michclp

Video and song "Alice."

2008-05-21T21:59:00.000-07:00

Song: Alice. (Pogo)

Music and video taken almost entirely from Alice in Wonderland. Beautiful. Vocally, it's evocative of Bjork's Disney-esque Vespertine album. The rhythms of this artist are a bit more conservative than Bjork's, but still very beautiful. It's own thing, really. I almost apologize for the comparison.

Song: Oceania (Bjork)

You can download Alice here.
Artists's deviantart page here.
Artist's YouTube page here.

There are other noteworthy things about the artist that make the art perhaps more impressive, but I'll not note them here, and let the art stand on its own.

(Via kottke.org)

Let Tina be Tina (mini Tina Fey on SNL review)

2008-02-24T14:48:00.000-08:00

(Special "Women's News" guest Tina Fey on Weekend Update. Apologies to folks outside the US, NBC may be blocking the video, as they do not enjoy free marketing in your country.)

Due to its relatively short production-cycle (pretty much one week), Saturday Night Live is the first thing on tv to have new content since the WGA strike ended.

This, combined with (this week's host) Tina Fey's cult following meant that lots of people were excited for the show this week, myself included. How'd it go? Tough to say. The show was above average, but I didn't really feel that Tina's presence made much of an impact. I didn't feel the Tina, nah'mean? Except for once, during Weekend Update, which was awesome. (Video above.)

My Dream Grammy 2009 Performances

2008-02-12T01:45:00.000-08:00

Carlos Santana and Jared from Subway
Yo-Yo Ma, Candlebox, Ricky Martin, and Ernie (from Sesame Street)
Carlos Santana and Pokemon
Ace of Base and Tony Bennet and Carlos Santana and Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty and P. Diddy: tribute to Elvis and Biggie
Ghostface Killa and Itzhak Perlman
Alicia Keys and Ace of Base and Sheryl Crow and The Fresh Prince and Carlos Santana and Mozart and Metallica and Nirvana and Coolio (medley)
Red Hot Chili Peppers and Frasier

other good Grammy stuff:
FourFour's Night of the Creeps

Baby Mama: The dumbest movie I'll see 3 times

2008-01-31T03:03:00.000-08:00

It's the kind of movie Tina and Amy would rip on on Weekend Update. But I forgive them.

Interesting insight regarding big Studio money: less money to go around because of "participation deals." A-listers' disproportional cut is growing.

2007-11-13T12:38:00.000-08:00

Today Ze Frank brought up an interesting item about decline in the Studio profits, and how it's more than partly due to them paying more and more money to "top" directors, producers, and actors in participation deals. Participation deals give top stars a cut of revenue, not the profit, so even a movie that does not make a profit can be obligated to pay out tons of money to participants.

[New York Times]

...the real killer was the growth in participations. Their precise amount is difficult to reckon, because deals vary and details are seldom disclosed publicly. But Global Media noted that at Disney — unusual in that its financial reports break out annual outlays for participations and residuals — the figure had grown at a compound annual rate of 37.6 percent for the last five years, to $554 million. If the other companies are spending at a similar rate, said the researchers, they are paying out shares worth $3 billion, while piling up an almost $2 billion loss on their new films.

So the short version according to this in-depth 6 month report by Global Media Intelligence, is that revenue has gone down a little, but payout on participation deals as gone up a lot, way more than the decrease in revenue. So that even if DVD sales, etc., were at break even, or even slight growth, movie studios would have a financial problem on their hands.

I guess I just can't believe that this kind of concentration of resources and high-risk investment (giving lots of money to a big star no matter what) is still happening when there is another, more dominant model emerging, proving itself to be profitable, and much, much lower risk. (Are you going to make me link to the Long Tail?)

Again... Writers Guild... become a part of the newer system, or create your own. Don't pander to something that's really, really broken.

Writers hold evil Studios hostage for their own happiness, should just ditch them!

2007-11-13T00:29:00.000-08:00

Another good video from United Hollywood, this one about the inconsistencies on behalf of the Studios regarding the Internet.

OK, it's not surprising that writers can put together a pretty snazzy video. Bravo! But sheesh guys, at this point it's like you're attaching yourself to an abusive spouse, insisting he get better. Leave him! (And read Marc Andreesen's posts regarding same.)

Dear Writers Guild: Why not just leave the Studios and make Hollywood 2.0?

2007-11-11T21:40:00.001-08:00

[update: Don't even read this post and instead read Marc Andreesen's Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley's Image)]
Above you'll see the Writers Guild's very specific, informative video on what they're asking for in contract negotiations.

To recoup part of a deep cut they took in home video residuals 20 years ago
To get more then zero from any Internet revenue, which Studios claim is "promotional only. " (Even if they make money.)

(Yes, this video is only one side of the issue, but I have yet to see the producers' viral YouTube video anywhere (I wonder if they would order themselves to take it down), so for now we just have to deal with biased sympathies.)

Constant video and text blogging of WG strike coverage:

http://unitedhollywood.blogspot.com/

Though I'm in general pulling for the Writers here, I can't help but feel they're missing something giant here. The incredible coverage of their strike, from both the inside and outside, blogged even by really famous writers only further reveals the awesome power of the Internet and how irrelevant legacy television and movie Studios can easily become. The Writers say this negotiation is critical because whatever the next dominant (Internet) distribution channel becomes, they need to make sure their needs are represented in whatever relationship they have with the Studios. They interestingly assume the Studios will be utilizing this Internet distribution channel. Dear Writers: There are employers other than the Studios! The entire Internet is out there! You're singing union folk songs. I want you to kick the Studios' butt, trust me! But a real revolution would be to just leave the Studios. Madonna left her label. Radiohead has proven they don't need theirs. Small artists were never served by mainstream distribution channels to begin with. Start your own Hollywood 2.0! You have the talent. Do you have the vision?
Your own WG website linked to a story pointing out a lack of mainstream media coverage of the strike. This is the very system you're campaigning to remain a part of. I feel bad beating you guys up when you're down, but you're part of the problem if you want to preserve this stuff in any form.

Ze Frank on the Writers Guild strike

2007-11-06T08:46:00.000-08:00

thanks, Ze.

NBC takes down potentially self-serving viral video from YouTube, offers no legal alternative. Still.

2007-11-04T22:09:00.000-08:00

When you try to watch the video embedded above, it won't work. It's an SNL skit/ parody of an iPhone ad. In less than 24 hours, it's gone viral, as many SNL skits do. So people go where they often go to post and view viral media content: YouTube. And NBC does they usually do: take it down.
Bummed, I went to NBC's we-don't-need-YouTube video clearinghouse, Hulu.com. But then I find out that Hulu.com isn't really open yet.

Then I remember that NBC.com hosts selected clips from their shows (luck of the draw).
But yay, it's there. And after clicking around, I find some SNL highlights, including the iPhone ad.
I just have to watch a little commercial first. It's working! This is going to be awesome!
But after the commercial, darkness. The video windows stays black. The video never loads. And below the window, comments. I'm not alone. A stack of comments mocking/ criticizing NBC, how self-destructingly doesn't let videos on YouTube, and now the video on their own site doesn't work.

I'll just go buy the episode on iTunes- oh wa-.
Anyway, I don't know what to say. I was in a determined mood. When people aren't, NBC will be even more screwed.
I know this whole post is a candidate for White Whine, but I point out the pains not to highlight my own inconvenience, but to give NBC yet another chance to avert its increasingly inevitable irrelevance.

Writers Guild: Pencils Down Means Pencils Down

2007-11-02T21:16:00.000-07:00

(screenshot from Writers Guild web page with list of writers (Tina Fey listed prominently, they mean business!) who commit to join any strikes that may be declared... and were.)

Ladies and Gentlemen, where you will not be buying your music from

2007-08-22T02:42:00.000-07:00

"MTV NETWORKS, REALNETWORKS AND VERIZON WIRELESS JOIN FORCES TO OFFER A NEW INTEGRATED DIGITAL MUSIC EXPERIENCE"

They sound like real music lovers.

related: Valleywag's thorough: Timeline: MTV's history of digital-music failure

The ten-second Internet sitcom

2007-04-30T20:50:00.000-07:00

In episode 18 of 30 Rock this season (viewable here on NBC.com), NBC/ GE veteran executive Jack Donagy (Alec Baldwin) feels threatened by west coast upstart Devon Banks (Arrested Development's Will Arnett), who "...pioneered the concept of ten-second Internet sitcoms." (Peep YouTube clip above for full visualization.)

And Devon Banks' webisodes were all I could think about today when I read that Sony is shrinking 70's + 80's tv shows like Charlie's Angels down to 3-5 minutes for MySpace.

And then I got stuck in a time warp watching archived 30 Rock episodes. After that, though, it occurred to me that the idea of 3-5 minute shows on MySpace was distasteful in some way, but I couldn't really figure out how. I mean, 3-5 minute tv shows sound pretty horrible. And MySpace can be pretty horrible. But what was I protecting from that stuff? The sacred medium of television? Classic works of art like Starsky and Hutch? Duh, no.

I guess we just feel extra protective of institutional crap, and extra critical of experimental crap. In the 30 Rock clip above, the 10 second Internet webisode is portrayed as ridiculous, though not unsuccessful. Later, its creator eventually gets out maneuvered by the veteran Donagy, who seduces some senior executives with the idea of old fashioned "spectacle" and "fireworks... shaped like a cowboy hat!"

As distasteful as parts of the future are, let's not over-romanticize the past.

Related: BuzzFeed's Minisodes index

by the way, this site has a del.icio.us account

2007-03-09T20:48:00.000-08:00

If you find the kinds of things written about in this blog interesting, you might also wanna check out my del.icio.us.

If you aren't already familiar with del.icio.us, it can be overwhelming at first. But it's an amazing way to store bookmarks, research topics, or just browse others' bookmarks. Recent additions my del.icio.us appear on the right of this blog.

If you're already on del.icio.us, you might wanna join my network.

Everybody's all up in Google's business, and now they're all up in yours

2007-02-13T22:00:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to check in on one of my favorite writers, NYC's Rich Juzwiak. Rich's blog FourFour got famous for its hilarious recaps of America's Next Top Model. But you can't let FourFour's pop-culture focus give you the wrong idea. Without reading it for yourself, you won't appreciate FourFour's intelligence, severity, and heart. Whether Rich is writing about Mariah Carey, or museum stuff like Matthew Barney, he just really cares. (Plus he talks about religion and drugs and stuff, too).

It's only natural when you read a personality like Rich's, to totally wish he was your best friend. Rich makes everything more fun. Like outrage. Like, for example, when I went to check in on Rich's blog, and found this:

(via FourFour. Maybe a little over the top.)

OK. Clearly somebody isn't happy with YouTube. And on the one hand, I'm mad about anything Rich is mad about. But on the other hand, when Rich is really mad, I, the reader, benefit, because the battle will take place publicly.

Rich has had all of his uploaded videos taken down by YouTube. Yes, there was some copyrighted material in there. But it was painstakingly edited copyrighted material. (Often accompanied by editorial commentary.) And also, some of his videos were not copyrighted. They were his videos. All deleted. His entire account was deleted. It's not unheard for Google-owned YouTube to take down individual videos here and here, but to wipe out a whole account, including personal videos, is some new territory for them.

What's going on?

Some recent headlines:

Oh yeah, that! That whole gigantic revolution of human creativity and overhaul of its distribution. That. That's still happening. I keep forgetting!

Google and YouTube are playing along. It's not that the giant media companies really expect YouTube to be totally copyright-material free. They're just annoyed when Google doesn't act apologetic enough. And so now, temporarily, Google is acting contrite, and doing some hand-slapping. They know they just have to wait it out.

Yes, I'm mad that YouTube took down Rich's Winston videos, but this state of chaos can only last so long. The giant media companies will eventually realize that having their content "out there" is a good thing, or they'll be displaced by companies that already understand it.

I disagree with Rich's concerns:

...As much as this sucks for me and my borderline OCD need to document and log everything (and see how many other people are affected by it), I think it sucks for everyone's future. I don't know how many other people have encountered such unceremonious banishment at this point (I don't think it's been too many, considering the amount of unaccounted for copyrighted material still up), but people should get ready for it. The future of YouTube is no YouTube. The halcyon days are over. As with Napster and AudioGalaxy, the one-stop shop is closing...

While it's true that YouTube might get displaced, it's not because of copyright or legal threats, it's just because everything on the web is constantly getting displaced, usually because some new thing solves a problem a little better. No matter how reactive they might appear, Google and YouTube are in a position of power. And while there are plenty of ways in which Google scares the heck out of me, I generally think they're an extremely helpful entity to have on one side of the copyright battle opposite NBC, Viacom, etc.

kottke.org: creators vs. lawyers

2007-01-31T01:46:00.001-08:00

Jason Kottke wrote today:

Here's a fun rumor. I heard that the staff of the Daily Show and Colbert Report upload the shows to YouTube as soon as they can after the shows air and then the next day, lawyers from Comedy Central hit YouTube with takedown requests for the uploaded shows. Which makes total sense...sort of. The people making the shows want them to be seen while the lawyers want to ensure that people are paying to see them. It's a crazy media world we live in.

There remains a great divide here. Those who think that giving away your art gets you more paid than making people pay, and those that believe that this is "lost" revenue. The end game is essentially the same. The players might not be. In the example above, the creators could do well to give/sell/present their work directly to the consumer. AND make money. Comedy Central, the distributor, needn't worry about money not being made. Just being displaced. Particularly if there are better, more accessible video content distributors.

Technorati Tags: jason kottke, creators, lawyers, intellectual property, copyright, tv, television, media, daily show, colbert report, comedy central

disruptive video links for January 30, 2007

2007-01-30T01:30:00.001-08:00

Technorati Tags: video, sharing, long tail, aol, mpaa

Links for November 6, 2006

2006-11-06T22:58:00.000-08:00

John Battelle on Google selling print ads
Pink Floyd manager Peter Jenner says major labels are in trouble, and things are looking up for artists and indie labels
Blurb. Another self-publishing option.
Zamzar lets you convert media files

Stephen Colbert on YouTube and Viacom and all that

2006-11-04T22:01:00.000-08:00

Google bought YouTube recently, and there are plenty of people out there with opinions.

Yesterday I linked to Mark Cuban's insider info on how media companies possibly worked with Google to avoid playing artists royalties on YouTube content.

Here Stephen Colbert kids about how everybody's making money except for the creators of the content

How big media companies can avoid paying artists royalties

2006-11-03T23:30:00.000-08:00

Mark Cuban (media/ tech/ entertainment entrepreneur) posted a really interesting forward he got about the Google aquisition of YouTube.
The author of the email isn't revealed, so it's not official documentation of the deal... but for anybody who worries about the "how artists get paid," you might be worrying more about artists than the mainstream media companies who claim to care about them. As mainstream media companies work so hard to resist the all the emerging ways in which art can be produced/consumed/organized, here we have an example of a way these companies can go out of their way to not pay artists.

The media companies had their typical challenges. Specifically, how toget money from Youtube without being required to give any to thetalent (musicians and actors)? If monies were received as part of a license to Youtube then they would contractually obligated to share a substantial portion of the proceeds with others. For example most record label contracts call for artists to get 50% of all license deals. It was decided the media companies would receive an equity position as an investor in Youtube which Google would buy from them. This shelters all the up front monies from any royalty demands by allowing them to classify it as gains from an investment position. A few savvy agents might complain about receiving nothing and get a token amount, but most will be unaware of what transpired.

You can read the full post here.

Top-ranked books at Amazon.com: the rich-get-richer effect

2006-11-01T18:20:00.000-08:00

There's a new collaboratively written book, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century. In an attempt to gain visibility, and therefore sales, the creators of the book are openly "hacking" Amazon. By concentrating sales in a 24 hour period, they're trying to boost their Amazon sales rank. It might be working. They're currently ranked #14 (I don't know where they were ranked before).

BitTorrent Goes Hollywood

2006-05-10T01:55:00.000-07:00

"BitTorrent will now help Warner Bros. sell its films and TV shows" (article might not totally get the difference between Bittorrent the company, and Bittorrent the technology. The technology continues to be used for both legal and illegal file transfer. The company is not necessary to help Warner Bros. use the technology. This is the second time a mainstream media company has struck a seeminlgy unnecessary deal with the company.)

Throwing Music

2005-09-19T22:44:00.000-07:00

Both the MPAA and RIAA often invoke guilt, and sympathy for the artist when discouraging the public from sharing and downloading content. Today I came across two mainstream artists who say otherwise.

You Don't Have to Fight Anymore

2005-07-05T20:27:00.000-07:00

There are only so many movies opening every weekend, right? When the world in which your work might appear seems finite, there is a big bouncer at the edge of it, deciding what might be allowed in. This bouncer could be Jeffrey Katzenberg. This bouncer could be your high school newspaper editor. This bouncer has been wrong and right so many times, that it's dumb to give him any credit for recognizing either quality, or stinkiness. This bouncer would be called a Pre-Filter by Chris Anderson.

When the world in which your work might appear seems infinite, there is no bouncer. Anybody can come in. Anybody can throw down their movie, like Jason Scott did. It's not guaranteed that everybody will see it. But if people talk about it, then a chain of ideas and communications might lead others to it, or away from it. This would be called a Post-Filter.

If a filter allows or denies a piece of work or product access to a market, then it's a Pre-Filter. If a filter labels, endorses, compares, rates, or critiques a piece of work after it's been introduced to a market, it's a Post-Filter.

In Pre-Filters vs. Post-Filters, Chris Anderson says that "soon everything will make it to market and the real opportunity will be in sorting it all out."

...where distribution is cheap and shelf space is plentiful, the safe bet is to assume that everything is eventually going to be available. The role of filter then shifts from gatekeeper to advisor. Rather than predicting taste, post-filters such as Google measure it. Rather than lumping consumer into pre-determined demographic and psychographic categories, post-filters such as Amazon's custom recommendations treat them like individuals who reveal their likes and dislikes through their behavior. Rather than keeping things off the market, post-filters such as MP3 blogs create a markets for things that are already available by stimulating demand for them.

Equally interesting stuff comes from the comments section of the same post.

Actually, from the point of view of the user, they are all pre-filters, they are just pre-filters of varying levels of authority...

...If you are talking about what producers create, then you have a true pre-filter, since a consumer cannot find what does not exist, and instead must find some way for the item to be created or substituted for.

Your list of pre-filters really just consists of high hit "authorities". That is, information sources that have developed a general level of respect in the community, sort of like Thompsons, Edmonds or Moodys. The post-filters are just lower hit information sources with a higher variance in reliability.

The commenter has a point. When "everything" is available, it is almost as difficult to find stuff as when very little is available, so the filters, no matter how they are labeled, aren't conceptually that different from eachother. (Though I disagree that they "are all pre-filters." I'd say "they are all post-filters.") That said, the commenter must recognize the vast difference in participation-level between an unpublished author who lives in a world without boutique, niche publishing, who has been rejected by Doubleday, and a self-publishes in a hypothetical Amazon-less universe, and the emerging zine-crazy, blog-crazy, Amazon-embracing public. That rejected author has a lot more options now. Technically, yes, just more filters of varying degrees of authority. But meaning of authority is totally being reworked. Authority itself seems to be owned by more people. There is a huge change going on. Maybe Chris's two-filter paradigm isn't the ideal description of "it," but the idea he describes with Pre and Post Filters is definitely undeniable.

Original grass fight photo appears at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bombardier/19817485/, taken by Flickr user Bombardier. Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0.

Digital Hugs Don't Have to Hurt

2005-06-25T22:45:00.000-07:00

It's not hard to find an insightful, enthusiastic essay on emerging publishing and digital reproduction issues... from within the intellectual property savvy tech publishing community. (Publisher Tim Oreilly wrote Piracy is Progessive Taxation almost three years ago!)

But this week on his co-edited Radar blog, Tim (we're cool like that) wrote about an article that appears in The Book Standard, a Nielsen BookScan-centric site. (Stephen King, Judith Regan... They're not exactly beating the drum for the Long Tail.)

In Buying the Cow, Though the Milk is Free, Booksense has a balanced discussion of unpaid digital downloads of books, addressing both piracy concerns, and marketing boosts. The verdict in this article? Free digital downloads don't detract from sales.

According to Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Doctorow’s editor at Tor Books, most first-time sci-fi novels sell between 2,500 and 5,000 copies—if the author is lucky. Since it was published in January of 2003, Down and Out has sold more than 10,000 copies, as reported by Nielsen BookScan, and it’s now in its fifth printing. Doctorow attributes a lot of that success to the free publicity the online version of the book has given him.

Ok, so free downloads don't sabotage book sales. Very cool. But given that even Cory Doctorow describes himself as a "mid-list writer struggling to break in and break out," it's fair to say that the "marketing tool" argument can only apply to so many situations. That said, it's great that alternative distibution models are getting through to the mainstream publishing world.

...according to O’Reilly, a new form of publishing is on the way. “We have looked to the future. There are a lot of opportunities to reinvent what we do, but if we spend all our time protecting what we used to do, then we can’t build the future.”

original version of photo appears at http://www.geocities.com/cobb_media/adobebookshop.html. Post-production scribbles added by michclp. The shelf in question was part of a great art show, There is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World, at Adobe Books, in San Francisco, CA, USA. Endless. Coverage. Everywhere.

Music Industry, You So Crazy. I Think I Want to Have Your Baby

2005-06-21T00:22:00.000-07:00

There's this guy, who clearly really, really likes musis. He has a whole website full of stuff about music he loves, music he listens to, music he thinks you should listen to. He probably cares more about a music than a lot of people who are involved in the business of it. With mixed feelings, he has downloaded 12 unpaid for items of music. And he has written a letter to the music industry explaining why in each of these cases, why he felt justified in doing it.

Take the Kyo album he snagged.

Kyo are a French band I had to go to France to discover, and wasn't that supposed to be the kind of thing I'm paying you for? While you were watching people vying on TV to be the next disposable idol, I was wondering what the rest of the world sounds like.

And then the out of print Joe Jackson albums.

I have stolen from you where you have betrayed the music. Why are these two great Joe Jackson albums out of print? Go ahead, sue me. If you were doing your job, I'd have paid for them already.

The dude's on fire, OK?

You created the aesthetic of disposability, and now you are its most beautifully disposable work. We will mourn you in infinite song.

Ooh, snap!

I recommend you check out his whole diatribe.

The Long Tail Panel at Supernova

2005-06-20T23:55:00.000-07:00

Some biased, short-hand extractions from Oreilly Radar's kinda short-hand transcript of the Long Tail Panel at Supernova 2005.

...They're closing one rock radio station per week. Audiences for rock couldn't get what they wanted from rock radio, now getting it from other places.

...Major record labels and movie studios have controlled distribution. When you take away that distribution, they have to be good at either marketing or investing. Right now they're good at neither. All these things will change at the same time.

...Most content producers, given choice between smaller paid and larger unpaid market, will choose larger unpaid.

The Change That Already Happened

2005-06-16T21:08:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about the accidental changes this blog has gone through. Last year I was going to write about stuff my friend told me about open source software. Now I'm itching to talk about music downloading. And yeah, that might seem like a shift. But all the stuff that got me excited about open source software was exciting because it clearly applied to things beyond software. And it's not like the rest of the world of culture and commerce needs open source software to show it the way. Napster probably would have happened without Linux, thanks. But all this stuff is kind of happening at the same time. And open source software is kind of giving us a language, and giving the idea of sharing a legitmacy that maybe would have taken a bit more labor to wrap our heads around without it. Thanks, open source software! But open source software, you're no longer the focus of this blog. For real, I'll write about open source software every once in a while. But I think a lot of the principles surrounding open source software have already been internalized. Wait. Maybe I can't take for granted that everybody "gets" open source software. And there definitely are lots of parties fighting it... either out of fear or self-interest. But you can't take away the fact that it's totally changing models and behaviors of "old school" software peeps.

The same can't be said for other economies. Despite the fact that people have totally new ways of producing, finding, buying, and selling other kinds of creative stuff they make (books, movies, music, photos, drugs... u-name-it), old school players can barely be bothered to participate in new ways. They do kinda sign on when somebody else does all the legwork (iTunes, Amazon), but overall, they seem to focus on fighting, suing, and lobbying for things to change as little as possible, all under the pretext of helping the artist! I take that back. They often do wants things to change. They want more things than ever to be illegal. But let's get back to the artist. The creator. The maker of stuff. Whatever you wanna call him/her. This dude really needs to step away from their old school guardian ASAP, my friend! And this dude needs to be happy about it. There are more ways than ever to distribute his work. And there are more ways than ever for somebody else to buy/ consume his work. And there are more ways than ever for people to find his work.

This blog will now be focused on emerging ways of creating, selling, distributing, buying, finding, and consuming stuff. Mostly creative stuff. Keywords riff: self-publishing, Creative Commons, sharing, Free Culture, piracy, the Long Tail, mp3, ebook, free.

What's the point? I don't know all the way yet. I think I'm taking notes. I'm an OK note-taker. But there are incredible note-takers out there. Before you even bother with this blog... if you're not-totally-economically-creative-marketplace-literate, you may want to check out a really illuminating article in Wired magazine,The Long Tail. It's about how people's niche interests in a buncha creative stuff (like movies, music, books, mostly), have been surfaced by a marketplace which is not constrained by physical space.

Paranoid Twitch-Bags (Legal Term)

2005-06-02T23:40:00.000-07:00

A common argument for giving away some rights surrounding your intellectual property is that you're not really giving up much of anything. You get back more than you give. You shouldn't fear having non-purchased copies of your (usually digital) books/songs/software/movies out there, because you're exposing your work to a huge audience. You're getting free marketing. You're building your brand. You're getting people to care, to cultivate an opinion about something that otherwise might not be on their radar. You're building a reputation. You are one step closer to your big break, because next time, they'll already know who you are. You've already had your big break, and there's no barrier to access to your work.

But documentary filmmaker Jason Scott has other reasons for Creative Commons licensing his work.

... under copyright law in the United States, I have, as a content creator, an amazing arsenal of statutes and legal decisions at my disposal to make your life, assuming you are playing the part of someone copying my films without my permission, into a bitter fucking hell. I mean, a seriously bad, stinky, horrifying pit of suck. I can threaten you with years of jail. I can sue you in civil court while pursuing a criminal case against you on a state and federal level. If I am feeling somewhat kinky I can try and drag Interpol into the whole mess. And the laws out there, approved, let me attempt to have you put away for YEARS. Absolutely YEARS of your life for videotaping a copy of my film
...
But that's not what I did. Instead, I ...licensed it under Creative Commons, giving away a lot of the tools that US copyright law grants me, because they're are By the Jerks, for the Jerks, and should perish from this Earth.

It was in some ways a tough decision, because you want to "protect" yourself, but then you realize you're not really "protecting" anything; all you're doing is being a paranoid twitch-bag.

He's not invoking the awesome exposure of p2p, Creative Commons search engines, etc. He specifically says he wants you to pay for his documentary. He's just not willing to be a part of a system that doesn't serve people's best interest.

Even if you are honest, open, friendly, making a kick-ass product and totally changing the world with your little whooziz, some people, on principle, do not pay for media. This is what they do and they have tools to get media for free, tools that are better than your tools are and which are much more ubiquitous and better updated. In realizing this, perhaps you will stop treating every single person who purchases your product like a scumbag, guilty until proven innocent, beneath and below you. A number of people do not pay. This happens at the circus, the rock concert, your local supermarket and at your job. To turn your customer base into a constantly-on-alert totalitarian wasteland is not the effective solution. Instead, assume that if you've actually made a unique, interesting product and put your heart into it and made something that can't truly be duplicated, people will pay. And if you treat them like they're human beings, they'll ask other people to pay too.
Result: You save a lot of lawyers fees, and people feel like customers and not shotgun targets. Also, your breath will smell better.

His full post here: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000123.html.

BTW. His geeky movie looks pretty great.

So Much Things to Say

2005-04-06T23:36:00.000-07:00

There hasn't been much activity on here from me, which is dumb. There definitely hasn't been a shortage of stuff to talk about! Lots of interesting conferences, and even more grassroots coverage. And lots of developments in the world of popular culture, which are definitely related to emerging open source issues. This blog is going to change. Some key words: Robert Rodriguez. MPAA. RIAA. Book dealz. Linux. Rise.of.the.Amateur.

If I did die en Edward Gorey death, experts say it would go something like this.

You will be devoured by mice. You are so shy and
always off alone in the corner. No one knows
you are there except for the blood thirsty
rodents.

What will be your Edward Gorey death?
brought to you by Quizilla

Take Out a Piece of Paper

2005-03-09T20:09:00.000-08:00

Hey. I learned about a new word tonight! Costwall. Not that I have to explain it. Y'all know what it means.

A costwall is a disruptive process or requirement, usually involving a little bit of money, that stands between you and a resource, in an otherwise uninterrupted stream of behavior.

Wall Street Journal website, New York Times website. You know the drill. A costwall stings the most when you're all geared up to get at what's on the other side of the costwall (most. awesomest. allergy. advice. ever. As described by some blogger...) and then bam! "You could enjoy this article if you were a Speckiesville Gazette subscriber." Who are they kidding?

I was so excited about this new word, I looked it up on Google. As of this writing, it came up 158 times. In those instances, the word "unfortunately" appears 43 times. As in "I'm going to talk about an idea I would love to refer you to, unfortunately, it's behind a costwall."

Don't mean to get all Debbie Downer.

The Bends

2005-03-09T20:03:00.000-08:00

Yeah yeah yeah. Long time, no write. I've been thinking a little about this site. It was started as a way to discuss open source software with my friends and user group buddies. But it's been so hard to constrain it to that. What's really exciting about open source software, isn't just the software, but how its ideas apply to other stuff. Not that I've even really tried to talk about Linux kernel releases, but still... Anyway, expect some changes. Or at least little curves.

Changes On This Site

2005-01-31T21:54:00.000-08:00

Just a little site update: I have taken off commenting, and replaced it with trackbacks, courtesy of HaloScan. Also, I have added a few ads on the right. Not making any money off of them, just a sharing program, through The SimpleAd Exchange. We'll see how it goes.

The Biggest Boss Ever: Us

2005-01-25T01:21:00.000-08:00

"Legitimacy based on inclusion is replacing legitimacy based on hierarchical authority."

From a presentation in Seattle by Stowe Boyd.

Sell the Uh, Not the Nuh

2005-01-14T19:25:00.000-08:00

The difference between Oreilly conferences and other conferences. Like IDG.

Last year I went to lots of computer training stuff. 4 things, I can't even remember it all. I went to in Linuxworld in New York, New York, and the Oreilly Open Source Conference in Portland, Oregon. At the time, Linuxworld didn't seem all that bad. Most conferences are marketing opportunities for the sellers, not so much educational opportunities for the consumer. I guess I got so used to that, that I didn't really feel disappointed with them. But now I'm ruined. Oreilly conferences are incredible in every way, and spoiled me, and basically now I distrust [anything]World.

[anything]World is usually run by IDG, but it could be anybody. They aren't the only ones perpetrating the fraud.

I could dissect each and every difference between Oreilly Conferences and [anything]World, and I think I might one day. But the differrence really boils down to []World serves whatever area of business it thinks can sustain an event. Oreilly actually cares which way the wind blows, and usually helps dictate which way the wind blows. They don't hide their enthusiasm for open source, open API's, and networked technology. Which makes them perfectly positioned to be a resource on these topics. The speakers... there's just no comparison. Oreilly conferences feature the creators and users of ideas. []World features execs, marketing people, pundits, and technologists. In that order of importance. The questions in the tutorials asked by the students aren't that provocative. At Oreilly conferences, the chatter among attendees is easily as enriching as the formal talks.

When you're hanging around the periphery of an Oreilly conference, you can just feel the warmth and friendliness, not freaked out people with phone headsets. The attendees at Oreilly conferences are really sweet and sincere, not cheesey, fake schmoozers. Unlike some people at other conferences.

So why is Oreilly so effective at most everything they touch? They are not marketing geniuses or conniving strategists. They are useful, and there's no beating that. It always pays off. Oreilly claims to have learned this from an ex-Sierra Club activist.

"... we shouldn't be promoting our products. He showed us how much more powerful it was to talk about the technologies themselves, the possibilities that they might unleash, or the threats to the future that we might encounter. He reminded us that in marketing, as well as in product development, the best way to have an impact was to be useful."

I wonder if IDG understands the differences between Perl and Python, and if so, do they care about them?

There is an Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco this April. Its focus is unique. Not that there isn't a lot of dialogue about this stuff already, but a whole conference about the business side of OSS... that's pretty cool. It looks like it's in its second year. And my heart sinks when I see an ambiguous IDG affiliation. But what does that mean? There's no way they invented this conference! How does this stuff work? If anybody knows, feel free to leave it in the comments section, or email me directly on the list.

I found an article written by the conference's co-founder online. He expresses some regrets about last year's conference.

"Sponsors demanded (and got) speaking slots based on their willingness to pay."

And insists this year will be different.
I might go this year.
But if Oreilly starts an Open Source Business Models conference...

Easy

2004-12-30T18:23:00.000-08:00

Writer Nick Hornby:

You'd be amazed how long it takes me to write things that people can read in two minutes. Still, I do think that's the way it should be. The writer should do the work, not the reader.

The producer should do the work, not the comsumer.

In computing, and there's lots of talk about "simplicity" and "it should be easy." A common complaint from high-minded bigwigs from IBM to Microsoft is to say something like "computing is too complicated." In their imagined future, computers heal themselves, automatically install drivers, telepathically configure applications, etc. It's suggested that it's too hard for the consumers and administrators of software and hardware technology.

But where is this complexity of activity to be accounted for? Sure, the end-user could have it easy, but there could be a whole load of messy, tangled up technology under that! Does that matter? Is it truly simple? It's funny, because on the technologist side of the equation, a common criticism of kludgey work is "it's not elegant," "it's inefficient." In short, it's too complicated. Is there really such a thing as easy and simple, or is it just a matter of choosing where to place the burden of work?

Yes, We're Open!

2004-12-23T20:26:00.000-08:00

I'm at my parents' house, in their computer corner, not because I'm dying to get away from them, we were actually just cracking up at something or other, but because I was thinking of you guys. No matter how little we think Christmas officially means to us, it is imposed on us, and we nod and take stock. Even the Buddhists I know can't help but reflect on their year, their values, and the people they really care about on Christmas. So yeah, hi. Hi you guys, some of whom I get to hang out with all the time, and some of whom only every once in a while.

I know y'all are doing the same thing as I am, Hi!

No matter how much the world goes through the motions of stopping this week, some out of sincere deference, some a facade of "respect," there are areas that commerce and church can't quite reach, the little universes and networks between all of us. I don't stop running on Christmas. I got the best email ever on Thanksgiving. Thank you G! I'm so happy my friend G wasn't closed on Thanksgiving. In the spirit of "share and share alike," "open source," and just plain niceness, let's respect everybody's holidays, whenever they get declared. And let's also respect those who choose not to participate. Let's respect everybody's non-holidays, too! Happy regular day, everybody!

Commitment

2004-12-21T13:19:00.000-08:00

(sheesh, I have 9 unpublished posts since my last one... just click, missy!)
So... it's a strange time. There are reports of Finnish police (not necessarily provoked by the MPAA) bustin' down doors of Torrent servers in Finland. So, that seems bad, right? But then again, this morning, on mainstream corporate radio, I heard a mashup mp3! That's huge. (Note to future readers reading an archive of this in 2010: In 2004, there was this thing called copyright. It was misunderstood and abused. 12 year olds got sued. For real. And there was this thing called radio. It operated on a finite physical spectrum. You still have it. It's just different now. For a time, it was the major way to share certain kinds of aural experiences. And people only played certain formats of media on it. (I know, right!) Anyway, they mostly played uncompressed digital files on small physical media called CDs. But today, in 2004, they played an mp3 (probably mp9, or or foobie-flops, or Jetson-bites by the time you read this). So yeah, there was a time... )

There's No Your Own Best Interest

2004-11-28T23:40:00.000-08:00

Sometimes there's law. Sometimes there's ethics. Sometimes there's pragmatism. And when all's going right, these three things are all the same thing. like the Bill of Rights. nahmean?

Sometimes though, the law is really out of whack. Not only does it make the wrong call, it calls the wrong thing! Tonight I'm thinking of laws about intellectual property. We'll divide them into two areas. Laws that protect the expression of an idea. We'll call those copyright-related laws. And laws that protect the idea itself. We'll call those patent-related laws.

Yeah, my mind is on mp3's... And you, likely a software programmer, might be thinking, "hey, i write programs... what's gonna happen to me... i see where you're going with this!!"

Well, duh, of course i've got a answer for everything you're going to sling at me. But for now, let's forget about our role as producers of intellectual property, and switch to that of consumer.

Any swallower of pharmaceuticals (hopefully few of us, knock on wood) is a consumer of intellectual property. and there are individuals racing to define and commodotize both the ailments, and their cures, that affect us. Even if you feel comfortable allowing a single company to patent and lock out other organizations from producing life-saving medicines, do you feel comfortable with the idea of it being illegal for people to rediscover the same chemistry on their own?

While I feel bad that grandmas are getting sued for downloading rap mp3's, it's really cool that it's surfacing and chipping away at the ridiculous arguments used to defend the concepts of intellectual property. ideas that can be used in much more important battles!

I encourage everybody to think about this stuff and get involved now, when we're just talkin about mp3's, instead of later, when we're talking about your sister's cancer.

some cool links:

http://eff.org/patent/
http://www.freeculture.org/
http://www.lessig.org/blog/

also... don't want to leave this on such a serious note. sure, there are some dangerous things about intellectual property that us average citizens should probably engage and get involved with to prevent some pretty serious policy decisions from getting made. that said, this is such an exciting and hopeful time. and even without meaning to, it feels like more people than ever are creating and being touched by ideas. yeah, there's more noise than ever. and tons of new crap that we all get exposed to. but the recent surge in accessibility in lots of different kinds of information, while creating some difficulties, is super democratizing. and for every time i wince when some politician or head of the MPAA feels unnecessarily threatened by all this.. well i'm way more often excited and enthused by all the cool stuff i get exposed to way more easily.
i'm fizzlin out here. but you gotta believe.

Koders.com

2004-11-04T20:21:00.000-08:00

Koders.com A great site for searching code. Like Amazon's Search Inside the Book, except with programs! As with Search Inside the Book, there's a problem with internal data being weighed as heavily as meta-data. But much promise.

No Time for Infinity, You're Working on a Theory

2004-11-02T23:11:00.000-08:00

(The Sex and Cash Theory, the Huckabitch)

Gapingvoid writes an explanation of art and survival. (There's the stuff you love to do, versus the stuff you have to do. The ratio of the need:love can slide along a continuum as time goes on. We knew this already.)

The meaningful addition in their page is

the faster you accept this, the sooner things take off.

A really accurate observation!

And it's not limited to artists. Scheme and shortcuts of any sort never get you what you want. Professionally, socially, romantically, politically. On your own, you have to define what's important to you, what you like, and be it. And I don't know why, but stuff just gets attracted to you. Behavior and labor driven from social anxiety, anxiousness, and neurosis fails to get you stuff that makes you happy. Stuff gets attracted to you, alright. BAD stuff!

Software programmers really should know this. The projects born of desperation for money and popularity flop. The projects that start off just to scratch an itch that the programmer felt, catch on and create love. Lately when writing little programs or making pages, i've been double-checking with myself 10 times over if nobody else ever used this, would it be worth it to you to go through this process? If the answer is no, I try to step back. If the answer is yes, I write the program/ code the page.

It's almost frustrating how we can catch ourselves caring when nobody's looking, and doing our "best work," and when it's more public, it's harder to get the juices flowing. Sometimes when I try to write a big message out to the list, or at work, I get so frustrated with how inarticulate I feel. And then, when I'm just writing an email to a friend, caught up in a stupid wave of enthusiam about some song, i'll get a note back... "that note was very good." I didn't even care about how good my note was! I just wanted to convince you to listen to that mp3. I cared. And when I sweat over some workplace missive, tryin so hard to impress, i wait for the love to come back. it don't.
[to be continued]

The Last Few People To Have Sent Me Spam

2004-11-01T14:05:00.000-08:00

From: Tumbledown C. Boutiques
From: Black Cock
From: Clinton Lenoir

Was That So Hard?

2004-10-18T14:25:00.000-07:00

the place I eat lunch at a lot... the girl who rings me up is really friendly. and today she just totally didn't charge me anything. On the surface, sure, this seems pretty cool. But the reason she did this was coz I was preceded by many, many assholes, and when confronted with my affable demeanor, she felt I deserved a free lunch. Now i am pretty effin' awesome, but i don't really deserve a free lunch. and the fact that it seemed like i did for a moment, says a lot about the world. world, you are a big jerk sometimes. world, be nice to everybody, especially when it's really busy at lunch.
[Update: October 29, 2004. I got another free lunch. World, it does not look good]

Lavatastic

2004-10-05T23:06:00.000-07:00

Prediction: There will be an open source language or piece of software named Lava someday.

So maybe I do got volcano on the brain. But jeez gimme a break. I'm not from the northwest, so this volcano thing is very interesting to me. Of course I don't want anybody to get hurt in any way, but as long as all this is safe, it has my full enthusiastic attention.

As this list knows... been deep into wikis lately. I won't rehash everything, but would love to hear about your favorite wiki, and what OS you run it on.

70%

2004-09-30T16:56:00.000-07:00

Related to Open Source or Linux? Nah. But it's definitely geeky. Been watching Mount Saint Helens as it gets ready to erupt.

Meanster

2004-08-31T15:17:00.000-07:00

Hello! Let me be the 5 millionth person today to trash Friendster for firing an employee for blogging.

Hi. We're a social software company. No blogging!

This guy has a descriptive account of what went down.

Go save all the funny things your peeps said about you in your profile, and cancel your Friendster account. Friendster was always only accidentally good anyway. Its creativity and utility provided by its users, who were routinely shut down and reprimanded for anything even slightly abstract, their founder exceeding early-Bill Gates-levels of social retardation in public communication. Ultimately, their sluggish performance will be what shuts them down. But why not speed up the process by abandoning their service right now?

You already know this, but myspace provides a similar, actually extended service, at much better speeds. Of course others swear by tribe, orkut. Work it out people.

The Pirate Flag

2004-08-26T01:51:00.000-07:00

Bjork in a recent interview:

“You know, its ironic that just at the point the lawyers and the businessmen had calculated how to control music, the internet comes along and fucks everything up.” Björk gives the finger again, this time waving it into the air. “God bless the internet,” she adds.

And what about you, then?

“I'll still be there, waving a pirate flag.”

Hi From Michellandia

2004-08-23T19:23:00.000-07:00

It's my country. And today I condemn the new age temptation. I strike the men who wear the shirts with the semi-puffy sleeves. They are pirate like. They do not project light and good. The women also bow to puffiness, sometimes just a flow-y skirt. You are not natural.

And now I beg forgiveness of you all, despite your unfortunate style. I just read a kind of new age list of birthday improvements on somebody's blog. And one item moved me: be able to let go of people who don't respect me.

I just realized that those people are the people you latch on to. You want to show them up, and rub their face in it. You don't actually like them. But you're determined to stick with them until you have your day. If they were to ever bow down and meekly acknowledge your awesomeness, they would immediately become hideous in your eyes.

There's nothing about them you want to learn from. Your ego just can't handle a straying member of the You party. What really bothers you is that you were wrong about them. You already knew there were losers floating around the planet, and felt no need to herd them up and shepard them into your Way. Yet this one wandered into *your* flock. And doesn't belong. Let him go, child.

Arrogance Does Not Pay

2004-08-19T13:17:00.000-07:00

Friends, you don't even want to know... The author is pathetic, and doesn't deserve your attention.
But. You're. Still. here.
In the spirit of closed systems, copyright, and patents, I won't even begin tell you about what a stupid idiot I am.
In the spirit of open source, and goodness and light, I will tell you that even judges who bear grudges can see the idiocy behind MGM suing P2P companies. They ruled against The Man, as covered in this Wired story.
The fight is far from over people, as Senator Hatch (technically not human) is still working on the Induce Act.
In other news, I'm starting my own country.

hotel onyx

2004-07-15T18:42:00.000-07:00

today tito and j and i all talked about the upcoming open source conference (aka: OSCON), put on by oreilly. it's gonna be in downtown portland, and at any single moment, there will 3 places you want to be at once. i'm gonna go, and am having a hard deciding between the tech sessions, or the more business and policy oriented sessions on open source idealogy.

t & j & i were talking about getting together, divying up the concurrent sessions we wanna go to, going to separate ones, taking copious notes, and then reconverging to share the info with eachother.

but then you gotta remember, oreilly does an amazing job of archiving their events.

no matter where you live, and no matter how little you think you care about computers or open source, i encourage you to open your mind to these issues. if you're a scientist, or an artist, these ideas are very exciting, and very relevant to your life. as the conference evolves, oreilly will post mp3's of talks, text transscripts, and blog entries about the speakers. please consider checking out these notes.
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2004/

take pick

2004-07-04T02:09:00.000-07:00

sun's employee blog project... check it out. dangerous for other places. but really, can only help sun.

but i wasn't even going to bring that up. i'm here to talk about the recent panel at java one in SF. a discussion about "openness" i guess and java. i barely care about java. but they had me at open.
real player required, unfortunately. but it's moderated by tim oreilly, so it's worth it.
and while you're poking around URLs, here's just a big archive of sun event stuff.

roomie's boyfriend is over right now, and we just had a little celebration for him. he got a pretty cool gallery gig for his photography. during the celebration we talked about how many amazing photographers and work we've all seen on the internet, and in general, how easy it is to find extremely interesting art on the web. awesome design. crazy ideas. people are very, very open right now. some brave girl put a video or herself dancing like a dork to a very, very bad song that is very well known. it was magical.
i also just read a beautiful essay by a girl about her sister. i don't have the clarity right now to flesh out this idea. but if you ever wonder about these things, i think the thought finishes itself.

yay everything

2004-07-03T02:14:00.000-07:00

it's 2:20am, sat morning. some thoughts i scribbled down earlier today, re: the MPAA, and jack valenti.
it *does* relate to open source, Jose. Linux geeks everywhere hate j.v., already for the DVD fiasco, but there are bigger things at work...

j.valenti. biggest idiot ever. fears VCRs. doesn't know how DVDs work. has backwards ideas about ratings. basically he's made no contribution at all, as the head of an org that is only bureacratic. there couldn't be less potential for accomplishment, and there couldn't be less accomplishment.

but i was thinking how when you're an exclusionary despot, you can make the world a bad place. but once you get really ridiculous, you cross the line from destructive, to irrelevant. and both jack valenti and the mpaa are no longer really a danger to anybody, because they are so irrelevant. go ahead, make all the laws for the 5th dimension universe you live in, mpaa. because i live on earth. and on earth, movies actually don't have to any relationship with the MPAA. and the more you stick your nose into issues you don't understand, the less movie makers will have anything to do with you.
--
week has been insane. in a huge dialogue at work over a proprietary tool. i am, not surprisingly, against it. but after reading a talk today about java's struggle to be stable, am sympathetic to the plight of keeping reigns on a vision.
--
Jose, TB: the new code is in your public folder.

request for proposals!

2004-06-25T13:45:00.000-07:00

been working on a system administration prob recently:
-installing linux without local media (i know about kickstart, but cool kickstart pages are welcome)
-doing inventory on large amounts of linux hosts, querying thier RPMs basically
(have been looking at aduva onstage, is there a decent open source option?

please put stuff in comment sections, if you have advice.

listeez

2004-06-23T16:40:00.000-07:00

i haven't posted in a while. been working on some projects, and making an effort to spend time in close physical proximity with my friends. and jogging. i have actually started jogging. it's gross. but it gives you energy. it's totally hot here lately, so you don't sleep as much. yet you still need energy. donc, the jogging. how freaking cool are: context-sensitive text ads, open source tools? i don't need an answer.

also: to the world of journalists and critics who are slyly referencing new morrissey lyrics in your articles, reviews, commentary, and features, even when they have nothing to do with morrissey, or music. even when it's just about george bush. or soccer. we hear you. the rest of the world doesn't know what's going on, because you don't label each reference as such. but we notice it. and enjoy being in the secret club with you.

GPL licenses are quite nice, client-side scripting remains a crashing bore

2004-06-14T20:28:00.001-07:00

so i've been working with some open source cms software. install was so painless.
my struggle is kinda cosmetic: very dependent on cascading style sheets, of which i know very little. so late at night, i'm reading these css books. i shake my fist at you web designers! chipping away at my super-hero self-image!

why i break the rule

2004-06-11T16:12:00.000-07:00

this blog was started as a little way to communicate with some people on a linux list i'm on, and was supposed to be mostly about linux i guess. but looking at the posts, it's mostly about open source in general. i acknowledge that, and don't apologize for it. it's related, duh.

call for an open source approach to medicine

2004-06-11T16:08:00.000-07:00

reading about a paper given at the biotech conference in san francisco this week... the many benefits to an open source approach to medicine. even for commericial organizations. in the economist!

open access to scientific literature

2004-06-10T07:29:00.000-07:00

Nature hosting a very cool forum about academic publishing, and access to literature. like the music industry, academic publishing has been left a little confused by the internet, and kinda left in the dust. nature decided to ride the fence, and not change, yet encourage discussion of changing.
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/

by friday, life has killed me

2004-06-05T00:16:00.000-07:00

linuxlist people: not coming to the saturday meeting. i have to meet potential accountant person. later i'm going to batting cages with some non-geek friends. y'all are welcome to join us. i'll be at the l.b.c. at 6pm.
---
m

sun to open source solaris

2004-06-04T14:18:00.000-07:00

mixed feelings. i know bradley is happy about this.
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/06/02/133256.shtml?tid=102&tid=130&tid=185&tid=187&tid=190

content management systems

2004-06-03T11:52:00.000-07:00

late last night had a conversation with a. about open source content management systems.
two popular models: the "blog" model, and the "news" model.

the funny thing is, technically, they are very, very similar. the news model came first.
blog model came later. especially since the introduction of commenting and categorization, and multiple panels, you really have a hard time distinguishing blogs from news logs/ CMS model.

did people have blog-like things before the blog model came out? sure.
but once it became legit, and free from the Googles and the Movable Types of the world, it completely took off.

Tim Berners-Lee said innovation isn't defined by the invention, but the world's embrace of it.
In any case, blogs were embraced, news CMS were not. at least not like blogs.

anyway, i am truly excited and inspired by blogs' influence on journalism, politics, art, and expression. there are a lot of "daily candy" types of blogs out there, that one should probably stay away from.

wait. i was having conversation with a. about open source cms. neither google's blogger, nor Movable Type is that, really. though in spirit, they are quite close. especially with movable type's developer community.

it's one instance, where the most popular tools aren't technically GPL. but i gotta say. MT flexibility and independence, two important attributes of open source software, have to be given a lot of credit here.

i could write about this forever. and this post makes no sense. but this blog is all about forcing me to throw down observations before i forget them.

the squalor of the mind

2004-06-02T17:45:00.000-07:00

so now the recording industry, still dead-set against actually getting involved in *selling* digital music over the web, or any accessories, is trying to get burner manufacturers to stop manufacturing burners that let you copy a cd like crazy. full story here.

(rubbing hands together). ah! so my plan to make the recording industry totally irellevant is coming together!

seriously, have these people considered that this only addresses the medium of CD-r's? less and less people will even be using CD's as a way to play music.

don't let the blue eyes fool you,

2004-06-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

memorial day barbeque.
this weekend... it's been non-stop computers for me lately. as a couple of you know.
and i'm not complainin. it's a medium, not a message. you can do lots of different stuff on computers. well. i don't need to tell you that.

this weekend i pretty much took a break from the medium of computers, if not the subject.

went to an excellent bbq on monday. very diverse crowd. meat eaters, vegans, the ambivalent. i ate fake hot dogs, which is actually the perfect fake meat, because even real hot dogs are kinda smooth and textureless.
the company was very fun and interesting. one guy i met puts on very cool music shows. really specific themes.
another guy builds his own frankenstein computers. low power consumption.

aside from the bbq, i spent some time with somebody i hadn't spoken to for a while. the most frustrating combination of confusing, and extremely, extremely pleasurable.

and i did yard work. and because of computers (see above), the yard has been neglected. the entire ranch has been neglected. but the front yard, what people see, is easily the worst on the block. even worse than my secret-meth lab neighbors' yard.

so i just spaced out, and weeded like a mofo. and for real, it's awesome. and i'm not just trying to trick you into helping me, huck. it really clears your head. and you understand stuff you're working on in your life. like say tweaking a linux application, or deciding whether to compromise on a small part of your start-up.

even though i don't like jogging, and am really bad at it, i do do it every once in a while. and it clears your head. and makes you feel good mentally. but gardening and weeding kicks jogging's butt, mentally.

an inventory of romantic gestures

2004-05-31T20:11:00.000-07:00

i live in portland, oregon. people can call it "stumptown," "puddletown," "the city that works."
i call it Home for Now. one time i heard somebody call it River City. it's true. the rivers flavor the land. and the bridges that you need to cross them are all over the place. i don't think i can get to work without crossing a bridge. unless it's by boat.

even the ugly bridges are actually really pretty. and now bridges catch my eye everywhere, especially in art and photos.

so i ran across these photos from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. the feel is really portland. but they're not from portland. huh.

http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/exhibitions/durant/page1.html

you're standing on our street

2004-05-18T18:11:00.000-07:00

Berkeley dude writes whole book about Open Source (not Linux) as a process, not a product.
Have been thinking lately about an open source supply chain FOAF model (cough! business idea!).
original slashdot story

inner teenager, ever teenager

2004-05-18T18:03:00.000-07:00

today, the morrissey cd, you are the quarry, went on sale.
not that i haven't had it for a while. (no, i am no music industry insider. i am a user of p2p software, silly.)
but i rushed out the the record store and grabbed a copy anyway (because the mp3s got me so excited, riaa psychologists are so wrong).

and though there's a little easy listen' vibe going on here, it's still morrissey. tough enough!

i think he's the only pop phenomenum, whose numbers grow with time. it's a lovely, lovely thing to be a part of.

and i can't say i've been in a bad mood recently. but i have been confused by some things lately, and this album has helped immensely.
this is standard for effective art. i am looking for answers. the morrissey record provides no answers, sorry kids.

BUT, morrissey might say it just feels better to hear somebody else ask the question, too.

true, that.

m