2000/1/25
All-too-realistic near-future scenario describing a massively amalgamated music/media/Internet industry: (BBC News)
The group taking Phoenix-muzak to court allege that Fire-me-up.com has been designed not to take users to the independent site they are searching for, but to that of the most similar Phoenix-muzak artist.
Having secured full rights to the works of its conventional musicians, Phoenix-muzak is pioneering sampling technology which will produce composite songs. These tracks will be different for each user and constructed to suit their tastes exactly.
Spam of the future: What if spammers used intelligent email-handling agents? (Salon)
What if instead of receiving an e-mail message shrieking, "BUY THIS BOOK NOW!" you received an e-mail message from a woman at that company -- an employee who stumbled across your Web page and shared some of your interests. Say you engaged in an e-mail conversation for a few weeks, and then one day this woman wrote that she was reading a book and really enjoying it. Over the next week, she sends a number of e-mails, telling you how wonderful the book is. Then she insists that you get a copy of the book, so that the two of you can talk about it on a deeper level.
Instant messaging startup releases unlicenced ICQ-compatible messaging program. Will AOL change the protocol to freeze it out? If so, will this kill open-source UNIX ICQ clones such as licq? (WIRED News)
You're mitnicked, sunshine! Norwegian police raid DeCSS author, seizing his computers.
How middle-men became godlike celebrities (newsunlimited.co.uk, via Arts&Letters):
The theatre director is an invention of the mid-20th century, when the humble but crucial job of stage manager became inflated into the idea of the director as creative demiurge, following the woolly theorising of such pioneers as Peter Brook.
The electronic composer works in his bedroom with a tower of computers and synthesisers; his music is mass-produced and distributed on vinyl. So when the music gets to be heard on the dance floor, there are waves of appreciative joy swilling round the place with nowhere to go. The guy who made it happen isn't there. The audience wants to praise him like they should, but it's impossible. The DJ is there, however, waving crazily from behind his decks, and so the adulation flows to him, for want of any more deserving receptacle.
Thought-provoking Salon article about the origins of surname conventions:
...in the 11th century, minions of William the Conqueror created surnames in the midst of a census to codify inheritance rules and thereby bolster tax revenue. Later in Europe, surnames were used to control and homogenize various ethnic groups... "Jews wouldn't take last names because Moses didn't have a last name," she explains. "But when they rebelled, the government assigned them really gross last names like -- Grossman -- which means fat man. If you wanted a pretty name, you had to a pay a bribe."
Evolutionary biologist Helen Fisher casts the idea in biological terms. "It's tremendously advantageous to think that the father belongs to [the mother and the child] for Darwinian evolutionary reasons. The main reason for marriage is for women to get a man to not only sire her children but to help raise them.
That women have a choice of surnames at all is only a relatively recent development in legal history. Originally, patrilineal names were part of the British and American common law called "coverture," in which a woman lost her legal right to own property, to enter into contracts or sue another party as soon as she got married.