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Slashdot | Rosen Floats ISP Fee Idea -- Charge Everybody!
Hilary Rosen so misses the point in her little Cannes whinefest that it is difficult not to get personal and call the woman a jackass.
Rosen is a jackass.
Law makers and industry leaders should ignore the ham-handed way of the RIAA and instead focus on new artist and patron-centered distribution systems and IP structures that privilege openness.
hear me, all of you, and understand:
there is nothing outside of a person
which by going into them can defile;
it is that which comes out of a person
that defiles them.
-Yesh'uah, Mark 7:14-15
Chakwal Diary: Bin Ladenism greater threat to Islamic world
Interesting editorial sent to me from the international banker extraordinaire, Suneel Gill. It is rumored that his statue stands someplace in the former Soviet Union...
Until the last part of 2002 anytime Ayesha volunteered to pray before a meal at the grandparents house she would begin, "Dear Lord, Thank you for today. I hope you had a good day...." This propensity to wish God a good day has slowed with time, but still peeks through the maturing fascade that hides the kid she will always be. Perhaps wishing God all the best for her day would not be a bad idea for more of us kids hiding in the years that have given us "more important" things to say and do. I hope you have a good afternoon, God.
i see myself in twenty years, in Hoth battle gear, astride my Tan-Tan hunting U.S. Government drones: Slacktivist
the girls and i went to see Rabbit-Proof Fence last night (trailer). it is an Australian film about the lives of three mixed-race Aborigine girls who the Australian government kidnapped from their mothers under a bigoted state policy and took to a government sponsored, church run camp to train as "good-white-people" or domestic help (depending on their skin tone).
the film centers on the escape and 1500 mile walk through the outback of Molly, her little sister Daisy and their cousin Gracie. being a true story without the Hollywood antics of the "based on a true story" marketing ploy the film moves at a pace much slower than mainstream audiences are generally tolerant of. this is no sleeping big screen success. this is more in the category of an A&E original movie. though, the haunting score by Peter Gabriel was in no way a simple small screen affair.
that said, the drama-of-the-real in scenes of bigoted governmental social hubris, mothers mourning the sudden loss of their children, the tenacious, mystically simple audacity of children discerning their way home over 1500 miles of wilderness and the austere, visual power of ways of life considered primitive, dirty and to be pitied from our comfortable art house theatres made the cinematic experience worthwhile. the end of the film was the most moving for me as the audience is introduced to a much older, weathered real-life Molly and Daisy and given a small view into the cycles of living and dying among this people irrevocably altered by the white man and his rabbit-proof fence.
iCommune taken out of official circulation after Apple "Breach and Termination" notice.
since the unfortuneate Supreme Court ruling this week in Eldred v. Ashcroft much has been written about IP, copyright and the like. there is a consistent voice amidst all of this that everyone should get to know. Lawrence Lessig is a powerful American legal mind and an articulate advocate for innovation, principle-driven legal interpretation and open online discourse. The Future of Ideas is good. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace was fun. Start with his bio if nothing else.
$41 Hamburger
Billed as the world's most decadent burger, it weighs in at 1lb 4 oz and comes with fries that redefine the word gratuitous.
The burger is made from the finest Kobe beef imported from Japan, where the cows are raised on beer and given daily massages to make sure they are truly succulent.
Marc Sherry, the restaurant owner, said: "This is not about price. This is an event." A cardiac event, perhaps... The end effect is that you feel as if you have been kissed by a beautiful stranger who has then punched you in the stomach.
so, i go to read Kuro5hin before bed and run into a massive thread on circumcision. "odd," i think to myself.
Posted
1/16/2003 10:34:08 PM
ex-Chicagoan, nu Seattle native, no-shit takin', Lutheran beermeister/minister/art colony partisan who happs also to be an African-American woman takes a bite out of the modern pretty boys making the pomo-ministry book coin. she is exhibiting some clear Legion of Doom tendencies...
how's come they keep writin' books and hostin' seminars about us, yet we don't reap any of the benjamins and our little non-mega, organic church plants are strugglin' to pay the rent? =deep :: dirt
Israel to kill in U.S., allied nations
Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries...
JOHO @ MIT Session II
In a nutshell: The Internet is about truth and the Web is about morality.
Ayesha earlier this evening: "I want to be in the ocean swimming after a dollar bill."
The United States of America has gone mad -John le Carré
via sotto
our EU friends share their bewildered sentiments:
Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall — just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
thanks to daniel for the email pointing to this ftrain: The McKee Recursion.
my stream of consciousness after reading:
the endless play of recursion a convenient self-delusion in an effort to not commit, or at the least to commit as little as possible, all the while living in a normally committed existence regardless of how abnormal the discourse becomes. an effort in time to escape time. the hyper-actualization of the enlightenment as it folds over onto itself.
the negative discourse portal is stunning and significant and all the while irrelevant.
{idea capture: negative discourse as parable of the divine--perhaps even divine parable}
{idea capture post: write more sometime?}
the "revelatory" as a jarring memetic master gene, a Pax-6 of the spirit, speaking out of and into the human conscience as a certain justice, sympathy and convivial expectation--a certain way of co-living that allows for an opening to the peripheral aporia at the heart of the living and telling of higher stories.
as Pax-6 controls the development of eyes in all creatures that have them so Meme-6 controls the development of that capacity for humankind to hear something otherwise than they have known.
{obviously, this is no biochemical or, even, categorical reality. though, in concert with the chain of neurological events in the superior parietal lobe, the Meme-6 centers and drives us through the you/non-you dichotomy to otherness.}
Avrilution.com | The Cultural Revolution of Avril Lavigne
Destroy those who with conceited self-interested would see fit to force our cultural sustenance through a filter of their own design.
here is an odd, but interesting, little piece of feigned teen revolution. i like the idea of a youth movement against RIAA domination, but this movement smells of some pretty old kids behind the scenes--unless of course Mike Schaffer is a little Canadian girl.
the kids want to make this.
Spielberg film might help US discover Tintin - The Times of India
Asterix is cul.
i grew up reading these. they always remind me of Julian Fatakia.
The Perpetual War Portfolio
The Perpetual War Portfolio is an evenly weighted basket of five stocks poised to succeed in the age of perpetual war. The stocks were selected on the basis of popular product lines, strong political connections and lobbying efforts, and paid-for access to key Congressional decision-makers.
thanks to Matthew for the link.
just read on Bladdermouth that Zwan is doing an Iron Maiden cover for the B-side of their first single release.
I linked to this earlier today. It has sparked some thought this morning.
I am posting some of my comments from this back and forth with Weinberger so that I have a record to look back on; a lack of permanent reference being one of the major downsides of posting to comments on a blog. Unless, of course, you totally trust the Google cache. I am not a man with that much faith.
On Tuesday night, 7-9, Building 1, Room 390, I'll be teaching the second of three sessions of my mini-course at MIT. Here are my notes for your comments and improvement:
__________________
Three basic approaches to morality. Something is moral because:
(a) Deontological: it fits under a principle (e.g., many religions, natural rights)
(b) Consequentialist: something is moral based on its effects (e.g., utilitarianism, selfishness)
(c ) Virtue: Moral actions comes from good habits of character
How do we decide about moral philosophy? We see if the theory sorts known cases into the right bins. E.g., if utilitarianism lets us hang an innocent person, we'll reject that version of utilitarianism.
Posted by David Weinberger at January 13, 2003 11:27 AM
Isn't C. Virtue a subset of, or at the least, inextricably intermingled with, both the A. Deontological and B. Consequentialist positions?
How does one enact moral virtue without reference to principle or outcome? In what way is virtue a method for moral ordering and not a generalized descriptor of a particular deontological or consequential position in action?
Posted by Dan Hughes at January 14, 2003 07:49 AM
Dan, Clearly all 3 are related, and virtue does cut across the other 2. But the idea as I understand it, stemming from Aristotle and going through MacIntyre, is that we center morality in the character of the agent, not in the rules that agent follows or the consequences of that agent's actions. MacIntyre argues that "we need to attend to virtues in the first place in order to understand the function and authority of rules" (p 119) and of moral outcomes ("After Virtue").
Posted by David Weinberger at January 14, 2003 09:37 AM
I like your topic and your ideas here. It sparked some nice dialogue while taking the kids to school this morning...
"The Web is a shared world created out of shared interests. It is fundamentally connected, sympathetic and moral." -dw
The W3 metaphor for a communal morality is interesting. The moral being a shared system of interests and sympathy--communal movements of micro-agreement locally lived with ramifications across the entire network.
"...stemming from Aristotle and going through MacIntyre, is that we center morality in the character of the agent, not in the rules that agent follows or the consequences of that agent's actions. MacIntyre argues that 'we need to attend to virtues in the first place in order to understand the function and authority of rules'"
Functionally placing the "attendance to virtue" prior to understanding the purpose and authority of rules does not seem, to me, to create a new category of moral approach. Do not all rule-systems end up doing what MacIntyre describes? It is a very real possibility that I simply am obtuse regarding these things.
{warning: dan thinking out loud...}
Running with MacIntyre… How is character defined if apart from rule or outcome?
Could character be a tendency toward certain outcomes; a propensity for a confluence of certain rules? Can one presume a rule-based system even if one cannot sufficiently demarcate the system? If one takes a position that states that one is always already within systems of knowing agency, even if the particular structures are themselves contingent, ever emerging, particular outcomes of these systems, can virtue be anything but a loosely coupled consensus on rule and/or outcome?
The Aristotelian capitalized Virtue tradition is one that, at times, I have real problems with. It seems less a (for this discussion) "bin" and more a layer on top of presupposed cultural agreements (fuzzy rules) justified or vilified through meeting or failing to meet internally defined criteria for success (making one virtuous or without virtue) which are posited as something more fundamental than the active agreements they rest upon.
MacIntyre's virtues-in-action perspective ("we need to attend to virtues in the first place in order to understand the function and authority of rules") is something that seems impossible for human beings to exclude--it seems built into the very fibers of our existence. We understand rules and outcomes only after we emerge into systems of biochemical existence and memetic systems of community and self-reference that are inherently active.
To me, A./B./C. seem too interrelated for any one to stand alone. I think that "centering" morality in the character of an individual is always already an act of moralizing in and around communities of loosely joined agreements held together by common existence that have everything to do with rule and outcome; constraints and results; orthodoxy and orthopraxy; structures of trust and closer relationship.
revolution is merely changing the rules of constraint; heresy changing the outcome of constraint’s interpretation.
perhaps all i am doing is advocating a post-structuralist version of virtue morality? hmm.
{dan is done thinking out loud, he apologizes for his clawing ineptness}
All the best on your class tonight.
Posted by Dan Hughes at January 14, 2003 11:34 AM
__________________
Dan Gillmore recounts his recent trip to a conference:
At a technology conference last March, a telecommunications chief executive groaned onstage about his troubles. I noted this in my Web log, which I was updating from the audience via a wireless network link. Soon I (along with Doc Searls, another journalist-blogger), got messages from a reader in another city. The reader included hyperlinks to an authoritative Web site showing how the executive had sold stock worth more than $200 million while his company was suffering. We both immediately posted this information. Some in the audience were soon reading our blogs, and the mood toward the ceo seemed to chill. Talk about real-time feedback.
The movement from THEChurch to McChurch to WeChurch has one basic outcome: Everything is conversation now.
The WeChurch
Loosely Coupled: .Net
Microsoft's .Net initiative is a CPU, transport and OS independent framework designed to be language agnostic. the original R&D vision for MS .Net was as platform. this was near heresy for many leading the Windows franchise--though i doubt the drama ever neared the fevered pitch of the raging battles between Allchin and Silverberg in the "Internet Platform" vs. Windows days.
i sat in a closed doors briefing in Redmond many years back where i was given the framework code and told that .Net was already available in-house on flavors of Unix and NT. after my trip i wrote an internal white paper in which i described how .Net could fail. the key failure point, as i remember it now, was for MS to monetize .Net to death. that is, that they would endeavor to so tightly couple .Net the architecture with MS products that it would lose all credibility and value.
.Net may yet remain the meta-operating system that it was designed to be. i still believe .Net is a respectable (r)evolution.
i am patenting an invention that is a key piece in the solution to a vocational aversion to the Catholic ministry among today's youth: the animatronic priest!
just think about it. going to church would be like going to Chuck E. Cheese! every week the Vatican could just beam out the message to be delivered via the charismatic animatron Father Jack. the Father could be manufactured with different skin tones and the message delivered in any language desired. every parish would have a built in multi-lingual ministry! confession could use some sort of voice response system to give out Hail Mary's and such based on the words used and their frequency. think of the cost savings and versatility. anywhere there is electrical current the HRCC could have a presence. there could even be church kiosks at the mall. the best thing about an animatronic priest: they can't be sued!
if this technology works for mother church the Protestants may even want to get in on the game. they could even have animatronic worship leaders. maybe even an animatronic senior’s ministry; although, since most of those involve going to Branson every 3 months they might need a real person to fill that role.
Posted
1/13/2003 10:18:21 PM
in the interest of page load time (given my unenviable bandwidth situation) i have cut the front page to the last 10 entries and will try to keep the graphics to a minimum.
for some reason, that has yet to be determined, there have been 26, no, make that 29, no, 31 unique user sessions in my log file originating from blogger.com in the last few minutes. perhaps EV is trying to tell me that he is sorry for deleting all of last week's archives... luckily, the data is published out to my server. at least i have the data in a flat file. had i been on blogspot i would have been... yeah.
Posted
1/13/2003 10:00:05 PM
indy goes hardcore on weenie poetry...
Three bloody clichés in a row. Repeat it four times, and you'll have a praise chorus.
Army tear-gasses Venezuelan protesters
the irony of Chavez calling his opposition, "'fascists' manipulated by the media," is so thick that it could be dismissible as the meaningless rant of a would-be leader if it were not coming from a man manipulating everything in his power to stay in a position of civilian dictatorship.
he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.
be merciful, even as your father is merciful.
http://Luke.6.35-36
Mecca-Cola: "No more drinking stupid, drink with commitment"
KFC Bomb Defused
the new embassies of the west are the brands of their multi-national companies. a bunch of us had this conversation in a pub last year. "TO KFC!"
Posted
1/12/2003 01:25:40 PM
Russell Beattie Notebook - Saturday, January 11, 2003 via miller
Cisco as a human rights abuser is a thought pregnant with questions.
how accountable should a company be for the dominating, abusive appropriation of their products/services? tech companies are especially vulnerable here. tech is regularly used for "innovations" of domination, monitoring and control as well as liberation, privacy and freedom. the WWW has certainly thrust open a Pandora's box of new possibility that, at this moment, leans toward the open... but, as the technical design of the global credit networks attests to, anonymity is a design decision that never happens unless fought for from the start and advocated over the entire lifespan of the network the technology enables. once industry/government (and it is *always* both) grow accustomed to abusive patterns of information mining it is nearly impossible to have the opportunity to refactor the system with the individual user's rights in mind.
anyway... if Martha Stewart gets crap for using sweatshops it seems a travesty that Cisco and its competitors can enable hostile government oppression without substantial dissent.
Posted
1/12/2003 01:16:58 PM
current.mp3:
boysetsfire:The.Abominations.of.Those.Virtuous