Is RSS a virus?

More recent comment by Dave Winer on the issue of RSS overwhelming the internet if the so-called standard of checking no more than once an hour is not honoured.

I wonder…if there is no general acceptance of his late in the day plea for using these apps no more than once an hour, isn’t the question now something like “have Dave and friends really inadvertently released the slowest acting but most devastating virus the web has ever seen”?  I know my aggregator of choice, Abilon, churns every ten minutes [Edit.: “bad, bad Big Al”]. Who is he once he has unleashed the monster to say this:

…the vast majority being good network citizens and accessing it only once an hour…

Wouldn’t it be better to order the recall and fix the dang thang before this goes any further?   Can’t we stop the syndication insanity?!?!

Die Fax Die

The other day I got an email returned with a reply. Except it was a handwritten reply and the answerer had printed off my email, written his answer on it and faxed it back. It’s folks like that who are ensuring that fax machines continue to clog our lives – pushing up usage 40% in the last year alone.

When will the fax machines die off joining the Gestentner, mother of all ‘zines, itself now hiding its own toxic legacy.

First Big Snow

Hmmm...Atlantic Canada looks vulnerable...think I'll hammer them
Mom always said bright colours would help me get noticed

We have been lucky around here watching lake effects hammer Central New Yourk State to the south and nor’easters riding up the coast burying Maine and the Maritimes. It has been a long and late fall around here. Ended today with the north tip of this low pressure zone landing us with a few inches of Christmasiness. Thirteen weeks to spring. Order your seed catalogs now.

So Now That Saddam Has Been Caught…

…what do you do if your job title is “Saddam Double”. I have pondered about these guys before and Steve and I were wondering about them this morning and have come up with some ideas:

  • The travelling roadshow “One Hundred Saddams” playing casinos and lounges world-wide, managed by Cirque de Soleil;
  • They have a fit of industriousness, they form a mining crew and male choir in Wales, winning raves for their highly accented but emotive version of “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”;
  • Clogging up the Yuk Yuk’s circuit in Bahrain with impersonator shows: “weren’t you through here last month, buddy?”

What other future careers can we suggest for the doubles of these and other desposed fascist dictators?

Canadian Digital Copyright Rulings

Yesterday’s Canadian Copyright Board ruling on the payment of fees on new
blank media such as iPods and blank CD as got some notice on some popular
US blogs. There
are two separate cases at play, the ruling of yesterday by the Copyright Board
as well as another from 1999 which has been appealed out of the Copyright Board
to superior courts on payment of tariffs through ISPs for sharing music on the
internet. Here are some background documents on both matters:

  • The Copyright
    Board ruling     on the tariff on blank digital media for recording music dated
    12 December 2003. Oddly it does not appear to cover personal computer hard
    drives where most downloaded music resides;

  • The Copyright
    Board ruling     on the tariff on digital sharing of music via the internet
    dated 27 October 1999;

  • The Federal
    Court of Appeal ruling     dated 1 May 2002, the judicial review (narrower, not
    an appeal) of the Copyright Board ruling, above, on ISPs and copyright. Have a
    look around paragraphs 179 to 192 for the point of the ruling; and 

  • A
    Supreme Court of Canada backgrounder     on the appeal from the Federal Court of
    Appeal judicial review. The oral arguments in this appeal were heard on 3
    December 2003. The ruling is pending.

Make sense? With any luck the
Supreme Court will make a ruling that will make practical sense, as I think the
Copyright Board has on the tariff for blank digital media. Unfortunately, it is
an appeal from a judicial review of an administrative tribunal order. Lots of
procedural issues to muddy to substance.