The Grand Strand bloggers have gotten together and committed to a blogging convention in Myrtle Beach in April 2008. Very cool…I’m hoping that once they nail down the exact date I can work something out to go. Myrtle Beach is fun, it’s close enough to drive, but far enough away to seem like a little getaway. And I’d really love to finally go to a bloggercon. I’ve got some other stuff going on that month, so we’ll have to see if things work out, but I’m really hoping I can go.

More to come (the set behind this pic will increase in number; just click through), but I wanted to get one up ASAP.

Holy crap…I hate it when I let this stuff slip through. I had heard a bit about HR 1955 – Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, but I hadn’t read enough about it; and then it goes and passes the House 404 – 6. Yowch.

One can, in a sense, look at this as just an intent to study the problem…sure. On the other hand, one could have seen McCarthy’s investigations, or the House Un-American Activities Committee, as the same. (To be fair, neither the Church Committee nor the 9/11 Comisison was so bad). Regardless, those National Commissions tend to end up pretty powerful. So what would it do, anyway?

I have to admit I find some disturbing assertions within the findings section of the bill. For example:

• The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.

Ohhhkay. While true, the same statement can be made about satellite television, shortwave, newspapers, novels, and religious groups (note: in none of these cases do I mean ALL members/representatives of a group. Neither all shortwave transmissions, nor all churches, are bad. *grin*) But singling out the Internet here (none of my other suggestions get their own finding, dang it) suggests to me that there’s a considerable chance that it’s going to get special treatment. That is seldom a good thing.

This appears to be a done deal, based on the lopsided voting in the House. But the OpenCongress link has a great news and blog listing that will give you the opportunity to make up your mind for yourself about this. An informed decision is the most important thing, in my opinion. Feel free to disagree with me, as long as you have REASONS.

In addition, it’s votes like this that shine a light on people who vote on principle. In a divided House of Representatives such as our own, I expect there were many odd bedfellows on this bill…from people who just liked the sound of the title, to those who have strong convictions that this is exactly the Sort Of Thing Our Government Should Be Doing. And it’s an intrusive, classic big government solution…have a National Committe to look at the issue.

So who voted against it, and why? You’d have to either HATE big government, or really, really be worried about the consequences of this particular sort of investigation. Hmmm…only 6 voted ‘Nay’…lessee…Kucinich? Kucinich??? Note: his office hasn’t yet spoken on this, and maybe there was some weird, legislative technicality reason that he voted against it…but I’m guessing no. I’m guessing that this universal health care, pull the troops out in a day, hard-left Democrat voted AGAINST this commission because he thinks it’s a bad idea. Heck, even Ron Paul was only a ‘Not present’ vote!

Kucinich has guts, I’ll tell you that much. And, in fact…as soon as I can confirm (and I don’t think it’ll be hard) that he was actually against this thing, I’m tossing his campaign some cash. There’s no way the guy will win, unfortunately, but at least I can give him that positive reinforcement.

And back to HR 1955…we need to watch carefully who is appointed to this Committee, and what they do. And while they may not like it…at least the good old Internet makes that pretty easy.

UPDATE: the associated Senate legislation appears to be S.1959

UPDATE: just in case you don’t know me well enough to be aware of it, I am about as anti hate speech as you can get. I speak up when I hear it used, I find it shameful, and I am ALWAYS against the use of violence as a political tool. I’m by no means saying I’m pro-Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism; anyone who thinks that has a severe disappointment coming. I just happen to kind of respect that whole 1st Amendment thing. Good idea; let’s have more of those!

As of this afternoon, my chumby was in Louisville, KY; en route to me from China via Hong Kong, S. Korea, and Anchorage, Alaska. It’s supposed to be here Friday.

I’ve gotten a tad excited, if you can’t tell. *grin* I’ve had to answer the what IS it? question several times in the past few days, and I’m working through a good explanation myself…but it is, I think, A Big Deal. It’s really among the first generation of non-computer always-on Internet tools that (hopefully, anyway) just work, yet are open, hackable, and extendable by the user. The cell phone could have been this device, (and the gPhone may yet be) but the telcos are for the most part unwilling to give the user freedom to hack on these devices to any great extent. I hope that devices like the chumby show regular users what the freedom to make a device truly your own is like…freedoms that those of us who are willing to compile a kernel once in awhile have had for some time, thanks to GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, etc.

Time will tell, but I have a good feeling about this one…

Jeff Clark’s Transcript Analyzer visualization tool is pretty incredible. It allows you to highlight words used in the Oct. 30th Democratic presidential debate, see who said what when, and how the ebb and flow of topics progressed. It includes the ability to focus on any particular candidate, as well as a popup of the full text at any point. Really, really impressive. I love seeing data sliced and diced in this way, and to do it with such relevant information is especially useful. Thanks, Jeff!

Urrgh…Facebook Pages for businesses and brands, Facebook Beacon (or whatever that goofy ad-thing is called), plugins that want access to my entire account so that I can compare movie ratings with a friend. It’s beyond enough. Not that I was ever a Facebook groupie or anything, but I see a shark jump coming. It’s useful for finding high school friends, but that’s about it.

UPDATE: LOL…I just caught up with last week’s two Penny Arcades on the subject Huzzah!

So… this internet thing,
from New Music Strategies: One of the best essays I’ve read in awhile on the topic — Let’s take it back to first principles: the internet is not a promotional tool for music. Nor is it a retail platform. It’s not even a method of distribution. It’s electricity. A well-written essay by someone who groks the spew is always a pleasure. Thanks, Andrew!

PS: My Christmas present will hopefully fit the Internet appliance bill quite nicely…

I’ve not gotten around this week to commenting on Amazon’s Kindle, mostly because it doesn’t thrill me all that much. I’m chomping at the bit, OTOH, for the Chumby that Santa Claus has in a sack with my name on it. While my unconscious was working on a post explaining that, Mark Pilgrim went ahead and did it for me, and Cory stuck it on boingboing: Amazon Kindle: the Web makes Amazon go bad crazy. Cory’s additional points at bb are spot on, but make sure you click through to Mark’s orginal article; it’s a great read as well.

• Chumby: open, hackable, wifi
• Kindle: closed, DRM’d, EVDO
• Decision: Chumby

A Good Album is More than Just a Collection of Singles — Did consumers complain? Maybe so. But at what point does any business care when a consumer complains about the money? Why do people not care how we – the people who make music – eat? If they just want the single, they gotta get the album. That was how life was. Today we should at least have that option. — LOL. True…you have that option. Is the album available w/o DRM? Reasonably priced? No? Let me know how that works out for ya!

UPDATE: Oh, the more I read, the better this is! — My book, Young, Rich and Dangerous: The Making of a Music Mogul, came out in hardcover last month, but Simon & Schuster doesn’t let the book stores tear it up and sell it chapter by chapter. A record is no different. — Yeah. OK. Whatever. Let me…oh, I already said that. *grin*

Thanks to Silicon Alley Insider for the link and their analysis. Good stuff!

Well, I finally got around to making the actual hard-coded changes in my webpage templates, so that my podcast URL is showing up correctly everywhere: new RSS feed url for podcast. Note: the old one still works, and the new one has, in fact, always worked (they’re both dynamically generated based on topic tags for the episodes), but I’m properly pimping the new one everywhere now. Enjoy…and I encourage you to change if you use the old one (both of you, Steve and Lee!); it was missing quite a few podcasts for some bizarre reason. Blip.tv is supposed to be fixing the issue soon…but it’s been soon for awhile now, and it’s so trivial a change, that I said the heck with it.