"Google.org, the public-spirited division of Google.com, charged with addressing “climate change, poverty and emerging disease,” is using the backdrop of the National Clean Energy Summit here in Las Vegas to announce a new round of clean energy financing." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet
posted a message
“MacBook fan was running continuously, even though I was doing nothing that should have taken cpu. Quit firefox and now it's quiet. All this javascript and flash is bad for my battery.”
"Recently I did what no sane person would: I watched the entire set of presidential primary debates, in sequence, like a boxed set of a TV show. In scale this was like three or four seasons’ worth of The Sopranos." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet
"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.'" - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet
"I am very proud to report today that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (THE "IP" court in the US) has upheld a free (ok, they call them "open source") copyright license, explicitly pointing to the work of Creative Commons and others. (The specific license at issue was the Artistic License.)" - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet
I'm sickly fascinated by Edwards. As many people suggested before, his confession likely contained as many lies as truths. Did he think once he appeared in an interview, people would stop asking questions? How stupid is he? - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet
"This is the post during which you find out about my criminal record.... At the age of nineteen, way back in 1992, I purchased a beer in a Philadelphia bar." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet
"When something you own is necessary to the success of a venture, even if its contribution is small, you’ll tend to ask for an amount close to the full value of the venture. And since everyone in your position also thinks he deserves a huge sum, the venture quickly becomes unviable. So the next time we start handing out new ownership rights—whether via patents or copyright or privatization schemes—we’d better try to weigh all the good things that won’t happen as a result." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet
"I didn't know a sandwich place could be this good. We'd been meaning to go to Ike's for ages, but the line in front always scared us away. Today, though, we got there just before they were opening…" - Paul Haahr
Cool to see one of my own patents analyzed. (Insert obligatory disclaimer of not liking patents, treating them as necessary evil...) - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet
Brian Eno and I have finished our new record, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. One of the songs, “Strange Overtones”, will be available free via everythingthathappens.com in exactly one week — you can log on and get a reminder if you like — and the whole record will be available August 18th. - Paul Haahr
At first I thought, Awesome, Paul and Brian Eno are making a record together. The Byrne-Eno record also sounds promising. - j1m
Hrmmph. I'm pretty sure I put quotes in by hand, using Reader's Share with Note. Ok, from now on, I just use the friendfeed bookmarklet. - Paul Haahr
"It’s hard enough for me to delete a feed from Google reader; it’s even harder to get rid of unneeded stuff I’ve taken physical possession of, even if it was free to begin with, even if I can remember vividly fishing it out of a pile of garbage on my walk home from the subway." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet
It's very easy to hypothesize an evolutionary cause here: it was probably advantageous in the past to hold on to everything that might be useful -- physical things as well as pieces of information -- because there fundamentally weren't that many useful things lying around 100,000 to 10,000 years ago. Even the pack-rat (and packet-rat) that I am knows that it's a silly way to go through life today, but I still acquire URLs, books, magazines, etc, faster than I can consume them. - Paul Haahr
It's easy to hypothesize but impossible to prove. Most human evolution was pre-agriculture, and hunter/gatherer societies tend to be nomadic, and you'd think nomads would think carefully about what they take with them. Literally having to carry it on your back would probably lend some clarity to your thoughts that we might now be missing. But who knows? What is interesting is that subscription to a feed apparently fits the same mental slot as the possession of physical goods. - ⓞnor
time is the most important commodity in life - rich or poor, you have 24 hours in each day to work your happiness and purpose. For CEO, for street cleaner, this is the one constant. Whoever has free time to pursue their goals; they are the truly rich in heart. The time-poor person is to be pitied. - linkman77
Nah, I'd put free time around level 3.5 of Maslow's hierarchy. Not the most important. - ⓞnor
"There are lots of books exploring what the fuck happened with 20th century classical music, when many composers willfully sought to alienate the general public and create purposefully difficult, inaccessible music. Why would they do anything that perverse? Why would they not only make music that was hard to listen to, but also demand, as in the case of Zimmerman, that the piece be performed on twelve separate stages simultaneously, with the addition of giant projection screens and other multimedia aspects?" - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet
Of course, some of that alienating music is quite awesome. And is that really that different from the approach of, say, NIN? - j1m
"As classical music followed this bizarre, perverted road for some half of the 20th century, the audiences left in droves. I hope the composers were pleased, because it seems they got what they wanted in that respect. Their compositional ideas live, and even thrive in movies; but as a form of music and music-theater, they simply died — rumbling and roaring all the way." My response to most modern classical music in one word: "BLECH!" - Adam Lasnik
but that is not classical, it is experimental ... and contemporary when made - gregory lent
The phrase "20th century classical music" is a complete oxymoron IMO. "Massive crapfest" would be more appropriate. :) - Rachel
wait, you're saying it's an oxymoron because it doesn't come from ancient greece? - j1m
j1m: there is almost nothing classic or classical about it except at the level of deepest abstraction. It has some virtue but alienation isn't classical. - Daniel Dulitz
In the English I speak, "classical music" includes everything with at least 2 violins, and anything else you'd normally go to hear performed in the same concert halls. As much fun as it might be to ridicule art you personally dislike by fiddling over what it ought to name itself, there is indeed a tradition of classical music, and that tradition includes not only music of the Viennese ("classical") period, but of the Baroque, Romantic, and 20th Century periods as well, and the fact all that music comes from that tradition means that it all has a lot in common -- i.e. "20th century" music is deeply "classical". That said, you know, ridicule away -- it certainly has it's issues, including a frequent lack of interest in what I call musicality, and not yet having been much filtered by time. - j1m
posted a message
“How do I get the "X would like to use your current location" messages to stop and just allow every app to use location?”
I'd like to be able to define ACLs based on location and time. In fact given my Calendar it's already clear who could see my location without leaking any new information. The problem is in knowing that your location is being used. No good way to deal with that because locations don't have opaque handles... - Daniel Dulitz
"But, but, if people have resources they prefer to pay the creators of products and services they like. Payment is
1) A way of connecting.
2) A sign of approval.
3) A vote.
4) It indicates an alligence with the maker.
5) It feels good to the payer, to support." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet
Most people absolutely do not want to pay. Look at the recent Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails "pay what you want" releases. The vast majority of people just downloaded the music, even when they knew the proceeds would go straight to the artists. - Steve Weis
Your "vast majority" turns out to be 60% (not what I would call "vast"), leaving the average amount paid -- even including the freeloaders -- at $6, far more than they would have received in a traditional distribution deal. Maybe it's a half-empty/half-full thing, but seems like that's pretty strong evidence for Kelly's point. The thing about digital goods is that it doesn't cost you to support the freeloaders. - ⓞnor
ⓞnor, point taken. I hadn't realized their average sale price was $6. I actually paid $5 for my "In Rainbows" download. In retrospect I don't know why. Maybe it was the novelty. The Saul Williams/Trent Reznor release was much less successful. Only 18% of people paid anything. The average album sale price was $0.89 and they grossed a whopping $140000 on the album, which was a net loss. (This is not a fair comparison at all, since Saul Williams is much less popular than Radiohead.) - Steve Weis
@nor, I don't think the 60% is a reasonable number, because it doesn't take piratebay into account. With that said, net gross (minus web/bandwidth and other expenses) IS a valid measure, IMHO, so if they made more than they would have made with a traditional label (for the same product, not the same number of sales), then huzzah. Still, I'm hugely skeptical. - Adam Lasnik
People who don't want to pay are not your real fans. But I think "want to pay" begs the question "for what". No one wants to be a rube. But paying for connection, sure, happens on Craigslist all the time. - Daniel Dulitz
"In a 93-page opinion in the Miers/Bolton contempt case, Judge Bates not only rejects all of the various Administration arguments against justiciability, but goes so far as to reach the merits and hold that there is no basis for the DOJ argument that close presidential advisers are absolutely immune from compelled congressional testimony" - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet
"After years spent studying counterinsurgency, Lt. Col. John Nagl recently put his knowledge of rebellion suppression into practice while serving in Iraq. Nagl was part of the team that drafted the latest edition of a U.S. Army field manual on counterinsurgency, and he was able to turn his own recommendations into action while in combat." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet
Compelling stuff. Deeply thoughtful comments on what civilian control of the military means when the citizens in charge are (my words, not his) batshit crazy. (How military leaders should resign properly, for example.) And great insights about detention being part of counter-insurgency; if Abu Ghraib had had an "Ask the Customers" policy, would the abuses have happened there? - Paul Haahr
"Slate wants your suggestions on the most useful queries that, when given to a variety of search engines, neatly show the differences between them." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet
