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David Foster Wallace on TV, loneliness, & death

art, language & literature / /

From Larry McCaffery’s “Conversation with David Foster Wallace” (Dalkey Archive Press at the University of Illinois: Summer 1993):

One thing TV does is help us deny that we’re lonely. With televised images, we can have the facsimile of a relationship without the work of a real relationship. It’s an anesthesia of “form.” The interesting thing is why we’re so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness. You don’t have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness, both of which are like sub-dreads of our dread of being trapped inside a self (a psychic self, not just a physical self), has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I’m going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me.

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Al Qaeda’s use of social networking sites

business, politics, security, social software, tech in changing society / /

From Brian Prince’s “How Terrorism Touches the ‘Cloud’ at RSA” (eWeek: 23 April 2009):

When it comes to the war on terrorism, not all battles, intelligence gathering and recruitment happen in the street. Some of it occurs in the more elusive world of the Internet, where supporters of terrorist networks build social networking sites to recruit and spread their message.  
Enter Jeff Bardin of Treadstone 71, a former code breaker, Arabic translator and U.S. military officer who has been keeping track of vBulletin-powered sites run by supporters of al Qaeda. There are between 15 and 20 main sites, he said, which are used by terrorist groups for everything from recruitment to the distribution of violent videos of beheadings.

… “One social networking site has over 200,000 participants. …

The videos on the sites are produced online by a company called “As-Sahab Media” (As-Sahab means “the cloud” in English). Once shot, the videos make their way from hideouts to the rest of the world via a system of couriers. Some of them contain images of violence; others exhortations from terrorist leaders. Also on the sites are tools such as versions of “Mujahideen Secrets,” which is used for encryption.

“It’s a pretty solid tool; it’s not so much that the tool is so much different from the new PGP-type [tool], but the fact is they built it from scratch, which shows a very mature software development lifecycle,” he said.

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The watchclock knows where your night watchman is

business, security / /

Detex Watchclock Station
Creative Commons License photo credit: 917press

From Christopher Fahey’s “Who Watches the Watchman?” (GraphPaper: 2 May 2009):

The Detex Newman watchclock was first introduced in 1927 and is still in wide use today.

&hellip What could you possibly do in 1900 to be absolutely sure a night watchman was making his full patrol?

An elegant solution, designed and patented in 1901 by the German engineer A.A. Newman, is called the “watchclock”. It’s an ingenious mechanical device, slung over the shoulder like a canteen and powered by a simple wind-up spring mechanism. It precisely tracks and records a night watchman’s position in both space and time for the duration of every evening. It also generates a detailed, permanent, and verifiable record of each night’s patrol.

What’s so interesting to me about the watchclock is that it’s an early example of interaction design used to explicitly control user behavior. The “user” of the watchclock device is obliged to behave in a strictly delimited fashion.

…

The key, literally, to the watchclock system is that the watchman is required to “clock in” at a series of perhaps a dozen or more checkpoints throughout the premises. Positioned at each checkpoint is a unique, coded key nestled in a little steel box and secured by a small chain. Each keybox is permanently and discreetly installed in strategically-placed nooks and crannies throughout the building, for example in a broom closet or behind a stairway.

The watchman makes his patrol. He visits every checkpoint and clicks each unique key into the watchclock. Within the device, the clockwork marks the exact time and key-location code to a paper disk or strip. If the watchman visits all checkpoints in order, they will have completed their required patrol route.

The watchman’s supervisor can subsequently unlock the device itself (the watchman himself cannot open the watchclock) and review the paper records to confirm if the watchman was or was not doing their job.

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Extreme male brains

business, education, science / /

From Joe Clark’s “The extreme Google brain” (Fawny: 26 April 2009):

… Susan Pinker’s The Sexual Paradox, which explains, using scientific findings, why large majorities of girls and women behave almost identically at different stages of their lives – while large minorities of boys and men show vast variability compared to each other and to male norms.

Some of these boys and men exhibit extreme-male-brain tendencies, including an ability to focus obsessively for long periods of time, often on inanimate objects or abstractions (hence male domination of engineering and high-end law). Paradoxically, other male brains in these exceptional cases may have an ability to experiment with many options for short periods each. Pejoratively diagnosed as attention-deficit disorder, Pinker provides evidence this latter ability is actually a strength for some entrepreneurs.

The male brain, extreme or not, is compatible with visual design. It allows you to learn every font in the Letraset catalogue and work from a grid. In fact, the male-brain capacity for years-long single-mindedness explains why the heads of large ad agencies and design houses are overwhelmingly male. (It isn’t a sexist conspiracy.)

In the computer industry, extreme male brains permit years of concentration on hardware and software design, while also iterating those designs seemingly ad infinitum. The extreme male brain is really the extreme Google brain. It’s somewhat of a misnomer, because such is actually the average brain inside the company, but I will use that as a neologism.

Google was founded by extreme-male-brain nerds and, by all outward appearances, seems to hire only that type of person, not all of them male.

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David Foster Wallace on leadership

history, language & literature, politics / /

From David Foster Wallace’s “The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys And The Shrub: Seven Days In The Life Of The Late, Great John McCain” (Rolling Stone: 13 April 2000):

The weird thing is that the word “leader” itself is cliché and boring, but when you come across somebody who actually is a real leader, that person isn’t cliché or boring at all; in fact he’s sort of the opposite of cliché and boring.

Obviously, a real leader isn’t just somebody who has ideas you agree with, nor is it just somebody you happen to think is a good guy. A real leader is somebody who, because of his own particular power and charisma and example, is able to inspire people, with “inspire” being used here in a serious and non-cliché way. A real leader can somehow get us to do certain things that deep down we think are good and want to be able to do but usually can’t get ourselves to do on our own. It’s a mysterious quality, hard to define, but we always know it when we see it, even as kids. You can probably remember seeing it in certain really great coaches, or teachers, or some extremely cool older kid you “looked up to” (interesting phrase) and wanted to be just like. Some of us remember seeing the quality as kids in a minister or rabbi, or a Scoutmaster, or a parent, or a friend’s parent, or a supervisor in a summer job. And yes, all these are “authority figures,” but it’s a special kind of authority. If you’ve ever spent time in the military, you know how incredibly easy it is to tell which of your superiors are real leaders and which aren’t, and how little rank has to do with it. A leader’s real “authority” is a power you voluntarily give him, and you grant him this authority not with resentment or resignation but happily; it feels right. Deep down, you almost always like how a real leader makes you feel, the way you find yourself working harder and pushing yourself and thinking in ways you couldn’t ever get to on your own.

Lincoln was, by all available evidence, a real leader, and Churchill, and Gandhi, and King. Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, and de Gaulle, and certainly Marshall and maybe Eisenhower. (Of course Hitler was a real leader too, a very powerful one, so you have to watch out; all it is is a weird kind of power.)

…

Now you have to pay close attention to something that’s going to seem real obvious. There is a difference between a great leader and a great salesman. Because a salesman’s ultimate, overriding motivation is his own self-interest. If you buy what he’s selling, the salesman profits. So even though the salesman may have a very powerful, charismatic, admirable personality, and might even persuade you that buying really is in your interest (and it really might be) — still, a little part of you always knows that what the salesman’s ultimately after is something for himself. And this awareness is painful … although admittedly it’s a tiny pain, more like a twinge, and often unconscious. But if you’re subjected to enough great salesmen and salespitches and marketing concepts for long enough — like from your earliest Saturday-morning cartoons, let’s say — it is only a matter of time before you start believing deep down that everything is sales and marketing, and that whenever somebody seems like they care about you or about some noble idea or cause, that person is a salesman and really ultimately doesn’t give a shit about you or some cause but really just wants something for himself.

…

Yes, this is simplistic. All politicians sell, always have. FDR and JFK and MLK and Gandhi were great salesmen. But that’s not all they were. People could smell it. That weird little extra something. It had to do with “character” (which, yes, is also a cliché — suck it up).

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How right-wing talk radio works

business, history, politics / /

From Dan Shelly’s “Former News Radio Staffer Spills the Beans on How Shock Jocks Inspire Hatred and Anger” (AlterNet: 17 November 2008):

To begin with, talk show hosts such as Charlie Sykes – one of the best in the business – are popular and powerful because they appeal to a segment of the population that feels disenfranchised and even victimized by the media. These people believe the media are predominantly staffed by and consistently reflect the views of social liberals. This view is by now so long-held and deep-rooted, it has evolved into part of virtually every conservative’s DNA.

To succeed, a talk show host must perpetuate the notion that his or her listeners are victims, and the host is the vehicle by which they can become empowered. The host frames virtually every issue in us-versus-them terms. There has to be a bad guy against whom the host will emphatically defend those loyal listeners.

This enemy can be a politician – either a Democratic officeholder or, in rare cases where no Democrat is convenient to blame, it can be a “RINO” (a “Republican In Name Only,” who is deemed not conservative enough). It can be the cold, cruel government bureaucracy. More often than not, however, the enemy is the “mainstream media” – local or national, print or broadcast.

…

This is a common talk show tactic: If you lack compelling arguments in favor of your candidate or point of view, attack the other side. These attacks often rely on two key rhetorical devices, which I call You Know What Would Happen If and The Preemptive Strike.

Using the first strategy, a host will describe something a liberal has said or done that conservatives disagree with, but for which the liberal has not been widely criticized, and then say, “You know what would happen if a conservative had said (or done) that? He (or she) would have been filleted by the ‘liberal media.’ ” This is particularly effective because it’s a two-fer, simultaneously reinforcing the notion that conservatives are victims and that “liberals” are the enemy.

The second strategy, The Preemptive Strike, is used when a host knows that news reflecting poorly on conservative dogma is about to break or become more widespread. When news of the alleged massacre at Haditha first trickled out in the summer of 2006, not even Iraq War chest-thumper Charlie Sykes would defend the U.S. Marines accused of killing innocent civilians in the Iraqi village. So he spent lots of air time criticizing how the “mainstream media” was sure to sensationalize the story in the coming weeks. Charlie would kill the messengers before any message had even been delivered.

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Kids & adults use social networking sites differently

business, politics, social software, tech in changing society / /

From danah boyd’s “Social Media is Here to Stay… Now What?” at the Microsoft Research Tech Fest, Redmond, Washington (danah: 26 February 2009):

For American teenagers, social network sites became a social hangout space, not unlike the malls in which I grew up or the dance halls of yesteryears. This was a place to gather with friends from school and church when in-person encounters were not viable. Unlike many adults, teenagers were never really networking. They were socializing in pre-exiting groups.

Social network sites became critically important to them because this was where they sat and gossiped, jockeyed for status, and functioned as digital flaneurs. They used these tools to see and be seen. …

Teen conversations may appear completely irrational, or pointless at best. “Yo, wazzup?” “Not much, how you?” may not seem like much to an outsider, but this is a form of social grooming. It’s a way of checking in, confirming friendships, and negotiating social waters.

Adults have approached Facebook in very different ways. Adults are not hanging out on Facebook. They are more likely to respond to status messages than start a conversation on someone’s wall (unless it’s their birthday of course). Adults aren’t really decorating their profiles or making sure that their About Me’s are up-to-date. Adults, far more than teens, are using Facebook for its intended purpose as a social utility. For example, it is a tool for communicating with the past.

Adults may giggle about having run-ins with mates from high school, but underneath it all, many of them are curious. This isn’t that different than the school reunion. … Teenagers craft quizzes for themselves and their friends. Adults are crafting them to show-off to people from the past and connect the dots between different audiences as a way of coping with the awkwardness of collapsed contexts.

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Why cons work on us

business, law, security / /

From Damien Carrick’s interview with Nicholas Johnson, “The psychology of conmen” (The Law Report: 30 September 2008):

Nicholas Johnson: I think what I love most about con artists and the world of scammers is that they’re criminals who manage to get their victims to hand over their possessions freely. Most thieves and robbers and the like, tend to use force, or deception, in order for them to take things, whereas a con artist manages to get their victim to freely give up their stuff.

…

The main thing that really makes people susceptible to con artists is the idea that we’re going to get something for nothing. So it really buys into our greed; it buys into sometimes our lust, and at the same time, sometimes even our sense that we’re going to do something good, so we’re going to get a great feeling from helping someone out, we’re going to make some money, we’re going to meet a beautiful girl—it really ties into our basest desires, and that’s what the con artist relies on.

…

Most con artists rely on this idea that the victim is in control. The victim is the one who is controlling the situation. So a great example of that is the classic Nigerian email scam, the person who writes to you and says, ‘I’ve got this money that I need to get out of the country, and I need your help.’ So you’re in control, you can help them, you can do a good deed, you can make some money, you’ve got this fantastic opportunity, and the con artist needs your help. It’s not the con artist doing you a favour. So really, you feel like you’re the one who’s controlling the situation when really it’s the con artist who knows the real deal.

…

I think for a lot of con artists they’re very proud of their work, and they like people to know exactly what they’ve gotten away with.

…

… for many of [the conmen], they really feel like even if they get caught, or even if they don’t get away with it, they feel like they’re giving their victim a good story, you know, something to dine out over, something to discuss down at the pub. They think that’s OK, you can scam somebody out of a couple of hundred bucks, because they’re getting a good story in return.

…

My all-time favourite one only makes the con artist a few dollars every time he does it, but I absolutely love it. These guys used to go door-to-door in the 1970s selling lightbulbs and they would offer to replace every single lightbulb in your house, so all your old lightbulbs would be replaced with a brand new lightbulb, and it would cost you, say $5, so a fraction of the cost of what new lightbulbs would cost. So the man comes in, he replaces each lightbulb, every single one in the house, and does it, you can check, and they all work, and then he takes all the lightbulbs that he’s just taken from the person’s house, goes next door and then sells them the same lightbulbs again. So it’s really just moving lightbulbs from one house to another and charging people a fee to do it.

But there’s all sorts of those homemaker scams, people offering to seal your roof so they say, ‘We’ll put a fresh coat of tar on your roof’, or ‘We’ll re-seal your driveway’. In actual fact all they do is get old black sump oil and smooth it over the roof or smooth it over the driveway. You come home and it looks like wet tar, and so ‘Don’t step on it for 24 hours’, and of course 24 hours later they’re long gone with the money, and you’re left with a sticky, smelly driveway.

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What happens to IP when it’s easy to copy anything?

art, business, history, law, politics, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Bruce Sterling’s “2009 Will Be a Year of Panic” (Seed: 29 January 2009):

Let’s consider seven other massive reservoirs of potential popular dread. Any one of these could erupt, shattering the fragile social compact we maintain with one another in order to believe things contrary to fact.

…

2. Intellectual property. More specifically, the fiat declaration that properties that are easy to reproduce shouldn’t be reproduced.

Declaring that “information wants to be free” is an ideological stance. A real-world situation where information can’t be anything but free, where digital information cannot be monetized, is bizarre and deeply scary. No banker or economist anywhere has the ghost of clue what to do under such conditions.

Intellectual property made sense and used to work rather well when conditions of production favored it. Now they don’t. If it’s simple to copy just one single movie, some gray area of fair use can be tolerated. If it becomes easy to copy a million movies with one single button-push, this vast economic superstructure is reduced to rags. Our belief in this kind of “property” becomes absurd.

To imagine that real estate is worthless is strange, though we’ve somehow managed to do that. But our society is also built on the supposed monetary worth of unreal estate. In fact, the planet’s most advanced economies are optimized to create pretty much nothing else. The ultimate global consequences of this situation’s abject failure would rank with the collapse of Communism.

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Socioeconomic analysis of MySpace & Facebook

business, education, politics, social software, tech in changing society / /

From danah boyd’s “Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace” (danah boyd: 24 June 2007):

When MySpace launched in 2003, it was primarily used by 20/30-somethings (just like Friendster before it). The bands began populating the site by early 2004 and throughout 2004, the average age slowly declined. It wasn’t until late 2004 that teens really started appearing en masse on MySpace and 2005 was the year that MySpace became the “in thing” for teens.

Facebook launched in 2004 as a Harvard-only site. It slowly expanded to welcome people with .edu accounts from a variety of different universities. In mid-2005, Facebook opened its doors to high school students, but it wasn’t that easy to get an account because you needed to be invited. As a result, those who were in college tended to invite those high school students that they liked. Facebook was strongly framed as the “cool” thing that college students did.

…

In addition to the college framing, the press coverage of MySpace as dangerous and sketchy alienated “good” kids. Facebook seemed to provide an ideal alternative. Parents weren’t nearly as terrified of Facebook because it seemed “safe” thanks to the network-driven structure.

…

She argues that class divisions in the United States have more to do with lifestyle and social stratification than with income. In other words, all of my anti-capitalist college friends who work in cafes and read Engels are not working class just because they make $14K a year and have no benefits. Class divisions in the United States have more to do with social networks (the real ones, not FB/MS), social capital, cultural capital, and attitudes than income. Not surprisingly, other demographics typically discussed in class terms are also a part of this lifestyle division. Social networks are strongly connected to geography, race, and religion; these are also huge factors in lifestyle divisions and thus “class.”

…

The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other “good” kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we’d call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

In order to demarcate these two groups, let’s call the first group of teens “hegemonic teens” and the second group “subaltern teens.”

…

Most teens who exclusively use Facebook are familiar with and have an opinion about MySpace. These teens are very aware of MySpace and they often have a negative opinion about it. They see it as gaudy, immature, and “so middle school.” They prefer the “clean” look of Facebook, noting that it is more mature and that MySpace is “so lame.” What hegemonic teens call gaudy can also be labeled as “glitzy” or “bling” or “fly” (or what my generation would call “phat”) by subaltern teens. Terms like “bling” come out of hip-hop culture where showy, sparkly, brash visual displays are acceptable and valued. The look and feel of MySpace resonates far better with subaltern communities than it does with the upwardly mobile hegemonic teens. … That “clean” or “modern” look of Facebook is akin to West Elm or Pottery Barn or any poshy Scandinavian design house (that I admit I’m drawn to) while the more flashy look of MySpace resembles the Las Vegas imagery that attracts millions every year. I suspect that lifestyles have aesthetic values and that these are being reproduced on MySpace and Facebook.

I should note here that aesthetics do divide MySpace users. The look and feel that is acceptable amongst average Latino users is quite different from what you see the subculturally-identified outcasts using. Amongst the emo teens, there’s a push for simple black/white/grey backgrounds and simplistic layouts. While I’m using the term “subaltern teens” to lump together non-hegemonic teens, the lifestyle divisions amongst the subalterns are quite visible on MySpace through the aesthetic choices of the backgrounds. The aesthetics issue is also one of the forces that drives some longer-term users away from MySpace.

…

Teens from poorer backgrounds who are on MySpace are less likely to know people who go to universities. They are more likely to know people who are older than them, but most of their older friends, cousins, and co-workers are on MySpace. It’s the cool working class thing and it’s the dominant SNS at community colleges. These teens are more likely to be interested in activities like shows and clubs and they find out about them through MySpace. The subaltern teens who are better identified as “outsiders” in a hegemonic community tend to be very aware of Facebook. Their choice to use MySpace instead of Facebook is a rejection of the hegemonic values (and a lack of desire to hang out with the preps and jocks even online).

Class divisions in military use

A month ago, the military banned MySpace but not Facebook. This was a very interesting move because the division in the military reflects the division in high schools. Soldiers are on MySpace; officers are on Facebook. Facebook is extremely popular in the military, but it’s not the SNS of choice for 18-year old soldiers, a group that is primarily from poorer, less educated communities. They are using MySpace. The officers, many of whom have already received college training, are using Facebook. The military ban appears to replicate the class divisions that exist throughout the military. …

MySpace is the primary way that young soldiers communicate with their peers. When I first started tracking soldiers’ MySpace profiles, I had to take a long deep breath. Many of them were extremely pro-war, pro-guns, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, pro-killing, and xenophobic as hell. Over the last year, I’ve watched more and more profiles emerge from soldiers who aren’t quite sure what they are doing in Iraq. I don’t have the data to confirm whether or not a significant shift has occurred but it was one of those observations that just made me think. And then the ban happened. I can’t help but wonder if part of the goal is to cut off communication between current soldiers and the group that the military hopes to recruit.

…

Thoughts and meta thoughts

…

People often ask me if I’m worried about teens today. The answer is yes, but it’s not because of social network sites. With the hegemonic teens, I’m very worried about the stress that they’re under, the lack of mobility and healthy opportunities for play and socialization, and the hyper-scheduling and surveillance. I’m worried about their unrealistic expectations for becoming rich and famous, their lack of work ethic after being pampered for so long, and the lack of opportunities that many of them have to even be economically stable let alone better off than their parents. I’m worried about how locking teens indoors coupled with a fast food/junk food advertising machine has resulted in a decrease in health levels across the board which will just get messy as they are increasingly unable to afford health insurance. When it comes to ostracized teens, I’m worried about the reasons why society has ostracized them and how they will react to ongoing criticism from hegemonic peers. I cringe every time I hear of another Columbine, another Virgina Tech, another site of horror when an outcast teen lashes back at the hegemonic values of society.

I worry about the lack of opportunities available to poor teens from uneducated backgrounds. I’m worried about how Wal-Mart Nation has destroyed many of the opportunities for meaningful working class labor as these youth enter the workforce. I’m worried about what a prolonged war will mean for them. I’m worried about how they’ve been told that to succeed, they must be a famous musician or sports player. I’m worried about how gangs provide the only meaningful sense of community that many of these teens will ever know.

Given the state of what I see in all sorts of neighborhoods, I’m amazed at how well teens are coping and I think that technology has a lot to do with that. Teens are using social network sites to build community and connect with their peers. They are creating publics for socialization. And through it, they are showcasing all of the good, bad, and ugly of today’s teen life.

…

In the 70s, Paul Willis analyzed British working class youth and he wrote a book called Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. He argued that working class teens will reject hegemonic values because it’s the only way to continue to be a part of the community that they live in. In other words, if you don’t know that you will succeed if you make a run at jumping class, don’t bother – you’ll lose all of your friends and community in the process. His analysis has such strong resonance in American society today. I just wish I knew how to fix it.

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Criminals working together to improve their tools

business, security / /

From Dan Goodin’s “Crimeware giants form botnet tag team” (The Register: 5 September 2008):

The Rock Phish gang – one of the net’s most notorious phishing outfits – has teamed up with another criminal heavyweight called Asprox in overhauling its network with state-of-the-art technology, according to researchers from RSA.

Over the past five months, Rock Phishers have painstakingly refurbished their infrastructure, introducing several sophisticated crimeware packages that get silently installed on the PCs of its victims. One of those programs makes infected machines part of a fast-flux botnet that adds reliability and resiliency to the Rock Phish network.

…

Based in Europe, the Rock Phish group is a criminal collective that has been targeting banks and other financial institutions since 2004. According to RSA, they are responsible for half of the worldwide phishing attacks and have siphoned tens of millions of dollars from individuals’ bank accounts. The group got its name from a now discontinued quirk in which the phishers used directory paths that contained the word “rock.”

The first sign the group was expanding operations came in April, when it introduced a trojan known alternately as Zeus or WSNPOEM, which steals sensitive financial information in transit from a victim’s machine to a bank. Shortly afterward, the gang added more crimeware, including a custom-made botnet client that was spread, among other means, using the Neosploit infection kit.

…

Soon, additional signs appeared pointing to a partnership between Rock Phishers and Asprox. Most notably, the command and control server for the custom Rock Phish crimeware had exactly the same directory structure of many of the Asprox servers, leading RSA researchers to believe Rock Phish and Asprox attacks were using at least one common server. …

RSA researchers also noticed that a decrease in phishing attacks hosted on Rock Phishers’ old servers coincided with never-before-seen phishing attacks used on the Asprox botnet.

…

In this case, Rock Phishers seem to be betting that the spoofed pages used in their phishing attacks will remain up longer using fast-flux technology from Asprox.

“It just shows that these guys know each other and are willing to provide services to each other,” said Joe Stewart, a researcher at SecureWorks who has spent years tracking Asprox and groups that use fast-flux botnets. “This goes on in the underground all the time.”

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Wikipedia, freedom, & changes in production

business, history, science, social software, tech in changing society / /

From Clay Shirky’s “Old Revolutions, Good; New Revolutions, Bad” (Britannica Blog: 14 June 2007):

Gorman’s theory about print – its capabilities ushered in an age very different from manuscript culture — is correct, and the same kind of shift is at work today. As with the transition from manuscripts to print, the new technologies offer virtues that did not previously exist, but are now an assumed and permanent part of our intellectual environment. When reproduction, distribution, and findability were all hard, as they were for the last five hundred years, we needed specialists to undertake those jobs, and we properly venerated them for the service they performed. Now those tasks are simpler, and the earlier roles have instead become obstacles to direct access.

Digital and networked production vastly increase three kinds of freedom: freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly. This perforce increases the freedom of anyone to say anything at any time. This freedom has led to an explosion in novel content, much of it mediocre, but freedom is like that. Critically, this expansion of freedom has not undermined any of the absolute advantages of expertise; the virtues of mastery remain as they were. What has happened is that the relative advantages of expertise are in precipitous decline. Experts the world over have been shocked to discover that they were consulted not as a direct result of their expertise, but often as a secondary effect – the apparatus of credentialing made finding experts easier than finding amateurs, even when the amateurs knew the same things as the experts.

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The success of Wikipedia forces a profound question on print culture: how is information to be shared with the majority of the population? This is an especially tough question, as print culture has so manifestly failed at the transition to a world of unlimited perfect copies. Because Wikipedia’s contents are both useful and available, it has eroded the monopoly held by earlier modes of production. Other encyclopedias now have to compete for value to the user, and they are failing because their model mainly commits them to denying access and forbidding sharing. If Gorman wants more people reading Britannica, the choice lies with its management. Were they to allow users unfettered access to read and share Britannica’s content tomorrow, the only interesting question is whether their readership would rise a ten-fold or a hundred-fold.

Britannica will tell you that they don’t want to compete on universality of access or sharability, but this is the lament of the scribe who thinks that writing fast shouldn’t be part of the test. In a world where copies have become cost-free, people who expend their resources to prevent access or sharing are forgoing the principal advantages of the new tools, and this dilemma is common to every institution modeled on the scarcity and fragility of physical copies. Academic libraries, which in earlier days provided a service, have outsourced themselves as bouncers to publishers like Reed-Elsevier; their principal job, in the digital realm, is to prevent interested readers from gaining access to scholarly material.

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ODF compared & constrasted with OOXML

business, technology / /

From Sam Hiser’s “Achieving Openness: A Closer Look at ODF and OOXML” (ONLamp.com: 14 June 2007):

An open, XML-based standard for displaying and storing data files (text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations) offers a new and promising approach to data storage and document exchange among office applications. A comparison of the two XML-based formats–OpenDocument Format (“ODF”) and Office Open XML (“OOXML”)–across widely accepted “openness” criteria has revealed substantial differences, including the following:

  • ODF is developed and maintained in an open, multi-vendor, multi-stakeholder process that protects against control by a single organization. OOXML is less open in its development and maintenance, despite being submitted to a formal standards body, because control of the standard ultimately rests with one organization.
  • ODF is the only openly available standard, published fully in a document that is freely available and easy to comprehend. This openness is reflected in the number of competing applications in which ODF is already implemented. Unlike ODF, OOXML’s complexity, extraordinary length, technical omissions, and single-vendor dependencies combine to make alternative implementation unattractive as well as legally and practically impossible.
  • ODF is the only format unencumbered by intellectual property rights (IPR) restrictions on its use in other software, as certified by the Software Freedom Law Center. Conversely, many elements designed into the OOXML formats but left undefined in the OOXML specification require behaviors upon document files that only Microsoft Office applications can provide. This makes data inaccessible and breaks work group productivity whenever alternative software is used.
  • ODF offers interoperability with ODF-compliant applications on most of the common operating system platforms. OOXML is designed to operate fully within the Microsoft environment only. Though it will work elegantly across the many products in the Microsoft catalog, OOXML ignores accepted standards and best practices regarding its use of XML.

Overall, a comparison of both formats reveals significant differences in their levels of openness. While ODF is revealed as sufficiently open across all four key criteria, OOXML shows relative weakness in each criteria and offers fundamental flaws that undermine its candidacy as a global standard.

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My new book – Google Apps Deciphered – is out!

business, education, history, personal, social software, tech help, tech in changing society, technology / /

I’m really proud to announce that my 5th book is now out & available for purchase: Google Apps Deciphered: Compute in the Cloud to Streamline Your Desktop. My other books include:

(I’ve also contributed to two others: Ubuntu Hacks: Tips & Tools for Exploring, Using, and Tuning Linux and Microsoft Vista for IT Security Professionals.)

Google Apps Deciphered is a guide to setting up Google Apps, migrating to it, customizing it, and using it to improve productivity, communications, and collaboration. I walk you through each leading component of Google Apps individually, and then show my readers exactly how to make them work together for you on the Web or by integrating them with your favorite desktop apps. I provide practical insights on Google Apps programs for email, calendaring, contacts, wikis, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, video, and even Google’s new web browser Chrome. My aim was to collect together and present tips and tricks I’ve gained by using and setting up Google Apps for clients, family, and friends.

Here’s the table of contents:

  • 1: Choosing an Edition of Google Apps
  • 2: Setting Up Google Apps
  • 3: Migrating Email to Google Apps
  • 4: Migrating Contacts to Google Apps
  • 5: Migrating Calendars to Google Apps
  • 6: Managing Google Apps Services
  • 7: Setting Up Gmail
  • 8: Things to Know About Using Gmail
  • 9: Integrating Gmail with Other Software and Services
  • 10: Integrating Google Contacts with Other Software and Services
  • 11: Setting Up Google Calendar
  • 12: Things to Know About Using Google Calendar
  • 13: Integrating Google Calendar with Other Software and Services
  • 14: Things to Know About Using Google Docs
  • 15: Integrating Google Docs with Other Software and Services
  • 16: Setting Up Google Sites
  • 17: Things to Know About Using Google Sites
  • 18: Things to Know About Using Google Talk
  • 19: Things to Know About Using Start Page
  • 20: Things to Know About Using Message Security and Recovery
  • 21: Things to Know About Using Google Video
  • Appendix A: Backing Up Google Apps
  • Appendix B: Dealing with Multiple Accounts
  • Appendix C: Google Chrome: A Browser Built for Cloud Computing

If you want to know more about Google Apps and how to use it, then I know you’ll enjoy and learn from Google Apps Deciphered. You can read about and buy the book at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Google-Apps-Deciphered-Compute-Streamline/dp/0137004702) for $26.39. If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to contact me at scott at granneman dot com.

My new book – Google Apps Deciphered – is out! Read More »

But we’ve always done it this way …

business, politics / /

From James Bennett’s “Let’s talk about Python 3.0” (The B-List: 5 December 2008):

There’s an old joke, so old that I don’t even know for certain where it originated, that’s often used to explain why big corporations do things the way they do. It involves some monkeys, a cage, a banana and a fire hose.

You build a nice big room-sized cage, and in one end of it you put five monkeys. In the other end you put the banana. Then you stand by with the fire hose. Sooner or later one of the monkeys is going to go after the banana, and when it does you turn on the fire hose and spray the other monkeys with it. Replace the banana if needed, then repeat the process. Monkeys are pretty smart, so they’ll figure this out pretty quickly: “If anybody goes for the banana, the rest of us get the hose.” Soon they’ll attack any member of their group who tries to go to the banana.

Once this happens, you take one monkey out of the cage and bring in a new one. The new monkey will come in, try to make friends, then probably go for the banana. And the other monkeys, knowing what this means, will attack him to stop you from using the hose on them. Eventually the new monkey will get the message, and will even start joining in on the attack if somebody else goes for the banana. Once this happens, take another of the original monkeys out of the cage and bring in another new monkey.

After repeating this a few times, there will come a moment when none of the monkeys in the cage have ever been sprayed by the fire hose; in fact, they’ll never even have seen the hose. But they’ll attack any monkey who goes to get the banana. If the monkeys could speak English, and if you could ask them why they attack anyone who goes for the banana, their answer would almost certainly be: “Well, I don’t really know, but that’s how we’ve always done things around here.”

This is a startlingly good analogy for the way lots of corporations do things: once a particular process is entrenched (and especially after a couple rounds of employee turnover), there’s nobody left who remembers why the company does things this way. There’s nobody who stops to think about whether this is still a good way to do things, or whether it was even a good idea way back at the beginning. The process continues through nothing more than inertia, and anyone who suggests a change is likely to end up viciously attacked by monkeys.

But this is also a really good analogy for the way a lot of software works: a function or a class or a library was written, once upon a time, and maybe at the time it was a good idea. Maybe now it’s not such a good idea, and actually causes more problems than it solves, but hey, that’s the way we’ve always done things around here, and who are you to suggest a change? Should I go get the fire hose?

But we’ve always done it this way … Read More »

Why American car companies are in trouble

business, history, tech in changing society / /

From Paul Ingrassia’s “How Detroit Drove Into a Ditch” (The Wall Street Journal: 25 October 2008):

This situation doesn’t stem from the recent meltdown in banking and the markets. GM, Ford and Chrysler have been losing billions since 2005, when the U.S. economy was still healthy. The financial crisis does, however, greatly exacerbate Detroit’s woes. As car sales plunge — both in the U.S. and in Detroit’s once-booming overseas markets — it’s becoming nearly impossible for the companies to cut costs fast enough to keep pace with the evaporation of their revenue. All three companies, once the very symbol of American economic might, need new capital, but their options for raising it are limited.

In all this lies a tale of hubris, missed opportunities, disastrous decisions and flawed leadership of almost biblical proportions. In fact, for the last 30 years Detroit has gone astray, repented, gone astray and repented again in a cycle not unlike the Israelites in the Book of Exodus.

…

Detroit failed to grasp — or at least to address — the fundamental nature of its Japanese competition. Japan’s car companies, and more recently the Germans and Koreans, gained a competitive advantage largely by forging an alliance with American workers.

Detroit, meanwhile, has remained mired in mutual mistrust with the United Auto Workers union. While the suspicion has abated somewhat in recent years, it never has disappeared — which is why Detroit’s factories remain vastly more cumbersome to manage than the factories of foreign car companies in the U.S.

…

Two incidents in 1936 and 1937 formed this lasting labor-management divide: the sit-down strike at GM’s factories in Flint, Mich., and the Battle of the Overpass in Detroit, in which Ford goons beat up union organizers. But the United Auto Workers prevailed, and as the GM-Ford-Chrysler oligopoly emerged in the 1940s, the union gained a labor monopoly in American auto factories. As costs increased, the companies routinely passed them on to U.S. consumers, who had virtually no alternatives in buying cars.

…

Nissan, Toyota and other Japanese car companies soon started building factories in America, followed by German and Korean auto makers. There are now 16 foreign-owned assembly plants in the U.S., and many more that build engines, transmissions and other components.

…

Several years ago Ford even considered dropping cars altogether because they weren’t profitable, and focusing entirely on trucks. Then in 2005, Hurricane Katrina and growing oil demand from China and India sent gasoline prices soaring and SUV sales plunging. GM lost $10.6 billion that year. Ford topped that by losing $12.7 billion in 2006. Last summer Daimler gave up on Chrysler, selling it to private-equity powerhouse Cerberus for about one-fourth of what it had paid to buy Chrysler. Last fall the UAW approved significant wage and benefit concessions, but they won’t kick in until 2010. That might be too late. GM lost $15.5 billion in this year’s second quarter, Ford lost $8.7 billion, and further losses are coming. (Closely held Chrysler, of course, doesn’t report financial results.)

Why American car companies are in trouble Read More »

George Clinton and the sample troll

art, business, history, law, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Tim Wu’s “On Copyright’s Authorship Policy” (Internet Archive: 2007):

On May 4, 2001, a one-man corporation named Bridgeport Music, Inc. launched over 500 counts of copyright infringement against more than 800 different artists and labels.1 Bridgeport Music has no employees, and other than copyrights, no reported assets.2 Technically, Bridgeport is a “catalogue company.” Others call it a “sample troll.”

Bridgeport is the owner of valuable copyrights, including many of funk singer George Clinton’s most famous songs – songs which are sampled in a good amount of rap music.3 Bridgeport located every sample of Clinton’s and other copyrights it owned, and sued based on the legal position that any sampling of a sound recording, no matter how minimal or unnoticeable, is still an infringement.

During the course of Bridgeport’s campaign, it has won two important victories. First, the Sixth Circuit, the appellate court for Nashville adopted Bridgeport’s theory of infringement. In Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films,4 the defendants sampled a single chord from the George Clinton tune “Get Off Your Ass and Jam,” changed the pitch, and looped the sound. Despite the plausible defense that one note is but a de minimus use of the work, the Sixth Circuit ruled for Bridgeport and created a stark rule: any sampling, no matter how minimal or undetectable, is a copyright infringement. Said the court in Bridgeport, “Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way.”5 In 2006 Bridgeport convinced a district court to enjoin the sales of the bestselling Notorious B.I.G. album, Ready to Die, for “illegal sampling.”6 A jury then awarded Bridgeport more than four million dollars in damages.7

The Bridgeport cases have been heavily criticized, and taken as a prime example of copyright’s excesses.8 Yet the deeper problem with the Bridgeport litigation is not necessarily a problem of too much copyright. It can be equally concluded that the ownership of the relevant rights is the root of the problem. George Clinton, the actual composer and recording artist, takes a much different approach to sampling. “When hip-hop came out,” said Clinton in an interview with journalist Rick Karr, “I was glad to hear it, especially when it was our songs – it was a way to get back on the radio.”9 Clinton accepts sampling of his work, and has released a three CD collection of his sounds for just that purpose.10 The problem is that he doesn’t own many of his most important copyrights. Instead, it is Bridgeport, the one-man company, that owns the rights to Clinton’s work. In the 1970s Bridgeport, through its owner Armen Boladian, managed to seize most of George Clinton’s copyrights and many other valuable rights. In at least a few cases, Boladian assigned the copyrights to Bridgeport by writing a contract and then faking Clinton’s signature.11 As Clinton puts it “he just stole ‘em.”12 With the copyrights to Clinton’s songs in the hands of Bridgeport – an entity with no vested interest in the works beyond their sheer economic value – the targeting of sampling is not surprising.

1 Tim Wu, Jay-Z Versus the Sample Troll, Slate Magazine, Nov. 16, 2006, http://www.slate.com/id/2153961/.

2 See Bridgeport Music, Inc.’s corporate entity details, Michigan Department of Labor & Economic Growth, available at http://www.dleg.state.mi.us/bcs_corp/dt_corp.asp?id_nbr=190824&name_entity=BRIDGEPORT%20MUSIC,%20INC (last visited Mar. 18, 2007).

3 See Wu, supra note 1.

4 410 F.3d 792 (6th Cir. 2005).

5 Id. at 801.

6 Jeff Leeds, Judge Freezes Notorious B.I.G. Album, N.Y. Times, Mar. 21, 2006, at E2.

7 Id.

8 See, e.g., Matthew R. Broodin, Comment, Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films: The Death of the Substantial Similarity Test in Digital Samping Copyright Infringemnt Claims—The Sixth Circuit’s Flawed Attempt at a Bright Line Rule, 6 Minn. J. L. Sci. & Tech. 825 (2005); Jeffrey F. Kersting, Comment, Singing a Different Tune: Was the Sixth Circuit Justified in Changing the Protection of Sound Recordings in Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films?, 74 U. Cin. L. Rev. 663 (2005) (answering the title question in the negative); John Schietinger, Note, Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films: How the Sixth Circuit Missed a Beat on Digital Music Sampling, 55 DePaul L. Rev. 209 (2005).

9 Interview by Rick Karr with George Clinton, at the 5th Annual Future of Music Policy Summit, Wash. D.C. (Sept. 12, 2005), video clip available at http://www.tvworldwide.com/showclip.cfm?ID=6128&clip=2 [hereinafter Clinton Interview].

10 George Clinton, Sample Some of Disc, Sample Some of D.A.T., Vols. 1-3 (1993-94).

11 Sound Generator, George Clinton awarded Funkadelic master recordings (Jun. 6, 2005), http://www.soundgenerator.com/news/showarticle.cfm?articleid=5555.

12 Clinton Interview, supra note 9.

George Clinton and the sample troll Read More »

If concerts bring money in for the music biz, what happens when concerts get smaller?

art, business, history, law / /

From Jillian Cohen’s “The Show Must Go On” (The American: March/April 2008):

You can’t steal a concert. You can’t download the band—or the sweaty fans in the front row, or the merch guy, or the sound tech—to your laptop to take with you. Concerts are not like albums—easy to burn, copy, and give to your friends. If you want to share the concert-going experience, you and your friends all have to buy tickets. For this reason, many in the ailing music industry see concerts as the next great hope to revive their business.

…

It’s a blip that already is fading, to the dismay of the major record labels. CD sales have dropped 25 percent since 2000 and digital downloads haven’t picked up the slack. As layoffs swept the major labels this winter, many industry veterans turned their attention to the concert business, pinning their hopes on live performances as a way to bolster their bottom line.

Concerts might be a short-term fix. As one national concert promoter says, “The road is where the money is.” But in the long run, the music business can’t depend on concert tours for a simple, biological reason: the huge tour profits that have been generated in the last few decades have come from performers who are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. As these artists get older, they’re unlikely to be replaced, because the industry isn’t investing in new talent development.

When business was good—as it was when CD sales grew through much of the 1990s—music labels saw concert tours primarily as marketing vehicles for albums. Now, they’re seizing on the reverse model. Tours have become a way to market the artist as a brand, with the fan clubs, limited-edition doodads, and other profitable products and services that come with the territory.

“Overall, it’s not a pretty picture for some parts of the industry,” JupiterResearch analyst David Card wrote in November when he released a report on digital music sales. “Labels must act more like management companies, and tap into the broadest collection of revenue streams and licensing as possible,” he said. “Advertising and creative packaging and bundling will have to play a bigger role than they have. And the $3 billion-plus touring business is not exactly up for grabs—it’s already competitive and not very profitable. Music companies of all types need to use the Internet for more cost-effective marketing, and A&R [artist development] risk has to be spread more fairly.”

The ‘Heritage Act’ Dilemma

Even so, belief in the touring business was so strong last fall that Madonna signed over her next ten years to touring company Live Nation—the folks who put on megatours for The Rolling Stones, The Police, and other big headliners—in a deal reportedly worth more than $120 million. The Material Girl’s arrangement with Live Nation is known in the industry as a 360-degree deal. Such deals may give artists a big upfront payout in exchange for allowing record labels or, in Madonna’s case, tour producers to profit from all aspects of their business, including touring, merchandise, sponsorships, and more.

While 360 deals may work for big stars, insiders warn that they’re not a magic bullet that will save record labels from their foundering, top-heavy business model. Some artists have done well by 360 contracts, including alt-metal act Korn and British pop sensation Robbie Williams. With these successes in mind, some tout the deals as a way for labels to recoup money they’re losing from downloads and illegal file sharing. But the artists who are offered megamillions for a piece of their brand already have built it through years of album releases, heavy touring, and careful fan-base development.

Not all these deals are good ones, says Bob McLynn, who manages pop-punk act Fall Out Boy and other young artists through his agency, Crush Management. Labels still have a lot to offer, he says. They pay for recording sessions, distribute CDs, market a band’s music, and put up money for touring, music-video production, and other expenses. But in exchange, music companies now want to profit from more than a band’s albums and recording masters. “The artist owns the brand, and now the labels—because they can’t sell as many albums—are trying to get in on the brand,” McLynn says. “To be honest, if an artist these days is looking for a traditional major-label deal for several hundred thousand dollars, they will have to be willing to give up some of that brand.

”For a young act, such offers may be enticing, but McLynn urges caution. “If they’re not going to give you a lot of money for it, it’s a mistake,” says the manager, who helped build Fall Out Boy’s huge teen fan base through constant touring and Internet marketing, only later signing the band to a big label. “I had someone from a major label ask me recently, ‘Hey, I have this new artist; can we convert the deal to a 360 deal?’” McLynn recalls. “I told him [it would cost] $2 million to consider it. He thought I was crazy; but I’m just saying, how is that crazy? If you want all these extra rights and if this artist does blow up, then that’s the best deal in the world for you. If you’re not taking a risk, why am I going to give you this? And if it’s not a lot of money, you’re not taking a risk.”

A concert-tour company’s margin is about 4 percent, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino has said, while the take on income from concessions, T-shirts, and other merchandise sold at shows can be much higher. The business had a record-setting year in 2006, which saw The Rolling Stones, Madonna, U2, Barbra Streisand, and other popular, high-priced tours on the road. But in 2007, North American gross concert dollars dropped more than 10 percent to $2.6 billion, according to Billboard statistics. Concert attendance fell by more than 19 percent to 51 million. Fewer people in the stands means less merchandise sold and concession-stand food eaten.

Now add this wrinkle: if you pour tens of millions of dollars into a 360 deal, as major labels and Live Nation have done with their big-name stars, you will need the act to tour for a long time to recoup your investment. “For decades we’ve been fueled by acts from the ’60s,” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the touring-industry trade magazine Pollstar. Three decades ago, no one would have predicted that Billy Joel or Rod Stewart would still be touring today, Bongiovanni notes, yet the industry has come to depend on artists such as these, known as “heritage acts.” “They’re the ones that draw the highest ticket prices and biggest crowds for our year-end charts,” he says. Consider the top-grossing tours of 2006 and 2007: veterans such as The Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Barbra Streisand, and Roger Waters were joined by comparative youngsters Madonna, U2, and Bon Jovi. Only two of the 20 acts—former Mouseketeers Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera—were younger than 30.

These young stars, the ones who are prone to taking what industry observer Bob Lefsetz calls “media shortcuts,” such as appearing on MTV, may have less chance of developing real staying power. Lefsetz, formerly an entertainment lawyer and consultant to major labels, has for 20 years published an industry newsletter (now a blog) called the Lefsetz Letter. “Whatever a future [superstar] act will be, it won’t be as ubiquitous as the acts from the ’60s because we were all listening to Top 40 radio,” he says.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, music fans discovered new music primarily on the radio and purchased albums in record stores. The stations young people listened to might have played rock, country, or soul; but whatever the genre, DJs introduced listeners to the hits of tomorrow and guided them toward retail stores and concert halls.

…

Today, music is available in so many genres and subgenres, via so many distribution streams—including cell phones, social networking sites, iTunes, Pure Volume, and Limewire—that common ground rarely exists for post–Baby Boom fans. This in turn makes it harder for tour promoters to corral the tens of thousands of ticket holders they need to fill an arena. “More people can make music than ever before. They can get it heard, but it’s such a cacophony of noise that it will be harder to get any notice,” says Lefsetz.

…

Most major promoters don’t know how to capture young people’s interest and translate it into ticket sales, he says. It’s not that his students don’t listen to music, but that they seek to discover it online, from friends, or via virtual buzz. They’ll go out to clubs and hear bands, but they rarely attend big arena concerts. Promoters typically spend 40 percent to 50 percent of their promotional budgets on radio and newspaper advertising, Barnet says. “High school and college students—what percentage of tickets do they buy? And you’re spending most of your advertising dollars on media that don’t even focus on those demographics.” Conversely, the readers and listeners of traditional media are perfect for high-grossing heritage tours. As long as tickets sell for those events, promoters won’t have to change their approach, Barnet says. Heritage acts also tend to sell more CDs, says Pollstar’s Bongiovanni. “Your average Rod Stewart fan is more likely to walk into a record store, if they can find one, than your average Fall Out Boy fan.”

…

Personally, [Live Nation’s chairman of global music and global touring, Arthur Fogel] said, he’d been disappointed in the young bands he’d seen open for the headliners on Live Nation’s big tours. Live performance requires a different skill set from recorded tracks. It’s the difference between playing music and putting on a show, he said. “More often than not, I find young bands get up and play their music but are not investing enough time or energy into creating that show.” It’s incumbent on the industry to find bands that can rise to the next level, he added. “We aren’t seeing that development that’s creating the next generation of stadium headliners. Hopefully that will change.”

Live Nation doesn’t see itself spearheading such a change, though. In an earlier interview with Billboard magazine, Rapino took a dig at record labels’ model of bankrolling ten bands in the hope that one would become a success. “We don’t want to be in the business of pouring tens of millions of dollars into unknown acts, throwing it against the wall and then hoping that enough sticks that we only lose some of our money,” he said. “It’s not part of our business plan to be out there signing 50 or 60 young acts every year.”

And therein lies the rub. If the big dog in the touring pack won’t take responsibility for nurturing new talent and the labels have less capital to invest in artist development, where will the future megatour headliners come from?

…

Indeed, despite its all-encompassing moniker, the 360 deal isn’t the only option for musicians, nor should it be. Some artists may find they need the distribution reach and bankroll that a traditional big-label deal provides. Others might negotiate with independent labels for profit sharing or licensing arrangements in which they’ll retain more control of their master recordings. Many will earn the bulk of their income from licensing their songs for use on TV shows, movie soundtracks, and video games. Some may take an entirely do-it-yourself approach, in which they’ll write, produce, perform, and distribute all of their own music—and keep any of the profits they make.

There are growing signs of this transition. The Eagles recently partnered with Wal-Mart to give the discount chain exclusive retail-distribution rights to the band’s latest album. Paul McCartney chose to release his most recent record through Starbucks, and last summer Prince gave away his newest CD to London concertgoers and to readers of a British tabloid. And in a move that earned nearly as much ink as Madonna’s 360 deal, rock act Radiohead let fans download its new release directly from the band’s website for whatever price listeners were willing to pay. Though the numbers are debated, one source, ComScore, reported that in the first month 1.2 million people downloaded the album. About 40 percent paid for it, at an average of about $6 each—well above the usual cut an artist would get in royalties. The band also self-released the album in an $80 limited-edition package and, months later, as a CD with traditional label distribution. Such a move wouldn’t work for just any artist. Radiohead had the luxury of a fan base that it developed over more than a dozen years with a major label. But the band’s experiment showed creativity and adaptability.

If concerts bring money in for the music biz, what happens when concerts get smaller? Read More »

His employer’s misconfigured laptop gets him charged with a crime

law, security, technology / /

From Robert McMillan’s “A misconfigured laptop, a wrecked life” (NetworkWorld: 18 June 2008):

When the Commonwealth of Massachusetts issued Michael Fiola a Dell Latitude in November 2006, it set off a chain of events that would cost him his job, his friends and about a year of his life, as he fought criminal charges that he had downloaded child pornography onto the laptop. Last week, prosecutors dropped their year-old case after a state investigation of his computer determined there was insufficient evidence to prove he had downloaded the files.

An initial state investigation had come to the opposite conclusion, and authorities took a second look at Fiola’s case only after he hired a forensic investigator to look at his laptop. What she found was scary, given the gravity of the charges against him: The Microsoft SMS (Systems Management Server) software used to keep his laptop up to date was not functional. Neither was its antivirus protection. And the laptop was crawling with malicious programs that were most likely responsible for the files on his PC.

Fiola had been an investigator with the state’s Department of Industrial Accidents, examining businesses to see whether they had worker’s compensation plans. Over the past two days, however, he’s become a spokesman for people who have had their lives ruined by malicious software.

…

[Fiola narrates his story:] We had a laptop basically to do our reports instantaneously. If I went to a business and found that they were out of compliance, I would log on and type in a report so it could get back to the home office in Boston immediately. We also used it to research businesses. …

My boss called me into his office at 9 a.m. The director of the Department of Industrial Accidents, my immediate supervisor, and the personnel director were there. They handed me a letter and said, “You are being fired for a violation of the computer usage policy. You have pornography on your computer. You’re fired. Clean out your desk. Let’s go.” …

It was horrible. No paycheck. I lost all my benefits. I lost my insurance. My wife is very, very understanding. She took the bull by the horns and found an attorney. I was just paralyzed, I couldn’t do anything. I can’t describe the feeling to you. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. It’s just devastating.

If you get in a car accident and you kill somebody, people talk to you afterwards. All our friends abandoned us. The only family that stood by us was my dad, her parents, my stepdaughter and one other good friend of ours. And that was it. Nobody called. We spent many weekends at home just crying. I’m 53 years old and I don’t think I’ve cried as much in my whole life as I did in the past 18 months. …

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