Slashdot Mirror

1. Here and here are two 7 minute RealAudio reviews on NPR, with extensive detail, and some conversation with director Ann Lee.
2. Here is about 45 minutes split between the director Ann Lee and the Actress, Michelle Yeoh, a star in the film on the NPR program FreshAir

But the ones above are at least educational.

Sometimes a nick becomes the name that you are known by everywhere. It identifies you online and in meatspace. Mine is like that. It was given to me by a friend in 1984 as a joke and it has stuck ever since. I first started using it online in the late 80's.

I remember early experiences with various online communities where what appeared to be real names weren't. One of the most common jokes was for guys to assume women's names to play with people's heads. Through those experiences I learned what a name truly is. It is continuity. It is identity. It is reputation.

Consistent use of any memorable, unique name is a way to establish who you are for all to see. John Doe, logging in for the first time next week is as much of a stranger to me as someone with a nick. Either of them can then build the identity that I will come to know.

For all of the psychological power that the idea carries, the thought that we can connect a name to a person hides some assumptions that just aren't true. Names aren't unique. People lie. And people change. My best friends from high school weren't the people I remembered when I went back for my 10th reunion.

NPR's Morning Edition ran a story this morning entitled Author Unknown about tracking the identity of anonymous authors. It underscored the fact that your words identify you. Each of us has a style, a voice. If you can hear the voices, even friends without real names can still be friends.

Go Here and you'll discover they don't want you linking to their pages, or framing them. If you want to secure "linking rights" you need to ask them for written permission. How ... free

Here's NPR's press release about why they took the position they did.
Thing is, the FCC plan was already a compromise that was designed to respond to any actual interference with the services NPR was concerned about.
If you are unhappy about NPR's involement in this, here are some folks at NPR you could contact:
Kevin Klose, President and CEO -- KKlose@npr.org
Kenneth P. Stern, Executive Vice President -- KStern@npr.org
Neal Jackson, VP for Legal Affairs (including legislation) -- NJackson@npr.org

A recent e-mail forward to me read:

"Please sign this petition so we don't lose an irreplaceable resource....NPR On NPR's Morning Edition last week, Nina Tottenberg said that if the Supreme Court supports Congress, it is in effect the end of the National Public Radio (NPR), NEA & the Public Broadcasting System(PBS). PBS, NPR and the arts are facing major cutbacks in funding. In spite of the efforts of each station to reduce spending costs and stream line their services, some government officials believe that the funding currently going to these programs is too large a portion of funding for something which is seen as not worthwhile."

My response? NPR is not an irreplacable resource.

Twenty one years ago, National Public Radio petitioned the FCC to stop accepting applications for the low-power Educational License class. WMUC in College Park was one of the last stations to get a ten watt FM radio license under this plan, but this was a year before the UMBC campus (my school) even established a radio station.

Because of these rules that NPR brought about, UMBC cannot get a license under 1000 watts, and due to the large amount of high-power corporate radio saturation in this area, no higher-powered licenses are available.

National Public Radio has only their own interests in mind, not the interests of smaller communities and people who still want localized, non-corporate free radio.

Forget about NPR. Support your local communities and your universities by advocating for LPFM.

For more information, see the following sites:
Pirate/Free Radio on About.Com
Prometheus Radio Project
Media Democracy Now

And my own letters to the Senators, here and here.

PS: In the interests of full disclosure, this is a revised version of something I posted earlier to my my own web page.

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Here's NPR's legal petition against LPFM. While competition for listeners makes a better conspiracy theory, they claim it's competition for spectrum.

>[...] who decided that the standard paper size in North America should be 8.5x11" (was it a person or a committee)?

According to a story on NPR's "Morning Edition" within the past couple of weeks, the size of a standard sheet of paper in the U.S. (8 1/2" x 11"), as well as the file folders, filing cabinets, etc. to support it was determined by the Remington Typewriter Company's decision on what width to make the platen of their typewriters...

LaoK

i was *going* to put in my two cents about the poorly phrased comments of the original message, but they have already been said. so i will simply take this time to give you some worthwhile charities that anyone (geek or non-geek) should give to, as they are well worth your time and provide some much needed services.

Southern Poverty Law Center

Hatewatch.org

Anti-Defamation League

Even if you don't agree with my policies, please give SOMETHING to a good cause this holiday season, whether that would be PBS or NPR or one of your own pet causes. we're so saturated with "be a good capitalist" in the media, we often forget about what truly makes a good person. give it some thought... it can give you a good break from the equally abstract concept of programming. :)

Check this&l t;/a> out from NPR's "All things considered (story at the bottom of the page). It also notes a German study which differentiated on what type of sleep was necessary. I was surprised to hear it was non-rem sleep.

National Public Radio reported on this on Monday. You can hear the story here in real audio format.

On the whole, this is a proposal I support. For the same reasons that we license health care providers we should certify providers of health care information. Note that this doesn't preclude alternative practitioners or alternative theories from being promoted on the web. But it does make clear who is offering a treatment that is not widely approved. And since my slumlord was also a homeopathic doctor, I fully support dividing the MD's from the folks pushing St. John's Wort.

National Public Radio reported on this on Monday. You can hear the story here in real audio format.

On the whole, this is a proposal I support. For the same reasons that we license health care providers we should certify providers of health care information. Note that this doesn't preclude alternative practitioners or alternative theories from being promoted on the web. But it does make clear who is offering a treatment that is not widely approved. And since my slumlord was also a homeopathic doctor, I fully support dividing the MD's from the folks pushing St. John's Wort.

A friend of mine lives in Palm Beach county, and he agreed that the ballot was confusing and difficult. He spent a good long time looking it over in the voting booth before he stabbed it with the little toothpick thingy that they used.

Is it reasonable to pick the most powerful job in the world because a minor clerk didn't understand good user interface design?

This could be stuck in the courts for months. If it takes until New Year's, I hope Gore will gracefully concede rather than force a national crisis. I'd rather have a calm nation grumbling about President Nitwit than risk rioting and martial law and whatever else could happen.

I've collated several links and images about this on my personal pages:

• Palm Beach @Home
• Palm Beach on Tripod

p.s. Having half the candidates in a second row may be a violation of Florida election laws. I've heard that mentioned several times on NPR but unfortunately don't have a link.

Salon has an electoral vote map here . They've been sluggish about updating it though.

NPR also has ongoing coverage, and it's quite good. You can just turn on your local NPR affiliate, or listen to it on the web NPR

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Blame the idiots. Think globally, but mock them locally.

The interesting thing is that as I get older I begin to realize more and more things and find them ironic. For example there was a recent study which recommended that parents be given more time off work for parenting because there were issues with 0-5yo children. When I heard the story I giggled thinking about the irony of all these social programs which dictate higher taxes which in turn dictate both parents working which leads right back to social programs to "cure" the ills of working parents! Programs which will start the cycle all over again.

To some extent I see this happening here, the candidates representing the people who just don't get it and, in turn, creating more people who just don't get it. A vicious cycle. The irony here is that both candidates are trying to prove that they have what it takes to lead by /following/ the worst doctorine possible. Ignorance.

It was just on this morning, so the audio stream won't pop up for another few days, but you can check Th e Morning Edition site in a day or two to listen to the story.

I appreciate the tongue-in-cheek commentary on political hype, but correllating an increase in violent games and movies to a decrease in violent statistics is just as bad as what the politicians are claiming. I just fundamentally dislike using bad statistics to back up any argument.

I listen to NPR just about every morning and evening, and violent gaming seems to have a surprisingly objective review there. Just yesterday was an interview with one family on why Diablo II is so popular, with audio quotes from two young boys maintaining that "It's just a game!", and that they can distinguish cartoon/videogame violence from the real thing.

But then, a couple of months ago, they had another discussion about a pre-teen kid esperienced with first-person shooters, and his first experience with shooting a real handgun. The adult observer commented on how steady his hand was, how careful his eyes, how his hesitation at shooting a target was nonexistent -- and then pointed out that these games are so good at training individuals to use real weapons that the Army now uses the same technology toward the same goal.

Do realistically violent games and movies desensitize kids to the real thing? No doubt. Does it do so to the point where actual violence is much, much easier to commit? Unprovable. There are plenty of things that can cause a decrease in crime statistics, from better policing to bad reporting. But claming that there's no correlation at all between virtual and actual violence, even in sarcasm, is just dodging the issue and irresponsible in the extreme.

NPR is almost as objective as they get.

Basically, the story was this: copyrights in Russia aren't protected very well. Pirates sell CDR copies of music for much less than bands sell them for, and as a result, 90% of the music is pirated.

Artists end up spending more time trying to figure out ways to make money and to get the pirates to pirate less than they do writing music. The successful bands are forced to tour at a strenuous pace. Even the most popular band spends most of their money on instruments and have to record in a very cramped apartment. The bands that are playing are basically doing it because they really really love to make music, not because they care about being able to do more than scrape by.

Maybe this is a sob-story, but it's an accurate reprentation of the situation in Russia. Listen to the story yourself, I may not have told it completely accurately.

Anyway, Napster opens up the possibility that America will be like that. Maybe you don't think musicians should make the enourmous amount of money they do now, but I don't think anyone wants the situation to get quite that bad.
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When I fly (which granted, is not very often), I like being able to get away from technology. I don't want to have Mr. Stock Trader on my left and Mr. IRC Junkie on my right while I'm trying to get some sleep on an aeroplane. National Public Radio had a commentary about this a month ago or so, where this woman didn't like this and cell phone usage becoming possible on the planes, because of the noise, stupid people who won't get off the fscking phone when they think that they can make a buck off of what they're doing, and the idiot on the aisle seat who won't put the @#%^ laptop away and tray table up so she could get up to get to the lavoratory. I LIKE getting away from electronics from time to time.

NPR had a segment this week on the SPP. They remarked that Steven King has already recouped monies from 3/4 of downloads. The other example they cited was a British rock band that has recieved 100,000 pounds in advance for a promise of an advance CD. They have made enough money to produce the album themselves. Listen to it in RealAudio at http://search .npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgDate=08/29/2000&P rgID=2. (bottom of the page).

There are other models of music creation and compensation on the horizon.

See NPR's article on the Street Performer Protocol to see how British band Marilion got more control of their music while still planning to sign with a major label.

For what I find to be the most intelligent, thorough, and generally interesting source of News, turn to your local NPR station on the radio. NPR is seldom, if ever, sensationalist, and it is always informative and educational.
This is certainly true on a national level, with programs such as All Things Considered in the evening, and Morning Edition. It has been true on a local level as well everywhere I have lived (Detroit, Grand Rapids, Philadelphia).

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With the possible exception of BattleBots and Farscape, but that's a different issue entirely.

Headline News is little more than predigested pablum designed to plug Ted Turner's other assets anyways... I say stick with professional, independent media.

A couple of great streaming NPR news sites that definitely fall within that category:

NPR Online Hourly news updates.
Living On Earth (environmental news)
WHYY Online Philadelphia's NPR station... has Fresh Air, which is a great interview program.

Bless RealAudio.

Want more on 'society', try NPR. Or one of the hundreds of news / society sites on the net.

BTW, what is "Yes we should just be beated down!" supposed to mean?

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• Napster Unplugged?
• Musicians and the Internet

• Napster Unplugged?
• Musicians and the Internet

• Napster Unplugged?
• Musicians and the Internet

• Napster Unplugged?
• Musicians and the Internet

• Napster has a smaller market
• Napster's offerings are of higher audio quality
• By default, users get a copy of the music they listen too
• Napster has no built in revenue generation (no ads)
• You search for music you like, rather than what is thrown at you by a radio station (where you might change frequencies)

Anecdote: Speaking with a friend of mine last night, who is in a band, I learned that Hip Tanaka has sold 2 cds b/c of someone hearing an MP3. Likewise, he has bought cds after listening to a group's MP3s. I don't listen to music on my PC, so I can't say anything about my purchasing habits...well, I buy a lot of vinyl records. :)

Finally, in this article about the decline in cd sales near college students. Overall sales are continuing to climb! It's also questionable as to whether college students may be purchasing more music online. What the hell is the RIAA complaining about...they are making money hand over fist!

TGL
PS - bring on more punk rock. woo!

National Public Radio's show Morning Edition has been following the trial in a series of articles. The account has been reasonably balanced and fairly thorough. If you want to point your non-geek relatives to a site that will give them the background on this, these stories are a good place to start. The first one, aired yesterday, can be found here (Napster Legal Dispute). Another one was aired this morning and has not been put on their web site yet.

National Public Radio's show Morning Edition has been following the trial in a series of articles. The account has been reasonably balanced and fairly thorough. If you want to point your non-geek relatives to a site that will give them the background on this, these stories are a good place to start. The first one, aired yesterday, can be found here (Napster Legal Dispute). Another one was aired this morning and has not been put on their web site yet.

National Public Radio's show Morning Edition has been following the trial in a series of articles. The account has been reasonably balanced and fairly thorough. If you want to point your non-geek relatives to a site that will give them the background on this, these stories are a good place to start. The first one, aired yesterday, can be found here (Napster Legal Dispute). Another one was aired this morning and has not been put on their web site yet.

There wouldn't be any huge parent companies anymore (at least temporarily). We would all get our news from smaller, independent outlets.

We would all get our news from smaller, independent outlets. We would, of course, have to decide for ourselves on the credibility of said news outlets. That in and of itself is a scary thought, we would have to make an important decision with information that we would have to go out and gather ourselves.

The foundation of today's news media is organizations like United Press International, BBC News, National Public Radio News, the Associated Press, the New York Times. These are all outstanding news organizations.

The Washington Post (a pretty good paper) owns Newsweek, an alright magazine, though its website is now hosted by MSNBC.

US News and World Report is also pretty good.

Skipping the rest of the good newspapers and the plethora of great magazines around the country (as well as the really bad ones) we get to Corporate Media. Time isn't really bad per se, but knowing what we know about Time Warner (I am an employee of the company) I personally stay away.

I stay away from all U.S. television news sources for reliable information, except for the excellent Newshour with Jim Lehrer and C-SPAN, both independent media. The former rocks, and I live in the neighborhood where Lehrer grew up; the latter isn't really news but has very informative content on current issues.

Okay! I hope I have convinced everyone that you don't have to worry about your news source if you know where to go. Even if Time Warner bought up half of these news souces somehow, it could never get them all. Also remember that if good journalists realize they are working for a company with a deteriorating reputation, they jump ship.

Did John plan to write a review? It is hard to tell if he is summarizing the content of the book or propviding his own political commentary.

For another review of the book check out this link.

The prologue to the book and another review are available on the New York times site (free registration required...).

An interview Mr. Rosen gave to NPR's All things Considered can be heard here. Note: For some reason I cannot listen to this on my computer...

He manages to leave out many of Mr. Rosen's arguments for why private speech should be protected, and why these protections should be extended to our electronic utterances.

Mr. Rosen points out that much of our private speech only makes sense in context, and that that context includes our relationship with the person we are communicating with and their knowledge about us. Thus my letters to my wife or my best friend may make no sense when read by a perfect stranger (such as a police officer, judge or jury member).

He also touches on how allowing stranger access to our private thoughts and communication infringes our freedom. The title of the book even comes from a tenet of Jewish law that protects others from being watched without thier permission (thus the 'unwanted gaze').

IMHO It is much more important to publicize and emphasize the real reasons privacy is a basic freedom, rather than just repeating privacy like a mantra and grumbling about how stupid and thoughtless Americans are to let these freedoms be eroded by the "Corporate Republic".

Failure Magazine is not only being Slashdotted right now, but NPR's all things considered just did a piece on the online 'zine as well. It can be found Here.

NPR just did a pretty interesting multi-part series called The Way We Play (Real Audio archive available), all about how technology is eating away at our free time, blah, blah. The issue is not portrayed quite so fatalistically as in Katz's piece.

And in how many articles can he use the word "Neo-Luddites?" sheesh . . .

Friday NPR's All Things Considered show ran a story about the Toysmart mailing list debacle. You can find it here or for the bandwidth challenged here.

Friday NPR's All Things Considered show ran a story about the Toysmart mailing list debacle. You can find it here or for the bandwidth challenged here.

Friday NPR's All Things Considered show ran a story about the Toysmart mailing list debacle. You can find it here or for the bandwidth challenged here.

Friday NPR's All Things Considered show ran a story about the Toysmart mailing list debacle. You can find it here or for the bandwidth challenged here.

tc>

I didn't get a chance to listen to it all but it cybersounded cybersimilar

The run dates were 3/14/2000 - 3/16/2000 and they're in Real Audio format (RealNetworks? NSA? Coincidence? ok, that's even a little too paranoid for even me!).

The P3P standard is being developed to let users decide how much of the data their computer will give up about them.

It has nothing to do with PGP, even though it begins and ends with P. btw, so does PHP and PCP. I don't think anyone is confusing those with PGP either. It is not an encryption technology, but a policy technology.

It would send out a PICS-like code to a user, and it would match to user preferences to check for violations of personal security rules.

This would let people collect a certificate that states "this site (will|will not) (sell|share) you information. Information is kept for (foo) months." If visitorse have a problem in the future that they think is a result of visiting this site, or accuse the site of violating their stated terms, they have evidence by which to prove it.

There really aren't many implementations available yet, aside from some of you usual startup-of-one-purpose companies.

This is a consumer protection measure intended to keep governments (particularly the pesky US) from passing yet more laws that don't work.

This was reported on NPR yesterday. Some folks form junkbusters commented on it saying it was a good idea to take back personal information, but more needs to be done to ensure enforcement, or the whole system would fail.

I needn't remind anyone that using junkbuster with cookie protection is usually enough for most privacy addicts.

I'll give you all of that, via old media. Just click here and choose your area.

All sorts of stuff that mainstream media doesn't/won't cover.

Morning Edition accompanies me to work, and All Things Considered takes me home. And for all of us geeks out there, there's always Science Friday. It's all much more interesting to listen to in the car than the Backstreet Boys.

Now if they just had a better time for the computer show, it's on at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday mornings here....yuck...

Our local affiliate, KUNI, broadcasts from two floors above my office, and they stream the broadcasts too!
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Morning Edition accompanies me to work, and All Things Considered takes me home. And for all of us geeks out there, there's always Science Friday. It's all much more interesting to listen to in the car than the Backstreet Boys.

Now if they just had a better time for the computer show, it's on at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday mornings here....yuck...

Our local affiliate, KUNI, broadcasts from two floors above my office, and they stream the broadcasts too!
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Morning Edition accompanies me to work, and All Things Considered takes me home. And for all of us geeks out there, there's always Science Friday. It's all much more interesting to listen to in the car than the Backstreet Boys.

Now if they just had a better time for the computer show, it's on at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday mornings here....yuck...

Our local affiliate, KUNI, broadcasts from two floors above my office, and they stream the broadcasts too!
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Oh, to have Carl Kassel's voice on my answering machine!

Best show on the radio right now.

Bar none.

Best of all, you can listen to all the episodes in real audio on the NPR website here.

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This is from npr.org; here's the Napster hour segment of the show at 28.8.

http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/t otn/20000607.totn.01.rmm