Saturday, July 29, 2000
i can see wha al ries is saying about internet business, but i have to say that there are two choices you can make. buy the lowest price, where branding doesn't matter, because you're finding that low price from a search engine like pricewatch, or buy from a site consistently because it is able to offer you personalized service that is impossible to get offline, and that becomes more useful as you use it more.
also, ries (or the author ochman, it's not clear) talks about shoppers using the internet for research but making purchases traditionally, which may be true when your talking about large purchases (cars), but doesn't make sense for small things that you buy regularly consumer goods (electronics, media, etc) - which you buy a heck of a lot more often than a car.
epitonic has a good eclectic mix of quality music. currently streaming some breakbeat, but i'll probably be checking out the indie rock stuff later on.
Friday, July 28, 2000
electric sheep web comics.issue2.contents
ooh, scripts, including an early draft of the x-men. i recall reading the magneto and scott summers prologues elsewhere, but not the rest i think. either that, or my memory is failing me...
i had forgotten that i have a more or less permanent forwarding email account at leonard@acm.org
dan gillmor makes some interesting comments on the long-term effects of free media, particularly on how it's affected the newpaper industry thus far.
i've been mulling over this a bit. in the net environment, it's hard, and most likely counterproductive to try to control the bits, whereas previously, controlling distribution was the most logical way to do it. but if you think about it, if someone wanted to, they could have taped / photocopied, hand transcribed a copy if they wanted to, it was just a pain in the butt. hmm, is this going anywhere? anyway, since people don't feel it's worth paying for news, what are the options (for monetizing): advertising supported model (journalistic integrity gets blurred if this is the only revenue stream), wait for micropayments and hope something works out (people are too used to getting free stuff, and it will flow as long as the large competition has money to burn), or offer a non-piratable value add. the last one involves offering a service, which can be controlled easier server-side. as long as it's sufficiently convenient, people will use, enjoy and pay for it.
so, my theory is that people may not pay for news, but people probably would pay for personalized service, like aggregation, searching, possibly even community features, umm. maybe
depressing corporatism, reported from the front lines.
besides having a kickass site, 37signals prove themselves to be uberkool by also having a kickass blog.
i just got an ad in my icq window while sending an url. that sucks. it was an annoying blinky nsi ad too. grr
along the lines of ascii art, i haveta mention that FIGlet is awesome.
__ __ _ __ / /_/ /_ (_)____ _______ __/ /__ _____ / __/ __ \/ / ___/ / ___/ / / / / _ \/ ___/ / /_/ / / / (__ ) / / / /_/ / / __(__ ) \__/_/ /_/_/____/ /_/ \__,_/_/\___/____/
vignette btw, has trouble with this because the backslash is an escape character. also, the square brackets are reserved characters for the tcl interpreter, which is a real bitch if you include javascript in your template.
heheh, balthaser is like skipintro turned into a whole site. i think the equation is:
(gabocorp + 2 year of special effects) * lots of time - common sense
sure it looks impressive (for the most part), but, the whole thing strikes me as wrong. (ie, way overdone, can not be serious). besides, even marketoids know that you can't make a flash ebusiness site if you break the back button and bookmarks. see, jakob neilsen is good for something.
more than you ever wanted to know about mpeg 4
Thursday, July 27, 2000
using png2html, i was able to convert a picture of myself (vertical compressed to compensate for character height) i had to colored ascii. weeee.
this ascii tux is pretty frickin cool. not quite as cool as tty quake however. [ascii tux and lots other related tidbits via mefi
hmm, do i have $2500 burning a hole in my pockets? ... canon eos d30 coming in september with a 2nd positive report.
i should be able to easily link / match earlier references, searching by keyword, category, etc. also, this entry should be an element in a scratchpad attached to a project.
cool, arsdigita has adopted the openacs sdm (software development manager) for the acs. on a semi-related note, it's amazing how much more attractive editing in emacs becomes after you've been editing code in a piss-poor custom java text editor application all week.
a lot of funky url rewriting and related stuff can be done with apache's mod_rewrite.
th u2log has a way better design than u2.com. also, they steal the one worthwhile feature from u2.com, the webcam pics.
grr, gnutella hoses the cable connection i'm on. i knew it was bad, but i finally did some tests today. it's especially weird because it's supposedly only transferring 5-10kbps.
before: round-trip min/avg/max = 66.9/197.5/419.5 ms
during: round-trip min/avg/max = 198.0/1427.3/2913.5 ms
after: round-trip min/avg/max = 62.3/260.5/1123.7 ms
the lowdown on msdn's redesigned table of contents.
dict.org has links to dictionary files and other fun (dictionary related) stuff.
Wednesday, July 26, 2000
to read: code and other laws of cyberspace
cool, google has streamlined their page a bit.
after reading a recent nytimes article on senator leahy, i dropped him a supportive note at his site, and despite selecting the no response necessary form option, got one today anyways. which isn't a bad thing, as it points to statements made on the senate hearing on internet music distribution, as well as a list of his recent press releases. among the recent ones are two of background on the sheep seizure in vermont, and also his reaction to the proposed legislation to update wiretapping laws and encryption rules.
i am still waiting to get a response from senator feinstein's office. i sent a message after finding out that the hr 2987, the methamphetamine anti-proliferation act, also attached as a rider on hr 833, the bankruptcy reform act (makes lots of sense, right) originally started life as senate bill 1428 last year, co-sponsored by feinstein. basically the bill tromps all over the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments, which of course is really stupid (of course, historically speaking, the "war on drugs" has never taken the logical or smart path in reducing drug use or harm prevention). more info on what you can do at the eff or from the lp.
any politician willing to give up my constitutional rights for their pet concern gets no respect from me. in the words of our old friend ben franklin, Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety
interesting thread on what's the best implementation of moderation. my current thinking, is that everyone moderates is a good idea. i'm torn right now in how to weigh the moderation, or if filtering should be on by default, and if it is turned on, if it should filter by threads or what... of course, i have yet to read the w3-collaboration notes or made much of a dent in other collaboration reading. i really need to take some time off and just go through my "to read" folder. wayy to much stuff gathering there.
haven't posted much recently because i've been busy, doing vignette training.
communities, content syndication, and commercial interests, good discussion, found it searching for some more info on scoop in light of kuro5hin's recent travails. kmself made an interesting comment on /.
What pains me is that the Three Big Weblogs (TBW) have portions of the solution. Slashdot has filtering tools. K5 has a good moderation system. Advogato has a good membership vetting system. However, the pieces need to be put together. Having them on seperate systems doesn't quite cut it.
Monday, July 24, 2000
instant runoff voting is a pretty cool idea.
As for third parties, it's really another dynamic--the fact that voting your third-party favorite ends up helping the guy you hate the most. This can be fixed with instant runoff voting: You pick your first choice, second, third, etc. Count up all the first-choice votes. If no one gets over 50%, eliminate the candidate with the least, take all the people who voted for him as first-choice, and count their second-choice votes. Continue until one candidate has over 50%.
rocket arena 3, now with new "true-lightning" client-side option to stiffen your shaft.
lots of interesting links on scripting news today. one of those is to go.com's recently open-sourced cms. pretty cool news.
Sunday, July 23, 2000
an interesting thread on the microsoft mentality. makes me hope no one i know ends up working there (and losing grip of reality).
cancelled one of my credit cards today because i was so cheezed off by their crappy customer support.
stephen kings new internet experiment seems to be something along the lines of counterpane's street performer protocol. the idea is that if paythrough surpasses 75% of the downloads, he'll write another installment. personally, i think that while the idea can work, asking for checks or money orders is silly (paypal anyone?). also, it'd be fairer to readers to also set a solid dollar threshold - i mean, come on, if he ends up getting a million downloads, but only 50% pay, will the half million not be fair compensation for his work? would that be fair to the people who paid in good faith? it can be that even that the 50% who didn't pay (or even 30%) just didn't like the book...
with all that being said, however, i have to say that the idea brings a smile to my face. it's a good first step. incremental improvements: create an automatic account for each person who buys a book. give them an option to participate within a community w/ there purchase. provide personalization (store the books for em, etc.) that's only available with a purchase. i think that ultimately, that's the best way to sell digital, provide value adds that make it better and simpler to buy than steal. i do share stephen kings opinion that most people do fundamentally want to support artists. it's just being made too inconvenient right now.
He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. -- George Orwell, 1984, 1948
cryptome seems to be down, but i was able to find a mirror. some good stuff there.
Cybersenator Defends the Net. this is a cool little piece in last week's nytimes about senator Patrick J Leahy. it's nice to know that there's someone on our side in there.
i was rereading the dune, 7th book speculation, and have started reading the fanfic dune revenant. hopefully it won't suck.
beast machines looks interesting, but i wonder how it affects the old cartoon / comics continuity. in my quest to find out some more, i happened upon a great transformers site that has a complete comic book guide recapping everything that happened. you can start from issue 1 and relive it all!