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Friday, August 31, 2001
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 Friday, August 31, 2001
started 8/31/2001; 11:08:25 AM - last post 8/31/2001; 12:47:53 PM
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Doc Searls - Friday, August 31, 2001 
8/31/2001; 3:08:25 PM (reads: 5161, responses: 1)
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If this were a fishnet, it wouldn't even catch waterWh 
| | The new Farallon (now Proxim, I see) Skyline wireless card, which replaced the old card, is just as flaky. Which means Joyce's G3/400 laptop still doesn't work off a hardwire. Since we had to rearrange her office, I had to rewire it too, and now almost nothing works. Of course and as usual. |
| | If anybody has any clues about how to de-flake the wireless card, the driver and the G3/400 (Lombard vintage) combination, lemme know. |
| | The symptom: first it works, then it blinks and the driver says it can't find a signal. The only way to get it to find the signal again is to restart the machine. But then it refails within minutes, even if the machine doesn't move. It's sitting next to the base station, by the way. The signal isn't a problem. I'm 30 feet away with another machine, connecting wirelessly. |
Shaking and moving
| | After the rest of us finish waking up and getting our acts together, we'll move what's left in the apartment over to the new house. Tomorrow we move my office, which is now in three places and involves more than a few spacial, technical and logistical challenges. I hope somewhere in there I'll find time to finish writing my Day Three report on LinuxWorld for the Linux Journal site. |
| | And if you're around a TV with a satellite downlink, check in with TechTV, where I hope they'll re-run yesterday's Screen Savers show, which was a load of fun to be on (in my blue Linux Journal Hawaiian shirt). Not only is the show in love with Linux and Cluetrain, but its site kindly features Leo LaPorte's flattering review of the book. |
| | I'll say more about the show later. |
Liberal praise
| | Yesterday morning while I was packing and getting ready for the last day of Linux World Expo, I turned on my little travel radio and found it scanning into the Howard Stern show, where my good friend Brad Kava, the radio columnist for the San Jose Mecury News, was being grilled mercilessly. The show was actually a moldy oldie, having originally aired five years ago, after Brad wrote a column critical of the King of All Media, who is on vacation this week while "best of" segments air in his absence. |
| | So I called Brad to give him a heads (as well as a wake) up. Surely many calls and emails would follow (which they did). The irony of the matter was that Brad was getting reamed by Howard for "not having the balls" to be critical of his own paper, and instead picking on an easy target — while Brad's current column was as ballsy as a batting cage: |
| | Let's face it, whether it's Walt Disney, Clear Channel or Knight Ridder, the folks on top of the food chain have a lot more in common with George W. and his country club cronies than with the folks doing the work of producing what you are reading or watching. |
| | Brad's column correctly (in my correct opinion) exposes the odd fact that conservative media figures like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Schlesinger are have become mainstream — to say the least — by marginalizing what little is left of The Left. "On the commercial dial," he writes, "the real media stars these days are on the right, where Rush Limbaugh gets $250 million a year and Laura Schlessinger $71 million." |
| | I'll be surprised if Brad's balls aren't already a subject of debate over at the ba.broadcast newsgroup. Even if they aren't, the whole fracas suggest some truth what Tony Kushner said back in 1999: |
| | The terms of the national debate have subtly, insidiously shifted. What used to be called liberal is now called radical; what used to be called radical is now called insane. What used to be called reactionary is now called moderate, and what used to be called insane is now called solid conservative thinking. |
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Britt Blaser - Re: Friday, August 31, 2001
8/31/2001; 4:47:53 PM (reads: 613, responses: 0)
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It's not surprising that the media is being used by the most wealthy to increase their advantage - this is the history of the world. What's surprising is that there is a dialogue among the relatively powerless about the mechanics of power.
With the impending end of broadcast to Tivo- and web-served media microevents, it will be harder to brainwash the masses. Consider the stock market, which systematically moves capital from the less informed to the better informed. Once the mechanics of the redistribution system are in the open, people are more likely to swear off and employ their capital in less lottery-like ways. Just as advertising is working less and less.
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