In My Experience: Random

Seems irresponsible to me.

2003-11-25T09:46:13-05:00

When C|Net bought mp3.com, I didn't realize that they were only buying the domain from Vivendi and not the actual business as it exists today. C|Net says "the company plans to turn MP3.com into a source of information for digital music" as opposed to another online music store, but that's nothing new and isn't the real story. The real story is that Vivendi is going to delete all of the MP3.com content/material from their servers. Delete?

A few days ago VU sent out the announcement that the url MP3.com had been sold and the new owner was not taking possession of the music and band pages. This means the music will die, disappear, and vanish forever. MP3.com is a global treasure. First off, it is the largest music site in the world, nothing else is even close. And as I mentioned, it contains a diversity of music found nowhere else. If you want Britney Spears, there are lots of places to go. If you want Brittany Bauhaus, Brittany Lacy, Brittany Frompovich, or even Lymp Brittany, MP3.com is the one place in the world you'll find them. On December 2nd, their sites there will no longer exist.

Delete? Doesn't that seem irresponsible?

I can only imagine that a million MP3's takes up some massive amount of space (ie, SAN fabrics), and likely requires some big iron to dish it all out. It's likely that the cost of that hardware is just that, a cost (as opposed to a profit center). But why not just let Archive.org do its thing and archive it all? I can only assume copyright/intellectual-property issues are there, or just laziness and ignorance. Who knows? I don't.

Media bias.

2003-11-13T15:31:52-05:00

When you stop to consider how the various parts of a chunk of content are presented to you, it can become clear how other people want you to feel about something or someone. In this case, it's something other people have already pigeonholed as "media bias." The icon to the left is the icon used on the aol.com home page which is a feed from CNN.com and is a picture of a certain crackpot who has been in the news recently. I'm avoiding using her name for some reason to avoid the Google hits that may be generated down the road. But that's beside the point. This person has recently shown herself to be a crackpot (imho) and the media, in it's own subtle way, is pointing that out thru their selection of this image. They could have picked an image of her smiling, but they chose a sneer.

Recently consumed.

2003-11-05T13:44:58-05:00

Total cost: $43.77

This is deplorable.

2003-09-09T22:42:20-05:00

The Recording Industry Association of America has sued, and settled with, a 12 year old girl over online music file swapping. The RIAA "was pleased with the settlement" that will cost the 12 year old girl $2000. I can't believe that the RIAA thinks that suing kids is good for the music business.

Best Spam Ever.

2003-04-11T15:12:14-05:00

I got a spam today with this subject...

Satisfy your wom@n you pindick

The ridiculousness of this works on so many levels, just the same way most of the humor in The Simpsons does. And for that, it gets my Best Spam Ever award.

Autechre's new record.

2003-04-08T13:34:37-05:00

The new Autechre record, Draft 7.30, continues the series of nearly incomprehensible 'music' that started several years ago with LP5. It's nowhere near the cacophonous EP7, but doesn't come close to the melodic brilliance of 'Incunabala' which remains as one of my favorite IDM records of all time. This new record is alienating.

I think it's interesting though that Autechre attempted to be listenable again. Their skill and musical talent has been hidden and (imho!) wasted on attempts to make noise into music. Their willingness to experiment and not kowtow to commercialism makes them worthy of repeated attempts to find enjoyment in this new batch of tunes, but I imagine I will quickly go back to Esem, BoC and Ochre for my melodic fix.

[ The Milk Factory has a more favorable review here. ]

I missed a few things.

2003-04-07T21:42:48-05:00

In the past several weeks I've worked on one high profile project (the orange thing in the top right at AOL keyword: Safety), broken bad news to my wife, watched too much war coverage, played two thirds of the way thru Zelda and purchased a TiVo. Because of that I've missed these important items...

Mozilla is following a new path.: "It's clear to us that Mozilla needs a new roadmap, one that charts a path to an even better future. Below we will propose a new application architecture based on the Gecko Runtime Environment ( GRE ), which can be shared between separate application processes."

AOL may restate earnings again.: "Regulators reviewing AOL Time Warner's accounting said they may require the company to restate as much as $400 million in advertising revenue booked in relation to a deal involving the company's America Online division and Bertelsmann."

Plagiarism is still bad, even on a blog.: "Kelley's insightful window on the details of the war brought him increasing readership (118,000 page views on a recent day) and acclaim, including interviews in the The New York Times and on NBC's Nightly News, Newsweek online and National Public Radio.

The only problem: Much of his material was plagiarized -- lifted word-for-word from a paid news service put out by Austin, Texas, commercial intelligence company Stratfor."

Wanted: One Conference Friend

2003-04-07T16:50:02-05:00

I just purchased my airline tickets and made my room reservation for the O'Reilly Emerging Tech conference, and need someone cool to hang out to make me look cool while attending said conference. I like long walks on the beach, Macintoshes and ways to boost blog visitorship. (heheheeh)

OK, seriously, I'll be arriving on Tuesday, I won't be attending the tutorials that day, and plan on making my Cupertino pilgrimage. Starting Wednesday, I'll be attending sessions and will attempt to blog everything I can, and photograph all the nerds with my Nikon 4300. I'd like a chance to meet up with any other webloggers who may be at the conference (which will likely be most of the attendees, so this shouldn't be hard).

I'm going to try to do everything I can to get the most out of the conference.

Even Dolphins hate Saddam.

2003-03-25T14:23:37-05:00

Dolphins are helping out in the US led war against Iraq by searching for under water mines. Meanwhile, many people on shore don't have drinking water. That contrast is shocking.

Poor kitty.

2003-03-23T16:32:36-05:00

This image seems to be making the rounds recently, but I'm not exactly sure where it originally came from. At the very least, this cat seems to know it's been violated, and is unhappy about it.

Glasshaus is dead.

2003-03-15T21:58:29-05:00

This was posted to the Webdesign list today. It's bad news because Glasshaus made User Interface, Info Architecture and User Experience oriented books. The Ed books were pretty good too, I don't care about Wrox though...

From:	"Hugh Blair"
To:	"'Webdesign-L'"
Date:	Sat, March 15, 2003 12:24 am
Subject:	RE: [WD]: [OT]: Glasshaus and Friends of ED: RIP?

> -----Original Message----- > > > I hear that Wrox is dead too.

Dear all

Please note that Peer Information, our parent company, has just been declared officially insolvent (bankrupt). This means that all current book projects end immediately and there will be no more friends of ED books.

All of us that worked here are now unemployed. Please accept my apologies for the sudden announcement, but it came as a bolt out of the blue to all of us here - we knew the company had been in trouble but had been led to believe it would be able to pull through, this turned out not to be the case.

Further to my communication regarding placing Peer Information into liquidation, I would like to clarify that Peer Information includes the following legal entities:

- Wrox Press Ltd
- Friends of Ed Ltd

Wrox Press Ltd also trades as: Glasshaus, Curlingstone, Active Path and Tect.

UCLA Surveys the Digital Future.

2003-03-11T16:19:05-05:00

I attended this thing at work today where Jeffery Cole, a Ph.D. at the UCLA Center for Communication Policy (see inset) spoke about current internet trends. It was pretty interesting, but I felt that one major hole in is presentation was bilateral media communications (eg, blogs).

Anyway, here's a bulleted list of some of the things he spoke about (notes were taken in real time, and thus punctuation and grammar are assumed to be absent)...

Surveying the Digital Future
Year Three: The Emergence of Trends
Jeffery Cole, Ph.D.
Director, UCLA Center for Communication Policy
The UCLA Internet Report, 2002
-----------------------------------------

Intro for Cole emphasizing social and economic impacts of digital media on society.

Cole apparently arranged the Info Superhighway conference with Al Gore nine years ago. Today he stands on a stage, bathed in a projected AOL logo talking about the impact of the net on the social fabric.

Today 14 year olds are watching less TV, and this confirms the fact that bilateral communications are attracting people away from TV.

In interviews with a random sample, 5% of Americans appear to NOT be online for the simple reason that everyone else is.

He feels that the gap between Broadband users and modem users is wider then the gap between modem users and non-users. "Broadband changes everything." (And I agree, due to the simple fact the immediacy of data interaction creates a seamless experience, and allows the user to concentrate on the data and the experience instead of the delivery of it. The mental shift between the meaning of the data and the delivery of it creates roadblocks.)

59% of Americans are online. 42% of the rest expect to go online soon (within 12 months) but that might be a hopeful statistic.

Hours per week usage has increased about 2 hours/week in two years.

As people gain internet experience, their usage and online time increases. A bar graph shows a relatively linear increase.

The graph for "at home" connections is vastly modem based, but broadband connections of growing pretty well. WebTV is on the decline. Cable modem seeing the greatest numeric increase.

Internet use is sapping time away from of-line media activities, except in the case of movies.

Broadband use impacts TV advert watching and modem use impacts general TV watching. Broadband use tends to be more atomic, as in, bite sized chunks, perfect for preempting commercials.

My obligatory snow storm post.

2003-02-19T15:12:21-05:00

Maybe my baby will want to rock out.

2003-02-11T09:07:36-05:00

CNN reports that "Lollapalooza set to return after six-year hiatus" and I'm pretty psyched about it because Jane's Addiction is slated to perform. Over a decade ago I used to hang out with my high school friends a lot and skateboard and listen to Jane's. I saw their last club date and their first arena date (for the Ritual tour) and was really blown away by how bad Perry sounds at the beginning of a show and how good at the end. I also managed to make it to the second and third incarnations of Lollapalooza, which pretty much sucked (imho).

This spring, more than a decade after my last Perry Ferrel sighting, my wife will give birth to our first child (a girl! whoot!). I wonder how many other new parents will show up to Lollapalooza this year with a 'baby or board' sticker in their Sedan.

Career Control is the key.

2003-02-07T14:31:51-05:00

C|Net reports on worker dissatisfaction...

The study said that one of the reasons workers are so grumpy is because managers wrongly interpret why employees are so disgruntled. Some of the major reasons that workers cite for their unhappiness are: amount of workload, a lack of a chance for professional development, boring job tasks and insufficient recognition.

Meanwhile, managers mistakenly believe that employees' feelings about management and the future of the company were more important to job satisfaction than workers' personal goals. In fact, the opposite is true. The study also found that managers underestimate the importance of many factors contributing to workplace satisfaction, including career development opportunities, rewards, challenging tasks, and a sense of self-confidence.

When management hands down edicts that directly contradict the business model of the company and are obviously tailored to self preservation, at the expense of doing good work, I get pissed.

It's institutionalized. Companies create systems where by people get promoted based on how many people they manage, or by being connected to the right projects at the right time. That creates a system whereby individuals seek out the situations that will benefit them the best (we are after all, human) at the expense of others. Human nature gets leveraged by corporate ignorance of the real work being done by the coal shovelers, and this creates fear and loathing when you have no control over the process. The article cited mentions "self-confidence" as a factor, but for me, it's career control. I want to feel like the work I am doing is better preparing me for what is next in my career.