Month: December 2006
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Hey, what ever happened to copyright?
(first appeared on teleread today) Wow, did anyone notice that Lessig went to court last month? He argued in Kahle vs. Gonzales before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the change “from an ‘opt-in’ to an ‘opt-out’ system of copyright alters a ‘traditional contour[] of copyright,’ requiring ‘further First Amendment scrutiny’ under the standard…
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Al Gore Speaking Tonight at Walmart!
After requesting a book from my city library on Adorno, I discover to my satisfaction that one website has generous excerpts of Adorno’s theories–enough for me not to need the library book after all. Swell. Have you ever thought about how much human labor and fuel can be saved simply by having web access to…
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Bloggers who Receive Gifts
Joel Spolsky rails against bloggers who accept gifts. Spolsky is a CEO, while bloggers are…just bloggers..sometimes penniless bloggers. Robert Scoble has thoughts. While I generally agree with Spolsky’s sentiments, wouldn’t a person who takes a salary and a person who blogs for a living (i.e., for pennies) have a different perspective? Practically speaking, it’s unrealistic…
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From Houston to UK to Houston
It’s very odd, but today I paid for a year’s hosting at a zope/python hosting company called webfaction.com. I was particularly impressed by their hosting management software (as seen in their online demo). I’ve been emailing the main programmer/owner for a few days. The company resides in England, but…get this…I just found out the location…
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Benkler and Artistic Worthlessness
I’ve been reading the fascinating analyis of the digital economy by Yochai Benkler. I’m reading it in preparation for a longish essay I’ve writing for teleread about literary collaboration in a digital age. There are lots of insights here and political analysis, but one thing curiously missing: how do artistically-minded individuals get food on the…
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My Favorite Jamendo Musical Albums
I’ve been listening to Jamendo like crazy. I’ve found some very good stuff, and I’ll probably blog about it, but for now, here’s a list of my Jamendo music bookmarks. I’m pretty liberal about what I bookmark. In the past I used to use dmusic, webjay and irate radio. But this site not only allows…
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Too Many Enemies & The Death Pool
From a charming NYT obituary on Gerald Ford by JAMES M. NAUGHTON and ADAM CLYMER: He invited to the White House individuals who had been excluded as political “enemies” in the lists kept by the Nixon administration. When Mr. Ford heard, as a Republican in Congress, that Mr. Nixon kept such a list, he said…
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Dear Mr. Will (a defense of weblogs)
(written in response to George Will’s post criticizing the importance of Youtube and blogging). Dear Mr. Will, First, I’ve been a fan of your writing for some time now (and recently picked up your book Statecraft as Soulcraft–it looks great!). I’ll concede the point about Youtube, but you don’t know anything about blogging. I know…
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Jamendo: p2p + tipjars…finally!
Well, it finally happened. Someone finally took my idea for p2p mp3 sharing + tipjars and ran with it. Jamendo lets you listen to songs and then download via emule or bittorrent the entire album. Suddenly, it’s become a lot easier to listen and download music without fear of consequences. (I’ll try it out and…
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God and Amputees
I don’t claim to be an atheist, but I found this logical dissection of God from the site Why Does God Heal Amputees? to be razor sharp: Assume that God is imaginary. The beauty of this explanation is that it fits the facts perfectly. In the case of amputees, it is a valid way to…
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Wikipedia & It’s a Wonderful Life
Rereading the wikipedia article on It’s A Wonderful Life, I found some great tidbits: A popular fallacy began that it entered the public domain and many television stations began airing the film without paying royalties. The film was still protected by virtue of it being a derivative work of all the other copyrighted material used…
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Flickering Eye for Beauty
at the beach Originally uploaded by lightpainter. Flickr Photographers I like: Agnieszka and Lightpainter. Actually, there’s another Vanita who lives in Houston, Texas. I’m sure there are many others. Agnieszka is a beautiful Polish woman who takes hundreds of self-portraits as well as scenes of her homeland in Kracow. She made a comment on one…
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Pearl: Victorian Erotica Online
(2013 Update): I don’t know whether I’ll actually read all of it, but the famous Victorian erotica magazine, Pearl is now completely online. Horray! Here’s a poem called, the Novice: A pretty little novice in her convent woke at dawn, And looking from her lattice she spied upon the lawn, A handsome shepherd quite intent…
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DVD Rewinder & Is it Real or is Memorex?
Perfect Holiday gift: DVD Rewinder. Digg story about a high school kid who had his computers confiscated for making a minor change on a school website. This is actually an interesting anecdote, but more interesting is the digg discussion about whether this story is actually true. Apparently, this is a one blogpost blog, and the…
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Libel, Big Pockets and Blogs
A fascinating discussion by Dana Hull of newspapers and blogging. Here are the potential libel issues: One of the biggest questions facing newsrooms is how libel law applies to blogs. Libel suits are relatively rare — and blogging is so new that little case law exists. Still, many media attorneys stress that if a blog…