A quick mind-game - it’s not terribly abusive, I promise. [note: this post purposefully ignores the arguments against the very foundation of IP law, along with what constitutes physical "damage" and any other anthropromophized metaphysical disconnect between physical property and mere concepts written on paper].
What if Google were to lose their lawsuits brought by the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers? I mean financially speaking. Google has approximately $7 billion in cash, could they not simply purchase the “copyrights” of those suing them? Even in a “hostile takeover bid” situation?
Perhaps the senior management considered this perspective and was willing to test the waters…
Though it would also set a bad precedent, because everyone whom owned a ‘copyright’ would then sue Google with the hopes of being bought out.
And we know that no one has enough money to purchase the entire adult book industry, let alone J. K. Rowling.
Oh and be sure to check out Cringely’s latest shenanigans: 1 2
Spinning The Web Forward:
Q: Critics say the US government basically controls the Internet.
A: That’s bulls—t. I’m sorry, I’m not supposed to say that to reporters, but that’s just a very bad misunderstanding. Ninety-nine percent of the Internet is in private hands. If you’ve got a computer at home, and a cable box or DSL line, you own a piece of the Internet. Most of the Internet is owned by the private sector, by businesses, by ISPs, by individuals, by governments— well, that’s not (the) private sector, but it’s not ICANN either and it’s not the United States.
Q: So what about talk of a battle between the EU and the US over control of ICANN?
A: Governments frequently don’t believe anything can work if nobody’s in charge. As you look around the landscape, you discover that the only entity that has specific high-level responsibility, or unique responsibility for the Internet, is ICANN. And so the immediate and incorrect conclusion is that if ICANN has this unique responsibility, it must be in charge of the Internet. That’s, frankly, not true.
Those answers are from a recent interview of Vinton Cerf, one of the chief architects behind the underlying framework of the Internet.
The 80/20 Rule:
Vilfredo Pareto, the influential Italian economist, while giving a talk in the early 1900s at an economics conference in Geneva, was repeatedly and noisily interrupted by his powerful colleague Gustav von Schmoller. Von Schmoller, who from his throne at the University of Berlin ruled the German academic world, apparently kept shouting in patronizing tone, “But are there laws in economics?”Despite his aristocratic upbringing Pareto had little respect for appearances, reportedly having written his monumental work Trattato di Sociologia Generale while owning a single pair of shoes and one suit. It was therefore easy for him to transform himself into a beggar the next day and approach von Schmoller on the street. “Please, sir, ” Pareto said, “can you tell me where I can find a restaurant where you can eat for nothing?” “My dear man,” replied van Schmoller, “there are no such restaurants, but there is a place around the corner where you can have a good meal very cheaply.” “Ah,” said Pareto, laughing triumphantly, “so there are laws in economics!”
This passage was from “Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life.” An associate of mine recommended it to me, and so far I have been impressed with the homework the author put into connecting the dots between numerous, seemingly unrelated phenomenon (though, I should note I haven’t been sold on the statistical approach used in some of the cases).
Nevertheless, I thought the above passage was interesting, seeing as the lay audience is now introduced to monsieur Schmoller.
I was first formally introduced to von Schmoller through an Austrian Economics Newsletter interview with Murray Rothbard:
AEN: What were your thoughts on Mises’s review of MES when it appeared in the New Individualist Review?
MNR: I liked it, but he didn’t say much about the book. I would have preferred him to go into more depth.
AEN: Was he bothered by some of your corrections and of his theories?
MNR: I don’t know because he never said. Mises and I had only two friendly arguments. One was on monopoly theory where he wound up calling me a Schmollerite. Although nobody else in the seminar realized it, that was the ultimate insult for an Austrian. The other argument was on his utilitarian refutation of government intervention. I argued that government officials can maximize their own well-being through economic interventionism, if not those of the public. He in turn argued that those kind of politicians wouldn’t survive popular vote, thus changing the terms of debate.
While I can’t say I truly have a real archnemesis (although John Sabotta probably thinks so), I do have a token one listed on the Blogroll, for mere entertainment purposes: Mathias Bolton, a graduate student at Rutgers studying labor economics (yea, he’s a socialist).
Must one own a throne in order to be a legit hell raiser?
It’s been awhile since I’ve truly been impressed with an IM client. I got an ICQ account way back in ‘96 and then migrated to AIM once I got to college (picking up the obligatory MSN and Yahoo accounts along the way). Trillian was and still has some cool bells and whistles (e.g. built-in encryption, linking to Wikipedia terms), but nearly all of my amigos solely use the market domineering AIM.
At this point, one must not forget the plug-ins, add-ons and other must-have-etensions that every power user applied to AIM such as tabbed windows (e.g. AIM+ or DeadAIM). God bless tabbed windows.
Anyways, today The Powers That Be released the latest and greatest version of AIM (called Triton) which includes some cool features, most notably: 150 channels of streaming, ad-free music from XM radio. How cool is that? I have found at least 4 good ’80s Pop stations to satiate my love for the days when He-Man was still syndicated, go-go-gadget MacGyver fought Murdoch and David Hasselhoff brought down the Berlin Wall. Narly, eh?
Addendum: it should be noted that it is a bit of a resource hog, so only use it if you have plenty of RAM and CPU cycles to spare.
Univ. of Kansas Takes Up Creation Debate:
LAWRENCE, Kan. - Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution.
A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled “Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies.”
“The KU faculty has had enough,” said Paul Mirecki, department chairman.
“Creationism is mythology,” Mirecki said. “Intelligent design is mythology. It’s not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not.”
I do not thing I have gone a day down here in College Station without seeing one of those Ichthys ‘Truth-eats-darwin’ fish on the back of a car. In fact, you can easily spot half-a-dozen or so by simply walking through the parking lot each day. I could only imagine the uproar if such a course was offered here, especially from ol’ Patty boy.
I should start collecting a fine for every time someone says ‘Web 2.0‘… it’s utterly ridiculous. It reminds me of the ‘blogosphere‘ talking about social revolutions and such 2-3 years ago, yet few participants realized that they were simply talking to themselves. Or as one quote from The Simpsons reveals:
Milhouse: We gotta spread this stuff around. Let’s put it on the Internet!
Bart: No! We have to reach people whose opinions actually matter!
My main beef is not so much with the technology involved in this hub-bub, it’s the starry-eyed marketing push behind it.
Unfortunately, there are numerous tagging schemes used on websites or blogs that are seemingly worthless:
- “Folksonomy” tags - they are no different than meta-tags from the ’90s. The great thing about most search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN (GYM) is that they ignore these completely.
- Calendar archive tags (e.g. month-to-month, week-to-week)
- Category tags - these are redundant
- Trackbacks - great, 273 people linked to your article about an AJAX-based periodic table, trackbacks are not organized in any useful way; perhaps using the OWL-based Flash system that News.com has implemented can put them to some use
- Blogrolls - sure it’s nice to know who you read, but if left unorganized or extraordinarily long, are near meaningless (aside from boosting your PageRank)
Applications that actually implement tags in a useful manner:
- Flickr and other photo/video-tagging sites. They actually help locate related pictures and such (e.g. College Humor does a good job with this)
- The new Amazon Mechanical Turk service also uses a type of keyword tagging to help automate various tasks that AI cannot currently do in an inexpensive manner.
For better and for worse, tags are here to stay – as they say, it is not the tool itself that necessarily has value, but what you do with that tool. Hopefully more tagging tools used in Flickr and Mechanical Turk will continue to sprout up (note: the Facebook now offers a feature that allows you to tag the individuals in a picture, which adds another dimension to the “popularity halo effect” that gives it more staying power in the long-run).
I was talking to an old college buddy of mine last night, regarding browser extensions that block ads — including text ads. He mentioned that he felt that Google, Yahoo, MSN and others that rely heavily on text ads would soon be in a world of hurt due to browser add-ins and extensions that could potentially block otherwise ignored text ads.
On one hand he does have a point, however there is a relatively simple solution these firms have done to prevent that from happening. Simply put: develop the browsers themselves to stymie such an occurrence. I have doubts that Microsoft would place a feature into IE that prevented users from seeing these text ads on their own MSN search — it would only hurt their ability to generate revenue. Similarly, Google has shrewdly hired a number of developers of the Firefox browser. While the primary purpose was to support a standards-based alternative browser, one should not put aside the ulterior motive. Smart play on their part.
With that said, there are extensions available for browsers that do block these ads, but again, I have my doubts that even a small majority of users will install them en masse anytime soon. It could happen down the road, which could be on driving force behind the continued expansion of Google, Yahoo and MSN into other markets and services independent of text ads (such as BPL).
On Friday October 21, 2005 the Gamma Phi Beta sorority hosted their 2nd annual man pageant. No stunt doubles were used nor were any animals eaten on stage. Void where prohibited.
There were 5 portions to the show. The first was the all-guy dance in which I donned on a wife-beater and looked like that guy you would see at just about every club — Mr. Metrosexual.
The second was the partner dance and I had the rare opportunity to work with a certain former centerfold, Tina Smith (aka Miss July). I strutted my jail-bird jumpsuit which was complemented with a form-fitting doo-rag.
The third part was perhaps the most scandalous, the talent:
- MacGyver-grade Mullet, check
- 1987 nylon Ferrari jacket, check
- Gaudy headband, check
- Callous preventing gloves, check
- Sweat pants with torn swimsuit pulled on top, check
The original song I planned on singing was Sinatra’s “Fly Me To The Moon.” Well, it is somewhat difficult to curl 394 pounds of pure American iron at a four-four tempo. So I had to settle with They Might Be Giants’ “Istanbul Was Constantinople.”
Part four was the formal wear. I wore only the finest Italian tuxedo hand-tailored by Gucci, Armani, Michelangelo and Master Splinter. And like all Italianware, the jacket was too broad, the shoes soles were cracked and the bow tie worked 60% of the time, all the time.
Part five. While all the candidates had prepared for sauntering down the catwalk in speedo bikinis, a last minute snafu prompted the execution of Plan B: our ‘Aggie Best’ — hence the revealing overalls.
Lastly, my sash was created by jury-rigging a dozen 9-volt batteries in a series, from which they were soldered to 35 Christmas lights. These were strategically placed along the sash with duct-tape and 173 staples. And it worked. Mazletov.
I ad libbed the closing of my ‘jokes’ with the traditional: and that’s eactly what we’re going to do to them Ags. We’re going to beat the ever living, ever loving, compound, complex fighting Texas Aggie Class of 2003 out of ‘em. Oddly enough, no one whooped to the year : (
Behind me you can almost make out the 27 different pairs of clothes I brought to keep up with all the acts. Unfortunately you can’t tell if the Christmas lights are on. They are.
Another joke I used during my ‘Aggie Best’ was: There was an Aggie that was down on his luck. In order to raise some money he decided to kidnap a kid and hold him for ransom. He went to the playground, grabbed a kid, took him behind a tree and told him, “I’ve kidnapped you.” The Aggie wrote a note saying “I’ve kidnapped your kid. Tomorrow morning, put $10,000 in a paper bag and put it beneath the pecan tree next to the slide on the north side of the city playground. Signed, An Aggie.” The Aggie then pinned the note to the kid’s shirt and sent him home to show it to his parents. The next morning the Aggie checked, and sure enough a paper bag was sitting beneath that pecan tree. The Aggie opened up the bag and found the $10,000 with a note. The note said, “How could one Aggie do this to another Aggie?”
Part of the first guy routine. It involved leg kicks in the style of the Can Can.
The pants ripped. Literally.
Istanbul was constantinople Now it’s istanbul, not constantinople Been a long time gone, constantinople Now it’s turkish delight on a moonlit night
A man-train of head bobbing and tomfoolery.
Damn, should’ve brought the unitard.
The spotlight was hot. The heals were hotter.
The one. The only. The I-threw-a-javelin-into-the-pinata pose.
Every gal in constantinople Lives in istanbul, not constantinople So if you’ve a date in constantinople She’ll be waiting in istanbul
This is part of the partner dance where the guys get dipped. Originally, the scene involved juggling flaming chainsaws while we two-step. The choreography on that was quote: “whack.”
Yea, I really did try to sing, dance and lift weights at the same time. I even did a audible somersault-into-a-lift call. The audience approved with a loud clanging of cowbells.
The two grad students striking a pose. Bob was a good sport and will probably be my accountant when I sign the recording deal with
Mike Jones.
I’d tap it.
Even old new york was once new amsterdam Why they changed it I can’t say People just liked it better that way
One of the jokes I used during my ‘Aggie Best’ was: A Longhorn, a Baylor Bear and an Aggie were running from the cops. They all headed down a dark alley and hid inside several objects. The cops came up to a metal trash can and kicked it. The Longhorn quivered: woof woof. The cops then moved on and kicked a stack of wooden crates. The Baylor Bear chimed, meow. The cops then moved on and kicked a large sack. And the Aggie retorted: potato.
Apparently I am pretty good at holding my breath and blinking at the same time.
So take me back to constantinople No, you can’t go back to constantinople Been a long time gone, constantinople Why did constantinople get the works? That’s nobody’s business but the turks
Wave kisses to the people like the Queen Mum.
El fin.
