Here's some of what I was reading instead of writing here recently

Paul Boutin puts Andrew Odlyzko's point about Hard disks growing faster than network bandwidth into practice.
John Udell repeats my point about signed email being the long-term answer to spam.
Michael Wolff namedrops about hanging with the moguls, but thinks that:
the next big thing was that we would all soon find out how unhappy everybody is in the media business. That nobody can enjoy or get satisfaction from working in an uncertain colossus. That there is a dark and growing rage in the ranks. That while we partied, the media business was rebelling from within. It would be pulled apart by a bigness-induced psychosis, as well as by the ever-growing pressure and sure futility of the search for the next big thing.

Kevin Myers is becoming a censor:
...censors these days have become relics of ancient rituals: the guardsmen inspecting the vaults of Westminster searching for more associates of Mr Fawkes, or the tipstaff offering non-existent protection to a judge from a non-existent mob.
[...]Although the internet means that off-screen protection is almost impossible to achieve these days, we noble censors can't shirk our duty because of this. So at the one time, being a censor contains the impossible contradictions of being utterly ridiculous yet also being morally vital.

Peter Chernin is spouting again:
Using terms like "looting," "piracy" and "digital hijacking," Chernin said that the rampant free downloading of copyrighted material is akin to shoplifting. The big difference, however, is that downloading music and movies for free is tolerated.
Perhaps if companies like News International hadn't devalued music and movies by making them available 'free' as long as you suffer through advertisements, people's perceptions of their value would be higher. Jim Griffin says something like this, in his argument for nationalizing P2P systems:
Making art feel free, without being free, is the history of media. Radio, television, newspapers, magazines � almost all take a loss on distribution.
Doc Searls explains the real problem:
In commercial broadcasting, for example, customers and consumers are totally different populations. You and I pay nothing for what we hear on our car radios. We're just consumers. The customers of the stations we hear are the advertisers who buy time.

The same goes for commercial television. Consumers of commercial TV have no economic relationship whatsoever with their local NBC station, with the network, or with the producers of shows. All the "content" is just bait. Chum on the waters. The commercial broadcasting marketplace is a conversation that exists entirely between the media, advertisers and intermediaries such as advertising agencies.

The consumers have zero influence, basically, on commercial television because they pay nothing, and don't have any kind of direct feedback mechanism. And if we put that mechanism in place (as the Net and TiVo threaten to do), guess what happens? The colossal inefficiencies of advertising get exposed. A $100 billion business worldwide is suddenly at risk.

There is negative demand for most TV and radio advertising. It subtracts value for listeners and viewers. That's why TiVo viewers skip over the ads. TiVo isn't exactly Net-native, but it could easily be. And eventually, it will be, if its backers let it survive.

Andrew Marr met David Hockney:
Hockney is a great critic of government interference, from pornography to banning fox hunting, and told me he went on the recent Countryside Alliance demonstration in London. He had marched under a placard with the excellent general sentiment, "End Bossiness Now". But on reflection he thought that perhaps this was a little aggressive, a little peremptory. So he has carefully altered it for the lapel badges he now gives out, which read, rather more wryly and Britishly, "End Bossiness Soon". It made me feel quite patriotic.
Perhaps. On the other hand, this report combined with these posters do make my joke about being a political exile from England seem less funny.

Kevin Kelly explains the Universe-as-computer idea, but misses out the subtlety of the 'free will as the halting problem' idea.

Sony comes up with the most clueless locked-up CD scheme yet. AKMA is aghast.