Over the Edge

Mc-Graw Hill is closing its wonderful bookstore in the basement of its building.

"The space is so subterranean that it's more suitable as a destination like a health club than as retail space," said Faith Consolo, vice chairman of Garrick-Aug, a real estate firm.

She misses the point. The stuff in the MGH Bookstore was so specialized and esoteric, that only a motivated buyer would want to seek it out.

The space will become a health club (sort of the opposite of the bookstore, no?); it'll be the third health club within a three-block radius. Seems that no one wants to go out of their way to hit the gym -- which makes just tons of sense, doesn't it?

Timex has a new watch that uses GPS to tell you how far and how fast you've excercized. The GPS unit, by Garmin, straps onto your upper arm, and connects to the watch part using low-power FM (what -- no Bluetooth?).

The 50-lap version costs $200; a 100-lap version costs $225. It occurs to me: if you're doing laps, why precisely do you need GPS to tell you where you are? Interestingly, the watch does not seem to display your location -- only how fast you're moving, how far you've come.and similar lap-related functions. And, of course, the time. But not your actual location, making it kind of worthless for a lot of applications. (Question: can this be hacked?)

They're out of stock, but they promise more by Father's Day.

I'm not much of a fan of Michael Wolff. For those who came in late, Wolff invented the NetGuide series of books in the early '90s, and "sold" CMP Publications a) the right to start a magazine called NetGuide (which I later edited) and b) his database from his NetGuide book, all for the bargain price of $1 million. The latter was worthless and the former wasn't his to sell. Then Wolff went on to found an online service that cratered memorably, all of which recounted in his book Burn Rate.

Wolff somehow parlayed all this failure into a gig as the media columnist for New York Magazine. The column impressed me so much that I let my subscription to the magazine lapse, but this column about the music business impressed me mightily.

Wolff argues that the economics and the structure of the music industry have changed to the point that rock stars won't be able to act like, well, rock stars anymore. Rather, the record businesss is looking more and more like the book business. Provocative and persuasive stuff.

A colleague on one of my e-mail lists sent around a list of "more wierd facts." The bold comments are mine.

More Wierd Facts: Did you know...

It is impossible to lick your elbow.

A crocodile can't stick its tongue out.

A shrimp's heart is in its head.

In a study of 200,000 ostriches over a period of 80 years, no one
reported a single case where an ostrich buried its head in the sand.

It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a
telephone call.

Horses can't vomit.

The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest
tongue twister in the English language.

If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress
a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.
If you keep your eyes open by force, they can pop out.

Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a
million descendants.

Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your
ear by 700 times.

If the government has no knowledge of aliens, then why does Title 14,
Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations, implemented on July 16,
1969, make it illegal for U.S. citizens to have any contact with
extraterrestrials or their vehicles?

In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.

A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.

23% of all photocopier faults worldwide are caused by people sitting on
them and photocopying their butts.

Most lipstick contains fish scales.

Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.

Over 75% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow.

The accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has changed its name. Henceforth, it will be known as:

Monday

No joke. Monday. As in www.monday.com. As in, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences will have its Academy Awards tallied by Monday. (Since the Oscars telecast is usually on a Sunday, that could be a problem.)

Sheesh. Monday. As in "I Don't Like Mondays." And they paid someone for this?

(By the way, domains for the other days of the week are already taken.)

Stumbled across this 'blog, apparently published over in Park Slope. Pretty good stuff, especially this item.
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Earthlink, the online service, has bought the PC manufacturer (well, assembler) PeoplePC. This is interesting for a bunch of reasons.

• They only paid $10 million (plus assuming $34 million in debt). Though I haven't looked at any financials -- what, you want me to do research at these prices? -- that seems low for a company that had established itself as a national brand through some pretty good advertising.


• Why would an online service buy a hardware company? It surely isn't because hardware has such terrific margins. Earthlink plainly wants to be a one-stop shopper for online access. Communications turns out to be the killer app after all. Getcher e-mail, web, access and smarter-than-the-average terminal all in one place.


• The next step, I bet, is for Earthlink to not sell the computers at all, but include the hardware in your monthly fee: $35 for dialup access, $60 for DSL access, $100 for DSL with hardware.


• When online services begin giving you the hardware, and the hardware becomes solely a communications device, Microsoft's position on the desktop becomes tenuous indeed. Earthlink could use pretty much any OS it wants -- even a custom one -- if all they're providing is a computer terminal.


• The last interesting point is that I learned about this story in The Hollywood Reporter. Interesting place for tech news, no?

I'm still working on my full answer to this, but Walter Cronkite gets at least some of the answer right: if you're going to call yourself a journo, be prepared to be held to those standards -- not that that's saying much these days.
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This bad, apparently.

The record industry is calling the radio business corrupt. I myself am shocked, shocked to hear that. Could it be remotely possible that the real problem with record sales isn't that people are stealing music but that, with the Communications Act of 1996, Congress and the last two presidential administrations broke the promotional mechanism that drove both industries?

From Ernie the Attorney. Personally, I don't think the guy has a case. Everyone knows it's the tenor players who get the chicks.

Tried Vanilla Coke tonight. Not bad, actually, but don't be expecting Coca-Cola. It looks like Coke, and even has Coke's slightly citrus smell. But it tastes like a pretty good cream soda. Which is good, since that's what a vanilla soda is supposed to taste like.

Astronomers say an asteroid moving at 10 kps came within 75,000 miles of the Earth last week. They didn't see it until three days after it would have hit.

From CNN:

The destructive force might have been comparable to an asteroid or comet that exploded over Siberia in 1908, which flattened 77 square miles (200 square km) of trees, according to the NEO.

Wouldn't that have ruined your day...

Story in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week about plans to build a bridge between the Italian mainland and the island of Sicily. It's been talked about since roughly the third century (A.D.), but Italian officials say now that this is the time.

The suspension bridge will be two miles long -- three times longer than the Golden Gate. It'll cross one of the most active seismic faults in the world and will no doubt be worked on by contractors with ties to the Sicilian Mafia. Sounds like something you'll want to be the first one to drive over, doesn't it?

The cornerstone is to laid in 2004, with completion set for 2010 at a cost of 4.6 billion euros. You'll pardon me if I don't leave my car idling while I wait.

Much as I enjoy writing this weblog, the question keeps coming up: "So, you making any money at this?" Well, no, and that's not the point. But even if I wanted to, I don't think the plumbing of the weblog universe would let me.

So, why not?

Many of you know that there is a growing class of weblogs that speak to each other through "news aggregators;" the one you're reading right now is one of them. When I post an item here, some unknown number of other weblog authors read that item on a customized web page, from which they can post the item on their own weblog. It makes for a very fast and efficient way of disseminating news and opinion.

This strikes me -- in theory, at least -- as an excellent way for professional news gatherers to distribute information to paying clients. I know a ton of un- and semi-employed journos all over the world, and it would be an interesting exercise to get them filing real news for pay.

Here's what would be required to make that work:

• a multiuser weblog that


• allows for content categorization and


• which generates material for a news aggregator that


• can be kept out of the public eye.

An electronic commerce addition might be interesting too, so that sites could subscribe on a monthly or annual basis, or that casual readers could see an abstract and pay on a per-story basis. Given the prior lack of success for micropayments, I wouldn't expect anyone to rush to develop that last one. There are other ways outside the weblog mechanism to handle subscriptions, so this might be a blind alley.

But those first four points are a must. And while the most advanced weblog plumbing that I know of -- Radio Userland, which I use for this weblog -- can handle the first three, I know of no way to keep an aggregator restricted to only people who are authorized to see it.

(Tracking infringers down, of course, is a simple matter of using Google or Daypop. Can't run, can't hide in a digital world.)

So all you wizards: can this be done? Is next week too soon?

As usual, The Shifted Librarian just Gets It. Here's part of her expansion on my idea:

Or what about the library paying for a subscription to an online serial that makes it available to residents. Theoretically, a user with a valid library barcode would go to the library's web site, enter the barcode, and be authenticated through to the full version. But what if that journal provided an RSS feed? Abstracts are available to everyone, but if your barcode number is entered in your aggregator, when you click through on a link, you see the full story. Think about what a great service this would be for medical libraries to provide to their physicians!

Or here's another idea - what about an AP or Reuters made up of bloggers. Newspapers could subscribe to the service and pick up stories, and so could libraries. In a way, the concept isn't that far removed from NewsIsFree, to which the library would then subscribe.

This last, of course, is why I'm so interested in authenticating aggregators (though I'm pained that Peggy didn't mention my own Alma Mater, UPI). Where my thoughts differ from NewsIsFree is that I'm talking about actually generating new content -- maybe targeted to a narrow audience, but maybe not -- instead of repackaging what others have created.

My mom brought this interesting NYTimes article to my attention. My wife, the Lovely and Curious Olivia, came up with the headline. (For the geeks among you, I'm typing this at the dining table over my Wi-Fi network.)

One day, though, a computer chip may do some of the work of a damaged hippocampus, replacing living neurons with silicon ones... The shrinking of the hippocampus is thought to indicate early cognitive impairment that is a precursor to Alzheimer's disease. A chip such as the one envisioned by Dr. Berger might one day help combat not only the ravages associated with Alzheimer's, but also language deficits that result from stroke and memory problems associated with epilepsy as well.

"Ninety percent of everything is crap."

--Theodore Sturgeon.

Check out John Stanley and Ernie the Attorney via The Shifted Librarian for some thoughts about the legal system and the Internet. As Mr. Stanley writes:

A cyber Code of Hammurabi will not suffice. There was no artificial intelligence in Babylon. Another Magna Carta will be required, another Grotius, another Blackstone. Within the body of law that does not yet exist Dred Scott and Marbury v. Madison may seem trivial or quaint.

To interpret the music of the spheres where computers and the law intersect requires an ability to read the score and hit a moving target. It is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff when the wind is blowing at the speed of light."

Pardon me, but this is ridiculously overblown, and really kind of a surprisingly juvenile approach to the law to be coming from a bunch of lawyers. Law exists to resolve disputes, rarely to anticipate them. In most cases, first law that resolves a dispute doesn't come from a legislature, it comes from a court; that's why/how the law is a living thing.

Furthermore, law that comes from a court, in the vast majority of cases, is based on precedent, which is little more than a fancy word for prior experience. To suggest that we need "another Magna Carta" is to suggest that the Internet is beyond the experience of those who are creating it. This, of course, is nonsense.

To quote myself from the July 1995 NetGuide, "Nothing happens online that doesn't happen in the real world." Though the Net adds some fascinating questions to a ton of areas -- particularly the notions of "ownership" and "location" -- The Net is nothing like uncharted territory. To suggest that it is somehow otherwise is to invite all sorts of unpleasant mischief.

The Net changes everything. The Net changes nothing.

The astronomers who discovered the color of the universe (and then changed their mind, like any good homeowner) have given the color a name: Cosmic Latte. Their colleagues helped pick. Here are their Top 10 choices.

I kind of liked "Big Bang Buff" myself. Sounds maybe a bit too much like a porn star, though.

Sudden thought: has anyone filed a trademark yet on Cosmic Latte?

I always feel kind of naked when I show up at the airport without a paper ticket. I'm grateful that I have one less thing to lose, but I worry that when I walk up to the counter, it'll be like making the maitre d' "find" the "missing" reservation, or persuading the auto rental clerk that a confirmed reservation means she actually has to give me a car. More seriously, there are still significant problems in getting one airline's e-ticket honored by another, if you need to change your flight.

American Airlines said today that they plan to move to all-electronic ticketing by the end of next year, and that starting next week, a paper ticket will cost you $20. The kicker, though, is in the last graf:

As part of this initiative, American will implement 100 percent interline e-ticketing with those carriers that can meet the technical standards and will eliminate such agreements with carriers that cannot. Interline agreements among carriers allow baggage interchanges, passenger transfers and other transactions.

I read that to mean that if an airline doesn't honor American's e-tickets by the end of 2003, don't count on being able to do an interline ticket or baggage transfer. It'll be interesting to see how American's competitors respond.

Very interesting item on bOing bOing this evening. Seems that this first wave of broadband users is as interested in -- if not more interested in -- creating content than consuming it. This might have ramifications for the architecture of the Net itself, which is based on having (comparatively) fewer servers and (comparatively) more clients. If broadband users, with their always-on connections, want to be transmitting as much as they receive, DSL and cable providers will have one big whomping problem any day now.

Broadband *doesn't* need content!. This amazing recent study (warning: it's a big PDF) of broadband adoption shows that content is irrelevant to the broadband experience. Broadband uses crave the ability to contribute to the Internet's distributed conversation and want nothing more than end-to-end connectivity. The online surfing patterns of high-speed users reveal two values that policymakers, industry leaders, and the public should bear in mind:

1. An open Internet is appealing to broadband users. As habitual posters of content, broadband users seem to desire the widest reach for what they share with the online world. As frequent searchers for information using their always-on connection, broadband users seek out the greatest range of sources to satisfy their thirst for information. Walling off portions of the Internet, which some regulatory proposals may permit, is anathema to how broadband users behave.

2. Broadband users value fast upload speeds as well as fast download speeds. They not only show this by their predilection to create content, but also by their extensive file-sharing habits.

It's like I used to say: The Net isn't about consuming information; it's about sharing information.

bOing bOing scores another. This one's a keeper.

Some of you may know that private wireless network nodes have a habit of leaking signal out into public spaces. Some companies, like Starbucks, have built rudimentary businesses out of selling public wireless Net access. Other companies just seem to let their bandwidth leak. Bryant Park, just west of the New York Public Library, apparently has a good strong signal from no one knows where.

The trouble with this is finding the wayward signal, short of walking the streets with a live laptop or a signal meter. Matt Jones has a brilliant and simple idea: create a kind of hobo sign language to tell other computer users about access that they've found.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals -- which has federal judicial authority over Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington -- says the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. Seems the words "under God," which were added in 1954, constitute an establishment of religion.

Whatever do the judges do with their coins, every one of which says "In God We Trust"?

The court noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has said students cannot hold religious invocations at graduations and cannot be compelled to recite the pledge. But when the pledge is recited in a classroom, a student who objects is confronted with an ``unacceptable choice between participating and protesting,'' the appeals court said.

``Although students cannot be forced to participate in recitation of the pledge, the school district is nonetheless conveying a message of state endorsement of a religious belief when it requires public school teachers to recite, and lead the recitation of, the current form of the pledge,'' the court said.

It's worth noting that the 9th Circuit is considered the most liberal of the appellate courts. Anyway, I bet talk radio is having a field day with this, and I can't wait to see what Ernie the Attorney and LawMeme have to say.

Wanna bet The Supremes weigh in on this? The line to place bets on the outcome starts to the right.

From the AP:

 PAW PAW, Mich. (AP) -- Pigs can't fly, after all -- at least not in the passenger cabin.

The story's about Northwest Airlines sudden refusal to treat Vietnamese potbellied pig -- named Pork Chop, incidentally -- like a small cat or dog. The pig's part of a ventriloquism act that was destined for the Fox network. Yeah, that figures.

• 
  
  Can't be worse than some of the actors flying First Class.


• 
  
  Are they afraid Pork Chop might be traumatized by breakfast?


• 
  
  Has someone watched too many episodes of <echo>Piiiiiigs Iiiiiiiiin Spaaaaaaace?</echo>

From CNN:

A study published in this week's edition of Nature says that snail and slugs can be repelled and even killed by a solution of 2 percent caffeine.

The findings "aren't something that surprises me," said Campbell. "There's data in frogs, fruit flies, and mosquitoes" that suggest caffeine may be toxic to these animals. The researchers found that large doses of caffeine slowed snails' the heart rate and made contractions irregular.

If you think that drinking enough coffee will keep the skeeters at bay, remember: a cup of coffee is only 0.05 percent caffeine. But a commercially available snail repellent might not do badly at Starbucks, too.

Added a couple of new entries to the Blogrolling list over on the right.

Corante is the parent company of Microcontent News, previously cited here. It's an interesting collection of tech news-oriented weblogs. And if you really really really can't get enough of online journalism, I've put a link to a large list of what they insist on calling "cyberjournalist's" pages.

From the Denver Post (passed on by David Hakala):

A 12-year-old seventh-grader has been summoned to Littleton Municipal Court on a charge of unlawful retention of library materials: She had an overdue library book...

Delinquent borrowers aren't hauled into court right away, Smith said. Books at the Bemis Library are loaned for three weeks. After that, overdue fees begin accumulating at 10 cents a day. A first overdue notice is mailed after two weeks. Two weeks later, a bill for the materials is mailed. After another two weeks, if the borrower doesn't respond, the library calls.

A citation is mailed if the borrower still doesn't respond.

Yeah, that'll teach the kid to patronize her libary. I'm sure the problem will be solved by having her recite the unexpurgated Pledge of Allegiance every day during the summer.

The Supreme Court ruled today that school vouchers, which allow parents essentially to opt out of the public education system, are constitutional. That may be as it is, but "constitutional" is not the same thing as "good."

I will make out very well with school vouchers, which will allow me to apply a significant amount of my tax money -- which would otherwise have gone to our local struggling publc school -- to tuition at one of the very excellent private schools in our neighborhood. By the time our six-month-old twins are old enough, I've no doubt that New York City's voucher program will be in place.

My kids will therefore get a great education, because we can afford to make up the difference between the voucher and tuition. But the local public school -- with its low test results, high "minority" enrollment, and dedicated principal -- is going to get slammed. It's not that the other affluent white kids will leave the school; none go there now. But any incentive for the neighborhood's educated parents to get involved in the public school is now gone, and it's frequently parental involvement that makes the difference between a good school and a bad one.

A couple of enterprising reporters tour some of Las Vegas's 283 miles of drainage tunnels. Spooky. Good piece.

Former UPI reporter Barney Lerten tracked down U.S. District Judge Ted Goodwin at his summer home for an interview. Read it here.

I have no idea where these thoughts are leading:

Where we have today is the Hands-On Generation. People use technology to control their lives. They use computers to decide what they want to read and where and when. The choices of music -- and the media by which its enjoyed -- is unprecedented. We've moved from once-a-week Don Kirschner's Rock Concert, to MTV, to a choice of daily live rock performance on Letterman or Leno. Cable television, the VCR and DVD have utterly blown up the movie distribution industry. Tivo is already changing the way networks program. Cell phones and pagers let us shift time and place; is it possible to watch an old TV cop show that hinges on someone finding a pay phone without snickering?

It's not just about instant gratification. It's not even about Carrie Fisher's wonderful line, "Instant gratification isn't fast enough." It's about the instants getting ever shorter. It's John Brunner, in his novel "Stand on Zanzibar:" "They say it's automatic, but you really have to push this button."

Though it's been possible for decades to start your own garage band, now you can start the band, record it, press a CD, and distribute it -- all without much of a corporate infrastructure.

Which is good, because corporations, which through the latter half of the '90s tried to portray themselves as Shiny Happy People so that you too could be a spectacularly rich 30-year-old CEO of a publically traded company... well, not only are those days gone forever, but even the "adult supervision" companies are finally getting outed as Nasty Bastards who drove the market into a bridge abutment. Remember: it's not the speed that kills you. It's the deceleration after you stop.

If anyone can figure out what I'm getting at, please let me know.

The Telegraph reports something of a dust-up over a prosthetic penis in a West End play.

They are apparently re-making one of my favorite movies. "The In-Laws" is a 1979 comedy written by Andrew Bergman, who also wrote "The Freshman" and "Soapdish," and part of "Blazing Saddles." (He also wrote "So Fine" and "Striptease," demonstrating that no one's career is unmarred.) "The In-Laws" starred Alan Arkin and Peter Falk, with Richard Libertini in a large supporting role.

Like most Bergman films, this one is about an innocent (a Long Island dentist) who gets placed in increasing absurd and dangerous situations -- bad days that keep getting worse. And like most Bergman films, the dialog is razor sharp.

Not willing to let a classic lie unmolested, "The In-Laws" is about to start filming in Toronto. It could be worse: Albert Brooks -- now a podiatrist -- is in the Alan Arkin role and Michael Douglas in the Peter Falk part. Sounds like it'll be pretty glossy, which is a big change from the low-budget original.

Angela Gunn passes this along, with only a slightly victorious sneer. From the New Scientist:

The further your politics lean to the right the more likely you are to have nightmares, according to a dream researcher from Santa Clara University in California.

Kelly Bulkeley found that US Republicans are almost three times more likely to have bad dreams than Democrats.