Jakob Neilsen on paying attention to what users actually do
From his latest newsletter.

“About half of the users now access the Internet from more than one location. Despite the implications of this for service design, many systems assume that users remain bound to a single computer.”

I used to be one of those vagrants. But since I got an iBook, I just take it with me and access the Net from it wherever I happen to be.

My Observer column about epiphanies in Cyberspace is here.

Hollywood’s control freakery

When I tell people about the Hollings Bill and then say that it’s only the tip of the copyright thuggery iceberg, they look at me as if I’m crazy. But Cory Doctorow’s chilling account of the studios’ long-term ambitions makes even my blood run cold.

Nathan M talks sense about fundamental research
From that Tech Review interview.

“NM: Basic science is the fundamental well from which all this stuff is watered. Ironically, basic science is being given increasingly short shrift. DARPA [the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] funding for computer science is probably the single most successful government program in the history of governments — it led to this entire revolution in computing. Yet most Silicon Valley companies that are the beneficiary of that don’t invest in fundamental research. Then you get the ludicrous thing of people in Congress saying they want more relevant research. No, you should have less relevant research.

I’ve done extensive modeling of all of this. If you’re a company that lives hand to mouth, don’t do research, okay. You don’t need me to tell you that. If you’re a company that has steady cash flows, then you should work at whatever level you can afford. So if you’re a company that intends to be around 20 years from now, like a Microsoft, you are losing money if you don’t do research. It is an incredibly profitable investment only open to a limited club — the people who can afford to take a long-term view. And that’s an industrial research context. At the government level, you really should swing for the fences.

You could make a case that research funding really won the Cold War, because it was those economic things that stoked the economy. As soon as the Soviets went from being our enemies to being potentially our friends, [people said,] now let’s stop giving lots of money to science. Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Fundamental science has been the best investment the government’s ever made.”

Amen.

Thomas Friedman talking sense about the latest security nonsense from Dubya & Co
“NYT” op-ed piece.

May 22, 2002

Cool It! By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Ah, excuse me, but could we all just calm down here?

What started as a story about how the Bush team handled unspecific warnings about possible terrorist attacks in the U.S. before 9/11 has now prompted the Bushies not only to defend themselves from charges of irresponsibility — which they are entitled to do — but to go on a Chicken Little warnings binge that another attack is imminent, inevitable and around the corner, but we can’t tell you when, where or how.

Look, in the wake of 9/11, I would never rule out any kind of attack. That would be foolhardy. But I’m no more interested in indicting the Bush team for failing to respond to an unspecific warning about a possible terrorist attack before 9/11 than I’m interested in having the vice president and F.B.I. director warn us about the certainty of an unspecified attack sometime in the future…

What Nathan [Myhrvold] Did Next…

Start an invention factory of course.

Dan Gillmor’s notes from the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference
Full text here. Quote:

“The floor for the entertainment and other “content” industries is increasingly clear. They don’t fundamentally believe in fair use, and they see technology as a way to turn everything into pay-per-view — a system that would eliminate fair use almost completely.”

My Observer column about John Gillmore’s essay on the implications of the Hollings Bill is here.

Salon: Napster’s wake. The MP3 movement may have already had its day in the sun — the revolution, with all its attendent celebrity, has ended — but file-swapping still continues in a quieter sort of way. Will the record labels eventually catch up to reality and offer a reasonable product that customers won’t resist? [Tomalak’s Realm]

John Robb: “Did the Internet enable a new economy? I think the latest evidence says that it has. But it isn’t the new economy corporate America expected.”  [Scripting News]