...more recent posts
I love to watch as bloggers go through the required ritual of second guessing and self doubt which seems to crop up every 6 months or so. Why am I doing this? I'm a loser. Stuff like that. Here's an exceptionally good one."<snip>...You're supposed to write about sex and drugs and things. Jenni from Jennicam slept with her best friends' boyfriend ON CAMERA. What have you done lately?...</snip>"
The plot thickens. Looks like Napster won't be shut down. I sense deal making time.
Great article from Joel about Microsoft Passport. This is a really understandable description of how cookies work, why they are usually no threat to privacy, and how Microsoft is routing around this "problem" to build the worlds biggest database about... you. They are trying to sell this "service" as a help to the consumer because using Passport, you only have to remember one password, and it will remember all the rest for you (as it collects info on what you are doing on each of those sites you are accessing by a password stored in Passport.) Why no one listened to my plea for the password watch, which would solve this problem much better, I do not know. I submitted it to shouldexist but nobody seemed to understand the genius of my idea :-)
I had to unsubscribe from that Chi-web mailing list. After a few weeks of skimming the subject fields before throwing everything away unread, I've decided it's not for me. And just in time, Cam has started a new list on Content Management Systems. Already very busy, and its only been up a few days. I think this will be more up my alley.
In all the Napster hysteria the DeCSS trial is getting overlooked. I guess it's a little more technical, so it's harder to report on. I won't even try, but I had to post this little exchange from the trial that was quoted on techdirt.
Q = Mr. Garbus, attorney of 2600.comWhat do you mean "get back to work Jim"? - I'm not surfing; I'm investigating.
A = Ms. Reider, Chief Operations Anti-Piracy, MPAA, witness of plaintiffs
"Q. How did you know to go to the LiViD website, download the material you downloaded in October and November? A. I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q. Tell me what the trail was. A. I read about it on Slashdot."
So, Napster will be down today. In unrelated news, Hack the Planet points out the top two downloads from SourceForge yesterday were The Freenet Project (6521) and Open Source Napster Server (1932). Get busy.
If your reading this from work, don't forget to thank your computer system administrator. What? You didn't know it was sysadmin day? Shame on you. In honor, here's the original usenet post that went on to become the most desired sysadmin t-shirt of all time.
Newsgroups: alt.sysadmin.recovery
Subject: ADMINSPOTTING
Message-ID: <5cl3le$q24@infoserv.aber.ac.uk>
From: gkb@aber.ac.uk (Gary Barnes)
Date: 28 Jan 1997 14:49:18 -0000
Organization: Ripoffs R Us
X-No-Archive: Yes
Choose no life. Choose sysadminning. Choose no career. Choose no family. Choose a fucking big computer, choose hard disks the size of washing machines, old cars, CD ROM writers and electrical coffee makers. Choose no sleep, high caffeine and mental insurance. Choose fixed interest car loans. Choose a rented shoebox. Choose no friends. Choose black jeans and matching combat boots. Choose a swivel chair for your office in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose NNTP and wondering why the fuck you're logged on on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting in that chair looking at mind-numbing, spirit-crushing web sites, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last on some miserable newsgroup, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up lusers Gates spawned to replace the computer-literate. Choose your future. Choose sysadmining[1].
Gaz
[1] It might fuck you up a little less than heroin[2].
[2] ObFootnote.
This prototype Sony camera looks pretty cool. Not very high resolution, but the size is amazing. I have one (canon s10) that I like, but I never seem to have it when I really want it. You could literally always have this one with you. Cool. But then I found a link to this digital film company. If you are at all interested in photography go check that site, and prepare to be very excited about the possibilities. Unfortunately the guy who posted the link said it had been vaporware for a long time. Still we can hope.
The RIAA wins the first battle (too bad for them they've already lost the war.) A San Francisco judge has ordered Napster be shut down (at least) until the outcome of the trial is known. The RIAA has to put up a $5 million dollar bond which will be awarded to Napster to compensate for loss of business if they end up winning the trial. Here's the slashdot thread. Here's the Washington Post blurb. Here's the wired story. Here's one of the many boycott the RIAA sites already in action.
The irony here is that one profit monger, the RIAA, is trying to kill another profit monger (Napster) and the result is going to be the rise of a radically distributed NONPROFIT ORIENTED file sharing network that literally cannot be stopped. Funny where greed will get you as move toward the frictionless marketplace.
Things are moving forward on many fronts as we speak. Over at Hack the Planet the discussion is really heating up about Jeff Kandt's plan for enabling the direct, voluntary payment of musicians (tipping.) Check out the action in the ensuing discussion. Jeff has changed the internet rallying cry from "the internet treats censorship like damage and routes around it" to "The internet treats greed like damage and routes around it." Cut out the middleman, as Dave Winer keeps exhorting us. Anyway, he's about to take his plan to a wider audience for another round of crypto vetting. Combined with a Gnutella or Freenet distributed file sharing network, I think this could really happen. I truely believe that musical artists can make money from voluntary payments. The RIAA, on the other hand, cannot. I hope that Dave Winer picks up on Jeff's ideas, and either promotes them, or something similar, in conjunction with his new Userland Radio. This is really the start of the big change. Wes Felter's headline today reads: "the singularity is coming" and I think I know what he's talking about. Hold on tight, things might get a little stranger from here on in.
I keep wanting to link to this new (to me) site that I have really been enjoying, except that it's really not about anything, and no post in particular ever seems to call for a link (sound familiar?) Still, it's a great site, and often very funny (much like another fav rasterweb.) Anyway, here's one about banannas.
Brilliant dinner last night at chez Wheel. He keeps turnin' and he can't slow down... Making me feel good today even with the grey skies and rain. Anyway, lots happening, so let's get to those links.
Zvezda docking complete. The Russian "brain" module of the space station (see picture below) was successfully docked with the rest of the station (see picture to left.) Good work. <robotvoice>must get off planet</robotvoice>
Salon has an article on Eazel a new GUI being developed for linux by some incredibly heavyweight (ex-Apple) interface people. Set for release this Fall, I guarantee you'll be hearing a lot about this one. Could make linux possible for mere mortals (like me.) It is going to be really fun watching this race: linux morphs toward the Mac as the Mac morphs toward unix (OS X.) Sounds like they are zeroing in on the promised land, but who's going to win? Anyway, read the article, or just enjoy this little pull quote
Last week, I met with Mike Boich, CEO of Eazel, who gave me a look at Nautilus, Eazel's souped-up file manager for Linux-based systems. And unlike most software product demos, which usually consist of equal parts stupefaction and irrelevance, the Nautilus run-through actually delivered. Nautilus looks like a lot of fun. More to the point, it looks like it will work.
Apparently, the MPAA v. 2600 trial has ended although no ruling has been issued yet. This is the case about that pesky piece of software called DeCSS which allowed people with linux machines to actually play the DVD's the have bought (or not bought, as the MPAA likes to point out.) Anyway, this is a really big one in terms of setting precedent for whether you actually own the entertainment content you buy, or whether you are just sort of leasing it, under incredibly tight controls. And it sounds like the judge is impressed by the good side. Still, this will almost definitely go to the supreme court, so lots more fun to come.
And in the techno-lust department, SGI has seriously cut the price on its seriously beautiful, almost-as-good-as-the-Cinema-Display, 18 inch flat panel display (bundled with Formacs ProFormance 3 PCI video card) down to $1795! Still too much of course, but this is a $1000 reduction, and with the video card, really a pretty good deal. I'm saving all pennies for next years Powerbook g4, which I'm still boldly stating has the chance to be the best selling computer of all time. This thing is going to smoke. Now get back to work, or none of us will be buying anything.
From a request on another page, I've put up some rather boring pictures I took Monday at the Union Square Green Market. If you're not familiar, this is what makes it possible to live in NYC (assuming you can't afford to eat out for every possible meal :-)
According to the latest Nielsen/NetRatings, more women than men now use the internet in the USA. That must be good somehow.
Somebody I haven't seen before in the small group over at HackthePlanet has posted a very reasonable sounding way to set up MP3's to allow people to easily send money (voluntarily) to the tracks artist. Very convining scenario. I doubt we'll see this adopted any time soon, but I do think it would work. (Slightly technical, as usual for HTP, assumes you know what public key encryption is, ect...)
This is the living and working module for the International Space Station. It's going up on Wednesday to dock with the the other two pieces (the other picture over there on the left.) We are leaving the planet, however tenuously. The BBC has the story.
I think this might work. Pre-paid debit cards for on-line shopping. Sold at 7-11's and backed by Amex, they are good anywhere on the web that a regular American Express card would be. I wonder which on line segment of the market this is going to help out most? (Hint: the only one that makes any money to begin with.) Iis it an irony that 7-11 made a lot of fuss about getting out of that business a few years ago?
Big week for Napster. Probably it will be shut down on Wednesday (although nothing is final at this point.) Dave Winer waxes nostalgic about the little program that changed everything. Sure, he's a little over the top, and a bit of an aging hippy, but is that so bad?
Not sure how I missed the rise of BBSpot, the site some have called, the techie Onion. Anyway, I did, because it's been around for a while, and I've never seen it. Microsoft Alleges US Government is a Monopoly, FTC Approves Crips-Bloods Merger, and Office Jesus Turns Water Into Coffee, plus much much more...
...and if you thought that was at all funny, you probably have low enough standards for The Adventures of Tom Cruise & Spork. (From the always quixotic riothero.)
O.K., I'll stop now.
Here's an article about supersonic submarines. Not too technical. Very interesting. Supercavitation. Mmmm.
I was telling some people about the genetically engineered glow in the dark mice and I don't think they believed me. Here's a story about them (the mice, not the people.) (TBTF has some more links on this, but the URL won't last for long and I can't figure how to link to the archives.) Anyway, not only does this appear to be true, but it's even sort of old news.
Bunch of links for your weekend viewing pleasure. Here is a story about the great Sage synthesizer fraud which might appeal to any budding multi-media product forgers. Here is the scoop on why some numbers are less random than others which is some mind blowing math, although someone else had a good explanation about why it can't be applied to horseracing as is jokingly mentioned. And here is some far out stuff on the biological wireless internet. That reminds me of the amazing sci-fi book I am in the middle of right now, Greg Egan's diaspora. It takes place in a distant future and some of the intelligent life lives inside computers, having put themselves in there centuries before. (Sort of, it's much more complex than that of course.) Others have taken on cyborg bodies, but still inhabit the physical world as we know it. Others have stayed in the flesh. Really interesting so far. If you like that kind of book, then you'll like this book. Sez me.
Here is a brutal appraisal of Microsoft's .NET strategy. "...This stuff is so abstract it's impossible to criticize. Who doesn't want an operating system that supports productivity? Great feature! Get me one of those spiffy new operating systems with the productivity feature!" (via scripting news)
I've been doing so well on my new plan to not get overly agitated by political stories that I clearly am not going to mention that the U.S. government has found that the U.S. government did nothing wrong in Waco. And, according to todays New York Times, they are "100% certain" of their innocence. Oh, you're 100% sure? Why didn't you say so? Good enough for me. I mean, if I was going to comment on the story at all which of course I'm not...
Move along, nothing to see here.
Stephen King has already released one book (albeit quite a short one) over the web. Apparently he was dismayed to find that he could not read it on his own computer. He uses a Mac, and of course the encryption software his publishers used to encode his book only works on Windows machines. So this time around he is releasing his new work on his own site without any of the encryption (or any of the publishers.) He is going to use the honor system, hoping enough people will cough up the $1 per section (released sequentially.) Oh my god. Somebody rich and powerful is doing something reasonable. Has he been talking to that troublemaker Courtney Love or something? The publishing industry must be extruding red rock based rectangular building blocks about now, if they even know what is happening. "This is the end... beautiful friend."
Made it safely back to workstation 1 (NYC.) Had a great time on Long Island last week. We treated it as a first test of the idea that with computer based free-lance jobs, we should be able to work anywhere. Well, yes and no. It's definitely not as productive to be at your computer staring out the window across a sun filled deck into a beautiful garden. Not to mention the pool. I get more done here with my shades drawn. Still, it's pretty nice on the head to get away. My croquette (sp?) game sure improved. Thanks to V & S for taking a vacation of their own, and leaving us their beautiful house. Just let us know when you are going away again... :-)
Do you really get live spam (telemarketing?) on ICQ? This transcript is just too bizarre to not be true. Maybe it's my blood sugar level or something, but I couldn't stop laughing.
Please use my inch address to email me today and tomorrow. Thanks.
Looks like Apple (yes, today is Macworld NYC) has released the machine I've been waiting for (or, actually, the machine I've been making MB wait for) the dual processor Powermac. I guess they had no choice but to release this machine with the intel/amd crowd pushing well past 1 GHZ. The 500 MHZ G4 wasn't seeming so strong any longer. They've had these MP (multiple processor) machines ready for awhile, but OS 9 doesn't really support MP. I thought they might wait for OS X release (which should blaze on multiple chips) but I guess they decided to jump a little early. That's fine by me. And did someone say standard gigabit ethernet? Holy cow. But the best part, and frankly, the part I don't really believe yet, is that Jobs said these machines are available today, at the same price points as current (now old) G4 powermacs. Could this be true? We've come to expect a little gouging from Apple, is this a change of heart? Giving the faithful an insanely great deal? More as news develops...
Maybe because I am not such a hard core coder, I like to follow the personality conflic... err, synergies between the various "leaders" of the free/open software movements. Here's a good article/discussion about the big three: RMS, ESR, and Linus. (I think it's 'good' because it supports RMS. I like the comment that he should/might get a Nobel prize someday. He's definitely in that sort of class I think.)
Here's a great faq about landing discount airfares. Seems very informative. I will never use Priceline.com if this info is correct. What a rip-off.
Beautiful day, beautiful scene. Here I am sitting in this sun filled room typing away on a Gateway 2000. MB is behind me with the G3 perched on the table drawing furiously on her Wacom tablet. Mr. Wilson is on the couch typing some words of wisdom (I'm sure) into his powerbook. Just another Long Island vacation digital media tree style. What? It's 2:00? Almost time for the vino. Hope you are all working or relaxing in such a nice state. Going to do some birding with the master in a bit. Maybe I'll put up a picture or two later.
I hope Mike gets back soon. My mailbox used to feel so loved.
From the lunch files. If you are a gazpacho fan (and who's not?) you better get over to Sacred Chow (Hudson around Christopher) before their heavenly fruit version is all gone. Incredible summer fare. Trust me on this. Best thing I've had in weeks.
Better keep up on your security alerts if you shelled out the cash for one of those Sony robot dogs. Apparently there are some problems. Woof.
Ground has been broken on the new world headquarters (in other words: we hauled a lot of crap out of the basement, and tore down a sheet rock wall.) Demand for inside information on the plush new office suite is so high that I'm going to keep you regularly updated right here on this page! Hold on for some edge of your seat excitment! Next milestone is Friday, when our crack team of engineers tries to ascertain why the supporting columns inside that wall we tore down don't seem to be touching the ceiling at all. Stay tuned.
I'm always waiting for the next enhancement before buying, but I think the time is right for this portable CD/MP3 player. If you've got CDR, this is a no brainer. I'll let you know when I get mine.
I live with a bird named Tarzan. He is a very noisey grey-cheeked parakeet. About six inches long. He has free run of the house, although acutally it's more like free waddle because he doesn't fly very well. Anyway, lately he's learned a new trick which is to climb up the mass of cables under my desk until his little green head pokes up right under my monitor. He likes to perch at the top of the phone line going into the modem. He'll sit there for hours watching me stare at the screen. Occasionally he'll say something. If I had a web cam I'd put him on. Since I don't you'll just have to use your imagination. I wonder if he can feel all the information flowing through his little feet?
Here we go again. Rumors are flying (thanks to Drudge this time) of an Apple, Pixar, Disney merger. Variations of this story have been floating for a year and a half, so a few grains of NaCl may be necessary. In fact, I'd dismiss this outright if it wasn't for the nagging fact that it makes so much sense. Disney is looking for a clue, and Jobs is really good at convincing people he has one. That would really shake things up.
A trip down RAM lane Camworld has a great link to a sequence of early GUI concept drawings for the Apple Lisa. This was the first computer to blow my mind. It was 1982 (or was that '83?) and I had just received my first computer, the loveably pathetic ibm pcjr. I thought that thing was slick, and with Borland's Turbo Pascal, my internal 300 baud modem, and the intel 8088 processor cranked up to 4.77 mhz., I was sitting pretty. Then one day my sister's friends older brother came home from Harvard and he had an Apple Lisa with him. I hadn't ever heard of this machine before (and I don't think many people had at that point.) The Lisa was an incredibly large "luggable" all in one computer. Much bigger than the eventual first Macs. The built in black and white screen was tiny. But like I said, this machine blew my mind. Graphic interface? MacPaint? Point and click? What new brand of sorcery was this? Anyone using DOS (3.1 at that time) could see right away that this was the future. The funny thing is, when you look at the old screen shots, we're basically in the same place right now. (Well O.K., network services are a little improved :-)
If anyone sent me mail to my inch account this past week I probably didn't get it. Sorry about that. Everything is now working again.
Went to Chelsea Piers last night after dinner and hit some golf balls. The driving range is on a pier, and you hit out toward the Hudson river. Nice set up. Now I'm totally stiff today because I haven't swung a club in a few years (and I haven't actually played in probably 10+ years) but it was fun to take a few swings at it. Still got that slice.
I though this article was pretty good. I hadn't heard anything from or about Jaron Lanier in a long time. I see he's still thinking about the future. In this article he explains why Bill Joy's worst fears probably won't materialize - due to the lack of improvement in software. But then he's got some other fears of his own. Almost sounds like he's not quite serious, but his ideas might well be closer to the mark then B.J.'s. Who knows?
I just got a copy of the email that promises you a cash payoff through some sort of Microsoft marketing program if you forward the message to enough people. I get this email periodically. Always very similar. Still, it's not true. Probably it will go around forever.
I'm always trying to clarify just what it is I'm thinking about with these posts. So here goes another try. The problem is about building smarter information storage and retrieval systems. This calls for automated agents (software programs) that can do, at least, preliminary sorting of data for us. Search engines are examples of what we have built so far. Not very sophisticated. The main problem with search engines is that they have to rely on some variation of matching words (or strings of words, or letter patterns within words.) Not meanings, but words. 'Cat' and 'Kitten' are only the same to a search engine if it contains a dictionary that explicitly links 'cat' and 'kitten' as synonyms. Humans don't think in such a literal manner (I think.) We can infer meaning beyond mere identity. Software programs are not so good at metaphore, or god help us, poetry. With so much information available, we need our software filters (whether they be search engines or something else) to do more than find matching occurances of words. For them to be really helpful, we need software to understand meaning. That's the problem. There are two directions towards progress, and both, I think, are being pursued. I guess we'll meet somewhere in the middle. The first direction involves including some machine readable codes inside information documents that explain the meaning of the document. This is called metadata, and XML is the format being pushed to encode this metadata into documents. (Although how you form the syntax of the metadata is not dictated by XML, so it doesn't address the hard problem, it just provides a non-proprietary form to encode that solution into. We still must all agree to use the same metadata syntax, or we'll be back where we started.) The other direction to take involves changes to our languages themselves. These changes revolve around making less ambiguous symbol systems. Or, in other words, making human languages more machine like. (It's not that machines are becoming smarter and will eventually be intelligent in a human way; it's that we are becoming more like machines as they become more like us, and we will meet somewhere in the middle.) One example of this sort of language shift is how technical people tend to talk in strings of initials. HTML, XML, PPP, POP3, IMAP, NMAP, RAM, GPL, SQL, ect... This isn't just a time saving device. It is more machine readable. Searching for 'toast' may not turn up that great reference to 'lightly browned bread', but searching for 'XML' will always turn up articles on 'XML' because that is what we call it. Always. From the start. Probably this sort of shift in the language is troublesome to some people. Perhaps our humanity (or at least our culture) is located exactly in that ambiguous space between symbol and meaning. This gap allows us to be flexible, and maybe even beautiful. But it makes it really hard to communicate well with our machines.
Another example of this change in language, and what got me started on this today, is the idea of constructed languages. Everybody has heard of esperanto, the most popular constructed language. But how many know about lojban? It bills itself as "the logical language." Personally, I feel my time is better spent learning Java if I'm going to pick up a new language, but the description of lojban is really interesting. It's a sort of extreme case that highlights some of the more subtle shifts in language that are definitely happening alread. And man, would it be easier to write smart information systems if we all spoke more logically. Of course, we might not like that world very much. I guess we'll see. AFAIK; FWIW.
Here's a really good article by Mark Pesce (Mr. VRML, and maybe he was with Survival Research Labs?) A history of hacker culture organized around the major works of "hard" science fiction. I'm not familiar with the most recent book he ends with (Greg Egan's Diaspora (1998)) but everything else seems right on. Great paper. I'll have to take a look at Diaspora.
Independence day quote, internet style:
"We reject kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." (Dave Clark, IETF 1992)
Good discussion at advogato about online communities and the various ways they interact (usenet, web bulletin boards, mailing lists.) Lots of "I remember back in the good old days..." but that can be instructive if coming from the people who really were around "back in the day." The much ridiculued Jon Katz has a 4th of July type article about Jose Bove, the man on trial for trashing the McDonalds in France. And slashdot also recommends space.com for some streaming rocket fireworks action, featuring clips from both categories ("when rockets go right" and the ever popular "when rockets go wrong".) But really, you should probably get out of the house. Turn that computer off. Happy 4th.
HavenCo is the company doing that "secure" co-location facility on the abondon military sea platform turned wacky independent nation off the coast of England. (The one on the last cover of Wired.) Slashdot did the first half of their HavenCo interview a few weeks ago (in the first half they solicit the questions that will be asked from the readers.) The long awaited article has been posted. Pretty interesting. The questioners don't pull any punches, basically suggesting that this is just a P.R. stunt. They do better with their responses then I would have thought.
Here's more about the next generation "two-way" web. Sick of these stories yet? This one's a good intro to all the various players (not just Mozilla) who hope to enable the client side.
On line privacy: the good and the bad.
And oh yeah, just in case you thought that Clinton "signing" the new e-signature bill was a good thing: it wasn't. The bill has nothing to do with the very feasible technology of digital signatures (using public key encryption) which could be used to verify the author or signer of various electronic documents (the Clinton admin. is still very against public key encryption.) All this bill does is increase the power of those "click here to agree to this license" licenses. This is purely for the benefit of big business, and definitely not in any way for your benefit (unless you are a big business of course.) Thanks again Bill.
This is one of the things I'm waiting for: the Mozilla editor. This will be a key piece in building the two-way web (start reading at The Web as groupware section for the shorter version.) In other words, Mozilla, and the Mozilla editor specifically, could be the thing that takes web authors (those writing directly to the web, like we do on this site, through little textarea input boxes) to the next step. Imagine that our little posting page was actually a full text/html/image editor. Nice. I've been playing around with M16 (latest milestone release in the Mozilla march to commercial release) and I can safely say that the editor is not ready. But it is really cool. And it's gotten a lot of people thinking. Enabling collaboration (reading and writing; consuming and authoring; the two-way web) is the mantra of web developers. And I would think everyone has their fingers crossed for Mozilla.
Today is the first day I feel sort of normal since I drank way too much with S. on her last night in town. Still haven't really gotten anything done since then, but it's been a good week in other ways. Lots of interior changes. Sort of like I redecorated my mind. Not exactly sure how that night ended. Hope S. is still talking to me when she gets back.
(My dillema of late: If you know what this means, then you probably heard the news already; if you don't know what I'm talking about then you definitely wouldn't care. Oh well. I'm so pleased about this I'm going to blog it anyway.) MySQL has been GPL'd
Sounds good Alex. 5:30. (I'll get our private page up again soon. Promise:)