Archives for January 2003

Halley: “..transfixed by the picture of Professor Lessig on his blog.” [Scripting News]

Why Britain needs more guns. As gun crime leaps by 35% in a year, plans are afoot for a further crack down on firearms. Yet what we need is more guns, not fewer. [BBC News | UK | UK Edition]

I’m planning the blogging website for Harvard in my head, and thought of a question I’d like to ask Harvard students and faculty. Would you like to participate in a project to create knowledge? I would have liked that question when I was a student. Of course! Yes yes yes. That’s why I came to college. But there were so few ways for students to participate when I was a student. I wonder if it’s like that at Harvard. I think about the Yahoo guys at Stanford and how inspired they were. What if a university like Harvard, not just a few students, got busy mapping the world of knowledge on the Internet. Each student would take responsibility for some period of time for some aspect of world knowledge. When they graduate they pass it on, or even better, take the responsibility with them, into life. Does any of this make sense? I’m beta testing ideas here as I go. [Scripting News]

Kmart Closes 326 Stores and Eliminates Over 30,000 Jobs. Kmart Corp. will close 326 stores and cut 30,000-35,000 jobs as it works to emerge from bankruptcy by April 30, the retailer said today. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

cs 1.6: hands-on. cs-nation updates [CS-Nation]

Cut off the head and the body dies.

Nobody seems to be missing Steve Case.

Consider this possibility: As much as he may have fucked up the merger with Time Warner, and mismanaged everything since, Steve Case was the only guy who could have saved AOL.

That’s what I thought last Summer, when Steve still had his job. Now he’s gone, and AOL is toast.

Time Warner was, and will remain, a media company. With few exceptions (hell, I can’t think of any, except maybe (and very partially ÷ see half the items below) the New York Times ÷ maybe ya’ll can help me here) media companies don’t get the Net.

[Later…] Lance Knobel names two, both in the UK.

How can you tell if they do?

1. They expose their archives, so search engines can crawl them
   
2. They don’t move around (and 404) their archives
   
3. They don’t refer to their customers as “consumers”
   
4. They do everything they can to make it easy for people to find and use their goods
   
5. They know, instinctively, that doing all the above yields greater value in authority than whatever value in dollars they obtain by selling yesterday’s or last week’s bird-cage liner
   
6. They don’t labor to dumb down technologies, so readers, viewers or listeners are forced to endure unwanted advertising
   
7. They value and work to improve interoperability
   
8. They don’t try to improve on the vacuum-filled end-to-end stupidity of the Net itself
   
9. They embrace and extend the Net’s own infrastructure (which provides that end-to-end stupidity)
   
10. They don’t sit quietly with their thumbs up their asses when powerful entertainment lobbies railroad laws and regulations that limit or eliminate the ability of innovative media enterprises (including themselves) to do business

[The Doc Searls Weblog]

I was a resident of Illinois for two years (birth to a bit after age two, before we moved back to Indiana).  More than four generations of my mother’s family lived and died – and are buried in Illinois – my parents will lie to rest there, as well.

While scandal tainted his office from the start, Governor Ryan showed a particular amount of character and political courage this week when he pardoned and issued clemency to all members of Death Row.

Granted that this was a bit extreme – the citizens of Illinois did elect him – and this was well within his power to grant.  Given the circumstances and information than has been learned about the death sentence in Illinois – he made the right decision – and I shall always admire him for it.

“I’m going to sleep well tonight…”. Even if the exercise of my power becomes my burden, I will bear it. … I sought this office, and even in my final days of holding it, I can’t shrink from the obligations to justice and fairness that it demands. … I’m going to sleep well tonight knowing I made the right decision. -Illinois Governor George Ryan announcing blanket commutation for all Illinois Death Row inmates. For the first time in a very long time, I’m proud of the state (Illinois) I live in. I’m proud, not because of some fleeting sports championship, or some other silly thing, but because of the moral courage of its elected leader, Gov. George Ryan. In the last forty-eight hours, Ryan (R-Kankakee) took the unprecedented steps of pardoning four death row inmates, and granting a blanket clemency to the remaining 164 inmates sentenced to death. [kuro5hin.org]