the art of writing is discovering what you believe
The Seattle Times: Arts & Entertainment: R.E.M.’s Peter Buck: talking about the passion
“I think a lot of people are finding unless you sell 10 million labels, a major label isn’t the place to be. I can’t tell you the number of people I know who get dropped from a major label, put out their own label and say ‘Man I made five times as much this year as last year.’ “
See also Janis Ian’s take on this.
I thought I had heard all the lawyer potshots but my wife found a copy of Lawyers and other reptiles and told me about the lawyer who stepped in cow dung and thought he was melting . . . . .
The perfect addition to our nephew’s bookshelf as he begins his career at a prestigious local law firm . . . .
Seen on the back window of a car today:
Grateful to my country
Proud to pay my taxes
Someone else sees taxes as the dues they pay for the privilege of living here. Not everyone sees it that way . . . . .
So if people don’t want to pay taxes, here’s an alternative. Instead of paying in cash, perform some public service at the current hourly minimum wage. Highway cleanup, painting, park maintenance, graffiti cleanup, washing police cars, that kind of thing.
Members of the skilled trades could pay off their dues at their local school: I’m sure there’s ample projects waiting for willing hands.
The simple fact is these tasks need to be done by somebody: either pay for someone to do it or do it yourself.
vitanuova.loyalty.org: July 3, 2002
Think about this: if you move the file (and, if you like, the entire software operating environment!) to another PC, the application can no longer decrypt the file. If you modify the operating system (which you are able to do), the application can longer decrypt the file. If you run a different operating system (which you are able to do), the application can no longer decrypt the file. If you modify the application (which you are able to do), the application can no longer decrypt the file. This is a technically impressive capability! After the meeting, I kept realizing more and more interesting features of this design.
Technically, this is quite interesting stuff, but I don’t know that I’m all that crazy about being locked out of my system because of some hardware being changed or the security mechanism being convinced that it’s no longer in a “trusted” environment.
When computers you can use any way you want are outlawed, only outlaws will have them, I guess.
There’s more on this here.
At $2 a question and an hour or more of research (who knew the Air Force’s Basic Training Manual was so obscure?), it’s going to take a lot of work to get anything from this. Since they won’t even send you a check until you earn $50, this is not going to cover a whole of my hobby budget.
Seen in these terms, TCPA and Palladium do not so much provide security for the user, but for the PC vendor, the software supplier, and the content industry. They do not add value for the user. Rather, they destroy it, by constraining what you can do with your PC – in order to enable application and service vendors to extract more money from you.
This is all being sold as making the personal computer more trustworthy.
The Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, or TCPA, was formed by Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. All five companies have been individually working on improving the trust available within the PC for years. These companies came to an important conclusion: the level, or “amount”, of trust they were able to deliver to their customers, and upon which a great deal of the information revolution depended, needed to be increased and security solutions for PC’s needed to be easy to deploy, use and manage. An open alliance was formed to work on creating a new computing platform for the next century that will provide for improved trust in the PC platform.
If you want me to trust you, then let me see what you’re doing and answer my questions.
It’s an odd use of the word “trust”: it has nothing to do with users being able to trust their computers. It’s not aimed at end-users at all: the intended customers are the media companies who can’t figure out how to distribute their wares without worrying about someone getting more than they paid for.
Thanks to the hardware and software being devised by the Faithless Five above, it makes the whole digital lifestyle that we hear so much about seem less like freedom and more like some dystopian future, where everything you read or hear is billed, no matter where you are and what you’re doing. The Attention Economy doesn’t begin to cover this: instead of selling your interest in entertainment to advertisers, we get billed for the entertainment as well. Super Bowl Party? Better not invite too many friends. New CD? Don’t turn the volume up too loud: could be unlicensed sharing.
CAUTION: if you are at all alarmed by paranoia or fear-mongering, do not follow this link. You have been warned.
A CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER
Continue reading “where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?”
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Never heard of them before.
Earthworms, redworms, red wigglers, Eisenia fetida, nature’s soil aerators…
I have lots of the little critters: I can’t imagine buying them when a pile of wet leaves seems to spontaneously generate them.
Nicest of the Damned: Amtrak shutdown
Unfortunately, Congress has forced Amtrak to maintain nationwide service, and there’s not a nationwide commitment to the service. If Congress wants universal service, they need to pony up the sliver of highway funds that Amtrak represents.
If they’re willing to let Amtrak cut unpopular routes, it could be profitable right now.
And Amtrak would cease to exist outside the NE corridor.
National rail service is skeletal at best, with the interstate highway system’s spread over the past 50 years.
If you want to ride the rails from Atlanta, you can go to Washington DC or New Orleans, but not to Florida (at least not without a trip to one of thoee other cities).
I can’t imagine the scenario that would make rail service really viable without drifting off into the realm of outright fantasy. Care to join me?
Continue reading “should there be a national transit plan?”