I haven’t seen it, but people who have say that the Paul Krugman webcast at Berkeley yesterday was hard-hitting and worth watching.

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Happy 5764!

We Jews get to throw away our sins today. We have to ask forgiveness of those we’ve wronged. (If they don’t accept our apology after we’ve offered it sincerely three times, it’s on them.) More important, we have to make amends.

I don’t think we can blog away our sins, but if I mistreated you in this blog this past year, I am truly sorry. Let me know and I will try to make it right and will try not to do it again.

BTW, if you’re going to start a cult, “To heal the world” wouldn’t be such a bad mission. Feel free to use it, but make sure you express it as follows:

“Tikkun Olam” © copyright 3761 BCE, The Jews

Don’t think our lawyers won’t come after you. And believe you me, we have lawyers.

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Here‘s a PDF of a report that argues that:

The presence of this single, dominant operating system in the hands of nearly all end users is inherently dangerous. The increased migration of that same operating system into the server world increases the danger even more.

Dan Gillmor cites a Washington Post story that one of the contributors to the story was sacked and that CIO Magazine refused to rent its subscriber list to the group that sponsored the report once the magazine saw the contents, which the magazine deemed “too one-sided.” This feels like the implicit power of Big Advertisers at work. [Disclosure: I’m a columnist for Darwin, a “companion site” of CIO.com.]

Anyway, the report is worth skimming/reading.

Meanwhile, at Darwin, Jonathan Zittrain has a superb article on what’s wrong with copyright law. Here’s a bit of it:

For example, bars and restaurants that measure no more than 3,750 square feet (not including the parking lot, so long as the parking lot is used exclusively for parking purposes) can contain no more than four TVs of no more than 55 inches diagonally for their patrons to watch, so long as there is only one TV per room. The radio can be played through no more than six loudspeakers, with a limit of four per room. That is, unless the restaurant in question is run by “a governmental body or a nonprofit agricultural or horticultural organization, in the course of an annual agricultural or horticultural fair or exhibition conducted by such body or organization.” Then it’s OK to use more speakers.

and

We are in the midst of a cultural war over copyright, in which the salvos show the complete disconnect between the colliding copyright regimes of statute and practicality, law and life. A formal report by a commission chartered by the British Patent and Trademark Office suggests, without a trace of self-consciousness, that we encourage schoolchildren to include the (c) symbol on all their homework. The Business Software Alliance, a commercial software industry group, just unveiled playitcybersafe.com, a website for kids to inculcate the values of Title 17 over those of consumer praxis. There a kid can play Piracy Deepfreeze, becoming a crusading, well, ferret. “Stop the pirates from freezing the city! Throw your ball into the pirates and their stolen software before they hit the ground.”

and

The cost of making no change at all must also be soberly assessed, all the more so because the Internet heralds such a staggering potential for the rapid transformation and evolution of ideas. This is not about the crass ripping-off of CD tracks but about a possible Jazz Age of creation enabled by technology.

IMO, it’s a must read.

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Jeneane apparently ran into me in a Publix (whatever that is) when I was actually in a different time zone. So, apparently I am now not only getting psychic flashes about earthquakes but am astrally projecting myself without my knowledge.

Since Jeneane and I have never met the 3D way – I look forward to the day – it makes me wonder how she identified me. Was it the duck-like waddle? The weasel eyes that are so close-set that they look crossed beneath my glasses? The stench of half-digested Milky Ways? Jeneane, do me a favor and don’t tell me! Thank you.

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I woke up a few minutes after 6 this morning because I was having a dream that was interrupted by a strong, physical sense that the earth beneath me had swayed a few feet. It was a distinct enough sensation that I woke wondering if it had had a physical cause, the way sometimes you’ll incorporate the sound of a car passing by as the gurgle of digestive juices as you’re trapped in your mother’s lower intestinal tract. (You’ve all had that dream, right?)

I got up, checked the computer and found out that just a few minutes before, there had been a force 8 earthquake in Japan.

Back in the day, when I was teaching logic or philosophy of science I’d take my students through an exercise. How many times in your life have you had a dream involving a plane crash? Take that as a percentage of the number of dreams in a single night within the population of the US above the age of 5. On any day in which a plane is reported to have crashed, that’s how many Americans will be tempted to believe that they foresaw it in their dreams.

Ah, coincidence. What can’t it do?!

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Jerry Michalski has a piece in RedHerring about why the explicitness of social networks such as Friendster get in their way. So true. And a theme — the price of explicitness — that’s looming larger and larger in my own thinking about stuff. That and confusing clarity with truth. A

Ambiguity sort of rulz!

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The TTI Vanguard conference I was at for the past two days is a configuration of elements I hadn’t seen before. And it worked well.

You’ve got the guaranteed presence of celebrity technologists because the Advisory Board consists of genuine luminaries. And because it’s a persistent body, their interactions had depth.

You’ve got carefully selected speakers almost all of whom combined domain expertise with presentation skills. (Leaving me out of it, of course.)