Kombinat!

Cluetrain

For some a Cluetrain adoption may not be so rust proof.

Kombinat moves to kombinat.blogspot.com

We are moving to a new dumpster at blogspot or as we call it 'blogdump'.
It's much nicer there with all those assholes from around the world that do not pay any rent. Here at typepad we pay rent in dollar bill and the place is nice and homy. But at Blogdump we have access to freshly spilled blood. Only the best of the best of dumpster dwellers hang out there where they don't have to pay rent in dollar bils but in Noise production. So we move there, closer to Noise. With us we'll take some of the posts we've constructed over the last year.

This kombinat.blogs.com address will remain operational until April 21, 2005. Then it will be taken off line 'cause we ain't paying next year's rent. Fuck it. We'll buy some cheap wine and drink and be merry instead. Fuck blogging!

So again: The new Cardboard and Piss and Noise shithole is kombinat.blogspot.com
The message for you is this: Stay away, it's our blogdump. If you want to stop by and leave comments you can but don't fucking engage us in any intellectual discussion shit. Yeah, we know the mob rules, the president is a dumbass and people don't read Shakespeare any more. We don't need to hear this shit again.

However, if you want to say something new and passionate and engaging then write it on a piece of paper and tell it to the people you love and people who love you. Do not post it on a blog. No one gives a shit about it here. Your writing will only contribute to Noise Production and we already have that, there is no need for more.

And if you are pregnant and you will deliver a healthy baby then please tell her or him from us: 'Welcome to Planet Earth, the original and the only Kombinat!. You too will one day Vomit Noise just like the rest of us"

Thanks for your patronage.

Head Janitor of Kombinat!

postscriptum: For a definiton of dumpster see TheHappyTutor

Warren Buffet Takes on Wall Street Journal

Click for a new location to this article and ensuing comments

Archived artilce here for now:

Here is Warren Buffett telling Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that an article based on their `interviewing him "was seriously misleading" and Wall Street Journal responds by saying... (hold on, a bit of a background on this, this will be fun)

First of all, why even mention these events? They occurred over a year ago! - Because I was thinking about the conference that occurred at Harvard last week under the title "Blogging, Journalism & Credibility", a.k.a Webcred which I think seriously missed the point that Jeneane so strongly made and I shall paraphrase here "In Blogging the Editing occurs after Publishing" -- It's like in BigJournalism - Reader is Consumer of News but In Blogging - Reader is Editor of News. Something like that, I am just making this up.

So WSJ responds -- that "In the tight confines of a newspaper article we always have to choose which of an interviewee’s many remarks to report". -- Bada Bing. There! The nice meal portion is set aside for you. It has been edited and ready for your consumption. The News has been carefully tailored to your palate. But not so for Mr. Buffett. He writes back but not on a weblog to stir public discourse and push back on WSJ but in a letter to the Editor asking that the article be corrected. What does the editor do? Well, they publish Buffett's rebuttal, but they have the last word. (more on that later)

This is a fun story. Let's explore this a bit. It shows a couple of things. One, let us ponder journalistic credibility. Is it maybe that Journalism decides what Credibility is by choosing "remarks to report" due to "tight confines of a newspaper article"? - Perhaps. - Two, could it also be that Blogging deals with credibility by first blowing up the fucking tight confines and then letting ALL REMARKS be reported? - Perhaps.

The entire exchange between Mr. Buffett and WSJ is documented on Berkshire's website in PDF files. Here is the story as I see it from dieses dokuments:

The Misquote occurred like this:
Joseph T. Hallinan from WSJ goes to interview Señor Buffett. Hallinan says in Buffet's words "that his taping equipment was not working" so he could not record the interview. The interview goes on without recording. Hallinan then writes an article published in WSJ on August 15th 2003 titled "Buffet Suggests Property Taxes Aren't High Enough in California" (This PDF) -- to paraphrase it goes something like this: Buffet says "I got me a Crib in Kalivornia das worth like $4 Million and I pay like a bit over $2 grand a year in popety taxes. Annnnnndddd - I got me a Crib in Nebrazka that's worth like only $500 thousand, which is 8 times less and I done paid like $14 grand in popety taxes for it. Can you believe this shit. I mean I should pay more taxes in Kalivornia for that huge ass Crib bro". So WSJ says Warren says: "state's property taxes need to be higher".

WSJ story travels around the world, everybody reads Buffet's words and reports."Yea, this dude wants to raise taxes. He is kooky!" Bada Bing! The News is consumed as delivered by WSJ. Riding on the story two days later, on August 18th, 2003 WSJ (This PDF) publishes an Editorial titled "Buffetting California" in which it states about Buffett that "he opined that California's problem may be that it's undertaxed". If you read the entire editorial you will see that it does not discuss Buffett's comments, it only uses the premise that Buffett does not like"Proposition 13, which limits property tax increases" and "The Buffett diagnosis misses entirely that California's main problem is high-tax, high-regulation government". OK, just for the record I want to say that I read the first article (which wasn't entirely about interviewing Buffett by the way) and I will say that nowhere in there does he say anything about that. Fuck, can you believe how hard it is to dig through this PDF shit?

Buffett Responds:

On October 7th, 2003 Buffett writes a letter to WSJ Managing Editor Paul E. Steiger (This PDF) in which he says "your article about me, based on an interview (...) was seriously misleading". So basically something like this "Yeah bro, I do have that Crib you said I do in Kalivornia where I pay $2 grand in taxes but I got another Crib right next door which is worth $2 million (so that's like half of my first Crib) and I paid like $12 grand in taxes so that's like 6 times as much as on the property that's half the value, bro" --- WooooHoooo! Holy Jesus, So this is what he was pointing to about Proposition 13. The reason why the taxes are structured this way is because the $4 mil Crib was purchased in the 1970's and the $2 mil Crib in 1990's and because you can't increase taxes by more than 2% you pay less taxes the longer you own your home. Buffett continues - "there was no mention in the story of my second home (...) nor any mention of tax inequities within California. Instead, the headline, the body of the story and quote made it appear as if I was only talking about the difference in taxes between Omaha and California" --- Sweet Jesus! How fucking hard do you have to work on getting the reporter to report what you said and then write letters to editors to straighten the whole fucking mess?.

"When I subsequently explained (...) just how misleading the story had been, our office received an email from Joe Hallinan suggesting that I "might be interested in doing another interview us, expanding on some earlier points." It is ironic that the reporter mentioned "expanding" my views when he - or his editor - were the ones who had truncated my views in such a misleading and unfair manner" ~ Buffett from Oct 7th, 2003 Letter to Managing Editor of WSJ.

This letter was published in full by WSJ on Nov 3rd yet the final word was not to be Buffett's, it was a the Editor of WSJ who said (This PDF): "I respectfully disagree with Mr. Buffett. The article wasn’t misleading. His central point to our reporter was the huge disparity in taxes on his home in Nebraska vs. those on his properties in California" and then added a very famous line of BigJournalism "In the tight confines of a newspaper article we always have to choose which of an interviewee’s many remarks to report". Fuck your tight confines then!

Buffett's final note was never published but it was posted in a PDF format on Berkshire's website simply saying that

"... my initial point was the comparison of taxes on the two California homes (...) It’s not necessary to raise real estate taxes across the board in California. Simply correcting extreme inequities in the imposition of those taxes would provide much additional revenue for the state. This return to fairness could be done in a manner that protects homeowners with limited incomes, living in homes whose values have soared. Several proposals include such protection" ~ Warren Buffett final note responding to Nov 3rd WSJ article that published his Letter from Oct 7th

My final thoughts: None. Just read the PDF files because all articles pertaining to this are behind Moneywall as Tom said. All links are well hidden and you have to pay to play baby!

I wish I could introduce Mr. Buffett to how blogging adds a twist to exchanging notes with Journalists.

Thank you.

Induced Consumption

Hysterical Background on Sandhil

Who is Frank Paynter? Find out.

and Frank ask this question:

How did Hewitt's book happen to be distributed free at the Harvard conference on journalism and credibility?

tag: webcred

remix: beyond rip, mix, burn.

Amazon DevCon - Rael Dornfest speech

Some Quotables:

A hacker is a tinkerer, not a bad guy. An experimenter, take stuff apart and see what happens. Put on a brave front, pop the top, see what happens

the conversation is its own reward

Hacks are a conversation. Hacks are remixing

If your customers are breaking your stuff in a certain way, they are telling you what your product should be


The gospel of openness is spreading

Watch what the customers do, team up with them.

Remix your data. Scraping begat XML which begat APIs. Hacks led to standards which led to business opportunity. Syndicated ecommerce. Google/Amazon/Alexa, Amazon/eBay for buying and selling, etc

Lesson: There are parts of the platform that you don't have to own


Remix your text, T-shirt, "I'm blogging this." Excited some people, unnerved man


Software wants to be social. Rendezvous, let devices find each other. Bluetooth hacks. Conferences have been transformed by the back channel (IRC, blogs, etc.). Presence is being redefined. Must allow people to snipe. Limiting to positive stuff changes dynamic and kills it. Virtual participation.

It is all about people and connections to each other

Rap On

Journalist and Blogger: John Hess (1917-2005) passed peacefully in his sleep

Tom Matrullo points to a long time journalist for the New York Times and a blogger: John L. Hess writing his Dissents Blog who died on Jan 21st. He was 87. I wonder if google is going to retain his blog. It would be a shame if it disappeard.

Tagsonomy Game: boobytag

in the spiriti of self organized web we are proud to present a game of tagging the web on del.icio.us, flickr and technorati.

The tag is boobytag

What is it?
When you read a bunch of bullshit and smell a bit of a rat, hot air and you noice that somebody is promoting the links for this this tag in some way, maybe doing some Tag Bombing (a phrase I overheard from Frank Paynter) then you can Anti Tag it to lodge a protest for that particular link, in a way you are awarding this link a Booby Prize.

Disclaimer: Tag Bombing we stole from Frank Paynter, Tagsonomy we stole from Kevin Marks

Bravo to Paul Graham for his advice to high school students.

Paul Graham: What You'll Wish You'd Known in high school:

"Your teachers are always telling you to behave like adults. I wonder if they'd like it if you did. You may be loud and disorganized, but you're very docile compared to adults. If you actually started acting like adults, it would be just as if a bunch of adults had been transposed into your bodies. Imagine the reaction of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had to ask permission to go the bathroom, and only one person could go at a time. To say nothing of the things you're taught. If a bunch of actual adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school, the first thing they'd do is form a union and renegotiate all the rules with the administration

The entire essay is a pleasure to read, as always from Paul.

This is our first post on category "Future".

Comments Off. Noise On.

In an attempt to drive this blog into oblivion we are turning off comments. So if you would like to comment on something you read here talk to your dog instead. If you don't have a dog talk to yourself. No, we are not turning off comments because of spammers though we get some from time to time. (those spamming bots are so fucking unimaginative, I do wish they used cheap labor force to post here, at least a human being, however unimaginative is better than spam bot).

Something came to mind. I wonder when the SpamHiredCheapLabor decides to have a blog where they can discuss their shitty spamming jobs. Imaging some Imrin Malinik O'Conme from a small remote village in Rwanda writing a blog post about how fucking little he makes working on the web and his post gets spammed by some other asshole; let's call me Chelin Zuvyovzinski from Chechnya. At this point Technorati could use their tag feature to track the conversations spammers are heaving with each other. Then some asshole at Harvard will make a fucking conference about it: Blog Comments Spamming & Credibilty they may call it and provide you a tag :spamcred

So off we go commentless. We are off to make kulture here on this blog from now on. No more conversations. We are redesiging Kombinat! business plan.

Stay Healthy so you can Tune.
We need to harvest your Conversations. You do have something very terribly important to say, right?

Pynchon On The Simpsons

Erik Ketzan on Thomas Pynchon On The Simpsons:

"In contemporary America, where most Americans would sell their souls to star on reality TV, Pynchon stands almost alone, rejecting the attention, fame, and money which he could easily attain, metaphorically pissing on the corporate boardroom table"

Birth of Kombinat!

Via Oblomovka I have found the article from April 15, 2003 written by Robert Fisk about burning of culture in Baghdad.

"For almost a thousand years, Baghdad was the cultural capital of the Arab world, the most literate population in the Middle East. Genghis Khan's grandson burnt the city in the 13th century and, so it was said, the Tigris river ran black with the ink of books. Yesterday, the black ashes of thousands of ancient documents filled the skies of Iraq. Why?"

Listen. When history is suppressed, wiped out, destroyed, burned. When evidence, however slim, that exists to support the conversations that give continuity of culture and heritage gets wiped out then the conversations of that culture, of that heritage disappear and Kombinat! is born and rules ruthlessly. Don't you ever fucking forget about it.

Now back to our regularly scheduled conversations burning and disposal.

Carnival Not Stopping

At the age of 22 Andrew WK records debut album "I Get Wet" and says this about it:

"This record is about 'not stopping' in every sense of the word, and every aspect of life, and it was created with determination that reflected that. Whatever you do in life, if you go full bore you're bound to get wet--with blood, sweat, urine, semen or girls' lubricant. This record is about cutting in to the heart of existence and getting wet... But it's also about having no fear, experiencing intense emotions – from passionate feelings of love and excitement to the most anger filled, hateful rages, and everything in between – embracing life and other people, and coming together as a party in celebration of possibilities, potential and opportunity. It's an explosion of human life."

Carnival Never Stops. It just has new face. What face will it have after Jackass.

Blogging, Journalims & Credibility

A (longish) comment on the upcoming Harvard conference on "Blogging, Journalism & Credibility"

A picture comment on Credibility of Journamlism

Fools of Kamiel Proost

Via Jim Thompson of Sex, Drugs & Unix I discovered this Amsterdam artist Kamiel Proost who uses $ Bills as his canvas.

Visit his Ship of Fools triptych (link from main page. He uses frames. Here are direct links to details: Birth, Life, Death)

As a Bonus Bonus Bonus:

Jim points to Jared Tarbell whose computer generated art is so fucking great. See Galery of Computation. His Guts Series remind me of EGR

Intellectual Property Explained in Short Film Clips

Finalists of Arts Project Moving Image Contest Announced:
The contest asked entrants to create short films demonstrating some of the tensions between art and intellectual property law, and the intellectual property issues artists face, focusing on either music or documentary film.

There are 8 short movies to view. All run about 2 minutes.

Blog Dog: Mercenary Journalism

You know the famous Dire Straits song lyrics:

"I'm a Blogger of Fortune, I'm a Dog of Blog
And we don't give a damn who our blogging is for"

Well, Mercenary Journalism is upon us. We will watch it unfold.

BitTorrent's Architecture and Democracy

Bram Cohen writes:

"What truly separates the great programmers from the journeyman programmers is architecture. What's puzzling is that architecture appears to be one of the simplest parts of the whole process, requiring in most cases little more than some pencil and paper calculations and a willingness to change."

Bram wrote BitTorrent.

I like his quote very much since it is not only about programming. I wonder if there is some Bram-Cohen-like-politician-citizen who will sit down with little more than some pencil and paper and create something that makes Democracy works.
(thanks to Kevin Marks for the link)

And this from monkey methods research group:

For the people that aim to stop P2P, they have turned a centralized system like Napster – easily controlled, easily monitored – into a fully decentralized system in the form of Kazaa, as well as a fragmented ecosystem of thousands of centralized servers through BitTorrent. This was probably a bad decision.

To Film or Not to Film. That is The Question

Wealth Bondage: Bloggers versus Copy Editors:

"The most interesting film you could shoot today about news, would require following the camera crew at it passes the freedom pens around Bush speaking events. Film CBS, ABC, CNN, not filming the suppression of democracy. Then edit in sound bites of the President talking about Freedom to cheering Dupes. The montage would be more truthful and telling than anything we see between dog food commercials on TV news. The casters of news, as of spells, or sand in the eyes, are part of the story, and should be outed"

Let's roll!

Kombinat! to feature self documented misery

Kombinat! is now accepting videos of tsunami victims. Send your horrific videos for the worlds consumption here. Be known. Don't let your 15 minutes pass you by. You too can profit from your misery. We too can use some more noise. Here is how to send your video.