Scripting News

Wed, 02 Oct 2002 01:22:23 GMT

Onion: "The Recording Industry Association of America filed a $7.1 billion lawsuit against the nation's radio stations Monday, accusing them of freely distributing copyrighted music." Heh.

Wed, 02 Oct 2002 00:51:38 GMT

MusicDish: "In a shocking statement made by Back Street Boy, Kevin Richardson, he testified that they have never received a royalty check."

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 23:20:31 GMT

List of modules for RSS 1.0 that may also work with 2.0.

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 23:24:27 GMT

Just heard Aaron Swartz on NPR's Marketplace talking about warchalking. Good job.

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 19:24:48 GMT

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 22:23:08 GMT

Shitty season? Fire the manager.

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 16:58:37 GMT

NY Times: "The 70 percent decline in the share price of AOL Time Warner since the merger has reduced Mr Turner's personal fortune, once more than $9 billion, most of it in company stock."

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 22:28:48 GMT

AP: "AOL Time Warner chairman Steve Case expressed confidence about the troubled media conglomerate's future on Tuesday, and indicated that he sees his role at the company continuing."

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 15:17:16 GMT

Reading this article about Microsoft's strategy for Web Services, something clicked. What if the telephone had been positioned by Microsoft as a tool for business process automation. It would be hard to argue that it wasn't that. But is that all it is? Of course not! (And what's so weird about this is that Microsoft made the most money selling productivity tools, and OSes to run the tools, unless I missed something in the last twenty-five years or so.)

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 15:32:07 GMT

Another angle on the same subject. Yesterday on NPR's All Things Considered, a report on a college town in the state of Georgia that's installing WiFi over the whole downtown district. The college is paying for it (only $85K). Of course this is a great idea, it'll make the college much more attractive and the town more useful. But they totally have the wrong idea about what it will be used for (or ATC asked the wrong people). It will be used for email, instant messaging, reading news, and blogging (and probably porn too). It's not just about finding out what's happening in the town or at the college -- it's about what's happening in the world, and creating stuff that's part of the world. People still think of the Internet as something like TV, so by extrapolation of course town-level WiFi must be like local TV, but geez folks, get a clue -- the Internet is two-way not one-way.

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 16:35:43 GMT

Jeremy Zawodny is blogging the O'Reilly OS X conference.

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 15:59:41 GMT

Halley's Comment: When Two Syllables Just Won't Do.

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 17:37:07 GMT

Another modern website that's impossible to read.

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 15:09:18 GMT

Chris Gulker's friend Clark Atkinson bought a nice $8,000 dog house. In 1965, my parents bought a nice three bedroom people house for $32,000.

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 15:05:11 GMT

Adam Curry on his new TV show: "Showing me blogging about the show is kinda like inhaling your own exhaust." Coool!

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 14:34:32 GMT

Daniel Berlinger on progress in RSS: "It seems like breakage will be nil, and extensibility preserved. This is a marvelous outcome."

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 16:24:29 GMT

From Central India comes this shocking news: "The NDA government at the Centre is run by RSS."

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 14:19:19 GMT

Looks like Google changed their ranking algorithm recently, maybe yesterday. To give you an idea what happened, in June if you searched for Dave I was number one, then I slipped to number two, now I'm number four. I still think this is ridiculous, I rank higher than The Dave Matthews Band. Hello. They're famous, I'm an iconoclast, at best (on a good day). But I'm irked that Scripting News isn't on the top page when you search for weblog. I think it clearly belongs there. Bottom-line, I think Google's algorithm is quirky, or the implementation is buggy, or both. When it first came out it was a miracle. Now I expect more. It's good if they're fixing bugs. When people say they're taking food out of their family's mouth, I think they should get a real job. Depending on the vagaries of an algorithm programmed by engineers at a VC-backed Silicon Valley dotcom-vestigial company is not a good idea. A bit of friendly advice.. Don't tell the loan officer at the bank that's how you're making your mortgage payments. ";->"

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 19:03:09 GMT

BTW, I tried changing the title to Scripting News Weblog, and then Dave Winer's Scripting News Weblog, as hints for Google, but it didn't make any difference in its rankings under Weblog or Dave. Getting lots of email on this. Some of it pretty nasty. Amazing what people get upset about.

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 15:49:16 GMT

Adam Curry is the number three Adam on Google today, ahead of Adam Smith, Adam Sandler, and the guy who did the deed with Eve.