Media

A Call to AOL

And hey, if that doesn't motivate you, maybe this will: There's no way Bill Gates will do it. In fact, there's no way he can.
— Doc Searls

3:17:53 PM # Google It!
categories: Industry, Media

Making money off connecting people

No way in Hell is content king.

Classmates is the bomb. They really hook you into providing information about yourself. I'm running across friends, enemies, and girls I had a crush on in elementary school. And I'm this close to giving them $36 so I can reach some of these people — after only 10 minutes of using the site.

Now I'm recommending it to my friends.

11:57:54 AM # Google It!
categories: Industry, Media

Psst, Mac, wanna buy a vowel?

Ray Ozzie wrote an excellent essay on non-discretionary access controls, a/k/a mandatory access controls. These are requirements, "controls that can involuntarily release you of your control." In the analog world, the command "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is a non-discretionary access control, as is "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

In the essay he examines the difficulty of implementing them in Notes and Groove.

But more than once, I've been shocked by a user who has been using Groove for months and months, and then points out "Do you mean that one of the other members of the Shared Space can copy & paste the shared data to a different shared space, sharing it with someone else, without my permission???"

I've run into that. There's a great lack of understanding of how computers work, aggravated by Marketing's misinformation in advertisements. For some reason, if you use a computer, you can get everything done faster. It's not like you have to wait for the computer. This directly affects customer expectations, so I spent a good deal of time lowering expectations when I worked at AlphaGraphics.

But what I don't understand is the lack of understanding of the computer as a communications device. Do you not gossip over the back fence? Did you think the secret you told would stay secret?

9:16:46 AM # Google It!
categories: Law, Media, Security

Spin

Theirs:

Media chief decries Net's moral fiber
The president of News Corp. warns that the Internet's future is threatened by porn, spam and rampant piracy. He condemns the medium's "enormous amount" of worthless content.

Mine:

Media chief running scared.
The president of News Corp. warns that their future is threatened by the "enormous amount" of worthless advertising on the Internet

8:40:36 AM # Google It!
categories: Media

I'm so happy with my feet on the ground
So happy, my head spins around
Quite content to sit on this fence
Quite content now a little bit older

The mirror people one day shall be free
The mirror people laugh at you and laugh at me
The mirror people, know not how to cry
So they scream, the mirror people scream inside
— "Mirror People," Earth, Sun, Moon, Love & Rockets

8:22:41 AM #
categories: Media