I'm a little bit sore. Not just because there was a possibility of getting my URL in Newsweek, a possibility that never materialized. No, it goes a little bit deeper than that. This article was utterly and completely vapid. There was no substance. Heck, there weren't even very many URLs!
1) For people who supposedly would have spent days, if not a week or two, picking up background info and doing research the people who wrote this article don't seem to "get" the very real distinction between weblogs and online journals. Two completely different communities. Fairly small amount of overlap. One is 1995. The other is 1999.
2) Like I said, there aren't very many URLs for an article which is supposedly about weblogging and 'Net stuff. If you look closely, there are more URLs for weblog and diary-keeping tools than there are URLs for actual weblogs and diaries. Is the average Joe Blow reader of Newsweek going to want to take a look at a couple weblogs after reading the article? Probably. Is he going to be ready to immediately start his own weblog or journal? Probably not. D'oh.
3) Although they mention a lot of tools, the one glaring ommission is Noah Grey's GreyMatter. Not only was it created by Noah, who is ostensibly one of the main people featured in the article, it is also pretty much THE premiere tool for people who are serious about weblogging. Again, d'oh!
4) Okay, so Dave Winer is an old-timer on the weblogging scene. So mention him. But devote more quotes to him than almost anyone else in the article? Why? As a friend of Noah's, I'm a little bit biased, but: this whole article could have been devoted almost exclusively to him with a small sidebar of other cool weblogs and journals to check out and it would have been better, tighter, more interesting and given a better picture of the current weblogging community than this hodge-podge of out-dated and inconsequential notes ever will.
5) It's Newsweek. Newsweek is the Lame Stream. Newsweek screws up everything it touches. Newsweek is the Kiss of Death. When your web trend hits Newsweek, your web trend is dead. I hope Noah gets some decent publicity out of this, because I'm expecting that the weblogging scene will be dead or dying off nine months from now.
6) Dear Dave Winer: No, the world would not be a better place if all 6B of us had a weblog. That's B.S. Think about it for a minute and then go and interview a few of your oh-so-interesting cookie-cutter suburban neighbors. Then tell me if you really think each and every one of them should have a weblog.
Actually, although the likelihood of multiple occurences of something that could be defined as biological "life" is extremely high, the likelihood that any of these life-forms is intelligent is much, much lower.
As best as we can tell human-type intelligence is not a notably desirable evolutionary trait. Most of the obvious benefits of a versatile intelligence can be better met by evolution for strength and a few specific instincts. For pre-Agrarian (hunter-gatherer) societies of, say, Ape-like creatures the pressure to develop into something that has an intellect capable of devising radio, inter-steller space travel and Classical music is very low. On the other hand, the pressure to develop of thick skull, big arms and the ability to tell by instinct which berries are poisonous is quite high.
Human intelligence, if a coincidence at all, would seem to be something of an environmental fluke. The chances of life on any given Earth-sized planet are low; the chances of "intelligent life" are very low.
''I'm an American, I believe in the American Way,'' he said. ''I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don't think we've done enough education of policy makers to understand the threat.''
You see, more than just saying that there was a lack of education somewhere along the line, he was saying that if you are a believer in open-source or free software you are un-American, just like Robert Hanssen. "Off with his head!!!" (I'm sure the idea of being, God-forbid, un-American really gives Linus the shivers...)
Um... It's kind of stupid to even reply to a troll like this, but FYI MP3s are by nature platform-independent. If it was possible to tie an MP3 to a specific machine and user account Napster never would have become a legal hotspot in the first place. Duh.
One of the difficulties that Napster will encounter is that a huge, huge percentage of their user base is made up of minors. How many of those kids do you think have debit cards? Mummy and Daddy may not feel like sitting down with surly 14-year-old Joe and keying in their pin # so that he can continue downloading free Eminem tunes.
It seems to me that Napster is suffering from an excess of lawyers and MBAs and seem to have lost touch with the demographics of their actual user base. Somehow I doubt that most of those 70M users are going to be willing to help Napster Inc. recoup that $1B. Free music, like free love, just isn't the same when you have to pay cash in advance.
As in all things, I think there's a Golden Mean here. No, we don't want all of our little offspring to be completely anti-authoritarian SOBs. On the other hand, raising a generation of conformist "ideal citizens" shouldn't be our goal either, unless we want a caged and stultified society.
It's so easy to loose balance on these things and let one's opinion become polarized. So, speaking moderately, IMHO we'd ideally be training children that are imbued with social grace but also filled with in an intellectual fierceness. Unfortunately, especially for male children, it's often the other way around (i.e., we get the hoodlums full of social fierceness and intellectual sloth).
Is it so unacceptably "anti-establishment" to point out that while the schools may succeed more often than not in producing children who are socially fit, they are failing to instill the intellectual fire-in-the-belly that is essential to a dynamic society?
Actually, I said "So once again we find that we ourselves, and not our parents or our grandparents, are responsible for who we are and what we become..."
I don't think that we'll ever explain it all; I don't believe in biological OR neurological reductionism and I think that there is an inherently Mysterious and Profound element to our humanity.
We will always be responsible for our actions. The story of man has often been about the search for a scapegoat before whom we can lay responsibility for our evil deeds. From a philosophical stand-point we've always known that this is wrong-headed; now science is confirming what we've long known in our hearts.
As Gould points out in his editorial, one of the best results of this discovery is that it sounds death knell of reductionist biology. As usual, the human body turns out to be more complicated than anyone could have imagined. ("Gee, we really still haven't explained it all? Gosh darnit!")
I have always thought it was silly to ascribe artistic talent, criminal behaviour, musical aptitude or computer savvy to the foibles of some particular single gene. Now here's independent confirmation of my opinion. Goody! I love being right all the time.
So once again we find that we ourselves, and not our parents or our grandparents, are responsible for who we are and what we become...
Agreed. Although, if you think about it, most of the greatest music that has ever been written (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc, etc.) was produced either for public performance or for a specific patron. The concept of profiteering on the actual music (not just on a particular concert or through a paycheck from a patron) just wasn't an idea that existed back then. So maybe if we want to encourage art rather than commercialism we should find some way for the artist to be recompensed alternative to selling bottled up versions of their performance. The current system cheats both the artist and the consumer.
Chess is a serious game: Donkey Kong is not. Why? Because chess fully engages your intellect, while Donkey Kong and (most) video games merely engage your physiological reflexes.
Applying egalitarian principles to games (of all things) is a very bad idea. Some games are actually more inherently worthwhile than others. This is why brilliant people have written voluemes on chess, while the only thing that gets written about most video games is penned by bepimpled unwashed mid-adolescent boys.You forget that before we can land that ship on Mars or navigate the asteroid belt or guide a nanoprobe through the human bloodstream somebody is going to have to invent the requisite technology. And I'll bet you that your average 17-year-old chess player will go on to invent more significant tech than your average 17-year-old Donkey Kong player.
(So we're clear on this one, I'm writing this comment from the perspective of a 17-year-old chess player. Just thought you'd like to know.)
Slashdot Mirror
1) For people who supposedly would have spent days, if not a week or two, picking up background info and doing research the people who wrote this article don't seem to "get" the very real distinction between weblogs and online journals. Two completely different communities. Fairly small amount of overlap. One is 1995. The other is 1999.
2) Like I said, there aren't very many URLs for an article which is supposedly about weblogging and 'Net stuff. If you look closely, there are more URLs for weblog and diary-keeping tools than there are URLs for actual weblogs and diaries. Is the average Joe Blow reader of Newsweek going to want to take a look at a couple weblogs after reading the article? Probably. Is he going to be ready to immediately start his own weblog or journal? Probably not. D'oh.
3) Although they mention a lot of tools, the one glaring ommission is Noah Grey's GreyMatter. Not only was it created by Noah, who is ostensibly one of the main people featured in the article, it is also pretty much THE premiere tool for people who are serious about weblogging. Again, d'oh!
4) Okay, so Dave Winer is an old-timer on the weblogging scene. So mention him. But devote more quotes to him than almost anyone else in the article? Why? As a friend of Noah's, I'm a little bit biased, but: this whole article could have been devoted almost exclusively to him with a small sidebar of other cool weblogs and journals to check out and it would have been better, tighter, more interesting and given a better picture of the current weblogging community than this hodge-podge of out-dated and inconsequential notes ever will.
5) It's Newsweek. Newsweek is the Lame Stream. Newsweek screws up everything it touches. Newsweek is the Kiss of Death. When your web trend hits Newsweek, your web trend is dead. I hope Noah gets some decent publicity out of this, because I'm expecting that the weblogging scene will be dead or dying off nine months from now.
6) Dear Dave Winer: No, the world would not be a better place if all 6B of us had a weblog. That's B.S. Think about it for a minute and then go and interview a few of your oh-so-interesting cookie-cutter suburban neighbors. Then tell me if you really think each and every one of them should have a weblog.
7) D'oh!
As best as we can tell human-type intelligence is not a notably desirable evolutionary trait. Most of the obvious benefits of a versatile intelligence can be better met by evolution for strength and a few specific instincts. For pre-Agrarian (hunter-gatherer) societies of, say, Ape-like creatures the pressure to develop into something that has an intellect capable of devising radio, inter-steller space travel and Classical music is very low. On the other hand, the pressure to develop of thick skull, big arms and the ability to tell by instinct which berries are poisonous is quite high.
Human intelligence, if a coincidence at all, would seem to be something of an environmental fluke. The chances of life on any given Earth-sized planet are low; the chances of "intelligent life" are very low.
Um... It's kind of stupid to even reply to a troll like this, but FYI MP3s are by nature platform-independent. If it was possible to tie an MP3 to a specific machine and user account Napster never would have become a legal hotspot in the first place. Duh.
One of the difficulties that Napster will encounter is that a huge, huge percentage of their user base is made up of minors. How many of those kids do you think have debit cards? Mummy and Daddy may not feel like sitting down with surly 14-year-old Joe and keying in their pin # so that he can continue downloading free Eminem tunes.
It seems to me that Napster is suffering from an excess of lawyers and MBAs and seem to have lost touch with the demographics of their actual user base. Somehow I doubt that most of those 70M users are going to be willing to help Napster Inc. recoup that $1B. Free music, like free love, just isn't the same when you have to pay cash in advance.
As in all things, I think there's a Golden Mean here. No, we don't want all of our little offspring to be completely anti-authoritarian SOBs. On the other hand, raising a generation of conformist "ideal citizens" shouldn't be our goal either, unless we want a caged and stultified society. It's so easy to loose balance on these things and let one's opinion become polarized. So, speaking moderately, IMHO we'd ideally be training children that are imbued with social grace but also filled with in an intellectual fierceness. Unfortunately, especially for male children, it's often the other way around (i.e., we get the hoodlums full of social fierceness and intellectual sloth). Is it so unacceptably "anti-establishment" to point out that while the schools may succeed more often than not in producing children who are socially fit, they are failing to instill the intellectual fire-in-the-belly that is essential to a dynamic society?
Actually, I said "So once again we find that we ourselves, and not our parents or our grandparents, are responsible for who we are and what we become..." I don't think that we'll ever explain it all; I don't believe in biological OR neurological reductionism and I think that there is an inherently Mysterious and Profound element to our humanity. We will always be responsible for our actions. The story of man has often been about the search for a scapegoat before whom we can lay responsibility for our evil deeds. From a philosophical stand-point we've always known that this is wrong-headed; now science is confirming what we've long known in our hearts.
As Gould points out in his editorial, one of the best results of this discovery is that it sounds death knell of reductionist biology. As usual, the human body turns out to be more complicated than anyone could have imagined. ("Gee, we really still haven't explained it all? Gosh darnit!")
I have always thought it was silly to ascribe artistic talent, criminal behaviour, musical aptitude or computer savvy to the foibles of some particular single gene. Now here's independent confirmation of my opinion. Goody! I love being right all the time.
So once again we find that we ourselves, and not our parents or our grandparents, are responsible for who we are and what we become...
Agreed. Although, if you think about it, most of the greatest music that has ever been written (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc, etc.) was produced either for public performance or for a specific patron. The concept of profiteering on the actual music (not just on a particular concert or through a paycheck from a patron) just wasn't an idea that existed back then. So maybe if we want to encourage art rather than commercialism we should find some way for the artist to be recompensed alternative to selling bottled up versions of their performance. The current system cheats both the artist and the consumer.
Chess is a serious game: Donkey Kong is not. Why? Because chess fully engages your intellect, while Donkey Kong and (most) video games merely engage your physiological reflexes.
Applying egalitarian principles to games (of all things) is a very bad idea. Some games are actually more inherently worthwhile than others. This is why brilliant people have written voluemes on chess, while the only thing that gets written about most video games is penned by bepimpled unwashed mid-adolescent boys.You forget that before we can land that ship on Mars or navigate the asteroid belt or guide a nanoprobe through the human bloodstream somebody is going to have to invent the requisite technology. And I'll bet you that your average 17-year-old chess player will go on to invent more significant tech than your average 17-year-old Donkey Kong player.
(So we're clear on this one, I'm writing this comment from the perspective of a 17-year-old chess player. Just thought you'd like to know.)