Does anyone know about a hard disk video recorder that works with the Dish satellite system? The Dishplayer model I’ve been using has become progressively less reliable, and the one the company replaced it with for retail sales is actually a downgrade in terms of features.
Let me know.
Jeff Jarvis has a fine idea: “We webloggers should help Iraqis start weblog newspapers.”
A company called Brocade Communications announced layoffs today, not a new concept in this industry.
But the headline on the press release — “Brocade Continues Business Model Optimization” — would have been funny had the situation not been so unfortunate. Sheesh.
UPDATE: Alice Marshall, via e-mail: “No word on whether the Iraqi information minister was the author of the release.” LOL…
Miami Herald: Army chaplain offers baptisms, baths. It belongs to Army chaplain Josh Llano of Houston, who sees the water shortage, which has kept thousands of filthy soldiers from bathing for weeks, as an opportunity. ”It’s simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized,” he said.
You can’t make up stuff this bizarre.
Imagine what would happen if this zealot was in charge of bringing fresh drinking water to Iraqis. Sheesh.
Andrew Orlowski (The Register): Anti-war slogan coined, repurposed and Googlewashed… in 42 days. Although it took millions of people around the world to compel the Gray Lady to describe the anti-war movement as a “Second Superpower”, it took only a handful of webloggers to spin the alternative meaning to manufacture sufficient PageRank
The Iraq war understandably continues to overshadow what otherwise would be real news. Case in point: The Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear an appeal (Mercury News) from two technology industry groups and two states in the Microsoft antitrust settlement — and the way the court granted the appeal may suggest that Microsoft and its round-heeled pals in the U.S. Justice Department may have to answer some uncomfortable questions.
You may recall that Massachusetts and West Virginia didn’t sign off on the craven deal that rewards illegal behavior and invites an unrepentant Microsoft to keep on stifling competition. Meanwhile, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and the Software and Information Industry Association filed a separate appeal.
One prominent antitrust expert speculated to the Mercury News’ Heather Phillips that the court was hearing the case in order to “establish some law” in the antitrust arena — and that the odds were strong against any overturning of the ruling. Why not just turn down the appeal, then?
Two elements of the appeals court’s decision are at least interesting, and possibly important. First, the court will hear this appeal “”en banc,” which is to say with all of the sitting judges present; normally such cases go to a three-judge panel and then, on occasion, to the full court.
Second, the matter has been expedited — put in front of some other cases in the schedule. A November hearing is still a long time from now, but in the legal world, I’m told, this is lickety-split.
Reading these tea leaves is difficult, at best. I’m hoping the appeals judges are furious that their 2001 ruling, which unanimously found repeated lawbreaking on Microsoft’s part and returned the case to a federal judge for action to stop the lawbreaking, was effectively gutted by the Justice Department’s giveaway deal to Microsoft.
It’s also possible that the judges are happy with the way the case turned out and want to be done with it, once and for all. But again you have to ask: Why would they take the appeal if that was true?
The relatively short schedule, however, is not quick in the real world. Microsoft and its battalions of high-priced lawyers have delayed justice long enough to make any sanctions less effective than they’d have been with timely action. The monopoly is stronger than ever, and Microsoft is moving to dominate entirely new areas of communications. Delay of justice remains part of the legal strategy, and the evidence says it’s working.
Thirty years ago on Wednesday, Martin Cooper made the first true cellular phone call, in a demonstration that was the beginning of massive change in the way we communicate. He’s a pioneer, and keeps pioneering.
More in my Sunday column.
New Scientist:Chinese secrecy blamed for super-pneumonia spread. The World Health Organization has continued to pressure China for more detailed information about its cases of SARS. “The team was fairly optimistic, but it is still too early to say if the big issues like a request for daily epidemiological reports will be accepted,” a WHO official told the AFP news agency on Friday.
If anything teaches the need for more transparency in public health, this is it. The spread of this disease was largely preventable, but China’s secretive dictatorship stopped only the information, not the virus.
Let’s hope that China — and other nations that tend to behave this way — will learn from this. I fear they won’t.
Back at PC Forum…network is very, very spotty today.
Execs from Yahoo, Cnet and AOL are explaining what business they’re in. Apparently it’s (surprise) making money.
Running notes follow:
Does AOL want to be “between the user and the Internet?” asks Bob Frankston. “I sure hope so,” replies AOL’s Jonathan Miller.
Eliot Noss asks about the future for small and medium service providers. Miller claims there will be “lots of different opportunities.” This is utter bull, given the way federal policy is giving control of the pipes to the cable and phone companies.
Infuriating to hear all this talk about putting up gates, referring to content solely as what people are fed by big media companies. The entertainment cartel mindset has captured the online world’s top companies.
No surprise there, either.
I missed blogging several panels, but the wireless one is interesting. Cometa‘s new CEO is trying to explain why this partnership of IBM, AT&T, Intel Capital and several other companies will be a serious Wi-Fi player. I’m still waiting to be persuaded. the business model — Cometa as wholesale provider — still doesn’t quite parse for me.
Vonage has huge voice-over-IP ambitions. I don’t think it’s ready for prime time, but it is very attractive in its own way. I’m not tempted, yet, to switch. But that time is getting closer.
Esther asks Sergey Brin from Google the content question — how far beyond search is Google going?
There will be some personalization in search, he says, but we may overestimate the amount of help that will provide.
I’m more concerned about the privacy implications — the tracking such a system implies. Google’s endless cookie, and refusal to explain its purpose, continues to be disturbing.
The war in Iraq was never a video game for the people on the ground, despite American TV’s inane efforts to make it so. Now we’re seeing the evidence — or at least we would be if the U.S. media were being more up-front with the audience. (See this LA Times story.)
I’m not in favor of gory close-ups of dead Americans, the pictures that have so infuriated Bush and Rumsfeld and many in the media. But the U.S. media are never shy about showing the dead from other places. Our sensitivity is, to put it mildly, selective. And hypocritical.
Showing war as a video game is even more hypocritical, however. The real thing is a bloody, ugly affair.
Also please read Frank Rich’s great Sunday New York Times column, “They Both Reached for the Gun.” Excerpt: To see why “Chicago” became the movie of the year in a year when America sleepwalked into war, you do not have to believe it is the best picture of 2002 (mine would be Almod
