000727.html
Joe Sample, Carmel; Stephane Grappelli, Olympia 88; Eric Clapton, Journeyman. Yes!
From The Sun, April 2000:
Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency. -- John UpdikeHere is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't. -- Richard Bach
When hungry, eat your rice; when tired, close your eyes. Fools may laugh at me, but wise men know what I mean. -- Lin-Chi
We've become a security-obsessed culture. We're an air-bag culture. We buy cars because of their safety features. Everything has to be safety-proofed so that there can be no accident. Now they're going to make a car in which the trunk can be opened from within because last year nine children died in trunks. To avoid death, or accident, or wounding of any kind has become our prime objective. It's as if, psychically, we live in gated communities in order to keep out the unforseen. -- James Hillman
John P. Mulligan of metajohn - Catch me on the can! Metajohn shows us... his john. LOL!
Joel on Software - Does Issuing Passports Make Microsoft a Country? Be afraid of Microsoft Passport. Be very afraid. [latte]
By the time you've read this article, I can guarantee that I'll scare you into turning off your Hotmail account and staying away from MSN web sites....
If Microsoft was honest about protecting your privacy, they would let users keep their private information on their own computers, and they would ask you every time they were going to reveal some data.
But they're not being honest. They want all your data in a big database on their server, thank you very much, and they want you to click "I Agree" to the 27 pages of legalese which says things like "Microsoft reserves the right to amend this agreement at any time." If you really trust any Internet company to protect your privacy, I've got a bridge to sell ya.
From grabbe:
Napster bad! Beer good!
Will Cate at Discuss.Userland.Com - Napster ordered to be shut down: Clueless judge shuts down successful internet company because its customers use it to commit questionably illegal activities. What's next? Shut down AT&T because people discuss child pornography on their phones? Fooey. [script]
Just came over the news, at 4:55 pm PDT. Rest in peace, Napster.Let a thousand little Napster seedlings grow.....
John Borland at CNET - Judge issues injunction against Napster: [script]
Other programs such as Gnutella and Freenet have sprung up in recent months that allow people to trade files of any kind without using a central server that can be shut down by legal action.At the same time, Napster aficionados have created a way to run their own servers unaffiliated with the company. If Napster itself is shut down, many of these servers will likely continue without it.
The effect of such file-swapping programs on the music industry is still ambiguous. The record industry cites studies that indicate Napster has had a deleterious effect on record sales. Napster and its backers have in turn cited their own studies that have found Napster users are likely to increase their record purchases.
I watched Napster's creator and CEO on a short internet video broadcast at 7pm Pacific time last night. They're going to appeal the ruling, but will shut down the server if the appeal is unsuccessful in time for Friday's deadline. It was sad to watch. How come we let judges have so much power?
Scott Rosenberg at Salon - Why the music industry has nothing to celebrate: Napster's shutdown will only cause a thousand alternatives to bloom: The RIAA has cut off the Hydra's head. Their troubles are only beginning. Hehe. [wnd]
Already, projects like Gnutella and Freenet are beginning to provide Napster-like functions with one key difference: There's no central server, and thus no one to sue. Napigator lets users find Napster servers that aren't run by Napster Inc. Over at Opennap, open-source programmers are developing free, Napster-like software for every computing platform under the sun. On the open Net, a thousand new Napsters are blooming.And what will be the impact of the court-ordered shutdown of Napster? These projects -- small, underground efforts that grew unnoticed in the shadow of Napster the company -- will be flooded with energy. Users will flock to them, and talented software hackers will work overtime to perfect them.
...
For music lovers, the bad news today is that if and when Napster shuts its servers down, we will have to find our music through other channels. The good news is that the brain-dead, colossally wasteful, artistically homogenizing old order of the recording industry is committing collective, time-delayed suicide in court.
Tim Dickinson at Mother Jones - The Man Who Would Be Veep: Dick Cheney, in his own words. [wnd]
Lew Rockwell at WorldNetDaily - Dreading GOP rule: G.W. is likely the next president. Good news? No. [wnd]
The glory of American democracy is that it permits us to kick out the nasty tribe of parasitical despots that is currently ruling us. The tragedy is that it installs another group that will do essentially the same thing. Already you get the sense that GOP apologists, propagandists, and power brokers are gearing up for their turn at steering Leviathan. This is one reason the Republican Congress didn't cut government. Why shrink something you are going to inherit?...
Here's the deal. The government, by definition, cannot commit crimes. What it does may superficially look criminal, by the standards applied to private individuals. For example, if you surrounded John Danforth's house with tanks and sprayed poison gas into his living room, you would be in a heap of trouble. But that's the way the system works. Government makes the laws, and decides what's right and wrong. When it says it isn't doing wrong, it's not. Got it?
Brian Martin at Danny Yee's Home Page - Against intellectual property: Chapter 3 of Information Liberation. I only skimmed it, but it looks worth thinking about. [/.]
This chapter outlines the case against intellectual property. I begin by mentioning some of the problems arising from ownership of information. Then I turn to weaknesses in its standard justifications. Next is an overview of problems with the so-called "marketplace of ideas," which has important links with intellectual property. Finally, I outline some alternatives to intellectual property and some possible strategies for moving towards them....
A fourth argument is that rights in intellectual property are needed to promote the creation of more ideas. The idea is that intellectual property gives financial incentives to produce ideas. Hettinger thinks that this is the only decent argument for intellectual property. He is still somewhat sceptical, though. He notes that the whole argument is built on a contradiction, namely that in order to promote the development of ideas, it is necessary to reduce people's freedom to use them. Copyrights and patents may encourage new ideas and innovations, but they also restrict others from using them freely.
Lindsay Perigo's Politically Incorrect Show - 27 July 2000: Oh my!
It has been said many times that environmentalism is "water-melon" socialism - green on the outside, red underneath. In Issue 34 of my magazine, Free Radical writer David Adams went even further:'Let there be no misunderstanding as to the nature of environmentalism. It is one thing to be concerned about clean air or water, or to wish to preserve areas of land as "wild" - such areas offer enjoyment. These are not the real goals of environmentalism. Though it was only implicit at first, environmentalists are now openly stating that they value all life - except for human beings. They openly proclaim that the human race is a "cancer on the face of the earth," and call for our (and their) ultimate extinction. A claim can be made for clean rivers or unpolluted air - if it is from a human standard, from the point of view of human flourishing - and the solutions are thus found in a market system. But environmentalists step outside of any rational context by proclaiming nature to be intrinsically valuable (valuable to whom?). They uphold an Eden-esque stasis, a colorful, changeless eco-wonderland of singing dolphins, happy trees, and snuggly animals (all of whom are kind and never prey on others, of course) - an ideal which has never existed. Some go so far as to propose the "Gaia hypothesis," that the earth is itself one large organism, similar to the socialists viewing society as an organism in itself. But compared to environmentalists, socialists were fairly reasonable - at least an appeal to the good of "society" is still an appeal on human terms, however misguided. But the eco-fascists envision a holy, green Gaia - and human beings are not part of the picture. In this notion of "Gaia," in this leap of faith to nature's intrinsic value, we have a new god (rather, goddess) - and a new religion. Like all other religions, the bottom line is sacrifice, self-denial, self-negation.'
MIT News - MIT researchers' theoretical waveguide may open new avenues in telecommunications and optical devices: Optical fiber with almost no transmission loss! [/.]
Building on the "perfect mirror" they created in 1998, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have proposed a new kind of coaxial cable that may be able to quickly and efficiently shoot light over long distances and around sharp bends while retaining its polarization....
The next step is to prototype and test the coaxial omniguide. Fink, Joannopolous, Thomas and others have launched a new Cambridge, Mass. company, OmniGuide Communications Inc. (www.omni-guide.com), to explore its practicality.
Matthew Rothenberg at ZDNet News - Mercury rising: PowerBook to pack G4: Apple's new Mercury PowerBook will put a PowerPC G4 in a wide-screen notebook computer. [/.]
Yesterday, I got the first HTML output from my User Interface Manager (UIM). One set of source XML and Progress 4GL can now create both a Java Swing and an HTML interface. Still lots of components to implement for the HTML, but I've got nearly enough to demo timecard entry on a Palm VII. Yay! I'll write a paper on it sometime in August, and submit it to a couple of Java & Progress magazines, in sha' allah.
