...more recent posts
Here's a Hack the Planet discussion thread that is worth looking at, at least for the great David McCusker ouija board metaphore:
Yeah, now we're all playing Internet Ouija Board, with lots of folks who want to spell out different things while pretending they are merely passive observers.Plus, this really nice response to Dave Winer's dream of the web as a "fantastic writing environment"
Yes, and that's a good dream. In fact, it's the best one I know about currently, unless I extend the concept of writing to include something more, until the final result is a fantastic dreaming environment.Fantastic dreaming environment? I'll take one of those please. Does it run on OSX?
Short, not too technical Cringely column on setting up a long range (10 kilometer) wireless 802.11b connection
Paul Ford is my hero. He's released the code that runs ftrain, and has posted a page explaining the mighty machine he has built.
Anyone who wants to work on this code with me should drop a line. What's here is an enormously slimmed down micro-version of the original 9 billion lines of shit-code I wrote, and now that it's fast, I want to expand the features, create a core suite of small (PHP?) functions would would be able to auto-execute on each page to allow people to add content to the pages on an ad-hoc basis, and have about 30-40 different little tools to build to make a real, proper Web site publishing framework - tools that for some reason no one else seems to be bothering with...But I know you're all weak, all talk, and that losing your e-commerce stocks took your fire away and you won't actually be joining me in uncovering the possibilities of new narrative connections via the global Interweb because the Web isn't cool anymore. Assholes.... I refuse to forsake the Web I love.
That's it. All documents linked together, all in harmony, all with full knowledge of their place in the hierarchy, but so many possibilities for each to transcend its place.
Sorry, no time for updates today. Dividing my time between the kitchen and the computer. One of the fabled sites I keep saying I am working on is actually about to go live. Plus the guests from Tucson are on the way.
Note to appleinsider: You use this word 'soon' but I do not think it means what you think it means.
Sunny afternoon on Long Island. MB's famous fried fish sandwiches.
David Weinberger has posted some pieces of a new book (which he is writing on line, so these are just early public drafts.) Interesting reading about the web. But does he really need to go to the formality of actually writing the book now?
Now playing - Aretha Franklin: Soul '69
Good stuff.
Nobody asked, but here's the personal update from yesterday. Nothing too interesting here. You've been warned:
Long day yesterday. My legs are killing me. Left here in the morning with no particular direction. Ended up on lower fifth avenue where I was reminded that it was Gay Pride day. Walked up the length of 5th (to the park) as all the floats were coming down past me. Very colorful. Of course I didn't have my camera.
The sidewalks were packed with people watching. Well, more than watching really. Dancing. Prancing. Shouting. Yelling. Everybody had some sort of camera. Lots of pictures. Lots of posing. And I kept hearing the same exchange: "...have a good parade!" This sounded just like what I remember from outside of grateful dead shows where people always parted with "...have a good show!" You have to say it as if you're not expecting the person to just watch. The spectators are the show. Everybody is performing. Everybody is on. Very nice. And seeing 280 pound bald headed men with moustaches twirling down fifth avenue in blue tutus is something probably everybody should see at some point.
[Update 6/26: rion.nu didn't forget her camera]
Eventually I cleared the crowd and made my way into the park. I had my eye open for Mr. Wilson, it being a nice day, and a weekend. But I wasn't really scouting for him as I have done a few times before. That's a different sort of walking. Faster. Head up and constantly scanning the horizon. You have to cover a lot of ground if you hope to find someone randomly. But yesterday I was just walking around. Real slow. Up and around the reservoir. I found a nice bench up on the east side and just sat for half an hour. Not even really thinking. My brain needed a rest.
Then off again back down fifth. Over two hundred blocks. As I said, my legs are hurting. Made it home in time for a quick shower and then off to the opening game of the Staten Island Yankees. They have a beautiful new ballpark at St. George, which is right where the Staten Island Ferry lands. And although I find it hard to believe myself, this was my first trip on the ferry. Amazing views of NYC. Again, I didn't bring my camera. I sat the whole way thinking how stupid I was as the great pre dusk light lit the clouds over my favorite view of the city. Really spectacular.
The park is nice. MB and H. did some graphics work for them, so I finally saw these big banners they made in their full glory. Must be nice to see your work so large. And so visible. They really did a good job. I have to think this is one of the nicest minor league parks. You sit in the stands looking out over the field, and then the water beyond, and then Wall Street rising in the distance. Very nice. This is single A ball, but the play was better than I had imagined. And it's actually sort of nice to see something short of major league quality. You get a much better sense of just how hard the game is. They missed turning some double plays that any big league team would have made look easy. But they weren't sloppy, it's just hard to turn it at second unless everything works out perfect. And it only rarely works out perfect for these guys. Much more fun than I thought.
After the game (which the Yanks won, by the way, 2-1) there were some fireworks from two barges just over the outfield fence in the harbor. Then we were back on the ferry (literally right there) and home again. We could see other larger fire works from the Gay Pride Day finale as we were crossing back to Manhattan. Everything seemed pretty festive.
Quick bite at Paladar, and home to bed. Must remember to do some stretching before any future adventures. And I guess remembering the camera would be nice too. If only I could grab stills from my optic nerve...
I can't wait to hear the story. Slashdot has been down for a couple of days. Unbelievable. My traceroutes get into exodus (where the servers are colocated) but then time out. I wonder if it's hard to bring a box back up when tons of people are pinging your site every second to see if you've managed to bring the box back up?
On the verge of AI? Cyc "is powered by an immense multi-contextual knowledge base and an efficient inference engine. The knowledge base is built upon a core of over 1,000,000 hand-entered assertions (or "rules") designed to capture a large portion of what we normally consider consensus knowledge about the world."
"HAL killed the ['2001'] crew because it had been told not to lie to them, but also to lie to them about the mission," [Douglas B. Lenat] observes. "No one ever told HAL that killing is worse than lying. But we've told Cyc."I hope they mentioned the thing about opening the pod bay doors too. (Amazingly, the LA Times doesn't even link to the Cycorp site.)
Douglas Hofstadter (of Godel Escher Bach fame) takes the other side of the debate: "I don't believe in the idea that intelligence is founded upon having vast amounts of facts about the world." I can see both sides. I don't really have a strong intuition about who's right, but this is clearly cool stuff.