Hiatus

This blog is going on hiatus. One, I hosed the template, and I really don't feel like re-doing it for a site that's getting 50 visitors a day. Two, I'm blogging over at Creative Destruction and BNN, and two sites is enough.

Will it return? Probably. When? Dunno.

Oh For Heaven's Sake

Don't these people have anything better to do?

Weekend Hamster Fun

Here's an activity the whole family can enjoy.

Well, other than the hamsters.

Interview With The Shah's Son

Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran, has an interesting inteview in Human Events. He seems like a sensible fellow; his dad was a sensible fellow. (A son of a bitch, but he was our son of a bitch.) We could do business with him, if he was to take the throne. I am less sanguine about the prospects for an Iranian revolution than he is, however. It would be bloody and ugly.

Dolphins Have Names

Say these scientists. Fascinating stuff.

My dolphin name would be "he who sits in easy chair and types".

Genius

...sheer genius. American Digest presents "The Law of the Blogger", a link-notated reworking of (I believe) a Kipling poem; I thought it was Kipling's "The Gods of the Copybook Headings", but it isn't; it's his "The Law of the Jungle". Either way, it's awesome.

Jeff Goldstein Has a Fundraiser

JeffG of Protein Wisdom is having a fundraiser. I am reliably informed that he intends to spend the money on supple young Thai boys, but don't let that stop you.

 

But seriously; Jeff does good work and deserves some support. I sent in MY thirty-five cents; I urge you to do the same.

"There is nothing good that comes out of that"

When I saw the headline, I was going to post snark about wishing I had the same problem. But I think he actually means it. Probably because of his kids. Having children is a source of infinite worry when you're very rich, because your kids are realistically and actually the target of kidnapping plots. It's hard enough to be a dad when the abduction threat facing your children is mostly hypothetical; how would it feel to know that at any moment, there really are people idly or actively thinking of ways to take your kids for ransom? Horrifying.

Pro-Choice Vandalism Strikes Another Pro-Life Display

Following the vandalism last month of a pro-life display at Northern Kentucky University, pro-choice activists destroyed another pro-life display, this time at Princeton University.

 

Pro-life group Princeton Pro-Life had erected a display of 347 flags, with each flag representing a student who might have been in the Princeton class of 2010, had they not been aborted. The display was torn down and vandalized; pro-choice activists cut up 30 coat hangers and spread them on the ground, and added sarcastic pro-choice messages to the display's signage.

 

Campus police are investigating the incident, but Princeton Pro-Life expressed skepticism about the investigation, saying that they believed investigating the vandalism was low on the priority list.

Ben Affleck to Play Young Kirk?

No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

 

NO.

Want Citizenship? Enlist.

Interesting proposal from The Futurist.

 

As one of the commenters notes, I think we have something like this now - but it would be fascinating to greatly widen its scope.

Licensed Torrent Model the Way to Go

An idle thought about selling video and music content online.

 

To optimize customer choice and satisfaction, companies ought to specialize in selling either data delivery service, or content delivered through the service.

 

I pay Adelphia for cable TV. I have DVR software and a machine to run it. I have a home network. I have a high-speed Internet connection.

 

If I want to watch a pre-existing episode of South Park, I can tell my DVR to record it the next time it comes around, and then watch it either on the TV connected to the DVR PC, or on my PC's monitor. That's legal.

 

Alternatively, I can illegally use a free BitTorrent client to download the same episode. I can't quite download it at real-time speed yet, so I'd have to get the file first. So it would take maybe an hour or so. For a new episode, I might have to wait an hour or a day for someone to put the file out into the torrentsphere.

 

Doing any of this would be piracy, pure and simple.

 

It wouldn't feel much like piracy, emotionally. I'm paying somebody for a mechanism that allows me to watch their show; whadda they care how I get my hands on the goods? But of course it does matter to the content producers, who get unhappy.

 

The difficulty with their unhappiness comes from the difficulty of fighting digital piracy. Information wants to be free; its legitimate and rightful owners are having, and will continue to have, trouble keeping it owned.

 

IF content companies want to get their product out into the marketplace and still own it, I suggest a compromise. Issue subscriptions and provide legal torrents to subscribers on a regularly scheduled basis. Make the torrents of decent quality, and ad-free other than (say) a one-minute promo at the beginning of the file. The torrentsphere will absorb such legitimate services and genuine emotional pirates will continue to steal the goods, but people who understand and believe that you have to pay the piper if you want to hear a tune will still subscribe - and the nature of torrenting is that even pirates contribute to the network effect and make the user experience better and better.

 

In essence, such a scheme would cut companies like Adelphia out of the loop when it comes to content for a large and increasing base of technologically gifted viewers. If I can get my ad-free South Park directly from Matt and Trey (or even from Comedy Central), and pay 'em 50 cents a month, I'll be glad to do so. I have to think that with - say - a million viewers willing to make this deal, a direct, continuing revenue stream of $500,000 a month is worth something - particularly since the deal would be non-exclusive, and they could continue selling their product via content distribution companies for anybody who wants to buy it that way.

 

(If any of my legions of idle wealthy techie readers feels like being the guy who gets really rich off this idea by pumping me with funding to acquire content and make distribution deals, you know where to send the check.)

Senator McCain: "Clean Government" More Important than First Amendment Rights

Arizona Senator and Presidential hopeful John McCain, appearing on the Don Imus show, said that "I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I'd rather have the clean government."

McCain's assertion reminds me, yet again, exactly why the Arizona Republican cannot be trusted with the presidency, or indeed, with any high office. I don't have any input into who the people of Arizona send to the Senate, but I have my own voice when it comes to the presidency, and I will never vote for a candidate who displays such disregard for the values of free political speech that our country is predicated upon.

Via Protein Wisdom.