goldballs

2003-07-21T06:43:00.000-07:00

looks like hollywoods winning the digital battleTech companies bow to entertainment world in device features

2003-07-21T06:33:00.000-07:00

surprise...music cos following apple's leadYahoo! News - Rivals Ready to Take a Bite of Apple

2003-07-21T06:23:00.000-07:00

just what we really needed - a friends spinoff

Post-'Friends' gig for LeBlanc

2003-07-21T06:20:00.000-07:00

so this is what woz was up to - a super tracking technology think i prefer Apple Co-Founder Creates Electronic ID Tags

2003-07-21T06:09:00.000-07:00

In case you're interested i'm using google's the blog this toolbar to log my day today. this story is about how amazon wants to add a searchable databae of book texts partially to head off a future challenge from google

Amazon Plan Would Allow Searching Texts of Many Books

2003-07-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

I'm too scared to see this movie...sounds to realEven Later, `28 Days' Hedges Its Ending

2003-07-21T05:59:00.000-07:00

today I got up at 5.15 am to watch the tour de france - the best race in years in an athletic competition that is mind blowing in the demands it makes of riders.

i'm getting an early read of the papers -
here's the bbc cuicide scandal Scientist Who Killed Himself Was Source of Report, BBC Says

2003-07-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

not to mention INtels optimism Yahoo! News - Intel Shares Rise on Earnings Optimism

2003-07-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

so for all thos yanks losing sleep over the supposed demise f silicon valley here's some good news from Rand:RAND News Release: RAND Report Forecasts U.S. Will Continue to Lead Information Revolution: "
Santa Monica Washington Pittsburgh New York Leiden Berlin Cambridge

Office of External Communications
703-413-1100 x5117 and 310-451-6913
oec@rand.org

FOR RELEASE
Wednesday
July 16, 2003

RAND REPORT FORECASTS U.S. WILL CONTINUE TO LEAD INFORMATION REVOLUTION
The United States will continue to lead the information technology revolution for years to come because U.S. businesses are focused on innovation, Americans readily accept change, and the U.S. government provides an environment hospitable to IT business development, a RAND report issued today predicts.
'Unlike many other nations that concentrate on protecting existing businesses and institutions, the United States presses ahead with change even when it means 'creative destruction' of companies that drive its economy today in order to build a stronger economy tomorrow,' said Richard O. Hundley, lead author of the study by RAND's National Defense Research Institute.
Looking at IT around the world, the report finds:
Asia already dominates IT manufacturing, accounting for 70 to 80 percent of total world output of a wide range of important IT materials, components, and products. China is rapidly emerging as a major IT player in Asia and the world. Over time, it could possibly leapfrog many nations that today are more advanced. Japan is one of the world's leaders in IT today, but its future course is unclear. If its current economic stagnation brought on by governmental and societal rigidity persists, Japan could gradually fall behind nations in the IT vanguard. This could lead to a power vacuum in Asia 'likely to be filled by China.'
Europe is taking a restrained approach to the information revolution, at"

2003-07-02T09:29:00.000-07:00

Today my plate is full with analysing the impact of Kraft's fat reduction strategy on fast food lawsuits. I'm also taking a look at T3 - yet another imbecilic, formulaic, badly-acted, effects-laden piece of Hollywood crap that dominate the box office for a week or two.

In between I will be tackling a project that's closer to my heart - building a new room on the back of my house. There's something about all that planning, measuring, hammering and sawing that I find deeply satisfying. The project also represent something of a philosophical turning point for me. Mu usual handywork technique has relied on the botch - improvising solutions that are sometimes brilliant but usually just good enough. They all have a Rube Goldberg like quality - which given the name might be fitting, but which don't stand the tests of time, permanence or thoroughness. Another inspiration: W Heath Robinson

So this project, which I'm facetiously calling Zen and the Art of Home Construction, is going to be different. No cutting corners, no ignoring of details, no lazy compromises. I will be accurate, thorough, comprehensive, thoughtful, creative and aware - not bad attributes for a journalist either. I'll keep you poste don my progress.

2003-07-01T08:09:00.000-07:00

Last year at Comdex I watched with a sense of dissapointment as Sony honcho Nobuyuki Idei outlined his company's vision for the future which was based around allowing easy transfer of any digital info wirelessly between intelligent devices. He also unveiled a prototype linux-based media center - which looked as though it was put together by a graphically challenged 14 year old geek tinkering in his bedroom.

It really was embarresing and I couldn't help thinking at the time that Sony should get together with Apple as the only way to stop the Microsoft juggernaut from contolling every last inch of consumer computing - but this interview at the impressive always on site run by ex herring Tony Perkins explains why this won't happen - (geniuses aren't good at cooperating with other geniuses it seems).

At least the open source comunity isn't sitting around waiting to eat Microsoft pie. Today big companies like Phillips, Matsushita, NEC and SOny anounced the formation of a Linux consortium to make it more user friendly for home entertainment devices.

It's a welcome move but we don't have to wait for these guys to get their act together.

A lttle delving on the internet alows you to find any number of x-box mods that turn the games machine into a fully functioning home media center that functions as a Tivo and can channel music, pics, movies and TV shows from the PC to the TV, and stero etc . Problem is MS doesn't like this hack and it could get you in legal trouble.

There's also another soluion that a friend is about to install. Myhtpc - which you install atop windows XP and which turns your humble number cruncher into a neat home theatre personal computer (Hence myhtpc). Ofcousre you could always fork out between 1500 and 3000 bucks for the factory model from hp, but where's the fun in that?

2003-06-27T14:59:00.000-07:00

this week the NYT discovered the existence of metrosexuals - men of differing sexual identities who adopt behaviour patterns traditionally ascribed to women. The chief evangelist is David Beckham.

A little digging (well typing the term into Google actually) reveals that the story is the result of a questionable study by a marketing group that ripped off the term from British journalist Mark Simpson. He coined the term in 1994 as a tongue in chek observation at how the mass media and its corporate partners were encouraging men to adopt more feminine and gay practices so they could sell them more clothes and cosmetics.

It has since become unquestionable that men are adopting more touchy-feely attitudes. Now if you'll excuse me I've got to go pluck my eyebrows.

2003-06-24T07:35:00.000-07:00

as someone who observes the movie scene with semi-professional interest I'm keenly aware that Hollywood seems to have perfected the art of the blockbuster: massive marketing efforts create a sense of a must see event that is hyped through every possible media channel. But how does that account for the unprecedented popularity of movies based on comic book heroes - or more acurrately flawed antiheroes like spiderman, X-Men and now the Hulk-?

One reason is technological - CGI has finally given filmakers the tools to insert photorealistic superhuman characters that can perform feats that were simly impossoble to portray without the use of powerful digital technology. BUt there is also a deeer cultural attachment as philosopher Crispin Stratwell notes in todays L.A. Times. His theory is both frightening and hopeful and one that fully jibes with my observations of my teenage son. these characters first gained popularity in the 1950's and 60's when there was a growing sense of distrust with powerful but unscrupulous conservative regimes.

"We seem to be in an era of uncritical acceptance of the power of institutions, in which a president can rally a people to war and those people are actually unconcerned about whether he's telling the truth about the reasons. It seems a pretty sunny and conservative and confident moment, despite a hangover of vulnerability from 9/11 and the recently stalled economy. Or perhaps this, like 1963, may be a transitional moment in which the possibility of subversion lurks just under the surface.

That's precisely the time when antiheroes are needed and comprehensible.
though a movie is not a social movement, a popular movie is a pretty good index of people's longings. That's why the return of the alienated superhero hints at interesting possibilities — huge, green, fearsome, incredible Hulk-like possibilities."

2003-06-12T01:21:00.000-07:00

interesting story here about massively multiplayer role playing games - the ones where you with thousands of others on line. the bigest mystery to me is not who plays , will the genre become a killer app, or any of that stuff. It's how so many people have so much time to indulge.

wash post story about the forged letter used by Bush on WMD before the war. Surprising how the story goes out of its way to avoid blaming the administration for a cock-up that should have caused the president to resign on the spot. Story quotes one CIS spook as saying "Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was [consistent] was not seriously scrutinized." Also shows that Cheney and his staff had serious doubt about the letter's authenticity. WHo knows what that guy is up to? I have a sneaking suspicion that he's engineered the whole WMD brouhaha to totally discredit the Dems by pulling them out of a hat when they booing reaches a crescendo.

SO Bill Gates is entering the anti-virus business which bad news for everyone else who currently rovides those valuable services. Also for Linux users because the company Gates bought will stop selling its popular linux protection. Will be interesting to see how ashcroft handles it - he got them off the last antitrust case and he'll likely do it again.

2003-06-10T13:10:00.000-07:00

so my conclusion so far...

if you just want to publish random thoughts to get them off your chest and hope that someone reads them starting a blog is dead easy. Basically you go to a blog hosting company like blogger or blogeasy follow the instructions and away you go. If you know how to read and click amouse buton you should be able to do it.

these sites have numerous drawbacks however - they use editing software that resides on a remote server and has none of the bells and whistles you might be used to if you normally write in Word. they don't offer a lot of space, have limited ability to index old material, post graphics or allow from interactive comments from readers if you have any.

Overall the concensus seems to be that the best tool for writing blogs is movaable type but this has a relatively complicated set up - especially for people who think perls are the things you find in shells rather than an open source programming language. The good news is that the folks there are prmosing a new user friendly version...I'm gonna call them to find out when it will be available.

the best info I found

2003-06-05T17:38:00.000-07:00

one day on and what is new?

well I tried radio userland, but since I didn;t find a way to post to the golballs blog from there I decided to come back to the blogger site and splash out on the blogger pro version. But wouldnt you know it - the funvtion is down. don't you hate when you want to spend money and you can't.

In the meantime I 've also spoken to the british poster boy of blogging Nick Denton, for whose extreme sociability the format m ay well have been invented. he doesn't think bloggers are gonna replace old time media very soon - but he does believe that a lot of the writing's better, you get more of a conterxt for stories and that they do have a certain influence on how the medi covers stories.

Anyway in the interests of journalistic claritty I am posting my notes of the chats with Denton and Gulker in unedited form. Hope you can make sense of them coz I cant.

democ of publishing –

started gulker as result of a joke – from will hearst – start gulker.com and cut me out of the loop

its an amzing networking thing – by publishing this blog and opinions I find other bloggers and communities of like minded or radically diff minded people –

are they journalism – not in the modern sense o fthe word but perhaps in the original snse of the word

there is plenty of competitiveness – if I publish something that’s not thought through well will get a torrent of abuse

cfd to postal service in 16th century – the thinkers could collaborate – its no coincidence that the renaissance and industrial revolution started out of that

there is something in the notion of known trusted media sources – half my time there half my time in weblogs

one of the reasons that weblogs are rising is that factory journalism is leaving people looking for other sources –

whenever there’s a big event weblogs happen – eg

emergence from webblog is voices and opinions and quality checking that goes on

doc searles dave winer

reporting is ubiquitous – it’s the individual spin

radio.userland

Lafayette – automatuically generated guide

Will pull together wewblog pots – here are the friends and logs im interested in and will be automatically generated – will look like a group blog
Suggested donations a project rather than a fully fledged enterprise

People are getting overly excited about blogs and their commercial potential

Are a good way tpo build an audience – gawker in 5 months went to be well noticed and has hit critical mass – if you think that media brands are worth something nows a good tiome to build them – but brands don’t converge into money –

Theres an upsacel audience who are hard to reach thru trad media –

Gawkers traffic shoots through the roof at 9.30

Less and more important than people say – no more interesting that drudge whose been around for six years – though the saoftware has evolved so that anyone can set upa reasponany content rich site – but web media is clearly having a major impact in coverage

They ill coexist – webloggers don’t have time for original reporting – but can take risks that mainstream don’t – they are more genuine and more interested in straightforward – more spontaneous and best writing…

democ of publishing –

started gulker as result of a joke – from will hearst – start gulker.com and cut me out of the loop

its an amzing networking thing – by publishing this blog and opinions I find other bloggers and communities of like minded or radically diff minded people –

are they journalism – not in the modern sense o fthe word but perhaps in the original snse of the word

there is plenty of competitiveness – if I publish something that’s not thought through well will get a torrent of abuse

cfd to postal service in 16th century – the thinkers could collaborate – its no coincidence that the renaissance and industrial revolution started out of that

there is something in the notion of known trusted media sources – half my time there half my time in weblogs

one of the reasons that weblogs are rising is that factory journalism is leaving people looking for other sources –

whenever there’s a big event weblogs happen – eg

emergence from webblog is voices and opinions and quality checking that goes on

doc searles dave winer

reporting is ubiquitous – it’s the individual spin

radio.userland

Lafayette – automatuically generated guide

Will pull together wewblog pots – here are the friends and logs im interested in and will be automatically generated – will look like a group blog
Suggested donations a project rather than a fully fledged enterprise

People are getting overly excited about blogs and their commercial potential

Are a good way tpo build an audience – gawker in 5 months went to be well noticed and has hit critical mass – if you think that media brands are worth something nows a good tiome to build them – but brands don’t converge into money –

Theres an upsacel audience who are hard to reach thru trad media –

Gawkers traffic shoots through the roof at 9.30

Less and more important than people say – no more interesting that drudge whose been around for six years – though the saoftware has evolved so that anyone can set upa reasponany content rich site – but web media is clearly having a major impact in coverage

They ill coexist – webloggers don’t have time for original reporting – but can take risks that mainstream don’t – they are more genuine and more interested in straightforward – more spontaneous and best writing…

2003-06-04T12:15:00.000-07:00

today is when I get really brave

On the advice of the super knowledgeable chris gulker - who's been blogging since 95 - I am switching to radio userland - another content management tool that he says is better, has more features and allows graphics. let's see...

2003-06-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

there's also another problem I'm struggling to adjust to

that is the inversion of the narrative timeline.

To explain: when I post this it will become the top of the blog page, which means it will be the first thing that the average reader sees. the story thus starts at the end, and every new posting creates a new end and makes it more difficult to see where everything started. I should really explain that better but now Ihave some other stuff to do, like fnding out how Ican post praphics and what's the easiest way to link to all my old articles in case anyone's interested

2003-06-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

there's something of a debate apparently among journalists about the posting of notes - those who demand the highest standards of integrity say we should post our notes and all aniclliary material on blogs - this ignors the fact that even tech gurus like myself (ahem) often write down important pieces of information on tiny scraos of paper, spare pieces of skin etc etc. ALso it would be counterproductive. Good stories are the product of a journalist's notes plus their deep background knowledge and individual take on things. The basis of trust between journalists and their audience cannot be manufactured by posting notes on the internet - it develops over time as the reader sees that what the journalist reports is an accurate represntation of the real world - rather than a bunch of images and facts that are manipulated to create a picture that might be factually correct, but is representationally innacurate and often dishonest. Phew, glad I got that one off my chest

2003-06-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

But seriously folks - here are some of the notes I made on my intiial blogging experiences, in case anyone's interested:

" May 29 – went to download com – typed in blog – the best popular was wloggar.2.03 after reading the reviews I hit the download button a few seconds later ithe brazilian program was installing on my machine

But I keep getting impenetrable error message when I try to use the publiasinh tool to post on blogger.com. So I go straight to the horse’s mouth – register a blog called goldballs on blogger, choose the Jellyfish template and within minutes I have my first two postings - one about cheerleaders being as fit as Olympic athletes and the other about the weird state of Utah putting out a call for volunteers toa firing squadahead of two planned executions. It’s pretty easy, though its lucky that I knew that a little picture of a chain is the button you hve to press in order to hyperlink text in the blog to another site.

Stll I have a problem. When I type in my supposed address (goldballs.blogger.com) I go to the site’s main page rather than the incisively witty postings of yours truly. Time to check the help site,,,my mistake of course. Confusingly the address is goldballs.blogspot.com. Not bad looking at all.

But what about pics…after all they’re worth a thousand words…soo wouln’t you know it that costs extra, and yup, that option was temporarily unavailble due to technical difficulties"

2003-06-03T09:49:00.000-07:00

so a confession - I'm not the most altruistic blogger out there in the blogosphere. In fact I got into this in order to write about the blog scene for a real newspaper - that's right somewhere where they still pay money for intelligent comments written in a fairly interesting style (or something like that at least).

My conclusions so far - which of course you will read in depth when you buy a copy of the Indepndent - or look it up online for free - is that its pretty simple to set up a basic blog but the hard part is actually writing a good one - especially if no-one's paying you do do it.

There are a number of reasons why you might be good at this: you might be an egotistical maniac who thinks that people should be interested in reading your rants and raves - you might not have anything better to do with your time (get a life) or you might genuinely be a revolutionary incisive visionaryu whose ideas rreally will change the world.

Me? I'm none of the above. plus I have a family to take care off, a millin other things that ienjoy doing and a general feeling that in this digital age I spend too much time in front of the computer anyway so when it comes to fun I'd rather get my hands dirty digging in the garden, or having a beer - or preferably both at the same time.

Maybe I should get one of those panasonic toughbooks that I could use inbetween holes.

2003-05-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

Coldplay - this millenium's answer to U2 is playing tonight at the SHoreline - a massive amphitheatre. I forked out $70 for tickets. So who can blame me for downloading their best songs from kazaa (actually kazaalite - the same without the spyware) so I can get in to the music throughout the day?

2003-05-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

pssst...wanna see barbara's parasol?

that;s what you can do if you link go to the californian coastal protection website which is a project by a rich software engineer to photograph the entire coastline from a helicopter. Barbara Streisand is suing for invasionof provacy because one shot shows her grand Malibu house swimming pool et al - which she argues is not for the eyes of lesser mortals. As if anyone cared...

2003-05-29T14:42:00.000-07:00

The lion lays down with the...well it's not a lamb, perhaps a wounded tiger.

Anyway Microsoft pays AOL 750 million big ones to settle the Netscape anti-trust suit and the two companies promise to cooperate in the future. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

US-Business/
Microsoft pays AOL 750 million dollars to settle lawsuit =

New York (dpa) â€“ In a significant step towards ending one of the most famous spats in the technology world, Microsoft Corp will pay AOL 750 million dollars to settle a private anti-trust lawsuit the companies announced Thursday. The 2002 lawsuit stemmed from the software companyâ€™s anti-competitive practices against Netscape, the pioneering Interent browser which was bought by AOL after Microsoft had practically run it out of business.

Besides the payment the settlement also included a seven-year licence for AOL to use Microsoft browsing and digital media software and a commitment by both parties to explore making their competing instant messaging systems interoperable.

As part of this agreement, the two companies entered a long-term, nonexclusive license agreement allowing AOL Time Warner to use Microsoft's Windows Media 9 Series and future software for creating, distributing and playing back high-quality digital media.
"With Microsoft's media technology expertise and AOL Time Warner's content expertise, we believe we can accelerate the adoption of digital media for the Internet and help content providers across the entire industry," said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, in a statement.

"While our companies will continue to compete, I'm excited about the opportunity to work together collaboratively to make the digital decade a reality," Mr. Gates said.

"We welcome the opportunity to build a more productive relationship with Microsoft," added Dick Parsons, AOL Time Warner's chairman and chief executive. "We look forward to others in the media and entertainment industries joining together with us to help to advance the digital distribution of content to consumers while maintaining copyright protection."

2003-05-29T10:58:00.000-07:00

then there's this reported out of utah by the NYT and the Salt Lake Tribune. Well what else to expect from the state of weird mormons?

US-Execution/
Utah looks for marksmen to serve in firing squad =

New York (dpa) – Officials from the state of Utah have put out a call for marksmen to serve in firing squads that are due to execute two convicted murderers in a hail of bullets next month.

According to The New York Times the Utah Corrections Department has appealed to law enforcement agencies around the state prison near Salt Lake City, and in areas where the two men committed their crimes. "We've asked them to submit names of responsible people," said Jack Ford, a spokesman for the department. "It's standard practice."

But the grisly prospect of death by firing squad is sharpening criticism of the death penalty. This was already coming under fire because of increased evidence of wrongful convictions, and a perception that imposing the ultimate penalty is more suited to the totalitarian regimes the U.S. is committed to opposing than to the self proclaimed leader of the free world.

"Unlike the more clinical lethal injection, a firing squad is a big show with the condemned as the star," wrote the Salt Lake City Tribune on Thursday. "A firing-squad execution draws the attention of the whole world. And…it is attention that casts all of Utah in a bad light. It is time for Utah to do away with the firing squad, once and for all."

The executions by firing squad will be the first since John Albert Taylor was executed in 1996 after raping and murdering a young girl. Executions are sanctioned by 38 U.S. states but Utah is the only one that allows death row convicts to choose execution by a team of riflemen as an alternative to lethal injection.

Of the two convicts slated to die at the end of June, one, Troy Michael Kell, a white supremacist who stabbed a black prison inmate to death in 1994, says he chose the firing squad because he does not want poison injected in his body. He has initiated an appeal however and it is likely that his execution will be delayed.

The other convict, Roberto Arguelles, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting and killing three teenage girls and a 42-year-old woman in 1992. He has not given any reason for his choice of firing squad and has refused legal help and the right of appeal.

Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told the New York Times that death-row inmates sought alternative means of execution for a variety of reasons, one of them to demonstrate what they deem the barbaric nature of capital punishment. "They want to be on display," he said. "They want to show the state to be brutal and bloodthirsty.

2003-05-29T10:54:00.000-07:00

this is the first blog -
so far these are of interest today:
cheerleaders aren't just pretty faces and lissome bodies according to the SF Chronicle :

Study: Cheerleaders fit as Olympic athletes =

San Francisco (dpa) – They may wear skimpy outifits, strike stupid poses and twirl pompoms like there’s no tomorrow, but American cheerleaders are serious athletes with strength and fitness on par with Olympic- level soccer players and gymnasts, according to a new study reported Thursday in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Researchers led by Hermann Engels of Wayne State University in Detroit measured such things as workout capacity, flexibility and lean body mass in 33 high school cheerleaders. After days of testing on treadmills, stationary cycles and bend-and-reach flexibility tests the researchers found that the competitive cheerleaders showed "superior athletic fitness" similar to results seen in studies of top-level amateur athletes.

Non-competitive cheerleaders – those who just turn out to support their high-school teams - showed more typical traits of teenage girls. Many failed to turn up for the tests, had only average fitness and consumed far too many soft drinks and other sweets, the report said.