June 30, 2003
What we already knew, scientific-like
What we already knew, scientific-like
University of Oxford researcher have quantified the benefits of open source, saying that "'Closed-source' software, finessed by staff hired to work on information that users send in, requires higher-quality programmers and more users to attain the same level of perfection as open-source software in a comparable time," according to Nature.
The key: Feedback loops in proprietary systems are much smaller, reducing the number of bugs that can be identified. In other words, proprietary software is decidedly unclued.
A-V tagging
A-V tagging
Notable announcement in Nature Science Update today: An open source tool for tagging audio and video segments for searchability on the Web. An Australian team has developed the tool, Annodex, a "Continuous Media Markup Language" for entering audio/video segments at a particular point, based on the creator's having given sections of their programming identifiable names, like "debate on HIV drug costs." Here's the syntax explained.
June 23, 2003
*When tech industries are dumb*
When tech industries are dumb
In one of those moments where an IT person realizes that most folks don't live in the same world we know is possible, I ran into the first case of a conference turning down my request for a press pass in 16 years today.
I'm at Bio 2003 in Washington, D.C. for InnovationWorld and was actually told by the press office that "online publications aren't the same as paper publications and so we don't let them in." This was an elaborate way of avoiding the question I was raising, which is why they had turned down my request before the show and neglected to answer my query about why a research newsletter with a $12,000 a year subscription price doesn't qualify for a press pass to the exhibits at a show hosted by a trade organization desperate for coverage of member companies.
But they seriously stuck to their argument that an online publication isn't worth the same treatment as a paper publication. I pointed out that paper is less efficient, less timely and largely superfluous for organizations that are organizing on a global basis -- exactly the kinds of companies that attend Bio 2003.
It is truly ironic that a technology dependent industry like biotechnology should have a trade organization that doesn't see the value in an publication delivered electronically. Wierd. But all of us tech folks need to remember that this is the norm for most organizations -- I'm just surprised to find it here.
June 19, 2003
Triple Deadlines...
Triple Deadlines...
are a good thing, I keep telling myself. Having many projects in the air is envigorating, I keep telling myself.
June 16, 2003
Non-paying today....
Non-paying today....
Anne Holland has a very nice plug for Correspondences.org, the civic journalism site that Howard Greenstein, Peter Shaplen, Gary Bolles and I have launched. She says it's non-paying, but we believe that a civic journalism can also become a basis for at least part of a living. It is important to remember that a living was assembled from a variety of vocations and avocations as recently as a century ago, and that the specialized journalism that divorced the writer/reporter from the subject of the story has created a suckhole of vanity that is destroying the news business. So, while we may not pay today, like OhMyNews, we hope to develop enough revenue at the site (yes, breaking even would be nice first, as it is coming out of my pocket right now) so that we can eventually pay reporters for their contributions.
Thing is, we have to create the basic need for direct reporting first. So, drop by, sign up to cover your local community or an area of expertise you have. Do your bit to screw with reality.
When Safire argues for regulation
When Safire argues for regulation
It is either a sign of the Apocalypse or that the Bush Administration has gone totally overboard, but New York Times columnist William Safire is arguing that the Federal Communications Commission should be reigned in from its rush to deregulate the airwaves. My money is on the fact the Bushies have gone out of their minds with power. Key passages:
The Federal Communications Commission — in business to protect the public's interest in our nation's airwaves — has by a 3-to-2 vote opened the floodgates to a wave of media mergers that will further crush local diversity and concentrate the power to mold public opinion in the hands of ever-fewer giant corporations.
Forgive the inside baseball (this is beginning to read like a Bob Novak column), but the legislative intricacy shows how a power grab engineered by a seemingly unstoppable lobby has at least a chance of being stymied by an aroused public resentful of media manipulation.
You should find your Senator's email address here and send messages demanding the 750,000 public comments, which were overwhelmingly against the ruling, be respected and addressed by the Senate Commerce Committee.
June 11, 2003
A market is an argument...
A market is an argument about an economy
And the lunatics are winning, which isn't always a bad thing. Unfortunately, with $4 trillion in federal deficits over the next decade, we're setting ourselves up for a prolonged recession. Says here that everything's great in the economy and here that it isn't so rosy. The Federal Reserve describes the economy as "sluggish" but the Dow was up 116 points on the news.
My particular concern is that consumer spending is still soft. According to the Fed: "Overall consumer spending was soft in April and May. Retail sales picked up some after subdued sales in March, but most reports indicated that sales remained below the level of a year ago. A few Districts noted that retail sales did not pick up as much as expected after the winding down of hostilities in Iraq."
The FTC Wants to Play...
The FTC Wants to Play Spy vs. Spy
It's disturbing when government officials suggest that they need more power to investigate Americans in secret. Even if the Federal Trade Commission is going after spam, couldn't they just do it without having special exceptions to privacy and financial records laws? I hate spam, but I hate erosions of civil rights more. In addition to asking for exemptions to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and Right to Financial Privacy Act--delaying the required notification to a spammer that they are being investigated -- the FTC wants to have more control over common carriers, which means dictating what can or cannot be carried on the Net. Bad news for Net users, if you ask me, because it means content restrictions (and dedicated processors for enforcing them) will become commonplace -- once you can enforce spam restrictions it is a short hop to banning other content, like that nefarious book, Huckleberry Finn.
June 09, 2003
Is this the housing storm...
Is this the housing storm breaking?
I was talking with a real estate investor friend over the weekend, who said she has been lowering her debt ratios and generally preparing for a downturn for months. "I can just feel the storm coming," she said. Today, we see that Freddie Mac, the second largest mortgage finance company has fired its CEO because he did not fully cooperate with an internal review of the company's books. The Chairman and the CFO are out, too. And the stock is down 13 percent at this writing.
Freddie Mac and its larger home mortgage sibling, Fannie Mae, have been wildly profitable during these times of low interest rates, as consumers mined their equity to keep spending. This is the source of the continued, albeit relatively feeble, health in consumer spending as unemployment rose. Should the process of refinancing become harder or more protracted due to increased uncertainty about either Freddie or Fannie, the result could be a cascading debt crunch as bills are suddenly not payable with ever-cheaper loans and consumers lock down spending more than they have.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on April 30 that "As part of 2002's process of refinancing, households "cashed out" almost $200 billion of accumulated home equity, net of fees, taxes, points, and commissions....Federal Reserve surveys of the disposition of cash-outs indicate that a substantial amount--perhaps half--was used to finance home modernization and personal consumption expenditures, outlays that directly affect GDP and jobs, and that likely was the case again last year. Low mortgage rates doubtless motivated much of this spending, but the ready availability of home equity for extraction appears to have also played a substantial and independent role in prompting additional household expenditures. Even as recently as the late 1980s, a family that wanted to use housing wealth to finance consumption would have faced an expensive and time-consuming process."
The odd thing about this restatement of earnings for 2000-2002 is that it actually increases the earnings for those periods, because interest rates were falling faster than the company was lowering its rates and allowing it to create greater returns on derivatives based on mortgage-backed securities. Technically, the company is better off than expected.
Yet any hint of scandal or impropriety can be deadly in a market as inflated as housing is at the moment. This is a situation to monitor closely.
Greenspan, who speaks before Congress on the economy this week, has raised concerns about the capitalization of both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. He argues that the public believe the companies are guaranteed by the federal government, which is not the case, exactly. Freddie Mac's mortgage-based securities are backed by some federal agencies, who effectively lend their guarantees on performance of mortgages they sell to Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae can borrow from the U.S. Treasury to build its portfolios of mortgages,which does place the feds in line in case of a default. In other words, the public could end up with some of the costs of a financial melt-down.
Greenspan did make clear in his April 30 speech that a housing "bubble" scenario is "a rather large stretch," saying that any bubble would be local, not national. However, he noted, "even modestly declining home prices would reduce the level of unrealized capital gains and presumably dampen the pace of home equity extraction."
In other words, without the equity growth perceived by consumers, which is fueled by easy money through Freddie Mac- and Fannie Mae-facilitated mortgages, consumer spending is at risk. So, a bubble need not burst for a serious reversal in consumer spending to take place.
June 05, 2003
Peering Digital IDs
Peering Digital IDs
Britt Blaser has a straight-forward explanation of how Xpertweb differs from the centralized identity systems used today (think credit cards and login names/IDs).
The keystone of self-organizing networks of trust is to allow a growing identity that reflects our fractal selves to move easily from task to task, sharing information selectively and securely. We aren't one identity, but many, and "federated" identity systems favored by many for purposes of simplifying the launch of Digital IDs enforces a kind of narrow view of the individual, because a federation will organize itself around how its members see either a.) their customers or employees -- in commercial applications, or b.) they see themselves. The former is the corporate road that eventually separates us from our rights to personal information and the latter, the Xpertweb way, is how we begin to build economic and political leverage as individuals and groups of individuals cooperating to solve problems.
June 03, 2003
Reasonable Copyright
Reasonable Copyright
Lawrence Lessig has launched a very important petition that calls on Congress to require copyright holders to pay $1 to renew their rights in a work after 50 years. This would go a long way to restoring a commons of public thought. You can sign the petition here. Do it now, if not for your own freedom of thought, then for your children and grandchildren's.
The problem in publishing
The problem in publishing
Anne Holland writes about the problem of finding good writers at ContentBlog:
Everyone at the editorial roundtable I attended seemed to be focusing on how to get more from a tight editorial team when you can't hire more people and the content bar is constantly rising. So when I said, "Oh my problem is hiring people who can write solid, detailed business how-to content quickly and concisely for online publication, I'm looking for several and I'm in hiring hell."... everyone started sputtering.
The editors around the table definitely thought I was a clueless jerk. "There are so many good people looking for work! I turn them away!," said one. "I find the problem isn't with the writers, it's with the training the publication gives them," noted another.
Afterwards though, a few people on the publisher-end came up to me individually to say, "You are right, you know. It's almost impossible to find really good newsletter writers. There are lots of would-bes, but few home runs." So I felt a lot better.
This rings completely true to me, as InnovationWorld is finding business everywhere because there is so little in the way of good business intelligence available today and, simultaneously, it is very difficult to find writers, many of whom have long resumes from the bubble era, that have the basic reporting skills that translate into solid analytical writing. For instance, when InnovationWorld advertised for a writer/researcher, I got more than 600 resumes. Half were poorly written (by writers!) and two-thirds were totally unqualified based on the requirements laid out in the ad. Of the writers I did interview, fewer than half understood the basics of sourcing a story, doing research in anticipation of an interview (most reporters who came up in the bubble seem to have specialized in listening to CEOs and writing down what they said without asking critical questions), and how to assemble those facts into a straightforward narrative.
Sure, I may sound like an asshole, but as an editor I've got two responsibilities: 1.) To my company, for whom I have to fix these problems or move onto another writer, and; 2.) To the writers, whom I have an obligation to help get better at their jobs. For those of you out there thinking about how to break into the newsletter business or research/journalism in general, get back to basics every time you start a story.
June 02, 2003
FCC Assures We'll See Less
FCC Assures We'll See Less
Justifying its decision because big media has more competition from the Internet and cable, the Federal Communications Commission today relaxed cross-media ownership rules, calling the decision a "limit on media concentration." It's the height of doublespeak to expand the number of major media outlets a single company can own and say that is "setting a limit." The Democrats on the Commission voted against the move, but Chairman Michael Powell and his colleagues won the day.
The FCC released example statistics on media ownership in 10 markets that "show" substantial changes in the number of media owners, but there is no supporting information in the spreadsheet to use in determining whether this information is accurate or reflects increasing ownership of media by local entities. Such a substantial change in policy should be backed up by more information.
Based on these rules, a single company could own virtually all the commercial outlets in a market and for some reason this is described as "lcoalism," when most media companies are non-resident owners.
To analyze localism in broadcasting markets, the FCC relied on two measures: local stations’ selection of programming that is responsive to local needs and interests, and local news quantity and quality. Program selection is an important function of broadcast television licensees and the record contains data on how different types of station owners perform. A second measure of localism is the quantity and quality of local news and public affairs programming by different types of television station owners.
That means that more "local" shows based on pre-packaged national programming qualifies as local programming, when what the FCC suggests it means is there will be more local programming.
More than a half million public comments were recorded, but there is no information in the ruling about whether what the FCC did reflects the will of the people. Michael Copps, a Democratic commissioner, however, reported that 99 percent of those filings were opposed to expanding ownership limits.“I dissent because today the FCC empowers America’s new Media Elite with unacceptable levels of influence over the media on which our society and our democracy so heavily depend," Copps said. "I see centralization, not localism; uniformity, not diversity; monopoly and oligopoly, not competition."
Kenneth Ferree, media bureau chief at the FCC suggested during a press briefing that a "market where there are three newspapers" each newspaper could own a television station. History is quite clear about the fact that the number of newspapers is major markets has collapsed, so it is hard to understand where all this competition will emerge. A media company could own two stations in one small market, based on the comments Ferree is making right now on C-SPAN; but what is clear is that the order is so complex staff barely understands it -- Ferree is checking with staff on everything he says and it is very hard to follow. Here's a key passage:
This rule replaces the broadcast-newspaper and the radio-television cross-ownership rules. The new rule states:
In markets with three or fewer TV stations, no cross-ownership is permitted among TV, radio and newspapers. A company may obtain a waiver of that ban if it can show that the television station does not serve the area served by the cross-owned property (i.e. the radio station or the newspaper.
In markets with between 4 and 8 TV stations, combinations are limited to one of the following:
(A) A daily newspaper; one TV station; and up to half of the radio station limit for that market (i.e. if the radio limit in the market is 6, the company can only own 3) OR
(B) A daily newspaper; and up to the radio station limit for that market; (i.e. no TV stations)
(C) Two TV stations (if permissible under local TV ownership rule); up to the radio station limit for that market (i.e. no daily newspapers.
In markets with nine or more TV stations, the FCC eliminated the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership ban and the television-radio cross-ownership ban.