The war, prolific Brits, and weblogs Ron Rosenbaum, in the New York Observer, brings together some of my favorite things: weblogs, and prolific Brits, and the potent combination of the two. So most of the piece is about Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan, their status as expat Brits in the US, their support for the war from left and right respectively, and the powerful influence they have had. Rosenbaum wonders whether there is something British in being both clever and prolific. If anything I'd credit the furious competition between UK national newspapers, which puts a premium on speed and punchiness, and leaves accuracy to plodding US journalists. But then there is an interesting digression on the subject of Andrew Sullivan's weblog, a perfect medium for rapid-fire Anglo-American polemic: "agree or disagree with Mr. [Andrew] Sullivan, it’s hard to deny that he is the surprising new media/political development of the post–Sept. 11 period. A media/political development because he’s gone beyond his influential print platforms, The Times of London and The Times of New York. What gives him an edge in impact and reach ... is the way he’s turned his political Web site (Web zine, Web log, online diary—whatever you want to call andrewsullivan.com) into a powerful weapon of nonstop, 24/7, omnipresent total-surveillance panoptican punditry. Using his political Web zine (a form pioneered by Mickey Kaus in his witty Kausfiles.com), he’s done more than just frame the debate; he’s dominated it, smothered it with an overwhelming energy and forcefulness that allows him to riddle his opponents with ceaseless real-time hectoring and invective and polemic." The men who would be Orwell [New York Observer]#
monday, january 7
Is that it? After weeks of mounting speculation, Jobs annouces... a flat-panel display. Oh, and a hemispherical computer body. Do people still buy this hype. I'll give you that Apple products are gorgeously designed. But to proclaim this launch represents the death of the CRT: that's just silly. And the hemisphere. That sounds like a triumph of design over function. Okay, all you Mac fanatics out there. Let me have it. Jobs: Flat-panel iMacs on the way - CNET.com#
White House defends use of 'Pakis' Can someone get the foot out of Bush's mouth. Paki is a term of abuse. Bush, who loves diminutives, no doubt meant the word affectionately. "I don't believe the situation is defused yet, but I do believe there is a way to do so, and we are working hard to convince both the Indians and the Pakis there's a way to deal with their problems without going to war," Bush said.#
Business 2.0 - Google Hires a Grown-Up An unusual hire at Google: a 32-year-old former management consultant and chief of staff for Larry Summers. Supremely bright, no doubt. But one would have thought Google would hire an ad sales or knowledge management veteran to expand its existing businesses. Particularly as the first grown-up hire since Eric Schmidt took over. Probably me just being dumb.#
Business 2.0 - TV That Works Like the Web An ambitious project. Matthew Karas and his colleagues at Dremedia, some of the most impressive people I know on the UK technology scene, are applying Autonomy's information retrieval technology to video. And you thought searching text was hard. This article in Business 2.0 sets up Dremedia as a more sophisticated version of TiVo, the digital video recorder, but the company's main market will be digital gadget makers and broadcasters.#
sunday, january 6
Geek's guide to music downloading I've always used Napster or Morpheus to download music, but my blogbuddy Olivier Travers tells me that old-fashioned internet relay chat (IRC) is the way to go. I defer to his obviously greater knowledge, though this all sounds a bit geeky. As Olivier says, "Irc is a little more "technical" to get into, so it effectively filters out all the clueless AOLers who can't spell their name (and won't share anything except a couple of broken Britney Spears tracks)." Ouch. Is that me? · IRC clients such as mIRC are not the buggy resource hog most P2P programs are (I tried WinMX, eDonkey, BearShare, Kazaa, Morpheus, probably a couple others listed at www.zeropaid.com). Since IRC is client/server, it doesn't require so much resources and bandwidth just to know where the files are. Also, some IRC clients have been improved for years, whereas most P2P programs are a few months old. · mIRC is scriptable, so you can automate hours of downloads very quickly and let it run as a background task. And you don't have to turn into an IRC developer, useful scripts have already be made for you. Beware of unknown scripts though, you can get hacked through IRC. Not that you can't get bothered through P2P software, since some come with ads, spyware and even trojans. · Most people on IRC are a lot more careful about their collections so you'll get a lot less broken files or files with pops and beeps. · It's easier to auto-resume on IRC, since you get file lists from other people that you can find again, while some P2P progs assign users a different ID each time they log on. So once you start an album, you should eventually get it whole (from the same user). People stick to IRC, use the same nick and roam the same channels for years, whereas P2P programs come and go as far as popularity is concerned. Once you find people with big lists and high bandwidth, you can grow your collection very quickly. · You'll find more obscure stuff on IRC, and more genres outside the mainstream (big jazz collections for instance). There are channels specific to a given genre (say metal or jazz) where you can find people who like the music you're into. · Trading has been taking place on IRC for years, but it's a public chat network so I don't even know how anyone could file a court injunction against "it"? · There are IRC clients for all platforms whereas many P2P programs are Windows-only. · There's also divx trading on IRC (more on Efnet I think, mp3 is big on Undernet), though I'm less familiar with that "scene" (but I'll probably investigate it further since WinMX 3.0 is still not out and eDonkey tends to crash on XP).#
Afghan City, Free of Taliban, Returns to Rule of the Thieves [NY Times] Let's not congratulate ourselves too much on the change of regime in Afghanistan. It's hard to be worse than the Taliban, but some of these Pushtun warlords are really trying. "The scene today as a CNN team left for Pakistan was particularly menacing. As the crew packed its gear, the hotel management summoned a group of about 50 armed soldiers, who gathered outside the door or took posts on the steps. Then the hotel manager began to list his demands before the team could exit: in addition to paying the hotel bill, plus one extra night for each guest, CNN would have to leave behind a color television, a refrigerator, a satellite dish and an encoder."#
Is that it?
