By Stephen Downes
May 14, 2003
Is Palladium Getting a Bad Rap?
Microsoft is playing the coy innocent in its
reaction to the criticism it has suffered since announced
its
'trusted computing' (or as Richard Stallman styles it,
'treacherous computing') platform. In this article, MS
developer
Mario Juarez responds, "There's this mythology surrounding
NGSCB that Microsoft is in league with the media industry
to
override consumers' rights. That makes no sense. Who would
buy a product that doesn't allow them to do what they want
to
do? No one. So why would Microsoft choose to commit
professional suicide in that fashion?" Still. Even as
Juarez
admits, content publishers would have to exercise
self-restraint.
"Any overly restrictive DRM would boomerang back on the
company that imposes it. It's a big world out there, and
companies know that there are plenty of sources for
content.
They want to keep customers happy." Maybe so. But it's a
question of trust. And it's worth noting that the content
companies - and the music publishers, especially - have
found
themselves in court far more frequently than
most of the consumers they intend to regulate. If it comes
down
to a matter of trust, where do you place your bets: with an
industry accused over the years of payola, collusion and
royalty
underpayments? Hm. Probably not. Maybe Microsoft isn't in
league with the content industry, as Juarez suggests
(though
they probably are). But at the very least, they are placing
their
bets - with our money - on a two-time loser. By Michelle
Delio, Wired news, May 14, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Canada's Advanced Technology Business Plan
Not actually a plan, this document is a set of
recommendations
forwarded by the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance
(CATA) based on a survey of city executives and business
leaders across Canada. It assesses the strengths and
weaknesses of major Canadian cities with respect to
innovation
in technology and offers suggestions based on that
assessment.
The subtitle of the report, "First the City, then the
Country,"
reflects the bias inherent in the sampling. So too do some
of the
recommendations, such as the emphasis on tax credits for
research. As you scroll through the individual city
reports, a
clear trend emerges: cities rate themselves strongly with
respect
to infrastructure and people, and less well with respect to
money
(and in particular, venture capital) and leadership. Hence,
for
example, the suggestion that Canada establish "a
consolidated
central information resource that would advise firms on
where to
go to find capital (and) how to apply for it..." - a
resource, in
other words, similar to the Atlantic Venture Networking group already
established by NRC's Industrial Research Assistance Program
here in the East. The report also urges
high-speed links between urban hubs, greater emplasis on
education and research, and the promotion of technology
clusters. PDF document. By John de la Mothe, CATA, April,
2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Politics Kill School Vouchers in Louisiana
It's pretty hard to find more biased reporting
than in this CNN
article attributing the failure of New Orleans to approve
school
vouchers to "politics" rather than to the concern that the
bill
would have allowed private schools to operate free from
scrutiny
and accountability. By AP, CNN, May 13, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
From Thinkers to Clickers: The World Wide Web
and the
Transformation of the Essence of Being Human
This article tries to argue that our
inclination to click our way
through the world wide web has become a substitute for
thinking. Oh for the days of the book, pines the author,
when the
delay of several hours or days before the next one arrives
would
give us time to think about, and perhaps even understand,
the
last one. Oh for the days when the answers were not at our
fingertips, when instead we
had to reason our way to a conclusion. Pardon me, but this
is a
load of hooey. Clicking is not a replacement for thinking,
it's a
replacement for waiting - waiting for the book to arrive,
waiting
for the information to become available, waiting for an
author or
speaker to finish droning on and on before something
interesting
can come along. We are, as the author asserts, a species of
wanderers. But that is probably because we have found the
waiting so unbearable. By M.O. Thirunarayanan, Ubiquity,
May, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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