“Searls and Weinberger are hippies, and they see a Free and Open Internet as a key building block of a free and open world, in much the way that Timothy Leary saw LSD in a previous generation. They’re concerned that commercial interests will spoil their metaphor through misunderstanding, and somehow pervert it into a tool…
“The president of a California college is sending a letter to President Bush apologizing for an instructor who gave students extra credit for writing anti-war missives to the White House. | ‘Students were clear in their understanding that they would only receive credit if they wrote ‘protest’ letters…’ ” Lou Marano —College to Apologize to…
“In the fall of 1958 Theodore Kaczynski, a brilliant but vulnerable boy of sixteen, entered Harvard College. There he encountered a prevailing intellectual atmosphere of anti-technological despair. There, also, he was deceived into subjecting himself to a series of purposely brutalizing psychological experiments — experiments that may have confirmed his still-forming belief in the evil…
“Twenty Broadway theaters fell dark tonight, as more than 1,000 musicians and actors took up picket signs and went on strike to protest producers’ attempts to reduce the minimum number of orchestra players at each musical.|From “Rent” to “The Producers” to “Chicago” to “Hairspray,” the biggest moneymakers on Broadway closed down.” Michael Powell and Christine…
“Yesterday I had midterm grading conferences with my journalists. (Just for the record, I abhor grades, for a list of reasons too long to post here.) It was interesting to me how Web logs have changed the whole process, and it has me thinking more seriously about the assessment issues that come along with this…
“Massively multiplayer games require a huge world to support and sustain a user base (few people would keep playing if they can explore everything in the game in under a month). The amount of content required is IMMENSE. Walton estimates that creating a world 3 times bigger than a single-player game is at least ten…
“If Google went in this direction with the Blogger acquisition, it would hearken back to one of the seminal documents of the computing age: Vannevar Bush’s 1946 ‘As We May Think’ essay, which envisioned a new tool to augment human memory. Bush’s imaginary device, called the Memex, would help manage the ever-accelerating explosion of information…
Fortunately, the true nature of Internet isn’t hard to understand. In fact, just a fistful of statements stands between Repetitive Mistake Syndrome and Enlightenment? The Nutshell The Internet isn’t complicated The Internet isn’t a thing. It’s an agreement. The Internet is stupid. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value. All the Internet’s value grows…
“The advocacy organization that crusades for the protection of privacy rights sent its online ‘Safe and Free Newsletter’ out to about 860 people last week but mistakenly made every recipient’s e-mail address available to everyone else.|The ACLU sharply criticized pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly for making a similar error two years ago.” —ACLU in Hot Water…
What kind of a sicko uses keywords such as “teddybear hamster cages teddybear invitations miniature teddybear kits teddybear” in order to draw traffic to a website featuring haiku about masturbation and child rape? The sickos at www.harmlove.com, that’s who. Teddybear Keywords = Sick StuffHarmlove) While I can’t say I care much for the content of…
“Merely the fact that the dirty piece of paper that wrapped the old man’s parcel was covered with Arabic writing was enough to give Mr. Sladden the ideas of romance, and he followed until the little crowd fell off and the stranger stopped by the kerb and unwrapped his parcel and prepared to sell the…
“The Java Morse code translator translates to and from Morse code and can play the Morse to you as sound. It runs on your computer and therefore is very quick.” Stephen Phillips —Java Morse Code TranslatorStephen’s Home Page) My father was a radio operator when he was in the army. He described trying to send…
I AM THE WIDOW OF THE LATE SANI ABACHA OR HEAD OF THE PAN-AFRICA BANK IN LAGOS OR EXECUTOR OF THE WILL OF THE LATE SIR WALDO POPPYSOCKS.|I AM IN THE UNFORTUNATE POSITION OF NEEDING TO MOVE $315 MILLION OF SOMEONE ELSE?S MONEY OUT OF MY COUNTRY. AS THIS IS HUGELY ILLEGAL I NEED THE…
“With millions of résumés now online, identity thieves and marketers are turning to online résumé databases to poach data such as e-mail addresses, phone numbers and other personal information.|Identity thieves have also been known to post fake job listings, then require that applicants submit additional personal data, such as social security numbers, credit card numbers…
“Despite one website creator’s plea to stay away from his site, people just can’t stand not clicking on the Don’t Go There button. The site, programmed to go dark after 100 visitors, stayed live just shy of one hour.” Michelle Delio —Keep Out Sign Irresistible OnlineWired)
“On the Battersea Reach of the Thames, a mixed bag of eccentrics live in houseboats. Belonging to neither land nor sea, they belong to one another. There is Maurice, a homosexual prostitute; Richard, a buttoned-up ex-navy man; but most of all there’s Nenna, the struggling mother of two wild little girls. How each of their…
“The Lunatics, as they occasionally dubbed themselves, lived in an age when the magic of science gripped the popular imagination. Crowds flocked to demonstrations of newly discovered forces like “ELECTRICITY”?in the words of one advertisement, “that branch of Philosophy which engrosses so much Conversation everywhere.” Using strange-looking contraptions, showmen conjured “lightning” inside huge glass globes,…
“Attendance is up. Detentions are down. Just six months after Maine began a controversial program to provide laptop computers to every seventh grader in the state, educators are impressed by how quickly students and teachers have adapted to laptop technology.” Sarah Mahoney —Laptops Win Over the Skeptics, Even in MaineNY Times) According to the article,…
“We struggle with what we own today. Our fingers are already too thick and clumsy to stab the buttons on our gadgets, and, as our eyes age, we squint even harder to see the shrinking screens on our stuff.” Jefferson Graham —Hello, Tech Designers? This Stuff is Too Small.USA Today) Maybe by the time today’s…
“In much of the world, after all, the popular conception of DDT is of a dangerous and toxic chemical that pollutes water and poisons the food chain; in the United States, DDT is remembered as the pesticide that helped put bald eagles on the endangered species list. But a growing body of scientific evidence suggests…