?Streaming to a desktop near you, the death knell of online radio stations. Continuing to pave the money trail the RIAA and others claim to be theirs and theirs alone, the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel has released their ideas on what webcasters should pay to re-broadcast copyrighted material over the Internet. A good summary can be found at the Radio and Internet Newsletter, which provides an outline of what hoops net broadcasters must jump through, in addition to what they must pay. To say the rates are ridiculous is an understatement, and the amount of information required from the broadcaster to the copyright holder is ludicrous. The cost of bandwidth and delivery is already high enough, and this ruling, if upheld, kinda removes any hope of surmounting operating costs and continuing on. ? Webcasters will have to report a great deal of information about their listeners according to the reporting requirements that the Copyright Office has proposed.
Category: Technology
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Comcast Newsgroups is No News
From the Comcast High-Speed Internet FAQ’s: “Newsgroups provided by the Excite@Home service will be accessible through February 28, 2002. We are currently evaluating newsgroup options for Comcast High-Speed Internet. We will provide updated information as it becomes available.”
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Can Dot-Com Resurrection Pay E-Commerce Dividends?
In the aftermath of the dot-com shakeout, surviving e-tailers have swooped in to buy the assets of defunct companies, relaunching once-dead sites to capitalize on existing brand names or e-tail foundations. So far, anecdotal evidence seems to show that when the price is right, bringing dead dot-coms back to life can be a sound strategy.
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Big Job Sites Muscle Each Other For Your Resume
An online job war has been brewing for the last year. With hotjobs and careerbuilder and monster all fighting with Yayhoo over who’s going to have the biggest pile when it’s over… why are they so anxious? “…Online recruitment revenues reached $1.1 billion last year and will hit $4 billion by 2005, predicts Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research in Massachusetts. Related services such as online training and career assessment could bring in another $3 billion, Li says….”
That’s why. Plus, no more information can be had about individuals than a resume. Chew on that while you are job hunting on the internet.
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Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking Creator Dies at 94
At 94, Astrid Lindgren has died. She created Pippi Longstocking, which eventually sold 130 million copies and spawned 40 films and series. She also wrote “Mio, My Son” and “The Brothers Lionheart” which was beloved as well. (esp. by me). An unwed mother at 19, she left home and eventually built a career that won her the Hans Christian Andersen medal in 1958. She wrote over 80 books, which have been translated into 76 languages, and earned her an eventual fortune. She died in a nursing home but, lived in the same apartment, in Stockholm, all of her adult life.
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DanoWorks Online
So, Dan Hiveley’s page is back online. After a long hiatus, he is back sporting a new design. There is some areas that aren’t quite finished yet. Make sure and take a look at Dan’s original (sold mind you) mixed media art. I wish I could see them up close…. Also, he’s running the only shoutcast server on the internet that features classic jazz.
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A Lot Of Page Views
The rant that I did on October 25, 2001 about the Flint UAW worker Anthrax hoax has been getting hundreds of page views. Not sure why, may have something to do with that picture I did. Oh well, hope they like it too… I love to spread the good work about Flint.
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Disable pop ups (at least some)
No More Popup Ads is a mission for some people. Click tracking, pop under ads, and the evil pop up ad are the bane of web users everywhere. This page will help you get rid of some of them. Click your way through the links they provide and you’ll be well on your way.
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Another Side of the IT Story?
E-Commerce News: Where Will the Dot-Com Jobs Be in 2002? “The Internet is still burgeoning, and there is a lot of uncharted territory that will create new business opportunities and the job growth that naturally follows,” Challenger said. “As creative entrepreneurs continue to find successful niches, the result will be more jobs.”
But, the outlook isn’t exactly rosy. Wait and see is all we can do for now.
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More IT Optimism
Salon.com – Chips ahoy “AMD competes with Intel, and the public wins. The right Microsoft antitrust settlement can bring the same energy back to the software market.”
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IT Sales Going Up?
IT Vendors Expect Sales to Grow
By Dana Hedgpeth,
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 16, 2002; 7:55 AM“Vendors of computer systems and software expect increased demand from businesses despite the slowdown in the overall economy, according to a report by Input, a Virginia-based information technology marketing firm.”
“The market for electronic information technology will grow from $93 billion this year to $370 billion in 2006, the study said. The findings were based on a survey of 25 companies that sell information technology equipment, including regional firms CACI International Inc., Computer Sciences Corp. and Manugistics Group Inc.”
Well, let’s hope that they are right. Check the related articles for more…
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Modest Evolutions
Modest evolutions in gadgetry for 2002. The PDA/Cellphone (my holy grail) is entering it’s 3rd. generation, more MP3 gadgets, and video over cellular.
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More Hilarious Boomer Hijinks
Salon.com — Internet analyst Henry Blodget under investigation
“Internet analyst Henry Blodget is reportedly among a number of analysts who are being investigated by the New York state attorney general’s office over conflicts of interest they may have had while making stock recommendations.”
Imagine that? Hrmmm. Despite that, he’s leaving Merrill Lynch with a 5 million dollar golden parachute. How does that feel to all you unemployed dotcom workers wondering how to buy your kids christmas?
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With the Help of the
With the Help of the Good Lord and a Few Good Missiles… We will overcome the evildoers.
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Arcade Action
It’s an old link but, I was looking around for a browser game to while away the time and I found Norbert’s Emulators again. Had a blast. You should check it out. I reccommend Tempest… kill an hour or so.
When I play these games, either real or emulated, I imagine that I am 14 again, back at the 7-11 on Dort Hwy. Playing the Tempest upright there. I always used to try and beat the scores so that I could leave my signature “DDP” on the top. Having a little time on my hands helped. I left that “DDP,” I’m proud to say on that game a lot, as well as a few others in that 2-3 mile radius of my house. God I was as pathetic then as I am now.
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paxtonland Remembers Pearl Harbor
It’s been 60 years since the attack upon Pearl Harbor. Even though most of the people that can recall that day with some clarity are now gone, it would be difficult to find someone today who is alive and does not have a personal connection to this event. Such a galvanizing occurrence has never happened in modern times. Pearl Harbor mobilized this and several other nations to engage in the greatest conflict in history. I have no doubt that this country will never again gather to form such a formidable power as we did then.
Of course several theories and much work has been done to support those theories that Pearl Harbor was no surprise at all. To my generation (just short of Boomers ? just short of Gen X), none of this really matters. The history has been cast in stone. We have begun to idealize ?The Greatest Generation? and consider this the inaugural event of their life and times.
12/7 and 9/11
Naturally, the correlations are being drawn to Sept. 11 and have been since the first hour of the WTC/Pentagon (remember the Pentagon?) attacks. Most of the people that I have spoken with have pointed out that the two events are not similar at all. Perhaps in magnitude and it’s effect upon society, other than that, the similarities cease. Pearl Harbor was not an act of terrorism; it was an act of all out war. There was no mystery as to what the message of the action was. There was no surprise as to who did it. There needed to be no investigation. All that was needed to be done was action — quick, decisive, and blunt action. It was action that they delivered.
Most of us use Pearl Harbor to show how a nation can be shocked out of its blithe doldrums into realizing that monsters do indeed lurk in the world. Those monsters can be communism, fascism, terrorism, or a new monster not yet born. It remains to be seen if 9/11 will mark the beginning of a war that could grow to the size of WWII. It is not difficult, however, to imagine that it is possible. Particularly in light of recent developments in Israel, Palestine, and Iraq. That is where the similarities to these two events will begin. This is primarily why I don’t think they are similar, yet. I hope that they never will be, at least not by my definition.
Historically, Hollywood has portrayed Pearl Harbor as a shocking dirty trick by a horrible and evil enemy. That is, until recently. Political correctness and the lust for high action crept into the latest incarnation of the event. It will be interesting to see what Hollywood has to say about 9/11. You can bet we will not have to wait too long.
Be sure and catch the History Channel’s Live from Pearl Harbor. Which is going on all day until midnight. Check your listings for the times and listings.
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Goodbye Blogger
I deleted paxtonland from blogger today. It was a bittersweet event for me. I’ve held onto that service until it was actually beginging to hamper the development of this site. I was an early adopter of the service and it gave me flawless results for a long time, at absolutely no cost to me at all. All I can say to that is thanks very much, well done!
I wish Evan, with whomever is there at Pyra Labs, the very best. I’m not one to dispense advice to those who don’t need it but, I’m going to give you guys some anyway (famous last words). Now that you’ve got a smoothly operating model with blogger and blogspot, now that you have some corporate support, and now that you have advertising revenues streaming it. Do think about getting back to the beginings of what Prya was possibly going to be about.
The web can still use a good project management tool. eproject.com is unusable, intranets.com isn’t nearly sophisticated enough, and Microsoft Project Central costs too much and is too complicated to set up. Oh, I can give you about a dozen more sites and reasons why you should, but even if you were listening… I don’t really expect you to take my advice.
However if you are listening, it’s not just project management that is important. It’s providing an acceptable solution for people in two or more different places to work together as if they were side by side. One that encompasses an awful lot more that project management, message posting, and file sharing. If someone really sat down and examined the elements that are essential to remote workplaces, it would be a major step. Thus far, people have just added functionality to what are essentially message boards. That is not and never was good enough. With that said, obviously I’m thinking about this a great deal and have been for quite some time.
So, it you, dear Prya, or anyone else is listening and interested in what I’m thinking…. let me know. I think that there is a major paradigm shift about to happen. The infrastructure is not yet in place to support it. The features are, but form and functionality isn’t.
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Sleepless in paxtonland
Outlook 2000 SR-1 Update: Extended E-mail Security for my Outlook friends who insist on sending me viruses. Please head on over and get your security fix for your e-mail client.
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Software Update — December
I have posted the December software choice for your downloading pleasure. Wheee!
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An Overview of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic, 2001
Here is an overview of the HIV/AIDS world-wide epidemic for 2001.
“Sub-Saharan Africa is by far the worst affected region in the world. The estimated 3.4 million new HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa in 2001 mean that 28.1 million Africans now live with the virus. It is estimated that 2.3 million Africans died of AIDS in 2001.”
That’s 6,300 people that die everyday in Africa alone. Now what do you think is worse… the Taliban or AIDS? Osama or HIV? It’s a loaded and unanswerable question, I know. Still worth a thought or two.
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Ginger/IT News
Remember Ginger? Seems that ABC will air more info about “IT” on Monday. In case you forgot, IT was the ultra super secret invention that was supposed to revolutionize society as we know it. Apparently, Steve Jobs and a couple of other Digerati were flattened by the thing, whatever “IT” may be. I’m sure that we will hear quite a bit about this in the days to follow.Meanwhile, be sure and click on the image for a paxtonland exclusive spy photo!
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@Home Shutdown Friday?
Apparently, @Home could shut down as early as Friday. This could mean that cable customers in the paxtonland area could loose internet access and e-mail service. Comcast, Charter, Cox, and Media One are the service providers in this part of Michigan that rely partly upon the @Home networks.
The article mentions: “…it is estimated that in the best-case scenario an Excite@Home shutdown could result in a two-week service outage for cable giants, and in a four-week to six-week outage in the worst-case scenario…” I’ve not been able to find any information on the web or in the news groups from Comcast. Only the letter that we recieved several weeks ago.
Your Backup Plan is?
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Content Management Systems (CMS)
I’m looking into a content management system for Intervention. I’ve started to develop my own set of tools to manage the site. But, it is becoming clear that this is not the way to go. I’m spending far too much time on things that just aren’t working. If you have any ideas for a system that can be run on a hosting service, runs with MySQL, and is more robust than say Greymatter or, movable type. Please let me know. Here’s what I’ve found so far: eZ Publish, S.I.P.S, Thatware, PHP Nuke and a few others.
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They fire you and hire him….
U.S. Tech Firms Abusing Visa Program, Critics Say. “In the midst of one of the largest tech layoffs in history, U.S. firms obtained government approval to bring in a record 163,200 foreign workers under a controversial program that critics say is being abused to hire cheaper overseas talent.” Now, I wonder… how come a good tech job is so hard to come by again? hrmmm…..
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WTC “Tourist Identity Revealed”
The “tourist guy” stepped forward to reveal his identity. The mythic meme of the “tourist guy” started a couple of weeks after the WTC/Pentagon (yeah, remember the Pentagon?) disasters. Since the sighting, he has shown up in at the scene of the sinking of the Titanic, the shooting of Kennedy, and many other places. Spread via e-mail… the dude has become quite popular. When asked how the picture began to spread he replied, “I believe that some friends planted my face in that body,” Penteado wrote in an e-mail (which was translated from Portuguese).”
