Creative work won’t be directly paid for in the future.

Scripting News for 11/30/2007: Creative work won’t be directly paid for in the future. And we’re already in that future. Read my essays from the 90s to see how angry this made me. Now the anger has subsided, as a software writer, and it will subside for the Hollywood writers too. This may be the moment when the system breaks. It looks more and more like that.[An interesting piece at an interesting time for me (and some others who have become important to me this last year.)]
Source: Dave’s WordPress Blog

Don’t complain about the game. Change the game you’re playing.

Don’t complain about the game. Change the game you’re playing.: The people who insist on telling you that you can’t are often actually saying I can’t. For whatever reason: fear, self-doubt, teachers, managers or parents who quash them (whom they let squash them), a complete lack of belief in their own power, a kind of sublimated jealousy and rage because you succeed where, of course, they “can’t.”

It’s true that this stuff sometimes comes straight from the mouths of people who care (or purport to care) about you, your business, your product, your career, whatever. They may think they’re trying to do right by you, but I’ve found that the people who say such things are afraid of life… not just for themselves, but for you, too. They’re afraid you might fail because they’re so horribly afraid of failing. They’re afraid that you might succeed, too, because what kind of light would that cast on their failure to do exactly what you’re doing right?[Great piece on success, failure, and making stuff happen.]
Source: (24)Slash7

Creating People-Friendly Streets

Creating People-Friendly Streets (Gotham Gazette, November 2007): Against this backdrop, many West Side residents and elected officials believe the time has come to reclaim the streets as public space. In November, several hundred people filled the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan to hear Jan Gehl, the Danish urban planner renowned for humanizing the streets of Copenhagen, London and dozens of other cities. Gehl’s talk launched the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance, a campaign to radically reconfigure the streets led by Transportation Alternatives, the Project for Public Spaces and the Open Planning Project.

Gehl is working as a consultant for the transportation department. With a team of volunteers, he conducted studies of how the streets are used in various parts of the city and made recommendations for supporting “walkability” in public life. [Go, Go!, GO! (Am I enthusiastically for all this? Mmmm, yes!)]

NYC’s “Flawed” Traffic Plan Brought to You by… Toyota

CBS 2’s award-winning political reporter tells us that "Londoners are now cloning license plates to avoid congestion fees" (note they’re not copying license plates — they’re cloning them. Terrifying). She doesn’t tell us how widespread the practice is, how many people might be doing it or how it may be impacting a system that has reduced traffic congestion by 70,000 vehicles per day and is raising $250 million a year for mass transit (You’d think it would be easy for an award-winning investigative reporter to find this sort of information). Rather, Kramer gives some airtime to Westchester obstructionist Assembly member Richard Brodsky, incorrectly referring to him as "head of the Congestion Mitigation Commission."[Oy.]
Source: StreetsBlog

Russianoff and Schneiderman Map the MTA’s Road to ‘Ruin’

Russianoff and Schneiderman Map the MTA’s Road to ‘Ruin’: Spitzer has a lot on his plate, but ending Albany’s systemic abuse of our 7.5 million straphangers should be at or near the top of the pile. He must work with the Legislature and the MTA board, both to avoid a fare hike in 2008 and to set a new agenda for our state’s mass transit program – an agenda that breaks with the unsustainable and inexcusable policies of the last 12 years. [What a mess…]
Source: StreetsBlog

Apple, where are the rentals?

Apple, where are the rentals?:

Over the past few weeks, the studio bosses have been reversing course and praising apple again.  Warner Chief, Edgar Bronfman recently got caught praising Apple’s iPhone and iPod lines.  Jon Gruber at Daring Fireball reports on  Doug Morris‘ admission that the Entertainment industry had/has no idea what they are doing technology-wise.  In fact they were so stupid that they couldn’t even know who was smart enough to hire to figure it out.  That is Calculus Integral stupid – and it seems about right. Quote:

"There’s no one in the record industry that’s a technologist," Morris explains. "That’s a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn’t. They just didn’t know what to do. It’s like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"

Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn’t an option. "We didn’t know who to hire," he says, becoming more agitated. "I wouldn’t be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me."

[It’s amazing that these folks can’t even get to let’s try a whole bunch of things and see what works and what doesn’t — including Apple’s solutions. Shameful…]
Source: 9 to 5 Mac – Apple Intelligence