meta-roj

i’m a bit late to this party, but… jeffery nolan has a lucid and detailed piece on dealing with bloggers – and the comments that follow are interesting as well (sometimes it’s good to be late to the party 🙂 ).

i have a larger motive for putting this here – it’s worth my attention (and perhaps yours) on it’s own, but i hope to come back to this in the near future from a different [political] angle.

a brillant bit of news. if only i could get along with institutionalized education.

yahoo ran it, i picked it up at metafilter

Along with eliminating the average $2,300 expected contribution from low-income students’ families, Harvard also announced that students whose parents earn from $40,000 to $60,000 will receive a substantial increase in aid.

Tuition, room, board and fees at Harvard cost $37,928 this year.

in 2004, apple showed off their groundbreaking ad introducing the macintosh. come see how 2004 has become like 1984 (sorry george)…

original [via slashdot]

ipod-enhanced revised version [via apple]

this came up in #joiito, i figured it was worth noting as i work on a little bit of writing about trust and re-establishing trust.

did apple people really miss the orwellian implication of this stunt?

double-plus good. we have always been at war with oceana.

apple makes the ipods. apple has always made the ipods.

discovery communications makes up footage. no big deal, really, in the business of television, sometimes there just isn’t a picture to show. i don’t have a problem with recreations, dramatizations or other tools of the trade.

what i do have a problem with is when the network makes up this footage and doesn’t label it as made up footage. discovery promotes their channels (discovery, tlc, discovery health, animal planet, discovery kids, science channel, discovery wings, travel channel, discovery times) as sources of information, not disinformation or misinformation.

sometimes, it’s obvious. sure, anyone reasonably intelligent should realize that discovery communications did not actually have a camera crew on-site during the mongol invasions of central asia, sometimes it’s not so obvious. sometimes, they stage things like snakebite victims driving down off mountains, recreating the adventure with the actual victims and cutting in interview segments with them and their actual friends and family.

this is even more offensive since the times is working with discovery now, you’d think some concept of journalistic integrity would make it across the gap. no, apparently not.

even e! is willing to admit when they’re faking it – they put little graphics on the screen to indicate when they’re staging the nicole brown simpson and ronald goldman murders, and didn’t actually have a camera crew on-site. just like discovery used to do.

is that really too much to ask, now that we have constant station-identification graphics and annoying self-promotion graphics that actually overlap content on the screen? how many times have you seen the name of an interviewee obscured and unreadable by an animated promotion graphic for some new program?

discovery communications has violated my trust. the deal is off.

i’m annoyed, and i’m not the only one… an alternative is in the works. i draw your attention to CSN: Cable Science Network

evidence that non-traditioal business models are alive and well in america, i present for your consideration, the restaurant with no menu and no cash register.

inspired or crazy, denise cerreta jumped into a model that spurns every conventional concept of running a restaurant (except maybe the location thing).

they’re making news (well, made news, i’m picking up on this late), apparently making money, and got my attention. next time i’m in salt lake city… they might just get some of my dollars.

read more… tell me what you think

deseret news
salt lake tribune
charles herald
free republic

is it a non-profit model in a for-profit business? liberal pricing? conservative production? interesting? crazy?

today, the dow stuck its nose above 10,000…. and the nikkei broke below 10,000.

points, ladies and gentlemen. it’s just a number.

[via boingboing]

following this crack and that crack comes the save disney site.

this story [new york times, included below] tells us about the adventures of hollywood studios trying, desperately, to give away their movies.

the irony, of course, is that they’re under the gun to give these movies away in a hurry to get in under the new mpaa rules about giving movies away.

so, even in movies, even the studios realize that they have to give it away somewhere, or nobody will ever pay for it. hmm.
(more…)

generally, i try to refrain from the “pile-on” mentality that pervades blogspace with some issues. tonight, i’m going to make an exception.

professor lessig broke with his schedule to take some time and explain just how clueless darl mcbride (ceo of sco) really is.

it’s truly amazing.

i have 39 cents sitting on my dresser that i’m willing to contribute to the buy-a-clue fund.

in the meantime, i think i’ll go get a business method patent on “legal action as a revenue model.”

as mentioned recently, there’s a bit of a stir happening over at the magic kingdom.

another board member, stanley gold, has left the board of directors and joined roy disney in an “outsider” campaign to oust michael eisner.