The Doc Searls Weblog : Friday, September 30, 2005

Friday, September 30, 2005

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Friday, September 30, 2005
started 9/30/2005; 3:32:44 PM - last post 10/2/2005; 7:09:32 PM

Doc Searls - Friday, September 30, 2005

9/30/2005; 7:32:44 PM (reads: 7001, responses: 1)

Run 'er up quote

If you have to write on your ass, it might not be true. From right here in go fug yourself, a blog by the Wonkettes of celeb fashion (Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks), found with pointage on the front page of Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. (Registration required.)

Sadly I find no credit to the original Fugs.

The Berlind Wallbreaker

David Berlind is fed up: ...now that DRM is coming up on my radar every day, and the more I read about it (on the Web, in our TalkBacks, and in my e-mail), the angrier I get.

It gets better. Some nuggets:

Today, with every individual DRM-wrapped piece of content that gets sold, we are securing the futures of the DRM licensors (mostly Apple and Microsoft). That content will forever be useless unless you have something that includes their playback technologies....

By continuing to buy DRM-wrapped content, we as consumers are actually unwittingly co-conspiring with Hollywood to give Microsoft and Apple the keys to the kingdom...

...as long as DRM technology stands in the way of legitimate use of the content that I've paid for, I as an informed buyer will vote with my dollars by going elsewhere for my content (for example, sites where the artists offer their music for free). You should too. That's my Declaration of InDRMpendence. Don't let this plague spread beyond the epidemic level that it has already reached. Just say no to DRM (stop buying DRM-wrapped content before it's way too late and oppose any DRM-related laws under consideration by any legislative body).

Go there to sign up.

The deeper problem here (I want to say 'of course', but it isn't obvious yet) is that all of us, as both producers and consumers (and even as customers, intermediaries and journalists writing about all this stuff) still mistake "Your Choice of Silo" for a free and open marketplace.

The free market supports silos, of course, and there's nothing wrong with that. But a market comprised of nothing-but-silos is a sick one. We've had so many of those, for so long, that we tend to think of nothing-but-silos as normal and healthy.

More of us need to resist or refuse (which isn't always possible — witness your TiVo, or any commercial DVR) being "captive" customers. We also need to make it harder than ever for companies to work as accessories to the crime of "consumer" enslavement.

The day will come that we'll look back on nothing-but-silos markets the way we now look back on slavery and drunk driving: as a former norm that was clearly wrong all along.

Worth $2.97! Plus free advertising!

Anyway, that one just came in over the transom. Gotta say we're no closer than ever to Advertising That Truly Adds Value For Everybody.

Cooking with Simoon

This time of year we often have Santa Ana winds, which cause unseasonable warmth and fan fires out of control.

But the winds were calm yesterday as Santa Barbara heated to a new record for the day: 101° Fahrenheit (38+° Celsius).

But that wasn't the overall record. Oddly, Santa Barbara, with perhaps the mildest climate in the whole U.S., also holds the overall high temperature record: 133° Fahrenheit (56° Celsius). The story:

THE SUN COMES UP bright that day. It is a Friday-June 17, 1859. There is a little breeze from the northeast, a clear sky, and the promise of a warm day. The morning temperatures are normal, 75-to-80 degrees, with an offshore breeze that prevents the ocean from having a cooling effect.

By noon, people begin to notice something unusual is happening. The temperature has quickly risen to almost 100 degrees and the mountain breeze is becoming stronger and stronger. About 1 pm a heavy blast of hot air sweeps through the Goleta Valley from the direction of Santa Ynez Peak, driving even the hardiest into the shelter of their homes and filling them with terror; they think the end of the world has come.

The superheated air continues to pour down on the coast for the next hour. By 2 pm the temperature is an incredible 133 degrees! Many of the people take refuge behind the thick walls of Daniel Hill's adobe, who is owner of Rancho La Goleta, where they pray fervently for the oppressive heat to be lifted.

For the next three hours the temperature hovers at 130 degrees; by 5 pm it has cooled off only slightly, to 122 degrees. The inhabitants wonder if this will ever come to an end. Then suddenly, as fast as it has come, the hot breeze dies and a cool marine breeze washes over the land. By 7 pm the temperature is a comfortable 77 degrees and the half-baked citizens emerge from their houses to see what damage has occurred.

"Birds had plummeted dead from the sky; others had flown into wells seeking cooler air and drowned," says Walker Tompkins, describing the event in his book, Goleta the Good Land. "A fisherman in a rowboat made it in to the Goleta sandspit with his face and arms blistered as if he had been exposed to a blast furnace."

"Calves, rabbits and cattle died on their feet," adds a government report. "Fruit fell from trees to the ground, scorched on the windward side; all vegetable gardens were ruined."

It was during a 108-degree Simoon in June that the Painted Cave fire started in 1990.

Meanwhile, the Chatsworth fire, now called the Topanga fire, is at 21,000 acres with 20% containment.. Lots of reporting there. But no MODIS image yet. Hey, guys, you've shot plenty of other fires. How about this one?

Locke'd in

Chris Locke is blogging for NetSquared. Meanwhile, he continues to blog Mystic Bourgeoisie toward a bookstore near you.

As do we all

I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what the Google/NASA deal is. I am sure about one thing, though: Google needs to expand its revenue base beyond advertising.

Mashup

Dick Hardt has been honing a new style and method of presenting based ‹ with credit and gratitude ‹ on the style and method of Larry Lessig. (Which many of us first witnessed here.)

I was sitting next to Larry at a meeting the other day when Dick gave the presentation in the coolest way: by walking up to the podium, plugging his laptop into the projector, bending the microphone down to the laptop's speakers, bringing a video of his own talk up on the Web, then sitting and watching it with the rest of us.

Larry wrote (while we were both sitting there), Dick Hardt is brilliant. Watch (and copy) the style. Learn tons from the substance. (My pride is tied to the style only).

Remember first, fight later. Or not.

Closing paragraph from this Britt Blaser piece:

These are the reasons that people with a memory -- like Dwight Eisenhower -- are slow to go to war. Combat is always a sad, desperate monument to man's inability to get it right, either diplomatically or tactically. The wise but uneducated people in a culture generally clean up the messes created by the over-educated fools who just know they can manage a war better than the similar idiots who screwed it up last time.

Which I got to, somehow, from Jeff Jarvis, who has a great piece also about a journalism roundtable most memorably characterized by Susan Crawford: Under its surface, this well-dressed roundtable discussion (complete with waiters) was really about a future that none of us can hope to control.

Quote du jour

The bottom line in Don Marti's farewell as Linux Journal's Editor-in-Chief:

When inventing something that makes big business sense, build in a dependency on freedom and enroll powerful interests on freedom's side.

Many of the insights credited to my writing (e.g. DIY-IT and the demand side "supplying itself") came straight from Don, from his assignments, or from his insistence that I think and dig deeper. As an editor he was insightful, principled, skilled (and fun, too). He pushed writers to do their best work. We'll miss him at Linux Journal, and always wish him well.

Meanwhile, I'm already enjoying work with Don's successor, Kevin Bedell.

discuss

JTH - Re: Friday, September 30, 2005

10/2/2005; 11:09:32 PM (reads: 826, responses: 0)

Doc

Dunno if I threw this idea at you before or not

Anyway - Google and Ads Don't know if they "need" another spigot for cash.

Background - started (for Earthy and Purity Foods) with Adwords soon after they launched. (Should have bought some google stock when they IPO'd - the model was so damn plain to see)

Follow me here Adwords busts up the old Ad Agency model Client can do it him/her/themself (I've since turned over the program to a staffer) Targeted ads work I've posted a few ideas at http://blogblogbog.blogspot.com/

Now we look at GMail, GMaps, GFi (the dark cable/WiFi/Max ideas) Do we accept useful ads in return for giving up the right to "snif" our semi-public communications? If so - many many more dollars on the table to gather up.

If I'm considering a trip to Ulan Bator (return trip), I would accept and appreciate any fresh info (ads) on accomidations, travel, guides, etc. So if I google up Ulan Bator, or search blogs, maps, email a contact, I get the message. As long as they are unobtrusive, I'll take them. If I click on them - advertiser pays.

Downside to all of this. Clickfraud. This needs to be addressed - and I suspect that it will be.

Anyway My 2cents Go long Google, short Interpublic and all the othe old shops/models

Ciao Chip

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