That is, according to Rupert Murdoch.  You see, a few days ago, good ‘ole Rooper-boy told the Australian press (well, SkyNews Australia) that he will remove stories from Google's search index as a way to encourage people to pay for content online.

Of course this caused a great disturbance in the blogosphere, who really didn’t seem to want to remember that the man who controls the less-than-accurate-media empire has said this before.  The Associated Press has said it (and has yet to pull the trigger).  Google was sanguine about the matter, saying in essence “Go for it”. 

So how does Rupert Murdoch plan to quit teh Google?   Making a deal with Bing?  Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land thinks otherwise:

The reality is that the Wall Street Journal execs seem to be leading a charge against Google without really knowing where they are going or what they want. They already get lots of traffic plus get to have a paywall, thanks to First Click Free at Google. And yet, Murdoch doesn’t seem to know exactly how that operates or how Google indexes his paper. His managing editor Robert Thomson gets confused about font sizes and how Google News works. I get the impression both of them are good at talking but don’t know the actual realities of their traffic situation in relation to Google. Or they know it well but are happy to ignore it.

Oh, Snap. You see, right now, news has a relationship with Google much like Billie Holiday did with heroin.  While it is possible to quit, it won’t be easy.  It will be a long, painful process, that may not even need to happen.  Especially when it is estimated that Google brings about twenty-five percent of Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal traffic.  That kind of pain stockholders may want to think twice about before going cold turkey.

But there is an ugly truth out there that Murdoch may have sensed out that many do not see.  Twitter.  Twitter is surpassing Google as a destination for finding information on breaking and recent news of all types.  Twitter and Facebook are platforms that allow the news sources to post breaking news and gain value from their brand. Google does not.  In other words, if I trust a newspaper, TV or any  brand, I can follow it on twitter and expect the news to come to me.  The concept  of “If the news is important, it will find me” works better by the day.  If it matters to me, chances are very good its in one of the twitter feeds I follow on real time feed. Users will continue to source news through Google.  Now don’t get me wrong, Google ain’t going away any time soon.  But for Real-Time news, Google is not in the equation. 

But all of this ignores a very simple question that no one is really wanting to ask-Do you really want to pay for opinutainment Fox News?

Now Playing: Missing Persons - Spring Session M - Words

When you’re a multi-billion dollar media mogul who has watched his empire take a dive as of late, you start thinking of ways to, well, make more money.  And so, Rupert Murdoch, King of fake news and rumour-monger extraordinaire has pledged to shake up the newspaper industry by introducing charges for access to all his news websites, including the Times, the Sun and the News of the World, by next summer.

His reason?  "Quality journalism is not cheap."

Indeed Rupert, indeed. 

Now Playing: Fleetwood Mac - Tango in the Night - Little Lies

Ah yes, The Pirate Bay trial.  OK, forgive my ignorance here, but why has did it take people this long to connect the dots?  Someone in the media just noticed that the judge in the trial has ties to pro-copyright groups. Really?  You think that may be the reason that many people thought the punishment set was a little harsh?

From TorrentFreak:

“The judge has several engagements - together with the prosecution lawyers for the movie and music industries.

Swedish Association of Copyright (SFU) - The judge Tomas Norström is a member of this discussion forum that holds seminars, debates and releases the Nordic Intellectual Property Law Review. Other members of this outfit? Henrik Pontén (Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau), Monique Wadsted (movie industry lawyer) and Peter Danowsky (IFPI) - the latter is also a member of the board of the association.

Swedish Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (SFIR) - The judge Tomas Norström sits on the board of this association that works for stronger copyright laws. Last year they held the Nordic Championships in Intellectual Property Rights Process Strategies.

.SE (The Internet Infrastructure Foundation) - Tomas Norström works for the foundation that oversees the .se name domain and advises on domain name disputes. His colleague at the foundation? Monique Wadsted. Wadsted says she’s never met Norström although they have worked together.” (huh?)

Now, for the record, I am neutral when it comes to torrenting.  The technology itself is useful; how it is used in the real world is another matter indeed.  What also irks me also is the ham-handed way the entertainment industry is trying and failing to destroy the technology entirely.  But the main point of this story is that, gee, the trial is over and people are bringing up a conflict of interest now?  I mean, all a reporter or blogger had to do was to do a little background checking before or during the trial and publish.  It’s not as if this trial was held in secret, was it?

It’s not the results of the trial, but shoddy lack of reporting on this one, folks. 

Now Playing: The Stranglers - Black and White - Sweden (All Quiet on the Eastern Front)

From Tech Crunch: Once again, the Associated Press is not on the right side of the fair use argument.  But, hey, don’t let that stop their room full of lawyers from trying to shake down someone.  In this case, that someone is artist Shepard Fairey and the object of the AP’s affliction is Fairey’s iconic poster of Barrack Obama (that’s the poster in question on the right). 

You see, ever since the poster came out, everyone has been asking “What photo was this based off of?”  So, the hunt was on.  For a while, it appeared as if the photo was based off of a Reuters shot.  But it was recently discovered that the poster is closer to a photograph by Mannie Garcia that AP claims is theirs.  (BTW, there seems to be a question right now as to whether or not Garcia was in the actual employ of AP at the time, and so there is a major question of copyright ownership.  But like I said, don’t let that stop the lawyers).

So, we have a photo and a poster that was based off of said photo.  Is it fair use or not?  On the one hand, the final work is so distant from the original that even the original photographer didn't recognize it. So points in the fair use favor.  But is it derivative?  Certainly there are similarities, however, given that there were many photos of Obama that people thought was “the one”, what’s the AP’s next step, sue every photographer that has taken a similar photo?  You know there has to be a few shots out there just like this.

Either way, this is going to prove interesting.  Good luck, AP, you’re going to need it. 

Now Playing: Heaven 17 - The Luxury Gap - Crushed by the Wheels of Industry

Follow me for a minute here.  Yesterday, an article in The Times of London set the web aflame over new findings that every Google search contributed 7 grams of CO2 to the atmosphere.  At the center of the story was a young physicist named Alex Wissner-Gross, who, according to the article, says “that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea”.  Given that it was The Times, the story settled to the four corners of the world, DIGG, reddit, CNN, FOX, you get the idea.  Suddenly, a simple search for Steve Urkel was destroying Polar Bear habitats and killing kittens and puppies everywhere.  Somewhere, according to the Rush Limburgers out there, Al Gore was in a state of apoplectic shock.  After all, he did invent the internet which was now effectively killing us all with greenhouse gasses.

Unfortunately, according to Wissner-Gross, he never said anything of the sort.  That the 7 gram/search figure came from some other source and notes that if you read the article  it only makes it sound like it’s from his data.  But of course, the truth comes out, too little, and too late.

<rant>  The standard media, it seems, is always going off on how the “New Media” bloggers are not to be trusted, that they only repeat a given meme, that we are working in an echo chamber, that we don’t mention conflicts of interests, that we don’t actually, you know, report or check sources…

Or do any of the things that The Times of London supposedly is supposed to do on an article that sounds alarmist at the very least. 

This isn’t the first time that The Times has been mistaken about a tech story - in late November the newspaper incorrectly reported on a complicated and fictional Yahoo/Microsoft search arrangement.  But getting it completely wrong is only part of the problem here.  The big problem is now there is a lie out there, because someone at The Times wrote an grossly incorrect article that has been taken as the Holy Truth by the news-reading public in the blink of an eye.  And as of right now, I have yet to see a retraction or an explanation to this story.  And if there is, it will be buried somewhere in the Obituary section. 

Oh, if only the news outlets of late spent as much time and ink on trying to be accurate as they do alarming the world. Because once stories like Al Gore inventing the interwebs, or teenagers huffing human feces to get high or boiling tea with Google searches get out there, they stay.  Stories like this are the oily stain of stupidity on the T-shirt of humanity.  I guess the lie here is calling it “news”.  There was a time, not too long ago that such a story would be in a “tabloid” well known for incorrect stories and “gossip”.  But oily stains sell papers and accuracy costs money.  And in the “news business”, the ultimate line is the bottom one.  These days, accuracy falls on the wrong side of the balance sheet. 

Maybe another cup of chamomile tea will do the trick, but I doubt it. </rant>

Now Playing: Pet Shop Boys - Fundamental - I'm with Stupid

They fired up the Large Hadron Collider this morning, and guess what?  We're all still here.  Yay!  It took less than an hour to guide the stream of particles around its inaugural circuit: the first protons had been fired into the 27km ring at 8.32am.

Now to be honest, this was just a warm up for the heavy duty colliding that will start happening in the near future.  By next month, the LHC should be running at more than 10 times the energy used today, though it will not reach its maximum energy of 14 teraelectronvolts until next year.  So, there is still time to make peace with your maker, whatever you conceive him or her to be. 

Now Playing: Brian Eno/David Byrne - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today - Home

While I enjoy politics, it's something that I don't add in my blog, just because my blog deals with life and technology in general and the fun intersection of the two.  If anything, I like to err on the side of freedom, because it is very difficult to get something back from the government, once taken by the government. 

But enough of that.  This entry deals with the disruptive technology that blogging in general has posed to the publishing industry as a whole.  An entry in the Silicone Valley Insider about the number of "new media" staffers at the Democratic convention in comparison to the "old media" newspaper staffers. 

While I realize that blogging in many ways is still the "Wild, Wild West", the fact is over the past few years, there are now a number of respectable blogs out there, that use the same type of journalistic ethos as standard print. 

The point that many use is that bloggers are more ideologically driven than simply trying to be "fair and balanced", and for some blogs that is true.  However, the blog site "Talking Points Memo" was the site to investigate and publicize the politically based firing of seven US Attorney's Generals.  The problem that many point out with current newspapers is that there is no longer a place in the budget for investigative reporting.  As a result, most of what you see in the newspapers is little more than standard press releases. 

A point can be made about ownership as well.  Newspapers are owned by some pretty large corporations.  The idea of reporting something that could have a damaging effect on an advertiser can sometimes lead to a story not being broken.  Sad, but true.  A blogger, on the other hand is smaller and less subject to such constraints. 

That, of course, brings us back to the Journalistic ethos.  Bottom line-is the story true or can the story be proven true?  When reading a blog, that should always be the first question asked.  Unfortunately in the blogosphere, a story is told, then picked up and amplified without much thought about its veracity.  As a result, the current state of blogs has more in common with a gossip sheet than a source for real news. 

The point is, with this disruptive technology, newspapers are only the first in the publishing industry to be hit.  Magazines will be next.  When Digital Ink becomes more standard, expect less paper magazines and more on-line magazines.  The industry itself need to realize something that is becoming pretty evident-we all have a story to tell.  Some of us are better than other at telling it and those will be the stories that people will read in the future, with the publishing industry's help or without it.  But there's a lot of growing still left to do.

Now Playing: Whiskeytown - Strangers Almanac - 16 Days

I love Dallas.  I lived there for fifteen years, so the following story from Engadget amuses the hell out of me.  Apparently Dallas installed red-light cameras.  Fair enough, I know people in Dallas love running red lights.  There's just one problem.  They have worked too well.  As a result, the cams have curtailed red light infractions by 50 percent, which in turn has put a budget crunch on City Hall.

So what's a city to do?  They are now considering stopping its planned rollout of more cameras, or shutting down the cameras on a rotating basis -- upkeep when off is next to nothing, but the city pays $3,799 per month per online camera to its service provider.

So just like everything else in the world of government, whet it works too well, shut it down.  And they wonder why the population feels the way it does.

1/31/07

The National Association of Broadcasters asked the Federal Communications Commission to pull the plug on its 180-day shot clock for considering the XM Satellite Radio-Sirius Satellite Radio merger to give the NAB time to go through documents it said it is getting through a Freedom of Information Request filed in March.

Responding to the FCC petition, XM and Sirius said in a joint statement: "The NAB opposes the merger of XM and Sirius to protect AM/FM radio from competition, not to protect consumers.

In a way, I tend to agree with XM and Sirius.  Really, have you listened to your AM/FM these days? AM radio is wingnut crap and FM plays the same ten songs over and over again, no matter what channel you switch to.  At least with Sirius I'm offered far more choices than Clear Channel would ever think of offering.  And isn't that really at the heart of it?  Clear Channel owns vitually all the radio stations around and has homogenized the FM dial to the same station everywhere you go.  You want to revive FM, guys?  Make FM radio local again.  Then you'll have a chance against XM/Sirius. 

But that takes money, and as we all know, that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

In a way, this is ridiculous.  In a way, it was inevitable.  In short, this is the internet, guys, circa 2007.  You wanted a place where ideas can be exchanged.  Where people could be empowered to do great things.  You said you wanted a revolution.  Well, you got it; only revolutions rarely play out the way their creators think they will play out.

So, what am I talking about?  Someone posted the sixteen hexadecimal digits that unlock the wonder of most currently released HD-DVD titles from the surly clutches of the AACS  content protection system on Digg.  Digg took it down.  Then Digg shut down the account of the poster.  Then the sixteen digits found their place in the Wikipedia.  And that was taken down.

And then a funny thing happened.  Much like that old commercial, someone told two people.  Then they told two people, and so on and so forth...

Before you know it, you have a Google page that looks like, well, I can't post it here, because I like my MSN account and detest lawyers. But trust me, Google the sixteen digits and have a hearty laugh.  The cat is out of the bag.  Time for the MPAA to go back to the drawing board and try to develop a code that won't be hacked by some nineteen years old kid in twelve hours.  Oh yeah, good luck with that.   

Oddly enough, this may serve as one of those moments that becomes "historical".  Grant Robertson posted that this was the equivalent of the 95 thesis' Martin Luther nailed to the door of Wittenburg church. In many ways, I agree with him.  Prior to the invention of the printing press, Bibles were difficult to come by and then only for the rich.  After the printing press, Bibles became more numerous, and suddenly, people were questioning the church, as they had their own bibles from which to read and draw their own conclusions. Then Luther started the reformation by posting his thoughts on the church door for all to read.  Luther and his actions were an inevitable outcome of the printing press.  Well, that and the cynical corrupt mess the Church had become at the time. 

So it is with the net.  As information becomes more and more democratic, the population is realizing that they do not need or want some large group telling them what they can or cannot do with their information, be it music, or movies or whatever.  And so, someone posts the magic numbers and all hell breaks loose.  Companies go apoplectic, passions are raised on both sides and the culture war has a brand new front.

Who said math was dull?