...more recent posts
Sklyarov indicted.
Paul Boutin (senior editor, wired magazine) is blogging from Burning Man. Next year (when it finally absolutely will for sure no longer be cool) we're definitely going.
Here's a summary of the new Jabber-RPC spec.
Pictures from opening day (last Saturday) at 49 Clinton.
As Janet might say: I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed.
Walked back home on Saturday night from the soft opening party at 49 Clinton. Went right into the bathroom. Dropped my trousers in preparation for sitting down and heard a very loud ker-splash (or was it ker-splunk?) Yes, my digital camera had been in my back pocket. And yes, it was now at the bottom of the toilet. Needless to say, alcohol was involved.
This was so embarassing I didn't even tell anyone for a few days. Last night I spilled the beans at dinner. At least everyone had a good laugh.
Went up to B&H today because I really have to replace it. The press kit for the new place has to be done by tomorrow. Alex needs it for more park photos. Hannah needs it for Staten Island Yankee pictures. I took the micro drive removable storage card up with me because I thought there was a tiny chance that it might still work. Not a good chance, but at least a chance. And it's worth as much as the camera itself. I explained the situation to the guy at the counter. Not surprisingly he got a good laugh too.
"No I didn't drop it in a pool...er...I um..."
He popped the drive into a display camera, fired it up, and it works. All the pictures from Saturday are still on it. "You are lucky" he kept saying. I think about 12 times. Finally I had to say, "Can you please stop saying that?"
"O.K., but you are lucky."
The new camera is a little bit bigger and a little bit better than the last one. It's too big to fit in my pocket, but in light of how I ruined the last one that's probably not a bad idea.
Feel free to get a good laugh too.
Long interview with John Smart (of SingularityWatch) on AI, nanotechnology, and the singularity (via missingmatter)
Good starting point for learning about the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA.)
Village Voice article on free wireless broadband community networks in NYC.
Noted Sci-Fi author Bruce Sterling has started a weblog.
Here's a long, wide ranging, literate (literary?) look at software design in general, and open source software design in particular. Non technical. Strange. Interesting. Important? (via HTP)
HTTP viewer. Cool. Possibly useful although I can't think how. Still, I have a feeling I'll need this to debug something one day. (via .tmp)
Blogging keeps creeping into the mainstream press (well, yes, it starts out talking about Code Red, but then it gets into blogs.) Standard explanatory fare. Nicely enthusiastic.
Well it's finally raining and I swear it is getting more humid.
Lately I've been noticing that the features we have built into this weblogging system (private/public pages, subscriptions w/ email notification, auto-archiving) almost make it suitable as a mailing list and mailing list archive system. All I really have to do is connect each page with a specific mail account (maybe this page would be connected to jim.weblog@digitalmediatree.com) and write some scirpts to glue it together. I think that could be cool if done right. Not very hard to write, but pretty hard to think of the best way to do it.
New 49 Clinton photos start here.
Blogger API. This is interesting. If there was any reason to we could now wire this system into blogger so that when you make a post here it could also (or optionally) send the post to a blogger account (and optionally publish it to the blogger page located somewhere else on the web.) I can't think of why we would do this, but it's early and I haven't even had coffee yet, so give me some time.
In any case, it's cool that he is doing this.
49 Clinton is really coming together. What fun to watch. We had to take some pictures of the place to send to the SLA (State Liquor Authority) as a last phase before they issue the liquor license (it's been granted but not issued.) This forced things to come together very fast. I'll try to get some of the pictures up later today. Basically the whole place is done. That's not to say that everyone won't be working 12 hours a day (like they've been doing) from now through the weekend, because I know they will be, and there's always "one more thing" to get done. But people walking by no longer look at you like you are out of your mind when you say you are opening in a week. It seems reasonable now. MB and B have really done a great job.
Now if only the Italians would ship that marble...
Hopefully we can have August 16 YAT at the new place.
Very good, long, thoughtful essay on intellectual property ethics. Highly recommended.
Spent all day yesterday working on music mixes for the new restaurant. This is a lot of fun, but takes quite a bit of time. Spent over 8 hours yesterday to make less then 3 hours of music. I'll be back at it today.
I've been using the new mozilla 0.9.3 for a few hours today. I think it's finally good enough.
Current design mantra: everything happens in the browser, and information flows both ways.
I always cringe when someone uses the "free speach doesn't give you the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre" argument. Someone used this today on Metafilter, and as I clicked through to the comments I was hoping someone would have already set the record straight. Score one for the bloggers:
That quote was from an opinion (Schenck v. U.S.) by Jusice Oliver Wendell Holmes. (Holmes later backpedaled from this idea, creating the "marketplace of ideas" concept in his equally-famous dissent in Abrams v. U.S.)
The "fire in a crowded theater" test, also known as the "clear and present danger" test, was used to justify the conviction, under the Espionage Act, of a socialist protester for distributing leaflets protesting the draft for Americans in the first World War. The leaflet allegedly endangered the war effort.
I think it's pretty clear today that the ideas contained in that leaflet fall squarely within the bounds of First Amendment protection. But even though Holmes later changed his mind, hindsight shows that the government was clearly wrong, the "fire" quote is used to justify all sorts of restrictions on speech today.
posted by mikewas at 8:34 AM PST on August 1
I had an interesting business meeting last night. I don't think I had realized before that I've been waiting to meet a certain kind of person. My skill set is so lopsided. I guess this is true of most people. Still, it's hard to see until you meet someone who seems to be good at what you are not. And when such a meeting produces genuine enthusiasm it's a really great feeling. Go team.
More to hopefully follow.
Blogger now has advertising. If people have to do it I hope they follow Ev's lead. Took me a few seconds to even recognize where it was. Very subtle (but not in a tricky subtle way.)
Scoble: "Starting August 15, 2001, I will be the Director of Marketing for Userland Software."
There's something nice about being able to hold your business meetings in a bar. "Can't talk now, I'm late for a meeting!"
Random bad bar jokes:
A termite walks into a bar and asks "where's the bar tender?"
A horse walks into a bar and the bartender asks "Why the long face?"
A man walks into a bar and says "ouch."