performing. Look for much better links between Internet radio, artists, clubs and other venues.
Externalities
Thanks to John Engler for pointing out that there are ways to get Mozilla to respect mail clients other than its own. I haven't tried it (looks pretty ugly), but it's nice to know it can be done.
Just a warning
Don't mess around with Howard, cuz ya might have to mess with Joe. Or Bobby, though he doesn't look nearly as dangerous.
Better now than when I'm there
I'm in heavy prep for Munich and London next week, so the blogging might get slow.
Part of the prep is trying not to repeat my Earthlink experience the last time I was in Europe — Switzerland, to be exact. None of the numbers worked. Ironically, when I travelled all over the world in the early-mid '90s, Compuserve was extremely handy. It wasn't fast (nothing then was), but it was ubiquitous. I dialed in from New Zealand, Australia, Italy, France, England, Spain, Brazil... it was terrific. Alas, it's long gone.
If anybody has specific advice on dialing into Earthlink (or Xo, my main ISP) from Munich and London (or otherwise getting on the Net), lemme know.
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Bernie Dunham - Re: Friday, June 7, 2002
6/8/2002; 4:54:04 AM (reads: 1256, responses: 0)
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Doc: thanks for creating the Zen-exact Wi-Fi survey. It helps to have a grandmaster blogger facilitating the concept of remote blogging.
Six "yes" responses (so far) creates a core cruise incentive group that would secure one conference room (the Executive Board Room, which is the coolest meeting room on the ship) aboard Royal Caribbean's 'Explorer of the Seas.' Please email me at dunhamb@aol.com (with "Bahamas Blog" in the subject field) and I will start making a list of attendees and get information out to you, through my cruise consultant Charlie Funk at Just Cruisin Plus. (We've been working together on this Royal Caribbean wireless project since early 2000. He has arranged for all of the site surveys with RC staff.) We will have a web page up next week at www.justcruisinplus.com explaining the booking for the Blog cruise.
Please note that this will be the first major Beta test of the Wi-Fi 802.11b wireless Internet services aboard the largest cruise ship in the world (there are sister ships of equal size that I have conducted site surveys for as well), but MTN is the same satellite provider for all of the cruise ships, so if it goes as well as Neil Bauman's Perl Whirl and MAC Mania Geek Cruises system tests, your connect speed will range from 60 kbps to 98 kbps over an 11 mbps WLAN connection. Because of the exisiting Ethernet back bone Royal Caribbean installed while constructing the Explorer, the access points will all be configured as root access points with their own cells of coverage, rather than repeaters frequency hopping all over the cruise ship. This will improve overall network quality of service.
I intend to have all of the major conference facilities and public areas covered for this test. Because this is a system test, the reward for your participating is that I am organizing this as an open event (not a Woodstock). You still have to buy a cruise ticket with the incentive group to get into the network, but since blogging is not for profit, the event should be as well. (At least I learned something about the concept of open source from RMS and Eric Raymond at Linux Lunacy, although I think Glenn Fleishman convinced me on Mac Mania that Wi-Fi networks should be open access at conferences.)
(I'm also creating an open access Wi-Fi campus at my public library this month. I'm on the Library Board of Trustees, so it was an easy vote of approval, but if anyone would like help setting up a wireless campus at their local library, please drop me an email. I volunteer for a number of small assignments.)
Do bloggers appreciate good karma?
It should also be noted that this is not a Geek Cruises event. My company MOUStech.NET, LLC provides the wireless services for Geek Cruises, and the Royal Caribbean project will be independent of Geek Cruises, although Neil is aware of my ongoing Royal Caribbean wireless projects, and has expressed interest for possible collaboration in 2003. Doc's post may lead some of you to conclude otherwise. If there are enough bookings for the Geek Cruise LINUX Lunacy, MOUStech.NET, LLC will be there providing the wireless services aboard the Holland America Maasdam, the first ship we tested the WLAN on for Geek Cruises last October on LINUX Lunacy (there was some lunacy, but we have a GPL, Geek PubCrawl Liability confidentiality agreement). Geek Cruises knows that at any time they can get involved, and the invitation is always open.
(This virtual corporation paradigm is the best career choice I ever made.)
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