Shirky on the impending death of newspapers

When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry.  Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse.  This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times.  One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away.

You can't solve any problem until you first both recognize that you have a problem, and identify what it is.  The traditional print media's complete unwillingness to accept that the world has changed leaves them utterly unable to respond in a meaningful or effective way to that change.  By clinging to the idea that they can preserve the world before the Internet if they can just find the right way to do it, they are actively and yet unknowingly complicit in their own demise.

Patent infringement revealed ... maybe

From TechDirt, Microsoft Finally Reveals Some Of The Patents It Claims Linux Infringes... Sorta

Some of these are pretty damned broad patents.  Then again, I haven't the least hesitation in thinking that if it could figure out a way to get away with it, Microsoft would unblushingly patent the computer, the operating system, and the idea of software.  It's been pretty clear for years to anyone who's spent a fair amount of time watching what Microsoft says and does that Microsoft's perfect-world dream is to be the sole source of computer software and operating systems worldwide.  No share of the market is big enough for them; they want ALL of it.

Projected deficits "unsustainable"

So saith the latest report from the Congressional Budget Office.

White Roses

I refer to the ... hidden, for lack of a better word, final track of the CD Don't Be Afraid by Kurt Harland of Information Society, released under the Information Society name.  As noted in the Wikipedia article, "The 10th track on Don't Be Afraid is titled "White Roses" and sounds as 55 seconds of modem noise.  When decoded, text data is displayed revealing clues for of an internet scavenger hunt of sorts to collect 16 separate .arj-compressed, password-protected files which add up to the completed White Roses song in .wav format.  Most of the pieces are now lost, due to hosting being taken down."  The first sentence of that text, when decoded, reads "For reasons that will become obvious when you hear it, the song "White Roses" is not found on this disc."

Thanks to Spacemutiny, I just got my hands on the compressed 76-megabyte CD-quality .wav file of White Roses, from Kurt Harland's archives, and listened to it for the first time, after owning the CD for 12 years.  I never found enough pieces to assemble the full track.  (There's a high-quality MP3 available on that same page.)

After hearing it, I cannot agree with the above-quoted text.  The reason is not obvious.  In fact, after listening to White Roses, you realize that Don't Be Afraid isn't complete without it.  White Roses is the correct place for Don't Be Afraid to end.

Join the InSoc Liberation Force.  Spread White Roses around.