onfocus

John Perry Barlow, Internet pioneer, has written a state of the nation from his perspective. It was prompted by last Thursday's vote:

"Despite a deluge of calls, letters, and e-mails, which Capital Hill staffers admitted ran overwhelmingly against the ludicrously-named Resolution Authorizing the President to Use Force, if Necessary, to End the Threat to World Peace from Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction, Congress extended to George II the authority to make unlimited and preemptive war against another nation that has neither attacked us nor shown the ability or inclination to do so."

In this letter he criticizes the Internet for the all-talk, no real-world action role it plays. And I agree with JPB, "As much as I loathe organizations, we need to organize." [via boingboing]

Bus sign - Corvallis, OR

Post Office Gargoyle - Corvallis, OR

A fantastic and well-researched article by Janis Ian about the horrible state of the music industry: The Internet Debacle - an Alternative View. [via MeFi] "There is zero evidence that material available for free online downloading is financially harming anyone. In fact, most of the hard evidence is to the contrary."

I'm not into baseball, but I always get suckered by the playoff games. I go from casually listening to a few innings early in the season—to screaming at the TV through the entire game by the end of the season. Nice work Giants. Last time they were in the world series there was a horrible earthquake in the Bay Area. I'm sure that's a coincidence. It's not like MLB controls the tectonic plates. (They will someday, but not now...)

I'm against preemptive military strikes. And I vote. (A bit long for a bumper sticker.) I won't be voting for anyone who approved the Iraq resolution. I don't believe they were listening to their constituents...and they didn't even amend the White House's wording or put in an expiration date. (Bush 0wNz3rz Congress!) Beyond voting them out, all we can do is hope that this bit of legislation doesn't become this generation's Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and keep public pressure on our representatives to make sure it doesn't happen.

Now, about that economy...

With a tagline like that, it's gotta be good. (Jason is writing a weblog about the new Spike Jonez movie Adaptation.)

I've been listening to the Senate debate the resolution that will authorize the President to use whatever means necessary to preemptively dismantle Iraq—in whatever way he sees fit. The debate has been spirited, and the best part has been listening to Senator Byrd from West Virginia. You can read a transcript of some of his comments, but to get the full effect, check out the MP3 of his speech on that page. This speech was only the beginning of a series of his passionate speeches about this issue. He is almost the lone voice of dissent in the Senate, and I admire his conviction. (I predict that the kids will soon be trading political speeches on Kazaa.)

btw, if you're interested in listening to the Senate debate this issue, check your local NPR radio station. The Bay Area NPR station (KQED) has been preempting their regular programming to air the audio of the debates when they're happening. For some reason, CSPAN doesn't seem to be covering it.

Beautiful sunset at the coast tonight...

Where have you been all my life, Kraftwerk?

There's a great article on Boxes and Arrows about Microsoft's intranet. (The article was written by the authors of Information Architecture for the WWW.) Microsoft has over 3 million intranet pages, content created by over 50,000 employees, and over 8,000 separate intranet sites. Aggregating all of that data into a useful whole is an interesting problem. (Not unlike trying to aggregate information across thousands of weblogs.) They're using a single metadata schema (borrowed from the Dublin Core) to facilitate searching and browsing across the intranet. Applying some of these methods to weblogs could increase their usefulness as a whole. [via Information Nation]

Part 2 of Microsoft's intranet series is worth reading as well. It has some good advice from one of their knowledge management analysts about how to develop a system that will be adopted: "...Improving information systems affects people, process and technologies. To not recognize that will spell doom...Another key is to have a multi-disciplinary team. Just one discipline does not have the answer."