the art of writing is discovering what you believe
94.9 KUOW: Seattle’s NPR News and Information Station:
Podcasting: The Next Big Thing?
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This sounds interesting, more than I realized at first. I would like to try it (I have a face for radio, as has been said), but I don’t have idea what I would read. I’ll have to listen to some and see if anything strikes me.
It’s happening all over the world; if I had to make a new year prediction it would be that the list of open source governments will double in length over the next 18 months.
The terrorists weren’t enough: now the communists are making a comeback.
Yahoo! News – iTunes user sues Apple over FairPlay DRM:
Thomas William Slattery has filed a class action suit against Apple Computer Inc. in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging Apple is guilt of violating federal antitrust laws and California’s unfair competition law by requiring users who buy music from the iTunes Music Store to use an iPod if they plan to take their music on the road with them. Slattery’s suit cuts to the heart of an ongoing issue related to Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology present in commercial downloaded music.
I just realized the other night that I had 250+ paid-for tracks in my library, and over the same period of time, I have bought 2-3 CDs. As I’ve said before, I’m a bit wobbly on DRM as it works in iTunes: it’s sufficiently loose as to be manageable and I worry that if for whatever reason it got more stringent, it would make things worse (I realize that for some, the mere existence of DRM is as bad as it gets).
Then you have this from the chairman of the most derivative company in the tech sector: 
Boing Boing: Bill Gates: Free Culture advocates = Commies:
There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. [image credit]
Lawrence Lessig says it best:
It’s one thing to read this sort of thing from a studio exec, or head of a record label — surrounded as they are by the sort that surround them. But the people I’ve met at Microsoft are miles beyond this sort of silliness. Does Mr. Gates not even talk to them?
I hear over and over again that there are lots of smart people at MSFT: why do they stay? Are they that wedded to their options and the perks of working at the big house? I realize there are a lot of cool R&D things going on there that no one else has the resources to fund, but that’s not the case with all of them. I wish I could remember where I saw it, but there was some guy there who was blogging his progress toward his first million.
Looking through the logs, since I have an uptick in traffic to exploit here, here are the top 25 useragents request my rss files (rss2 and atom) today.
NetNewsWire 2 gets my vote.
As I follow the tangled web of this story, I find my creativity is most alive when I quit and go to bed. I have no idea how many things came to me after I was in no place to do anything with them.
x.x.x.x - - [05/Jan/2005:07:29:44 0800] "GET /wordpress/wp-rss2.php" HTTP/1.1 200 6167 - Bloglines/2.0 (http://www.bloglines.com; 7 subscribers)
7 readers via BlogLines is a peak for me: all due to my mention of CNN’s newly-minted RSS feeds (and coincidentally, I mentioned to someone there that I hope they use BlogLines). I doubt I’ll have anything that interesting in the days ahead, but perhaps I’ll surprise both of us.
Now playing: I Am the Resurrection by The Stone Roses from the album “The Very Best of The Stone Roses“
ADW:
Mammalia: Classification:
Some questions arose after dinner about the difference between hares and rabbits, so off to Google to find out more. This site at University of Michigan was very interesting. I could browse it for quite a while: there have been some changes to the classifications since my school days.
The Washington Post says “Hershey’s milk chocolate contains about 11 percent cacao.” Our friends at Scharffen Berger have a new 82% Extra Dark Chocolate. Once you’ve gone over to the dark side, you can never go back.
I had the best hot cocoa I have ever tasted New Year’s Eve — and by far the simplest. Simply melt 6 oz of Scharffen Berger in a cup of milk, then once it’s dissolved, add 3 additional cups of milk (total: 1 quart). Serve and swoon . . . .
We used the 70%, but I can only imagine the 82 might need a touch of sugar or vanilla (the 70 has crushed vanilla beans). I see a new website button — Powered by Scharffen Berger — but the message may not fit in the little box.
CNN.com has RSS feeds: updated URLs, if you need ’em. The [feed] URLs will open whatever you have configured to handle feed:// type URLs. The others are http:// URLs for your copying or linking pleasure.
It looks like we get excerpts on inhouse content and “Read full story for latest details.” for wire stories.
It’s been a long time coming . . . .
And in case you’re curious about how long I have been grumbling about this . . .
<update> well, from what I understand (I still know some people there), this is but a preview, an aperitif, of what my former colleagues have planned. I hope that if we’ve waited this long, they’re going to reward us.
Well done, anyway, and some days I still wish I was part of all that.
<followup> Well, those updated URLs are rumored to be solid: check ’em out.
I’m interested to see a feed of most popular stories mentioned: that’s exactly the kind of thing that can only originate inhouse, since it would be driven by actual log data. Very cool idea . . .
Some days ago, during the long layoff from school, I awoke from sleep in the midst of a dream, a rare enough occurrence as I almost never recall dreams, but this one even more rare: the dream had some kind of form, some narrative thread. The press of affairs prevented my writing down anything more than just the barest details, but since then I have been working through my recollection — something more than a snapshot, less than a sequence — and seeing characters ad wondering what they have in mind. I read a quote somewhere, attributed to William Faulkner, that his technique consisted of nothing more than turning some characters loose and taking notes as he followed them around. I have no idea where this is going: I feel like I’m just transcribing events, rather than making them up.
Now playing: Robbie Robertson – The Sound is Fading via Radio Paradise