Hephaestus' Favorite Stories Of The Week
from the favorites-of-the-week dept
This week’s post on favorite stories comes from regular commenter Hephaestus
In human history, we have people who stand out. These are the people that believe in community, that fight oppression, that innovate, that create the next big thing sometimes with out even knowing it. That’s who I’ve chosen to highlight in Techdirt posts from the past week.
The people around you and the community you build is important. Community Is About Enabling People To Be Heard. Everyone wants to be a part of something larger, something greater than themselves. Unless you have a huge ego and just want to be worshipped.
For standing up to those who wish to oppress, I give serious Kudos To Twitter For Not Just Rolling Over When The US Gov’t Asked For Info. Some of what Twitter did comes from doing what is right and just and maintaining trust. And some of it comes from the fear of financial loss. In the world of business on the internet, they are related. People now talk at the speed of light, so if you break the trust everyone knows almost immediately. This brings me to three givens for internet community, if you lose the trust, you fail to innovate, or if you get bought up by Rupert Murdoch, you lose the community.
Small innovations that occur as part of a larger trend are often overlooked by incumbent businesses. One such trend is the rise of low cost, high quality digital cameras. While the iPhone is does not have the best video quality, a Korean Director Shot a Movie With Just iPhones. The movie is 30 minutes long and seems to be more of a publicity stunt targeted at iWhatever fanbois than a serious attempt at film making. This puts the fact that films and TV shows can be made on a cellphone in the public mind. Combine that with YouTube extending the length of allowable videos and you have a serious disruption waiting to happen. It is only a matter of time before someone does a TV series about a robot on an Android, just for the publicity it will generate.
I have great hope for the next couple of years. Slowly we are seeing things change, sometime for the worse — sometimes for the better. On one side, we see the incumbents in several industries fighting the changes that are occuring with lawsuits, and laws designed to stop the advancements being made. On the other side, we see small incremental changes being made in reaction to these laws and lawsuits. Information technology, open source, online communities like Facebook and Linkedin, changes in the way we find information, all marching forward at a very rapid and predictable rate. We see existing disruptive trends accelerating, and new ones occuring all the time. None of which can be stopped, just slowed down a little.
Oh and my least favorite story of the week, because I want a recount (!!!) is this one about Techdirt’s 2010 numbers. Congrats to Dark Helmet for posting a single comment more than me last year.
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Comments on “Hephaestus' Favorite Stories Of The Week”
We need more people with such an outlook upon life.
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Agreed. I realize nothing can slow down the march of progress, and there is really nothing to fear in change.
Damn I sound like a fortune cookie … 🙂
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i would disagree many things can slow progress; namely corruption and ignorance
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nice recap on the story of the week Hephaestus.
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its not a real fortune cookie type saying unless it still makes sense after tacking on “in bed” to the end.
the nothing to fear in change kinda passes…its weird but still kinda passes, the march of progress is just…no.
Straight up ass kicking, homie 😉
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Thanks, you do pretty well in the ass kicking department yourself. 😉
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Agreed. Awesome post. 🙂
My favorite find this week was is related to the wildly popular “ReframeIT” firefox extension. It remains the best way to troll.
To find out more, visit http://www.reframeit.com
“Unless you have a huge ego and just want to be worshipped.”
Considering DH & Yours Helmet nice finish.
Oh and side quote.
There are certain things a human needs in life; doing something they love, doing it well… but most importantly being recognized for it.
-George Carlin
That being said, its great to be part of something if that’s your plum. It’s far more notable and meaningful to the individual if they are recognized, let alone immortalized. That is not EGO it’s noble.
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Want a real life story?.
About a poor guy that managed to write some code that is difficult for physics students let alone to some Cuban raising chickens in his backyard to have something to eat.
His is not only getting exposure, he got people trying to help him land a job and contributions that only people outside the U.S. can do.
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“Considering DH & Yours Helmet nice finish.”
Its not a hemelt its a temple. The temple of Hepheastus in Athens. And its way to big to wear as a helmet … unless i do the spinal tap ” -vs- ‘ thing. 🙂
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I was talking about ego but that misconception was priceless. lol.
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Yeah, I do have a bit of an ego. It comes from having the last standing greek temple 😉
I was actually trying to make a spinal tap inches -vs- foot joke. It would have been funnier if I had figured out how to squeeze a dancing midget joke in.
I’ve been an avid reader of TD for a few years now. I don’t comment much because I have a hard time expressing myself in writing but I sure learn a lot here. I sometimes disagree with Hephaestus, however, I very much enjoyed this write up. You go Hep!
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“I’ve been an avid reader of TD for a few years now. I don’t comment much because I have a hard time expressing myself in writing but I sure learn a lot here. I sometimes disagree with Hephaestus, however, I very much enjoyed this write up. You go Hep!”
Thanks, so how do you disagree with me? I will take on any questions, and will change my view of Intellectual property, and where it is going based on data, not rhetoric. So lets talk. Feel free to change my mind on the following, or anything else I have commented on in the past.
–The GE sale of NBCU is good for GE, but bad for Comcast. Shows, like music, are going to “singles” making TV networks irrelevent.
–The final 3 major record labels will fail in the next 5 years due to debt, failing to reduce expenses, and someone buying up the EMI catalog. The EMI catalog sale has two possible scenarios both leading to the failure of the record labels. Purchase by Google or Apple leading to a price war (apple at $0.29 USD, or google partialy free with some sales and ads), or a major label purchasing the catalog and going into serious debt causing an acceleration of the failure of the big 3.
–Like in the 1950’s, and pre CD and video tape, the movie studios will (for the most part) only make money off of the theater experience in 5-10 years. This will be due to cost reductions, competition for screen space from outside hollywood, and the lack of adaptabily of hollywood.
–In the next one to three years someone will figure out the music and video promotion piece online. Resulting in major airplay for some currently unknown band. This will make the majors only hold (promotion) on monopolizing new bands obsolete. More than likely this will come from the P2P arena or from social media.
–Online music sales have peaked at the current price point. This has lead people to other sources and will result in a reduction of online sales in the US over the next year.
–The high cost of pharma and the push for even higher prices world wide through IP laws will cause a backlash. Facebook, twitter and other social media will more than likely be a leading factor in this revolt against Pharma price hikes.
–etc
So lets start a discussion on this and ignore the people that live under bridges.
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I don’t disagree with anything in your write up. Just sometimes your opinion is different than mine, I think that’s good, we need different views to judge if our opinions are within reason. That’s why I’m here, to tweak my opinion with different ideas. I see a huge spectrum of intelligence, from very smart to ignorance to idiotic. For most of my life I didn’t care about intelligence, now that I’m old(er), I have a hunger for it and I can find it here with subjects that I never thought or heard of So even if I disagree with your opinion, it’s still valid and helpful to me.
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“I see a huge spectrum of intelligence, from very smart to ignorance to idiotic.”
Yeah same here.
“So even if I disagree with your opinion, it’s still valid and helpful to me.”
Is your day job a politician :p Very well said.
“For most of my life I didn’t care about intelligence, now that I’m old(er), I have a hunger for it and I can find it here with subjects that I never thought or heard of”
Out of curiosity. What are your favorite subjects here? What subjects worries you? What subjects delights you? What subjects makes you think? What floats your boat in the subject matter here?
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Everything interest me at least a little. What blows my mind is the complexities of copyright and the extreme silliness of a lot of patents. Throw in trademark and it nearly melts me down to see how little the supposed experts know in any of the three subjects. Is your day job a politician? You don’t have to resort to name calling. 😀
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This reminds me of the Heinlein predictions, where he’d write what he thought was going to happen and then check back in ten years. Very interesting stuff, even when I disagree.
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“This reminds me of the Heinlein predictions”
Thank you very much 🙂 Being compared to him just made me grin ear to ear.
“where he’d write what he thought was going to happen and then check back in ten years.”
Normally I am balls accurate when it comes to predicting when a country, company, or trend is going to fail. Real estate with in a month, various techno bubbles in the stock market all with in two weeks, Venezuela, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, all of which are easy to time and know when and where to invest.
But the record labels and TV studios have been basically kicking my ass. Every time I make a prediction they do something more self defeating than the last time. Which forces me to revise my estimates downward and shorten the time they have remaining as viable businesses. My original fail date for the big 5 record labels was 2025, now for the final 3 its 2015 plus or minus a year.
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Forgot to mention something …
The sale of the EMI catalog may not happen due to price. Which will accelerate the artist abandonment rate at the remaining three major labels. Who wants to work for a failing business? It will also cause the copyright reclamation rate by artists to increase as they see this as a sinking ship.
How important is the commons?
Ask the ex-president of Tunisia who was tweeted out of his job.
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“Ask the ex-president of Tunisia who was tweeted out of his job.”
[reference] please
I agree, people matter
Which is why I was quickly disappointed after the promising start to your story.
Twitter is not a person. Twitter did not decide anything. Somebody(s) that work at Twitter made a great decision. There were probably some other somebody(s) there that disagreed with them.
You want to build a better future, or even believe that one is possible? Start believing in the real people that are doing good things. Start holding real people accountable when they do bad things.
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“Twitter is not a person. Twitter did not decide anything. Somebody(s) that work at Twitter made a great decision. There were probably some other somebody(s) there that disagreed with them.”
Thats splitting hairs. Twitter is an organization of people, that made a great descision. On this we agree.
“You want to build a better future, or even believe that one is possible? Start believing in the real people that are doing good things.Start holding real people accountable when they do bad things.”
Slowly but surely this is happening. Sites like OpenSecrets.org tell us who is paying for which politicians votes. Sites like http://www.govtrack.us/users/trackers.xpd and projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/ allow us to see what polticians are voting for. What is needed is a facebook-twitter-whatever app to pull it all together for people. Considering that my numbers say just under 700 million people will be on facebook one year from now, it could be a game changer in US (and world) politics.
Re: I agree, people matter
in a political world setting where corporate sponsorship of new bills is running amok and corporations have been given the green light to associate campaign contributions with free speech, its not surprising to see more and more people pointing to a corporate entity and ascribing persona to their actions.
Would it be great to point at someone within that organization and say ‘hey, that guy made a stand up decision’? yes it would, but i think disappointment simply because you dont really have that one person within the organization to point at is not the best way to view it when it doesnt really matter who it was, they still made the right choice.
if that person wants to be given credit for making that decision within the organization they need to stand up and take credit for it… otherwise the credit goes to the organization the same way that organizations take heat when they make mistakes or bad choices.
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FYI
We can point to one person. Twitter?s general counsel Alexander Macgillivray who was one of the first law students at Harvards? Berkman internet law center.
I am a mother of six children. five boys and one girl. we have moved so many times i couldnt count.we are in need of a place we can call home.in the town we live in there are some homes that are 15 to 20 thousand. they may need some work but we wouldnt mind.if you can find it in your hearts to help us we would forever be greatful. thank you and god bless you all