July 31, 2004
1 km bluetooth file transfer
14:51 UTC » Wireless and Mobile
Is this unprecedented or are they just trying to sell bluedriving kits?Mike @ Wi-Fi ToysNew World Record for Bluetooth Link!The date: Wednesday, July 28th 2004
The time: 12:00 PM PDT
The test: Connect to a low-power Bluetooth cellphone from a distance of 1 kilometerThe result: Success!
...With a slight cable modification, this test shows that, based on previous research in the area, bluetooth functions (and exploits) can now be performed from distances thought to be impossible.
via MyAppleMenu
Comments (4) | TrackBack (2) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Memories of memory
I saw this picture on Boing Boing. It's a ancient (about 30 years old) hard disk that probably fit about 256K according to a Boing Boing reader.
This iDuck can hold 1000X as much as that disk drive.
And these little 0.2mm RFID chips hold 128K each.
I wonder when they will start selling memory at the drug store in Petabytes per gram...
Comments (3) | TrackBack (1) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Sys Admin Appreciation Day
Although the day has past in Japan, it is Sys Admin Appreciation Day in the US. System administrators are some of the most important and often least appreciated members of the team and this is a great opportunity to thank them.
I'd like to thank Kuri who does the brunt of my network admin, Boris who does most of my blog admin and pixel pushing, and Adriaan and Jim who help out when they can. Special thanks to Justin, for installing my first Movable Type installation.
Thanks to Peter, Adina and Ed for helping me out on my SocialText stuff, to everyone on #joiito for keeping the bots running. Although they're not really Sys Admins, to Jeannie and Suw for being the "strange attractors" on #joiito who keep it going.
I'd like to thank the team who started Eccosys: Cyrus, Sen, Shimokawa, Daishi and Jona, and kudos also to Ushioda who pitched in at Neoteny.
Thanks also to Scott Burns who kept The Meta Network running for all those years.
Finally, I'd like to thank all of the people who run the dns and other vital components of the Internet and keep it working.
The world would not work without you all.
(I'm sorry if I missed anyone.)
via Boing Boing
Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
July 30, 2004
My first torrent
17:43 UTC » Creative Commons - Movies
Thanks to Jim and Ado for setting up the BitTorrent tracker. Here is a torrent for Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture talk in Helsinki that I blogged about earlier.
Comments (10) | TrackBack (3) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Just-in-time-production?
16:39 UTC » Media and Journalism - US Policy and Politics - Warblogging
Coincidence?Talking Points MemoJust-in-time-production?Then, after you see that, remember that we noted in May and then The New Republic reported out extensively early this month, that this White House has been telling the Pakistanis for months that they wanted to see a big-time al Qaida leader -- hopefully bin Laden -- produced during the Democratic convention.
via Glenn
Comments (11) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
BitTorrent public tracker needed
15:47 UTC » Cool Web Sites - Network Technology
I want to start playing with BitTorrent and integrating it into blogging more. I think I need a BitTorrent tracker. Can anyone recommend a respectable public tracker or does anyone have a machine they'd be willing to run a public tracker on? I want try to experiment with a variety of legal uses of BitTorrent.
Comments (15) | TrackBack (1) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
BitTorrent of Hearings on the INDUCE Act
07:52 UTC » Intellectual Property - Technology Controversy - US Policy and Politics
BitTorrent is one of the most efficient p2p systems and is great for distributing movies and other large files. The Induce act is trying to make illegal basic technologies such as p2p which "could induce" people to break copyright law.Lawrence Lessigno potential for a substantial noninfringing use?Here's a BitTorrent file that will get you, p2p, the video of the Hearings on the INDUCE Act, prepared by Tom Barger. Watch, and blog the substantial noninfringing use.
With more powerful cameras and PCs, video and Flash have become important mediums for free speech. They are increasingly being used for political action. The integration of blogs and p2p technology for sharing these videos like the BitTorrent link above from Lessig are a good example. I believe this is substantial non-infringing use.
BitTorrent is very smart and allows you to download from multiple sources. Thus, the more people downloading/sharing, the faster the download becomes and the less stress it puts on any one person. Anyone who's posted a movie file to a blog knows what this is like. I'm downloading it now with 3 peers. Come on everyone, join in the BitTorrent p2p fun and help me make the download faster! (while it's still legal)
Comments (1) | TrackBack (5) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Xeni's SNS article on MSNBC
Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
July 29, 2004
The new blogocracy
20:29 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - US Policy and Politics
danah boyd has a good op ed on blogging and bloggers at the DNC on Salon. (Salon forces you to watch an ad to read it.)
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Quicksilver Atom Plugin
19:35 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Python Fun
This is a test message posted using Quicksilver and the Atom API Plugin.
Comments (8) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Douglas Krone of Dynamism
15:34 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Creative Commons - Gadgets
Yesterday, I met Douglas Krone the CEO of Dynamism. (I forgot my phone at home so couldn't take his picture.) Dynamism is an awesome company that takes all of the coolest gadgets from around the world, localizes them into English and sells them on the Internet. They provide support for these devices. Most high-end gadget geeks that I know have at one time or another purchased stuff from Dynamism.
Anyway, we talked a lot about gadgets, blogs and Creative Commons. I got him to agree that it would make sense to put a Creative Commons license on his site so that people could use pictures of products and clips of his text to review products. I think that his stuff is PERFECT for blogs.
I ordered one of the low-end, but very popular iducks. ;-)
Comments (3) | TrackBack (1) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
July 28, 2004
Freely downloadable Free Culture going into third printing
08:25 UTC » Books - Creative Commons
It will be very difficult to "prove" that the Creative Common license and the freely downloadable aspect of Free Culture improved sales, but the book is selling and making it freely available has clearly not STOPPED sales. I wonder if it is possible to show that making books available for free electronically increases the sale of real books? I wonder if there are particular genres where this holds more true...CC WeblogLessig's free book still racking in the salesStanford Magazine carries a story this month about our chairman and co-founder Lawrence Lessig's book which has just entered its third printing. This is interesting because the book is freely available online for download (under a Creative Commons license), and has been downloaded about 180,000 times. On the one hand an author can give away free content for folks to remake into audio books, translations, and other formats, and the author still gets paid through traditional book sales. Amazing how that works, and works so well sometimes. [via Copyfight]
Comments (9) | TrackBack (3) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
CNN/Technorati Daily blog roundup
05:48 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Technorati - US Policy and Politics
Here is the first CNN/Technorati daily blog roundup for the DNC by our very own Dave Sifry.
Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Video of Lessig Free Culture speech in Helsinki
There a small, but well produced mp4 video of Lessig's speech about Free Culture and the Creative Commons that he gave when he was in Helsinki this May.
Thanks to Jyri at Aula for the link and for organizing the event.
UPDATE: Here is the link using an IP address if the link above doesn't work for you.
Comments (5) | TrackBack (2) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
July 27, 2004
WikiSwitch
I've been using MoinMoin, a python based wiki because I thought I'd be able to hack it since I was learning python. It turns out that I haven't had any time to hack MoinMoin and frankly, it looks too difficult for me. The SocialText (I'm an investor and on the board) wiki software has become quite stable with some cool features so I've decided to switch my main wiki from Moin Moin to SocialText. The question I have is whether I should migrate pages from my old wiki and whether I should continue running the old wiki. If I am going to migrate the pages, another question is how to move the pages... Anyone have any thoughts?
Comments (17) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Loic learns from mistakes...
10:34 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Marketing
Loic blogs about his experience with his customers and the French blogging community. This reminds me of when I got my bumps from the Japanese diary community about two years ago for trying to push blogging in Japan. We now have a very good relationship with the Japanese Net community, but it took a lot of work on the part of my team and the delivery on a lot of promises.
Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Bloggers versus journalists
10:09 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Media and Journalism
I think the DNC could turn into a key moment in the discussion about bloggers versus journalists. I've generally been rather low-key on this issue, taking a position that bloggers and mass media should work together and that bloggers and professional journalists had different strengths and weaknesses. I am getting a sense that an increasing number of professional journalists are beginning to feel threatened or at least seem to be trying to belittle bloggers as a source of news.
Jeff Jarvis addresses this question today by quoting Tom Rosenstiel on the question, what is a journalist?
Under this definition, a lot of what we are calling media or press is not journalism and I DARE any professional journalist to try to defend any big media company of sticking to the definition above without fail.Tom Rosenstiel - Boston Globe
- A journalist tries to tell the literal truth and get the facts right, does not pass along rumors, engages in verifying, and makes that verification process as transparent as possible.
- A journalist's goal is to inspire public discussion, not to help one side win or lose. One who tries to do the latter is an activist.
- Neutrality is not a core principle of journalism. But the commitment to facts, to public consideration, and to independence from faction, is.
- A journalist's loyalty to his or her audience, even above employer, is paramount.
I've been interviewing a lot of professional journalists about "What is journalism? What makes a good journalist?" They usually talk about vetting sources, portraying things accurately, and other things that any blogger who is used to being ripped to shreds in comments by their readers on their blog do as second nature. My conclusion is that much of good journalism is just common sense, and I would even assert that compared to journalists who don't write in their name, have fact-check desks to do their fact-checking and editors to fix their grammar, bloggers are much more accountable and have to take it in the face compared to their anonymous counterparts in the mass media.
Is mass media more rigorous than blogs? Remember the "Rumsfeld bans phone cameras" story that UPI and AFP ran and all the media picked up? Xeni at Boing Boing called the defense department and debunked the story and I updated my entry as a lot of the mass media were still going to press with the story. Did they print any corrections? I didn't see any. And this isn't an isolated incident. I've seen many cases where blogs have fact-checked and vetted stories that the media have just passed over.
I'm not blaming the mass media for their lack of ability be as nibble as blogs, but characterizing bloggers as a bunch of amateurs with no news value is really silly. Particularly annoying are the articles that seem to be picking a fight with the blogs. Maybe as Mahatma Ghandi said, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Dan, maybe you and "We the Media" better get over here before the real fighting starts.
As always, I like David Weinberger's. perspective on this.
David WeinbergerFor example, after the breakfast, the bloggers were swarmed by the media. "You know one difference between you and us," said a friendly guy from NPR, "We don't applaud for the speakers." But, heck, it was Howard Dean and I'll be damned if I'm not going to stand and clap for him.
Comments (14) | TrackBack (2) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Bloggers at the DNC
09:34 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - US Policy and Politics
So they're off. With credentials to get them past some sketchy security, bloggers are at the Demoractic National Convention. danah boyd has a critique of a New York Times article the bloggers at the convention. David Weinberger has a fun post about the blogger breakfast.
Technorati has a page showing what convention bloggers, liberal bloggers and conservative bloggers are saying right now and Dave Winer has set up a Convention Bloggers aggregator.
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Seth Godin : Are blogs backward?
09:12 UTC » Blogging about Blogging
I think that blogs are creating a new format that people have become used to reading. Regardless of whether it is the most effective format, people are now accustomed to seeing new posts on top, stuff in the sidebar, etc. Granted that many people are reading blogs for the first time, I think that there is too much momentum to make a dramatic shift in the way we present information on blogs without a lot of confusion.Seth GodinAre blogs backward?This leads me to two thoughts:
a. a lot more blogs should be posted in chronological order, like books. If you're trying to chronicle something, it makes a lot of sense to start at the beginning, as long as you provide regular readers an easy way to just read the current stuff (That's what RSS is for, right?). No, this isn't right for gizmodo. But it makes a lot of sense for someone, say, chronicling her experience in a 12 step program.b. we need Movable Type or someone to create a simple way to create "greatest hits" pages. Not an archive, but a simple way for a new reader to read the ten posts we want them to start with, in the order we want them read, before they dive in.
I know it's weird to read a chronological blog. It's worse, imho, to leave a great blog just because the last two posts don't make sense out of context.
I think that making a "greatest hits" page easier to create makes sense. I personally like wiki pages for that sort of thing, but I could imagine it being built into a tool. Another thing people do is to put a sidebar section of favorite items and permalink from there.
Or maybe there is a way to create another view that allows you to read a blog from the beginning. That should be that hard.
Comments (10) | TrackBack (7) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
CC moves in with OSAF
The CC team at OSAF: Nathan Yergler, Francesca Rodriquez, Mike Linksvayer, Neeru Paharia, Glenn Otis Brown, James Grimmelmann, and Matt Haughey.
Creative Commons has just moved into the Open Source Application Foundation space in San Francisco. Thanks for letting our team share the space with you Mitch. CC and OSAF together does make a lot of sense. I look forward to dropping by soon.
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
July 26, 2004
Roger Ailes complaing about Outfoxed
09:18 UTC » Intellectual Property - Media and Journalism - Movies - US Policy and Politics
Poor poor FOX.
If someone thinks CNN or Al-Jazeera is doing a bad job, they should say it. Using clips of news programming to criticize a network is totally game I think. Although news has become entertainment, I don't think it should be controlled in the same way that creative content should be. I think that fair use should be applied liberally. The press and the news media should encourage critical debate. I think that a network that has a monopoly on millions of eyeballs should be fair game for documentaries like Outfoxed.Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO, Fox News NetworkAny news organization that doesn’t support our position on copyright is crazy. Next week, we could take a month’s worth of video from CNN International and do a documentary “Why does CNN hate America?” You wouldn’t even have to do the hatchet job Outfoxed was. You damn well could run it without editing. CNN International, Al-Jazeera and BBC are the same in how they report-mostly that America is wrong and bad. Everybody should stand up and say these people don’t have the right to take our product anymore. They don’t have a right to take a year’s worth of Dan Rather or Ted Koppel and edit it any way they want. It puts journalism at risk.
Via Lessig
Comments (11) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
AP Runs Eisner F 911 Story
07:59 UTC » Media and Journalism - Movies
AP finally ran the Eisner F 911 story. ;-)
via Reid
Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
July 25, 2004
911 Commission Report
08:56 UTC » US Policy and Politics - Warblogging
Here's the 7.4MB 911 Commission Report.
via Cryptome
Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Dive Into Python the book
Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into Python is now available as a printed book. This is the best tutorial for my favorite programming language. I wrote more about the book when Mark announced it back in September of last year.
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Lessig : Mr. O'Reilly, please just stop
08:19 UTC » Activism - Media and Journalism - US Policy and Politics - Warblogging
Lessig writes an open letter to Bill O'Reilly from the FOX News show The Factor. Lessig has been blogging a lot about OutFoxed, Richard Greenwald's film criticizing FOX News. Lessig links to a clip from the film, the original interview with Jeremy Glick and the offending anti-war ad. He takes on point by point the series of false accusations that O'Reilly has been making about Glick in an unfair smear campaign against his Glick.
Please read Lessig's entire post.Lawrence LessigMr. O'Reilly, please just stop.Mr. O'Reilly,
You have declared a "war" on the New York Times. That's good for you, good for them, and good for our democracy: Strong opinions deserve strong spokesmen. Your battle will help sharpen a debate about matters important to the Republic.
But in waging this "war," you are continuing to abuse a man whom you have wronged, and to whom you owe an apology.
On February 4, 2003, Jeremy Glick was your guest on THE FACTOR. Glick had lost his father in the attack of 9/11. He had also signed an ad criticizing the war in Iraq. You were "surprised" that one who had lost his father could oppose that war. And so you had him on your show, presumably to ask him why. (Here's a clip from Outfoxed putting this story together.)
You might not remember precisely what you said on that interview, or more importantly, what Jeremy Glick said. So here's a copy that you can watch. Nor may you remember precisely what the ad that Jeremy Glick signed said. Here's a copy that you can read. And when you've watched what was actually said, and read what was actually written, I'm sure you will see that the statements you continue to make about Jeremy Glick are just plain false. Not Bill Clinton "depends upon what is is" false, but false the way most Americans learned growing up: just not true.
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
July 23, 2004
Back to school
I just received word that I have been admitted into the International Business Strategy Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) program at the Hitotsubashi University Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy. I was talking to them last year about possibly applying, since the Ministry of Education recently changed the rules so people could apply for a doctorate program without a masters degree. Unfortunately, I don't even have an undergraduate degree so it was tough nuggies for me. They changed the rules this year and let me apply again and I got in. I guess this makes me the least educated student to ever be admitted. hmm...
Anyway, the real reason I'm doing this isn't the degree, although that's nice. It's a very cool program where I will be able to use the resources of the university including research and the professors. My only deliverable is a book on the sharing economy. I don't have to take any classes and the topic really fits right in with Creative Commons, blogging and everything else I'm doing. I'm a big fan of many of the professors at the school and I am really psyched to be able to exploit them officially now. ;-)
Here is a PDF of my research topic description.
Comments (42) | TrackBack (2) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Doonesbury to be dropped from 38 newspapers
09:02 UTC » Media and Journalism
Doonesbury to be dropped from 38 newspapers.
Now you've really gone and done it Larry. Do you believe in conspiracies? Me either....
via cubanlinks.org
Comments (15) | TrackBack (7) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
TypePad Germany
08:31 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Neoteny
Welcome aboard TypePad Germany. Congratulations to the Six Apart team in Europe and special thanks to Heiko.
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
July 22, 2004
The Guardian - Suw on the effect on file sharing
18:42 UTC » Intellectual Property - Music
Suw has a good article in the Guardian about the paper (PDF) by Associate Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard Business School in Boston and Professor Koleman Strumpf of the University of North Carolina where they assert that "Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates." It's an important first paper in the battle against the rampant idea that file sharing is destroying the music business and Suw does a good job introducing it and additional ideas to public in a more popular medium. Yay!Suw Charman @ The GuardianListen to the flip sideNew research suggesting that file sharing has no impact upon sales of CDs has, not surprisingly, angered the music industry. [our very own] Suw Charman reports
Comments (3) | TrackBack (3) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Technorati and CNN
08:51 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Media and Journalism - Search - US Policy and Politics
Great news for us at Technorati and hats-off to CNN for taking this leap. Hopefully this will help people view blogging as a more "legitimate" source of news.Sifry's AlertsTechnorati and CNNA few minutes ago CNN announced that Technorati will be providing real-time analysis of the political blogosphere at next week's Democratic National Convention. I will be on-site in CNN's convention broadcast center, along with Mary Hodder, and I'll be providing regular on-air commentary on what bloggers are saying about politics and the convention. And on Sunday, July 25, we'll launch a new section of our site for political coverage: politics.technorati.com. This site will make it easy for bloggers, journalists, and anyone interested in politics to see the postings of the most linked-to political bloggers, to track the ideas with the fastest-growing buzz, and to monitor conversations in thousands of other political blogs. CNN.com will link to this site, and we'll be updating the CNN site with the latest from the blogosphere.
It's interesting to note that it was CNN which broke the big 3 TV network monopoly on news editorial by feeding local TV the raw video feeds, allowing them to edit the news themselves. Similarly, CNN providing bloggers the ability to reach the public directly may have an impact on the way media edits their news.
Obviously, incentive to just be faster, isn't better. I think we're going to get a chance to see whether Technorati authority management and the ability for blogs to fact check and manage news will be able to provide viewers of CNN with additional insight.
UPDATE: Here's the press release from CNN.
Comments (22) | TrackBack (9) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Outfoxed : Bill O'Reilly likes to say "shut up"
07:53 UTC » Activism - Media and Journalism
This looks like a partial trailer or something for OutFoxed that Larry Lessig's been blogging about. I just ordered it on Amazon. Jon Lebkowsky talks about his experience watching it with friends.Mark @ Boing BoingBill O'Reilly enjoys ordering his guests and others to "shut up"This video commercial starts out with a quote from talk show host Bill O'Reilly making the claim that he has told a guest to "shut up" only one time in six years. The rest of the commercial shows clips of Mr. O'Reilly telling people to shut up. Link [Quicktime] (Via Horkulated)
Comments (11) | TrackBack (2) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Delivery pizza with a personal touch
A great flash animation by the ACLU simulating a pizza delivery call in a future where they're "plugged-in" in a Total Surveillance Society.
via Dan Gillmor
Comments (5) | TrackBack (2) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
July 21, 2004
It's just a lost pet Hyena
I think the "mystery creature" in Maryland (via Boing Boing) is just a lost Nigerian pet Hyena.
The mystery creature or "Hyote"
Nigerian pet hyenas and baboons
Comments (21) | TrackBack (1) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Seth Godin's ChangeThis
16:56 UTC » Activism - Blogging about Blogging - Media and Journalism
Seth Godin's new project, ChangeThis is a project to have interesting people write short "manifestos". Seth's working on creating a new form of literature. It's looks like something between a paper, a blog post and a marketing presentation with a message. It will be interesting to see how this takes off. It looks interesting to me. They have a blog, "Read and Pass".
Comments (3) | TrackBack (1) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Genesis P-Orridge
I just got email from an old friend who told me that one of my old friends who I haven't seen for years, Genesis P-Orridge has breasts now. There is a picture of him and his breasts on his site, which turns out to be a blog. Yay!
I first saw Genesis probably about 15 years ago when he came to Japan and performed a penis piercing on stage at at event that was sponsored by Sony, Silicon Graphics and a bunch of other big name companies. It was produced by Professor Mitsuhiro Takemura. Japanese companies sponsored a lot of sub-culture stuff back then...
I first actually talked to Genesis when I interviewed him for a Japanese magazine and he was in Japan for a Psychic TV concert. Later, we became friends. I remember going to stay at his house and thinking, as I slept on his sofa, that the sound of the dozens of the body piercings jangling as he walked around the house naked sounded a skeleton with chains in some movie or something.
Looking at his blog, I'm glad to see that it looks like he's doing well. I also just noticed that he looks a lot like Kiefer Sutherland. (I'm watching 24 right now.)
Anyway, if you see this, "Hi Gen!"
Comments (6) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
'Jap Road' to Get Name Change
16:02 UTC » Introspective - Japanese Culture - US Policy and Politics
I'm posting this because I've often been asked if I am offended by the word "Jap". The answer is, yes. I am.
'Jap Road' to Get Name ChangeFirst of all, I still hear people using the word "Jap" and can't imagine that "not a soul" in Beaumont would use the word "Jap". I for one am glad there is no longer a street in Beaumont, Texas called "Jap Road" named after a Japanese. I was often called a Jap when I was growing up in Michigan and it was usually accompanied by emotional and sometimes physical abuse. This childhood experience probably created a very negative association in my brain, and I assume that many Japanese-Americans have had a similar experience to me.BEAUMONT, Texas (Reuters) - A decade-long fight over a quiet country lane called "Jap Road" ended on Monday when local officials voted to change the racially charged name.
[...]
"It's our history, it's our heritage. I can remember when it was a dirt road, now it's being portrayed as a racial divide between us and the Japanese-Americans," Earl Callahan, born and raised on Jap Road, told the commissioners.
[...]
"People believe in this country that we're a bunch of racists. There's not a soul here that would call anybody a Jap," he said.
Now, even when they are referring to the "Jewish American Princess" I still wince when I hear the word Jap. It's hardwired in my brain. So that's why when I hear:
But road resident Jason Marshburn, 31, disagreed.I think he's missing the point. If the word "cracker" made him wince when he heard it, it would be a parallel, but I can't imagine anyone in the US getting flashbacks to abuse when they hear the word "cracker"."It feels like we're in the middle of a George Orwell novel. It's like me suing Keebler or Nabisco because the word 'cracker' is offensive to us white people," he said.
Via KS
Comments (45) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Evidence for Hersh's claims of child sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib?
Xeni has some excerpts in her post on Boing Boing and here is part 1 and part 2 (PDF) of the documents supporting this hosted on the Washington Post site.Boing BoingEvidence for Hersh's claims of child sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib?Following up to this BoingBoing post on allegations by journalist Seymour Hersh of rape and sexual abuse of minors at Abu Ghraib prison Iraq -- there appears to be evidence for those claims in supporting statements that accompany the Taguba Report.
What most of us have seen of the report are excerpts from the 50-page summary. In fact, there are well over 6,000 pages in the report itself, including statements by and interviews with witnesses. Among them, testimony from an Iraqi prisoner that would appear to substantiate Seymour Hersh's claims that boys were sodomized at Abu Ghraib. Maj. Gen. Taguba evidently found these statements credible -- they supported statements from interviews with soldiers and other witnesses.
Comments (8) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
We the Media blog
03:37 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Media and Journalism
Noticed a beta version of a blog for Dan Gillmor's new book We the Media in my Technorati cosmos. ;-)
I am expecting this blog to be required reading in the same way Smart Mobs has become for me. I think this idea of having blogs to keep the ball rolling after publishing a book is a great idea.
Comments (1) | TrackBack (4) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
July 19, 2004
Interesting survey of blog readers by Blogads
08:47 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Marketing
Interesting statistics derived from a survey of of over 10,000 blog readers. Also asserts that blog readers are older, smarter and spend more money that most people think.eMarketerAre Blogs Ready for Prime-Time?June 16, 2004
...A partial profile of blog readers reveals:
* 54% of their news consumption is online
* 21% are bloggers themselves
* 46% describe themselves as opinion makers...As Henry Copeland, author of the report and CEO of Blogads, summed up: "86% say that blogs are either useful or extremely useful as sources of news or opinion. 80% say they read blogs for news they can't find elsewhere. 78% read because the perspective is better. 66% value the faster news. 61% say that blogs are more honest. Divided on so much else, blog readers appear united in their dissatisfaction with conventional media and their rabid love of blogs."
via Smart Mobs
Comments (7) | TrackBack (8) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
July 18, 2004
Back to Japan
I'm on my way back to Japan. I thought I was going back to Japan yesterday, but AFTER I checked my bags through to Tokyo, I looked at my ticket and realized that I had a one night layover in San Francisco. I should have stayed in Aspen. The weather (the fourth time in the last year) grounded my flight to Denver, but I made it safely to San Francisco.
Anyway, thanks for all the wonderful thoughts from the people at Fortune Brainstorm 2004. It was GREAT. Once again, the small size and diversity of the people totally trumped any other conference I've been to in a year since the last one. See you next year. (hint hint David)
See you again in Japan.
Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
July 16, 2004
Speaking of funny IM conversations
I think fake IM conversations are becoming a new legitimate form of satire. Here is one of the classics.
via snowchyld
Comments (7) | TrackBack (2) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
What was Eisner doing?
Defamer imagines what Michael Eisner was doing in my moblog picture of him at Brainstorm 2004. ;-)
via Glenn
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us