Mike Maney

Tag: Uncategorized

  • Newsreaders vs Journalists

    The BBC gets it right when it describes its television anchors as newsreaders rather than journalists.

    Technorati:

  • The Problem with Verizon’s $100 Unlimited Wireless Plan

    Interested in Verizon Wireless’s new $100 all-you-can-eat voice plan?  May want to check out this post by Silicon Alley Insider’s Dan Frommer first.

  • Who’s Who, Open Source Style

    Italy’s Roberto Galoppini posts his thoughts from the recent Open Source Think Tank.  It’s great seeing the long list of open source leaders Page One PR does business with.

  • Roblimo Interviews New Red Hat CEO Whitehurst

    When Red Hat named Jim Whitehurst as its new CEO, many in the open source community wondered, “Huh?”  But Whitehurst made himself available to reporters and bloggers and quickly gave everyone an inside look at who he was, what he knew and what he had planned for the open source powerhouse.

    Which is why this interview by Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miller is so important.

    The majority of Whitehurst’s “rainbow tour” when he was announced was conveyed through words on paper or on a screen.  Roblimo caught Whitehurst in Orland at JBoss World and put him on tape — uncut and unplugged.  The video adds to what we already know about Whitehurst, giving us a more personal connection to the man who will lead one of the industry’s most visible brands…warts and all.

    It’s an example of how the interactivity of the Web is changing the face of journalism.  Is Roblimo a broadcast reporter?  I’d claim not (although I could be wrong).  But it was simple enough to throw a video camera on a tripod to capture the questions he was going to ask Whitehurst anyway.  And we’re all the richer for him doing so.

  • Open Source Rogue’s Gallery

    LinuxWorld.com’s Mark Hinkle pulls together a who’s who of the open source movement in this list of the publication’s top leaders for 2008.

  • The Affordable Art Class

    Rare are the times that a comment on a blog post makes you stop dead in your tracks. Such was the case this morning as I was getting my daily fix of Matt Asay’s posts over at InfoWorld’s Open Sources blog.

    One of Matt’s articles this morning called out the RIAA’s influence peddling in Congress. Nothing earth-shattering, but informative nonetheless (he calls out his state’s senator, Orrin Hatch, who received $6,000 from the RIAA…an amount I suspect is more than Hatch has made as a songwriter).

    Then I started reading the post’s comments. The third comment, by Peter Sysko, may be the single-most provocative comment I’ve yet to read in the blogosphere:

    …i think its better that people in the world listen to the music that they want to listen to, rather than what they can afford.

    Think about that for a second.

    As a society, we’ve chosen to abdicate the value we place on art and culture to corporations — lawyers, really, when you think about it in the context of the RIAA and MPAA. We’ve chosen to let others determine the cost of admission to our exposure to cultural advancement.

    Peter’s statement says as much about what’s happening today in software as it does about music. Proprietary companies — most notably Microsoft — are the RIAA/MPAA of software, clinging to business models that look backward instead of forward and seek to levy taxes on those that dare to challenge what they view as their monopolistic right to print money. The open source movement is doing to proprietary companies what MySpace, YouTube and other social media sites have done to the RIAA/MPAA: giving artists (in this case, software developers) a foundation to communicate, collaborate and sell to their customers without the arbitrary and outdated overhead imposed by those who are unable to adapt to the changing demands of their customers.

    Well said, Peter.

  • Pole Vaulter’s Dad Gets the Shaft

    Scrolling through my RSS feeds this morning, I notice there’s considerable buzz in the ether about 18 year old high school pole vaulter Alison Stokke. In a nutshell: she’s shattering state records, happens to be photogenic, and is now plastered all over the ‘net, i.e., American Idol hottie Antonella Barbra.

    In one heavily-linked article, her father, defense attorney Allan Stokke, talks about how he surfs the web to protect her from potential stalkers. Well, that’s all fine and good…and what most of us would do to protect our children from society’s detritus if it were our daughters. However, maybe Allan Stokke should seriously reconsider resigning from his current profession (excerpted from feministing.com):

    …Stokke’s father is the same guy who earlier this year defended a cop who jerked off on a stripper during a routine traffic stop. “She got what she wanted,” Al Stokke said, of the stripper. “She’s an overtly sexual person.”

    I can imagine the dinner conversation at the Stokke table: “Yes, honey, I realize you feel this is an invasion of your privacy and you are hurt and offended, but, you know, it’s not really their fault. You are pretty and you did show the bare skin of your belly when you were breaking the records…and, I mean, c’mon, a “pole” vaulter? You pretty much deserve the attention.”

    As the father of two daughters, it disgust me that I’m partly defined in the same demographic as Stokke.

  • A Tribute to George Carlin

    Somebody get Reuters and its reporter, Martha Graybow, a Pulitzer. Heck, pull an old Nobel out of the closet and give it to them. They deserve it.

    This morning, I was reading a story written by Graybow about the U.S. courts rejecting the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) broadcast decency limits. Basically, they said the FCC was “arbitrary and capricious” in defining (for all of us) what it thought was indecent. Well, no kidding.

    But, unlike every other mainstream media outlet, Reuters had the cajones to include the verbatim words in dispute. In print. In a major media outlet. Against the wind of the puritan way most would’ve handled it.

    And it’s a good thing, too. Because you only have to read the Republican FCC Chairman’s reaction to see the Crisco-lined slope this is headed:

    Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin angrily retorted that he found it “hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’ are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience.”

    “If we can’t restrict the use (of the two obscenities) during prime time, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want,” Martin said in a statement.

    Kudos to Reuters and Graybow.

  • Folliculay, Folliculah

    I love science. Genetics saddled me with a bad case of follicle deforestation. Rather than comb-over, I shave the dome down to the skin. However, it now looks like there may be hope on the horizon:

    “Hair loss in humans might not be irreversible, suggest scientists who have helped create new hair cells on the skin of mice.”

    Of course, I’ll probably be 115 years old by the time any of this science will bless me with a full head of hair.

  • Don’t Tell Me He’s Not Running for President

    A very thoughtful, calm and reasoned excerpt from Al Gore’s new book, The Assault of Reason. Read it. The content is important and the writing is superb.