I always feel kind of naked when I show up at the airport without a paper ticket. I’m grateful that I have one less thing to lose, but I worry that when I walk up to the counter, it’ll be like making the maitre d’ “find” the “missing” reservation, or persuading the auto rental clerk that a confirmed reservation means she actually has to give me a car. More seriously, there are still significant problems in getting one airline’s e-ticket honored by another, if you need to change your flight.

American Airlines said today that they plan to move to all-electronic ticketing by the end of next year, and that starting next week, a paper ticket will cost you $20. The kicker, though, is in the last graf:

As part of this initiative, American will implement 100 percent interline e-ticketing with those carriers that can meet the technical standards and will eliminate such agreements with carriers that cannot. Interline agreements among carriers allow baggage interchanges, passenger transfers and other transactions.

I read that to mean that if an airline doesn’t honor American’s e-tickets by the end of 2003, don’t count on being able to do an interline ticket or baggage transfer. It’ll be interesting to see how American’s competitors respond.

The astronomers who discovered the color of the universe (and then changed their mind, like any good homeowner) have given the color a name: Cosmic Latte. Their colleagues helped pick. Here are their Top 10 choices.

I kind of liked “Big Bang Buff” myself. Sounds maybe a bit too much like a porn star, though.

Sudden thought: has anyone filed a trademark yet on Cosmic Latte?

 

Check out John Stanley and Ernie the Attorney via The Shifted Librarian for some thoughts about the legal system and the Internet. As Mr. Stanley writes:

A cyber Code of Hammurabi will not suffice. There was no artificial intelligence in Babylon. Another Magna Carta will be required, another Grotius, another Blackstone. Within the body of law that does not yet exist Dred Scott and Marbury v. Madison may seem trivial or quaint.

To interpret the music of the spheres where computers and the law intersect requires an ability to read the score and hit a moving target. It is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff when the wind is blowing at the speed of light.”

Pardon me, but this is ridiculously overblown, and really kind of a surprisingly juvenile approach to the law to be coming from a bunch of lawyers. Law exists to resolve disputes, rarely to anticipate them. In most cases, first law that resolves a dispute doesn’t come from a legislature, it comes from a court; that’s why/how the law is a living thing.

Furthermore, law that comes from a court, in the vast majority of cases, is based on precedent, which is little more than a fancy word for prior experience. To suggest that we need “another Magna Carta” is to suggest that the Internet is beyond the experience of those who are creating it. This, of course, is nonsense.

To quote myself from the July 1995 NetGuide, “Nothing happens online that doesn’t happen in the real world.” Though the Net adds some fascinating questions to a ton of areas — particularly the notions of “ownership” and “location” — The Net is nothing like uncharted territory. To suggest that it is somehow otherwise is to invite all sorts of unpleasant mischief.

The Net changes everything. The Net changes nothing.

“Ninety percent of everything is crap.”

—Theodore Sturgeon.

My mom brought this interesting NYTimes article to my attention. My wife, the Lovely and Curious Olivia, came up with the headline. (For the geeks among you, I’m typing this at the dining table over my Wi-Fi network.)

One day, though, a computer chip may do some of the work of a damaged hippocampus, replacing living neurons with silicon ones… The shrinking of the hippocampus is thought to indicate early cognitive impairment that is a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease. A chip such as the one envisioned by Dr. Berger might one day help combat not only the ravages associated with Alzheimer’s, but also language deficits that result from stroke and memory problems associated with epilepsy as well.

As usual, The Shifted Librarian just Gets It. Here’s part of her expansion on my idea:

Or what about the library paying for a subscription to an online serial that makes it available to residents. Theoretically, a user with a valid library barcode would go to the library’s web site, enter the barcode, and be authenticated through to the full version. But what if that journal provided an RSS feed? Abstracts are available to everyone, but if your barcode number is entered in your aggregator, when you click through on a link, you see the full story. Think about what a great service this would be for medical libraries to provide to their physicians!

Or here’s another idea – what about an AP or Reuters made up of bloggers. Newspapers could subscribe to the service and pick up stories, and so could libraries. In a way, the concept isn’t that far removed from NewsIsFree, to which the library would then subscribe.

This last, of course, is why I’m so interested in authenticating aggregators (though I’m pained that Peggy didn’t mention my own Alma Mater, UPI). Where my thoughts differ from NewsIsFree is that I’m talking about actually generating new content — maybe targeted to a narrow audience, but maybe not — instead of repackaging what others have created.

Much as I enjoy writing this weblog, the question keeps coming up: “So, you making any money at this?” Well, no, and that’s not the point. But even if I wanted to, I don’t think the plumbing of the weblog universe would let me.

So, why not?

Many of you know that there is a growing class of weblogs that speak to each other through “news aggregators;” the one you’re reading right now is one of them. When I post an item here, some unknown number of other weblog authors read that item on a customized web page, from which they can post the item on their own weblog. It makes for a very fast and efficient way of disseminating news and opinion.

This strikes me — in theory, at least — as an excellent way for professional news gatherers to distribute information to paying clients. I know a ton of un- and semi-employed journos all over the world, and it would be an interesting exercise to get them filing real news for pay.

Here’s what would be required to make that work:

• a multiuser weblog that


• allows for content categorization and


• which generates material for a news aggregator that


• can be kept out of the public eye.

An electronic commerce addition might be interesting too, so that sites could subscribe on a monthly or annual basis, or that casual readers could see an abstract and pay on a per-story basis. Given the prior lack of success for micropayments, I wouldn’t expect anyone to rush to develop that last one. There are other ways outside the weblog mechanism to handle subscriptions, so this might be a blind alley.

But those first four points are a must. And while the most advanced weblog plumbing that I know of — Radio Userland, which I use for this weblog — can handle the first three, I know of no way to keep an aggregator restricted to only people who are authorized to see it.

(Tracking infringers down, of course, is a simple matter of using Google or Daypop. Can’t run, can’t hide in a digital world.)

So all you wizards: can this be done? Is next week too soon?

 

Story in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week about plans to build a bridge between the Italian mainland and the island of Sicily. It’s been talked about since roughly the third century (A.D.), but Italian officials say now that this is the time.

The suspension bridge will be two miles long — three times longer than the Golden Gate. It’ll cross one of the most active seismic faults in the world and will no doubt be worked on by contractors with ties to the Sicilian Mafia. Sounds like something you’ll want to be the first one to drive over, doesn’t it?

The cornerstone is to laid in 2004, with completion set for 2010 at a cost of 4.6 billion euros. You’ll pardon me if I don’t leave my car idling while I wait.

 

Astronomers say an asteroid moving at 10 kps came within 75,000 miles of the Earth last week. They didn’t see it until three days after it would have hit.

From CNN:

The destructive force might have been comparable to an asteroid or comet that exploded over Siberia in 1908, which flattened 77 square miles (200 square km) of trees, according to the NEO.

Wouldn’t that have ruined your day…

Tried Vanilla Coke tonight. Not bad, actually, but don’t be expecting Coca-Cola. It looks like Coke, and even has Coke’s slightly citrus smell. But it tastes like a pretty good cream soda. Which is good, since that’s what a vanilla soda is supposed to taste like.