...more recent posts
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!
If you have an account here (and not much of a life?) you can now pop up a small window that will sit on your desktop and watch the site for you while you work. If something gets posted on a page you are tracking the window will let you know. Just go to /monitor (requires javascript.)
Phil Agre (of rock rock eater mailing list fame) has some ideas about colaborative web filters:
The "webfilter", as I'll call it, is a cross between a discussion list, a weblog, and a bookmark file. It is not just a weblog, since it includes numerous functionalities to deal with long lists of URL's. Nor is it just a discussion list, since the goal is to produce a reasonably clean and orderly presentation of the URL's. Nor is it just a bookmark file, because of its community nature.He explains the system he wants, but also adds "I cannot participate in building such a tool, but I would be happy to try out any prototypes that others might construct." Yeah, OK, I'll get right on it. Still, a good article of some interest to bloggers.