...more recent posts
Short interview with the wife and two children of Philip K. Dick.
(OK, yeah, it's not that interesting, but c'mon, we're talking PKD. Any explanations are helpful.)
Outside of my coerced adventure into the land of javascript drop down menus, most of what I've been doing lately involves stripping unnecessary features out of my CMS (I never know what to call it, but it's vaguely a Content Management System.) This is for a specific implementation (the basic business site implementation) where a lot of the built in features aren't needed. And even though I was aware of this general idea, I'm still shocked to find the whole package improving the more I trim it down.
Maybe someday I'll get all the way back to zero. The most elegant solution: look for yourself and remember.
I couldn't bring myself to watch. If someone could provide very brief scoring of the speach I'd be grateful. (I mean, you watched it, right?)
Wow that's cool (requires Flash - give it a second to load.)
I've been really enjoying listening to Lemon Jelly. The first two tracks off of Lost Horizons are especially cool (Elements and Space Walk.)
I wonder if people who are really into electronic music think of this as the bubble gum pop of their world.
Tough night for the internet. A massive worm exploiting a known (and patched) hole in Microsoft SQL Server (that's a database) is doing a pretty good job of grinding the net to a halt. Here's a disassembly of the 400 or so bytes being sent by infected systems. (No, I can't make anything out of that either, but it's kind of cool to look at.)
The worm isn't doing anything (it's not trying to destroy the infected databases,) it's just broadcasting information as it spreads creating a massive denial of service type situation. Basically a giant traffic jam. Theoretically this should be pretty easy to get under control, because all outbound traffic from infected machines is directed at the same port which can just be closed.
But I still can't get to my colo'd mail server with any regularity.
I've been hiding out. Making good progress on my project, but I haven't been able to deal with anything else. Sorry if I've been ignoring you.
I'm wrestling with something. I'd say more, but that's about all I know.
The next couple posts are some of the stuff I would have been blogging if I'd been writing more recently.
Wes Felter said this a few days ago:
I have to admit that I'm skeptical of the whole Open Spectrum thing. Is there no limit to wireless capacity or is there a really large limit? If I pile up a thousand radio-of-the-future gizmos all trying to talk to each other, what actually happens? And how much do these whiz-bang smart radios of the future cost, anyway?Damn these sensible questions. I wish someone would answer him in a way that would reassure me. Is this going to turn out to be just the latest in a series of utopian visions that always seem "right around the corner" but never quite get here? Maybe there's some purpose in that.
Still, I believe this story for the minute. Once we start building radios out of software, our radio devices (cellphones, wireless computers...) will be able to reconfigure themselves on the fly, not just maximizing potential network capacity over a given area, but actually increasing it as the number of devices on the network increases. How does it do this? Unlike now, where your radio is sending and receiving signals with special devices that form the network (cellphone towers, wireless base stations...,) the new whiz-bang network will be made up of the devices themselves, which are now so smart that nearby devices can automatically configure themselves into networks without the help of centralized infrastructure (cell phone towers and telco computers,) and then route traffic for the network in the background, while still serving their original function as clients on the network.
But yeah, you have to wonder, will that really work? I just mean technically, to start. After that there's the little issue about nobody making any money from such a network. And don't forget the billions of dollars invested in present day non whiz-bang networks.
Cory Doctorow's book Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom was released. You can download a free digital version here. He's utopian like that. Salon also published a shorter story Liberation Specturm. He also is the man behind boing boing which might be the best site on the internet. And he's also the outreach coordinator for the Electronic Freedom Foundation. You should give them some money.
Bruce Sterling had a really interesting quote about Sci-Fi being in a strong position right now to influence policy because of it's power to flesh out the complex technical questions we face today. Except his words were to the point and made you think "wow, that's a good point" whereas mine were probably a little more on the "huh?" side. But because I haven't been keeping up I don't have the link.
This is what you get.
So I have been thinking more in terms of science fiction. Not that I could write a book, but it's fun to think about. My story would have these whiz-bang wireless communicators. They're cigarette pack size, except all the corners are rounded. Like a bar of soap at perfect mid life. Fits right in your hand.
It uses a software defined radio. Speaks any flavor of wireless you download into it. It's all screen on the outside. High resolution. Touch sensitive.
It's our latest techo approximation of the philosopher's stone. Or at least the pocket Palantiri. Now what will the user interface look like?
Dear Operating System Vendor, I no longer want to know where my files are stored....
I've been laughing to defectiveyeti, maccers, and mimi smartypants which is sure better than a poke in the eye.
I still take my guilty pleasure in debka, and now thanks to dave I have added defensetech to the list of politico/military sites I don't know why I read.
Kevin Werbach's blog is a must for telecommunication industry watchers. Reiter's Wireless Data Web Log is just that. And you already knew about Glenn Fleishman's 802.11b News, even if you didn't know that it's been renamed Wi-Fi News.
I mentioned this before, but don't forget William Gibson's new blog. If you miss a day make sure you hit the archive, because he only shows the most recent day on the first page.
And if you really can't get enough Apple in your life Dave Hyatt (formerly of mozilla followed by Chimera fame, and now one of the men behind Apple's new Safari browser) has a (new) weblog Surfin' Safari. OSXAudio keeps up with - yes it's true - the world of OS X Audio. And speaking of which, here are a bunch of applescripts for iTunes. And also, OS X now has it's own category at freshmeat so you can find cool free software that you may or may not be able to figure out how to get running.
Don't say I never did anything for you. Updated sidebar links for this page coming real soon now.
Well, I'm finally getting something done. Unfortunately it involves building DHTML pop up menus which I knew would be a pain. And I wasn't wrong. Seems to be working, but I'm sure there is some browser/OS combo out there that will break it. This kind of work is not very satisfying for me. The problem is too artificial (working around the various rendering bugs in all the different browsers.) But I do want to make these people happy. And it might be something I can repurpose for other uses.
Did you ever read something you knew was only mildly funny, yet it stuck in your head and made you laugh out loud on multiple occasions when, let's say, maybe you shouldn't have been laughing? Like, because it wasn't really that funny? Still, sometimes I can't help myself.
From defective yetti:
ConfessionI don't even have to finish the sentence. To my brain, that's funny.
Tonight for dinner I ate both pasta and antipasta...
David Weinberger has put together an excellent Open Specturm FAQ. You should read it.
Alex and I went to the Apple store yesterday. They didn't have the new powerbooks on display (real soon now they said.) I should have figured, since the ship dates are still a few weeks. But you'd think they'd have demo models at least. Oh well. Seems like those models won't be the right size anyway.
Had a mini college reunion last night with a friend visiting from Colorado. Great time. Makes me want to spend more time with the folks who are always here.
I couldn't possibly be in a worse mood.
Talk the talk - gamer style.
Your search - "exoatmospheric thrill vehicle" - did not match any documents.
I find that hard to believe.
I never told the story about Janet taking Theo to Mexico. When they tried to board the plane the airline wouldn't let them, saying Janet needed a notarized letter from Bruno, the father, stating that Janet could take her child out of the country! Needless to say they missed their flight.
Apparently this has something to do with entry into Mexico, rather than being an airline policy. Still, it's strange I had never heard of this. Seems like something the airlines might want to mention when you book the flight.
They eventually made it. I'll get the full story when they get home.
Occasionally in the morning we'll wake up and MB will open the laptop and surf the web some. This was one of the ideas behind getting that machine. She still uses OS 9 for working (thanks for nothing quark,) but this gives her a little time in OS X. And a little aimless surfing time which is what you need to really get comfortable on the web.
I think news.google.com convinced her that this all might turn out to be useful. I'll bet that's the case for a lot of people. Makes reading any one newspaper rather silly.
Anyway, when this happens I'm at a bit of a loss for what to do. Make the coffee. Clean up any leftover dishes. Maybe make the bed. I've gotten more conscientious about such things in my new homemaker phase. But still, it's hard for me not to check right in first thing.
Luckily I can fall back on my sidekick. I can't wait until the power of my laptop is the size of this phone. Shouldn't be too many years. Three? Keyboard and display (input and output) are going to become the real issues. How do we shrink these things?
I cooked dinner again last night. That's four times this past week, which is quite a change. Very satisfying. And it's hard to beat the price. I'm going to try to keep this up. It feels healthy. Mentally. I'll probably start wishing for a garden soon. Somebody stop me....
I just got an email that consisted of an embedded voice message. I hadn't seen this yet. This companies technology was involved. The mail seemed to suggest I needed to download and install something (yeah, right) but it worked without doing anything in mail.app on OS X 10.2. Just click play.
This is one example of a larger and more complex issue: voice over IP (VOIP.) Clay Shirkey explains why the telecoms are doomed. I can't wait.
Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theory is the coolest thing I've found in a long time. Maybe ever. It's defended by David Deutsch here, and that's probably as good a starting point as any.
The key discovery in the omega-point theory is that of a class of cosmological models in which, though the universe is finite in both space and time, the memory capacity, the number of possible computational steps and the effective energy supply are all unlimited. This apparent impossibility can happen because of the extreme violence of the final moments of the universe's Big Crunch collapse.In Tipler's theories, intelligent beings (like humans) are not epiphenomenon, but are instead required by the laws of physics. They are required so that the collapsing universe can be "steered" along the correct course to result in an approach to the Omega Point (singularity) in which the universe becomes an infinitely powerful computer.
The stabilization procedures, and the accompanying knowledge-creation processes, will all have to be increasingly rapid until, in the final frenzy, an infinite amount of both occur in a finite time. We know of no reason why the physical resources should not be available to do this, but one might wonder why the inhabitants should bother to go to so much trouble. Why should they continue so carefully to steer the gravitational oscillations during, say, the last second of the universe? If you have only one second left to live, why not just sit back and take it easy at last? But of course, that is a misrepresentation of the situation. It could hardly be a bigger misrepresentation. For these people's minds will be running as computer programs in computers whose physical speed is increasing without limit. Their thoughts will, like ours, be virtual-reality renderings performed by these computers. It is true that at the end of that final second the whole sophisticated mechanism will be destroyed. But we know that the subjective duration of a virtual-reality experience is determined not by the elapsed time, but by the computations that are performed in that time. In an infinite number of computational steps there is time for an infinite number of thoughts - plenty of time for the thinkers to place themselves into any virtual-reality environment they like, and to experience it for however long they like. If they tire of it, they can switch to any other environment, or to any number of other environments they care to design. Subjectively, they will not be at the final stages of their lives but at the very beginning . They will be in no hurry, for subjectively they will live for ever. With one second, or one microsecond, to go, they will still have 'all the time in the world' to do more, experience more, create more - infinitely more - than anyone in the multiverse will ever have done before then.Here's an interview from transhumanism.com. And here's his disinfo page with lots more links.
I think I'll need infinite time to understand all this suff.
MB did some graphic work for a fabric company and they sent us a mattress pad made out of a new material. It's called Outlast adaptive comfort.
Probably you won't believe me, as I wouldn't have believed anyone claiming that a mattress pad can change your life. But it's true.
You lay down on it, and for several minutes you can feel it pulling heat out of your body. But then it reaches temperature equilibrium, and it holds you there. All night. External temperature fluctuations be damned.
So what? Well, I didn't realize it until I started sleeping on this thing, but the main reason I would wake up in the middle of the night was to rearrange the covers because I was either too hot or too cold. But no longer. Seriously. I sleep right through now. And long. Twelve hours is no problem. This stuff is going to put a hurt on productivity like nothing since tetris. And I say bring it on.
Everybody can use good night's sleep.
You can watch Steve Jobs and his amazing reality distortion field today at noon eastern time.
This page isn't off to a great start in 2003. Neither am I for that matter, although I don't know what I have to complain about. I was melancholy in the days leading up to new year's eve, and despite that night actually turning out to be quite fun, I seem to have picked up where I left off once the party landed.
I need some sort of change. Not sure yet what this will entail. Luckily my life is such that making a change isn't precluded by too much. It's just making a choice that is difficult. Or assembling the choices. Or something.
One problem is that I spent an entire evening reading the development mailing list at the OSAF. This should probably get a whole post of it's own. But a quick statement of the result for me is that I should probably wait until Chandler ships (and I learn Python) before I move my personal software projects forward. If it turns out like I suspect there won't be any point in developing weblogging (knowledge management, personal info management, p2p information sharing, groupware, collaborative ware, etc...) applications that aren't built on Chandler.
So I think I'd like to turn my attention somewhere else for a few months and wait for that situation to shake out. I'm picking my head up a bit, and looking around, and hoping for some synchronistic collision with something other. I'd be interested if this didn't involve the web at all, but who knows? Probably I'll keep up some sort of lame infrequent stream of haphazzard posts here. This way, at least, you can be as confused about me as I am.
[update: I had the development mailing list link wrong. Fixed now.]
You've got blog. AOL ready to offer weblogging tools to their subscribers. Ev is a little skeptical:
My guess is that they will release something called blogs, or some derivative of the term, in a few months (not February), which won't seem like weblogs as most of us know them. They'll co-opt the term to rehash something they already have, with a new coat of paint. I'm not sure whether this will be a good thing or a bad thing.