Status-Q

Two related recent announcements are both welcome:

A US court decision that file-swapping is not illegal.

"The ruling means that the labels and studios cannot ban 21st century technology in defence of their inefficient and outmoded 20th century distribution model," said President of Grokster, Wayne Rosso.

[Original Link] John helps get RSS into the public consciousness.

[Original Link] (from MacCentral)

[Original Link] An advertising classic. More info about how it was made here.

Deserves a place alongside the Apple '1984' ad, of which more here. If you want a really in-depth look at the Apple ad and its place in history, I suggest this paper by Ted Friedman.

[Original Link] [link from the Guardian Online blog]

[Original Link] Richard Cohen: A Media Empire's Injustices. "Since 1917 the Pulitzer Prizes -- named for their creator, the 19th-century press baron Joseph Pulitzer -- have been awarded to encourage excellence in journalism. I happen to think that more could be accomplished with a prize for the worst in journalism. It should be called the Murdoch...." [link from Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

[Original Link] Here's a view of this weblog as seen in Chandler 0.1:

Good to know that it runs on Mac OS X. Even better to know that it's mostly written in Python.

[Original Link] Thanks to Adam Curry for the link.

[Original Link] While not wanting to compare myself in any way with Mitch Kapor (!), this has happened all too often to me, in minor ways, so I can understand his sentiments:

"... Journalistic misrepresentation like this is fairly common. CNET also got it wrong, something I wrote about early on in this weblog. I used to get really angry when this happened. Lately, I feel more half-irritated, half-amused by life's foibles. Journalists taking the easy way out is a fact of life I'm not going to have much impact on.

In hindsight, I think it was naive of me to believe in the assurances I was given. . I'll bear it in mind in the future and pick my interview spots more carefully.

Finally, it's fortunate that a weblog is a wonderful, alternate, and complementary forum in which to speak directly, thus by-passing the intermediation of formal media. "

[Original Link] John Naughton's blog had a link to this interesting article by Philip Greenspun about the MIT Media Lab's mode of operation, which in turn was a response to this Wired article about its current funding crisis and likely future.

When I visited the Lab a few years back, I, like many others, thought, "this is fun, but who pays for it?" I was a student at the time, and so I didn't worry too much about these things. But I was working on similar stuff, and so was glad that somebody, or some bodies, had the vision to fund the wacky stuff.

The Media Lab is a bit like manned spaceflight. It probably doesn't make sense, the funders seldom get their money back, there are more efficient ways to use resources, and so on. But the world would be a much less interesting place to live in without it. I hope it survives. Or that something more exciting, rather than just more practical, rises up to replace it.