...more recent posts
The Washington Post has an article about peer to peer networking. Apparently the military is interested. The article is not technical, but I'm always interested to read anything that departs from the "P2P networks are for pirates" standard entertainment industry line.
The U.S. Joint Forces Command last week began testing new commercial software called Groove, developed by the creator of Lotus Notes. About 20 large corporations also are using the program, which allows people to create ad hoc computing groups, send instant messages, mark up files and do other collaborative work online without help from system administrators. Makers of similar "groupware" products got in line this week to take the military up on its appeal for help.Dan Gilmore has a column on this same issue in which he talks with John Robb (ex USAF special operations and now president and COO of Userland software) about how the internet can help our overly centralized leadership meet the highly distributed enemy of today. John Robb expands on the idea at his own website. (links from HTP and scripting news)
It's not just for stealing music and exposing your diary to the world anymore.
Prada is opening a new store in Manhattan with something called "elastic time" mirrors.
Move slowly and the mirror reflects your image back to you normally. But if you spin around quickly, you experience what the designers call "elastic time": The mirror slows down your image so you can view yourself from the back. This Wonderlandian trick is pulled off with hidden cameras and a screen that masquerades as a mirror.Cool. Popular science (mostly fluff) story here (via harrumph)
Christopher Locke (remember him from the other day?) and John Patrick (V.P. of internet technology at IBM) have an email conversation about business and the future of the internet (or is it about the internet and the future of businesss?) on line at borders.com. Tom at improprieties has some thoughts, plus pointers to here, and here for more.
This must be out of context somehow, or else he's just saying this to get a laugh watching all the people it bends out of shape, but according to the seattle times, Bill Gates thinks Microsoft is responsible for open source:
Gates also took some credit for the genesis of open-source software. He said Microsoft made it possible by standardizing computers: "Really, the reason you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines," he said.A few months ago microsoft was calling open source "a cancer" and now it turns out they are actually responsible. Which is it? To be clear, Gates has been adamantly against free software (I know I'm mixing my terms here, but this is an overview) since the very beginning. Read this open letter from Bill Gates to early computer hobbyists from 1976. This same fight has been going on all these years. It's a shame those evil-doer hobbyists kept him from making money.
Melanie Goux, over at brushstroke.tv calls herself, in passing, a "yellow-dog feminist." Does anybody know the origin of the "yellow-dog" phrase? Google isn't too much help, as a PowerPC distribution of linux is called Yellow Dog and that seems to soak up most of the hits (although I'll admit to not going through all 72,700 matches.) Anyway, I've heard it used in the phrase "yellow-dog democrat" which, as I remember, refers to someone who would vote the party line even if a yellow dog was on the ticket. But where does this come from? I don't think the 'yellow' is related to cowardliness, but maybe. Where would you search for something like this?
Jason Kottke: "I never never ever never thought this day would come, not in a million years.... I want an Apple computer." It's still unclear whether Apple's move to Unix is going to work, and whether it will really make much of a difference even if it does, but it's nice to see a Mac basher come around.
A message from the action man: "Actually, what interests me most about weblogs is (you should forgive the expression), memic propagation and amplification."
If you're looking to freak yourself out with speculation about Al-Qaida's endgame then read on. You've been warned.
Dave Winer's latest davenet piece is worth the read. Very interesting to connect the larger war on terrorism with the smaller battles being fought in the internet arena. So much of modern fighting is about information and intelligence gathering. These things really do fit together.
I haven't said anything about the microsoft settlement because I don't think there's much to say. It's horrible, but not unexpected. I don't have enough information to be sure, but Dave's ideas feel right to me. Micorsoft and the governement made a deal - we just don't know what kind of deal. And given Microsoft's power and reach (especially in light of this settlement) they have quite a bit to give the government. So yes, it does scare me. Read the davenet piece for a good understanding of why.
However, there are some things working in the other direction. Mozilla, for instance, might turn out to be rather important (like it seemed in the beginning, but hasn't seemed to me for a long time now.) Sure that project has been slow to evolve, but that might be because there wasn't much need for it. Internet Explorer is a good browser. Even netscape 4.7 is a good browser (although it gives web designers fits.) But if Microsoft suddenly started censoring web sites through its control of the browser (with a wink and a nudge coming from the government) I think you'd see an explosion of interest in Mozilla. People do care, they just don't always care ahead of time. Outlook might actually be harder to unthrown (outside of the mail client in mozilla, are there any mature open source mail clients?) but I can't see how Microsoft could choke things off as easily with Outlook as they might be able to do by (mis)using Explorer. But again, if they tried that (in a full scale assault on freedom way) people would just make the jump most tech savvy people have been arguing for them to make for years: don't use microsoft products.
So I'm not as scared as I might be by all this. On the other hand, Dave's P.P.S. about loving the checks and balances provided by the judicial branch doesn't bring me much comfort. Remember the last presidential election? The lower courts - maybe - but the supreme court has lost my vote of confidence.
Happy birthday MB!