Rants: Ethics, Survival and Music
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Readers sound off on stem cell research, the new Blackjack and the death of CNET editor James Kim. Plus: Links to our most popular blogs!
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Eleven days ago I wrote a blog post describing a call-in service that I'd like to use to create a podcast with my friend and fellow blogger Robert Scoble. A new service (or one that I just became aware of) comes achingly close to doing what I want. Maybe it goes all the way there, but I've not seen how to do it. First, here's how it works. 1. Call 646-495-9201 x 49763. 2. Talk. 3. Hangup. There will be a new recording here.  http://drop.io/tradesecrets  Looks good!  But there are two problems. 1. The RSS feed doesn't have an enclosure, and even if you were willing to scrape the HTML there's no pointer to an MP3 file. 2. There's no pointer to an MP3 file on the landing page, although there appears to be one if you don't look at the HTML source. Tricky. It was enough to get Mike Arrington at Techcrunch to think it was there. I have a call into Mike to discuss. A caveat, I am also in touch with the folks at BlogTalkRadio. I want this service, and we're close to having it now. drop.io doesn't go quite far enough, they clearly want to drive traffic to their site, and appear unwilling to let the MP3 out into the wild. Interesting stuff!!  Update: I did a podcast with Robert and Patrick Scoble using drop.io. I was able to download the MP3, although it pretty well hidden, and upload it to my S3 account.
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As new digital-distribution plans gain traction, an inevitable fight over publishing royalties breaks out. If songwriters lose, your ears will suffer. Commentary by Eliot Van Buskirk.
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Most of what Chris Matthews says is mindless trash, but today he pulled out a great analogy immediately after Ted Kennedy's stirring endorsement of Obama. He compared Hillary Clinton to the character Salieri in the movie Amadeus. Until Mozart came along he was the leading composer in Vienna, but he was just a workman, a technician. Mozart had inspiration, feeling, the spirit. Salieri, even though he lived a long life and Mozart died young, is a footnote to Mozart's lasting greatness. Matthews nailed it.  Maybe this makes up for his calling the voters of New Hampshire racists because he and every other pundit read the polling data wrong.
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Henry Jenkins  and his observations on social responsibility in Chinese video game culture.
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Critics and admirers alike have their say on what they hate and love about Rahman's music.
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The Web 2.0 darlings can't pay - won't pay Guest Opinion So 2008 brings another battle in the war over the value of music.â¦
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SINGAPORE (Reuters Life!) - You know that annoying tune  that you can't place or get out of your head?
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La Rete fa male alla musica? Per niente. Secondo la rivista Wired siamo di fronte alla sua rinascita. Definitiva
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I just woke up in Paris, it's 5:34AM here, but back in California, it still never ceases to amaze me, the day hasn't yet flipped. You guys haven't even gone to bed yet! Now that's amazing to me. What perseverence! Keep up the good work everybody.  I just started posting a couple of twits that really should be a blog post, so let's get started. First at some point, after a suitable period of mourning, I'd like to rasie the issue of what's to happen with Marc Orchant's web presence. Which of course is a way of focusing attention on all of our web presences.  None of us like to think of it, but truth is none of us are going to live forever. Yet if you read this, it's likely that you're creating a digital body that can and imho should continue to exist even after your physical body stops existing. People are humble, no one wants to come out and say their work has any value that's worth preserving past their death, but come on, we know that's not true. If Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be writing on the web. As would Hemingway or Faulkner, Vonnegut or Mailer, John Lennon or Dylan Thomas, Carl Sandberg or Robert Frost. Mozart, Bach and Beethoven. You think there isn't any great literature out there on the web? I wouldn't be so sure about that. What if there is? And what if a baby born today becomes a great creative force? Or what if there's a social disaster like the Holocaust? Did you know that there are preserved diaries from pre-revolutionary America? Writings of ordinary people can be of enormous help to historians. And if we believe in citizen journalism (I do) why not citizen historians? Shouldn't we be thinking out into the future? We should! With all possible humility, I'd like to tell you that a few days after I die my entire web presence will likely disappear. My servers require some attention from me from time to time. The first time that happens, poof, there goes 10-plus years of Scripting News, and all the docs for the OPML Editor and the OPML spec, the XML-RPC site, to name just a few. Anyway, within a couple of months it will all certainly disappear, unless someone pays my hosting and DSL bills. Maybe someone will, but isn't it ridiculous that that's what it depends on? And when my sites disappear so will my uncle's. He died in 2003. His site is still accessible because I keep it that way. When I die, who will will take over for me? I'm sure the world will survive without his writing, but why? If I love the memory of my uncle, and I do, what can I do to reserve a place for him in the archive of the future. It seems such a small thing, but it's most of what remains of his life.  And what of academics, Nobel Laureates and others? I know for a fact that a great university (Harvard) has no plan to protect their web-based work after they pass. It's so ironic that the web offers an archival solution for non-digital work, yet the web information is more fragile than the physical stuff. Preserving our digital heritage is going to require some foresight, some planning, but it seems possible and we surely can do much better. Marc's fate awaits us all. While we're still alive, there's still time to solve this problem. When we're gone, it will be too late. Part of his legacy can be that he helped focus us on this issue, and his life work could be a great test case. Do we want to see his work preserved? And if so, how will it be done? PS: The RSS 2.0 site will likely persist, because I gave it to Berkman, and then used it as a test case to learn about future-safing. It seems likely to continue to exist, knock wood, praise Murphy, as long as Harvard exists.
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Tycho: You might have heard that NASA was trying to gin up an MMO. We just received a mail from a human being involved in the project, someone who wants to make sure they collect the best ideas from the best people. Naturally, she thought of the readership here. Her mail follows:I know how incredibly unpleasant this could end up being if we don'thave the right minds behind it, and would just like the chance to get itin front of as many potentially talented people as possible. Would youguys consider posting a sentence on this in the news section soon?"The purpose of this RFI is to solicit information from organizationswith proven immersive synthetic environments expertise who areinterested in potentially forming a MMO platform development partnershipwith NASA. We are currently targeting releasing a Request for Proposalin March 2008."Here's a couple of run-downs in English from people outside NASA:http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/01/nasa-seeks-inpu.htmlhttp://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/01/would-you-play.html#previouspostAnd the NASA sites:http://procurement.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/eps/synopsis.cgi?acqid=128415http://ipp.gsfc.nasa.gov/mmo/submit.htmlNASA gets surprisingly tiny amounts of money (about $17B/yr) to go tofreakin' space and do a whole lot of discovering of varioushumanity-impacting things. And a lot of people just don't know theamount of awesomeness we do for that. We're working on many things totry and communicate to people better about what we do (that's part ofour forming mandates, actually), and this is one initiative.And I think it would be cool if it wasn't a big mess, or even just an"eh" thing. I'd like to see it be *good*.For the space program, guys?Oh, but darling: you had us at immersive synthetic environments.(CW)TB
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What does it take? A fireside chat from Nelson Mandela doesnt work. The pleas of pop icons like Bono fall on deaf ears.
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Violence is anathema to modern German sensibilities. That pacifism applied to video games could mean legal repercussions. By Bruce Gain.
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Amazing, but even in this time of goodwill and cheer, some folks are always looking for a fight. A recent exchange with a regular reader got me thinking how divisive things can get.
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I have a friend who has had nothing but nightmares result from his attempts at setting up the fabled low-latency high-performance Linux audio system. In sympathy with his plight I present here a primer in three parts for troubleshooting common and uncommon problems with the Linux sound system. Parts 1 &amp; 2 will present programs used to analyze and configure your audio setup. Part 3 will list the most frequently encountered problems along with their suggested solutions. This week, Part 1 introduces some useful system analysis tools and utilities with graphic user interfaces.
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Gabe: You might have seen this story on CNN about the teens that murdered a homeless guy and then equated it to the sort of thrill one might get from a violent video game. There will be plenty of articles focusing on these kids and their crime. I"d like to take a second and talk about the parents of these teenagers instead. It is the job of a parent to teach their children certain rules. Obviously the rules themselves and the emphasis each family places on them will vary, but there are certain universal constants that these parents obviously failed to pass on.
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In a rare open letter, Steve Jobs calls on the music labels to drop copyright controls. In Cult of Mac.