Thanks to Michael for spotting it! Great Q&A session, btw.
If you want more, why not try the PowerPoint version of the Gettysburg Address?
Get your number now — and protect it using the DMCA
Sometimes, satire is the only way to deal with oppression. Ed Felten’s been working overtime after the AACS claimed that it ‘owned’ a decryption key.
Remember last week’s kerfuffle over whether the movie industry could own random 128-bit numbers?
Now, thanks to our newly developed VirtualLandGrab technology, you can own a 128-bit integer of your very own.
Here’s how we do it. First, we generate a fresh pseudorandom integer, just for you. Then we use your integer to encrypt a copyrighted haiku, thereby transforming your integer into a circumvention device capable of decrypting the haiku without your permission. We then give you all of our rights to decrypt the haiku using your integer. The DMCA does the rest.
Here’s mine:
5A 3F 7B A3 1C 75 88 F6 18 53 C6 09 75 83 CC 71
I will be Very Cross if you use it!
Thanks to Bill Thompson for the hint.
(Bill’s number is 7E 3D 4C 5A 75 37 5D 28 82 1B 95 D5 D3 AF CB 3B and he’s equally possessive of it btw.)
Mapping instant messaging
Meebo (a web-based IM service) provides an interesting (and regularly refreshed) map of IM activity across the world as seen by Meebo servers. Here’s a snapshot around midday today.
How to win friends and influence people
Very instructive, this. A video shot inside a US Army Humvee driving through suburban Baghdad. The kind of thing you never see on mainstream TV news.
[Source]
Join the Marines, see the world
A new kind of user-generated content — video from a US Humvee on patrol on a dirt road in Iraq. Contains strong language and is best avoided by readers with sensitive dispositions. But it provides a vivid illustration of why US military power is so impotent in Iraq. This is what Donald Rumsfeld & Co never reckoned with.
[Source]
Heath-Robinson on steroids
If you like Heath-Robinson, you’ll love this.
Life in the Imperial Court
This is wonderful — an account of what it was like to work at Microsoft in the early days.
So you’re in there presenting your product plan to billg [Gates], steveb [Ballmer], and mikemap [Mike Maples]. Billg typically has his eyes closed and he’s rocking back and forth. He could be asleep; he could be thinking about something else; he could be listening intently to everything you’re saying. The trouble is all are possible and you don’t know which. Obviously, you have to present as if he were listening intently even though you know he isn’t looking at the PowerPoint slides you spent so much time on.
At some point in your presentation billg will say “that’s the dumbest fucking idea I’ve heard since I’ve been at Microsoft.” He looks like he means it. However, since you knew he was going to say this, you can’t really let it faze you. Moreover, you can’t afford to look fazed; remember: he’s a bully…
Worth reading in full. Thanks to Billt for the link.
The Digger gets it
Rupert Murdoch, writing about ‘mixed media’ in Forbes.com…
Those of us in so-called old media have also learned the hard way what this new meaning of networking spells for our businesses. Media companies don’t control the conversation anymore, at least not to the extent that we once did. The big hits of the past were often, if not exactly flukes, then at least the beneficiaries of limited options. Of course a film is going to be a success if it’s the only movie available on a Saturday night. Similarly, when three networks divided up a nation of 200 million, life was a lot easier for television executives. And not so very long ago most of the daily newspapers that survived the age of consolidation could count themselves blessed with monopolies in their home cities.
All that has changed. Options abound. Fans of small niches can now find new content they could never before. Going elsewhere for news and entertainment is easier and cheaper than ever. And people’s expectations of media have undergone a revolution. They are no longer content to be a passive audience; they insist on being participants, on creating their own material and finding others who will want to read, listen and watch.
That’s the bad news, apparently. But,
The good news is that we are learning–and fast. Take the type of media I know best–news. News is in more demand than ever, but the vast network of Internet-savvy news junkies want their news with several fresh twists: constantly updated, relevant to their daily lives, complete with commentary and analysis, and presented in a way that allows them to interact not just with the news but with each other about the news. They won’t wait until six o’clock to watch the news on television or until the next morning to read it in isolation. This plainly provides a challenge for news providers but also an opportunity to be far more engaged with the audience.
Companies that take advantage of this new meaning of network and adapt to the expectations of the networked consumer can look forward to a new golden age of media.
Translation: stick with those News Corp shares.
Quote of the day
Writing about horticulture has suddenly reminded me of something Dorothy Parker once said. She was challenged to come up with an interesting sentence with the word ‘horticulture’ in it and responded:
“You can bring a whore to culture, but you cannot make her think.”
Now, back to work.
Twitter: big idea or leading-edge uselessness?
I’m puzzled by the buzz about Twitter: why would anyone want to know the tiny details of what I am doing at any given moment? But lots of people I know are intrigued by it and I can’t quite see why.
David Weinberger has just posted the best case I’ve seen so far for paying attention to it.
I’ve been twittering. I’m not entirely sure why, and I feel too old for it, but I’m finding it fascinating. And more than that.
Twitter and other such sites (e.g., Jaiku) are “microblogs” where you can post very short messages (e.g., 140 characters) and see the scroll of messages posted by your buddies. You can Twitter via the Web site, IM, or SMS on your cell phone.
In general, people seem to post what they’re doing at the moment, plus occasional quotes and ideas of interest. So, by definition it should be trivial. But, Twitter is about the intimacy of details. Without it, I’d hear from people maybe once a year, when I run into them at a conference or they send a holiday newsletter. (Actually, I don’t get any of those any more. Two explanations: 1. Blogging has obviated them. 2. Nobody likes me. Third explanation: Both of the above.) We then engage in the odd ritual of narrative construction called “catching up.” We give the headlines in each of the big areas in our lives. The kids are fine, the job sucks, we botoxed the cat, etc. But with Twitter, you see the day-to-day life of your friends.
A lot of it of course I don’t care about. But it turns out that I do like hearing that Paolo Valdemarin, an Italian friend I see every couple of years, is sitting on his porch, drinking wine and watching the sunset. I do like hearing that Jessamyn West, who I unfortunately run into very rarely, is working on a presentation to librarians, which she then shares with her Twitter pals. I do care that BradSucks, a Canadian musician I’ve only met once, is rehearsing for a live show. This is, to mangle Linda Stone’s phrase, continuous partial friendship, and it’s a welcome addition to the infrequent, intermittent friendships we’re able to manage in the real world.
It helps that the volume of flow is so impossibly high that there’s zero expectation that anyone is keeping up. “Hey, dude, why didn’t you know that? I like twittered it two days ago?” is just not a reasonable complaint.
I don’t know if Twitter or one of its new-and-improved competitors will survive, or what it will become. It’s hot at the moment, which usually means that it’s not going to be hot soon. But it’s a powerful platform for something, and even in its current state, it addresses our desire to fill every interstice with social connections.