DISQUS

I see that in the US we are talking around USD $350 for the 405 with HRM included. OK, I need to wait a year or two (or I should have bought one while I was in London one week ago).

Nice review. It is pricey for me (over $200 US) but interesting, although I would want the heart-rate monitor as well. On the Handtec site, I am seeing VAT-inclusive prices with ex-VAT in small print in some cases. Have they updated since you looked?

I have been in the UK doing anything more than shuttling between Heathrow and Gatwick only 4 times since my first visit to London in 1966. This past Saturday I arrived for an actual visit and one-day meeting in London. And I used public transport from Heathrow to London and around London with much satisfaction. The bus system here in Seattle is reasonable and many visitors remark on it, but I found Transport for London to be remarkable, right from being able to prepare for my visit and plan local travel using the Internet.

I felt that I was able to see and enjoy far more this way, an unexpected benefit.

Nice analysis. I like the decentralized moderation principle. It makes great sense, and how it works in terms of social capital is also fascinating.

I am wondering if commenting systems like Disqus will provide something comparable (and/or if a FriendFeed item would work as a comment stream for a blog, have to think about that).

I know you looked into Disqus recently. I confess I am intrigued, but not that thrilled about having my comments in a cloud silo. (Now I can backup comments on my blog, few as they are, because the blog and comments are posted to a site that I control.)

Hey, don't burn out!

And good luck. I'll have my eye on word from SXSW

I like this view. There is the interesting problem of how we are trust asymmetrically. For example, our notions of which social mechanisms are efficient or inefficient come into this, as well as our notions of how the particular system is gamed (or the game is stacked), and in whose favor.

Management of a commons (e.g., a trade system or economy or common/public lands and resources) is a great example of how our stories collide.

Although there are similar, though maybe more subliminal, differences around ideas of property and ownership, I think the idea of a public trust and accountability that can actually function (that is, has efficiency) could serve both models of ownership.

The prospect of generating income (that is, imposing a tax) is a problem, and I notice the distortion here in Seattle between what I pay for public utilities and what I paid in a suburb where the services were from private companies and much less expensive. There are not markets within the service areas, of course, and I have to choose where I live in order to make substitutions. An interesting case of economic inefficiency versus social planning (e.g., urbanization as a presumed efficiency).

Hmm, reply may not have worked. Try this URL:
http://orcmid.com/readings/philosophy.htm#Berli...

(When I started those bibliographies, I didn't realize that [ and ] are not allowed in fragment IDs. I haven't repaired all of them yet.

http://orcmid.com/readings/philosophy.htm#[Berl...

I loved the conversation between the Cardinal and the physicist. There seem to be some bugs in the examples, but I have not gone back to dig closer into them.

I loved the book.

Was his son there too? I recall seeing him on the DVD of Springsteen's Seeger Sessions.

That is probably the cleanest explanation of the difference ever. Nice job.

Good for you Robert.

I think one problem is that when you are among the Gillmore gang, you will always find someone to say their respect for Microsoft is diminished, since some of them seem to be always looking for that. It would be good to step out of that echo chamber to calibrate what you see happening.

OK, I'll cool it too! Stay well, dude. Enjoy the home cooking.

I think there are two different positions (at least) of interest here. First there is technology policy, and that could be a policy advisor position (though those don't always amount to much, depending on the President and other considerations). Like, heard of any Science Policy Advisor incumbents lately?

The Federal agencies (all executive branch with a few exceptions) have CIOs and there is a CIO counsel. They also work on the equivalent of enterprise architecture across the Federal Establishment. There could be a CTO here, along with a national CIO for that matter. What goes on here also impacts and relates to counterparts at the State level and there are occassions for coordinated efforts. This is essentially about government operations in their rich variety. For this end of it, it would help to understand what the Federal investment in ICT infrastructure, operations, and applications is. You will blink. Candidates for this level of responsibility and experience are not going to be geek household names.

I don't get it.

Universities are not operating a service to the public, any more than internal corporate internets are. Both are in a position to manage network activity as part of assuring their institutional purpose (however different the university one is from the corporate one).

Making an equivalence with regard to FCC regulatory authority seems very weird to me.

And, ahem, recent legislation is going to require universities to take pro-active measures against piracy over their networks in order to obtain Federal funds. Way different regulatory regime there, wot?

Steve Garfield: Although the idea is to leave blog entries intact, there are people who do make clear corrections and updates. This is often done carefully so that the change is evident (although I touch up typos without making a fuss about it). Also, because the update may not be seen in an RSS feed, if there is a significant update, a new article that points out the changed information and later news can be posted. We have the advantage of hyperlinking to knit this together, as well.

Now, there are webzines, including those for print news, that also tie articles to comments and will also indicate if there is an update or has been an update. A prominent recent example was the Austin newspaper that moved a column from the front page and provided an editorial introduction to the reclassified commentary publication. So I think that the print media can be savvy about this in their electronic editions too, and some may see it as material to their integrity as a source.

Robert, I wish you would dig deeper into this stuff before assuming that the posturing about free speech has any sound basis. I like the way that Aaron Brazell has continued to update and tease out the perspective on this, even though he tends to hold to his first impression too. I think it should have been clear from a careful reading of the original letter and Culberson's claimed reading of it that there was a serious disconnect. It is also clear from the alleged (unofficial?) material from Feinstein that the Senate is also not attempting any such thing. I do notice that Brazell has changed the title of his post (although the URL has not changed.

He still doesn't give up on the limitation idea when the proposal is to start relaxing existing rules. I think we should be encouraging that, and being respectful that the constitution directs that the Congress set their own rules. I guess if we tweeters and woofers are played so easily, we should maybe have more compassion for MSM being led around by the nose on terrorism and Iraq?

"fortes: you do NOT need a release of your subject to put them into public domain. The only reason you need a release from a subject is if you’d like to use them in advertising where their use might imply an endorsement of the subject. Professional photojournalists never get releases of subjects they take in public places, which is where I got all of these photos."

Let's be clear about something. You can only make a quite claim to rights that you have. Not to rights that you don't have. Your copyright in a photo does not include a right possessed by the subject of the photo and not you. That's why there are separate releases.

I am not disputing that the rights of people to their own image is diminished in public activities, but your making a public domain declaration is independent of that and people who use your image need to be just as careful as someone who purchases it from you.

OK, two problems. First, of course, Flickr has the photos under Creative Commons Attribution. You can declare that no attribution is required, but it doesn't show on Flickr. You probably need the declaration to be on your profile on Flickr, if there is a way to do that. This would be a natural place for people to find out what attribution satisfies your license. (By the way, the U.S. Copyright Code has no means to put material in the public domain. You have the copyright whether you want it or not, it will expire whether you want it to or not -- unless you are Disney Corp -- and the most you can do is make a quit claim, which you are doing.)

The second problem is more serious. While you can grant free use of your photograph, the subjects of the photograph have something to say about the use of their image. This is especially the case if a commercial use is made of the photograph. Unless you have model releases, and say what they are (they usually have to be in writing) your copyright license is important but insufficient for someone to do whatever they want with the image. I bet you know something about that from your work in a camera shop. Nothing has changed.

Notice, for example, that the Nikon School group on Flickr requires that contributors of images to the group are required to have obtained the necessary releases for images of identifiable people. Notice that your CC-attribution license is sufficient for this except for the possession of releases:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/nikondigitallearni...

PS: No one seems to find it worth mentioning that a major part of the charge to the proposed Commission is to make sure that the protections of the US Constitution are addressed and given weight in any recommendation.

So I am mentioning it.

OK, let's cool it, OK. HR 1955 was the bill that passed in the House of Representatives. The authoritative version of this bill, which was forwarded to the Senate and is there as S.1959 is here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:4:./...

So, if we are to quote things, lets find the accurate legislative history and link to the definitive versions. (The Library of Congress is definitive in every way I can imagine.)

Finally, let us get off the Chicken Little bandwagon. This is going to make it harder to find the real scary stuff that might be happening by desensitizing all of us to ravings about this.

First, the HR.1955 and S.1959 do not create laws in the sense of making additions to the US Code (USC). It is an Act to ammend an Act (the Homeland Security Act of 2002) in order to establish a study Commission and a Center of Excellence. These are not unusual activities and this is an ordinary way of carrying them out.

The presumption that this is going to create laws against "thought crimes" is unwarranted. If the commission produces a report calling for such legislation, that will be an appropriate time to complain. (They will be delivering their report during the administration of the next President of the United States, by the way.)

However, such an outcome is in no way a foregone conclusion. Since the bill did pass in the house, you might want to find out how *your* Congress-person voted on the bill and find out why. The voting record on this bill should be an useful bit of information.

Yes Robert, I think you got co-opted into someone else's agenda (like the juxtaposition of a "24" episode with the prospect that internship camps are being built all over the US).

The Bill is designed to set up a study and a Center for the study of how radicalization to violent means is done. It doesn't make anything illegal and it certainly has nothing to do with "thought crimes."

Now, you did get me to read all of it (and from the official government site, just to be safe), check its legislative history (it has been consigned to a committee and it is not clear when or whether it will be addressed by that committee), and make sure that it is actually before the current Congress and is not another one of those bogus E-mail tax things.

The outcome of the implementation of this bill is a report on the nature of such activities, how they come about, and what other (democratic) countries with experience in domestic terrorism have learned about it and about their efforts to contain/prevent it.

This, I think, is a great demonstration of the willingness of advocacy groups to lie, exaggerate, and speculate without bound in the name of their particular just cause. You know, the "extremism for the sake of freedom is no vice" kind of thing. (I don't know about the exact wording, but a Republican Senator said that.)

In this time of facing into a major electoral season in the United States, one that may shape the direction of the nation for years to come, we should have our bullshit and unsupported claims detectors turned to high. Let's cool it on the screaming meemies.

This was a nice addition to my "I will Facebook no more Forever" post, but I am commenting here just to say I like the snowflakes you added to your banner picture. Heh.

Uh, ok, but then what is the new meaning of "platform" in your treatment?

I don't think I look in the right places, having so little skin in this game, but I do wonder about the complaints that the serious non-complier already is JScript.

It would be nice to have a specification that gets everyone on a common level, with serious adoption and good conformance/interoperability demonstration.

That's probably not with ES4, perhaps on the road to ES4. But is that possible? Is it practical? Is it probable?

Oh, my sides hurt!

I almost signed up for twitter just so I could tweak you with some tweets, but I figure why torgue when I can just nag you about not even answering Facebook mail.

Dang Robert, I finally go digital (saving up enough AmEx Rewards green stamps for it) with a D80 and now have a nice flash to go with it but still using my old lenses. I am not going to have Canon envy, I am not. But I definitely have VR lens envy and that is going to take another two years worth of green stamps at least. I don't think I can wait that long. Maybe have to find another low-fare consulting gig to pay for one sooner.

Hey, can we photowalk in December when Vicki and I are down there? (Dec. 3 to 10 or so, with best time on the weekend.)