...more recent posts
Lots of people seem impressed by the new google toolbar which plugs into Internet Explorer 5.x running on Windows. If I ran Windows I would probably check this out. There are some privacy concerns, but Google is very upfront about what it is tracking, and they have such a good reputation that it's hard even for someone usually suspicious (like me) to get too worried about this case. And anyway, you can turn off certain features that work by knowing your surfing history and the toolbar will still be useful without any sort of tracking (even anonymous) going on. Let me know if anyone tries this out.
Magical weather day here in NYC.
This site is very cool. Inspirational even. Sort of like a jodi.org creation (is it?) It's amazing what can be done with so very little (bandwidth-wise) if your stuff is good. Or maybe all that dancing is going to my head. (via metascene)
I don't know if it's the holiday season or what, but these are some strange days indeed. I keep finding myself at dance parties. How does this happen?
Here are my two computer gripes of the day:
My video card is too fast when scrolling text - I can't stop it at the right point, because the text is flying by in a blur. And why does Navigator pop up a box when I try to reload a page that contained some sort of form data which gives me only 'repost form data' or 'cancel' as options? Where's the option to reload the page (obviously what I meant to do since I clicked on 'reload' to get to this point) without the form data? To do this I have to cancel, then click in the location field to make that active, and then go to my keyboard and press enter. That is not acceptable. Does IE do it differently?
Great interview with Eban Moglan, the Free Software Foundation legal counsel, and Columbia University law professor. Kind of long, and a little technical, but you really should find the time to read this. He is very clear about many very difficult to think about issues.
"What we have here are two different structures of the distribution of cultural product. You have a set of people whose fundamental belief is that cultural products are best distributed when they are owned, and they are attempting to construct a leak proof pipe from production studio to eardrum or eyeball of the consumer. Their goal is to construct a piping system that allows them to distribute completely dephysicalized cultural entities which have zero marginal cost and which in a competitive economy would therefore be priced at zero, but they wish to distribute them at non-zero prices. In the ideal world, they would distribute them at the same prices they get for physical objects which cost a lot of money to make, move and sell, and they would become ferociously profitable. They are prepared to give on price, but at every turn, as with the VCR at the beginning of the last epoch, their principle is any ability of this content to escape their control will bring about the end of civilization."From what I can see, Moglan is the main legal mind behind a huge change in society of which the Napster story and the Decss case (making DVD's play on Linux machines despite industy efforts to stop this) are just the tips of the iceburg. Some people think he goes too far (for instance, in another place he makes the very curious argument that all digital content, by virtue of being digital, exists as long strings of zeros and ones, or in other words, all pieces of digital content - things like programs, music, movies, ebooks - are really very long numbers, and it shouldn't be possible to copyright a number) but I think it would be more true to say that most people aren't aware of how fast, and how radically, the world is changing. Of course I could be wrong. I don't think Richard Stallman is a crackpot either, so what do I know? Anyway, read this article, I think Eban Moglan knows.
The "trusted client" is upon us. Wes is right on it as usual. First he points to the classic Richard Stallman piece The Right to Read. The key passage in this dystopian short story is: "Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger." And then Wes points to this fine print on the Adobe eBook (a new format for publishing books in electronic form) website:
" If you are a software programmer, you should note that the Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader's security implementation does not allow program debuggers to be executed on the machine while the Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader is running."Not quite threatening prison terms yet, but the idea that Stallman's fears are looking a little more reasonable is very scary indeed.
Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress as it is commonly known, is the first plant to have its entire genetic sequence read by scientists.
Massive list of links concerning the intersection of Art, Technology, Science & Culture.
Been thinking about Montana a lot lately. My father's side of the family is from the big sky country. My great grandfather was a homesteader in Paradise Valley. Despite the promising name, there is a good reason why they were giving away that land: you couldn't grow enough food to make it through the winter. But thanks to a little side work on the newfangled railroad, my ancestors survived, although the land was lost - in good cowboy fashion - on a hand of poker. Tough life, or so the legend goes. I "lived" there briefly during my college years, but only through the good will of some real westerners. It's beautiful country, but it's cold. The people have to be tough. I, on the other hand, am clearly from the east ("the concrete jungle" as my grandfather would say) where you just have to be loud, and maybe a little pushy. That's a survival skill too, I guess, but it's different. Anyway, it seems like a few lucky (where 'lucky' means 'crazy') modern people are going to experience the real thing: frontier.