Yep, Today The Matrix Reloads.  I can't wait!  { Here's the Salon review... no spoilers. } Somehow it seems fitting that the Matrix Reloaded general release coincides with a major lunar eclipse.  There's a lot to see tonight... Mark Kottke asks an interesting question:Is Apple stupid or courageous?  He suspects Apple will get into trouble with big music because the iTunes Music Store's sharing facilities can be subverted for a form of online file sharing (see ShareiTunes).  I don't know if they're stupid - seems like this possibility would have been discussed when Apple did their deals - so that makes them courageous.  I've got to believe big music is encouraged by the early success of the Apple service. SARSwatch dept: China Threatens to Execute SARS Spreaders.  Yeah, that will help.  These guys are desperate - there is no way this thing is under control yet. Doc Searles and Dave Winer consider whether Google will be crushed by Microsoft, a la Netscape (following a Forbes cover: All Eyes on Google).  I don't think so.  Google has a network effect which will be hard to break, much more so than Netscape.  Also, a fact people often overlook, Netscape's demise was hastened by their own incompetence, they never did have a business model which worked.  But Google does... An interesting note in Doc's post: "Gary Flake, the chief scientist at Overture, is highly dismissive of Google".  Seems weird to me.  Flake should be highly impressed by Google even as he works hard to leapfrog what they've done.  Respect your competition, especially when they're way ahead of you! Fox-trot: Google is not only cool, it defines cool :) The 34th Carnival of the Vanities is up, complete with animated images - check it out!  My favorite is D.C.Thornton's "Flunking Victimology 101" - recommended reading! Dave Winer makes a great point: "Trackback isn't what I want. I want it in the other direction".  He's exactly right.  But he's wrong about the solution - we don't need new facilities to explicitly create this metadata.  It should be an emergent property created from analysis of server logs. Tobacco Road Fogey lists The Ten Commandments of Blogging.  "And, as is usually the case with Ten Commandment lists, there is an Eleventh Commandment". Po Bronson in Wired: Life in the Bust Belt.  Essentially this Silicon Valley pundit is pondering SV 3.0 (1.0 was the PC boom, 2.0 was the Internet).  He says 3.0 will bring things back to normal, but not back to 1999.  I don't know about that - you've got biotech, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and who knows what else beyond the visible horizon ...  Not a bad article, but it misses badly on this one "The economic growth of the next decade won't come disproportionately from those who are motivated by equity".  You just know that is dead wrong.  Personal self-interest underlies all economic growth, and Silicon Valley is exhibit A. Cory Doctorow posted this wonderful chart on media concentration.  Edward Tufte would love it.  Fortunately we have blogs to resist the trend - they aren't included in the "indie" numbers, but what do you think the chart would look like if they were?  Maybe the pac-man would be pointing the other way :)