The ungrateful dead

From a recent BBC interview with John Perry Barlow of the Grateful Dead and EFF, concerning Dan Glickman and the MPAA:

I’ve got good news and bad news and good news. And the good news is that you guys have managed to buy every major legislative body on the planet, and the courts are even with you. So you’ve done a great job there and you should congratulate yourself.

But you know the problem is – the bad news is that you’re up against a dedicated foe that is younger and smarter that you are and will be alive when you’re dead. You’re 55 years old and these kids are 17 and they’re just smarter than you. So you’re gonna lose that one.

But the good news is that you guys are mean sons of bitches and you’ve been figuring out ways of ripping off audiences and artists for centuries…..

Welcome to the prolonged media war of attrition. Maybe, the **AA’s should stop suing all of us and hire the odd person under-30.



Database War Stories

For those interested in designing large-scale web applications, it’s worth taking a look at O’Reilly’s database war stories. They tap some of the larger real-world players for your reading enjoyment.

The future human consciousness will not be stored in a flat file.