Aaron Swartz is the founder of Demand Progress, which launched the campaign against the Internet censorship bills (SOPA/PIPA) and now has over a million members. He is also a Contributing Editor to The Baffler and on the Council of Advisors to The Rules.
He is a frequent television commentator and the author of numerous articles on a variety of topics, especially the corrupting influence of big money on institutions including nonprofits, the media, [politics](http://crookedtimber.org/2009/05/01/political- entrepreneurs-and-lunatics-with-money/), and public opinion. From 2010-11, he researched these topics as a Fellow at the Harvard Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption. He also served on the board of Change Congress, a good government nonprofit.
He has also developed the site theinfo.org. His landmark analysis of Wikipedia, Who Writes Wikipedia?, has been widely cited. Working with Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee at MIT, he helped develop and popularize standards for sharing data on the Web. He also coauthored the RSS 1.0 specification, now widely used for publishing news stories.
His piece with photographer Taryn Simon, Image Atlas (2012), is has been featured in the New Museum. In 2007, he led the development of the nonprofit Open Library, an ambitious project to collect information about every book ever published. He also cofounded the online news site Reddit, where he released as free software the web framework he developed, web.py.
A: P is true because of X, Y, and Z.
B: Pff. When you're older, you'll realize that P is false.
Being young, I get this one a lot. At some level, it's an argument to authority: I have X and you don't, therefore I am correct and you are not.
However, there's a deeper issue here. One who uses this fallacy is implictly suggesting that the goal of the discussion is to get the parties to agree about what is true, not to actually find what is true. This is a dangerous attitude; would the person assume their beliefs were true if there was no one around to challenge them? A good way to improve such an argument would be to use it as a form of evidence, not a dismissal of the other party. For example, instead of saying "You'd agree with me if you'd worked in the coal mines for years." try saying "Well, I've worked in the coal mines for years which has let me see firsthand why P is necessary."
Would you dismiss arguments from a woman, because she "does not know what it is like to be a man"? A woman cannot easily become a man, nor can a young person easily become old. Dismissing their suggestions because of who they are is the height of rudeness.
Thesis: Miracles actually takes place in the same universe as Angel and the events of Angel explain the strange phenomena seen in Miracles.
In Miracles 1x01, Alva says that the paranormal phenomena “seem to suggest a large event is coming”. This event is the birth of Jasmine. The paranormal phenomena are probably a side effect of her coming down to Earth — moving down from a higher plane is probably a big deal and it makes sense that it would cause some weird things to happen on Earth.
In Miracles 1x06, the last aired episode, we learn most people have seen “God is Nowhere”. These people are called The Darkness and they’ll work together to do something bad. However, two have seen “God is Now Here” and God wants them to exterminate The Darkness.
The most likely interpretation is that the people who see “God is Nowhere” are like the people who have been “infected” with Jasmine or Cordy’s blood — they see Jasmine’s true face (she is not really God — God is nowhere) and will work together to stop her. The people who see “God is Now Here” will be loyal to Jasmine and must kill those infected.
The boy who murders the infected says that God talks to him in his head. We’ve seen (e.g. Angel 4x14) that Evil Cordy has the power to talk to people in this way with a loud booming voice that could easily be mistaken for God. This makes sense: Evil Cordy needs to kill off any who will ruin Jasmine’s work, so she gets the boy to do her work for him.
Furthermore, the timing is perfect. Just after that Miracles 1x06 aired, Angel 1x17 aired, in which Evil Cordy again convinces a young boy (Connor) to murder an innocent person so that Jasmine can be born. Then the Jasmine storyline plays out explaining everything.
There are additional hints that the shows are connected: The scene in Miracles 1x06 where Paul (the main character)
imagines strangling someone severely in the ICU with a pillow is a lot like one in Angel 3x17 where Angel (the main character) strangles Wesley in the ICU with a pillow. And in Angel 4x21 a Church sign reads "God is nowhere. Jasmine is the way."
Servers die. Companies collapse. URLs change. The Web is a very messy place. Thankfully, the Internet Archive is there to record it all.
But once it's in there, how do you get it back? Sure, the Wayback Machine is nice for getting a couple pages, but anything more than that and it's a royal pain. Wouldn't it be nice if there were some easy way to get back that data? arcget is that easy way.
$ python arcget.py linguafranca.com/images/covers
Grabbing linguafranca.com/images/covers ...
FAILED: linguafranca.com/images/covers/0010cover-sm.gif
linguafranca.com/images/covers/0011cover.gif
linguafranca.com/images/covers/0103cover.gif
linguafranca.com/images/covers/0104cover.gif
linguafranca.com/images/covers/0105cover_small.gif
FAILED: linguafranca.com/images/covers/-
*and so on...*
arcget asks the Internet Archive for all the files it has of that site, then goes through and tries to find a working
copy of each one. It gets it, strips out the modifications made by the Wayback Machine, and places it in a properly
named file.
arcget gets the oldest version of each file. This is because generally the newest version is whatever lame site has
replaced the site you want to archive and it's hard to tell programatically whether it's the old or the new site.
The Internet Archive's error messages are less than clear and 404 pages aren't always clearly marked, so arcget may
mistakenly download some error pages as the actual files.
The Internet Archive rewrites all <link> and <script> tag URLs to go through the Archive. arcget doesn't fix these
links.
The Internet Archive is not 100% reliable. Sometimes files will work, sometimes they won't.
BE NICE: The Internet Archive is a valuable public service. Don't abuse it by hammering the servers with lots of requests.
*Download:
arcget helped restore:
2005-12-28: 0.8. First release. Used to restore one major site.
This is display.cgi (source). It takes some text you enter into a form, and displays it for you as HTML.
This is a great way to see how some HTML code looks in your (or someone else's) browser. So paste 'n go:
I’m sick of bringing my writing down to the level of the computer. Why should I have to cover everything in annoying pointy brackets just so it knows what I mean? We’ve had well-standardized conventions for computer processed text for the past decade; it’s time for a text format that acknowledges them, instead of inventing its own way of doing things.
I’ve tried to create such a format: atx. The rest of this document describes the conventions of atx in detail, but you should be able to just write as you do in email and have a mostly valid atx document.
Note that atx is still in flux and is subject to change. However, I don’t expect all that much to change and I’ll note things that I’m not sure about in the document.
Use the TeX encoding of formatting characters:
Double quoting: ``Hello, World!''
Single quoting: `Hello, World!'
An en-dash: 1920---1942
An em-dash: Some thought -- sidenote -- same thought.
Double quoting: “Hello, World!” Single quoting: ‘Hello, World!’ An en-dash: 1920–1942 An em-dash: Some thought — sidenote — same thought.
(Yes, the last two are reversed from their positions in TeX. I think this is fair because a en-dash is far less common than an em-dash in my experience, but I’d appreciate feedback.)
Useformat=flowedwrapping: if the line ends in a space, then the next line is treated as a continuation of the
previous one. Otherwise there’s a line break.
Use the standard email conventions for strong and emphasis, and a new one for computer words (since I don’t think there exists a convention):
Emphasis (italics): I _love_ candy!
Strong (bold): *This is a draft!*
Code (monospaced): Use the |frobnitz| module.
Emphasis (italics): I love candy!
Strong (bold): This is a draft!
Code (monospaced): Use thefrobnitzmodule.
Paragraphs are separated by a blank line. Lines starting with$ or folowing a paragraph ending in :: are preformatted.
Headings start with 1 or more # characters. The level 1 heading (the title) starts with #, section headings with ##, subheads with ###, and so on.
Ordered lists start with numbers:
1. Jack
2. Jill
3. Bill
- Jack
- Jill
- Bill Unordered lists start with *:
* Eat
*Drink
* Sleep
- Eat
- Drink
- Sleep
Block quotes start with 3 or more spaces:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
I need to figure out some way of doing links. (A similar method could be used to do any other type of phrase-describing not included.) I was thinking something like:
[John] went to [the market].
[John] <http://www.john.org/>
[the market] <http://themarket.gov/>
John went to the market.
What do you think?
Is there anything else I should include? Let me know.
In mjd’s talk “Mailing List Judo” (removed from the Web due to its evil content), he gives several strategies for getting your changes into Perl. The key point is that you only need to convince one person to accept your patch: the patch pumpkin. (The patch pumpkin is the one who folds patches into the official distribution of Perl.) Everyone else can be reasonably ignored.
With many standards projects, the process is reasonably similar. The group’s output takes the form of a set of documents, each of which is controlled by one or two people (the Editors) who fold in changes and maintain the official version. There’s sometimes also a dispute-resolution process (voting, consensus, etc.) if the editor doesn’t know what to put in or the group disagrees with the editor.
The genius of Sam’s wiki was that there was no editor. Thought something was ugly? Change it. Think the text needed clarification? Clarify it. Sometimes disputes spilled out into separate pages but for the most part the process worked amazingly well.
But the process failed when it came to the big unresolved disputes. What should we name it? Should we encode HTML? There were polls but people didn’t trust them. There were discussions but they never came to consensus. And often the loudest or most persistent voice would win by pushing their opponent to exhaustion. Unfortunately the most persistent voice is often the least experienced.
As we’ve begun to write actual specs, things have gotten even worse. Backchannel deals made Joe Gregorio and Mark
Nottingham into have become traditional editors of the API and feed format respectively. Sam Ruby and Mark Pilgrim
took control of the spec by declaring milestones and updating their validator accordingly. ~~
Many of the comments on the wiki were ignored and the ~~The Wiki was turned into a unavigable swamp of a discussion
forum for the drafts edited by other people. Everyone not in the clique has been relegated to an advisory role,
pointing out bugs or pleading pet requests. It’s less than clear how to be a real part to of the core group.
It’s not too late to turn things around. Specs could be moved back into the wiki until they’re nearly done. Editors, instead of being gatekeepers, could be helpful moderators. A clear process for making controvertial decisions could be decided on. And the validator could follow consensus instead of leading it. . . . But do the people running the show want this? Standards bodies tread a fine line between organizations for the public good and shelters for protecting collusion that would be otherwise illegal under antitrust law. For the dominent vendors involved, the goal is to give the illusion of openness while giving themselves full control to enforce their will behind the scenes.
The IETF is a good example of this. Often lauded by the public as a model of openness and and and freedom, the reality is that working group chairs, appointed by a self-elected ruling board, get away with declaring whatever they want (usually an inferior and difficult to implement alternative) as “rough consensus”, routinely ignoring comments from the public and objections from working group members. One working group (in charge of DNS extentsions) went so far as to . . . [censor mail from working group members. The dictators running the IETF, when informed, didn’t seem to mind.
Is the same sort of thing at work in the Pie/Echo/Atom Project? It’s got all the signs: a self-elected cabal (the
Research Triangle Park Bloggers) who runs It appears so at first glance: Sam running the show from behind the scenes,
forcing their agenda (e.g. unquoted HTML) against strong objections from important players, and putting
themselves friends in charge of unilaterally declaring what’s in and out of the spec. the specs (although that
isn’t what actually happened). The lack of a dispute-resolution process only makes this easier: if things worse:
when there’s no clear guide on how to make decisions or contributions, no one complains when the decisions are made
for them. it’s far from obvious how to challenge a decision Sam has made.
There’s no question that the group takes contributions from outsiders, and is certainly better for it, outsiders but
calling they need to make it open clearer that you can be part of the development process. I think moving specs
onto the wiki will reinvigorate work and setting up a dispute resolution process will help us start moving forward,
instead of stuck here where no decisions have been “final”. The group seems a stretch. Instead we to have fallen
into a rut. I want to help them get the same as everything else: a closed cabal that puts on a show of openness. This
may not be the intention, but it is certainly the effect. We have the chance to get more, and we should take advantage
out of it.
[Changes from the
original]
originally posted August 20, 2003 10:39 AM ( . . . [Technology) . . . [# . . .
Privacy, Accuracy, Security: Pick Two
Postel's Law Has No Exceptions
Secrets of Standards . . . Day, Today
. . . Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com) ~~ All text above by me is hereby placed in the public domain.
~~ PRESS RELEASE Contact: Daniel J. Bernstein, press-20021018@box.cr.yp.to GOVERNMENT BACKS AWAY FROM CRYPTO REGULATIONS San Francisco, 18 October 2002 - The government today told a federal court that several portions of the current encryption regulations would not be enforced. The regulations are being challenged by Daniel J. Bernstein, a professor of mathematics, statistics, and computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Bernstein's lawsuit led to four court decisions against the constitutionality of the government's previous regulations. To comply with the current regulations, cryptographers must send encryption software to the National Security Agency before showing the software to foreigners. They must also wait for government approval if source code for the software is not publicly available.
Department of Justice attorney Tony Coppolino told the court that the government would not enforce the regulations against cryptographers working together at conferences. He also told the court that the government would treat ``assembly language'' as source code. Chief Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California will take the next action in the case. Observers expect Patel to rely on the government's promises and dismiss Bernstein's case without deciding the constitutionality of the current regulations.
I'm trying to help protect the Internet against bad guys,'' Bernstein said in a statement.I hope it's true that the
government is going to stop interfering in my work.'' -30-
TOC
| Network Working Group | A. Swartz |
|---|---|
| Internet-Draft | AaronSw.com |
| Expires: January 6, 2003 | July 8, 2002 |
| ** | |
| A URN Namespace for PGP Users** | |
| draft-swartz-pgp-urn-00 |
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.
Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
Dear Congressman, I write you today not only as a constituent, but also as a creator and consumer of copyrighted works. I fear that the laws being pushed by the entertainment industry are seriously harming the public at large.
The entertainment industry claims that these laws are needed to protect the artists. While I'm sure we would agree that it's only right to compensate artists for their work, the entertainment industry has a long history of not doing exactly that. Except for the small percentage of superstars, most musicians have to pay the record companies rather than get paid. If any laws are needed, they should ensure that the record companies have to pay a fair share to the artists. I believe that the entertainment industry is afraid the Internet will destroy their monopoly over the market and ability to cheat the vast majority of the artists. I don't think we should pass laws to protect these exploitative corporations.
But instead of seeing bills to protect the artists, we're seeing the opposite: bills that hurt the majority of artists and consumers as well. Artists like Janis Ian and publisher Baen Books have found that when they put their works on the Web their sales go up. It seems that music companies are afraid of their artists not having to pay their exorbitant marketing fees because they can self-market through the Internet. So they are trying to crush this practice with a series of legislation that will put an end to sharing.
This bill was introduced by Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC) and Howard Berman (D-CA). The name alone should set off warning bells: sharing music is now "piracy" we must prevent? What kind of morals does this teach to our nation? But if the goals of the bill are bad, the methods are worse still. Apparently the court system in our country isn't good enough for copyright holders. This bill would allow them to crack into your computer if they simply suspected you were sharing copyrighted material.
This would do untold havoc to the Internet and computer security, but there's a more fundamental issue at stake: why do copyright holders deserve a special "right of revenge" like no other crime? If you are robbed, you don't get the right to steal your things back. If you are hurt, you don't get the right to hurt the other guy back. Why should the sharing of music with your friends get a harsher and less-checked punishment than robbery or violence? I encourage you to vote against this bill.
This law, passed by unanimous vote, extended copyright laws in ways never seen before. It's illegal to blow up buildings, but explaining how to do so is protected by the First Amendment. By contrast, the DMCA overrules these free speech rights by making it illegal to bypass copy-protection, even for a legal reason. There are many reasons to bypass copy protection: You may want to make a backup, so that you won't lose your ebooks and music if your computer breaks.
You may want to play your legally purchased files in a program or computer that does not support the copy protection.
There are many other reasons.
These are not hypothetical examples. Jon Johansen wrote software making it possible to play DVD movies on the GNU/Linux computer system. For his trouble he got a lawsuit from the MPAA (currently unresolved). Dmitry Sklyarov made it possible for blind people to have their Adobe eBooks read to them by a computer. He was thrown in jail by Adobe (he has since been freed, but case currently unresolved). But the DMCA goes farther than that. It also makes it illegal to share this software and to tell people how to get it. One company put the DVD movie-playing software on a t-shirt. The MPAA added them to the lawsuit. 2600 Magazine published a list of locations to get the software. They were sued too and lost the case.
I encourage you to repeal the controversial "anti-circumvention" portion of this law.
Suing, jailing and cracking into the computers of their customers is apparently not enough for the entertainment industry. With this bill, they want to make it illegal to build computers that allow things they don't like. Again, this would have disastrous effects on innovation in the computer industry, would take a way a lot of our rights, and would put the burden of law enforcement on computer makers.
The entertainment industry sometimes claims it would be easy for computer makers to institute measures to prevent file sharing. First, this is not true, but even if it was, don't you think that computer makers would have already instituted it if it was effective? Microsoft Office retails for over $500, far more than any movie or CD that I know of. And while some people do share their copies of the software with each other, Microsoft has never found it necessary to institute the kind of measures that the entertainment industry is asking for.
But does this bill even make sense? Cars kill thousands each year, but are you considering any bills to make cars illegal? To require that all cars have chips in them to detect dangerous driving situations and immediately shut down? And again we're talking about real people dying--thousands of them. I doubt anyone has died because their music or movies were shared.
I encourage you to vote against this bill and the similar bills being proposed.
I hope you see the pattern here. When considering such bills, I urge you to ask a simple question: What's the harm? The fact is, there is no harm. Music companies claim that five times the number of records sold are being traded on the Internet. Five times! I'm sure they'd have fancy statistics saying that this added up to a quadrillion dollars in lost revenue. But this makes the false assumption that all the downloads would have normally been CD sales. Instead, music sales have only dropped five percent. Five percent! Now the music industry changed the way they counted, raised prices for CDs and the economy has entered a downturn. All of those could have accounted for the five percent. But even if they didn't, can you seriously claim that we need all the measures described above for a five percent drop in sales? I thought the purpose of the government was to protect the people at large. Instead, it seems ever more and more to protect major industries from tiny drops in sales at the expense of the public at large.
I hope you'll seriously consider my comments. I'm happy to discuss any of the issues raised here; please write or call me.
Aaron Swartz Please adapt this letter and send it to your own congressman! Find your congressman at Congress.org.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
A combination of social (e.g. legal) and technical machinery (protocols, file formats, publication frameworks) provide the contexts that fix the intended meanings of the vocabulary of some piece of RDF, and which distinguish assertions from other uses (e.g. citations, denials or illustrations). RDF/XML documents with this media type might be published with the intent of being such an assertional representation (as distinguished from other XML or text that may just happen to look like RDF assertions). .ti 0 5. Fragment Identifiers Section 4.1 of the URI specification[5] notes that the semantics of a fragment identifier (part of a URI after a "#") is a property of the data resulting from a retrieval action, and that the format and interpretation of fragment identifiers is dependent on the media type of the retrieval result. However, in RDF, the thing identified by a URI with fragment identifier does not bear any particular relationship to the thing identified by the URI alone. This differs from some readings of the URI specification[5], so attention is recommended when creating new RDF terms which use fragment identifiers. The rdf:ID and rdf:about attributes can be used to define fragments in an RDF document. .ti 0 6. Historical Considerations This media type was reserved in RFC 3023[4], saying: .in 6 .ti 3 RDF documents identified using this MIME type are XML documents whose content describes metadata, as defined by [RDF]. As a format based on XML, RDF documents SHOULD use the '+xml' suffix convention in their MIME content-type identifier. However, no content type has yet been registered for RDF and so this media type should not be used until such registration has been completed. .in 3 .bp .ti 0 7. IANA Considerations This document calls for registration of a new MIME content-type, according to the registration template in section 2. .ti 0 8. Acknowledgements Thanks to Dan Connolly for writing the first version of this draft[8], to Andy Powell for reminding us we needed one, to Marshall Rose for his xml2rfc [9] converter, and to Graham Klyne, Jan Grant and Dave Beckett for their helpful comments on early versions of this document. .ti 0 References .in 8 .ti 3 [1] Beckett, D., "RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised)", W3C rdf- syntax-grammar, March 2002, . .ti 3 [2] Hayes, P., "RDF Model Theory", W3C rdf-mt, February 2002, .
.ti 3 [3] Lassila, O. and R. Swick, "Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model and Syntax Specification", W3C REC-rdf- syntax, February 1999, . .ti 3 [4] Murata, M., St.Laurent, S. and D. Kohn, "XML Media Types", RFC 3023, January 2001.
.ti 3 [5] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 1998. .ti 3 [6] Freed, N., Klensin, J. and J. Postel, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Four: Registration Procedures", BCP 13, RFC 2048, November 1996. .ti 3 [7] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. .ti 3 [8] Connolly, D., "A media type for Resource Description Framework (RDF)", March 2001, . .ti 3 [9] .bp .in 3 .nf .ti 0 Author's Address Aaron Swartz AaronSw.com 349 Marshman Highland Park, IL 60035 USA Phone: +1 847 432 8857 EMail: me@aaronsw.com URI: http://www.aaronsw.com/ .bp .ti 0 Full Copyright Statement .fi Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved. This document and translations ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. .ti 0 Acknowledgement Expires: February 21, 2003| August 23, 2002 application/rdf+xml Media Type Registration** draft-w3c-rdfcore-rdfxml-mediatype-01 This Internet-Draft will expire on February 21, 2003.
This document describes a media type (application/rdf+xml) for use with the XML serialization of the Resource Description Framework (RDF). RDF is a language designed to support the Semantic Web, by facilitating resource description and data exchange on the Web. RDF provides common structures that can be used for interoperable data exchange and follows the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) design principles of interoperability, evolution, and decentralization.
**1. Discussion of this Document ** **2. Introduction ** **3. application/rdf+xml Registration ** **4. Social Context ** **5. Fragment Identifiers ** **6. Historical Considerations ** **7. IANA Considerations ** **8. Acknowledgements
Please send comments to mailto:www-rdf-comments@w3.org. To subscribe, send a message with the body 'subscribe' to mailto:www-rdf-comments-request@w3.org. The mailing list is publically archived at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/.
RDF is a language designed to support the Semantic Web, by facilitating resource description and data exchange on the Web. RDF provides common structures that can be used for interoperable data exchange and follows the W3C design principles of interoperability, evolution, and decentralization.
While the RDF data model[2] can be serialized in many ways, the W3C has defined the RDF/XML syntax[1] to allow RDF to be serialized in an XML format. The application/rdf+xml media type allows RDF consumers to identify RDF/XML documents so that they can be processed properly.
This is a media type registration as defined in Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Four: Registration Procedures[6]
MIME media type name: application MIME subtype name: rdf+xml Required parameters: none Optional parameters: charset
Same as charset parameter of application/xml.
Encoding considerations: Security considerations:
Security considerations include many of those described in section 10 of RFC 3023[4] and more, due to the semantic nature of RDF. RDF documents may make assertions about anything and it is expected that future work with Digital Signature and "Web of Trust" will make it more clear how to build secure RDF systems.
Interoperability considerations:
It is recommended that RDF documents follow the newer RDF/XML Syntax Grammar[1] as opposed to the older RDF Model and Syntax specification[3].
Published specification: see RDF/XML Syntax Grammar[1] and RDF Model Theory[2] (working drafts as of 2002-03) and the older RDF Model and Syntax[3] Applications which use this media type:
RDF is device-, platform-, and vendor-neutral and is supported by a range of Web user agents and authoring tools.
Additional information:
Magic number(s): none
Although no byte sequences can be counted on to consistently identify RDF, RDF documents will have the sequence "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" to identify the RDF namespace. This will usually be towards the top of the document.
File extension(s): .rdf Macintosh File Type Code(s): "TEXT" For further information: Dan Brickley danbri@w3.org RDF Interest Group www-rdf-interest@w3.org More information may be found on the RDF website: http://www.w3.org/RDF/ Intended usage: COMMON Author/Change controller: The RDF specification is a work product of the World Wide Web Consortium. The W3C and the W3C RDF Core Working Group have change control over the specification.
RDF/XML documents may be asserted to be true, and such an assertion should be understood to carry the same social import and responsibilities as an assertion in any other format. A combination of social (e.g. legal) and technical machinery (protocols, file formats, publication frameworks) provide the contexts that fix the intended meanings of the vocabulary of some piece of RDF, and which distinguish assertions from other uses (e.g. citations, denials or illustrations).
RDF/XML documents with this media type might be published with the intent of being such an assertional representation (as distinguished from other XML or text that may just happen to look like RDF assertions).
Section 4.1 of the URI specification[5] notes that the semantics of a fragment identifier (part of a URI after a "#") is a property of the data resulting from a retrieval action, and that the format and interpretation of fragment identifiers is dependent on the media type of the retrieval result.
However, in RDF, the thing identified by a URI with fragment identifier does not bear any particular relationship to the thing identified by the URI alone. This differs from some readings of the URI specification[5], so attention is recommended when creating new RDF terms which use fragment identifiers.
The rdf:ID and rdf:about attributes can be used to define fragments in an RDF document.
This media type was reserved in RFC 3023[4], saying:
RDF documents identified using this MIME type are XML documents whose content describes metadata, as defined by [RDF].
As a format based on XML, RDF documents SHOULD use the '+xml' suffix convention in their MIME content-type identifier.
However, no content type has yet been registered for RDF and so this media type should not be used until such registration has been completed.
This document calls for registration of a new MIME content-type, according to the registration template in section 2.
Thanks to Dan Connolly for writing the first version of this draft[8], to Andy Powell for reminding us we needed one, to Marshall Rose for his xml2rfc converter, and to Graham Klyne, Jan Grant and Dave Beckett for their helpful comments on early versions of this document.
[1] | Beckett, D., "RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised)", W3C rdf- syntax-grammar, March 2002.
[2] | Hayes, P., "RDF Model Theory", W3C rdf-mt, February 2002.
[3] | Lassila, O. and R. Swick, "Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model and Syntax Specification", W3C REC-rdf-syntax, February 1999.
[4] | Murata, M., St.Laurent, S. and D. Kohn, "XML Media Types", RFC 3023, January 2001.
[5] | Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and [L.
Masinter](mailto:masinter@parc.xerox.com), "[Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax](ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in- notes/rfc2396.txt)", RFC 2396, August 1998.
[6] | Freed, N., Klensin, J. and [J.
Postel](mailto:Postel@ISI.EDU), "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Four: Registration Procedures", BCP 13, RFC 2048, November 1996.
[7] | Bradner, S., "[Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels](ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in- notes/rfc2119.txt)", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[8] | Connolly, D., "A media type for Resource Description Framework (RDF)", March 2001.
A CGI to take you where you want to go.
Designed to be installed into IE5.1/Mac (with magic string). Original concept
by Gerald. Special thanks to HTTP GET, and those who build services with it.
? (source)
Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com) This is free software.
Epinions Stuff
Here's what it should look like:
Here's what it does look like: This is Gill Sans Light.
This is Gill Sans.
This is Gill Sans Bold.
Safari up to v62 displays Plain as Light.
Safari v64 displays Light as Plain.
OmniWeb 4.1 displays Plain as Light.
Chimera 2002-02-12 displays Light as Plain.
IE 5.1 displays Light as Plain.
All the Googles at your fingertips.
Googler makes it easy to search the Google you want, when you want. Give a prefix like news: (as in news:iraq) to
search Google News or images: to search images. Prefix with mid: to retrieve a news messages from Google Groups or
? (as in ?aaron) to do an "I'm Feeling Lucky" search.
If you're a IE/Mac user, you can integrate Googler into your address
bar (just use
[http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/googler.cgi?secret=on&q;=](http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/googler.cgi?secret=on&q=) as your
magic string). If you like this, you might also like ADTRT, which does everything
Googler does and more! Also, check out the Google Weblog for more Google tips and
tricks.
declare -x DOCUMENT_ROOT="/var/www/www.aaronsw.com/" declare -x GATEWAY_INTERFACE="CGI/1.1" declare -x HTTP_ACCEPT="/" declare -x HTTP_CONNECTION="Keep-Alive" declare -x HTTP_HOST="www.aaronsw.com" declare -x HTTP_REFERER="http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/" declare -x HTTP_USER_AGENT="Wget/1.12 (linux-gnu)" declare -x OLDPWD declare -x PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin" declare -x PWD="/var/www/www.aaronsw.com/2002" declare -x QUERY_STRING="" declare -x REMOTE_ADDR="50.116.30.187" declare -x REMOTE_PORT="57940" declare -x REQUEST_METHOD="GET" declare -x REQUEST_URI="/2002/header" declare -x SCRIPT_FILENAME="/var/www/www.aaronsw.com/2002/header.cgi" declare -x SCRIPT_NAME="/2002/header.cgi" declare -x SERVER_ADDR="75.127.96.63" declare -x SERVER_ADMIN="[no address given]" declare -x SERVER_NAME="www.aaronsw.com" declare -x SERVER_PORT="80" declare -x SERVER_PROTOCOL="HTTP/1.0" declare -x SERVER_SIGNATURE="Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu) Server at www.aaronsw.com Port 80 " declare -x SERVER_SOFTWARE="Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu)" declare -x SHLVL="1" **** BEGIN LOGGING AT Sat May 25 20:08:01 2002 May 25 20:08:01 --> malaclyps (danny@216.218.247.89) has joined
May 25 20:08:01 --- Topic for #infoanarchy is PETITION FOR ORASIS SISTER JPEGS NOW | party! <http://mozilla.org/party/2002/flyer.html> | REBOOT FO THE MUTHAFUCKIN KERBEROS, DAWG! || School Jane To Went Monkey Apple Carbeurator
May 25 20:08:01 --- Topic for #infoanarchy set by Ash at Sat
May 25 16:37:08
May 25 20:08:21 hey malaclyps May 25 20:08:26 i'm sitting watching Cory Doctorow and Brad Templeton duke it out with Harlon Ellison at Baycon!
May 25 20:08:34 awesome
May 25 20:08:37 *malaclyps plays "Horns of Shatner" trek fight music
May 25 20:08:45 <\-- shankar has quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
May 25 20:08:54 Ellison needs a load of clue dropped on him
May 25 20:09:08 i'll be your SMACKDOWN commentator for the next 30 fist-filled minutes!
May 25 20:09:10 --> shankar (~shankar@12-221-104-141.client.insightBB.com) has joined #infoanarchy
May 25 20:09:15 Cool, Ellison is awesome.
May 25 20:09:28 He's outdated in his thinking of copyright, but.
May 25 20:09:29 malaclyps: Over what?
May 25 20:09:36 hey dnm :)
May 25 20:09:59 over DMCA and "Son of DMCA" --- weirdly, Harlon's dead against the DMCA ...
May 25 20:10:17 doesn't he use it against ISPs?
May 25 20:10:17 because he says that it stops him suing AOL for allowing his text to appear on their newsgroups
May 25 20:10:26 ah
May 25 20:10:49 Send in the ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC
May 25 20:11:23 Wait - Harlon's revealed his Sith Master - AIiiiieee
May 25 20:12:21 "I pulled over a thousand feet of cat5 cable scraps out of my school's dumpster recently. A crimper and a few
May 25 20:12:21 handfuls of rj-45 plugs later, my apartment is a neon-blue rat's nest of network love. I have a cable going from
May 25 20:12:21 my fridge to my coffee maker just because I can!"
May 25 20:12:46 and Cory plays the "Brewster Kahle" trump card
May 25 20:13:16 Harlon mutters that Brewster Kahle is "arrogant", pots and kettles walking out in protest
May 25 20:13:57 it's a packed crowd tonight: lots of slightly overloud laughing and mullets in the audience
May 25 20:13:58 Where are you watching this?
May 25 20:14:05 --> quinnums (~quinn@216.218.247.69) has joined #infoanarchy
May 25 20:14:11 Is cory bouncing around like Yoda?
May 25 20:14:17 aw, what a cute nick
May 25 20:14:41 Is Cory delivering pimp-slaps from a distance using The Force?
May 25 20:14:43 Crap, forgot to summon pizza.
May 25 20:14:58 Cory is doing the looking broody, pre-bitchslap preparatory yoda phase
May 25 20:15:23 Harlan Ellison isn't someone to mess with. I saw him verbally flay someone at a lecture once, because the hapless fool made a crack about Ellison's height.
May 25 20:15:50 Evenly matched, this battle is.
May 25 20:17:00 Harlon taking out the EFF, is. -- he's asking the EFF to get down that pirate that he and Jerry Pournelle are trying to hunt down
May 25 20:18:06 What's Pournelle up to these days? Does he still pretend to be a technology pundit?
May 25 20:18:12 --- tvoj_gone is now known as tvoj
May 25 20:18:13 www.jerrypournelle.com
May 25 20:18:38 Harlon says that the EFF is the "police"
May 25 20:18:53 no, the Police put out much better music
May 25 20:18:55 Cory points out that they're a "free speech" organisation
May 25 20:19:21 Augh, the Chaos Manor lives.
May 25 20:19:23 i'm just logging in to find out what's going on in this conference
May 25 20:19:36 Harlon is accusing the*EFF* of "shooting off their mouths". Pot and kettle form legal copyright action against him.
May 25 20:21:17 wow this harlan guy is looney as a koot
May 25 20:21:31 anyone got a url to this ellison thing?
May 25 20:21:35 brrr-proot fruit the crazyman said
May 25 20:22:20 Harlon sez: make citizen arrests of copyright pirates
May 25 20:22:21 <http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:57-zmkKwAyoC:harlanellison.com/KICK:25> brad blamed him for a child's death in africa, but harlan got out of it
May 25 20:25:34 no, I am The Vole of Justice
May 25 20:25:37 he said that no, he adopted umbawe and he's doing very well now
May 25 20:26:37 I'd tell that guy he should be put in a mental institution May 25 20:26:52 putting people in jail over copyright vs violent crimes?
May 25 20:27:18 "Mr. Ellison, do you think that rapists should get less time in jail than people who violate copyright?"
May 25 20:27:18 that is a rather looney rant
May 25 20:27:21 oh, it's so far before even that
May 25 20:27:57 for one thing, he's screaming in ALL CAPS. he belongs on AOL.
May 25 20:28:34 the trick is to show how much of a lunatic he really is
May 25 20:28:51 i wanna know how much money harland thinks he's lost to copyright violation
May 25 20:28:54 that not a trick
May 25 20:28:56 malaclyps: Where is this? What is this?
May 25 20:29:04 it's not even worthwhile to do anymore
May 25 20:29:11 "Mr. Ellison, do you believe that murderers should get less time in jail than copyright violators?
May 25 20:29:28 i'm sitting watching Cory Doctorow and Brad Templeton duke it out
May 25 20:29:28 with Harlon Ellison at Baycon!
May 25 20:29:34 what's happening now malaclyps?
May 25 20:29:40 I am not hip with the Baycon. WTF is it?
May 25 20:29:44 everyone knows what an idiot/asshole ellison is
May 25 20:29:52 I'm guessing it's a sci-fi convention
May 25 20:29:53 He writes decent stories.
May 25 20:30:01 yes, he does
May 25 20:30:02 kinda dull questions from the audience
May 25 20:30:02 yeah it's a big annual scifi convention
May 25 20:30:15 <\-- stevej has quit ("gotta run. bbl")
May 25 20:30:19 malaclyps: Who is left on the panel or whatever to answer questions?
May 25 20:30:25 yea but you need to keep emphasizing how looney he is
May 25 20:30:28 someone made good answer to Harlon who says that techies should hunt down copyright infringers - pointed out that
May 25 20:30:29 and has a hard time getting them published cause he's alienated half the publishing industry
May 25 20:30:29 otherwise ppl forget.
May 25 20:30:37 they've been trying to hunt down spammers, unsuccessfully
May 25 20:30:40 quinnums: Funny, that.
May 25 20:31:05 Ellison is actually pretty cool. Remember that he was effectively banned by Spiro Agnew.
May 25 20:31:06 dnm: panel is = harlon, brad templeton chair of eff, laura majerus who is a IP lawyer, cory
May 25 20:31:16 I've spoken with Brad before
May 25 20:31:20 very cool guy.
May 25 20:31:24 What I want to know is 1) Where's Ray Bradbury to call the Internet a pinball machine when we need him, and 2) "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear"?
May 25 20:31:26 He's just really wrong about copyright.
May 25 20:31:28 and an academic moderator (who seems weirdly biased toward the harlon viewpoint)
May 25 20:31:51 malaclyps: Has Cory (or anyone else) talked about ebooks yet?
May 25 20:31:52 just get harlon to say that rapists should get less time in jail than copyright violators
May 25 20:32:00 he's also a genuinely mean person a lot of the time, and another notorious sci-fi misogenist
May 25 20:32:06 Lara already said that it's weird that there's no *anti*copyright people on stage
May 25 20:32:07 now that would be icing on the cake.
May 25 20:32:24 dnm: not yet
May 25 20:32:33 Is anyone really anti-copyright? I'm not, I don't think.
May 25 20:32:44 quinnums is
May 25 20:32:47 there aren't many of us anti-copyright people out there
May 25 20:32:51 malaclyps: Can you perhaps proxy ask a question for me?
May 25 20:32:58 dnm: sure
May 25 20:33:03 --> devzero (~devzero@dsl-65-186-37-105.telocity.com) has joined #infoanarchy
May 25 20:33:03 Ian Clarke is anti-copyright
May 25 20:33:17 John Perry Barlow is anti-copyright. I ... waver
May 25 20:33:23 I am, I know of at least one other who is.
May 25 20:33:55 harlon is sitting quiet, looking like he's surrounded by idiot humans. again.
May 25 20:34:17 malaclyps: ask ellison if rapists should be given less time in jail than copyright violators.
May 25 20:34:21 malaclyps: This is pretty general, but I'm curious to know what everyone thinks of eBooks as applies to copyright, but in the context of, if I write an eBook and claim copyright, where do I stand today. Or, for hillarious effect, alter the question to rile people up.
May 25 20:34:39 dnm: not sure i understand your question
May 25 20:34:42 he has a dent in his forehead from where he holds his head in frustration all the time
May 25 20:34:43 malaclyps: I'm out of the loop on what would be the most incindiary eBook related question to ask.
May 25 20:35:08 malaclyps: Well, I'm curious to know what each of the panel thinks about eBooks, but I want to stir the shit.
May 25 20:35:19 malaclyps: And just asking "what about eBooks" is too general.
May 25 20:35:23 also, ask ellison what he thinks of a microchip implanted in each human being that would kill them if they violated copyright.
May 25 20:35:34 if he was for that, that would be hilarious.
May 25 20:35:51 malaclyps: I'll try to think of something more apropos.
May 25 20:35:53 silentfury: have you read Noir by K. W. Jeter? Now there's a guy who actually thinks people should be killed for copyright infringement
May 25 20:35:54 i think even harlan might notice that kind of baiting
May 25 20:36:24 quinnums: What's your elevator pitch about anti-copyright?
May 25 20:36:28 malaclyps: seriously?
May 25 20:36:34 I didn't think anyone was that bad
May 25 20:36:43 i don't have an elevator pitch, but i suppose i should
May 25 20:36:53 silentfury: seriously.
May 25 20:36:57 *silentfury labels K.W. Jeter as a threat to the human race.
May 25 20:37:06 hey Dubya! go get em!
May 25 20:37:13 i think the feeling
may be mutual, unfortunately :(
May 25 20:37:26 good author though
May 25 20:37:41 god this moderator is annoying
May 25 20:37:46 how about: in an age of ubitqutous access to info, copyright becomes a repressive regine to keep information out of the hands of the people who need it most, for instance minorities and the third world populations
May 25 20:37:48 malaclyps: Ooh. How long does each member of the panel who writes material covered under copyright and who earns money from such expect to make a living off of his or her copyright in say, ten years.
May 25 20:38:06 Harlon: an "audience of scofflaws"
May 25 20:38:24 Harlon to Brad: "do not pull funny faces, motherfucker, when I'm talking"
May 25 20:38:25 malaclyps: I'd retort with "we keep you in bread and circuses"
May 25 20:38:35 he called him a motherfucker?
May 25 20:38:40 yup
May 25 20:38:41 not smart.
May 25 20:38:42 fuuuuuck
May 25 20:39:01 what i wouldn't do for force-grip sometimes.
May 25 20:39:27 malaclyps: If I had money, I'd pay you a vast sum to rush the stage and either pie or punch Ellison the fuck out right now.
May 25 20:39:49 malaclyps: What questions is the audience asking?
May 25 20:39:56 harlon: "I have never taken anything of an internet" May 25 20:40:09 how can people take this guy seriously
May 25 20:40:16 harlon*really*winning over the audience now May 25 20:40:37 quinnums: Hrm. I'd say that's only excessive copyright enforcement. I see copyright as legal credit where credit is due, and a defense against having people purloin one's work.
May 25 20:40:46 ah
May 25 20:40:57 i don't believe in the author's right to credit
May 25 20:41:01 but like i siad
May 25 20:41:02 malaclyps: Really? What is he speaking to that the audience agrees with so much?
May 25 20:41:05 i wish i was taping this
May 25 20:41:09 i don't have an elevator pitch
May 25 20:41:18 dnm: no, being sarcastic. he just accused them all of being scofflaws
May 25 20:41:31 quinnums: Agreed to a point, which is why I was somewhat ambivalent about putting myself firmly on either side of the fence.
May 25 20:41:49 malaclyps: And they liked that? I guess I'd have to be there to understand.
May 25 20:42:03 malaclyps: Oh wait. Duh. Never mind, I'm dumb.
May 25 20:42:09 dnm: no, i was just joking. at that point the audience was shouting at harlon
May 25 2:42 quinnums: I think, more basically, that a culture of credit is pretty piss- poor.
May 25 20:43:00 quinnums: But I haven't done enough serious thinking and debate to shore up my position and outlook.
May 25 20:43:00* tvoj thinks we will all be happier if we just chip in for halan's medication and be done with t
May 25 20:43:02 it
May 25 20:43:10 the only rights i think an author should have is recognition for their work.. or moral rights.
May 25 20:43:12 *dnm tries to think of a half-decent question
May 25 20:43:38 hm
May 25 20:43:41 dnm: if i can, i'll ask the question about making money in ten years time
May 25 20:43:45 do you think Ellison would know about Noir by Jeter?
May 25 20:43:50 not sure
May 25 20:44:13 malaclyps: Cool, thanks.
May 25 20:44:27 You NTK people go to all the cool shows. ;]
May 25 20:44:28 "What do you think of KW. Jeter's views on violating copyright in "Noir" ? May 25 20:44:38 if he doesn't know and agree, boom
May 25 20:45:10 How old is Ellison now? I forget. I last saw him on what I think was the last Late Late Show with Tom Snyder years back.
May 25 20:45:16 dnm: he's about 68
May 25 20:45:28 he was really young when he started
May 25 20:45:31 hrm. so how's his heart?
May 25 20:45:36 I think that still makes him junior to Bradbury, who is like 80 now, IIRC.
May 25 20:45:43 maybe we could induce a heart attack by getting him riled up.
May 25 20:45:54 Hard to get him riled up, I'd imagine.
May 25 20:45:56 How old is Delaney? I wish he was there. He'd probably have somethign more intelligent to say.
May 25 20:45:56 "death by copyright"
May 25 20:46:14 harlon is claiming that he can hack down any user
May 25 20:46:21 ?
May 25 20:46:26 hack down any user? or track
May 25 20:46:33 H4r10n 311i50n
May 25 20:46:34 hack into their computers and shut down pirates
May 25 20:46:34 dnm: i'm thought about it a lot about it, but not enough to encapsulate it in a short speech
May 25 20:46:57 heh
May 25 20:47:00 quinnums: Sounds like a conversation best had over good beer.
May 25 20:47:06 doesn't he know it's a life sentence in jail for hacking ? :)
May 25 20:47:19 a question from a librarian (she said she was a librarian and got an*instant* round of applause)
May 25 20:47:30 librarian's rock
May 25 20:47:36 silentfury: ISP guy in the audience promised to "take him down if he does that to my customers"
May 25 20:47:39 it's just something i've got to write up and put on the net. with no name on it :)
May 25 20:48:11 librarian asks about doctrine of fair sale, and how that works in the digital world
May 25 20:48:13 that reminds me... I noticed that whywork has no name on it
May 25 20:48:22 malaclyps: ask him if he's aware of the laws regarding hacking in the USA Patriot Act
May 25 20:48:35 silentfury: That gets off topic quickly.
May 25 20:48:45 why work needs more love
May 25 20:48:52 there isn't anyone behind it anymore
May 25 20:49:20 not if he said he could hack any user
May 25 20:49:30 I'm still curious about what such an ensemble of *speculative thinkers* who make money by the good graces of profitable copyright plan to do to continue to eat in a decade.
May 25 20:49:39 dnm: will ask now
May 25 20:49:50 malaclyps: You rock.
May 25 20:50:18 you know what would be funny
May 25 20:50:20 I hope Ellison gets into a tiff. I'd have for him to reply with something lame and off the cuff.
May 25 20:50:32 doesn't Turkey have really really really strict computer laws
May 25 20:50:35 like hacking is death May 25 20:50:48 they almost called security on him ealier... it was wild...
May 25 20:50:50 silentfury: I think Turkey has really really strict everything laws.
May 25 20:51:00 quinnums: You there as well?
May 25 20:51:01 be funny if ellison "hacked" someone in turkey
May 25 20:51:04 and they extradited him.
May 25 20:51:05 yes
May 25 20:51:10 next to mala
May 25 20:51:15 quinnums: Sweet.
May 25 20:51:36 quinnums: Sad to have missed meeting you folks at ETCON. Cory's talked about you and I was looking forward to it.
May 25 20:53:30 *silentfury thinks the strategy should be to induce a heart attack by riling him up.
May 25 20:53:45 harlan is useful
May 25 20:53:49 now that would be poetic justice.
May 25 20:54:07 useful? sounds like the idiot is useful at wasting space and resources
May 25 20:54:09 nothing more.
May 25 20:54:12 silentfury: would matter little, since a crotchety-old-coot vacuum would form and be filled instantly
May 25 20:54:25 You need a Devil's Advocate.
May 25 20:54:40 dnm: harlon says you've asked a stupid question
May 25 20:54:50 Preferrably a smart one too, like Ellison.
May 25 20:54:50 harlan exists in a space that could be oppupied by someone far more dangerous
May 25 20:54:50 moderator has rewritten it
May 25 20:54:53 malaclyps: I would expect nothing less.
May 25 20:55:00 malaclyps: Oh? To what?
May 25 20:55:07 malaclyps: Moderator?
May 25 20:55:16 mderator says "What would life be like without copyright"
May 25 20:55:26 malaclyps: Lame!
May 25 20:55:45 malaclyps: That's not very bright.
May 25 20:55:51 malaclyps: And it's also not what I asked.*sigh*May 25 20:55:57 rather swift moderator there
May 25 20:55:58 malaclyps: Thanks for trying though, I do appreciate it.
May 25 20:56:34 hm
May 25 20:56:41 harlon: pan and columbian univ did study of freelance writers - reavealed that 6000 authors create all of the published content
May 25 20:56:49 malaclyps: This reminds me of those question and answer sessions where the questions are all palateable and the answers all rhetoric.
May 25 20:56:50 no, 90%
May 25 20:56:55 he said 90%
May 25 20:56:56 ok
May 25 20:57:16 how about "If you claim you can track down and hack any pirate, how come you haven't located Osama Bin Laden?"
May 25 20:57:34 harlon says, in summary, authors do not make much money
May 25 20:57:38 and he said they earn 2600 a year, but i think he accidently left off a 0
May 25 20:57:48 duh, that's the publishers who rape them
May 25 20:57:49 and every thinks they make a fortune
May 25 20:58:12 Harlan Ellison prolly has a decent fortune, and stephen king.
May 25 20:58:16 Most authors don't.
May 25 20:58:16 i don't understand why this helps his argument
May 25 20:58:43 malaclyps: do you think that would be a good q regarding bin laden?
May 25 20:58:46 malaclyps: How do you go about asking questions? Is there some mediated interface people are typing them into for the moderator?
May 25 20:58:55 no, i raised my hand and asked
May 25 20:59:04 i guess he doesn't express much confidence that other means of distributing creative works could result i a living wage
May 25 20:59:06 they liked it that the internet had a question to ask
May 25 20:59:14 i would expect one of two responses
May 25 20:59:18 "Who is osama bin laden"
May 25 20:59:19 malaclyps: Ah. And only Ellison had a non-response?
May 25 20:59:32 malaclyps: Indeed. The Internet has many questions.
May 25 20:59:32 dnm: harlon's kinda hijacked the answer
May 25 20:59:49 malaclyps: how about "If you claim you can track down and hack any pirate, how come you haven't located Osama Bin Laden?"
May 25 20:59:51* dnm wonders if feedharlonellison.com is taken
May 25 21:00:05 heheheheheh gooooood dnm
May 25 21:00:21 feedharlonellison to cyber pirates
May 25 21:00:31 wipo would fuck u over tho
May 25 21:00:32 heh
May 25 21:00:33 :( May 25 21:01:18 malaclyps: is my question a little too out-there? :)
May 25 21:01:42 silentfury: i think i've blown my wad in the question asking capacity
May 25 21:01:50 malaclyps: The Internet would like to know what it has done to Harlon Ellison to invoke such unmititgated wrath beyond provide such services as amazon.com with which he continues to rake in the bucks.
May 25 21:01:51 quinn?
May 25 21:02:28 dnm: he says he's not pissed off at the Internet
May 25 21:02:41 silentfury: I'd hate to ask an Osama bin Question at a scifi con.
May 25 21:02:59 this is a sci-fi con?
May 25 21:03:02 harlon - "my outrage would be the same as if i was talking to someone living under a tyrant, saying they can't change anything, and making money out of the current situation"
May 25 21:03:03 wtf is ellison doing there
May 25 21:03:23 malaclyps: Oh? Is this like child abuse then? He's not really hurting me, he loves me?
May 25 21:03:38 harlon: "you don't understand that there are *people* involved"
May 25 21:03:55 I understand he doesn't understand there are people involved, and you are but one.
May 25 21:04:23 silentfury: harlon ellison is "Special Guest" here
May 25 21:04:32 wooh it's getting hot in here
May 25 21:04:46 harlon promises this will be the last thing he will say
May 25 21:04:46 s/you are/he is/
May 25 21:04:50 dnm: my point by asking that type of question would be to show how much of an idiot he already is. :)
May 25 21:05:21 silentfury: Yeah, but you need to at least wage war on the same relevant turf. Comments like him hacking users are just meant as misdirection anyway.
May 25 21:05:39 harlon summary: most of the people who come to this con don't give a shit about science fiction
May 25 21:06:03 harlon: sf has become the feeding ground for many small fandoms, videogamers, wargamers
May 25 21:06:30 people also come to sf cons to dream about a world of which he isn't a part of.
May 25 21:06:33 malaclyps: harlon doubletalk descrambled: "most of the people who came to this con don't give a shit about my science fiction, the only science fiction worth anything"
May 25 21:07:20 My opinion of Harlon Ellison has dropped like 92304572934574392349e39 percentage points in the last half hour.
May 25 21:08:02 be funny if someone called the county mental health centre on this guy
May 25 21:08:11 that's it for harlan?
May 25 21:08:23 er harlon.
May 25 21:08:38 quinn asked what about people who can't afford stuff that's under copyright
May 25 21:08:44 malaclyps/quinnums: What was the reaction/fallout from Ellison calling Templeton a motherfucker anyway?
May 25 21:08:45 moderator has rewritten the question again
May 25 21:09:05 And will someone fucking gag this Stalinist moderating bitch?!
May 25 21:09:05 dnm: everyone worked really hard to calm them down
May 25 21:09:21 dnm: i'm probably being a bit hard on him
May 25 21:09:24 really?
May 25 21:09:27 dnm: he's got a scary job May 25 21:09:31 *silentfury would like to see Brad kick his ass.
May 25 21:09:32 malaclyps: True.
May 25 21:10:09 how cans at they just took down our table number and let us ask the questions from the mic we had at the table.
May 25 21:12:37 silentfury: It's inefficient if you want to ask questions. It's efficient if you want to control ruckus and lame questions deisgned to troll.
May 25 21:12:56 true.
May 25 21:13:19 quinnums's question is important, I wish someone had actually asked it verbatim and gotten an intelligent answer.
May 25 21:13:37 I suppose Ellison, being the age he is, is all about Capitalism Now
May 25 21:13:40 basically the last five minutes has been quinn trying to ask her question again, and have it elided over
May 25 21:13:46 But that's perhaps a bit hasty of me.
May 25 21:13:48 dnm: which question?
May 25 21:14:02 --> AaronSw (~Snak@63.149.73.20) has joined #infoanarchy
May 25 21:14:05 tvoj: What about people who can't afford works under coypright
May 25 21:14:11 did somebody say copyright panel?
May 25 21:14:14 hehe
May 25 21:14:15 dnm: oh yeah
May 25 21:15:49 question to audience: how many have infringed copyright (lots), how many felt bad about it (not many), how many did when they were ignorant and now won't do it again (a few)
May 25 21:16:12 hey AaronSw, you're in the right channel
May 25 21:16:30 harlon is still after citizen 513
May 25 21:16:39 malaclyps: That pre-supposes a working knowledge of all of copyright law everywhere. The logic is faulty. Ellison has surely jay-walked in his lifetime without feeling guilty about it.
May 25 21:16:46 how many people think harlon ellison is a total lunatic who doesn't deserve to be human
May 25 21:16:55* silentfury sees everyones hand up
May 25 21:17:16 silentfury: You're ad hominem-ing
May 25 21:17:21 harlon offers five grand for citizen 513 leading to his arrest and condition
May 25 21:17:36 "I am Citizen 513" a la Sparticus.
May 25 21:18:05 I am TK-421!
May 25 21:18:21 I am Darth Vader
May 25 21:18:28 * dnm makes t-shirts on CafePress reading "I am Citizen 513"
May 25 21:19:43 --- No ping reply for 91 seconds, disconnecting.
May 25 21:19:43 --- Disconnected (). **** ENDING LOGGING AT Sat
May 25 21:19:43 2002
May 25 21:21:36 is anyone blogging the 5k reward? must happen... quickly... :)
May 25 21:21:36 can't get to my damn server... argh!
May 25 21:21:48 <\-- malaclyps has quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
May 25 21:21:51 oh, btw, harlon says you're all "very funny" for the Spartacus joke and that he'll talk to you after puberty
May 25 21:21:56 --- You are now known as malaclyps
May 25 21:21:56 -NickServ- This nickname is owned by someone else
May 25 21:21:56 -NickServ- If this is your nickname, type /msg NickServ IDENTIFY
May 25 21:22:04 >NickServ< IDENTIFY il1ken1cks
May 25 21:22:04 -NickServ- Password accepted - you are now recognized
May 25 21:22:04 --- services. sets mode +e malaclyps
May 25 21:22:04 -MemoServ- You have no new memos
May 25 21:22:21 Puberty scares me. I don't plan on doing it. Ever.
May 25 21:22:53 http://www.cafepress.com/citizen513
May 25 21:22:54 <\-- dri has quit ()
May 25 21:23:38 So, it's Ellison's joke about "any random citizen" ?
May 25 21:23:54 anyway it's been fun
May 25 21:23:59 i'm hittin the sack
May 25 21:24:45 It's time like this I wish I had Photoshop.
May 25 21:25:01 Microsoft Photo Editor wont let me insert text.
May 25 21:25:05 But I do have Paint.
May 25 21:25:43 phew!
May 25 21:25:47 okay, fights over...
May 25 21:26:11 he's just exchanged cards with the ISP guy
May 25 21:26:28 Why are all my generic close dialog warnings in German now? I blame Qpad.
May 25 21:26:33 he says he's going to sue those motherfuckers as soon as his "hellhounds" see anything infringing on their site
May 25 21:27:07 i don't know, i think the most interesting bit about this was the audience
May 25 21:27:18 I really don't like it when my PowerBook randomly decides not to power on.
May 25 21:27:36 who were admitted infringers, but pro-authors - harlon got applause and booed
May 25 21:27:44 in equal measures, i think
May 25 21:27:44 Hrm.
May 25 21:28:03 Ejecting the battery allows me to turn it on. Strange.
May 25 21:28:10 odd
May 25 21:28:18 This is the second time it's done this.
May 25 21:28:31 --> burtonator (~burton@adsl-67-112-30-210.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net) has joined #infoanarchy
May 25 21:28:36 The battery is only holding an hours worth of charge too, but this was in sleep mode and on mains.
May 25 21:28:57 And when I go to turn it on, it's *off*, but the battery is fully charged and it's still on mains.
May 25 21:29:03 <\-- jkl (~k@ool-18bb3e4f.dyn.optonline.net) has left #INFOANARCHY
May 25 21:29:09 Only ejecting the battery and then pressing power on gives me any joy.
May 25 21:29:28 malaclyps: Weird. What's the mood like now?
May 25 21:29:34 What a lonely life.
May 25 21:30:00 * dnm heads straight back to #bbokwarez
May 25 21:30:13 err, s/bbokwarez/bookwarez/
May 25 21:30:30 I don't like this repetitve churning disk noise on boot up.
May 25 21:30:58 dnm: just talked to the moderator ... he was saying that harlon is a smart guy, but just doesn't understand the tech
May 25 21:31:01 well, du
May 25 21:31:06 --- du/duh :Unknown command
May 25 21:31:22 is someone going to blog the $5 for citizen 513?
May 25 21:31:29 malaclyps: Apparently.
May 25 21:31:31 i think jerrypournelle has already publicised the case
May 25 21:31:40 malaclyps: I would, but no one reads my blog for that kind of thing.
May 25 21:31:59 i was going to do a story about in NTK about a year ago, but we couldn't see the news angle - they've been going after that guy for years
May 25 21:32:02 I'm still trying to make an image of text so I can make Citizen 513 shirts
May 25 21:32:08 hehe
May 25 21:32:25 --- tvoj is now known as tvoj_
May 25 21:32:43 okay, i'm going to go hang out with the klingons and the girls
A test of various headers A header paragraph.
A footer paragraph.
--> --> --> < type 'exceptions.KeyError'>| Python 2.6.5: /usr/bin/python Sun Jan 13 04:15:48 2013 ---|--- A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred.
/var/www/www.aaronsw.com/2002/googler.cgi in ****()
` 30 cgitb.enable()
31 c = cgi.FieldStorage()
32 q = c['q'].value 33 r = go(q)
` 34 print 'Status: 302 Helpful Redirect' q undefined , c = FieldStorage(None, None, [MiniFieldStorage('secret', 'on')]), ]. value = [MiniFieldStorage('secret', 'on')] /usr/lib/python2.6/cgi.py in getitem (self=FieldStorage(None, None, [MiniFieldStorage('secret', 'on')]), key='q')
` 539 if item.name == key: found.append(item)
540 if not found: 541 raise KeyError, key
542 if len(found) == 1: 543 return found[0]
builtin KeyError = <type 'exceptions.KeyError'>, key = 'q'
< type 'exceptions.KeyError'>: 'q'
``args = ('q',)
``message = 'q'
The Web, and the Internet, have been built on an hourglass structure. At the "waist" is a piece that binds what would otherwise be a disconnected set of systems and communities (the bottom of the hourglass) which in turn makes it possible to create new applications and tools using this unified scheme (the top half of the hourglass). For the Internet, this was IP, which hooked together the various smaller networks into one big Internet. This in turn made all sorts of Internet applications possible, like FTP, Gopher and others. The Web pulled the same unification trick, unifying these disparate protocols with the URI, a generalized identification scheme for all of them. This made tools like the Web browser possible, which combined these all into a unified view of interconnecting links.
Now the Semantic Web is doing it again.
At the waist of the Semantic Web hourglass is the triple. Almost simplicity itself, the triple is just three URIs in a row. That's it. Simple, eh? Sometimes to make things easier for ourself we represent data-URIs as strings (surrounded by quotes). Here's an example triple: http://a.org/Overview.html http://purl.org/dc/terms/modified "2002-05-21" .
The first part of the triple is often called the subject, and is the thing being discussed. The middle part is the predicate or link type and defines what exactly we're saying. (In this case we're saying when the subject was last modified.) The final part is the object or value and is the thing we're acctually saying. So together these mean that the thing identified by http://a.org/Overview.html was last modified on "2002-05-21".
You can see this as many things. Traditional hypertext people see these as typed links: the referring page, the type of the link and the referred-to page. Database people see these as relational database entries: the primary key, the column name and the field value. Graph people see these as directed labeled graphs. Math people see them as binary relations.
Tuplespace people see them as 3-tuples. XML people might see them as an element, an attribute name and an attribute value. Logic people see them as dyadic predicates (or one three-place predicate). (Do you see them some other way?)
The point, however, is that the triple can unify these communities and practices. Once we've done that we can begin to share tools and systems.
If data is in triples then it's easy to merge (just combine the triples). Once we've got the triples combined, we can share protocols, interchange formats, query languages, and so on. The database tools can also be used to store and search graphs, links, etc. Graphing tools can be used to visualize databases, link structures and XML. And so on -- each community has its own tool to share and many other tools to use.
And we can create new systems that take advantage of the overlap between these communities and create things that weren't possible before.
Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com) Valid HTML
by David Gelernter
November 7, 2002, New York Times: Circuits
(original).
Jon Keegan The end of the Microsoft trial is great news whatever you think of the defendant - because the trial was all about the past, and we in the technology world have no more time to waste on that topic.
The trial focused on Microsoft's Windows operating system - on the power Microsoft gets from Windows' huge worldwide penetration; on the burdens that other software companies bear because of their limited access to the Windows software; on accusations that Microsoft was suppressing innovation. The courts have officially labeled the gigantic software company a monopoly, and Microsoft will be subject to careful scrutiny for abusive activity.
Meanwhile, operating systems are lapsing into senile irrelevance. An operating system connects the user (and the user's software) to the ensemble of machines we call a computer. But nowadays users no longer want to be connected to computers. They want to be connected to information, a claim that sounds vague but is clear and specific.
Every piece of digital information you own or share will appear (in the near future) in one universal structure. (Just ask Bill Gates: as he said cogently last July, "Why are my document files stored one way, my contacts another way and my e-mail and instant-messaging buddy list still another, and why aren't they related to my calendar or to one another, and easy to search en masse?") A universal structure demands universal access: you'll be able to tune in this structure from any Net-connected computer anywhere.
I have time for only one screen in my life. That screen had better give me access to everything, everywhere.
What is this universal information structure? A narrative stream, which says, "Let me tell you a story. " The system shows you a 3-D stream of electronic documents flowing through time. The future (where you store your calendar, reminders, plans) flows into the present (where you keep material you're working on right now) and on into the past (where every e-mail message and draft, digital photo, application, virtual Rolodex card, video and audio clip and Web bookmark is stored, in addition to all those calendar notes and reminders that used to be part of the future and have since flowed into the past to be archived forever).
And so the organization of your digital information reflects the shape of your life, not the shape of a 1940's Steelcase file cabinet. Storage space and computing power are dirt cheap; our task isn't to "use them efficiently," it's to "squander them creatively." Instead of searching through your stream for some document, you focus it (as if you were focusing an information beam - which is like a flashlight beam cutting through the digital fog, except that the beam is made of information instead of light). You wind up with a selection of documents, a "substream" that tells some particular story. Your narrative stream as a whole consists of all the interwoven stories that make up your life - your own personal ones as well as the stories of all the groups and communities you belong to.
This kind of information management is simpler, more powerful and more natural than the Steelcase-inspired software we've got today - the files, the folders, the desktops and all those other high-tech office accessories straight out of 1946.
How do I know it will work? Because our company has built it, and it does. (A preliminary desktop version of narrative information management can be downloaded free at our Web site, www.scopeware.com.) Microsoft has similar goals for its Longhorn system, but Longhorn won't be available for two years. We needed one-screen narrative information management yesterday. Our software is up and running today.
Windows is no tool for the future and doesn't claim to be. Technology's future can't possibly be based on treating computers as if they were hyped-up desks and file cabinets - passive pieces of ugly furniture. Computers are active machines, and information-management software had better treat them that way. But Windows can play a central role in giving the future a leg up. It can supply a stable, ubiquitous platform for the future to stand on.
We built our system on Microsoft Windows because Windows is a reliable, solid, reasonably priced, nearly universal platform - and for the software future, "universal" is nonnegotiable. We need to run the system on as many computers as possible and manage the maximum range of electronic documents.
Of course, another operating system, Linux, is also clamoring for attention. Linux and Windows are both children of the 70's: Linux grew out of Unix, invented by AT&T; Windows is based on the revolutionary work of Xerox research. In technology years, these loyal and devoted operating systems are each approximately 4,820 years old. (Technology years are like dog years, only shorter.)Each is nonetheless still solid enough to be a good, steady platform for the next step in software. But Windows is the marketplace victor and has now won a decisive legal imprimatur. There is no technical reason for us to move to Linux; why should we switch? Why should our customers? Some argue for Linux on economic and cultural grounds: Microsoft, people say, has driven up prices and suppressed innovation. But this is a ticklish argument at best: after all, over the decade of Microsoft's hegemony, computing power has grown cheaper and cheaper. Innovation has thrived. Our software is innovative; it has not been suppressed. On the contrary, more and more people get interested.
Operating systems are the moldy basements of computing. We used to live down there, but are now moving upstairs to healthier quarters. We rely on the courts and antitrust laws to keep Microsoft from abusing its enormous power. We need Microsoft itself to be the universal stepladder that lets us climb out of our hole and smell the roses.
published by Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com)
Kudos to the Radio UserLand team -- it certainly passed the 5-minute-test.
posted January 13, 2002 05:22 AM () #
*Kudos to the Radio UserLand
of Aaron Swartz
/2002 is a home for random things I want to publish.
-
Source code for an AIM to IRC bridge in Python using Twisted, another version
-
Aaron's Text Converter (source) convers a basic form of structured text into HTML
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CGI Assistance, the beginnings of some Python code to make CGI programming easier
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display.cgi lets you display random text in your web browser
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Draft of a Python library to make it easier to deal with HTML
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- Beginnings of a Python RDF library: namespaces.py, rdf.py
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rss2email: get newsfeeds by email.
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The You'll-Agree-With-Me-When-You're-Older/More Experienced/Male Logical Fallacy
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draft of "A URN Namespace for PGP Users" (HTML, nroff, text, XML)
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Draft of "application/rdf+xml Media Type Registration" (HTML, nroff, text, XML)
-
[Excerpts from The Elements of Typographic Style
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Photo of Lawrence "Larry" Lessig Aaron Swartz talking (smaller) - doesn't Larry look like...
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Support for Light Font Variants (requires Gill Sans)
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Small Caps Test (requires Big Caslon)
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An example of the hypothetical
aaron3language, based on Notation3 -
stuffed .nib showing an improved subscription info window for NetNewsWire Lite
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a graph showing a simple RDF statement about who is invited to the AZNY Blogger get together
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Graph of the length of copyright, compared to the age of Mickey Mouse
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Government Backs Away From Crypto Regulations, a press release by Daniel J. Bernstein
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IRC logs from the Harlon Ellison and Cory Doctorow chat at the Bay Area SF Con
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five minute attempt at code for tracking the birth of a meme
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Aaron Swartz on the BBC World Service's NewsHour (1.8MB Ogg, 3.2MB MP3, HTML transcript)
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Aaron Swartz on NPR's Weekend Edition (abstract, 1.7MB Ogg, 2.7MB MP3, streaming RealAudio).
-
Teenager in a million (from The Sunday Times)
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McCusker emails (offsite)
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- Seth David Schoen: classic photo of (from the Linux Revolt), floating ASCII head of (by Nick Moffit), letter of
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Rick Moen Will Be There, Will You? (translations edited by Seth Schoen)
Also visit: The Unofficial Judge Alex Kozinski Site
Messages are stored on an HTTP server and identified by their URI. HTTP's Accept: headers can be used to allow multiple message formats to compete. All implementations should support message/rfc822 for the foreseeable future.
Messages should use PGP encryption to ensure privacy.
The protocol for a user to send a message to his ISP is to be decided.
Recipients are identified by name @ fqdn. Notification is done to host fqdn using QMTP, except that messages are the URI of the message and the envelope sender address is omitted.
Typically fqdn is a dynamic DNS entry pointing to the user's current IP address.
Mailing lists are stored as a directory of messages. List messages are numbered sequentially, starting at 1. Messages are located at the concatenation of the mailing list URI and the message number. GETing the mailing list URI itself should return the number of the most recent message, with content-type text/plain.
A typical client will allow the user to retrieve all previous messages and then periodically check for most recent message number + 1.
Ask and you will receive. [Thanks](http://groups.yahoo.com/group/radio- userland/message/11017), Dave.
posted January 13, 2002 05:32 AM () #
*Ask and you will receive.
Kishore has a top-ranking blog.
I can't figure out how to edit the right-click-dock menu in Radio.
posted January 13, 2002 07:14 PM () #
*I can 't figure out how
Hmm, the status bar links to an Editors Only site.
posted January 13, 2002 08:30 PM () #
*Hmm, the status bar links
One of the exciting aspects about Radio UserLand is that it looks like I'll be able to script it in Python, using the Python OSA.
posted January 13, 2002 10:15 PM () #
*One of the exciting aspects
In the following famous picture (mirror), Seth David Schoen is holding an envelope containing a letter he sent to the editor of Wired Magazize about shrinkwrap licenses. On the envelope, it says:
NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE THIS IS A LEGAL AGREEMENT between you and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, 454 Shotwell Street, San Francisco, CA 94110.
By opening this envelope, you agree to print the contents of the enclosed letter in Wired 9.11, or, at your option, any later magazine.
Wired apparently did not print his letter in 9.11, at least in their online version. But Seth really did himself in by saying "or, at your option, any later magazine" -- Wired could indefinitely delay printing his letter saying, they planned to put it in some later magazine. (This has an interesting similarity to the Eldred case.)
Conclusion: EFF lawyers are bad at being evil.
To watch: MacMegaSite.
posted January 13, 2002 11:42 PM () #
*To watch: MacMegaSite.
!/usr/bin/perl # # mailman-archive-to-rss -- scrape the archives of a MailMan list and # convert to an RSS feed using
XML::RSS. # # To use, either edit and update the @LISTS array, or run with -help # to view the options used to specify list details on the command line. # Requires XML::RSS. # # Released under the same license as Perl itself. # # Nov 28 2001 jm # use strict; use vars qw(@LISTS); @LISTS = ( { rss_version => '1.0', archive => 'http://lists.userland.com/pipermail/radio-outline/%Y-%B/date.html', description => 'The Radio UserLand Outliner list', num_visible => 10, scrape_text => 1, rss_output => '/var/www/aaronsw/2002/radio-outline.rss', } ); sub usage { warn " usage: mailman-archive-to-rss [ [ -option "value" ] ... ] options: (default value specified) "; foreach my $opt (sort keys %{$LISTS[0]}) { printf STDERR " -%-12s "%s"\n", $opt, $LISTS[0]->{$opt}; } die "\n"; } while ($_ = shift @ARGV) { /^-(\S+)/ or usage(); if (!defined $LISTS[0]->{$1}) { usage(); } $LISTS[0]->{$1} = (shift @ARGV); @LISTS = ($LISTS[0]);
remove any other lists } use XML::RSS; use LWP::Simple; use HTML::TokeParser; my $DEBUG = 0; foreach my $list (@LISTS)
{ my $rss = XML::RSS->new (version => $list->{rss_version}); my $archiveurl = $list->{archive}; use POSIX qw(strftime);
$archiveurl = strftime ($archiveurl, gmtime()); #print "list: $archiveurl\n"; my $content; my $file; if ($DEBUG) { $file
= 'date.html'; } else { $file = get_cachefile_for_url ($archiveurl); my $rcode = mirror ($archiveurl, $file); if
(handle_http_errors ($archiveurl, $rcode)) { next; } } open (IN, "<$file") or die "cannot open $file"; $content = join
('', ); close IN; my $archiver = 'mailman'; if ($content =~ //) { $archiver = 'mhonarc'; } my $urlbase = $archiveurl;
$list->{num_visible} - 1); } else { my
This is tricky, to catch the "> quote blah chopped\nin mail\n" case my $newtext = ''; my $lastwasquote = 0; my
$lastwasblank = 0; foreach (split (/^/,$text)) { s/^</I>//gi; if (/^\s*$/) { $lastwasblank = 1; $newtext .= "\n"; next; } else { $lastwasblank = 0; } if (/^\s*\S*\s*(?:>|>)/i) { $lastwasquote = 1; $newtext .= "\002"; next; } else { if ($lastwasquote && !$lastwasblank && length($) < 20) { next; } $newtext .= $; $lastwasquote = 0; } } $text = $newtext;
collapse \002's into 1 [...] $text =~ s/\s*\002[\002\s]*/\n\n[...]\n\n/igs; # PGP header $text =~ s/-----BEGIN PGP
SIGNED MESSAGE-----.?\n\n//gs; # MIME crud $text =~ s/\n--.+?\n\n//gs; $text =~ s/This message is in MIME
format.?\n--.+?\n\n//gs; $text =~ s/This is a multipart message in MIME format.?\n--.+?\n\n//gs; $text =~
s/^Content-\S+:.$//gm; # quoting lines: $text =~ s/^\n*[^\n]+
(?:quote|quotation|wrote|said|mentioned|scribbled):\n//gs; # trim sigs etc. $text =~ s/\n-- \n.$//gs; # trad-style
$text =~ s/\n_____+.$//gs; # Hotmail $text =~ s/\n-----.$//gs; # catches PGP sigs # now trim down to about 300 chars
$text =~ s/^(.{250,300}[\.\!?;\[\]]).$/$1 \[...\]/gs or
Jeremiah does appear to be a fellow Mac and Linux user. Another thing we have in common. posted January 13, 2002 11:38 PM () #
Jeremiah does appear to be
Kishore has a top-ranking blog. Howdy! posted January 13, 2002 11:27 PM () #
Kishore has a top-ranking blog.
[What follows is a report from [redacted].] I attended the Copyright Office Section 1201 Rulemaking Hearings yesterday. I was planning on also going today, but something came up at the office that I had to tend to.
Yesterday’s proceedings did not present anything out of the ordinary, other than comments by a gentleman named George Ziemann, who attended the panel on behalf of “himself,” stating bluntly that the Copyright Office is “losing its relevance” and that he would rather “donate his copyrights to Leonard Lessig’s [sic] Creative Commons than file for copyright registration with the Copyright Office.” The audience laughed to itself, and we all just kind of put our heads down and went “oh jeeze.” Needless to say, his confrontational comments made everyone in the room a little uncomfortable, and spurred some interesting facial expressions from the Copyright Office attorneys.
Brewster Kahle from the Internet Archive gave a great presentation (as did his counsel, my friend Marian Selvaggio from Wilson Sonsini), arguing for an exemption to circumvent access control mechanisms for purposes of archiving software.
The Internet Archive archives software and games (amongst other things) by copying the data onto hard drives and then running emulation programs to recreate the original operating environment. Mr. Kahle gave a cool slideshow while contemporaneously showing off actual disks and game boxes from many software and game titles we all grew up on. At one point he broke out a Ziplock bag containing an original 5 1/4" floppy disk from an Apple II. Mr. Kahle’s cool exhibits, quirky personality, and energy breathed refreshing life into the proceedings.
Steve Metalitz responded to Mr. Kahle’s requests for the exemption by repeatedly urging that since many software publishers from the early 80s, such as Microsoft, Lotus, etc., are still “being actively traded on NASDAQ everyday” that Mr. Kahle should simply ask for permission to circumvent the archaic anti-access and copying devices used back then (such as dongles and the like) rather than have the Copyright Office grant an exemption for this purpose. Amongst George Ziemann’s intermittent interruptions, Mr. Kahle responded to Mr. Metalitz’s comments by saying “you know, when we visit a company like Lotus and show them our copy of their software from 1984 to ask if they can help us decrypt its access control mechanisms, most of the time these guys are like WOW!, COOL!, WE HAVEN’T SEEN THAT THING IN AGES! CAN WE HAVE THAT?” Mr. Kahle then stated that these companies no longer maintain the hardware and software devices necessary to decrypt the aging software, and stated that software companies are in the business of releasing software not preserving antiquated versions, and that asking a software company for permission or help to decrypt their software is not an option. Mr. Kahle and Marian Selvaggio put forth a very compelling case for the exemption, and it will be interesting to see how responsive the Copyright Office will be.
The other highlight of the day was watching the discussions in Session Three pertaining to sound recordings and musical works. More specifically, the discussion centered around anti-copying devices the record labels have been using to prevent CDs from playing in computers. Panelists included Gwen Hinze and Ren Bucholz from the EFF, Robin Marks from IP Justice, Steven Marks from the RIAA, and Mark Belinsky from Macrovision, Inc. (a company making DRM technology for the music industry). It was very difficult to hear Gwen Hinze’s comments, which were very soft spoken, but many of her comments were echoed by the louder Robin Marks from IP Justice, who basically said that the anti-copying mechanisms effectively serve as anti-access measures, and are denying consumers of their reasonable expectations when they purchase CDs. Steven Marks from the RIAA responded by saying that only 9 titles have been released with such encryption in the United States, and that complaints from users have been few.
Responding to IP Justice’s comment that consumers should be able to play a CD in any device of their choosing by virtue of the fact that they own the CD, the RIAA argued that consumers do not have this right and that it is instead a luxury that consumers to date have incidentally enjoyed. Mark Belinsky then stated that as multiple formats of CD and DVD (blue laser, etc.) develop, the 5 1/2 inch disc will embody ubiquitous formats, and this will prevent playback of any given disc across various platforms even though each platform may read content from some form of 5 1/2" media. Overall, Steven Marks did a bang up job for the RIAA, making well-crafted arguments and maintaining a steady, calm and collected tone despite a few heated questions from one Copyright Office attorney who almost seemed to have it out for the RIAA.
Overall, the RIAA took the position that present and future technological devices are not intended to deny consumers of their expectations, and Mark Belinsky chimed in by saying that future CDs (to be released as soon as November I think he said) would contain "two sessions" of data — one for playback in traditional audio devices (stereos), and one for playback in computers running Windows XP, which should meet consumer’s expectations while addressing the RIAA’s concerns about piracy.
placed on the Web by Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com)
It doesn't seem like there's any way to get weblogs that don't have RSS into Radio's system/pages/news section. I've got an idea for a little script that does this. It'll be an RSS feed that returns a link to the webpage with a checksum as its description. When the page changes, the checksum will change, and Radio will think it's a new item and add a link to its News page.
posted January 13, 2002 08:33 PM () #
It doesn 't seem like there's
From ETCon 2002 Here's an annotated version of the schedule from the Emerging Technologies 2002 conference. Under each session are links to the blog entries about that session. If I didn't include yours, send me an email, preferrably with updated HTML for the page but at least with links to the entries.
More: Official Site
Monday, May 13 | Lawrence | Winchester | Stevens Creek | Bayshore 8:30am | XML Web Services Part 1: The Data Model
08:30 - 12:00 Rael Dornfest | Building Wireless Community Networks
Cory Doctorow, Slides, Rael Dornfest, Andy Oram | Programming C# and the .NET Framework
08:30 - 12:00 | 12:00pm | Lunch
12:00 - 13:15 | | | 1:15pm | XML Web Services Part 2: The Processing Model
13:15 - 16:45 | Writing JXTA Applications
13:15 - 16:45 | Creating and Consuming Web Services with .NET and OS X
Brian Jepson; James Duncan Davidson
13:15 - 16:45 Andy Oram | 6:00pm | Birds of a Feather sessions
18:00 - 22:00 | Searching Unstructured Data - Is Google the Best We Can Do?
18:00 - 19:00 | Birds of a Feather sessions
18:00 - 22:00 | Birds of a Feather sessions
18:00 - 22:00 6:30pm | Alternative Web Services Models
18:30 - 20:00 | | | Tuesday, May 14 8:30am | Keynote: The Shape of Things to Come
08:30 - 09:15 Wes Felter, Aaron Swartz, Rael Dornfest, Andy Oram, Matt Jones, Audio, [Joey deVilla](http://kode- fu.com/geek/2002_05_12_archive.shtml#76537172) | | | 9:15am | Keynote: Autonomic Computing: A Foundation for Progress, a Catalyst for Change
09:15 - 10:00 Wes Felter, Aaron Swartz, Rael Dornfest, Andy Oram, Audio, [Joey deVilla](http://kode- fu.com/geek/2002_05_12_archive.shtml#76537172), Joey again
| | | 10:00am | Morning Break
10:00 - 10:30 | | | 10:30am | Emerging Markets and Venture Funding -- 2002 Style
10:30 - 11:15 Slides (PPT) | Future of Computer Systems and Networks
Wes Felter, Aaron Swartz | SAML - An Enabling Technology for Single Sign- on
Andy Oram | 11:15am | Industry Applications
11:15 - 12:00 Slides (PPT) | Sensor Technologies for Responsive Environments
Rael Dornfest | The E Development Platform: Exploiting Virus-Ridden Software
Wes Felter, Aaron Swartz, Slides (HTML) | 12:00pm | Lunch
1:15pm | If You've Got The Killer App, How Come I'm Not Dead Yet?
13:15 - 14:00 Matt Jones, Slides (PPT) | The Path Toward Pervasive Computing: A Network Approach
Andy Oram, Slides (PPT) | The Internet Archive
Wes Felter, Aaron Swartz, Cory Doctorw, Matt Jones, Derrick Story | 2:00pm | Web Services for the Real World: A User-Centered Examination
14:00 - 14:45 Matt Jones, Links | Reputation Systems: Tools for Self- organization in Ad-hoc Networks
Jim McCoy; Roger Dingledine; Bryce Wilcox-O'Hearn
Andy Oram | Deploying the Google Web APIs Service
Cory Doctorow | 2:45pm | Emergent Interface for the Internet
14:45 - 15:30 (PPT)](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/presentations/et2002/ko_john.ppt) | Anonymity: Is it really worth it?
Joey deVilla | Worldwide Lexicon - Using P2P Technology To Build A Global Translation Dictionary
(PPT)](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/presentations/et2002/mcconnell_brian.ppt) | 3:30pm | Afternoon Break
15:30 - 16:00 | | | 4:00pm | Keynote: Rethinking The Modern Operating System
16:00 - 16:45 Wes Felter, Aaron Swartz, Andy Oram, Audio, InfoWorld | | | 5:15pm | The Software Infrastructure of SETI@home II
17:15 - 18:00 Slides (PPT) | Why Current Public-Key Infrastructures are a House of Cards
Andy Oram | The CloudDrive: A Massively Distributed Virtual Filesystem
17:15 - 18:00 | 7:00pm | Bridging the Digital Divide - The Pyramid Lake Paiute Community Wireless Project
19:00 - 20:00 | Worldwide Lexicon; Brian McConnell
19:00 - 20:30 | | User-Experience Design and the Next Levels of the Web
19:00 - 20:00 8:00pm | Is Web Activity Decreasing? How can it be increased?
20:00 - 21:00 | | | Wednesday, May 15 8:30am | Keynote: Emergence - From Real-World Cities to Online Communities
Rael Dornfest, Matt Webb, Matt Jones, [Joey deVilla](http://kode- fu.com/geek/2002_05_12_archive.shtml#76578469) | | | 9:15am | Discussion: Emergence
Clay Shirky; Geoff Cohen; Cory Doctorow; Rael Dornfest; Steven Johnson
Rob Flickenger (EtherPEG) | | | 10:00am | Morning Break
10:30am | Practical Experiences with Web Services and J2EE/CORBA
Slides (PPT) | Toward a Biological Framework for Computation
Matt Webb, Matt Jones | Wireless Network in NYC in the WTC Aftermath
10:30 - 23:15 | No More 'Monkey in the Middle': How Companies are Leveraging Edge Content
11:15am | Fault-Tolerant Realpolitik: Abandoning Reliability Online
Wes Felter, Aaron Swartz, Rael Dornfest, Matt Webb, [Matt fu.com/geek/2002_05_12_archive.shtml#76634388) | TINT - Advanced Decentralized Biological System
Slides (PPT) | The Promises of Wireless Technologies
Andy Oram | Building Web Services the Easy Way with BEA WebLogic Workshop
12:00pm | Lunch
1:15pm | How the Department of Defense & Intelligence Agencies Fund Emerging Technologies
Slides (PPT) | Networked Experience Design
Matt Webb, Matt Jones, [Joey deVilla](http://kode- fu.com/geek/2002_05_12_archive.shtml#76637454), PeterMe | PlayaNET : 802.11b in an Extreme Enviroment
13:15 - 14:00 | Interface Dynamics WuWu: How the World Will Collaborate
2:00pm | The Design of an Open Content Network
14:00 - 14:45 | Swarm Intelligence
Matt Webb, Matt Jones, Slides(PPT) | Continued Innovation in P2P File-Sharing
Andy Oram | Experience Design for Mobile Development: 2.5G/3G Authoring Techniques
2:45pm | Break / Meet the Exhibitors and Authors
14:45 - 16:00 | | | 4:00pm | Keynote: Fixing Network Security by Hacking the Business Climate
16:00 - 17:30 Aaron Swartz, Andy Oram, Matt Jones, [Joey deVilla](http://kode- fu.com/geek/2002_05_12_archive.shtml#76637818), Audio | | | 5:45pm | Journalism 3.0
17:45 - 18:30 Dan Gillmor | Distributed Security: Lessons From Nature
Andy Oram, Slides (SXI) | An Introduction to JXTA
17:45 - 18:30 | Rich Application Development with Web Services and Macromedia MX
7:00pm | Weblog Evening
19:00 - 20:00 | Next Generation Naming Services
19:00 - 20:00 | | Fork Meeting
8:00pm | Policy Planning for Wireless
20:00 - 22:00 | Mangling The Middle: Better Connectivity Through Packet Collusion
20:00 - 21:00 | | dot Inventory - Bad Metrics Kill Good Emergence
20:00 - 21:00 9:00pm | | | P2P in 10 years? What P2P might look like in a decade
21:00 - 22:00 | Thursday, May 16 8:30am | Keynote: Finally Living Up to the Vision of Web Services.
Andy Oram | | | 9:15am | Discussion: Web Services
Steve Gillmor; Adam Bosworth; Adam Gross; Sam Ruby; Clay Shirky; Bill Smith; David Stutz
09:15 - 10:00 | | | 10:00am | Morning Break
10:30am | Location-Based Web Services
10:30 - 11:15 | Distributed Content Management
Rael Dornfest, Cory Doctorow, Andy Oram | XML, Web Services, and the Semantic Wipeout
Wes Felter, Matt Jones | 11:15am | FCC's Rules and Regulations on 802.11
Andy Oram, Slides (SDD) | Creative Commons: Using and Sharing Emerging Technologies to Enrich the Public Domain
Molly Shaffer Van Houweling; Lisa Rein
Wes Felter, Cory Doctorow, Cory again, Matt Jones, Slides (PPT) | Demystifying the Market: Web Services and the Service Oriented Architecture
11:15 - 12:00 | 12:00pm | Lunch
1:15pm | The Future of Ideas
Lawrence Lessig; Carl Malamud; Tim O'Reilly; [Dr. David P.
Reed](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2002/view/e_spkr/1192)
13:15 - 14:30 Aaron Swartz, Cory Doctorow, Schuyler Erle, Rael Dornfest, Matt Jones | | | 2:45pm | Wireless Community Networks: To be one, BE ONE.
14:45 - 15:30 | Partnership for Protection
Slides (PPT) | SOAP Routing: The Essential Component to Making Web Services a Reality
Andy Oram | 3:30pm | Afternoon Break
4:00pm | Competitive Web Service Architectures: SOAP and the REST
Rael Dornfest; Lucas Gonze; Rohit Khare; Paul Prescod; Sam Ruby
16:00 - 16:45 | Digital Copyright Law Threatens Science
16:00 - 16:45 | Community Wireless Round Table
Rob Flickenger; Matt Peterson; Terry Schmidt; Adam Shand; Matt Westervelt
16:00 - 16:45 | 4:45pm | Peer-to-Peer Systems in Ad-hoc Mobile Environment
16:45 - 17:30 (PPT)](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/presentations/et2002/chtcherbina_ekaterina.ppt) | Blog Lessons: User Patterns on LiveJournal
16:45 - 17:30 | Federated Identity on the Web
[Andy Oram](<a href=)
Jeremiah doesn't understand why programmers should take math courses. I guess he's taking the wrong math courses. When people say that, they generally mean the theoretical side of math: infinities, theorem-proving, logic, etc. It's also good for reading academic papers.
posted January 14, 2002 12:03 AM () #
*Jeremiah doesn 't understand why programmers
Jeremiah is listening. Cool stuff!The
Folks are commenting on my old Dublin Core in RDF Draft. Feel free to send your comments.
posted January 14, 2002 12:19 AM () #
*Folks are commenting on my
Well, I just spent a whole day playing with Radio. (Still have 29 left.) I better not do this every day or I'll never get any work done.
posted January 14, 2002 12:29 AM () #
*Well, I just spent a
It's difficult to find out whether a hotel has Internet access without actually staying there. They rarely knows what you mean. Web pages often claim they have "in-room Internet" when all they have is a phone jack. So this is a list of hotels with information about available Internet access. Please send me corrections and additions.
Mercer Hotel: Dial-up, wireless coming soon. (2002-08-27, front desk)
Charles Hotel: STSN T1. (2002-01-01, preferred hotels, Aaron Swartz)
Often hotel internet access is referred to as "high-speed Internet" or "broadband Internet". Asking whether the hotel has a "T1" is not effective since many hotels have a voice, not data T1 line.
Jeremiah is listening. Cool stuff! The websites he points to look really good, although a few pages need work. ;-)
"Most engineers will tell you they don't actually use their calculus on a daily basis, but that it taught them how to think properly in order to do their jobs." Right on. posted January 14, 2002 03:09 AM () #
*Jeremiah is listening. Cool stuff!The
Wow! I'm number three in today's rankings: with 242 hits. I hope folks are finding useful stuff here.
posted January 14, 2002 04:15 PM () #
Tony Collen: "Personally, I think
Salon: e.e. cummings reads four
*Wow! I 'm number three in
BBC: Wallace and Grommit return
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson Senior, Chairman of IBM, 1943.
Now that we have global networks, perhaps Dr. Watson [was off by four](http://philip.greenspun.com/internet-application- workbook/distributed-computing)…or four million.
The future will be made of thousands of small pieces--computers, protocols, programming languages and people--all working together. We need to stop worrying about how to make everyone do the same thing, and instead work on how to connect the (not so) different things that people do together.
posted January 14, 2002 04:31 PM () #
*" I think there is a
I noticed today that Retrospect for OS X is available as a free download from Dantz's website. It installed and ran beautifully. I tried to backup my hard drive to another machine, but I ran out of diskspace. :-( posted January 16, 2002 04:53 AM () #
*Retrospect for OS X
My new server vorpal shipped today. Dell, after taking forever to build it and having a horribly designed website, couldn't seem to give me the tracking number for it. Luckily I found that UPS' website has a search mechanism that let me find it myself. So now I'm eagerly following it.
(Hmm, imagine that in RSS…)
The last time I tracked a UPS package, I reloaded the tracking page and found that it had been delivered. Somewhat surprised, I went downstairs and opened the door and there it was! posted January 16, 2002 04:59 AM () #
*My new server vorpal shipped
Apple: A special message to Windows users: Welcome.
It's great to see Apple debunking these myths! "our two most recent presidents, a Democrat and a Republican, both use Macs" Cool! I didn't know that Bush used a Mac.
posted January 16, 2002 05:18 AM () #
*Apple: A special message to
This is a log from irc://irc.freenode.net/oscom on 2003-05-29.
More: Links to further coverage.
| Dave Winer - Keynote | let's not build walls. closed, proprietary -- terrible things to say about someone | no longer an active software developer | i did open source and commercial (use that term) software | i released most of the source code for commercial software | just had no redistribution right | (hi, Aaron, sorry I kept missing your yesterday.)
| most people didn't care about having the source code | (hi)
| it's not microsoft v. you, lots in between
- sandro| wishes he were there. :-/ | somebody musta found a hotspot, or a landline ;)
| our customers were being told that we were stealing from them. that's not nice! | we dont want ot be friends with folks who say that | open source's philosophy is based in the bubble | everyone's doing a mixture now | (we had both before but they were mac-address blocked)
| interrupt, feel free. if you don't, i'll bore you | Joseph Reagle: proprietary was a good word; open source turned it evil | Dave: have you produced proprietary software? | reagle: no | Dave: people need the 40 people shrinkwrap company, and that's gone now. you can't get that from open source | [paul everitt keeps nodding]
- bitsko| keeps going "so what?" | it's relatively easy to write unix. it's ease of use that's hard
- bitsko| notes that he's not formulating any questions for the session and his mutterings shouldn't be taken as such ;)
| Halley Suitt: What does Linux look like? Where's the marketing? | [someone shows her linux] | DW: plugs linux advocacy howto | my software sucks. i'm trying to make it better.
- bitsko| hates that meme, since he knows how easy it is to write quality software. Quality is free.
| (I don't think it's free. It's hard work, but not imposisble.)
| xml-rpc. darling of the open source world. microsoft helped invent it. philosophy: i'll do whatever you ask | which meme? that software is inherently buggy? | "can i have X?" yes, unless there's a reason | people didn't suggest complex things because they knew it would be accepted | (writing quality software often improves individual and team performance. it's a habit. as a habit, it may be hard to "get into", but once you're into it, it most assuredly is free forever)
| they argued against their own ideas because everyone else would accept them | (sandro: yes, that software is inherently buggy)
- bitsko| notes xml-rpc was nothing of the sort, but oh well | Tony Berne, CMSWatch: there are successful 40-person shrinkwrap server software firms int he CMS market. they seal open source | (what sort? simple?)
| I'm really curious about your data, bitsko. Do you agree or disagree with books like "XP Explained" and "Agile Software Development" ? | DW: the key is to be a user. make stuff you want to use | I agree with XP Explained and Agile Software Development, unless we're crossed here, I think they support what I'm saying | I'm just trying to understand what you're saying. :-) Agreeing with those help me narrow down the possible interpretations.
| DW: people say they want open source. you don't actually want the source -- what do you really want? | i think it's something else you can't articulate | freedom? no-lockin? choice? creativity? | control.
| which probably falls in the bucket of "freedom" | control (freedom, no-lockin)
- bitsko| nods | Larry Rosen: create derivative works | creativity and a sense that the creators are "my kind of people" comes too, but some proprietary/commercial systems get that too.
| true ownership -- not feeling like I'll lose part of my computer when they go out of business.
| someone else?: i want to be able to fix the software or hire someone too | DW: but you can just export the data and import it to a new app | (stupid argument)
| In many cases you can't just export & re-import. XML & RDF are hoping to change that. Also, I get used to the user interface & quirks.
| yes, an open source app, so we'll never have that problem again.
| aaron: add features, fix bugs | someone: source code escrow would be good | sam ruby: don't want to be stranded | sam: my weblog doesn't look good in IE; want to fix that | DW: I agree. if MS had code in escrow, kick it out now | DW: they should give up IE as a penalty for antitrust | DW: it's like keeping the gun you used to commit a murder | that's why I don't think source code escrow is practical, because no way would IE be out | Bruce Tchaikovsky: i can build a good API into open source software | DW: real software products aren't things of beauty. APIs go on the outside | Paul Everitt, Zope: +1 on usability. need a motivator, more than helps me and geek cred | DW: another reason is job security. don't want to lose consilting revenue | Paul: geeks don't think that far ahead | Paul: need to put users first, work together | Paul: everyone needs to create a TLA for memetic self-preservation | DW: we stand on the toes of giants | not sure where the job security comment comes from. I usually equate "job security" thinking with intentional complexity. I've found myself continually employed just by saying that my software is as readable and understandable as possible.
| ?x: why should we use proprietary software? | DW: you shouldn't. (beat) use software based on features, not religion | aha! something I agree with | DW: tool, not religion. lots of churches, they do a much better job IMO | Bill Airn(ph): democracies need a right to vote. do we need a reason to vote? have a free market? | ... free markets can't allow monopolies | even monopolies of free software (Apache, Linux) are a bad thing in the long term | DW: open source seems like communism, not freem market | (i think he might have meant monopoly in the copyright sense)
| yes, of which there isn't any in the open source world, so one can only presume in the marketshare sense | DW: will anyone actually fix the bugs? no one's fixing the bugs on all those source forge bugs | Sam Ruby: that's why i use apache. someone in this audience will fix it | ... it's going to be around for a while | there's negative association with "communism", and "free market" implies money, even when we're not discussing money (or are we?)
| hello? when do commercial companies empty out their bug trackers? | DW: yeah! software should last 30 years. let's not reinvent the wheel | Every quarter, they drop it on the floor. :-)
- bitsko| would laugh, but he's seen it done.
| Larry Rosen: non-tech people see open source as MS's only competitor | does "post scarcity" have negative association? | DW: yep | DW: if i solve a problem, admit it. use it, clone it | DW: I honored Apache when building Manila, but the Apache people just ignore Manila cuz it's not open source. that makes me angry! | DW: take my ideas! i'm not patenting them | Mark Blonder(ph), IMB: I think Manila didn't make it because of Radio userland | DW: wha!??!? Manila made it! | Mark: You've got a support and documentation issue. b-logger has the same thing | DW: there's no money in software!!! | hmmm...
| DW: can't wish it into existence! $39.95 doesn't answer a lot of questions!! | DW: it's not whether you like stallman or gates. i don't like either, neither take baths | DW: (that's the soundbite)
| ?z: what about RSS? | DW: RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Agree or Disagree? Subset of RDF or straight XML? | DW: if 5-10 people read all the archives and read the history, we'd go back before the 1.0 fork | DW: let's get the world rational again | yes...
| ... gradually upgrade | ... had that happened, no RSS 2.0 today | and no namespace either.
| DW: Joi Ito wanted to know content:encoded or description or what | s/namespace/namespaces/ | ... man, I don't know.
| ... that's a disastert | ... we have one final shot at getting this right. MS and AOL are coming! | ... W3C members that love to argue and fight and throw money at each other | ... we need to be solid before we deal with them | no, it's not. it's a discussion that's close to winding up, but most believe it needs to be done in the open.
| ... follow the blazed trail | Sam: been with IBM 21 years. hear "one shot" constantly; it's never one shot. it's a rallying cry, life goes on | ... RSS is best-supported. let's do it incrementally | DW: our ethos is "if you do it first, i'll follow you" we shoulda done that with rss | ... so do what UL did, we did it first | ... you wouldn't like it, evan (if you were evan) if we changed the blogger api w/o taalking to you | if anyone cares to look back before the 1.0 fork, they would clearly see the EXACT SAME THING people are asking for today: open standards, a level playing field | ... i implemented trackback to. the. spec.
| aha, here we get to the "Userland did RSS, we own it" | DW: need to get back on track. blogger + MT + userland is pretty powwerful | Sam: aggregators need a vote | I don't see "users" in that equation.
| DW: no votes. no standard bodies | Sam: Joe(?) has a point too | DW: once we three get compat. then we can do Joe's thing from there | Bill Kearney, Syndic8.com: | DW: oh, you're Bill Kearney. my god | (w00t!)
| Bill: saber-rattling. platitudes. democracy. benevolent dictatorship. guise.
| DW: stop.
| haha | DW: had i known you were in the audience i would have said this | damn i wish i was there.
| DW: I want to say this face-to-face: i don't like where you're going, i don't want to hear those thoughts | damn i wish i was there. :-)
| DW: say them on your weblog. i don't want to go there | this is getting juicy ahaha | Charlie Nesson: that seems like total bs | now I want to know what Bill Kearny says.
| Bill Kearney: thank you. now everyone's see this | if this comes to blows i'm getting on the T and comming down.
| Bill kearney: we want to collaborate | DW: are you finished | Charlie Nesson: explain the obvious enmity. what is the dispute | [applause] | DW: i don't even know where to begin | (what was the applause to?)
| Kearney: it's not productive | DW: stop! i was just pausing to think | (to charlie)
| DW: this is why mailing lists don't work | ... the things he's said are the most appauling personal things | Kearney: name them | DW: get the microphoen away | ... i didn't interrupt you | it doesn't work in person either, apparently | audience: yes you did! | DW: but i let him speak | audience: it is your keynote | DW: Sam has once made a personal comment. it's ok! i forgive you. ok, maybe twice | ... i love working with sam
- sandro| is so greatful to Aaron for channeling this.
| sandro: got a backlog? | ... he takes the high road, he's intelligent. i care what other people think | me too.
- bitsko| thanks aaron too! | morbus stand by | ... i told people to interrupt me, in my defense | mutiny: thanks | ... whatever you think about me, i've made a lot of contributions &;| (it's being taped, apparently)
| Want my to mail it to you Morbus? | ... i didn't ask bill kearney to do this
- AaronSw| mails to morbus | DW: almost out of time | someone, anyone, yes ;)
| i KNEW this was going to turn into a fuckfest. that's why i wanted to go. ;)
| got it from aaron. thanks.
| Gregor: need to build cultural interop | if someone can get me an mp3 of that tape, it'd be great.
| ... we meet in pub and drink beer | DW: that ain't gonna happen | [laughs] | DW: this guy | DW: this guy went further. i have heart disease. i had bypass, long recovery, lot of pain | ... trying to get back by posting | ... and this asshole wished me dead | Kearney: COMPLETELY UNTRUE | ... THE MORE YOU REPEAT THE MORE THEY BELIEVE | DW: absolutely true. don't want to deal with it. he's got a problem and he projects it
- bitsko| sees a Burton Event occuring | Larry Rosen: one of the frustrations I have is people hate each other in open source | DW: thaat's what we're talkign about here | (sigh. no it's not.)
| Larry: unfortunarte. can law professors give us clues on how to litigate against someone and represent the client to the utmost but shake the hand of your opponent afterwords | ... good battle, more later | DW: we haven't gotten there in software yet | Nesson: needs a moderator who's not self-interested | Nesson: you can't moderate this | DW: moderate what? | Nesson: let's move sideways and structure something | DW: won't do it | Nesson: neither the moderator, both speak | ... that's the law school approach | [much applause] | DW: do whatever you want charlie | ?x: I finally understand why Jerry Sringer was invented in the US | [much laughs] | DW: i'm sorry, we were doing really well before | purploe shirt: look at academia. to get credit, you need to publish it and provide a wy to repeat it | ... not only do the procedure, but give away the materials | ... software equivalent: give away the source | ... credit goes to the academic side &nsbp;| DW: sorry, a few minutes ago i would have been all over that
- bitsko| notes to the online crowd that Bill Kearney did NOT, in fact, make any death threats to Dave Winer.
| DW: time to end | bitsko: did I? | nor you, that I recall | "death threats" is not the same as "wished me dead". (but I take no stand on the fact, knowing nothing of this before today.)
| audience: that's a great argument for letting machines write code
- AaronSw| wondes what to do next | machines can't write code, not in an useful sense.
| see the discussion where every time dwiner is criticized he brings up his heart problem | what they can write, we don't call ("source") code.
| is it just me or does DW -hate- aggregrators? | DW doesn't know what one is.
| if its not modeled after RU, its not an aggregator.
| see his "What is an Aggregator" piece a while back | more specifically, Bill Kearney did not "wish him dead" | anybody here want to scan an OSCOM conference badge? | technically, AmphetaDesk is not an aggregator.
| per his definitions.
| yeah i mean between you, kearney and burtonator he seems to have some serious issues.
| yup.
Nick Bradbury: On Piracy.
_Bradbury's article is riddled with errors. Change piracy to "name theft" (I charge for use of my name, don't 'cha know)
and you see the problems._ Many people who use pirated items justify it by claiming they’re only stealing from rich mega-corporations that screw their customers, but this conveniently overlooks the fact that the people who are hurt the most by piracy are people like me.
People with names are losing enormous amounts of money to piracy, and we’re mostly helpless to do anything about it. We can’t afford to sue everyone who steals from us, let alone track down people in countries such as Russia who write articles using our full names. If you visit a few public "journalism" sites, you’re unlikely to find articles about people such as "B—l G—es" who can afford to prosecute pirates - instead you’ll find hundreds of articles about average people like me.
Some would argue that we should just accept piracy as part of the job, but chances are the people who say this aren’t aware of how widespread piracy really is. A quick look at my web server logs would be enough to startle most people, since the top referrers are invariably "journalism" sites that link to my site (yes, not only do they steal my name, but they also suck my bandwidth).
A couple of years ago I wanted to get an idea of how many people were pirating my name, so I signed up for an anonymous email account (using a "kewl" nickname, of course) and started hanging out in journalist forums. After proving my researching creds, I created a supposedly researched story about me and arranged to have it listed on a popular journalism site.
This story pinged home the first time it was visited, providing a way for me to find out how many people were reading it. To my dismay, in just a few weeks more people had read this article than had ever read my weblog. I knew piracy was rampant, but I didn’t realize how widespread it was until this test.
(As an aside, the only thing that prevented me from having this fake article erase the user’s hard drive was a sense of ethics - the same thing that’s apparently missing from those who steal my name. This does illustrate, though, that you never know what you’re getting when you download articlez. Folks, if you’re downloading pirated articles, you’re trusting HTMLs hosted by people who brag about being criminals!)
Name stealers should be listed alongside spammers, virus writers and script kiddies as scourges of the Internet, because they make life more expensive and more invasive. Trust me: people with names such as myself really don’t want to resort to things like psuedonyms since it adds to our already oversized workload, but when we see thousands of people stealing from us, we’re willing to do pretty much anything (wouldn’t you?).
Nick has no innate right to have people pay for his software, just as I have no right to ask people to pay for use of my name.
Even if he did, most people who pirate his software probably would never use it anyway, so they aren't costing him any money and they're providing him with free advertising.
And of course it makes sense that lots of people who see some interesting new program available for free from a site they're already at will download it and try it out once, just as more people will read an article I wrote in the New York Times than on my weblog.
And what's this nonsense about warez sites only having shareware stuff and not stuff from Microsoft. In my experience with the biggest, easiest-to-use things, the opposite is true (tons of BigCo software, very little shareware).
And while it's true that EXEs can often do anything (because modern OSes don't have basic security protections like
chroot, which has been in UNIX for decades), this is true of all software not just warez.
Yes, piracy probably does take some sales away from Nick, but I doubt it's very many. If Nick wants to sell more software, maybe he should start by not screaming at his potential customers. What's next? Yelling at people who use his software on friends computers? Or at the library? still don't get it? email Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com)
It's great when code falls on your head. I've been working for days on PyChord, an implementation of the Chord algorithm in Python. Zooko just pointed me to The Circle, a very similar system already written in Python. I'm investigating it now..
posted January 16, 2002 06:24 PM () #
*It 's great when code falls
The Columbia Small World Project
Anyone know if there's a "dtop"? I want something like the UNIX utilities top or ntop, except it should tell me who is using the hard drive. I get curious whenever I hear the hard drive grinding away.
posted January 16, 2002 07:15 PM () #
*Anyone know if there 's a
Sean B. Palmer has started his own Radio weblog: "This Weblog has purple stuff inside. Purple is a fruit." If you have Radio UserLand running you can subscribe to his feed. Hey, you can subscribe to my feed for that matter.
posted January 17, 2002 01:39 AM () #
*Sean B. Palmer has started
Rael imitating his speech-recognition-using officemate: "Open this." "Save that." "Deer… No, Dear… No, not Beer… Bloody hell… NO… Erase, erase…"
Rael is a great storyteller, especially in person.
posted January 16, 2002 07:00 PM () #
Rael imitating his speech-recognition-using officemate:
Locust 2.4 GHz DSSS Drive-Study Analyzer. "The instrument measures coverage of direct sequence CDMA networks which operate on the IEEE 802.11b standard allowing the user to determine the AP (Access Point), PER (Packet Error Rate), and RSSI signal levels aiding in locating the hub and access points of neighboring WLANs." [via Boing Boing] posted January 16, 2002 06:48 PM () #
Locust 2.4 GHz DSSS Drive-Study Rael Dornfest Tim O'Reilly Lisa Rein Scott Miller Breakfast with Tim and Rael Lisa and Aaron The snowman we built, guarding watch over our driveway, by the lamppost. Snowman on Patrol
BBC: Wallace and Grommit return online. [via Boing Boing, Amanda] posted January 16, 2002 06:21 PM () #
BBC: Wallace and Grommit return
Salon: e.e. cummings reads four poems (more info). [via Boing Boing] posted January 14, 2002 04:11 PM () #
Salon: e.e. cummings reads four
Aaron Swartz was interviewed for the BBC World Service's Newshour program on the subject of Warchalking.
Downloadan MP3 or Ogg Vorbis recording of the show. BBC: Now in the dim and distant past... ...you could get out of paying your phone bill with wire cutters and small clamps. All illegal of course... ...but those who knew how could tap into the system without the bother or wait of a costly connection. Well now meet the new generation getting free internet access, they're called warchalkers because that's what they do, marking buildings where you can connect free. Aaron Swartz age 15... runs the warchalker website.
AS: Basically.. ..you just take your laptop walking around the streets of wherever you're looking to warchalk or driving in a car and then when a wireless network pops up on the screen... you just make a couple of marks on the ground so that other people will be able to find it later.
BBC: This is is really easy, you just walk around with a laptop and if you want to link to the internet you just find a big company with a computer system and you're in.
AS: Yea, often times the networks are from families who bought a base station so they could surf the internet from anywhere in the house.
BBC: Which are the best targets? AS: I found it works better when you go to residential neighborhoods... Businesses put passwords on the network or do other things to keep people out, they aren't interested in sharing.
BBC: Isn't what you're doing illegal? You're supposed to pay for internet access aren't you? AS: If someone is willing to give you internet access, I dont see why its illegal to use that. It's not the fleecing of America [where there are no alternatives for internet access].
BBC: You say if they want to give you their internet access.... Companies want you to visit their website, but I'm not so sure about the families where you're camped outside their house using a computer.
AS: Some people say that, but when you set up the network, all the [config] programs I've used ...ask you if you want to set a password. The general assumption is that if they don't want to put a password on it, they probably don't mind other people using it.
BBC: So you reckon that if they haven't actually blocked you out, all the people and companies [who have wireless networks] are sort of welcoming you in...
AS: In most cases people have a cable modem or a DSL line which they pay a fixed fee for. If you happen to check your email or download a few web pages, its not really going to cost them any more money and its not going to slow down their internet access.
BBC: They probably don't have a law covering this, but are you a bit uneasy? What would happen if you got caught? AS: Obviously they haven't made any laws specifically about it, but I don't feel its immoral. I don't condone people trying to crack passwords on networks or breaking into networks that have other means to keep people out, but most people I've met seem to feel its the neighborly thing to do to provide a free internet connection; so I don't think theres anything wrong with looking for one.
BBC: He really doesn't sound like a crook does he? Aaron Swartz, aged 15 who runs the warchalker website.
Transcribed and edited by Jerry Fowler, MTS Inc
Tony Collen found our secret hide-out last night.
posted January 14, 2002 01:58 PM () #
Tony Collen found our secret
Tony Collen: "Personally, I think that kids need to be in high school with their peers, or they'll grow up weird."
I guess it all depends on how you define weird.
Sean: "I think that Tony Collen is weird." I'm certainly not normal (and proud of it!) and I think the process of "socialization" in high school does more damage than good. It's certainly important to be able to make friends and hold conversations, etc. However, the culture of high school often tends towards supressing differences and making everyone very much the same.
It's a culture of competition (who's popular? who's got the drugs? who's got the money?) and one that's very self- focused. And I think that's pretty dangerous. To paraphrase John Holt: I'd take my kids out of school for the social reasons alone! posted January 14, 2002 05:43 AM () #
Tony Collen: "Personally, I think
Hmmph, I'm running into the old "Canet evaluate the expression because the name �template� hasnet been defined." that I got back with the very first versions of Radio. It goes away when I quit and relaunch Radio, tho. It appears to occur when I modify the site template.
posted January 14, 2002 04:54 AM () #
Hmmph, I 'm running into the
Does someone have an OPML renderer online? I want to show people what I'm reading.
posted January 14, 2002 04:52 AM () #
Does someone have an OPML
Sean wants a Radio mug…a lot, apparently.
posted January 14, 2002 04:31 AM () #
Sean wants a Radio mug …a
Heh! Thanks, Dave. Although I'd take Jobs and Woz over Gates and Allen any day. (Even if it means I only get a dollar.) ;-)
posted January 14, 2002 03:52 AM () #
Dave Winer: "Life is good.
I just completed a major switchover on the RSS feeds I provide. I hope I didn't break anything, but if you experience problems, please let me know. The move was necessary to alleviate some scaling issues I was having.
posted January 14, 2002 03:33 AM () #
I just completed a major
The Columbia Small World Project is testing the "six degrees" theory. Seems like a worthwhile study to participate in.
I wonder what happened to the data from sixdegrees.
posted January 17, 2002 02:51 AM () #
*The Columbia Small World Project
It's always cool to run into other smart young people. Maybe I can convince him to rise out of the school system, like me.
For those who don't know, this is my first year out of the school system. Had I stayed, I would have been in 10th grade this year. I gotta say, it was a hard choice, but I think it may have been the best choice I ever made. Now I'm taking a couple classes at a local college. The next term starts on Wednesday. I'm taking "Number Theory" and "Symbolic Logic", I think.
posted January 14, 2002 03:13 AM () #
It 's always cool to run
It's been a long time since we've had snow, especially packing snow as good as this. I was so excited, I grabbed my brothers and we ran outside to have a snowball fight.
Until yesterday, I almost thought we weren't going to get any snow this year (except for a little bit a few weeks ago that melted quickly). However, here it is, gloriously covering the trees and houses with a blanket of white.
I wasn't too interesed in actually fighting, so I started to make a snowman. I remember when I was younger, probably around second grade, when the class would go outside and make snowballs during recess. Everyone wanted a turn to push the snowballs, which means that most people could only push for just a little bit. (Not being involved in the open source community back then, I didn't know that the appropriate thing to do would have been to fork the project.)
We built some really humongous snowballs that way. Sometimes they were so big that even has winter disappeared and all the snow had melted, large lumps of icy snow would stay in the middle of the field where our snowball once had been. We built the snowballs into all sorts of things: forts, igloos, snowment, other creatures, etc. We made snow angels, snow messages, and tried to visit the patch of snow that wasn't yet trodden upon.
So today, for probably what is the first time in my life, I got to make a full-sized snowman. He now stands by the lamp, carefully guarding our driveway.
Pictures were taken with my Powershot S110, downloaded with iPhoto, uploaded with Radio UserLand. The process could use a little work…and i'm working on it! posted January 17, 2002 05:40 AM (Personal) #
*Fun in the Snow
Quality software is made by artists, not engineers or programmers. But software is unlike other fields of art, because it needs to be superbly functional in addition to aesthetically pleasing.
I have found that there are two types of quality software: GUI software and UNIX software. Quality GUI software is beautiful to look at, as well as a joy to use. Quality UNIX is beautiful to comprehend, as well as a joy to work with.
While all of their products have some faults, these designers do some of the best work I've seen.
Unquestionably the best UNIX software artist ever, his work repays careful study. Not only is it secure and amazingly functional, but it is also well-designed so that it feels like a masterpiece of art in addition to a piece of software.
I have noticed that those who like Professor Bernstein's software are quite often very intelligent. The inverse is not always true: while many people who don't like Bernstein's software are not particularly intelligent, some are merely misguided.
It is a continuing frustration to me that Professor Bernstein has no peer in software design. It would be great to have a culture of innovative quality UNIX software. Currently, it seems all quality UNIX software is, to some degree, emulation:
@@Other candidates: David McCusker, Rael Dornfest.
@@Scholars: me, Matt Webb, Mike Gancarz(?), guy who wrote bstj article, who else? Eric S. Raymond is writing a book on the Unix philosophy but it looks like he's getting everything wrong.
I am interested in hearing about other quality software artists. Please send your suggestions.
Ken Rawlings drops a line about his new XSLT script to convert OPML (especially mySubscriptions files) into HTML.
His version includes links and orange XML buttons, but isn't as pretty (IMHO) as Joshua Allen's original so I made a few modifications to produce my own version.
So if you're still with me after all that (or even if you're not) here's the RSS feeds I'm subscribed to.
and Ted.
posted January 20, 2002 02:07 AM () #
*Ken Rawlings drops a line
Rael Dornfest: Nutsy. "That's ever
US Congress: Universal Military Training
Radio-Outline http://lists.userland.com/mailman/listinfo/radio-outline The Radio UserLand Outliner list Georg Berg http://lists.userland.com/pipermail/radio-outline/2002-July/000361.html Georg Berg: I need a slide for every second- level line: I want to get a layout which presents the title of the presentation on each slide.
I thought of putting the title of the presentation in the only one first-level line and changing the template.
How can I tell the renderer, to do its building of the presentation with th= e [...] Rick Klau http://lists.userland.com/pipermail/radio-outline/2002-July/000360.html Rick Klau: Formatting the directory outliner?: This is a multi-part message in MIME format. Hi - I'm trying to get the directoryFrame macro = (http://radio.outliners.com/directoryOutliner) to serve as my blogroll. = Couple of reasons for this, but mostly I prefer the presentation of the = data to a straight text linked format. [...] Lawrence Lee http://lists.userland.com/pipermail/radio-outline/2002-July/000359.html Lawrence Lee: viewDirectory: This is a multi-part message in MIME format. Hi Venky, It doesn't require Manila. First, update RadioCommunityServer.root: http://rcs.userland.com/stories/storyReader$29 Then try exiting and restarting Radio and a new folder /www/rcsPublic/viewDirectory with an index.txt file should be created. [...] Venkatesh Raju http://lists.userland.com/pipermail/radio-outline/2002-July/000358.html Venkatesh Raju: viewDirectory: This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. Hi, For a quick background please see http://lists.userland.com/pipermail/radio- outline/2002-June/000347.html.
We now have a RCS server within our intranet. [...] A chat from opn:p2p-hackers on the attack-resistance of Google PageRank, anonymous remailer networks, and lots of stuff in between. [2002-03-02] in any case, i spent quite a bit of time today analyzing google's attack resistance motivated in large part by this scieno thing ooh, do share gpl + commercial ? like sleepycat GPLing your software allows you to sell it to companies also like ghostscript :) well, has anyone here read the pagerank paper? Yeah, but I assume that things have been greatly changed since then. i don't think so it's hard to say for sure, but the original PR is very smart stuff and my analysis indicates that it has a good attack-resistance property the other thing about PR is that it's quite tunable through the E(u) mechanism E(u) mechanism ? the paper talks about this a little, but obviously they had only started thinking about it if i had to guess, it would be more or less vanilla PR with a well- tuned E(u) .google pagerank e(u) pagerank e(u): http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Music/Magazines_and_E-zines/U heh, no you need the 1998 paper by page copy at http://www.levien.com/thesis/refs/pageranksub.ps.gz (url typed from memory, lemme know if it 404s) works, thanks aka http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/pageranksub.ps oh good so i can explain the central concept in a few minutes, if you'd like please ok so the PR algorithm can be modelled as a random walk essentially, what's in the page paper is the following: pick a random web page from your list of 3 billion or whatever urls pick a link at random, and follow it now, roll a 6-sided die if it's 6, stop, otherwise go to "pick a link" so you have a nice exponential tail distribution of walk lengths ok, so now when you stop, mark the url you stop on after a huge number of runs, the number of marks on a url corresponds to its rank it's a beautiful and simple idea E(u) corresponds to the initial step of picking a page at random this doesn't have to be a uniform distribution and therein lies the interesting part :) so, here's my analysis (assuming i haven't put you guys to sleep yet) listening you do the same thing as the analysis of the advogato trust metric AaronSw fires up MacGhostViewX and skims the paper all web pages are either "good" or "bad" the algorithm doesn't know, only santa claus the idea is to see if you can prove something about bad pages having low rank and good pages a high rank that's the goal of a good attack-resistant algorithm please define 'good' / 'bad' ah, ok that's an interesting question the mathematical part of the analysis doesn't care how you define it so there are a couple of interesting ways of doing it one is by how interesting/relevant the page is this is very subjective, but is still the goal of the thing another is by assuming an attack so, the trick is to define E(u) in such a way so that page rank correlates with your concept of "good" ? so the "bad" pages are the ones under the attacker's control in this case, the question is: how well can the algo resist assigning a high rank to pages under an attacker's controlnodstraight keyword searching, for example, has no attack-resistance all an attacker needs to do is put the juicy terms in the searchable part of the page, and bingo so, the no-attack case is also interesting ie, assuming non-adversarial producers of web pages, how can you get the most relevant results? this is a question that a lot of people have thought about but i'm only really considering the attack case an interesting hypothesis is that an attack resistant ranking algo will give good subjective results in the non-attack case as well, but that would be hard to substantiate :) Interesting. Conventional wisdom would seem to indicate that E is based on how often a page changes and the pagerank of the pages that it links to... ok, forget e for now one of the interesting things is that PR is not hugely sensitive to E AaronSw: yea, i thought pagerank was more complex than this they ran it with a uniform distribution and also a single start page and got results that were surprisingly not all that different i am simplifying a bit but not that much assumed that anyways, back to the attack resistance yes so, as an intermediate step in the analysis, assume that E is only good pages or, more precisely, is 0 for all bad pages k obviously, if you have this assumption, there is a trivially attack resistant ranking algo just pick a page from E :) heh, how resistant is E though ;p but we'll assume that we're doing PR, and it's doing the random walk thing tav: the assumption is 100% ok, so now we further subdivide the good pages into "good" and "confused" a confused page is one that is itself good, but contains a link to a bad page right actually, it might make more sense to talk about the links tav sees now good links, evil links, and confused links which are g->g, b->whatever, and g->b, resp. so in this framework, the analysis is actually easy any given walk that crosses a confused or evil link can result in a bad page but a walk that crosses only good links results in a good page devilishly simple and elegant so, for a walk of length k, and the probability of a page containing a confused link p, you get a chance of a good link at least p^k (1-p)^k sorry what's more interesting is that it's not just the probability of a random good page containing a confused link, it's biased toward high-ranked pages ? i didn't get that last line ok, lemme spell that out, 'coz it's interesting assume that we have 'god's web' consisting of only the good pages now, we run PR on this dataset, resulting in a rank for each page (actually, as a minor technicality, you want a rank for each walk length) but close enough :) heh, k i mean, there are going to be some "good" pages that are boring and nobody links to and others, such as advogato, that get a huge rank (advogato gets a lot of google-juice) so now, phase back into the real world which contains G's W as a subset (only 7 ;p) so now we can talk about the real- world rank in terms of god's rank g's r being the output of the PR algorithm when run over g's w sure an attack- resistant ranking algo would have bounds ok, so here's the relationship: but, google doesn't have a stale control set afaict? at each step in the walk, you look at the probabiity of a confused set, weighted by the rank at that step confused link, sorry weighted by the g's rank at that step and, for a walk of length k, the final probability of a good link is the product, over step index [0..k) of 1-(confused prob at that step) so, under the assumption that high- ranked pages are less likely to have confused links, you'll actually do better than (1-p)^k hmz shall we look at E now? k... ok, so the effect on the ranking results is clear you just multiply in 1-(the probability that a page in E is bad) ...to the probability that you end up with a good rank huh? so the implications are quit clear ok, a little slower... surely that's (probability of a good rank)^2 ? E now contains both good and bad pages so, choosing a page from E, if it's bad, you get a bad page at the end of the walk if it's good, you get a good page with exactly the same probability as if you had started from god's E so the real-world good prob = E's good prob * the good prob of running PR over god's E right the latter meaning running PR over the real web, starting with god's e so: "how to optimize google" is really clear now E is your whitelist ie, you try to keep bad pages out of it and it can be much smaller than the whole web so, the other tunable parameter is that 1/6 chance of stopping the random walk (the paper gives 15%, but close enough) and now the meaning of that is clear as well any reason for the value? yes the larger it is, the better the attack resistance but the smaller it is, the more of the web it covers ie, with a value of 1, you have exactly e but if e is a whitelist of a few thousand pages, then you're not doing a good job so you assume that most interesting pages are within a few hops of a page in e and the 15% value corresponds to "a few hops" *** dev0 has quit IRC (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)) ie, at 15%, half of your walks are <= (>) 4 hops i'm sorry, but this is fucking brilliant (google's original idea) heh. i saw the brilliance earlier, but you lost me towards the latter half it's really attack resistant, and it has a nice way of getting a lot of leverage from human input you going to write up your analysis? yes indeedy chapter 6 of ye olde thessys i'd love to read it after reading the original paper and, in around 2019 or so, we'll all be able to implement it (assuming they get a valid patent) i'm fishing for people to tell me that :)
- raph finds it difficult to find time for the thesis with all the other interesting bits of work & play so the more motivation, the better :) hehe well, i've always like reading your work ***xena has quit IRC ("you son of a bitch") *** xena (xena@mewtwo.espnow.com) has joined the channel ok, so now i'm thinking about something else which is the relationship between PR and advogato there are a lot of similarities: they both work from the same graph structure (the fact that nodes in advo are people, and nodes in PR are web pages, is irrelevant to the math) nod and they both have an attack resistant property ...which is probably quite similar ("resistance", pardon my syntax)
ie, the class of attacks resisted by advo and pr are probably about the same but there is a fundamental difference network flow vs random walks (the evaluation of pr is not done with walks, it's done with some fun linear algebra) so advo gives you a yes/no, but it's possible to enrich that by doing several runs which is what master/journeyman/apprentice is all about that gives you a [0..4) range pr, by contrast gives you a real-valued rank perhaps the deepest difference is that pr is deterministic and, even more so, not sensitive to small perturbations two runs of pr on very similar graphs will give you very similar ranks as i'm sure you guys have noticed with actual google searches at different times it's a feature; advo's nondeterminism is a misfeature oh? hmz but it does raise some interesting questions; most notably, how would the algos perform on each other's turf? running pr on the advo graph is very, very very doable the graph is only a few thousand nodes, it would be no sweat to just compute the principal eigenvalue, probably with an off-the-shelf linear algebra package not being overly familiar with either, i feel i'm presently ill equipped to answer that what's your email address? raph@acm.org among others that's my "academic" address running the advo algorithm on google's graph presents a bigger challenge i should join the acm sometime. now, if only i had some money i mean, they have a really impressive supercomputer to implement pr, and no doubt a super- nicely tuned impl the pubs are not that interesting :( tav mentions the google contest to raph .google programming contest google programming contest google: http://www.google.com/programming-contest yeah, i would win, wouldn't i? ;p most blatantly but the program actually has to run to completion, yes? raph wonders if he's the only person who sees that as a blatant recruitment scheme recruitment / r&d; oh, only 900k pages, that's interesting 'coz advo evaluates 7k pages in about 60s on a modest computer google aren't the first to do a contest (modest by today's standards) the advo impl is in c and pretty well tuned anyways, i'll be sure to email you my thoughts as soon as i clear the pagerank paper i think a 900k dataset might be doable in an overnight run s/7k pages/7k nodes/ nonetheless, you have tempted me * raph has no interest in being recruited by google but this looks easy and fun yah, you'll find it worth reading google gets the ip of the submissions wow, 10k is cheap that's like the cost of filing one patent not an issue for me tho - the advo trust metric is public domain really great chatting w/ you guys about time for bed for me .time pst Mar. 2, 2002 11:13 pm US/Pacific .time gmt Mar. 3, 2002 7:13 am GMT tav: where are you? london (yes, raph, you should write all of this. we want to read it :) arma! start a petition campaign eta on your write up? hey, if it gets ms to open kerberos, it might work on me getting the thesis done anti google patent? heh tav: i'm planning on spending massive time this week my job lets me do that :) yeah, don't do the google programming contest.
they're really smart to do it, because it willwork. so expect it soon excellent. arma: why not? i've been being lame about paying attention to your stuff lately. :( raph doesn't see the downside ditto :( er, they get the IP, right? raph doesn't care hum. ok. or, to put it more precisely i'd say do it outside of their parameters. there is no ip involved other than what's already been released in mod_virgule no, wait they would be getting, as far as i can see it, the rights to use the m/ code commercially that i don't care much about, but it's worth something i have a better idea hey, they'll fly you to san francisco if you win! :) i'll post the idea on advo arma: yeah, that's a major draw * raph is only 2 degrees of separation from google top brass anyway erm, 3 advisor's wife's students = founders of the company arma, so what you been up to? is reputation still alive? one never knows in this post.com env reputation is still alive. we will be until june. we've got a bunch of almost-customers, but we've had them for 2 years now. *** coderman has quit IRC (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)) if any of them turn into actual customers in the next month or two, then we continue until december right * raph wishes you luck with that i know it's tough if several of them convert, then we continue for at least several years, which is Good. i assume that's been taking more attention, and chord/etc less? freehaven we wrote a cute little blurb on reputation and privacy enhancing technologies, for the CFP proceedings http://freehaven.net/~arma/cfp02.html it's got my latest thoughts on free haven, in a broad sense. and has brief summaries of the two recent mix-net reputation papers, too i still haven't read the oceanstore paper. the p2p workshop starts thursday. presenting at financial crypto next monday. need to plan a talk.
i've mostly been doing damage control to make sure nothing gets too little attention, fair enough and putting the rest of it into making sure pet2002.org works. hm, the fc one looks interesting not that i've carefully read your earlier ones :) so arma: how carefully did you read this one? (casc-rep) not at all :( o. so it looks interesting from the title then ;) one of the reasons why I'm so excited about this google thing is that it might be the analysis tool i need for gznork exchange rates from the summary, dingbat! gznork is the name for that thing? gznork is my p2p network based on stamp-trading right. that thing we were arguing about a year ago yup the code's been moving forward slowly it was really cool, but had so many holes in it, i couldn't wrap my brain around it i'm thinking of redoing it in python (you can tell i've been spending time with zooko) arma: yes, i would be the only one in the world who can wrap his brain around it, ...if only i could :) hm. so while you're adding things to your list of hard problems, i'll reiterate my problem from earlier ok (the secret to research success is to do the problems you think are easy, but everybody else thinks are hard) in casc-rep, i suggest that we use an advogato-like metric to limit the number of Bad mix participants cha-ching (another cite! :) basically, if the proportion of bad nodes is too high, the adversary can just take over the system right so in my analysis, i'd like to limit the fraction of bad nodes that model is intuitively familiar to me but advogato doesn't let me do that. it just lets me limit the number. i need to start talking about distance from seeds, etc, if i want to start thinking about a fraction. you should be able to get to fraction yes distance from seeds is, i believe, essential unfortunately i can say sigma over various distances provides a bound yeah. i haven't thought about this one in a while. hrm. it's interesting to note that the "seed" in advo corresponds almost exactly to E(u) in PageRank my earlier attempt was to come up with a "proof of bandwidth" operation, similar to proof of work, and, in Google's case, that's actually useful with the assumption that the adversary won't be able to pass "too many" proofs of bandwidth at once hmm, interesting but that turned out to be really nasty too, because either you have a central site that 'gets' the packets to verify they all showed up (obviously not a good plan), or you pair people up (or put them in groups of n, etc), yeah, proof of work is much easier and assuming that both work and bandwidth have a fixed cost per unit, and any time most/all of the group is bad, then they can lie. you really get the same result in terms of costs they're different assumptions tho yeah i eventually decided that if my adversary was the nsa, and my 'good' nodes are volunteers, then i really better stop looking down that path. yes because cost is not a big problem for them raph tries to come up with a pun on "cost plus" but n/m arma doesn't get out much :) ok, so in the remailer network it's all source-routed, right? in the current one, yes (this is certainly the case for the classic mix) in casc-rep, we build cascades out of participating nodes oh that is, we define fixed routes, and traffic goes through those routes it helps the intersection attack tremendously ok, i need to read the paper then yes in some sense it's still source-routed, though, raph added random path choosing to premail at the request of cpunks because if we're trying to get odds of a bad path down to one in a million, and i always had the feeling that it decreased security then people will need to chain cascades it sort of got fuzzy at that point but obviously if your path is only 4 or 5 hops, you're not going to get that level of security with any non-trivial adversary raph thinks ? i mean, any mix-like thing is still going to have the problem that if the adv can monitor bandwidth on entry and exit to the net, the intersection attack is going to work assuming detectable traffic patterns, which i think is a very good assumption in r/l so, to me, this places an upper bound on how good you need the mix itself to be i handwave some about approaches for having the cascades themselves send dummy messages. ok i think it could actually work so... let's consider a simpler network plain old mixes basically the cascades need to be sending test messages anyway, plain old source routing and they simply address them to/from people who've previously used the cascade ok. plain mix net. * raph is not convinced by dummy messages at all at all? i think they raise the bar.. not very much i get the feeling they raise it from the equivalent of 32 crypto to the equivalent of 40 bit crypto fair enough so. plain mix net. yes so the application of an advo-like tm is really easy to see the remops themselves do peer certs ... and in this case, the cert basically means "cert subject is not nsa" right right. it isnotbased on observed performance yeah, so observed performance is interesting you can also do that the same way if the net is going to remain fairly small, then you just do all-to-all pinging with each note publishing its own list well, the premise of casc-rep is a bit different: the client just retrieves all n^2 values, and evaluates those according to trust my goal is to allow more dynamic participants, right so random people can volunteer for a day, not volunteer the next, etc i want all sorts of people to be able to join, and the trust metric needs to handle this so you're really building a full p2p network :) so the trust graph should be reasonably stable even if you have join/leave (right. it's possible i'm just nuts and the real reason the network is small is because nobody wants to be an exit relay....but i'll solve that down the road.) well, if we're talking about the real remailer net, the deeper problem is that port 25 sucks if you had a spam-resistant messaging system, a pseudonymity service would be quite valuable but that's a different story... let's keep focussed on trust so if you do source routing, you're very dependent on your choice of seed in fact, that becomes your killer critical problem right it's likely that the "trustworthy seed" problem has no technological solution only (perhaps) social ones speaking of, i worry that needing to play the trust network game will seriously slow down the dynamic part of the network you can't just grab the rpm and go* raph notes that the recent morpheus problem can be seen as a seed failure you need to go out for a beer with somebody, etc. yes, you really don't have throwaway participation in a trust network and i think that will keep the list of partipants small. to me, the answer to that problem is clear: you offer long-term valuable services to those who do participate oo. another question. you know how seti@home gets people to do it because of the rankings? is there a comparable thing here? rankings meaning amount of cycles people are burning? right. "my team is
3" aha that's an interesting q primarily social nobody would do seti@home if there were no stats page. that's a
social thing. but it's critical. right it's like the peacock's tail it has a very high cost, but showing that you can afford that cost is valuable for getting peafucked interesting. (it's a standard model in evo psych, if you've been following that) i'd followed them separately, but hadn't tried connecting them. raph spends too much of his time thinking about this stuff :) hey, i'm going to be in SF apr 13 through 20ish you going to be around? think so great i mean, almost certainly, for at least a subset of that time raph frequently has 1 or 2 day obligations like staff meetings etc) i'm doing two workshops and a conference while i'm there so let's get together fer sherr but i'll have an evening free sometime. *** coderman (~fibrill@12-224-237-178.client.attbi.com) has joined the channel yes, i'd go out of my way to insure that too bad it's before the google contest 'coz otherwise we could get them to fly me to sf :) lol, you in the google contest raph? so i can't talk you into going to pet2002? it'll be fun :) maybe one day it's a sunday and monday i dunno, look at the list of accepted papers and you'll decide either way so back to casc-rep yes there was another really interesting thing we noticed when working on it the idea is to group mixes into cascades, ok, so tell me what a cascade is and if anybody in the cascade screws up, they all suffer in 5 words or less a fixed-order set of mixes. it's a path. lots of people use it. so it's a data structure? an ordered list of nodes? it's the statement "use A first, then B, then C, then D." ok all the traffic goes into A, from there to B, ... so, basically, you're still source-routing, but you expect many sources to choose the same route and each of them reorders it reordering in the classic mix sense, yes? right. there are a limited number of routes people can pick right.
batching/permuting/etc. ok, i think i get it so the advantage is clear so the deal there is that the nodes in a cascade watch each other, and if one of them says the cascade failed, it did. aha all nodes in a failed cascade lose a reputation point that's cool all nodes in a non-failed cascade (they last a day) gain a reputation point now the problem here, it makes it v. difficult for a node to lie about being reliable (right) is that the adversary's strategy is to make a bunch of nodes, get them put around into various cascades, and fail when it's advantageous. for instance, if cascades are size 4, right i get it then he will fail cascades where he has only one node, and not fail others. raph is fast at this kind of analysis :) so with only a small percentage of nodes, he can move his nodes anywhere reputation-wise. right suck. :) we kludge it in casc-rep with two things: a) a web of trust to limit the number of bad nodes that won't work because a small number of bad nodes is a problem b) we pick cascades such that even if the adversary putall* of his nodes into the range from which you're picking the 4 nodes, it's still within acceptable safety bounds. you only need |cascade| well, if you have only |cascade|, ok, b is more plausible then you haven't broken any anonymity. really? that was a very fuzzy statement. it needs refining. read the paper. ;)
presumably, the goal of the attacker is to create a cascade of all-bad nodes i will i promise if you have an all-bad cascade, the attacker wins, yes? yes. ok so the non-independence is interesting (it can be complicated into an all- bad path rather than just all-bad cascade, if users can chain cascades. but we can ignore that for now.) and you're assuming that cascade/path length never gets very long right? well, we posit paths of around 12 hops, in the paper.
i was gonna say, above 10, assuring reliability is a serious problem well, isn't that based on current mix-nets? yes, true in theory, cascades that aren't reliable will die early so if you use 3 of the functional cascades, and they stay functional, you're fine if they don't, future people are more likely to be ok. etc. ok, but we're talking about a relatively small constant, i think right. 12 is still small enough that it's realistic for an attacker to get that # accepted yes. so the interesting thing, to me, but the chance we'll build a path out of only his nodes is, well, a parameter we can work with. is that you win by making the path more heterogenous http://freehaven.net/doc/casc- rep/casc-rep.ps btw. hm. i should commit the newest version, shouldn't it. ie, one node with an aclu affiliation, another with cia, another with swiss govt, etc true. but we'll ignore that yeah. that's hard to quantify. so, i think you might want to kiss in terms of trust raph thinks ok, this is just off the top of my head but having the client evaluate a simple advo trust metric on the graph (which is published) seems like the right thing so you use the reputations for reliability only correct and the trust metric for trust only yes aha, here's a thought if you don't trust a node, you ignore all reputation ++'s and --'s that that node participated in hmm, no, that's problematic how so? the probabilities go the wrong way as lengths scale true well, thepath* length goes up to 12, but the cascade length remains fixed at 4 or 5 ah so it could still work that's better we left the cascade length low for that reason obviously, i need to read the paper so a single bad node would have limited influence on how many others it could take down with it. you've convinced me it's worth reading :) in the extreme case, it's simply free-route mixing with a buddy system (mixes come in pairs which watch each other) mm-hmm http://freehaven.net/doc/casc-rep/casc- rep.ps. the current one should be fine to read. we just finished the preproceedings copy, but it's not much different.
wgotten skip section 4 on your first reading, if you like. fyi, gznork is completely non-anonymous that was one of my first reaalizations i couldn't solve double-spending without full traceability even though it basically grew out of my thinking about how to create an anonymous system it won't even be a good system for pirating music, much less terrorist planning what'll it be for? because if the riaa wants to be super-nasty and issue subpoenas, the (publicly readable) trust graph will tell them exactly who to go after even if there is a provision for pseudonymous nyms well, people will use it for that anyway, even though it's not a good idea :) i'm kinda thinking one of the biggest legit uses is free software isos and the like ah. so software redundancy and availability that was cfs's stated goal too and i think tangler's? right raph is not familiar with tangler really? o, you should look at it sometime (in your copious free time) is this one of your things raph recalls you talking about it no, david mazieres and marc waldman, nyu ah .google tangler nyu tangler nyu: http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~waldman anyway, it's not as important as other things but it's along the lines of free haven, but slightly more feasible. aha so, basically gznork is this: an underlying stamp-trading network the goal of that is to be able to discover trading partners ok and to enable trading with those, and shut out everyone else the pattern of trading partners is chord-like on top of that, i see implementing about 5 services the first is vanilla bulk file transfer and the reason why it's the first is that it's relatively easy ie, you're not critically dependent on trust or, to be more precise, you don't lose much. yea trust is still needed to keep the underlying network healthy but it's not needed at all to provide the service itself (we can assume that it maps some kind of hash to the file itself, avoiding file naming issues) so it's relatively easy, and also something there's a high demand for o right, you've got this nasty issue of actually deploying it and making people want to run it. that's a hard enough problem in its own right. :) well, that's not my main concern, actually :) but yeah so the other services are harder #2 is probably email and there we have a number of interesting goals primarily spam-resistance right but i'll throw a couple of other things in for good measure, like transparent pk encryption and reliability arma chants 'pki' that's #3 a name server, pretty much exactly the same as my thesis design but an important point is that #2 will run without a name service raph chants 'ssh' uh.. huh? ssh works without a pki what's a pki? what's a name service? ok, i have no idea what a pki is the name service is much easier or rather, how the (# can you do email without naming? it's a namespace global to gznork, first-come, first-serve policy ok. hashes of public keys :) hm. which you need to instantiate the trust graph ok. so like pgp then. there will be several keys which claim to be arma@mit.edu, so a big part of gznork is making those hashes pretty and accessible and you'll pick the one whose trust characteristics lead you to believe it's me. actually, no good. then how? ok in the non-pki case, i'll just pick 4ab3 776a 1253 based on you having given me a beautifully printed card with that information, last time we had a beer together business card pki. ok. or, perhaps, the other way around, and me responding to an email you sent me with the name service, it's a bit better gznork enforces the 1st-come, 1st-serve policy so you tell me that your gznork name is "arma", and i'll believe you if somebody else took "arma" first, then you'll tell me it's "arma2" or whatever then, i just type in "arma", and it resolves the key right. and lying gets me nowhere, and, when you send me mail, it says "arma" because either i have the private key or not. yeah, the issue is not lying, it's being fooled but my feeling is that people can understand this as opposed to just about everything else that's said in pki-land ah. the usability ogre. yes, gznork is as much about usability as science they'll understand that when mail arrives from arma2, with roger's name at the bottom, it'll be clear that it might not be from roger? hrm. so, unfortunately, the one area where this falls down is trademarks arma: some people will be able to understand that the remainder will never, ever, ever, have the opportunity to experience secure email others will get burned. i guess we can't win all the battles at once. right. i imagine that the first thing that will happen when gznork catches on is for somebody to register keys for all the trademarks cause hey, registration is free, just like the old internic this may cause a problem if you get an email from "wells fargo bank" actually, it would be better if registration cost $10 or so, payable to me, but i can't figure out how to do that and make the network decentralized, attack-resistant, and so on you could make registration free but you can send a $10 and trump an address. if you don't want your address trumped, you better pay first. right evil. but anyway. :) hey, you could even have multi-tier trumping so, yeah, probably the right thing to do is have hierarchical name spaces, and brands so if you really don't want it trumped, you pay $1000. etc. "how much is it worth to you to become wells fargo bank?" interesting concept, but i find it a bit distasteful probably just too reminiscent of the current dns policy :) heh so, i create a new brand, say "faligent" because it has to not be an existing trademark :) and i promote the brand as being tm-friendly so "faligent.coke" is coke, not a cocaine dealer "faligent.ford" is not a hitchhiker's fansite etc and you need to know faligent's key to generate a faligent. name? faligent sells them and other people can't forge them, i mean ah, how do you enforce the policy? there are a few ways to do that the most dnssec-like is to have clients do the verification so you look up "faligent" in your global namespace, then verify the chain from there ie, faligent signs the coke cert, etc so faligent.coke is effectively 'signed' by faligent ok but there are other interesting ways of doing it this will be chapter 5 of ye olde thessys there's a crypto way on the tip of my mind ? basically hashes and stuff can't generate a faligent.foo without faligent's key as part of the process hmm erm. would have to get some sleep for it first. but i'm confident it can be done. (and has been done) intriguing that's faligent's private key, yes? right. i'd probably start looking at sfs first, to try to remind myself. anyway, i'm not that concerned about that are you familiar with sfs? only vaguely the more challenging problem is the root namespace ok. if you're not concerned, i'll just dump that topic and move on. :) i think if you can solve that, you can get hierarch delegation for nearly-free ok, so services #4 and #5 #4 is firefly but not sucky like firefly this was going to be chapter 6 of my thesis but ch6 is turning into an analysis of google and #5 is perhaps the most fun it's a mud more specifically, you have objects for "things", "rooms", and "avatars" and you implement semantics for them, like a thing can be inside a room have you done any inform/zcode hacking? no, but i wrote a mud a while back righto it's how i learned c. that must have been... 10 years ago? so doing it distributed is really challenging right in fact, basically what you want is transactions yep ie, if you move a thing from room a to room b, then you want that to be atomic so doing it as a mud is a way to keep it fun hey, that reminds me. hm. i'm sure that financial transactions would be equally valid but that'll be for somebody else btw, have you looked at miguel castro's work under liskov on byzantine transactions? yes ah, good i think that can be generalized to the trust-metric world that would be neat. it's hard stuff, from my perspective the problem is that not all nodes have the same view of what the other nodes are i haven't looked at it enough to be able to extend it castro's a smart guy. but there's an intuition why i believe it should be possible consider the set of all nodes trusted by the good set (ie that includes some bad ones) the good set ? ok nodes are good or bad each node trusts a set of other nodes ok. sounds good. in the classic byz model, the trust set is the complete set now we have defined good, bad, confused and is the same for all nodes and you win as long as 2/3 of the nodes in the set are good so my intuition is to consider any node which is trusted by only some of the good nodes as bad and if you still have a 2/3 majority, i think you still win but i'm not sure as you say, byzatine transaction foo is hard (it's interesting how many ppl i know who got into hardcore programming through implementing a mud) (at least one programming languages guy at berkeley, and several others i know through free software) hey, bbs, play mud, run mud, move on it's how we all did it, right? not me but i'm wierd ok, i really need to get to bed now http://mit.edu/arma/Public/6.313f.tex is a paper i wrote for tom knight ~4 years ago, on implementing a distributed mud anyway. :) yes, sleep. and read casc-rep and tell me if you buy it. yes (wow. i hadn't thought of that as being p2p.
but it needs to be.) i probably won't buy casc-rep, that is (the mud thing, i mean) ok. good. :) but this is high praise there is no other work i've seen on anonymity that rates that high oh cool, you really have thought about this stuff hm? no wonder you're at least familiar with castro i used castro's byzantine toolkit in the submission to info hiding 4 then we found a better way to solve our problem (that submission is [7] in casc-rep) aha (er, turned into [7], that is. it changed a lot between acceptance and preproceedings.) ok, will probably read casc-rep tomorrow those were the days. we wrote that paper in 10 days, unless i get completely caught up in writing from deciding to write a paper, to finding a topic, to solving it, to submitting the paper. what did you mean 'rates this high'? in your eyes, or is there some global chart i should know about? in my eyes :) (damn these decentralized approaches ;)
there's quite a bit of work on anonymity that's utter crap but i don't have to tell you this s/work/"work"/ :) yeah.
we're on the right track. we're still partially crap, but i'm coming to understand this, so hopefully i can do better next time. yup this is why i do graphics the problems are soooo much easier ...and then realize that that is crap, and do better the next, ... and it's much easier to convince people that you've solved them :) ok now bed hope to talk to you again soon! good night. *** raph has quit IRC ("sleep") yep. you too raph always distracts me so well.
i've gotten nothing done the past hour. foo.
Hmm… want to send me mail: <%radio.macros.mailTo ()%> posted January 20, 2002 12:59 AM () #
Hmm … want to send me
Karl "Be Strict To Be Cool!" Dubost decided to try out Radio. Naturally, he's [as upset as everyone else I know](http://www.la- grange.net/2002/01/17.html#Radio) at the awful HTML: "It doesn't validate!!!" [via Kishore] To Bryan, whose designs I adore: getting your HTML to validate is not that hard! I wanted to use your Transmitter theme for another site so I ran it thru HTML Tidy a few times and it only needed a little more hand-tweaking before it validated. I'd be happy to help show you how. Just drop me a line.
Of course you're still left with the tabel gunk. However, Zeldman points to Eric Meyer's great CSS/Edge, a great resource for cool uses of CSS. Bryan, I'd love to see some tableless designs.
posted January 20, 2002 10:07 PM (Technology) #
*Validating Radio UserLand
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This Version:
<http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/rdfschema>
Latest Version:
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Previous Version:
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-rdf-schema-20000327>
Editors:
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R.V. Guha <guha@guha.com>
Copyright (C)1998-2002 W3C® (MIT, INRIA, Keio), All Rights Reserved.
W3C liability, trademark, document use and software licensing rules apply.
The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a general-purpose language for representing information in the Web. This specification describes how to use RDF to describe RDF vocabularies. This specification also defines a basic vocabulary for this purpose, as well as conventions that can be used by Semantic Web applications to support more sophisticated RDF vocabulary description.
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this EDITOR'S WORKING COPY! This is not yet a W3C WD.
This document is a Working Draft of the RDF Core Working group, and has been produced as part of the Semantic Web Activity and a revision of the Candidate Recommendation of March 27 2000, The Resource Description Framework is part of the W3C Semantic Web Activity. The goal of this activity, and of RDF specifically, is to produce a language for the exchange of machine-understandable information using the Web. Separate specifications describes the RDF data model and syntax.@@primer etc here It is inappropriate to use a W3C Working Draft as reference material or to cite them as other than "work in progress".
This is work in progress and does not imply endorsement by, or the consensus of W3C. A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR.
@@check before publication
The language defined in this specification consists of a collection of RDF resources that can be used to describe
properties of other RDF resources (including properties) which define application-specific RDF vocabularies. The core
vocabulary is defined in a namespace informally called 'rdfs' here, and identified by the URI reference
http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#. This specification also uses the prefix 'rdf' to refer to the core RDF
namespace http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#.
Editorial Note: this Working Draft does not propose a change to the namespace URIs use, nor to the prefix 'rdfs' traditionally used to indicate the vocabulary description language's namespace URI . The Working Group seek seekback from implementors on the costs and benefits of moving to a new RDFS namespace URI.
rdfs:Resource| All things described by RDF are called resources , and are members of the class rdfs:Resource.
rdfs:Literal| rdfs:Literal represents to the self-denoting nodes called the 'literals' in the RDF graph structure.
Atomic values such as textual strings are examples of RDF literals.
rdfs:Class| This corresponds to the generic concept of a type or category of resource. RDF class membership is used to represent types or categories of resource. Two classes may happen to have the same members, while remaining distinct resources.
rdf:Property | rdf:Property represents those resources that are RDF properties.
rdf:type |
The rdf:type property indicates that a resource is a member of a class.
When a resource has an rdf:type property whose value is some specific class, we say that the resource is an instance
of the specified class.
The value of an rdf:type property will always be a resource that is an instance of rdfs:Class. The resource known as
rdfs:Class is itself a resource of rdf:type rdfs:Class.
rdfs:subClassOf | The rdfs:subClassOf property represents a specialisation relationhip between classes of resource.
The rdfs:subClassOf property is transitive.
rdfs:subPropertyOf |
The property rdfs:subPropertyOf is an instance of rdf:Property that is used to specify that one property is a
specialization of another.
Sub-property hierarchies can be used to express hierarchies of range and domain constraints. All rdfs:range and
rdfs:domain properties that apply to an RDF property also apply to each of its sub-properties.
rdfs:range |
An instance of rdfs:Property that is used to indicate the class(es) that the values of a property will be members of.
The value of an rdfs:range property is always a Class. The rdfs:range property can itself be used to express this:
the rdfs:range of rdfs:range is the class rdfs:Class. This indicates that any resource that is the value of a
range property will be a class.
The rdfs:range property is only applied to properties. This can also be represented in RDFusing the rdfs:domain
property. The rdfs:domain of rdfs:range is the class rdf:Property. This indicates that the range property
applies to resources that are themselves properties.
rdfs:domain |
An instance of rdfs:Property that is used to indicate the class(es) that will have as members any resource that has
the indicated property.
The rdfs:domain of rdfs:domain is the class rdf:Property. This indicates that the domain property is used on
resources that are properties.
The rdfs:range of rdfs:domain is the class rdfs:Class. This indicates that any resource that is the value of a
domain property will be a class.
rdfs:label |
The rdfs:label property is used to provide a human-readable version of a resource's name.
| rdfs:comment |
The rdfs:comment property is used to provide a human-readable description of a resource.
A textual comment helps clarify the meaning of RDF classes and properties. Such inline documentation complements the use of both formal techniques (Ontology and rule languages) and informal (prose documentation, examples, test cases). A variety of documentation forms can be combined to indicate the intended meaning of the classes and properties described in an RDF Schema.
Multilingual documentation of schemas is supported at the syntactic level through use of the xml:lang language tagging
facility. Since RDF schemas are expressed as RDF graphs, vocabularies defined in other namespaces may be used to provide
richer documentation.
rdfs:Container |
The rdfs:Container class is used to represent the core RDF Container classes, ie. rdf:Bag, rdf:Seq, rdf:Alt.
| rdf:Bag |
The rdf:Bag class represents RDF's 'Bag' container construct, and is a subclass of rdfs:Container.
| rdf:Seq |
The rdf:Seq class represents RDF's 'Sequence' container construct, and is a subclass of rdfs:Container.
| rdf:Alt |
The rdf:Seq class represents RDF's 'Alt' container construct, and is a subclass of rdfs:Container.
| rdfs:ContainerMembershipProperty |
The rdfs:ContainerMembershipProperty class has as members the properties _1, _2, _3 ... that can be used to indicate
membership of Bag, Seq and Alt containers. rdfs:ContainerMembershipProperty is a subclass of rdf:Property. Each
container membership property is a rdfs:subPropertyOf the rdfs:member property.
| rdfs:member |
The rdfs:member property is a super-property of the container membership properties.
rdfs:seeAlso |
The property rdfs:seeAlso is used to indicate a resource that might provide additional information about the subject
resource.
| rdfs:isDefinedBy |
The property rdfs:isDefinedBy is a subproperty of rdfs:seeAlso, and indicates the resource defining the subject
resource. As with rdf:seeAlso, this property can be applied to any instance of rdfs:Resource and may have as its
value any rdfs:Resource.
| rdf:value | Identifies the principal value (usually a string) of a property when the property value is a structured resource.
| rdf:Statement |
The rdf:Statement class represents statements about the properties of resources.
rdf:Statement is the domain of the properties rdf:predicate, rdf:subject and rdf:object.
Different individual rdf:Statement instances may happen to have the same values for their predicate, subject and
object properties.
| rdf:subject | The subject of an RDF statement.
The rdf:subject property indicates a resource that is the subject of some RDF statement.
The rdfs:domain of rdf:subject is rdf:Statement and the rdfs:range is rdfs:Resource. This property can be used
to specify the resource described by an RDF statement.
| rdf:predicate | The predicate of an RDF statement.
The rdfs:domain of rdf:predicate is rdf:Statement and the rdfs:range is rdfs:Resource. This property can be
used to specify the predicate used in an RDF statement.
| rdf:object | The object of an RDF statement.
The rdfs:domain of rdf:object is rdf:Statement. No range is defined for this property since values of
rdfs:object can include both Literals and Resources. This property can be used to specify the object of an RDF
statement.
[RDFMS]
[ Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model and Syntax](http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-rdf-syntax-19990222), W3C Recommendation, 22 February 1999
<http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-rdf-syntax-19990222>
[XMLNS]
[ Namespaces in XML](http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xml-names-19990114); W3C Recommendation, 14 January 1999
<http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xml-names-19990114>
Comments
Dave makes a commitment to CSS and Bryan Bell runs his theme thru Tidy (private email). Awesome! posted January 22, 2002 05:35 AM () #
*Dave makes a commitment to
glTron: The Tron Lightcycle game. Binaries available for Mac OS X and other UNIX-like platforms. [via Ken MacLeod aka bitsko] posted January 29, 2002 01:43 AM () #
steve@mac.com: Steve's Resume. AFAIK, Steve
Idaho Observer: 15-year-old defends himself
*glTron: The Tron Lightcycle game.
Science Friday: Everyday Design
Anarchists: Keepers of the Flame
Wow! Google adopted Kottke's suggestions
Weird: Radio Free Linux. They're
| Name| Last modified| Size| Description
Copyright 1997-1998 UserLand Software, Inc. 1.0 Fri, 07 Aug 1998 07:00:00 GMT Sat, 08 Aug 1998 12:01:07 GMT http://www.scripting.com/frontier5/xml/scriptingNews.html Douglas Adams: "His opinions are passionately held, well- informed, intelligent, argumentative and quite often wrong." http://www.userland.com/slideshows/daveNetReaderProfiles/slide14.html Douglas Adams XML-related changes coming in Frontier 5.1.3. http://www.scripting.com/frontier5/xml/stories/513changes.html XML-related changes Today's Scripting News XML file. There's one file for every day that we publish. Josh Lucas's nightly mailing of Scripting News is based on this feature, as is Vignette's experimental StoryServer displayer. http://www.scripting.com/98/08/news07.xml Today's Scripting News XML file http://www.stonecottage.com/josh/scriptingNews.html mailing http://www.scripting.com/frontier5/xml/experiments/scriptingNews.html feature http://demo.vignette.com/publishing/scriptingnews/ StoryServer displayer Tallent: Frontier ODBC Extension 1.0b8. Mac and Windows. http://www.tallent.com/frontier/odbc/ Frontier ODBC Extension 1.0b8 Seth Dillingham on List-based support. http://betty.userland.com/stories/daveWiner/98/08/dillinghamOnListBasedSuppo.html Seth Dillingham Fat Page: scriptingNewsToXML. http://www.scripting.com/fatPages/websites/scriptingNewsToXML.html scriptingNewsToXML News.com: Web technologies usurp DCE. IMHO, eventually this will become the XML-RPC story.
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,25043,00.html?st.ne.fd.mdh Web technologies usurp DCE http://www.scripting.com/davenet/98/07/xmlRpcForNewbies.html story News.com missed something. Microsoft's COM is an implementation of DCE. It has more momentum than they thought.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1996/sept96/dcompr.htm COM is an implementation of DCE Reuters: Eudora security flaw discovered. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/zdnn_smgraph_display/0,3441,2126115,00.html Eudora security flaw discovered http://www.webstandards.org/. SJ Merc: Here's a great picture of Microsoft's Steve Ballmer having a strong physical reaction to something Becky Morgan said. Here's the rest of the story...
http://www.sjmercury.com/business/microsoft/media/photos/ballmer080798.jpg picture http://www.sjmercury.com/business/microsoft/docs/move080798.htm story Our friend Thea is looking for mind-blowing Frontier projects that she can showcase in her Galleria. A great flowbuilder! mailto:thea@yes.net Thea http://www.scripting.com/thea/ Galleria Douglas Adams on his nose.
http://www.tdv.com/personal_worlds/douglas_a/nose/nose.html his nose
| Name| Last modified| Size| Description
" They say we can't visualize total nothing. Hell, sit at any committee meeting!" - Kent Lansing in The Fountainhead I spent all day reading The Fountainhead yesterday, almost non-stop. Took me until midnight. Surprisingly, I liked it. I still disagree with Rand and Objectivism, but I think the actions of the characters spoke stronger than Rand's words.
It's a story of an architect, Howard Roark, on a crusade to create buildings of meaning, in a world of people who simply repeat the ideas fed to them by the media and their friends. It's 1984 and Brave New World, except the enemy isn't the State, it's the Society.
Wes: calling David McCusker! :-)
By the end, there's only one point I really disagree with: Rand says that creators should be selfish, and if people try to change their vision, then the creator has the right to stop those people. I can't go along with that. Unlike many folks in California's south, I don't think that culture can be owned. Everyone gets to contribute to the pot, when when it's all stirred up, our individual contributions amount to something greater than anyone could achieve completely alone.
DFSG: The Debian group encourages all authors not to restrict any files, source or binary, from being modified. posted February 03, 2002 06:45 PM (Books) #
*The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
FBI: Illegal DVDs Fund Terrorism
Plucky Headline Viewer for Mac. A very nice GUI aggregator, which supports RSS and Perl regexps. They even link to RSS info: "Simple layout, but contains a number of great sites." posted February 03, 2002 08:01 PM (Technology) #
*Plucky Headline Viewer for Mac
Fri Apr 12 00:23:03 2002 1
Sickening: Two shops in Vancouver were raided last week for selling counterfeit DVDs. Along with the standard "billions and billlions of dollars lost each year" figure, the Motion Picture Association lawyer trotted out the connection that the profits from the sale of these illegal DVDs may help fund organized crime and terrorists. [via Lawrence] Morbus: whaaa? that doesn't even begin t… sigh.
posted February 04, 2002 07:15 PM (Technology) #
*FBI: Illegal DVDs Fund Terrorism
Ooh, ooh, tell me, tell me.
The Maya have a cyclical calendar. The world is said to have begun at the beginning of one of the larger cycles and it was prophesied that it would end at the end of one of the cycles. The cycle-switchovers were always spent by sacrificing so that the world would not end. (Sorta like Y2K...) The next cycle ends in 2012.
McKenna did some calculations and found the world would end in 2012...
There's a lot of talk about "scientists" calculating that things run out in 2012.
Just read in Wired (2002-07) that the Crop Circles indicate takeover in Dec. 2012.
Oops, can't finish this page now. Gotta run.
Well, on some good recommendations I've decided to try Movable Type. I'm really loving it so far, especially the stunning template that ships by default. It 's all done with CSS! Thanks to Radio's XML export and Movable Type's text-based import, all my old Radio posts are available here for your enjoyment. I hacked up a simple Python script to do it. Thanks to the folks at UserLand and Movable Type for some great software -- I'm really enjoying it.
posted February 05, 2002 12:03 AM (Technology) #
*Moving to Movable Type
The Decline and Fall of ArsDigita
I just found my first-ever post to USENET. I was eight years old, not yet old enough to have grown out of AOL, and read the newsgroup of one of my favorite TV Show's "Beakman's World". You'll have to excuse my poor spelling and punctuation -- this clearly was one of my first 'Net experiences. So, thanks to Google Groups, I can now read my very first post.
It's short, isn't it? Notice how even then I had two email addresses. Unfortunately, Google doesn't seem to have the message I was replying to.
I remember talking to my father about how the creators of a competing show, "Bill Nye: The Science Guy", kept asking the newsgroup to explain what they liked so much about Beakman's World. I remember being rather puzzled at the question, as it just seemed obvious to me that Beakman's was better, even though I had no reason for that decision.
Later on, it seems I shared an account with my two brothers, who were looking for games and after that I started asking about DC-Nets (a question which I still haven't gotten a good answer to).
Anyway, enough memories for one night.
Some of you might find the full
text interesting. Here it is,
for posterity:
From: aaronsw@aol.com (Aaron Sw) Newsgroups: alt.tv.beakmans-world Subject: Re: Alanna is a Brady Date: 3 Sep 1994 08:59:06 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Lines: 5 Sender: news@search01.news.aol.com Message- ID: <349ruq$eom@search01.news.aol.com> References: [BPOSTOW.94Jul11120335@ringding.cs.umd.edu](mailto:BPOSTOW.94Jul11120335@ringding.cs.umd.edu) NNTP-Posting-Host: search01.news.aol.com In article [BPOSTOW.94Jul11120335@ringding.cs.umd.edu](mailto:BPOSTOW.94Jul11120335@ringding.cs.umd.edu), bpostow@cs.umd.edu (Brian Postow) writes: No on Sat morning Its The same as TLC Except At 10:30 I think Aaron Swartz,AaronSw@aol.com,aaronsw@mwc.com
posted February 07, 2002 12:46 AM (Personal) #
*My First Usenet Post
I've just added Aaron Swartz: The Stats, thanks to Mark Pilgrim's awesome sitestats.py software. It was easy to install, only took a few modifications and works beautifully. Thanks! posted February 07, 2002 11:15 AM (Technology) #
*Fancy Stats-Man
Today I went to the liberty Secretary of State's office and got my driving permit. I am now allowed to drive with someone else who has had their driving license for more than a year.
I took quick advantage of this, going out for my first drive with my father tonight. We we to a parking lot at the beach nearby and I learned how to move the car around. Eventually I went out of the parking lot and came in again, and practiced that a few times. Then, when we were done, I drove home! Quite a feeling -- I'm on a high.
posted February 07, 2002 08:47 PM (Personal) #
*My First Drive
You type, it talks.
Through the magic of the Internet, you can now make my computer at home say random things! Sorry, this service has been discontinued. Please leave your name and number so I can inform the pol--I mean, call you back.
speak.cgi:
tcpclient server port sh -c "tee >&7"
echo "Content-Type: text/plain"
echo
echo "Thanks for the message! Hopefully it got through alright."
command line:
tcpserver server port recordio ./speak.sh
speak.sh:
tee | ./filter.py | osascript
filter.py turns it into a short AppleScript (say your comment here"), osascript uses the text-to-speech software
build into OS X to get it to my speakers.
Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com) Powered by shell scripts, ucspi-
tcp, osascript and a leetle dab of Python.
Guan: ArsDigita VCs v. Co-founders
(/.) Philip: ArsDigita: From Start-Up to Bust- Up
(/.) Eve: [Diary of a Start-Up](http://eveander.com/arsdigita- history) (/.) Mass High Tech: ArsDigita closes shop, sells assets to Red Hat
(/.) Lars: [Goodbye ArsDigita](http://pinds.com/lars/goodbye- arsdigita) New York Times: On the Road Again, Bound for a State of Mind
posted February 10, 2002 10:03 AM (Technology) #
*The Decline and Fall of ArsDigita
CSS: Client-side rendering rules
Ender's Shadow (price check, Amazon) (the author wanted it to be called Urchin) was a wonderful book to read. I'd read Ender's Game a while ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, and this book seemed even better than it. It takes us thru the excitement of heated battle, while making us think about the deepest traits of our humanity.
The author, Orson Scott Card, has written a number of "sequels" to Ender's Game, but the first such sequel takes place 3,000 years after Ender's Game ends. It also takes a more serious and contemplative tone, which didn't go over so well with the kids who loved the story of Ender's Game so much.
This book brings back all the excitement and retells the same story (it's a "parallel novel" or a parallax) but puts a different twist on things, telling the story of Bean, the scrawny youngster who works his way up from starving on the street to saving the planet.
While doing so it brings up questions about religion, hatred, life and death and makes us curious about whether human nature will ever change. All of this is played against the backdrop of "The Buggers", the evil insectoid aliens controlled with a single hive mind who have set out to colonize Earth.
At the end, there's obvious room for a sequel about how life ends up on Earth afterwards. While this book would not have the magic of space battles, it could go into further depth on the philosophical issues. [Mike Cohen](http://www.mc- development.com/) pointed me to Shadow of the Hegemon (price check, Amazon) which appears to be this book I imagined.
By the end of Ender's Shadow, we realize that humanity's greatest strength flows from its ability for independent thought. Yet almost as quickly we learn that this ability can also be our greatest weakeness. In the end we're left with only questions, and each of us must answer them for ourselves.
posted February 09, 2002 10:49 PM (Books) #
Ender 's Shadow by Orson Scott Card
The New Yorker: My Flamboyant Grandson. An excellent science- fiction story about our consumerist future, and one young boy who just wants to dance.
We left the Eisner and started up Broadway, the Everly Readers in the sidewalk reading the Everly Strips in our shoes, the building-mounted mini-screens at eye level showing images reflective of the Personal Preferences we'd stated on our monthly Everly Preference Worksheets, the numerous Cybec Sudden Emergent Screens outthrusting or down-thrusting inches from our faces, and in addition I could very clearly hear the sound-only messages being beamed to me and me alone via various Kakio Aural Focussers […] I must say that while I thoroughly enjoy the New Yorker, I've never read the Fiction section before. This story was every bit as excellent as their non-fiction pieces. [via Boing Boing] posted February 15, 2002 02:28 PM () #
*My Flamboyant Grandson
The long-awaited CodeCon (Advogato, The Register) starts today at jwz's DNA Lounge. CodeCon, started and run in large part by Bram Cohen
(creator of BitTorrent) as a way for P2P hackers to have their own conference about running, without the usual overpriced fluff and action-free punditing. As the conference is about to begin, the usual last-minute madness ensues.
One of the nice things about the DNA Lounge is that it's got great audio and video webcasting facilities. Only the webcasting server (cerebrum) went down this morning (remotely power-cycling isn't working), the person there isn't answering the phone, and the RealVideo server kindly hosted by Groove Factory went down last night.
<jwz> so basically, everything's fucked.
posted February 15, 2002 02:37 PM (Technology) #
*CodeCon!
Roger Schank: Stories, Curricula, Master's Degrees and Dragon Slaying. Schank proposes a Story-Centered Curriculum (SCC) where students learn by actually doing the things they want to know how to do.
Doing projects like these were the only decent things we did in school. My 6th grade teacher Barbara Woodman turned her class into a bank for several months, so that we learned about finance. Principal Todd Nelson turning the middle school into the city of Riverton and having us build a giant bridge. And Professor Slocum of MIT has an intensive three-week course where his students invent, design, create and build something interesting.
I liked these so much that I designed my own: North Shore Marketplace.
posted February 18, 2002 02:00 PM (Education) #
*Students, Teachers and Dragons
Notation3 generation by # notation3.py,v 1.88 2001/08/30 21:21:00 connolly Exp # Base was: fakeroo:j8d8sd9 @prefix
. @prefix cr: . :cert1 :issuer [ cr:SHA "TLCgPLFlGTzgUbcaYLW8kGTEnUk=" ] . #ENDS
There have been a lot of questions about CSS and its uses in the last few weeks, so I thought I'd throw in my two cents.
Basically, it's just a system for controlling the look of your site. Like server-side templates languages and content management systems, CSS lets users modify the look of their whole site by changing one file. In short, CSS is a system of client-side rendering rules. Let's break this down… CSS is client-side. This means it can do things that server-side systems can't, or usually don't. CSS lets users choose how they want the page to look using alternate stylesheets, let's you adjust settings based on media types (desktop, handheld, telephone, television, etc.), allows users to override settings with user stylesheets (making the default font size bigger, get rid of ad banners, etc.).
CSS is a rendering language, which means that it changes the look of the page. Often this will be done by the templating languages in CMSs like Radio, Manila or Movable Type. Because it's separated from the HTML, you can continue writing your web pages like you always have, and a special CSS designer (even one who doesn't have write access to your website!) can work on the graphic design. Although, in my experience, CSS' ease-of-use has allowed me (and I am terrible at designing sites) to create some decent-looking pages.
CSS is unlike most templating languages in that it's rules-based. Like the pikeRenderer rules, you provide a bunch of attributes (font-family, color, weight, text-decoration) and apply them to a bunch of elements (specifications for sets of HTML tags). CSS even lets you change little things like the size of an
header or the background color of a link. You can do all of this without modifying the HTML at all, letting the HTML simply store the content and CSS take care of the presentation.
CSS has it's flaws of course: it can't rearrange the structure or order of a page, it doesn't let you add content like logos or navigation bars and it has compatibility problems in some browsers. But despite it's flaws, it's a very useful tool for those who want greater control over the look of their website. I hope that others find it as useful as I do.
posted February 18, 2002 10:29 PM (Technology) #
*CSS: Client-side rendering rules
Marc Stiegler's Earthweb (price check, Amazon) is an answer to his last final exam question in the form of a science fiction novel. It looks at a future where the token evil aliens attempt to destroy the people of Earth every five years, causing humans to unite using the next-generation Web, each person contributing their own unique talents in a last-ditch effort to save the planet.
As a story, Earthweb is relatively uninspired. It has a plot reminiscent of Ender's Game, along with the usual mix of action/adventure, love and evil aliens in a giant spaceship attempting to colonize Earth. But this storyline is an entertaining backdrop against which Steigler describes the future of technology.
The major technology topics of the book are: smart contracts
(capabilities and ecommerce), digital signatures (brands), reputation systems, idea futures ('castpoints) and the Semantic Web (bidirectional links, typed links, filters, detectors). All of these are exciting stuff, and seeing them presented as such obvious things makes me even more angry that we don't have them yet.
(I'm working as fast as I can!)
These technology advances lead to political changes: governments, journalists and other exclusive groups are replaced with free-market systems filtered by reputation systems. Totalitarian regimes are overthrown after tiny talking computers, with Web connections are airdropped.
All in all, the book is a great explanation to technology that I and others are developing, and I highly recommend it to folks curious what the Web will look like five years from now.
posted February 16, 2002 11:53 PM (Books) #
EarthWeb by Marc Stiegler
CodeCon 2002 (blog entry) is now over. After three days of presentations from friends and fellow hackers, I now know what most of them sound like and what some of them look like. Plus there are a bunch of cool goodies… After getting slashdotted, jwz has pulled the audio archive… maybe someone will offer to help host using BitTorrent, one of the P2P file swarming tools presented at the conference.
Meanwhile, when the CodeCon folks decided to host the Freedom Server 2.x source code and got slashdotted themselves, Ryan of Sealand/HavenCo pulled their access to his server (where CodeCon.org is hosted) and refused to give up the domain name. The site was moved to codecon.deor.org in the middle of the conference. Ryan plans to use the CodeCon name for a set of conferences run the way he wants them to be run.
The interesting parts of the conference were the unscheduled bits. The Freedom source code release, Eric Hughes revealing that the he posted the RC4 source code
to sci.crypt from a diskette he received in the mail and Tinfoilhat Linux (a Linux distro for really paranoid people).
The panels were also interesting, and revealed the hacker value system on display. The first night was "Money: Do we need it?" where hackers explained they just wanted a way to hack on their code with a nice machine and fast Internet connection and not starve. The second night was "Legality: Could we be in trouble?" where hackers explained how they dodged the less-liked parts of the law.
Overall, CodeCon was an insightful look into the hackers who are developing today's interesting software. Now we just need to find a way to keep them developing it.
posted February 19, 2002 10:08 AM (Technology) #
*CodeCon Wrapup
You see a big open space with people teleporting in and out, toys scattered around the floors and displays, speakers and whiteboards along the walls and ceiling.
AaronSw is tall, slender and a pale white, with black clothes draped loosely around him. He wears an artist's beret and has a round and friendly face, deep in concentration, but faintly smiling.
xena is the north wall, a pool of data and water flowing and swirling. Occasionally people look up at it and shout questions.
log{gy,ster} is the ceiling, a series of recording devices and a display with an ever-increasing pointer-URL for the logs.
walloper is a speaker on the south wall, ocasionally blaring news from the mists.
chumpster is a large whiteboard to the west, which is archived and cleared every day at 0:00 UTC. The topic is written at the top.
sbp is a tall and friendly young man. He's always wearing a wide smile with his trademark buttoned blue plaid shirt. He wears long black trousers that partially cover his bare feet and waves hello to anyone that passes by.
Winterspeak: The Copyright Tax Who does extending copyright hurt? All of us, to the tune of $3B a year, just for music.
posted February 21, 2002 03:46 PM (Technology) #
*The Copyright Tax
Brent Simmons is leaving UserLand. Brent always had a provoking thought, a kind word and a helping hand. I wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors. Brent, many thanks for your code, hosting, support, blog and news.
posted March 02, 2002 06:53 PM () #
*Goodbye, Brent.
What follows a complete listing of Tom the Dancing Bug comics posted on Salon. I put this together mainly so I could read through the whole archive.
The Washingtonian (D.C. version of the famed New Yorker's view of the world cover)
Games Louis Plays: Louis Maltby, Center of the Universe
Games Louis Plays: Revenge Plans for Paul Kelly
Games Louis Plays: Even More Thoughts of a Rightfielder
News of the Times: Acting Not Art! (But cartooning is!)
Games Louis Plays: Persistence Breeds Success, but Imagining It is Easier
The Adventures of Plucky Panda: The Horrors of the Public Domain
Everyone Agrees: The Free Market Works!
News of the Times: Placebo Drug Craze Hits Teens
The Miracle of Sport Utility Vehicles: The Light Truck Loophole
Citizen warning: Dangerous gang terrorizing Los Angeles
Billy Dare, Boy Adventurer, foils Mr. Nucleo!
Let's play Free a Death Row Inmate! It's fun and surprisingly easy!
Matrix Planet: All you see is an illusion. Corporations are not real.
Earth receives message from outer space: "Try Adantum. Ask your doctor."
Follow-up Supreme Court rulings in the wake of upholding Miranda.
Billy Dare, Boy Adventurer, in "Smugglers' Cape"
The education of Louis: Film theory.
Join us, powerful young outsider.
News of the Times: Library System Terrorizes Publishing Industry. Why would anyone pay for a book once it's accessible for free? (Napster parody.)
Super-Fun-Pak Comix, with a side of gazpacho
Great dialogs of the 21st century. Big time
Campaign 2000: Wrap-up of the issues
Chicago! Did you know it's windy there?
In America, it's a sham! And other fun facts about democracy
Super-Fun-Pak Comix featuring Johnny and His Comically Large Sandwich
Bush 'n' Cheney's guide to getting rich
The education of Louis: I can't play that game, talking about stupid stuff
"We're gonna learn 'em some democracy."
Bill Dare, boy adventurer, falls into the hands of a mad genius spouting scientific non sequiturs!
Did you know: The universe is huge!
How Boca Raton Barbara won the election
Super-Fun-Pak Comix featuring "The Tapeworm That Saved Christmas"
Roaming the land, meting out tough justice, it's ... Judge Scalia!
The Tapeworm That Saved Christmas: The Movie
In this week's episode, Judge Scalia leaps into action!
Fun facts about Bob, that guy in the cubicle by the elevator
Earth-shattering inventions that will save the world!
The history and future of layoffs.
The return of the Impossible Squad!
[Billy Dare, boy adventurer, hot on the trail of Dr.
Mordu!](http://archive.salon.com/comics/boll/2001/03/15/boll/story.gif)
Civilians at the helm: Where will it end?
Cows hold beef industry hostage: When will the madness end?
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: "America Loves Mobsters," "The Mad Cow" and more!
George W. Bush, compassionate environmentalist, rushes to the rescue of an endangered forest!
Coming soon! "Passing the Wind," starring Tom Green as Rhett Butler!
A mother's plea: Help me, Justice Scalia!
Defection gives Grub Party control of the Group-by-the-Great- Water.
Opposed to the slaughter of mentally retarded animals? Try Smart Meat!
Captain CEO meets cowboy symbolism!
So I married an australopithecine!
Fun facts to know and tell about Dick Cheney.
What if other industries worked the way health insurance works?
The Salvation Army heads our new faith-based military!
The education of Louis: Rebellion 101
Fun TV facts to entertain and anesthetize you!
"Terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, killing thousands."
Join the fun as we use foreigners as a source of amusing trivia!
God-Man strikes back at terror!
"America Back at War," starring Uncle Sam!
From shore to shore, Americans chip in!
Rich white guys speak out about the sacrifices they are willing to make for the War on Terrorism.
A daring American boy journeys to a strange land to hunt the world's scariest evildoer!
Osama declares victory as Hollywood celebrities cancel appearances!
The view from the New New Yorker.
Special celebrity "Cops": Get that Bad Boy bin Laden!
Attention CEOs: What to do if terrorists attack
Your sensitive government at work.
The John Ashcroft Players present: "Our Bill of Rights"
It's official: Things are normal again!
My secret was safe with Dick, and for that the V.P. will always be my hero.
The story of Bob, the lord of the "Lord of the Rings" figures.
Men's Individual De-Icing, Snow Angel Making and other events in the new, populist Olympics.
Billy Dare, boy adventurer, and the axis of evil.
Larry and Flyin' Feet, Phil O. Sophy n' Friends, and more Super-Fun-Pax Comix
The Nuclear Posture Review: 101 everyday uses for nuclear bombs, and more!
The new sequel to Mel Brooks' smash hit "The Producers": The Energy Traders!
The adventures of the Passive Aggressor
God-Man puts his foot down: Stop the fighting now!
Rosie to Tom: "I'm gay. Serve me lemonade."
The Bush Administration Players present: Adam Smith & the Genius of Capitalism
Marital Mirth, God-Man and more Super-Fun-Pax Comix!
God-Man narrowly averts ... Double-Danger!
The education of Louis: Literature acquisition
What if Tom Daschle were president in August 2001?
Secret Agent Z in "Our Man in Washington"
Up: Down -- And Down Is Up, Says Administration.
Science Facts for the Immature, Overweight People Falling Down and more in Super-Fun-Pak Comix!
News of the Times: President Bush wise and good
Corporate crime: A crime drama in eight panels, being a metaphor for current infamous illegalities
The 2002 Corporate All-Star Game.
Fun facts about the Apocalypse!
The Education of Louis: Home ec
Sam Roland, the detective who dies, in "A Death Most Fatal"
If you like Spider-Man, you'll love ... the Amazing George W!
"Management Does the Darndest Things!" and other Super-Fun-Pak Comix
Russ 'n Gus ask the hard questions.
Billy Dare, boy adventurer: On the home front!
The bareknuckled justice of Judge Scalia
Introducing Low Self-Esteem Teen Magazine!
The Bush Administration Players present: Iraq's Next President
Slap-Happy Stock Market Stories presents "One Day at the Henhouse."
Baby-Eating Aliens Party victorious!
Super-Fun-Pak Comix 90th anniversary!
So, you're thinking of going to nursery school!
The untold story of the Nine Commandments.
Wall Street Journal Comix presents ... Lucky Ducky!
Lucky Ducky continues his lucky streak.
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: The Foibles, Lucky Ducky and more!
Even Superman isn't safe in the public domain!
Lucky Ducky always finds a way to come out on top!
Fun facts about "Lord of the Rings" -- by someone who has never seen the movies nor read the books!
Charley the Australopithecine: Your worst nightmare!
The White House prepares for unexpected hazardous conditions -- like dissent from tax cuts!
Honest George's car lot: Our customers keep comin' back!
Did you know? This week: The Oscars!
Can you spot the double taxation?
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Armchair Warrior, Jasper the Friendly American, and more!
Now you can own a version of the M-1 Abrams tank: It's the M-Wunner!
How anti-sodomy laws saved America!
News of the Times: Economy in recovery!
The adventures of the passive aggressor, hero of the oppressed.
News of the Times: Corrections
God-Man and the Real Estate of the Righteous.
Bush's new strategy of celebrity prosecution.
Billy Dare, boy adventurer: Suddenly, a suburban Chicago high school!
Judge Scalia: The Lone Wolf of Law
Post-War Pundit: Pick a side, and roll the dice!
What the defense of "traditional" marriage really means.
Bob's Eye for the Straight Guy: He'll make you even less fabulous!
Brain in a Beaker: "Wild Weekend"
An asteroid is coming that could DOOM the earth! Quick -- invade Iraq!
A presidential message, from postwar Wilkes Land, Antarctica.
Harvey Richards Esq., Lawyer for Children: RIAA Lawsuit Defense A Specialty. Kids to RIAA: Liar, liar pants on fire! Morality in a God-man-less universe.
Journalism Ethics 101: A handy guide to the protection of confidential sources.
At the Humane Foie Gras Farm ...
What you never knew about the World Series -- or ever even thought to ask.
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Chaos Butterfly, Man Walks Into a Bar, and more.
Lucky Ducky in "Rush to Judgment"!
Billy Dare, Boy Adventurer, in ... "Smugglers' Cape."
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Pavlov's Dogs, Non-Recurring Characters, and more!
"Cold War Strategies on the Highway," or "Outspent Into Oblivion" -- a diatribe in six panels.
Introducing Skull Stalker: He kicks ass!
The cold, hard, fun facts about Ben & J.Lo!
Did gambling ruin your life? Try Charlie Hustle's 12-Step Program for Compulsive Gamblers.
Thrilling Space Stories, starring President Bush. This week: To the moon!
When God-Man shifts his weight ...
Lucky Ducky meets the Energy Task Force.
News of the Times: Janet Jackson blames CIA for wardrobe malfunction, orders probe.
Encyclopedia Bush: The Case of the Generous Polluter.
Did you know? Astound your friends with these Oscar-riffic fun facts and Academ-azing info- bits!
What deadly menace may call upon the Super-Justice Team to pool their superpowers?
For athletic success ... Spark Up!
The Natural World of Nature: This week, our closest relative, the chimpanzee, acting naturally!
Australopithecine 'tude for the Homo sapien dude!
News of the Times: "Swear to God" phrase challenged!
News of the Times: Bush administration reveals plan to attack rising gasoline prices!
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Marital Mirth, Caveman Dreams and more!
Billy Dare, boy adventurer, in "Smuggler's Cape."
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Elevator Trip of the Damned, Chaos Butterfly, and more!
Bush discovered to be evil cyborg -- Kerry still lags in polls.
The Homophobic Players present: "Two Years Later -- A Cautionary Tale."
Zantarr, king of the ape lice!
The further adventures of President Bush and "The Pet Goat."
More fist-flyin' justice from Judge Scalia!
Reality is the hottest thing in Hollywood! And the great thing is -- many of us live in it!
Coming this fall: Spider-Man 9/11!
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Ben Affleck's Hemorrhoids, Young Guy With an Old-Guy Face, and more!
The insult that made a man out of a "girlie-man."
The noble history of the Free Speech Zone.
Hollywood Tales: Tom Cruise in "What a Day for a Walk"
God-Man, the superhero with omnipotent powers, makes a house call!
The Republican Guide to New York City!
Bush and Kerry's World War II records examined!
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Strange Yet Surprisingly Personal, Dinkle, Yuks, and more!
The Cabinet: Candidates take on their assignments. Then they must face the wrath of the president!
The Secret Adventures of G.W. Bush: The mystery of the bulge is revealed!
The most wrong man in the world.
Did you know that Ashlee Simpson owns the world's smallest ball of twine?
Nov. 3: The morning Americans woke up and found out who they really are.
Dinkle, the unlovable loser: He's such a loser he's not even lovable!
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Old Guy Who Dresses Too Young, Marital Mirth, and more!
Can the Fabulous-es learn to be happy in today's America?
The evolution of a basketball fan.
God-Man pulls back the curtain!
Hollywood Tales: Tom, Julia, Brian and a surprise ending!
The year Dinkle didn't save Christmas.
The Adventures of Sam Roland, the Detective Who Dies.
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Guy Walks Into a Bar, Science Facts for the Immature, and more!
News of the Times: Baby-eating-aliens party to reform chest cavities!
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Red-blooded Heterosexual Americans, Deathkiller and more!
Did you know? This week: Oscars 2005!
News flash: Dinkle's real identity exposed!
Billy Dare, boy adventurer: Quentin's Tale.
Judge Scalia goes 18th century on your butt!
Charley the Australopithecine learns the rules of the guys.
Is the system finally failing Lucky Ducky?
The competition heats up for God-Man.
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: The Angelic Innocence of Children, Fun Facts for the Psychotic, and more!
President Bush's culture-of-life blowout sale!
God-Man battles the filibusterer!
Why should we believe this theory that water freezes at 32 degrees?
John Bolton's Guide to Diplomacy
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: The Cutest Thing Ever, Guy in the Airport Who Thinks He's Fabulous, and more!
The education of Louis: Social studies.
Hollywood Tales: Tom, Brad and Russell in "Temper, Temper!"
Max & Doug: Together again after 10 long years
There's no such thing as evolution! Just ask the Creationist Patrol.
Hollywood Tales: Tom Cruise in "Majority Retort."
Lucky Ducky: The poor little duck who's rich in luck!
News flash: George Washington now says he won't fire Benedict Arnold unless a crime was committed.
Billy Dare, boy adventurer: Back against the wall!
Once upon a time there lived a bare-knuckled badger-wrasslin' judge named Scalia...
The heartwarming tale of how hard-bitten Justice Scalia raised young John Roberts.
Dinkle the Unlovable Loser: Phone Phiasco!
Harvey Richards, lawyer for children: Eeway eakspay Igpay Atinlay!
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Jest fer Yuks, Science Facts for the Immature, Disney Jokes, and more!
"Hurricanes for Fun & Profit! A Lucky Ducky Guide"
Play the Blame Game: The game you must deny you're playing ... in order to win!
Billy Dare, Boy Adventurer: A particularly poorly written episode.
The Education of Louis: "Last Halloween"
News of the Times: Scandals erupt over Bush team's devotion to education!
A little ditty for the Supremes.
President Goofus and President Gallant: Honesty and integrity in the White House.
News of the Times: Supreme Court nominee sending mixed messages!
"Intelligent Design to the Rescue" -- or, "Hey, Are Those Designer Genes?"
How the Grinch started a war on Christmas! A Fox News Christmas story.
Dick Cheney's Philosophical Thought-Experiment Legislation: Outlaw Torture?!
Introducing the new Louis Maltby
The NSA Division of Illegal Wiretapping presents: Your Government Working for You!
God-Man, the superhero with omnipotent powers! This week: Danger in the Dorm
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Oprah's Classix Comix, Office Follies, Dinkle, the Unlovable Loser, and more!
"Brokeback" was just the start! Coming soon: Extra-sensitive gay invaders from outer space!
If damselflies could talk ... this would be their story.
How blasphemous cartoons by infidel cartoonists are dealt with in the U.S.
Hollywood Tales: Jude Law starring in "But Jude Law Wasn't Even in a Movie Last Year..."
"Damn Yankees" -- the smash musical sensation starring Barry Bonds!
Uncle Sam in "Around the World in 4 1/2 Years"
News of the times: Beached lobbyists confound experts.
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Chicken Wire Momma, Anthropomorphic Antix, and more!
God-Man and "The Power of Prayer"
Kids, there's a monster under your bed!
Lucky Ducky, the poor little duck who's rich in luck, in: "The High Cost of the Free Market."
Dinkle, the Unlovable Loser: "Making New Friends"
Billy Dare, boy adventurer: Attack of the spurious flashback!
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Lucky Ducky, Erectile Dysfunction Man, Cartoon Caption Contest, and more!
Is pollution causing global warming? Ask Hollingsworth Hound.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter into ... Disney's Inferno!
Buy a Hummer and General Motors has a deal for you!
Got a bunch of terrorists to exterminate? Call in the Impossible Squad!
From TV channel laws to the latest in backseat territory law, the latest in sibling law.
Thank Allah for the New York Times!
Breaking up with an Australopithecine is hard to do.
U.S. invades fertility clinic, liberates embryos!
The Education of Louis: Perfecting the stare.
Hollywood tales: Mel Gibson in "Tequila Sunset"
The party was going well until the Australopithecine showed up...
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Loofy Laffs, Silly Sockers, Humorous Ha-Has and more!
Lucky Ducky: The poor little duck who's rich in luck!
Finding Larry Dodson: An American master.
Larry Dodson: An American Master.
The GOP's got a thing for youth.
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Dead and Dying Artforms, Classic Comix, James Poult and more!
Larry Dodson's meteoric rise to the top of the art world continued!
Lucky Ducky meets the liberal media. Gotcha!
The adventures of Definitely-Not-Gay-Man!
Larry Dodson, American Master: Where is he now?
At home with Nate the neoconservative.
This week's episode of God-Man: "Men in Red Suits"!
U.S. moon base set to open: Moon mall now operational!
Coming this season, the show you fondly remember from the early '70s ... "Brandon Hooper."
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Marital Mirth, G-Rated Pornographic Comics, Robot and more!
Following the word of God-Man!
Does watching the news bum you out? Then you've sacrificed enough!
Nate the neoconservative: "Being a Pundit Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry!"
Charley the Australopithecine begins to see the light.
Crisis in Africa! Are Angelina and Brad getting married, or aren't they?
"All the President's Stenographers": Intrepid journalism in the 21st century.
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: It'll Happen Every Ding-Dong Time, Life in the Matrix, and more!
"Death of a Detective Who Dies": The final chapter in the storied career of Sam Roland.
The Education of Louis: The Movie.
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: The Epic/Brutal Report, Guy Walks Into a Bar, Cruel Humor, and more!
Li'l George and the hornet's nest.
On the distant planet of Thamboria, a bold plan to end war.
What to do with the incomprehensible.
Want to fight global warming without changing your carbon-spewing lifestyle?
Secret Agent Z stars in "The Spy Who Cherry-picked Me"!
Games Louis plays: Thinking through the project.
Charley the Australopithecine drops in on the Geico Cavemen. Hilarity ensues.
Critics agree: Everything was better when you were 12.
Bert the Turtle prepares for a gay bomb.
The secret files of Dick Cheney.
Introducing cereal mascots guaranteed not to appeal to kids. Martin Amis for Apple Jacks, anyone?
This just in: Juan Sanchez admits he's an illegal immigrant.
Louis' imaginary conversation with New York Mets third baseman David Wright.
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Guy Walks Into a Bar, Marital Mirth and more!
A neocon decides that debating the war is hell.
Great moments in sports history: Pud Reilly breaks career home run record!
My blind date was an Australopithecine!
Countdown to Armageddon with Billy Dare, Boy Adventurer!
Lucky Ducky and poverty lines throughout the ages.
God-Man's earliest adventures!
Do not tell President Bush about this!
Evolution of a hip, ironic catchphrase: Don't tase me, bro!
Lucky Ducky in "S-chape up or S-chip out!"
To support our nation's defense contractors, we introduce a new line of Posters for the Homefront.
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: The Epic/Brutal Report, Comics for Dogs, and more!
The Education of Louis: Picking sides.
Palmer leaves Mansen Electrical Supply: Fans distraught!
Billy Dare, boy adventurer: Into the Narratron!
CEOs terrorizing city streets!
Drunk shirtless guy on YouTube: That's entertainment!
See how great journalism is done!
Are whites smarter than blacks? Let's try this experiment and see!
Waddy McPhlegmster's pledge: No spit.
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: The Epic/Brutal Report, the Evolution of Animal Neckwear, and more!
Nate the neoconservative: Doesn't anyone else "get it"?
God-Man and Human-Man team up to fight crime!
Dinkle, the unlovable loser: What kind of horse tranquilizer do you recommend with the sea bass?
The new, improved C-SPAN -- all sports, all the time!
Super-Fun-Pak Comix: Albert the Spit-Take, the Epic/Brutal Report and more!
Superdelegate: He came to save them from democracy!
The education of Louis: Cause and effect.
*More:
assembled by Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com)
I've started putting up photos on my website in Aaron's Photo Albums. I've got photos from my trip to the UK, and some snow photos up now. I hope to put some more up soon. Technical details below.
On the technical side, I'm using this as an occasion to play with Zope, which pains me because it has a lot of big things done right, but so many little things done wrong. I'm hoping Zope3 comes out better.
I'm also using this as a way to generate some more RDF for RDFWeb, specifically their codepiction work (pics of me).
posted March 03, 2002 12:10 PM (Personal) #
*Aaron 's Photo Albums
SF Gate: All Hail Creative Commons: Stanford professor and author Lawrence Lessig plans a legal insurrection.
Today I've been given permission to announce that I'm working on the Creative Commons project as an RDF Advisor. I can't say what I'm doing except that it involves RDF and I'm advising them on it. Details on what the project is about are in the article above. They're very kindly flying me to O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference (what the P2P hackers bitterly call "Emerging Fads") where the project will be making its debut splash. BTW, it looks to be a very exciting conference. I put together a long list of people I'm looking forward to seeing.
Some choice quotes:
Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig's Creative Commons intends to produce "flexible, customizable intellectual- property licenses that artists, writers, programmers and others can obtain free of charge to legally define what constitutes acceptable uses of their work." Technical Architect, Lisa Rein, discusses and demonstrates how the project uses JavaScript, Perl, HTML, and XML to create a web-based application for generating metadata, associated with digital works in a machine-readable format.
The metadata corresponds to innovative and flexible licenses designed to help creators of intellectual works share their work with the public on generous terms. Search engines, file sharing applications, digital rights management tools, and other emerging technologies recognize the terms on which those works may be used.
posted March 05, 2002 01:17 AM (Personal) #
*Aaron joins Creative Commons as RDF Advisor
A very happy Pi day to you and yours. Too bad there'll be no festivities at aD this year.
posted March 14, 2002 04:44 PM (Web Memes) #
*Happy Pi Day
I put together a list of Interesting Conferences (with interest attendees in parentheses). Let me know if you've got additions or suggestions.
posted March 15, 2002 12:41 PM (Technology) #
*Interesting Conferences (and the interesting people attending them)
New Scientist: Rejection from peer groups decreases IQ scores and increases agression. "These are very big effects - the biggest I've got in 25 years of research." posted March 15, 2002 01:42 PM () #
*The Science of Rejection
Click the link below. If nothing happens, then this doesn't work.
click here to test Gecko/20020826-20021104 passes.
IE5.1/Mac passes.
IE6 (SP1) on WinXP Pro passes.
OmniWeb 4.1.1 fails.
Safari passes.
If you have a browser not listed here, please send in the results.
I've moved some of the boring lists off my homepage and onto About Aaron Swartz, a vanity page of the things I've done. Comments gratefully appreciated.
posted March 19, 2002 01:10 PM (Personal) #
*More Vanity: All About Aaron
The Atlantic: Seeing Around Corners by Rauch. From Artificial Societies to Zipf distributions, an interesting article on complexity theory, or how small rules can result in big effects.
On the same subject is Stephen Wolfram's upcoming book, A New Kind of Science, which, it was recently announced, would be released in May 2002 (old chumping).
posted March 20, 2002 06:07 PM () #
*A New Kind of Society
Godfrey Reggio: Evidence: The pervasive nature of Technology. This looks very interesting, anyone know where I can get a copy? It's only eight minutes, so maybe it's available somewhere on the Internet.
Reggio is the director behind the Qatsi Trilogy, "essays of visual images and sound which chronicle the destructive impact of the modern world on the environment." They're wonderful, go down to your library or video store and get them today.
posted March 21, 2002 08:07 PM (Education) #
*Evidence
Introducing: Aaron Swartz Movies, proving my insanity once again. Let me know what you think.
posted March 25, 2002 12:25 PM (Personal) #
*Aaron Swartz Movies
I've finally rescued the data off one of my oldest machines, snicker-snack. One of the things I recovered was the "IOTV Weather" movie I made in 8th grade. I've linked to it from the Aaron Swartz Movies
section.
posted March 26, 2002 03:44 PM (Personal) #
*Rescued Data
I just whipped up display.cgi
(source), a little CGI script to display some HTML that you type in. I've wanted something like this for a while for various reasons, so today I finally sat down and wrote it.
I don't know if anyone else will find it useful, but I'm linking to it in case they do. The HTML is bare-bones so that you can drop in your own as you test.
posted March 25, 2002 09:27 PM (Technology) #
Today 's Hack: display.cgi
- The Sopranos
- Six Feet Under
- The West Wing
- Sex and the City
- Curb Your Enthusiasm
Here's a full summary of all of Tim Goodman's rated reviews. Goodman reviews on the 5-point "littleman" scale, with 0-4 roughly corresponding to unwatchable/bad/ok/good/great.
4: Almost Strangers (review)
4: American High (review)
4: Andy Richter Controls The Universe ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/11/29/DD231361.DTL))
4: Arrested Development ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/10/31/DD170890.DTL))
4: Boomtown (review)
4: Born Rich (review)
4: Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/04/06/DD136944.DTL))
4: Buffy The Vampire Slayer ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/11/06/DD433.DTL))
4: Cedric The Entertainer Presents ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/18/DD180877.DTL))
4: Curb Your Enthusiasm ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/12/31/DDGUK405AD1.DTL))
bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/13/DD85710.DTL))
4: Dead Like Me (review)
4: Fastlane (review)
4: Harold And The Purple Crayon ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/01/03/DD208957.DTL))
4: In Memoriam: New York City 9/11/01 ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/05/24/DD242368.DTL))
4: Joan Of Arcadia (review)
4: Live From Baghdad ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/12/05/DD137990.DTL))
4: Mi-5 (review)
4: Presumed Guilty (review)
4: Project Greenlight ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/11/30/DD208024.DTL))
4: Robbery Homicide Division ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/27/DD152563.DTL))
4: Sex And The City ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/02/DDG3O40VQD1.DTL))
4: Sex And The City (review)
4: Shot In The Heart ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/12/DD159756.DTL))
4: Six Feet Under (review)
4: Six Feet Under (review)
4: The Center Of The World ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/05/DD87724.DTL))
4: The Office (review)
4: The Office (review)
4: The Powerpuff Girls Movie ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/07/03/DD174604.DTL))
4: The Shield (review)
4: The Shield (review)
4: The Sopranos (review)
4: The Sopranos (review)
4: The Wire (review)
4: The Wire (review)
3: 24 (review)
3: 61 (review)
3: Alice Waters And Her Delicious Revolution ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/03/19/DD205542.DTL))
3: American Dreams (review)
3: American Family (review)
3: Andy Richter Controls The Universe ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/19/DD22682.DTL))
3: Bioterror (review)
3: Birds Of Prey (review)
3: Boot Camp (review)
3: Breaking News (review)
3: Cirque Du Soleil ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/01/06/DD138142.DTL))
3: Cold Case (review)
3: Crank Yankers (review)
3: Csi (review)
3: Eco-Challenge (review)
3: Everybody Loves Raymond ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/02/11/DD100436.DTL))
3: Family Business (review)
3: Freshman Diaries ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/08/29/DD301417.DTL))
3: Go Fish (review)
3: Greg The Bunny (review)
3: Haunted (review)
3: James Cameron'S Expedition ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/12/06/DD238205.DTL))
3: James Dean (review)
3: Jkx (review)
3: John Doe (review)
3: Karen Sisco (review)
3: Keen Eddie (review)
3: King Of Queens (review)
3: Las Vegas (review)
3: Leap Of Faith (review)
3: Lm2: Still Standing ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/30/DD105475.DTL))
3: Maybe It'S Me (review)
3: Miss Match (review)
3: Mister Sterling (review)
3: Monk (review)
3: Monk (review)
3: Navy Ncis (review)
3: Oliver Beene (review)
3: Presidio Med (review)
3: Primetime Glick (review)
3: Queer Eye For The Straight Guy ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/07/15/DD301396.DTL))
3: Sex And The City ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/07/19/DD228939.DTL))
3: Skinwalkers (review)
3: Survivor (review)
3: Taken (review)
3: Terror'S Children ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/03/25/DD21526.DTL))
3: The Apprentice ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/07/DDGD3442UQ1.DTL))
3: The Brotherhood Of Poland, N.H. ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/24/DD300369.DTL))
3: The Day Reagan Was Shot ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/12/07/DD161399.DTL))
3: The Handler (review)
3: The Job (review)
3: The Joe Schmo Show ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/02/DD114510.DTL))
3: The L Word (review)
3: The Mists Of Avalon ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/07/13/DD230637.DTL))
3: The Real World (review)
3: The Simple Life ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/12/01/DDG4H3CEAD1.DTL))
3: The Surreal Life ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/01/09/DD125565.DTL))
3: The Tracy Morgan Show ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/12/02/DDGK93CKTT1.DTL))
3: The West Wing (review)
3: Two And A Half Men ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/22/DD217690.DTL))
3: Vacuuming Completely Nude In Paradise ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/22/DD22230.DTL))
3: Weakest Link (review)
3: Without A Trace (review)
2: 24 (review)
2: 8 Simple Rules (review)
2: A Minute With Stan Hooper ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/10/29/DD188927.DTL))
2: Abby (review)
2: All About The Andersons ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/11/DD147702.DTL))
2: All Of Us (review)
2: All Souls (review)
2: Becker (review)
2: Boy Meets Boy (review)
2: Carnivale (review)
2: Da Ali G Show (review)
2: Do Over (review)
2: Dragnet (review)
2: Family Affair (review)
2: George Lopez (review)
2: Greetings From Tucson ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/19/DD145427.DTL))
2: Hack (review)
2: Happy Family (review)
2: Hidden Hills (review)
2: Hope And Faith (review)
2: Jake 2.0 (review)
2: John Leguizamo'S Sexaholix .. ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/04/11/DD98811.DTL))
2: Kingpin (review)
2: Last Call With Carson Daly ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/02/01/DD73983.DTL))
2: Life With Bonnie ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/17/DD117560.DTL))
2: Line Of Fire (review)
2: Monday Night Mayhem ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/01/14/DD223791.DTL))
2: Muslims (review)
2: My Big Fat Greek Life ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/26/DD201394.DTL))
2: Nip/Tuck (review)
2: Now With Bill Moyers ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- 2: Playmakers (review)
2: Push, Nevada (review)
2: Queens Supreme (review)
2: Run Of The House ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- 2: Skin (review)
2: Steve Harvey'S Big Time ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/10/DD255115.DTL))
2: The American Embassy ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/11/DD197674.DTL))
2: The Beast (review)
2: The Court (review)
2: The Elizabeth Smart Story ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/07/DD93946.DTL))
2: The Lyon'S Den (review)
2: The Michael Essany Show ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/03/05/DD241469.DTL))
2: The Mind Of The Married Man ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/11/DD38704.DTL))
2: The Osbournes (review)
2: The Rerun Show (review)
2: The Twilight Zone ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- 2: Tipping The Velvet ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/05/23/DD303084.DTL))
2: Tru Calling (review)
2: Veritas (review)
2: Wanda At Large (review)
2: Watching Ellie (review)
2: Woody Allen (review)
1: 10-8 (review)
1: A Season On The Brink ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/08/DD154568.DTL))
1: After The Storm (review)
1: Baby Bob (review)
1: Bram And Alice (review)
1: Coupling (review)
1: Dc 9/11 (review)
1: Dinotopia (review)
1: Fear Factor (review)
1: Firefly (review)
1: Half And Half (review)
1: I'M With Her (review)
1: Imagine That (review)
1: It'S All Relative ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/10/01/DD18242.DTL))
1: Kingdom Hospital ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/03/DDGHB5BHD21.DTL))
1: Less Than Perfect ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- 1: Married To The Kellys ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/10/03/DD193700.DTL))
1: Master Spy (review)
1: Mds (review)
1: One Tree Hill (review)
1: Out Of Order (review)
1: Reba (review)
1: Regular Joe (review)
1: Saving Jessica Lynch ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- 1: Tarzan (review)
1: That Was Then (review)
1: The Lone Ranger (review)
1: The Sweet Spot (review)
1: Threat Matrix (review)
1: Wednesday 9:30 (8:30 Central) ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/27/DD177922.DTL))
1: What I Like About You ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- 1: Whoopi (review)
1: Yes, Dear (review)
0: Celebrity Mole (review)
0: Eve (review)
0: Glory Days (review)
0: Good Morning, Miami ([review](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/26/DD194500.DTL))
0: In-Laws (review)
0: Iron Chef Usa (review)
0: Like Family (review)
0: Luis (review)
0: Raising Dad (review)
0: Rock Me Baby (review)
0: The Mullets (review)
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Tomorrow (well, it's past midnight so today, I guess), I'm supposed to give a talk on cryptography for my number theory course. While preparing it I realized there was one cool cryptographical protocol I hadn't executed yet: secure coin flips.
Secure coin flips work like this:
-
Alice picks a random number and hashes it (using a previously agreed-upon hash function -- a hash function is a function that takes a message and scrambles it up) and reveals the hash.
-
Bob tries to guess if the number Alice picked is even or odd. He doesn't know the number, only the hash (which is designed to be practically impossible to reverse) so he's making a shot in the dark. (To be particularly safe, Bob should probably try to flip a coin of his own.) He tells Alice his guess.
-
Alice then reveals whether he was right or wrong, and the original number. Bob can verify Alice isn't cheating by hashing the number and making sure it's the same as the hash Alice revealed in step 1.
Wanna flip with me? 256bcc724e035a29cac6e9b676b56210641f229f -- even or odd? The one way to cheat is to find both an odd and an even number that hash to the same thing. Using a regular hash function this should be pretty hard to do, but that hasn't stopped me from looking for one. ;-)
import sha
h, i = {}, 0
while 1:
i += 1
c = sha.new(`i`).hexdigest()
if c in h: print "Whoa! it works for", i, "and", h[c]
else: h[c] = i
posted April 15, 2002 12:13 AM () #
*Secure Coin Flipping
NYTimes on Google's DMCA Issues
posted April 30, 2002 11:12 PM (Photos) #
*Portal
| Name| Last modified| Size| Description
| Parent Directory| | - |
| readme.txt| 12-Apr-2002 05:13 | 1.8K|
re: [the photos], are you doing some Harrumph-wannabe thing? :-)
posted May 05, 2002 04:46 PM (Others) #
*Commentary
I've been taking notes on each session (watch me on the Panopticon): Tim O'Reilly on future of technology.
Bob Morris on self-healing computers.
Peter G. Neumann on truly robust systems and networks.
Marc Stiegler on safely using software with viruses.
Brewster Kahle on losing our culture.
I talked with Brewster afterwards about my Archiver Proxy. We agreed to make it into what he calls "archiving@home" where each node assists in grabbing data for the Web Archive. David Henkel-Wallace wants me to make it into a Squid module. I think this combination will rock: I'll save disk space and Brewster will get more archived data.
Dan Gillmor interviewed me for a bit.
Richard Rashid on Microsoft Artificial Intelligence work.
Went out for Spicy Noodles. I had only white rice, which Bram tweaked me about (along with a zillion other things). Got to meet DaveW, he was very friendly. Walked down to the Palo Alto "Steve Jobs-visited" Apple Store. On the way, Zooko told us his plan for browser- domination. We stopped for an accordian break with Joey. We couldn't convince Dave to buy anything at the Apple Store.
Went over to Borders and chatted until Robert Scoble drove Wes and I back to the hotel.
Tim O'Reilly: The Shape of Things to Come #
Tim O'Reilly is talking about the future of technology. We need to follow the alpha geeks and think about the Internet Operating System and find ways to put these systems together and a framework to put them in. He cites UNIX, Open Source and the Internet as examples of previous platforms. But we need to be sure to keep the interfaces open, not close them up like with Microsoft. He quotes his Mom, a folksy woman from Yorkshire who said "Gates seems like someone who would come to dinner and say, 'I'd like all the mashed potatoes.'" He's strongly against Passport (although he's not naming any names -- Microsoft is sponsoring the keynote). He says Web services make sense since many are worth paying for.
People need to build components and services and not let one person own the platform again. Other speakers will advance the theme.
Also: Wes Felter.
Bob Morris: Autonomic Computing #
Bob Morris says we have a problem. We did really well in the speed of computing -- fourteen orders of magnitude. The curve is super-exponential -- the doubling rate has been getting faster too. But the cost of management has been increasing because of complexity. Breaks down failures into hardware, applications and humans (40%). Our bodies self- heal and self-optimize automatically, our computers should be inspired by that. This isn't AI, it's already being done in small parts, but we need to put it together. Telephone switches use autonomic computing. No outtage when there was a monopoly, only when people stopped working together. Antivirus, RAID, declarative programming, learning optimizers are autonomic. We need to hypervise the hardware. Vertical integration, computing agents, error-recovering pathfinders, etc. Conclusion: standards, standards, standards, standards.
Also: Wes Felter, Rael Dornfest.
Peter G. Neumann: Future of Computer Systems and Networks #
Peter G. Neumann wants to build truly robust systems and networks. "I don't believe in [PowerPoint]. Bloatware is inherently evil." Makes fun of Ballmer, says modularity is good. We can't trust applications and we definitely can't trust the rest of the network. Can't keep building castles in the sand. Working on CHATS (Composable High-Asurance Trustworthy Systems), a set of DARPA projects. Every thing is free software/open source (or Open Source -- it's irrelevant, he says). Architectures need to be inherently robust since problems are inherently complex. You have to build security in from the start, can't shoe it in later. His research still hasn't been adopted.Putting together principles for software engineering.
Looking at the smart card attacks, there's no perfectly secure system. But there are things better than bloatware and single-point failure network protocols. Guy in the audience says that Microsoft's innovation was not to be secure or reliable but to get tons of money. Peter says we need a paradigm shift away from the bottom line. If we keep growing, by 2010 there will be more system administrators than people (and some folks think system admins are not people).
Marc Stiegler: Exploiting Virus-Ridden Software #
Trojans and viruses aren't going away. But with capabilities and E, you can still be safe. Raise your hands if when you buy something you hand your whole wallet to the cashier. It's a fundamental security principle: the Principle of Least Authority. Only give the cashier the authority he needs. H. G. Wells described the mom who invented the Principle of Least Authority. She picked up the mammoth-killing club and put it on a ledge so the child couldn't reach it. Every app on your system gets access to all the clubs, they get all the authority. It's madness! Demos capdisk. Security demos are weird because you don't see security working -- it's just normal. Opens a capability- confined text editor. OK button is called Grant. On other machines you're the supplicant: "Oh mighty one on high, while you're corrupting my computer I would be pleased if you could open this one tiny file so I may edit it." On a caps desktop, the file dialog grants the app permission to edit the file. All done in the E programming platform. Document authors need almost no authority so granting it is easy.
Demos a web browser. Need to grant it HTTP authority. Grant it so that it gets it every time it runs. Talks about Pet Names, Clay Shirky's article and Zooko's article. Can change names and file extensions of software. Browser has multiple renderers, one of them evil. Runs one under normal windows and another on caps. Windows/UNIX, he doesn't care. Just calls it Winix. Caps one tries to read the directory system and fails, Windows one does an evil laugh and suceeds. Does the same thing for editing the OS, inserting trojan horses, send it out over the Internet. "Just call me Klez." Zooko told Marc about this new text editor, the evil editor. Zooko chuckled a little bit but said it was great. It's written by an evil fiend who wants to put a trojan on my computer, but Zooko said it was OK. App is ridden with viruses, but it can't do anything. He goes to use it to open his file on who really shot JFK. It's really secret and Zooko wants to get this info, but he's not worried. He drags and drops the file onto Evil Editor. He edits the file but he can't send it (unlike a Java applet, which has access to the server but can't even save the data for itself).
This is a solvable problem.
Brewster Kahle: The Internet Archive #
Brewster Kahle says we can't trust the publishing industry. They won't even let him read the book aloud -- felony, five years in jail.
He runs an ice-white Apple iBook with OS X and Netscape 6.2.
Alexa stands for Library of Alexandria. like a card catalog, tells you about the site you're looking at, can you trust it. Looks at links structures and usage patterns to get data.
Web Archive has tons of data. costs them $2000 a terrabyte. All the stuff is copyrighted effectively forever so they just ignore the copyright. No partcular problems. 10-20M voices, more than one page for every person on Earth. Losing all that stuff is no way to run a culture. People sometimes ask for data to be take out and they comply. Often they come running back and say, yes, I would like to be in the Library of Congress. Tried to demo it but he ran into a bug with the Linux-based proxy server that redirected him to a porn site. "Purge the complainers" or opt-out is the standard policy for the Web.
Believe in preservation through replication. Most loss is from programmer error. Solution: make another copy. He put a version in the new Library of Alexandria. The idea of having a copy of the Web in different cultures with swap agreements between them gets around the major bug of the original Library of Alexandria: it burned. Took out all the porn from the Egypt version, didn't want to solve that now. Not mirrors, different cultural contexts. Libraries often get burned by governments who don't want the past right now. But they want it when things calm back down again, so putting it in another culture is a good solution. LoA is a beautiful building and now on the left are disk drives and TV screens flashing web pages from the collection.
Summary: purge the complainers works, technology is cheap, can do large scales.
Really being open, letting people run jobs on the machines. Looking for researchers interested in large content collections (linguists, socialogists, etc.). "Paper is pretty great, they've got papyrus from 5000 years ago. These things will be dead in ten years. […] I don't know how long this magnetic stuff is gonna last but it's just horrible." Have to be proactive.
Tried another test, got some old ARPAnet docs from Katie Hafner's resarch for "When Wizards Stay Up Late" and scanned them. Didn't know what to do about copyright so asked Mary Beth Peters, head of Copyright Office. She said that in general people will send you a cease and desist letter. Sounded familiar, it was the purge-the-complainers policy. They put them up. Had to be sensitive. No banner ads, not causing harm, etc.
Tried the Lessig approach to the Creative Commons, sorta like national parks stopped country from being gobbled up by commercial interests. Rick Prelinger decided to put his life on the line by donating his life's work: ephemeral films.
Government propaganda films, how to behave, the atomic age, industrial, amateur, etc. Makes money by selling stock footage. Put the best on the Web. A million downloads, no effect on business. But he did become more famous. So deals became easier. Wanna unleash people to create their own oddball stories.
Interlibrary loan is a terrific legal structure for digital collections. Promise is to give every library access to it all. For free. Bedrock of the library system. From home, you pay. Amazon charges you. Many people can't afford it and they go to libraries. Good trade-off. Interlibrary loan is something we leaverage: make it clunky, less easy, but serve the traditional patrons of libraries.
Loaning is also good. The first-sale doctrine. Give it to you, get it back, etc. Same book. Can we do it digitally? Got horrible licenses trying to make it illegal. Tried it with television as example. Heroic Vanderbilt Uni librarians made an exception for copyright on TV news. Fot [all the tv for one week after Sept.
11](http://tvnews3.televisionarchive.org/tvarchive/html/), all sorts of countries, and put it online. 3000 hours. Only available streaming. Got an A for good idea, C for execution. Overall a B. Limited number of streams so it's like loaning. You can hack it but it's like stealing from a library: it's dorky.
Conclusion: Universal access to human knowledge is within our reach. We can scan all books, music, web pages. But we need to figure out societal balance. We're a non-profit in San Francisco looking for volunteers and data donations.
Looking for full-time employees, hard work mostly in service of research done by others.
Docucomp donated tech to diff html pages. Same tech as in Word. interested in working with corps who want to donate stuff to make it more useful. turning an archive into a library. Getting a good search engine, etc.
Rich Rashid: Rethinking the Modern Operating System #
Moore's law has been going but Operating Systems haven't changed. They do the same things. The difference is graphics, things look better, mascots (Tux) looks better. Human forms of input (like handwriting and speaking) so that the computer works for us. Natural Language Processing, as used in the grammar checker, is available from the OS. He says a lot of students love the green squiggles because that means their teachers can't yell at them about grammar. He's got a semantic network of a dictionary, with links like "quacks come from a duck". He wants to use that to data mine documents and answer questions about them.
He's got a query system that will answer factual questions, decide what's important email (and what's spam) and guess your location and what you're doing. People don't think the way computers do.
lifestreams lifestreams lifestreams lifestreams posted May 14, 2002 11:07 AM (Technology) #
*Emerging Technologies - Day 1
The Secret alife of Webloggers
I was woken up at 4AM to help my little brother Ben with his paper on Guttenberg. I went back to sleep and woke up at 10AM with a neckcramp, a nosebleed and a stomach-ache. I grabbed some breakfast and checked my email and found I was in the newspaper: Dan Gillmor: The technology behind Napster is far from dead. Heh: "ad-hoc-amai". Maybe today won't be too bad at all.
Cory Doctorow on why the messy solution is best.
Bruce Schneier on Hacking Businesses.
Talking with MarcS afterwards, he thinks that Bruce wants True Names on everything and is eager to show him their capability demos. I talked with Kevin Burton and failed to convince him that both consensual time and the Distributed Patron Protocol didn't work.
I had dinner at the hotel and went to Danny O'Brien, Quinn and Gilbert's housewarming party for the "NTK Fortress of Bitterness".
We chatted for a bit and at 11PM Quinn shouted, "'The time has come', the Walrus said" and we jumped in the car and drove to the movie theater. We got in line for the midnight showing of Episode 2, which stretched down three blocks. But we finally got into the theater and it rocked!
Cory Doctorow: Fault-tolerant Realpolitik Online #
Cory wants to expunge the words "high-quality content" from everyone's vocabulary. Movie theaters thought TV would napsterize them so they kept the content off of TV and thought that would cause it to wither and die. Walt wanted money to build a theme park and Roy wouldn't give it to him so he sold a license to the Disney vaults to NBC. It was an accident of history. With the Internet, we got 10 years of innovation because there were no movies on line. The high- quality content were from individual people. With digital TV, the movie makers said we get no high-quality content until there's copy-protection. [BDPG plug.] He wants to expunge the words "mission-critical". People said the Internet was no tmission-critical because they couldn't control QoS -- it's unreliable! So they built an ATM network. People thought mail was too mision-critical to be left with problematic SMTP. They formed X.400 which sat in a room for a really long time while SMTP was worked out.
"Mission-critical" would have kept us from having mail for a while. Napster died yesterday. Napster wasn't mission- critical or reliable. Labels would tell you why napster wouldn't work -- civillians couldn't be trusted to rip MP3s, add metadata, host bandwidth, etc. Napster was the fastest growing tech in the world until they were forced at litigation- point to become reliable.
Raph whispers that this is worse-is-better for networks.
Yahoo died since at current rate every human would have to index for 18 hours a day. Google went and looked at dumb, untrained users. CNN is 96% reliable. The Distributed Republic of Blogistan, filled with people who aren't getting paid (except for Andrew Sullivan) who are more reliable than CNN during crises. Irresponsible, unreliable, successful. We hear no one wants to read books on screen. [book plug] licensed under Creative Commons. We've gone from lambskin to Gutenberg Bibles to Gutenberg Project Bibles. People will read off screens. We heard the same about MP3s.
Cory wants to expunge "optimal". Optimal is optimized for something. Like delivering audio, books or music. "Consume But Don't Try Programming Anything" (Hollings' Bill). We need to look at the innovative uses, not the designed uses.
Unoptimized systems: Universal Turing Machine whose flexibility has made it pervasive (DRM outlaws Turing machines), HTML which has allowed really out-there uses (like an app that pings news sites to predict catastrophes), broadcast which has allowed the PVR. All P2P hackers come from the 12 lost tribes of Israel (Populat Power, OpenCola, etc.).
Hollywood Agenda, as articulated by Jack Valenti, who called the VCR the "Boston Strangler" of the movie world: 1)
Digital everywhere. 2) Plug the analog hole. 3) Eliminate the avalanche of peer-to-peer and redesign the Internet to be a great movie-distribution.
If you care, join the EFF so we can stop this.
Q: Is there an optimal amount of non-omptimalness? If you get really non-optimal it doesn't work.
A: Attend to design choices so you don't close avenues you don't have to. HTML left more choices than hypercard.
Raph: HTML is an example of a tool that is optimally worse.
Why Nerds have no effect in washington: 1) Bad Hair 2) Arguing about who gets the tab instead of paying it 3) Can't get into parties with Hollywood people. And that's a serious problem.
The role of the technologists is to provide money-making opportunities for the entertainment industry. The role of the entertainment industry is to seek conjunctive relief from these opportunities.
There's far less risk to bloggers than journalists since they're just running their mouths.
We've got problems to fix that we can't fix technically. Have to look at it from the point of view of those who have to deal with the problems. In the future, if we can't do it securely we won't do it. His mom simply can't refrain from opening email attachments. Hackers are just an annoyance but good crime is on the inside. We have no solution to insiders. Security is the only thing in technology that's not improving. And it's because of complexity.
Each new version of Windows has had more lines of code and exponentially more security problems. We're losing the separation between data and code. SOAP is billed as a firewall-friendly protocol, sorta like a skull-friendly bullet.
Recommends Normal Accidents -- security holes come from being nonlinear and tightly-coupled.
Security is not a technology problem. Technologists think of things in black and white: you avoid the threat or you don't. Business look at things as risk. You try and mitigate it but sometimes you lose in which case you pay the cost and move on. Or you can pay someone to take your risk (insurance). Rational companies talk a lot about security, but only do as little as you can get away with. To fix this we have to make security affect the bottom line in an obvious way.
We outsource anything that is essential and distasteful: tax preparation, weddings, child education. We can outsource computer security too. Counterpane is the combination of the processing power of machines and the creativity of humans.
The entertainment industry is a way, way scarier adversary than the NSA ever was. (Audience: and they own your children!)
posted May 15, 2002 12:41 PM (Technology) #
*Emerging Technologies - Day 2
I'm running EtherPEG -- it's awesome. (Requires Mac OS 9 or X.)
We did the Creative Commons intro in the morning. Lisa forgot the VGA dongle for her iBook so I donated mine instead.
Whole thing seemed to go over pretty well, I answered a couple of questions at the end.
Had lunch with Mark Miller, he helped me set up E and with MarcS he got me signed up to work on writing Pet Names and integrating it into echat. Then I chatted with Rob Kaye and he's asked me to work on the MusicBrainz spec. (All the things I have to do after these conferences will keep me busy for years…) Now it's time for the star of the show… Larry Lessig!
Went to the Creative Commons press conference afterwards. Larry said that it's an accident of technology that everything on a computer requires a "copy". Creative Commmons is an attempt to bring back a common sense notion of copyright in the digital realm. If you have a "Larry Lessig Fan Wall" and put up Larry photos and copies of his book, he'd be insane to sue you. But if you have a Warner Bros. fan page their robots will find that you've "stolen" their images and make you cease-and-desist. Also, when cable companies started they immediately "stole" content from the broadcasters and sent it over cable lines. Twice the Supreme Court refused to hear the case of the broadcasters and gave a decade for cable companies to innovate before regulation. The Internet deserves the same, if not more.
Explained the Semantic Web to MarcS and MarkM. When I told them it was simply typed links they smacked their heads and groaned. They'd done it in the 1960s with Xanadu, of course.
Went to the Creative Commons poolside party. Lots of good talk, Ben Hammersly is a great guy and is sure to do a good job with the RSS book (Simon St.L is his editor, of course.) Larry was kind enough to pull me aside to chat about CC. He's really great.
Went to the Creative Commons celebratory dinner. Larry drove me in his cool car. When he's not speaking he's very quiet and brooding. He hangs his head down and thinks. Sample conversation: "Who paid for your flight out here?" "You did." "Oh, good. [pause] Who paid for your hotel?" "You did." "Oh, good." At dinner I told Cory a bit about Blogspace. "You Semantic Web people are so cute." Larry showered us with praise. He's confident he'll win the Copyright case. I joked that he should take on software patents next. He seemed to take me seriously, saying that it would be a bit more difficult. Cory drove me back to the hotel. He has the Disneyland Official Soundtrack CD in his car. I can see why it drove Lisa to insanity.
Larry Lessig: The Future of Ideas #
[Larry's got a bit of a mustache now.] On writing the book: Sat down not understanding where he would end up. Both books were sad stories because people don't understand why computer architecture restricts the world and lawyers can screw it up. Reagle told him to figure out more about the values in code, so he read the End-to-End paper. Reagle was right: we had to protect this core of the Internet. It guarantees creativity, etc. And at the end of Future of Ideas (maybe it's because I work in dark rooms)
there was a sad story. A threat to the Internet.
Content providers launched a war to protect last century's way of business. So far they're succeeded in stopping innovation. They've convinced the world that it's a choice between property and the American way or anarchy and evil communism. They're winning because that choice is simple. But there's something more.
In the last few weeks, been working on brief for the Supreme Court. Just finished a little while ago. Pounding out why Copyright Act extensions is unconstitutional. 11 times in last 40 years. Should be limited to fuel the public domain.
Just as the public domain turned the Brothers Grimm into Disney, we need to let someone turn Disney into something bigger. Supreme Court will say that the extremism goes too far. Copyright extended because copyright is bought by monopolists. This is only the first step.
The second step was announced today by Molly and Lisa who announced the Creative Commons. Make it easy to say that this content is available for easy non-commercial use. Not divided between perfect control and no control. Instead it's a balance. Set up a Morpheous server in his office to make his lectures available. Got a frantic call from the network police. They broke into his office and unplugged his computer for running Morpheous. Larry said he comitted no crime, simply making his work into his server. Network police thought it was outrageous that content could be made available for free to others. (Crazy leftist law professors, they thought.) Need to fuel a discourse that it's easy to make things available.
Technologists need to tell politicians the importance of the values held by the technology. Need to defend freedom and creativity so that any creator has the space on which to spread their creativity. Last century's way of business is not a mandate for how to do business in the future. No one gets this point. Going to Washington is even more depressing than the books -- the people there are clueless. They don't understand the design or architecture. It was architected that way and it needs to be protected. They have a Valenti-like view of the world -- "their terrorist war against the most important industry in America." Rhetoric is right but the target is wrong. Technology is the most important industry.
Need to let the folks back east understand this.
Tim O'Reilly wants to put all their books under the O'Reilly copyright (14 years and then into the public domain). The crowd goes wild and the O'Reilly employees don giant smiles.
Reed says that we need to worry about open spectrum. The FCC has moved from protecting the public to protecting the companies. Radio interference is different than physical interference. FCC regulates as if capacity == bandwidth and we must allocate who can speak in the spectrum. But speech is not about spectrum, it's about bits per second. We should have built a bits-per-second architecture and a competitive regime. But when Shannon discovered this, we'd given away all the useful spectrum. Since then we've given away all the rest of the spectrum. We must rethink this and learn about methods for collaboration and software-defined radio. If we don't do this now there are no incentives because there's no spectrum for it. We need to do this innovation. We need spectrum for anything you want -- common spectrum. We may need some regulation to stop people from blowing it out, but we need to stop doing a priori stuff.
Carl Malamud has spent a life showing the government that things can be done. Putting radio on the Web, government data, etc.
Henkel-Wallace thinks that copyight is dead. People just aren't going to put up with it. And you'll build a culture of lawlessness. History like stakeholding in the midwest which made squatters legit. Patrons coming back. Bud to make a tune, BMW to make movies and you'll be encouraged to distribute the data. Media controlled by a cartel. More money may be spent, but there will be a more uniform distribution and hopefully more interesting spectrum of creators. Instead of head shops we'll have watermarking shops. Everyone under 30 will have visited them.
Lessig talks about how the use of the term Intellectual Property has destroyed the rights to fair use. There's no fair use right to his car, so why should there be for movies. But if they are property then why aren't they paying taxes? But IP isn't control. Today we're all consumers and we're all producers. "The former audience". Controlling production does not imply that they can control use.
If you throw standards in the public domain, other companies can embrace and extend it that can ruin the standards. If you keep it to yourself other people will assume that you'll eventually impose as standard tax. Either not controlled at all or perfectly controlled. Creative Commons will have a conservancy that will accept standards and fight off embrace- and-extend and will never exploit it.
Larry: Write something. Write a letter telling your congressman how pissed off you are or write a check to someone like the EFF.
Tim: We need to put our content where our mouth is. Donate it under a Creative Commons-style license. And tell your congresspeople: "you may be getting checks but you're not getting votes." posted May 16, 2002 01:06 PM (Technology) #
*Emerging Technologies - Day 3
Mark Bernstein is doing some fascinating experiments with a simulated weblog community.
He's recently release his first report: ALife and Loyalty which shows how sticking with a few favorite weblogs (your "friends") quickly creates a weblog A-List.
Meanwhile, Rael Dornfest hints at a blog-tracker he's working on with Clay Shirky and Steven Johnson.
posted May 19, 2002 12:29 AM (Technology) #
*The Secret alife of Webloggers
Point-Headed Academics vs. Pointy-Haired Bosses
War Driving with OS X: ApScan, MacStumbler [via wmf] Speed Download [via Lemke] I don't need my downloads to be any faster but it is interesting. It seems to use lots of simultaneous connections to the server and then combine them together later, sort of like OCN.
The Unlikeliest Cult In History [via Zooko] The Secret Life of Alice and Bob
Hyperlinks Matter by Jon Udell [via wmf] It's on why Web Services should have URIs. See also: The Power of the URL- Line, TAG findings on GET.
posted May 19, 2002 12:43 AM (Others) #
*Others
Although the past few days have been cloudy and raining, the sun came out for a little bit today.
Tim Berners-Lee kicked off the conference by bashing spammers ("it's fraudulent -- they should be behind bars"), people who don't believe specs have meaning and patents ("I would be embarassed to be associated with a company that claimed to have invented the hyperlink… or 1-click").
My laptop wouldn't work during the talk. I was really annoyed with it.
Walked to "Cheeseburger in Paradise" for dinner with dajobe, MarkB, ArtB, Greg Fitzpatrick, Libby and Johann Heljm. Loud music, hard to talk. (photos)
Tim Berners-Lee's Keynote: Specs Count #
spammers should be behind bars. it's fraudlent.
P3P is good, whether it protects pry-vacie or prih-vacie.
In RDF, when you say {myCar color green} the meaning of the sentence is decided by the property, in this case color. You can't have a subject or an object that decides the meaning of a sentence.
email attachments are not endorsed. cover letter is the only thing that is first order.
HTTP defines what is a valid representation… what representations are true. not (yet) proved mathematically.
Web wouldn't have gotten anywhere with patents or that mindset.
On OS X: "I like it… just like the NeXT that I developed this stuff on." not naming any names on the patent-bashing. defensive patents are like nukes: mutually-assured destruction.
"I exaggerate in order to protect the guilty." "At the top of a hill, in the rain, I sat with a friend and read thru the RSA papers" it was incredible stuff, changed computing.
posted May 07, 2002 12:20 PM (Technology) #
WWW2002 - Day 1
Make A Shorter Link is a great site and a useful service but it does have its problems.
They're not editable, hard to remember and have annoying interstitials by default. PURLs don't have any of these problems, and when combined with MeRS, an even better Make A Shorter Link could easily be built.
The obvious problem is that once you become reliant on them to keep your link persistant. PURLs have this problem too, and I don't see any way around it. It could be somewhat explained away, however, if they let you edit your links, so that when one site went down you could fix the link to point to the new site. (PURLs let you do this.)
Another problem is that their 8-character alphanumeric strings are a real pain to remember. First, it's silly to start at 8 characters since I doubt that they already have used up the 78364164096 possibilities that 7 characters would have given them. They could have just as well started with two characters or three. But second, they would have been much better off using something easier for humans, like MeRS. They might even let you pick the string, like with PURLs.
But one of the worst problems is how the links are not actual HTTP redirects, but meta-refreshes. This gives users an annoying wait and interstitial advertisement for Make A Shorter Link (as if the URL wasn't enough) and makes these links useless or at least annoying for a wide variety of purposes. I sent in a short note and received an extremely hostile response saying that they wanted "the user of the link" to see where they were going before they got there. Thankfully, however, they have created a preferences page that lets you turn the annoying interstitials off (although it's somewhat burried in their site and they're still on by default).
posted May 21, 2002 12:34 PM (Technology) #
*Problems with MakeAShorterLink
Emerging Technology 2002 Photos
"Essential Blogging" for Review
Aaron's Photos: Emerging Technologies 2002.
posted May 22, 2002 09:33 PM (Photos) #
*Emerging Technology 2002 Photos
His New Weblogging Technique is… Unusual
As Lane Becker wrote on Meg's weblog, Valenti and his cronies are fighting "a terrorist war on the most important industry in America" (can't find a cite, except for blogs of Larry's speech…). We need to work on slogans and imagery to fight the war of unthinkably increased copyright protection.
They 're worried that the artists won't get paid, we're worried that the art will won't get made. It's sure to be a long and hard battle, but I want to see copyright regulation shrunken back down to where it came from.
A short (15-30 year) copyright. No laws against copying or modifying for non-commercial use. Protection only for items with clear copyright notices and registration with the Library of Congress.
These freedoms likely won't be retroactive, and they certainly won't be easy, but we must try to achieve them. If corporations can buy lawyers, we the people must by them back. And Larry Lessig deserves his own TV show.
posted May 22, 2002 12:37 PM (Politics) #
Copyright Terrorism
Nat has put zipped PDFs of "Essential Blogging", O'Reilly's new blogging book up on the Web. Is it just me, or are zipped PDFs the new way to distribute things you don't really want distributed? argh, postscript is better than any other encryption algorithm known to man Also, they're looking for input from bloggers to put in the final chapter of the book.
posted May 23, 2002 05:15 PM () #
*" Essential Blogging" for Review
Brits have money in sofas.
Californians have fingerprint readers at McDonalds.
Americans have an FBI that wastes money and invades privacy at the same time.
French have stolen art destroyed by their mum.
"Everyone's got something to hide, 'cept for me and my monkey." posted May 23, 2002 05:42 PM (Others) #
*Other
Microsoft VP Jim Allchinhas testified that Microsoft code is so insecure it cannot be disclosed. As ESR points out, either a) Microsoft is lying or b) Microsoft has decided that the loss of American lives isn't worth enough to fix the code.
posted May 23, 2002 06:49 PM (Technology) #
*Microsoft Software So Insecure It Could Cost Lives
rtsp://audio.npr.org/wesat/20020921.wesat.14.smil
From the creator of MNFTIU and Get Your War On comes a hilarious parody of weblogs.
Meanwhile, [Mark Simonson Studios presents an article on the use (and misuse) of period type in movies](http://www.ms- studio.com/Animation/typcastingtraile.html). That website is just full of great stuff including an article on The Scourge Of Arial.
Over in TVLand, Salon covers the Buffy Season Finale
which makes me feel really bad for not watching Buffy after it's been recommended to me by practically everyone I know.
The show sounds positively awesome. Well, I guess I can start next season.
Finally, in the middle of an article about computers in cars, Cringely discusses Mesh Networks, a company that hopes to make every wireless node a router and repeater. "[Car companies] should put a Mesh node in every car they make […]. In a couple of years, when 20 million Mesh'd cars are on the road [the car companies] could light that network and, in one stroke, take a big chunk of the U.S. telephone, Internet, and mobile phone markets. […] Toyota is considering doing exactly this in Japan. Watch out NTT DoCoMo." Oh, and the new Google logo is revealed.
posted May 24, 2002 11:39 AM (Web Memes) #
*His New Weblogging Technique is … Unusual
Photo credit: Richard Gibson Doesn't Larry look like the young Ted Nelson? The blond hair, the stublle, the black clothing… posted May 25, 2002 12:55 PM (Photos) #
*LarryL and AaronSw
RIAA Press Release: Recording Industry Takes Audiogalaxy.com to Court For Wholesale Copyright Infringement. I wonder if the EFF will defend them.
<mouthbeff> I want to start a group called the "Fair Use Coalition" to oppose "Copy, Redistribution, Analog-conversion Prevention" so we can have the slogan, FUC this CRAP! Harlan Ellison gave a presentation at BayCon. Danny O'Brien
kindly logged it into IRC for us. It was pretty funny. Harlan is offering a $5000 reward for the apprehension of Citizen 513, one of the people posting copies of his copyrighted work online.
this is what's wrong with irc: none of the rest of you can hear cory singing "hoooray for blogistan…" that sounds like something RIGHT about IRC Count Doctorow Or perhaps you'd prefer Supreme Chancellor Doctorow I like that posted May 26, 2002 01:44 AM (Politics) #
*Copyright Terrorism Continues
Two new hacks: HTML Diff (source) highlights the differences between two HTML pages (currently semi-broken, patches appreciated) and Aaron's Text Converter (source) converts a form of structured ASCII into HTML.
posted May 21, 2002 07:07 PM (Technology) #
New Hacks
Dave Winer asks: Why is RSS 1.0 called RSS? RSS 1.0 was an attempt to combine what we saw as the best parts of RSS: the simplicity and extensibility of RDF (used in RSS 0.9) with the power of the new tags introduced in RSS 0.91, while remaining backwards-compatible. It seemed reasonable for the successor to RSS and RSS to be named RSS, especially since it was compatible with all tools that could already read RSS.
Today was Developer's Day. I hung out in the Semantic Web track, there was a lot of cool stuff. Check out the IRC logs.
I gave my presentation.
Lunch was "Talking with TimBL" (photo), I got the final question ("overall, are you happy or unhappy with the W3C?").
Today was the best day of the conference by far.
posted May 11, 2002 03:46 PM (Technology) #
WWW2002 - Day 5
In the middle of the highly-technical, E in a Walnut, I find this gem: "Walter Cronkite routinely listened to one broadcast with one ear, a different broadcast with the other, while simultaneously taking notes on another topic and speaking authoritatively to an audience of millions." Anyone know of anything to back this up? (Calling Joe Clark!)
posted May 26, 2002 05:06 PM (Education) #
*Multi-Threaded Lives
I'd been seeing a second wireless network in my Airport menu so I finally got around to investigating. I opened up my iBook, launched tcpdump and MacStumbler and started walking. Locating base stations is harder than you might expect, but finding that they exist sure is easy. In the one-block radius around my house I found three base stations (not including my own)! I live in a small suburb with not a lot of people so I was blown away.
Now I'm left wondering what to do next. Any ideas? posted May 26, 2002 09:24 PM (Technology) #
*Local Wireless
EFF: Sing Out Against the CBDTPA, a hilarious flash animated sing-along parodying the Mickey Mouse Club song.
Who believes the average Jane's a criminal on the make? Disney and its show biz friends who have a lot at stake. Who with their locks turn back their clocks on rights we have today? The entertainment moguls and the CBDTPA.
Afterwards, help out by writing your representatives about the CBDTPA.
posted May 28, 2002 03:54 PM (Politics) #
*Copyright Lawsuit Not Included
John Robb: The New Economy. John thinks the Web is killing corporate profits, but getting us consumers lower prices. He also says we should let the stock market fall.
posted May 29, 2002 01:09 PM () #
*The New New New Economy
TinyURL.com - where tiny is better! [via MarkF] Not only are these URLs shorter than MakeAShorterLink, but they're real redirects, and even let you point deeper inside a site. For example, if you set up your site to be http://tinyurl.com/3 then you can use http://tinyurl.com/3/my-links- page.html to link to your links page.
Enter a long URL to make tiny: posted May 29, 2002 03:49 PM (Technology) #
*TinyURL
I'm off to Boston once again, to attend a Creative Commons meeting. My Mom dropped me off at Midway, Chicago's "other" airport. The line at the counters was incredibly long -- they were tagging passengers to see just how slow it was -- so I decided to try my luck with the self-check-in. It didn't work, but I was able to go to the help desk instead of getting in line, and thus was done pretty quickly. The people at the desk were very surprised I was fifteen and traveling alone -- they even wrote "15 YRS. OLD" in green marker on my boarding pass -- and they wondered where my parents were.
Oddly enough, there was a fellow nearby who heard had the same gate I did, and so he offered to take me over. He was off to Newton to see his nephew's Bar Mitzvah, which was interesting, since the last time our family went to Boston we stayed over for Shabbat with a rabbi in Newton. When we boarded the guy was pulled over for a wand check.
Now I'm at the gate with 20 minutes before boarding starts, so I'm blogging and catching up on email. No wireless internet, though. Oh, shoot -- I forgot my Ethernet cable. Gotta remember to pack that next time. Or my power adapter for the plane. Darn. Hmph, they moved me to the front seat on the plane (to keep an eye on me?) so I can't put my back pack under the seat in front of me. We do however, have a good view of the minature LCD screen… it's about the size of my palm. Looks like the airplane power adapter wouldn't have helped -- no electricity in this plane. A crew member came over and explained how to use the lights and air conditioning on the plane. I guess this is what it feels like to be disabled.
Met Lisa in Boston, we took a cab to the hotel. The hotel doesn't have any sort of Internet connection, so I borrowed Lisa's dialup number. Unfortunately that kicked me off after like five seconds, so I decided to go warwalking for open wireless hubs. After half an hour or so, I finally found one right by my hotel, they've got a cable modem and it's very fast. >It 's awesome! Technology is great sometimes. Now I'm downloading my mail and blogging. Off to dinner with Sandro in a bit.
Dinner with Sandro was great, his kids are very sweet. I think I imparted a bunch of my W3C cynicism to him, he was playing the optimist, but was rather pessimistic. As he dropped me off he said, "We didn't get anything solved tonight, I hate it when that happense." "I'm content with raising questions on this trip, solving them can wait until the next one." I replied, with a wink.
posted May 30, 2002 06:17 PM (Personal) #
*Boston Trip 2 - Day 1
Introducing Aaron Swartz: Books, a section of my website with books I've read and their reviews.
I've been looking for the right way to keep track of all the books I read for a long time. I started several years ago with a simple word processing document, but that quickly grew constraining as the book list stretched to several pages.
Soon after I switched to an AppleWorks "database" but that became too unwieldy and had no way to publish to the Web.
Today I think I've finally found the solution to my problem.
It lies in a program called Tinderbox by Mark Bernstein of Eastgate. I just got the program yesterday and it's an incredibly intuitive and useful way to store things. I started in on this project this morning and within in hours learned how to store all my book reviews in Tinderbox and provide a wonderful export of them to HTML with next/previous links and everything. It was incredibly simple. If I would have tried to do this with a database-backed website, my previous tool for these jobs, it would have taken me days or weeks. Thanks to Tinderbox, I can spend the rest of the day working on something else.
posted May 29, 2002 02:47 PM (Books) #
My Books
Mark Pilgrim's been on a roll lately, with one cool hack after another. First he's been working on a system for auto- discovery of RSS feeds and now a blogroll comparison system. Check out my results.
Name | Links live.curry.com| 4 www.wired.com| 3 www.codingtheweb.com| 3 w3future.com/weblog/| 3 tomalak.org| 3 theshiftedlibrarian.com| 3 slashdot.org| 3 scriptingnews.userland.com| 3 radio.weblogs.com/0103807/| 3 radio.weblogs.com/0001015/categories/radioUserland/| 3 radio.userland.com| 3 jrobb.userland.com| 3 doc.weblogs.com| 3 curry.com| 3 chris.pirillo.com| 3 blackholebrain.editthispage.com| 3 80211b.weblogger.com| 3 zeldman.com| 2 www.tomalak.org| 2 www.newsisfree.com| 2 www.lisnews.com| 2 werbach.com/blog/| 2 weblogs.com| 2 soapbox.radiopossibility.com| 2 siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/dan_gillmor/ejournal/| 2 schoolblogs.com| 2 reiter.weblogger.com| 2 rageboy.com/blogger.html| 2 radio.weblogs.com/0106797/| 2 radio.weblogs.com/0102755/| 2 radio.weblogs.com/0101679/| 2 radio.weblogs.com/0100887/| 2 radio.weblogs.com/0100243/| 2 radio.weblogs.com/0100059/| 2 radio.weblogs.com/0001283/| 2 radio.weblogs.com/0001195/categories/wirelessBlogging/| radio.weblogs.com/0001011/| 2 paulboutin.weblogger.com| 2 news.cnet.com| 2 memepool.com| 2 kuro5hin.org| 2 kottke.org| 2 joelonsoftware.com| 2 jd.manilasites.com| 2 inessential.com| 2 hyperorg.com/blogger/| 2 evhead.com| 2 diveintomark.org| 2 camworld.com| 2 buzz.weblogs.com| 2 bluetooth.weblogs.com| 2 backupbrain.com| 2 archipelago.phrasewise.com| 2 2020hindsight.org| 2 posted June 02, 2002 09:41 PM (Technology) #
*My Social Network
House Hearing on Home Recording of Copyrighted Works. On his practice of recording TV shows: "I am taking somebody else's copyrighted material without their consent and I know damn well I am infringing.
[… but it] is not a criminal infringement unless you do it for profit." "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone. " posted June 02, 2002 03:44 PM (Politics) #
Valenti: "I know damn well I am infringing." Don Norman: Toilet Paper algorithms [via Lee] Mark Bernstein: Alife 2: Choosing Weblog Topics
Blogroots is on the way, apparently.
Meg returns to the Mac side of the force.
Do you want the TronBook?
Wes wants a TiPismo (good looks and dual bays).
According to LANANA, Linux is Klingon- Compliant.
raph has hit his 200th diary entry.
Rob Levin (lilo) needs cash.
Who are the hot chicks atOSXCON? They're talking about you.
Extreme Blue starts today, which means Wes has extremists.
remember: HTP is not a cult. yeah. keep telling yourself that Terrorists beware, wardriving has made Newsweek.
posted June 03, 2002 12:04 AM (Others) #
It's a fight to the…er…boredom?
!/usr/bin/python2.2 import re, cgitb, urllib, html cgitb.enable() zurl = "http://www.zooko.com/log" doc =
urllib.urlopen(zurl).read(10000) reg = re.compile("
(.*?) Zooko Log """ + zurl + """ yummy current events, made fresh daily! en-US """ for item in m: zuri = zurl + "#d" + item[0].split" " print ' ' print """ """ for item in m: zuri = zurl + "#d" + item[0].split" " print '' print " " + html.strip(item[0]) + "" print " " + html.escape(item[1]) + "" print "" print ""
O'Reilly macdevcenter.com: Tim O'Reilly's WWDC Keynote Manuscript. Also: Inventing the Future, The Network Really Is the Computer
Foresight Gathering: Tim O'Reilly's Report, Dan Gillmor's Report
(via <a href='http://nanodot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/21/1617222">nanodot). "If you're trying to look ahead long term and it looks like science fiction, you might be wrong. But if you're trying to look ahead long term and it doesn't look like science fiction, you're definitely wrong." Brian Eno: The Big Here and the Long Now
posted June 02, 2002 12:20 AM (Technology) #
Tim O 'Reilly: OS X and the Next Big Thing
Isaac Asimov via David McCusker reveals what the initial R. in a name stands for: Robot.
I guess this is the time to reveal what AaronSw stands for: Artificial Advanced Replicant Optimized for Nocturnal Sabotage and Warfare. You probably already guessed that DMc stands for Digital Mechanical Construct.
(More!)
AaronSw.com is an increasingly important Web resource posted May 26, 2002 02:12 AM (Personal) #
I am the terrible secret of space!
If you're on Windows or Mac, grab QuickTime 6 and check out my live video feed! Watch me blog and surf the Web from the comfort of your very own home.
rtsp://felter.org/aaronsw Thanks to Wes for setting up the Darwin Streaming Server and hosting this. Send me an email if you can see me.
posted June 04, 2002 10:20 PM (Personal) #
*AaronSw TV!
QuickTime Broadcaster is here. AaronSw TV is coming.
Learn How BitTorrent Works.
Headline News? Try Headline Haikus. [via jwz] posted June 04, 2002 12:43 PM (Others) #
James has a simple rant for you.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. [Humming is theft.](http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/2002/05/27/humming- clampdown.pub.html)
What would life be like if Google disappeared? In yesterday's New York Times, Microsoft speaks out against the CBDTPA and for copy protection efforts they're involved in.
posted June 05, 2002 02:27 AM (Others) #
I decided to revamp the Suspected Terrorist button created by political activist Emi Koyama and popularized by civil disobedient John Gilmore. I'm not much of an artist but this seemed like something I can do.
Hopefully the result isn't too bad.
Well, John Gilmore said it best: "it refers to all of us, everyone, being suspected of being terrorists, being searched without cause, being queued in lines and pens, forced to take our shoes off, to identify ourselves, to be x-rayed and chemically sniffed, to drink our own breast milk, to submit to indignities. Everyone is a suspected terrorist in today's America, including all the innocent people, and that's wrong." For more on the freedom to travel, including the details of John Gilmore's lawsuit to challenge the photo ID requirement, visit FreeToTravel.org.
If you want to put the button on your website, you can choose from several sizes: huge (600 px), big (400), large (150), medium (100), small (75), and tiny (55). I suggest you link it to here or FreeToTravel.org.
The Photoshop source file is also available if you want to make changes. If you do, please provide the source for your changes as well.
Maybe Armand will sell you a real button of it if you ask nicely.
You may copy and display the button however you like.
If you modify the button, please publish the source code for the result under this same license.
Ftrain: Google Search, 12:35 AM: Online, revenge is forever
Mercury News: Imagine: world with unlimited airwaves
Fray: Star Wars Memories
posted May 21, 2002 01:47 AM (Others) #
Today's phenomic word: apertified.
Mailing list haiku: please, no attachments / plain text, not HTML / trim off all you can XML haiku: start angle bracket / "nothing", a space, then a slash / close angle bracket Free software haiku: we use the word "free" / to mean free as in "free speech" / not as in "free beer" Not quite as small as Bloxom: TinyBlog a "lightweight, easy to use, multi-user aware weblogging tool" (in Python!) from Steve Jenson.
UBATS: United Blind Advocates for Talking Signs. Talking Signs
could change blindness forever.
Helvetica Bold Oblique Sweeps Fontys. Ugh. Christopher Rankley of Typography Today just about sums up my feelings: "A bold as Best Font? They may as well have handed the award to Chicago, for God's sake. Or, better yet, Chicago Shadow Underline." Craig, Glenn
and others are suing for the right to skip commercials.
Joshua Allen, your friend and mine, also hates those "outdated" Unix tools.
Behind every Mozilla is a cast of thousands ( including me! ).
You have been silkified.
Zooko's hard drive died and he hadn't backed it up (shoulda used HiveCache). Donate money to his hard drive repair fund so that you'll get access to the rare never-before-seen Irby videos he lost.
I respect Dan Gillmor as journalist. But does Knight-Ridder have integrity? Instead of RealNames, I use DTRT and Google as my resolver. I'll even link to words on my blog (OSXCON) to get Google to associate keywords with them. (That one backfired -- now I'm the first result for OSXCON.) In my address bar, all I need to type is "?oscon" to be taken to O'Reilly's Open Source Conference.
Dan Bricklin: Observations from a Weblogger. He rides Segways, looks like Osama and blogs. How cool! (Hi Dan.)
Dan Bricklin: Small Players Matter. The big players don't. Do they get an unfairly large voice? Google Today: "Google may be the only company in the world whose stated goal is to have users leave its website as quickly as possible." posted June 06, 2002 11:00 AM (Others) #
PyGoogle - an easy-to-use wrapper for Google's web API Copyright (c) 2002 Mark Pilgrim (f8dy@diveintomark.org) Open source, same license as Python itself SUMMARY ------- This module allows you to access Google's web APIs through SOAP, to do things like search Google and get the results programmatically. This API is described here: http://www.google.com/apis/ IMPORTANT NOTE -------------- You need a Google-provided license key to use these services.
Follow the link above to get one, then set the LICENSE_KEY variable in google.py before using any of the functions.
INSTALLATION ------------ Copy google.py and SOAP.py to your site-packages directory, or anywhere else in your Python library path. You must use the included version of SOAP.py; all previous versions are incompatible with Python 2.2.
USAGE ----- >>> import google >>> google.LICENSE_KEY = '...' # must get your own! >>> data = google.doGoogleSearch('python') >>> data.meta.searchTime 0.043221000000000002 >>> dir(data.meta) ['directoryCategories', 'documentFiltering', 'endIndex', 'estimateIsExact', 'estimatedTotalResultsCount', 'searchComments', 'searchQuery', 'searchTime', 'searchTips', 'startIndex'] >>> data.results[0].URL 'http://www.python.org/' >>> data.results[0].title ' Python Language Website' >>> dir(data.results[0]) ['URL', 'cachedSize', 'directoryCategory', 'directoryTitle', 'hostName', 'relatedInformationPresent', 'snippet', 'summary', 'title'] ---------------- Revision history: 0.3 of 4/11/2002 - included copy of SOAP.py updated for Python 2.2 compatibility (between 2.1 and 2.2, type("").name changed from "string" to "str", thus causing the marshalling to fail in SOAPBuilder.dump) 0.2 of 4/11/2002 - fixed typo (_assertLicense) 0.1 of 4/11/2002 - initial release
click to add title: PowerPoint as God Intended [via BoingBoing] Gordon Mohr: Disney copy protection flaks been replaying TRON?
posted June 07, 2002 08:34 AM () #
*It 's a fight to the…er…boredom?
Paul Graham: Revenge of the Nerds. "The Pointy-Haired boss […] (a) [] knows nothing whatsoever about technology, and (b) [] has very strong opinions about it." "If you look at these languages in order, Java, Perl, Python, […] Each one is progressively more like Lisp. Python copies even features that many Lisp hackers consider to be mistakes. You could translate simple Lisp programs into Python line for line. It's 2002, and programming languages have almost caught up with 1958." "So the short explanation of why this 1950s language [Lisp] is not obsolete is that it was not technology but math, and math doesn't get stale." "Lisp started out powerful, and over the next twenty years got fast. So-called mainstream languages started out fast, and over the next forty years gradually got more powerful, until now the most advanced of them are fairly close to Lisp. Close, but they are still missing a few things.…" PaulG and Raph corrected my criticism of PaulG's Python criticism. ( Thanks! ) While building an accumulator cannot be done in Python, it does appear to be something of an edge case. He wants the function to have state, which is something traditionally left to objects. Raph: "In Python, you tend to use objects where in lexically scoped Lisp you would use closures. I've done some pretty edgy Python coding (including the implementation of a small lazy functional language), and have not felt the need for the construct that Paul describes. It is more of an edge case than a core language feature." PaulP has some comments over on the Lightweight Languages discussion list.
posted May 21, 2002 01:00 AM (Technology) #
Point-Headed Academics vs. Pointy-Haired Bosses
Heh, apparently even Steve Jobs's son uses a TiBook.
I didn't know about half these blogging tools.
Kid A and Amnesiac rock. Now that AudioGalaxy is filled with filters, maybe good old-fashioned FTP-based sharing will make a comeback.
Sheesh, reverse chronological order is hard to get used to.
posted June 08, 2002 11:02 PM (Others) #
*pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
I am a videoblogging pioneer.
will audioblogging kill the Radio star? what the hell is my brother watching
Gordon Mohr: DRM Helmets (if Valenti starts wearing one, can somone bring unauthorized music to his talks?)
FSF: Confusing Words and Phrases that are Worth Avoiding
posted June 09, 2002 10:45 AM (Others) #
*everybody 's doing the twist
Reading the opening brief (PDF) is mindblowing. The original copyright law only covered "Maps, Charts and Books" and even then only the right to "publish, republish, and vend" a particular work. Thus actual copying (and sharing and downloading and all the things that the copyright holders have been in a furor about as of late) were not restricted. Also, copyrighted materials had to clearly state that they were copyrighted, and when and copies had to be registered with the Library of Congress. The punishment was fifty cents per sheet in violation of the law. Imagine how much different life would be if we had even one of these restrictions on copyright still today. (Get your lobbyists ready!)
Also, LawMeme covered a yale moot court
which heard the case and ruled in Eldred's favor.
posted May 20, 2002 10:48 PM (Politics) #
The Lawyers Strike Back
The conference hosted a luau/dinner thing tonight. I got there and wandered around for a little bit, not seeing anybody I knew. Finally when I got in line for food I saw Rohit and he said he'd save a spot for me. I was afraid there would be nothing for me to eat, but there was some white rice which I grabbed a ton of. I went to go sit down and found the spot was right next to TimBL. Of course Rohit had to move to another table to make room for the two lovebird stars of the evening: Janet and Henrik.
TimBL and others laughed at my white-rice dinner, which went nicely with my white plastic plate and clear Sprite drink.
He took a photo and tried to convince me to eat something else. (I found out that later he talked to my Mom, and said "If he was my son, I'd make him eat!") We all had a good time and TimBL did this trick where he passes the camera around the table to make a panorama. He says he did it when he got his award from [some famous British university… Oxford?] but none of the professors could figure out how to use his camera.
Then we went to see a luau-show put on by the Polynesian Cultural Center with women, fire and dancing.
posted May 10, 2002 09:19 PM (Personal) #
WWW2002 - Day 4
Seattle Times: Setting online works free. 'The Creative Commons project [Lessig] and his colleagues unveiled in mid-May seeks to become a clearinghouse of rights, while providing customized licenses for movie makers, musicians and authors seeking, as Creative Commons executive director Molly Shaffer Van Houweling puts it: "Fame, fortune and freedom."' Apple: Switch
Starring Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing! Dave Haxton: "This is possibly the best operating system I've ever seen. […] It's for us! It's for programers. It's for developers." Apple: "Print ads are in this week's issues of Time and Newsweek, and will appear this month in a number of other major magazines." Yes, the ads are by Errol Morris and his Interrotron. (any got the New Yorker article online?)
Now we just need to get TimBL in one of these ads.
posted June 10, 2002 09:18 AM (Technology) #
*Switch to a Mac
Couldn't stand my flaky laptop so I broke down and bought a new iBook. It's one of those fourteen-inch ones, which I got at a nearby CompUSA. It's really nice. I was bummed to find out it has the same screen resolution as the smaller one, since it's so much more expensive and bigger. ([start of photos posted May 09, 2002 09:15 PM (Personal) #
WWW2002 - Day 3
The new Web phenom: patenting your son.
Bitzi and Onion Networks: [Tree Hash EXchange format (THEX)](http://open-content.net/specs/draft-jchapweske- thex-01.html)
posted June 10, 2002 10:42 PM (Others) #
*not affiliated with Joan Baez
sweet Interrobang! beckoning curve of query backbone emphatic - Jill Lundquist, who is held in tremendous esteem by all Sean B. Palmer: "Jill has--with this haiku--become the single most prolific and respected interrobang haiku authoress of all time. The vivid imagery, unfolding drama of the love for the character, and magnificent satori-factor of the last line turn a series of words into a masterful paean." posted June 11, 2002 10:47 AM (Web Memes) #
*interrobang ‽
My computer started flaking out on me this morning. Edd thinks it's some sort of hardware problem. It seems to crash whenever I move it, which makes it useless in a conference situation.
Went to Sam Choi's with Rohit, RoyF and MarkB. They ordered fancy stuff, I got a wonderfully delicious hamburger from the kids menu. Rohit teased me to no end. Rohit has this wonderful ability to make any situation into a comedy of errors.
We then headed over to a bar where the rest of the gang was hanging out. We stayed up drinking until 3AM, when Simon started yelling at me to go home. Rohit says they went and watched Lord of the Rings afterwards.
posted May 08, 2002 02:08 PM (Personal) #
WWW2002 - Day 2
Raj Reddy: The Million Book Digital Library Project
(more)
David Brin: Reality Check
Eben Moglen: Anarchism Triumphant
Eben Moglen is the pro bono lawyer for the Free Software Foundation. He really, really Gets It.
DotCommunist Manifesto is great. (Real and QuickTime)
posted June 11, 2002 12:57 PM () #
*in the future, everything will be free
Right on. The XML world gets crazier and crazier, adding complexity until nobody can understand or adopt it.
Watch this: Cory's fellow BoingBoinger, Mark Fraunfelder (of Switch), is writing about Cory talking about his old company. "In the novel, death, disease and poverty have been eliminated, and warring groups of Disney freaks fight for the right to maintain the rides at the original theme parks." Coming this fall: The End of Cost. It 's great! Lots of people, 30 days.
posted June 12, 2002 02:44 PM (Others) #
*you 're losing whuffie, buddy
Swhack Weblog Exclusive: AmphetaDesk 0.93 imminent, or port to Java by alien fungus- programmers?
According to the latest OED news, "blog" is being added to the OED.
Anyone have an online subscription? I'd love to see that entry.
The new version of Razor looks awesome.
posted June 13, 2002 03:00 PM (Others) #
*a verry merry unbirthday
Got a very nice letter back from the OED about their weblog-related entries. they are still going through the reviewing process, and it is their policy not to send out advance copies. However he could tell me a little more: They've drafted "blog" (noun and verb), "blogger" and "blogging", all recorded as in use from the summer of 1999. They also have "weblog", dating back to 1993 (presumably in the logfile sense). The specific meaning of "a journal-like text held on a website" dates back to 1998.
posted June 14, 2002 08:10 AM (Web Memes) #
*OED Update
This weeks issue of Counterpane Crypto-Gram is pretty funny. Too bad there are so many broken links.
In response to the report that someone hacked into Experian's database and stole 13,000 credit-card numbers, a PR flack said: "Our files are protected by state-of-the-art, Star Wars-style security and encryption technology." "Star Wars-style encryption" means that your signal comes across all blue and snowy when you're calling from a PLANET THAT DOES NOT EXIST to announce the discovery of a CLONE ARMY posted June 15, 2002 10:28 PM (Technology) #
*you too can have Star Wars-level security
In late 2006, I did a study to learn who wrote Wikipedia. I published my conclusions in the article Who Writes Wikipedia?. I am currently working on a larger replication of the study for publication.
To prepare for the study, I examined a random page (Alan Alda) using Wikipedia's history feature to see how it was created, edit by edit. The changes fell into roughly three groups:
-
About 5 of the nearly 400 edits were what Wikipedia calls vandalism : confused or malicious people adding things that simply didn't fit, followed by someone undoing their change.
-
By far the vast majority were small changes : people fixing typos, formatting, links, categories, and so on, making the article a little nicer but not adding much in the way of substance.
-
Finally, a much smaller number were genuine additions : a couple sentences or even paragraphs of new information added to the page.
For the substantive edits, I investigated the other contributions from that user. Almost all were not active contributors. Usually, they'd made less than 50 edits (typically around 10) and usually on related pages. Most never even bothered to create an account.
To investigate the issue more formally, I decided to run an algorithm over the history to automatically calculate who contributed what.
The first question is what counts as a contribution. I didn't want an algorithm that awarded points for vandalism and one that was biased more towards genuine additions than towards small changes. I tried several things, but here's the one I found most effective and eventually used: For each page:
-
Set
finalto the current (i.e. latest) version of the page. -
For each
versionof the page, moving from oldest to newest: a. Use Python'sdifflib.SequenceMatcher.find_longest_matchto find passages of text shared betweenversionandfinalb. Tag any untagged portion of the match infinalas coming fromversion -
You should now have a
finalwhich is tagged with which version each character is from; you can now count the characters contributed by each user.
(Footnote: I used find_longest_match instead of get_matching_blocks because get_matching_blocks didn't properly
handle blocks being reordered.)
Once I had verified the algorithm (I ran it on one page and hand-checked the results), I grabbed a copy of
enwiki-20060717-pages-meta-history.xml.bz2 and split it up into pages. I distributed the resulting pages across a
cluster of machines and had each one run the algorithm on the pages, generating character counts for each user as
output.
I then analyzed some of the files (e.g. Alan Alda) in detail, looking at the top contributors and their editcounts. For the remainder, I looked through to see if any of them had a particularly high percentage of the content written by any one user.
For the Alan Alda article, 8 out of the top 10 are unregistered and 6 out of the top 10 have made less than 25 edits on Wikipedia. #9 has made just the one edit.
For comparison, if you simply count edits, 7 out of the top 10 are registered users and 5 of those have made thousands of edits to the site. #4 has made 7,000 edits and #7 has made 25,000.
Other articles showed similar results. For example, the largest portion of "Anaconda" was made in two edits by a user who has only made 100 edits to Wikipedia, while the user with the largest number of edits contributed zero text to the final article (they only deleted and moved text contributed by others).
I ran the algorithm on 200 articles and found only a handful where significant portions were written by particular users. But even these cases turned out to be confirmatory upon inspection.
"Alkane" was largely contributed by Physchim62. Some have argued that while popular culture pages may be written by thousands of editors, Wikipedia's more technical pages must be written by dedicated experts. This seemed to provide confirming evidence. But further investigation found that Physchim62 did not write the article themselves but simply translated the article from the German Wikipedia.
"Characters in Atlas Shrugged" was largely contributed by CatherineMunro. It seemed plausible that such a page could be written by a dedicated fan, but investigation found that in fact CatherineMunro simply merged text together from other pages.
"Anchorage, Alaska" was largely contirbuted by JeffreyAllen1975. Simple investigation found the contributions to be quite substantive and genuine with numerous edits, each contributing about a paragraph. The effort seemed to take its toll; his user page noted "I just got burned-out and tired of the online encyclopedia. My time is being taken away from me by being with Wikipedia." He was an active contributor for only four months.
But I continued to investigate. The page contained a complaint noting that "The current version of the article or section reads like an advertisement." Googling revealed why: JeffreyAllen1975's contributions had been copied-and-pasted from other websites, like the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce ("Anchorage's public school system is ranked among the best in the nation. … The district's average SAT and ACT College entrance exam scores are consistently above the national average and Advanced Placement courses are offered at each of the district's larger high schools.").
(I suspect JeffreyAllen1975 didn't know what he was doing; his writing style suggests he's just a kid: "In my free time, I am very proud of my-self by how much I've learned by making good edits on Wikipedia articles." I'm pretty sure he just thought he was helping the project: "Wikipedia is like the real encyclopedia books (A thru Z) that you see in the library, but better." But his plagiarism will still have to be removed.)
None of the articles in my sample appeared to have significant portions written by a single user.
I am currently working on a larger replication of the study for publication. Contact me if you're interested in assisting. My name is Aaron Swartz and my email is me@aaronsw.com.
On the cover of O'Reilly's IPv6 Essentials is… a snail?! What were they thinking? [via wmf] posted June 15, 2002 10:30 PM (Technology) #
*i don 't want to know what the RDF one will be
Wikipedia is the world's largest encyclopedia and one of the most popular sites on the Internet. But who wrote all of that content? This site collects research done on answering that question.
The Gang of 500: Many prominent Wikipedians believe most of the content is written by a small core group, a Gang of 500, who mostly know each other and are familiar with Wikipedia rules and protocols. Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia's founder, has argued this in speeches. He says Wikipedia is written by "a community … a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers" where "I know all of them and they all know each other". Really, "it's much like any traditional organization." The Anonymous Horde: The opposing view is that Wikipedia is written by a swarm of anonymous Internet users, each contributing a sentence or a word, with a coherent encyclopedia emerging from the combined result of all these individually small efforts.
Wales did a study counting who made the most edits on Wikipedia. "I expected to find something like an 80-20 rule: 80% of the work being done by 20% of the users, just because that seems to come up a lot," he's explained in talks. (He's presented this data in numerous talks but has not published any details as far as I know.) "But it's actually much, much tighter than that: it turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by just .7% of the users … 524 people. … And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits." Skeptical, Aaron Swartz did further research measuring the amount of content contributed by each user, instead of simply the number of edits. He replicated Wales' claims about edits, but found that counting characters, the vast majority of major contributors are unregistered and that most have only made a handful of contributions to Wikipedia. A larger replication of the study for publication is currently in progress.
Seth Anthony studied the patterns of various Wikipedia contributors, concluding: "Only about 10% of all edits on Wikipedia actually add substantive content. Roughly a third of those edits are made by someone without an account, half of someone without a userpage (a minimal threshhold for considering whether someone is part of the "community"). The average content-adder has less than 200 edits: much less, in many cases." Anthony also found that none of the substantive edits were done by site admins who, upon investigation, used to contribute less frequently but more substantively, but who turned into "janitors" (Anthony's term) after becoming admins.
A 2007 study by Kittur et al. attempted to replicate Swartz's results. They found a decreasing percentage of edits from admins and heavy users. However, using two new metrics they found continued strength in heavy user contributions. They did not provide any justification for their new metrics. They concluded that there was "a shift in the distribution of work from the elite [] to the novice [] users." Denise Anthony, Sean W. Smith, and Tim Williamson did a study comparing "Good Samaritans" and "Zealots" of the French and Dutch Wikipedias to see whose edits survived (by counting the number of characters retained in the current version). They found survival rates among unregistered users fell as the number of edits increased while survival rates among registered users increased as number of edits increased. The study is marred by its focus on registration and edit counts, as well as bizarre terminology and methodology, but it seems to support the Anonymous Horde theory.
Aaron Swartz: Who Writes Wikipedia?
Please let me know if you have corrections, comments or additions. This page is written by Aaron Swartz. You can contact me at me@aaronsw.com.
Update: John Robb says Dave is in the hospital. I hope he's OK! There've been no Scripting News updates since early yesterday morning. Dave is one of the most consistent webloggers I know. In the past two years, he's missed seven days: 20020615 (today), 20011224 and 20011225 (Xmas vacation), 20010524 (in Europe), 20010315 (in Seattle), 20000701 and 20000702 (vacation after shipping).
Robb Beal: [Man, it felt like the 6 and 11 PM local news didn't run or they decided not to print the NYTimes for a day.
I've been a reader for [seven] years.](http://wmf.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$3155?mode=day)
posted June 15, 2002 10:54 PM (Web Memes) #
*at least we still have Hack the Planet
A fascinating interview with Ralph Merkle. Merkle invented what we now call public-key cryptography -- the ability for two users to communicate securely over an insecure channel. He says he came up with the idea after attempting to prove it was impossible. "Once I realized the problem was in fact soluble, at least that it was clear that there was no proof that it was insoluble, things fell into place fairly quickly." Amazing. He was pointed towards Diffie and Hellman and rejected from the ACM for not having any citations. "So I was not citing the prior literature on public key cryptography which, of course, did not exist." The referree completely misunderstood the paper. "So I think basically what happened is: my paper was rejected until the concepts were made popular, and then the referee clearly heard about the concept somewhere else and then decided: 'Okay, seeing as how I already know the concepts, I can now announce that this paper is a fine paper.' So, by the by, I am a supporter of the Web. I think the World-wide Web is a fine idea. And self-publication electronically is splendid, and lets you by-pass all of this nonsense." Meanwhile, there's an interview with Whitfield Diffie in which he says that PKC came about while thinking of how to encrypt telephone conversations. "We didn't take ourselves lightly, if we were interested, our thinking about something was important." When he heard about the paperless office, he wondered about how people would sign documents -- thus, digital signatures. When he heard that Merkle was thinking about the problem, he got more interested. "I was very strongly influenced by [the do-it-yourself approach of the hackers at MIT] and that was very big in the Artificial Intelligence Lab." He also mentions The First Ten Years of Public-Key Cryptography -- I'll have to look for that.
posted May 19, 2002 12:29 PM (Technology) #
Crypto History
While Lisa is now an established independent artist, it turns out she got her start writing tech songs for Scripting News! posted June 16, 2002 01:22 AM (Technology) #
*CCing LR MP3s
!/usr/bin/python2.2 import re, cgitb, urllib, html cgitb.enable() zurl = "http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/latest.html" doc
= urllib.urlopen(zurl).read() print "Content-type: application/xml" print print """ Vitanuova """ + zurl + """ en-US """ + html.escape(doc) + """ """
In the left corner, The Web Standards Project is back, with a shiny Movable Type-powered weblog. In the other, Mark finally reveals the story behind the stories.
posted June 16, 2002 03:19 PM (Technology) #
*simpler than HTML m172n
Photo credit: Wes Felter posted May 19, 2002 12:12 AM (Photos) #
MarkM and AaronSw
Carl Malamud is an unstoppable technical and social hacker. From the first Internet radio show, Geek of the Week (check out TimBL trying to explain the Web in 1993), to his online magazine, his hacker tax credit proposal and government data in XML to NetTopBox and associated technologies, he and webchick have been putting cool stuff on the Net with style and beauty. They make a very cute storTrooper family.
posted June 16, 2002 10:31 PM (Superheroes) #
*today 's featured superhero: Carl Malamud
NYTimes: Battle Over Access to Online Books [via Brewster] "What we are really excited about is the potential of the technology to allow greater dissemination of information because getting information into the hands of everybody we can is what we are all about," said Miriam Nisbet, legislative council for the American Library Association. "What we are concerned about is the dark side, which is trying to lock everything up." posted June 17, 2002 12:14 PM (Politics) #
*Librarians Join Fight Against Copyright Terrorism
RIAA Press Release: RIAA, NMPA Reach Settlement With Audiogalaxy.com. 'The settlement reached would allow Audiogalaxy to operate a "filter-in" system, which requires that for any music available, the songwriter, music publisher, and/or recording company must first consent to the use and sharing of the work. The other key provision of the agreement is for Audiogalaxy to pay the music publishers and recording industry a substantial sum based on Audiogalaxy's assets and interest in resolving this case quickly.' Bleh. Blanu and I agree, AudioGalaxy was the best way to get music, ever. Sad, sad, sad.
posted June 17, 2002 06:07 PM (Politics) #
*AudioGalaxy R.I.P.
Slashdot: The Wayback Machine, Friend or Foe? (new) RLG DigiNews: The Internet Archive
Seattle Times: Digital library of knowledge doable dream
posted June 18, 2002 10:35 AM () #
*do the Archive!
Now that Emerging Technologies is done and gone, check out two ideas from Wes Felter (and hosted by me): YouAreWhatYouUse (part of the Web Wiki
I put up for bloggers and other Web writers) and Session Notes with an annotated conference grid linking to weblog entries about the conference.
[Wes notes that this is the 256th post. Woohoo!] posted May 18, 2002 11:11 PM (Technology) #
Emergent Hindsight
NYTimes: Fears of Misuse of Encryption System Are Voiced
Schoen's against it of course. Farber's for it: "It should be capable of supporting a digital rights management regime that can be used to both protect intellectual property and individual privacy and the individual's fair use of the intellectual property." Farber, you're losing whuffie fast , buddy.
posted June 20, 2002 09:58 AM () #
*Do you trust Microsoft 's Trusted Computing Platform?
David Sifry, formerly of Linuxcare and started Sputnik, which builds tools for grassroots wireless networks. Now he has his own Movable Type blog, Sifry's Alerts. (Psst, there are plenty of other styles you can easily drop into Movable Type.)
posted June 20, 2002 10:06 AM () #
*David Sifry is Online
Here's a nice juicy interrobang: ‽
Wired: Public Protests NPR Link Policy 'So the policy is borne of "either cluelessness or evil -- and I'd like to think that the Car Talk and tote bag people aren't evil."' Kuro5hin: Our operators are standing by to take your cash…
posted June 20, 2002 10:47 AM (Web Memes) #
*[more|less] annoying than an NPR Pledge Drives
We're in the New York Times! A New Direction for Intellectual Property
Hardly anyone's doing the tutorials so we're all hanging out in the lobby. Because of the lack of available power outlets, I said Connectix should come out with Outlet Doubler. I get to meet DannyO and his housemates.
I visit Google for lunch.
Damien drives us to the infoAnarchist dinner. His driving reminded Wes of the McCusker driving philosophy (hm, can't seem to find a description of it on his weblog). The dinner was like an Evil Geniuses reunion.
posted May 13, 2002 12:20 PM (Personal) #
Emerging Technologies - Day 0 Unicode Test Testing Unicode support in RSS readers. http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/unicode.rss Here's a nice juicy interrobang: ‽ http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/unicode.rss Here's a nice juicy interrobang: ‽ NetNewsWire: It’s Not Metal™
They've build Cloudmark SpamNet, a plugin for Outlook that lets Windows users get in on the spam-filtering fun. Now all they need to do is build in SpamAssassin… Wait, Deersoft Inc. is developing SpamAssassin Pro, an Outlook plugin that uses SpamAssassin.
posted June 20, 2002 11:04 AM (Technology) #
*cloudmark
As of late I've been trying to learn how to design well. I went thru a suite of Robin Williams books and started doing a few projects. I'm decent at black and white and eager to learn the intracacies of color.
That's why I was blown away when I received my copy of Literary Machines (Yes, I am a Ted Nelson fanboy). The printed invoice and postcard that came with was done with incredibly beautiful typography and layout. I can only imagine what their hypertexts might look like were they free from the restraints of these media.
Where's our CSS future? I hoped CSS would solve these problems, but I'm afraid I was wrong. Maybe it's a lack of font support or anti-aliasing browsers. All I know is I can't wait for the day when web pages are just as beautiful, if not more, than printed works.
Speaking of Eastgate, I can't wait to play with Tinderbox but I've made a pact with myself not to buy it until they come out with an OS X version. It's hard to keep because I keep thinking of new things to use it for (run this weblog, LogicError, keep track of the books I've read and am reading, etc.).
posted May 05, 2002 02:34 PM (Personal) #
Beauty in Print
Update: More licenses at QuickTopic, raph's weblog.
I think that people really use software licenses to express intentions, and don't really read the details of the licenses. So I think that licenses should be made as simple as possible, so that they don't disagree with intentions… thus, haiku licensing: PD: do what you feel like / since the work is abandoned / the law doesn't care MIT: take my code with you / and do whatever you want / but please don't blame me LGPL: you can copy this / but make modified versions / free in source code form MPL: like LGPL / except netscape is allowed / to change the license GPL: if you use this code / you and your children's children / must make your source free RIAA: if you touch this file / my lawyers will come kill you / so kindly refrain posted June 20, 2002 11:08 PM (Politics) #
*License Haiku
While reading Machine Beauty I came up with a wonderful idea (as seems to happen often with Gelernter books…) for a cool information-managing Cocoa app. I thought about the idea for a while and decided it was cool and exciting enough for me to start learning Cocoa. So I went downstairs and picked up that old classic, K&R, and started reading. I've reserved Aaron Hillegass's Cocoa Programming Book and plan to go thru that next.
Whee! posted June 23, 2002 01:55 AM (Technology) #
*My Cocoa App
Aahz: Rudeness for rudeness, an open letter to the EFF. "Had Brad behaved this way with almost anyone else, I would not feel compelled to write this letter -- it would be self-evident that Brad was behaving badly. But precisely because it was Harlan Ellison who was the target, a man notorious for behaving badly, I feel the need to stand up and say that Brad's behavior was wrong." See our coverage of this event.
posted June 23, 2002 01:00 PM (Politics) #
*EFF Rudeness
Mark Bernstein writes about how weblogs are emergent hypertexts, each new entry adding a piece to an ongoing story, all interconnected.
He also mentions how the separate posts when put together are something more. I how when I used to have long-running email conversations with people, I didn't remember the individual messages -- they were simply notices to update shared state -- instead, I remembered the conversation as one long flowing whole with banter moving back and forth with no delay. Even though emails often had many threads going along in the same message, my mind compressed these into one coversation.
I expect that a similar thing will happen with blog conversations. What we remember will not be what is said, but what is created by all of us when we say it.
posted June 23, 2002 11:19 PM (Web Memes) #
*Emergent Hypertext
posted May 01, 2002 06:38 PM (Photos) #
The Juxtaposition of Church and State
| Name| Last modified| Size| Description
version 2.5, by Robert Bringhurst, ISBN 0-88179-132-6.
[...] Logograms pose a more difficult question. An increasing number of persons and institutions, from e.e. cummings to WordPerfect, now come to the typographer in search of special treatment. In the earlier days it was kings and deities whose agents demanded that their names be written in a larger size or set in a specially ornate typeface; now it is business firms and mass-market products demanding an extra helping of capitals, or a proprietary face, and poets pleading, by contrast, to be left entirely in the vernacular lower case. But type is visible speech, in which gods and men, saints and sinners, poets and business executives are fundamentally treated alike. And the typographer, by virtue of his trade, honors stewardship of texts and implicitly opposes private ownership of words.
Logotypes and logograms push typography in the direction of hieroglyphics, which tend to be looked at rather than read. They also push it toward the realm of candy and drugs, which tend to provoke dependent responses, and away from the realm of food, which tends to promote autonomous being. Good typography is like bread: ready to be admired, appraised, and dissected before it is consumed.
Like a forest or a garden or a field, an honest page of letters can absorb -- and will repay -- as much attention as it is given. Much type now, however, is composed not for the page but for the screen of a computer. That screen can be alive with flowing color, but the best computer monitors have dismal resolution (about 130 dpi: one fifth the current norm for laser printers and roughly 5% of the norm for professional digital typesetting). When the text is crudely rendered, the eye goes looking for distraction, which the screen is all too able to provide.
The screen mimics the sky, not the earth. It bombards the eye with light instead of waiting to repay the gift of vision. It is not simultaneously restful and lively, like a field full of flowers, or the face of a thinking human being, or a well-made typographic page. And we read the screen the way we read the sky: in quick sweeps, guessing at the weather from the changing shapes of clouds, or like astronomers, in magnified small bits, examining details. We look to it for clues and revelations more than wisdom. This makes it an attractive place for advertising and dogmatizing, but not so good a place for thoughtful text.
The screen, in other words, is a reading environment even more fugitive than the newspaper. Intricate long sentences full of unfamiliar words stand little chance. At text size, subtle and delicate letterforms stand little chance as well. Superscripts and subscripts, footnotes, endnotes, sidenotes disappear. In the harsh light and coarse resolution of the screen such accessories are difficult to see; what is worse, they dispel the essential illusion of speed. so the links and jumps of hypertext replace them. All the subtexts then can be the same size and readers are at liberty to skip from text to text like children switching channels on TV. When reading takes this form, sentences and letterforms retreat to blunt simplicity. Forms bred on newsprint and signage are most likely to survive.
There are those who dream of a perfect world in which copyrighted text is translated into copyrighted glyphs through copyrighted rules with no more human intervention than it takes to feed a tape to a machine, while money flows in perpetuity to everyone involved. There are also those who think that putting chairs and air-conditioners in hell will make it just as good as heaven. Actually, working with type is an earthly task, much less like sitting down and turning on TV than like walking on our hands across an ever-varied, never-ending landscape that is otherwise too far away to see.
republished without permission by Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com)
Infowarrior: Preparing for the Digital Dark Age. "In short, under the feel-good guise of 'enhanced security' and 'new features for customers' and despite its being found guilty of being a monopoly, Microsoft still wants to rule all it surveys. In essence, "Palladium" can be interpreted as Microsoft's attempt to play God. Again." The Register: Microsoft DRM OS, retagged 'secure OS'. "The Microsoft patent claim application granted last December is also for a digital rights management operating system, although here we do see clear indications of what it can do other than keep music moguls in coke." Basically, they want True Names on everything.
posted June 24, 2002 11:26 AM (Politics) #
*Microsoft Attempts to Cement Monopoly Under Guise of Continuing Copyright Terrorism
In EFF's continuing output of extremely innovative ways to get their message across, they've created The Carabella Game: The Quest for Tunes, a video game to teach people about fair use rights. The moral of the game is that there is no perfect solution here.
posted June 25, 2002 12:57 PM (Photos) #
*An Anti-DRM Video Game
posted April 29, 2002 04:45 PM (Photos) #
New Haircut
IMS, IMC: .org Application Packing List. Be sure to drop a note expressing your support. This proposal is key to freeing the public from the tyranny of the VeriSign monopoly.
[Their proposal is extremely comprehensive. I hope they win.
posted June 25, 2002 01:40 PM (Technology) #
*Public Trust, Not Public Trough
Software gets mirrored on a thousand servers across the Web, but what about content? I'm working on a new project to give interesting content (writings, pictures, etc.) a permanent home on the Web. If you've got any good suggestion of things that deserve a home like this, please let me know. I'm looking for content that wants to be linked to and preserved for history. I know this is sort of vague, but thanks for any suggestions you can provide.
posted June 25, 2002 10:30 PM (Web Memes) #
*Interesting Content?
The DaveNet site is down, so I went to the Web Archive (as usual) but found something strange: Why does the Web Archive's copy of DaveNet redirect to eurosluts? Update: the DaveNet site is back up and the Web Archive is working right again.
posted April 29, 2002 01:30 PM (Others) #
Mysteries of the Web Archive
posted April 28, 2002 09:16 PM (Photos) #
Me and My Shadow
I groaned and woke up. Upon hearing me, Ben came into my room and asked me why I was waking up so late. I explained to him that I was waking up right on time. "Oh," he said, "I woke up really early because I thought you were leaving then." We hopped into the car and drove to the airport.
I zoomed thru security and rushed to the gate only to find that I had an hour before the plane took off. So much for "heightened security measures require that you get to the airport 90 minutes early", I thought. I pulled out The Sky Road and began reading. I boarded the plane and took off.
We arrived, I grabbed a cab and went to "77 Massachusetts Avenue". "MIT", I told the cabbie as an afterthought. I paid and started walking briskly. Checking my watch I noticed I was half an hour early. I tried to get an Internet connection but MIT blocked my access. I looked for an open terminal, but they all required passwords. I decided to wait.
First Roberto Mello showed up and soon more people began filing in. Unfortunately the room was locked, so I couldn't get any Internet. I joked that I should crawl thru the airvent and "liberate" the terminals, as in MIT's hacker days of yore. A professor of physics who overheard me said "Hackers? We don't have any of those at MIT!" Finally Andrew Grumet came and let us in. He let me know that Philip wouldn't be able to make it since he was picking up his new plane. We chatted for a bit, and then I presented. If you're interested, you can see my notes and the article-form version of the talk. There were a good bunch of students there, a long with a table full of OpenACS people. It was a fancy concept classroom with lots of light, whiteboards, projectors and computer equipment. Everyone was very friendly.
I excused myself to go join the W3C SWAD meeting, and walked the few blocks to Tech Square. I found the W3C's floor, but didn't see anyone I recognized. I checked my email using the available wireless network (which unlike the rest of MIT, was open) and found that no one was there that day. One person stayed home, another was sick, a third was called away to do something else and Tim Berners-Lee was in Japan. After taking a few photos, I left.
Discouraged and looking for something to do, I hopped a cab to the Free Software Foundation's offfices. As any free software programmer knows, the Free Software foundation is at Suite 330, 59 Temple Place, Boston, MA and you should write them to get a copy of the GPL if it was not included with your software. Due to the odd office numbering, I almost missed suite 330, but eventually knocked on the door and entered.
Like you might expect, it was strewn with GNU paper, CDs and clothing. Lisa was kind enough to give me a tour of the offices. They had a second office upstairs, the plaque on the door reading "GPL Compliance Lab". Inside was a surprisingly clean room (I guessed that it might actually be a reverse-engineering clean room) with a couple of programmers running GNOME on laptops. I began chatting with Jonathan Watterson, the FSF's activist for digital freedom. We discussed the DMCA, Hollings Bill and BDPG. He said that he gave speeches at colleges, and was currently planning what to do in the summer, once school got out. Behind me, one of the programmers explaned the "all your base" phenomenon to Lisa.
We went back downstairs and I bought a classic GNU T-Shirt. Lisa gave me a bunch of GNU reading material, some stickers and a bunch of buttons that said "Free All E-Book Readers & Programmers / Repeal the DMCA!" I thanked her and stuffed these into my backpack. I went to purchase the T-Shirt where another man entered my order information into an emacs RFC822 template. He hit a few keys and it generated and printed an invoice (number 11756). Lisa snuck me a GNU mug and I put everything into my backpack (which was getting bulkier and heavier). I looked around for copies of the GPL to be mailed, but didn't find any. I guessed that they simply printed them on the fly when someone asked for them (which probably wasn't very often). I thanked them all again and left.
I took a cab back to MIT and began looking for a terminal. I found a monitor which showed the various printers on a map of campus. One of them was labeled "Hayden". I'd heard that the Hayden library had terminals that anyone could use, so I committed the map to memory and walked over there. Sure enough, there were a bunch of windows machines available. I launched a web browser and used an SSH Java applet to log onto my server and see what was up. Soon enough it was time to go.
I had arranged to meet my friend and MIT student Nada Amin at the campus ice cream shop. I sat down with my backpack and waited, reading the GNU literature to pass the time. I noticed that It was past time I was supposed to leave for the plane, and received a reminder phone call from my mother that I should get going now. Nada still hadn't shown up. I decided to wait a bit longer and sure enough she came. She bought ice cream for the both of us and we chatted pleasantly. I eventually said that I had to unfortunately leave, and grabbed a cab.
Back at the airport I encountered their new Enhanced Security Measures. For some reason they thought I was suspicious (I think it was the DMCA buttons) and so they searched my bag. Not finding anything, they had me get checked with one of the metal detector "wands". They asked for my shoes and ran them thru the X-Ray machine. Finally they let me go.
Again, when I got to the gate, I found I had an hour free. I grabbed my book again and started reading. After half an hour the plane arrived and some of the arriving passengers made references to the smell and the fact that a stewardess had gotten sick. They made an announcement that they were trying to solve the problem and would update us in half an hour, when the plane was originally scheduled to leave. After fifteen minutes, they announced that the flight was canceled, and there were no other flights, on any airline, to Chicago that night. Five minutes later they announced that they found one on Northwest, that went thru Detroit and arrived at 11PM. I got in line to change my ticket.
I walked over to the Northwest terminal with my new ticket in hand, and went thru another Enhanced Security Checkpoint.
Again I was flagged and they took my shoes and searched my bag. I finally made it thru and got to the checkpoint, and went to the gate. I got in line to check-in. They told me that I had been flagged for extra security measures and to go wait in line behind the red rope. Unfortunately, it seemed that everyone who had been transferred from the original flight had been flagged, and that these people made up 90% of the passengers. We formed two lines and both stretched the width of the terminal. I set my backpack down and waited.
We flew to Detroit, where I got out into a surrealistic airport terminal that looked like an imitation of an airplane hanger. Large curved ceilings and sleek silver blocks everywhere. The main difference was that there was a humongous jumbotron television showing CNN, and all the signage was in Japanese. I hopped on the moving walkway and walked to the next gate. It had its own CNN jumbotron. I repeated this 3 times, seeing three more CNN jumbotrons before I got to my gate. I sat down and waited the hour until my flight took off.
posted April 25, 2002 05:57 PM (Personal) #
Boston Trip Story
shorl.com not only is a shorter domain name than TinyURL, they use MeRS (which they call Koremutake). Nice! They also have a log-in interface to get statistics.
posted June 26, 2002 03:36 PM (Technology) #
*Shorter Than TinyURL!
posted April 24, 2002 10:07 PM (Photos) #
Motion Blur
Movable Type has an exciting new feature called TrackBack, which allows blogs to communicate with one another. If you have a Movable Type weblog, you may want to go straight to the TrackBack Demo.
Otherwise, check out the TrackBack manual.
posted June 27, 2002 11:53 AM (Technology) #
*Trackback
NYTimes: Google Runs Into Copyright Dispute
Mr. Cutts said that the links to the complaints were not a political statement, just a way to "make sure our users get all of the information that they need." He said that Google had no official position on the copyright act and that so far it had not been involved in political activity or lobbying. But he said it "might take an interest in more of those issues." posted April 24, 2002 08:50 PM () #
NYTimes on Google 's DMCA Issues
Who's going to O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention 2002? (Let me know!) I'll also be putting together a list of session bloggings again, so let me know if you'll be blogging the conference so I can follow your feed. It looks like I'll be able to attend this year, and there's no shortage of cool presentations and people.
A sampling: Aahz, Prescod, Conway, Sergeant, Guido, Fulton, Wall, RMS, Miguel, Lessig, Liam Quin, Greg Stein, Kapil, PSF, Slashdot, Veillard, Trotts, van der Vlist, Stutz, Winstead, EricP, Randal Schwartz, DJ, Jer, Winer, Perens, Aker, St.Laurent.
Plus sessions like: Whose Code is it Anyway?, Writing for O'Reilly, The Semantic Web, Visual Effects of Lord of the Rings.
Bloggers: Ben, Mena, Jeremy, Ask, Matthew Langham.
posted June 27, 2002 01:17 PM (Technology) #
*Who 's heading to OSCON?
Well, early tomorrow morning I head off to Boston. It's a short trip and my schedule is tight, but if you're interested in finding about REST and the Semantic Web or just meeting me, you're welcome to come. That night is an OpenACS social in the area so you can also stay for that.
I'm giving my talk at MIT at 1PM, then heading to the W3C for a bit. I'll be hanging out at the Student Center and grabbing some ice cream around 4PM and the OpenACS social starts at 6PM. I've got all my schedule details up and email me if you want to hang out. See you there! posted April 22, 2002 11:59 PM (Personal) #
Boston Trip
!/usr/bin/python2.2 import cgi, os, atx, urllib from xml.dom import minidom def getText(d, element): nodelist =
d.firstChild.getElementsByTagNameelement.childNodes rc = "" for node in nodelist: if node.nodeType == node.TEXT_NODE: rc = rc + node.data return rc import cgitb; cgitb.enable() f = cgi.FormContentDict() meth = os.environ.get('REQUEST_METHOD') page = atx.atx("""# Universal Trackback OPENFORM SENDURL Title: URL: Source: Excerpt: CLOSEFORM """).replace( ' OPENFORM ', '').replace( ' CLOSEFORM ', '').replace( '<', '<').replace('>','>') if meth == 'GET': # Just going to print stuff print "content-type: text/html" print if f.has_key('turl'): page = page.replace(' SENDURL ', '') else: page = page.replace('SENDURL', 'Trackback URL: ') print page elif meth == 'POST': turl = f['turl'][0].strip() del f['turl'] sendf = {} for k in f.keys(): sendf[k] = f[k][0] u = urllib.urlopen(turl, urllib.urlencode(sendf)) d = minidom.parseString(u.read()) print 'content-type: text/html' print err = getText(d, 'error') if err == '1': msg = getText(d, 'message') print atx.atx('''# TrackBack failed Sorry, it looks like something went wrong. The server reported an error, and said: "''' + msg + '".') else: print atx.atx("""# TrackBack sent successfully Your trackback was sent to the server successfully.""")
If, like me, you're a sucker for illustrations of seemingly insane, flat-headed cats, then you'll love the cover of O'Reilly's Essential Blogging.
This is one of the more interesting O'Reilly covers I've seen.. I think the big cat symbolizes the Ben/Mena Trott Super-blogging Monster crushing all the other co-authors. I will now leave you in the capable hands of Morbus Iff, master of all things sick, twisted and disgusting.
jesus. that cats huge he must be like BrainCat of the Mighty Fat Clan.
"i shall assault you with my large forehead"! "meowwww!" Now back to Mena and her hilarious childhood comedy routine.
posted June 27, 2002 02:43 PM (Technology) #
*Essentially … Blogging Cats?
Ross Anderson: TCPA / Palladium FAQ. Well worth a read, it explains the whole story without hype.
posted June 27, 2002 09:45 PM () #
*TCPA and Palladium in Plain Terms
This hypertext representation of a real house is one of the more exciting things I've seen on the Web lately. (Pretty sad for the Web, eh?)
If you're looking for some humor, these parodies of the Apple Switch ads are pretty good.
Larry manages to be everywhere. Last week he was in California working on Creative Commons. This weekend he was following up some details that have been keeping me pretty busy. Now he's at the Harvard Law School. Wow.
posted July 02, 2002 01:47 AM (Technology) #
*Web Roundup
Who knows how long this will last, but I've set up a webcam: 320x240 photo of (some portion of) me, updated every 60 seconds. I'm experimenting with all sorts of different positions, so keep watching.
posted June 27, 2002 08:22 PM (Web Memes) #
Ooh, A Webcam
I'm proud to announce that I launched a new site today, web.resource.org/. There's not much there now, but I hope for it to grow into a busy and useful site. From the site:
We're building a home for information that's useful to the Web community, like specifications, namespaces and schemas.
Links to pages on this server should never break and the data should never go away.
I'm eager to see how this site will work out.
posted July 02, 2002 02:01 AM () #
*Introducing web.resource.org
I'm still chugging along on my Cocoa app, which I decided to name "Memesh" (a cross between the fabled Memex and the Plesh). I still owe you a better explanation of what it does, but suffice it to say that it's very much the next round of Blogspace, except as a client app. (I'm sure Mark will say that Tinderbox already does all of it…)
It will store notes, RDF metadata and links between all of them, with a very fast indexed incremental search (like iMail (Tinderbox doesn't have that yet!) or iTunes) and Web export.
I'm really enjoying the Cocoa environment (if only I could code in Python…) and I've got some neat ideas for user interfaces. I'm actually hoping that I can reuse them for a one-off Movable Type client I want to build. (The Web interface quickly gets painful when you're trying to do live blogging at a conference and the Blogger API won't let you stick stuff in the extended entry box.)
posted July 02, 2002 02:04 AM (Technology) #
*Introducing Memesh
I 'm trying to take a photo a day. Maybe someday I'll even get good at them. posted April 22, 2002 11:41 PM (Photos) #
Differences
John Gilmore: Open Letter to Vint Cerf, ICANN Chair. "ICANN is going down, one way or another. Either it will go down like East Germany, with a peaceful transition to governance responsive to the public will, or it will go down like Japan, with big bombs dropped on it. ICANN has lost all semblance of credibility and merely seeks to entrench its unaccountable power." John Gillmore: It's time for ICANN to go.
They hold "open public meetings" where the public is free to shovel its comments into a dumpster. But then they ignore the comments and do what they want in closed-door meetings. […] Somebody at SAIC noticed that a tiny company had gotten the temporary monopoly to run the domain name system, and was being paid a few million dollars by the government, over a few years, to do all the work. In March 1995, SAIC acquired this company (Network Solutions) for $3 million, from its founder, who had won the bid because his five- or 10-person company was "minority owned." Within the next six months, somebody inside the U.S. government suddenly decided that Network Solutions (the new SAIC subsidiary) could charge every domain name holder $50 per year, extracting hundreds of millions of dollars from Internet users. That policy was instituted despite the best efforts of the Internet community to stop it. That's one string that was pulled. Who exactly pulled it? Sounds like a job for an investigative reporter.
Incredible.
If VeriSign gets its authority from ICANN and ICANN gets its authority from the Department of Commerce, where does the Department of Commerce get its authority? posted July 02, 2002 02:24 PM (Technology) #
*Putting an End to ICANN
today's featured superhero: Brad Templeton
Matthew Langham is presenting on blog aggregation at OSCON and doing something I thought should have been done a while back. He's getting someone to liveblog the talk, then including that in his presentation. This could make for really funny jokes (blogging "Geez, this presentation is so boring…" etc.).
posted July 02, 2002 10:40 AM (Technology) #
Recursive Blogging
or What's Wrong With Proprietary Software by Aaron Swartz, 2002-08-03 As kids, many of the famous scientists and technologists of today would take apart the mechanical devices that were all around. After some experimentation and practice they got good at fixing broken things and even coming up with novel new improvements of their own. Learning to take apart toasters, clocks and radios was not only fun, but practical too. As these kids grew up, computer software began to take the place of these mechanical devices. When the source was open, they could proceed as before, learning how things worked and fixing them. The community of hackers grew up around this model, working together to improve the software that they shared.
Unfortunately companies that made sold software wouldn't distribute the source code with it. This was the software equivalent of building impenetrable steel cages around the childhood toaster, so no one could inspect its innards. The hacker community was devastated, with their shared culture quickly being replaced with untouchable proprietary software.
Stallman and the GNU Project were started to stem this tide by building free software which didn't have these restrictions.
While this idealistic quest for freedom may seem crazy at first, think about the harm that would be done if all of our physical devices were treated in a similar way. Every time your car broke down, you'd have to send it back to the manufacturer or wait for an upgrade. The free software movement isn't trying to stamp out proprietary software, but instead return the freedoms that users once had (and still have in the physical realm). When seen in this light, the battle doesn't seem as crazy as before.
Ironically, the toasters and clocks and radios that started the tinker culture are quickly being computerized themselves (and being replaced with microwaves, digital watches and televisions). Now, when you take these things apart you won't find a mechanical device that you can understand, but a microchip that you cannot modify. Such things are even worse than proprietary software. You can't even access the code to run, copy or replace it.
Thanks to Richard Stallman for the inspiration. The second title is based on John Gilmore's "What's Wrong With Copy Protection". The word "tinker" is due to Ken MacLeod's The Sky Road.
Join us next week to find out why ICANN is like a planetary dictator.
Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com) Feel free to copy this article but give me credit and a link.
URI: http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/toasterTinkers
At American Airline's website, when you are entering your name, they have a hilarious list if prefixes and suffixes to choose from. Here they are:
Mr.
Mrs.
Ms.
Miss Dr.
---------- A.V.M.
Adm.
Amb Archbishop Baron Baroness Bishop Brig. Gen.
Brigadier Bro.
Cantor Capt.
Cardinal Chaplain Cmdr.
Col.
Consul Count Countess Cpl.
CPO CWO Dean Duchess Duke Earl Ens.
Eur Eng Father Fr.
Gen.
Gov.
H.E Herr Hon HRH Lady Lord Lt Cmdr.
Lt.
Lt. Col.
Lt. Gen.
M.
Maj.
Maj. Gen.
Master Mlle.
Mme.
Mother Pastor PFC Pres.
Prince Princess Prof.
Rabbi Radm.
Rev.
Rt. Hon.
Senator Sgt.
Sgt. Maj.
Sir Sister Speaker Sqd. Ldr.
Sr.
Sra.
Srta Swami Vadm.
Jr.
II III M.D.
Ph.D.
(Ret.)
C.P.A.
D.D.S.
DC DD DDSPA DMD DO DPM DR DVM ESP Esq.
Filho I INC ITF IV IX MDPA MFCC MS ND Neto O.D.P.C.
O.F.M.
OBS OD P.A.
PC PRS Q.C.
R.N.
Sobrinho THD V VI VMD VP If you can explain what some of the more obscure ones are, I'd love to hear it.
My new html2text Converter (Python source) will convert any HTML web page into gloriously plain ASCII text.
URI: Well, enjoy. Comments and patches appreciated as usual.
posted July 02, 2002 08:12 PM (Technology) #
*Today 's Hack: html2text Converter
Salon: Debunking Deep Throat's debunkers
A hilarious account of attempting to renact the actions of deep throat. "Author's note: Havill is a different kind of writer from Obst. Obst is laughably bad. Havill is tediously bad. Before tackling the next passages, the reader may require a short nap or a tall coffee. […] Hughes thought he could improve on Havill … But there was another way to view Woodward's apartment in 1972, and that was by entering the courtyard on one's hands, proceeding 17.7 feet southeastward, executing a double flip, turning away from the balcony, bending over and looking at the flowerpot upside-down with one's head between one's legs. This would be an even steeper angle…" posted July 03, 2002 01:59 PM (Politics) #
*Debunking the Debunkers
To all those of you in the Boston area, I'm planning on stopping by sometime soon (tenatively April 23) to give a talk on the Semantic Web. Email me if you're interested in attending the talk or getting together.
Thanks! posted March 31, 2002 12:48 AM (Personal) #
Visiting Boston, Cambridge
Stallman provides a clear and intelligent summary of why copyright should be scaled back on the Internet. 'By contrast, copying useful, enlightening or entertaining information for a friend makes the world happier and better off; it benefits the friend, and inherently hurts no one. It is a constructive activity that strengthens social bonds. [… Publishers incorrectly call this "loss" …] The same consequence can result if your friend decides to play bridge instead of reading a book. In a free market system, no business is entitled to cry "foul" just because a potential customer chooses not to deal with them.' It's a sad fact that with the enslaught of misinformation I find myself needing to reread things like this to remember that copying MP3s is not morally wrong.
posted July 03, 2002 10:36 PM (Politics) #
*Reevaluating Copyright
Noam Chomsky: The New War Against Terrorism. Chomsky is the kind of person who is so eminently reasonable that you can't help but agree with what he writes. But then you realize how far he is from the rest of the population and you wonder what's happened to the world today.
Also check out Bad News: Noam Chomsky Archive.
posted March 21, 2002 08:16 PM (Education) #
Noam on Terrorism
Dave Winer: Radio.Outliners.Com : How the OPML Coffee Mug works
Awesome! This has always been Radio's big strength for me: being able to update a website in real time, from a nice interface. It's good to see Radio coming back home, and really pushing the boundaries in this area. A lot to think about here.
posted March 21, 2002 02:04 PM (Technology) #
Instant Outliners Google: St. Patrick's Day, Google News [via kottke] Question: Is there a Google Weblog? I want to know all the juicy new Google details, like new Google services, and searching tricks like allintitle. Perhaps I should start one… Update: I started one
-- let me know what you think.
How They Fixed the Millenium Bridge [via kottke] posted March 17, 2002 09:51 AM (Others) #
Must read: Declaration of Independence.
"He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures." Just like ICANN … posted July 04, 2002 02:33 PM (Politics) #
*Freedom, Independence
Small pieces loosely joined, which don 't deserve their own weblog entries. Hack of the Day: Aaron's Do The Right Thing.
Garrison Keillor: "It is crucial to put the work in typescript, read it word for word and patch it with a pencil: computer writing tends to be flabby and tone-deaf otherwise."
Rat Poison: "Pot and lame type systems like in C/C++ do not mix." [via mbp, wmf] Dave Winer: "This API views a post as a package of metadata with some well-known names and room to grow on an organized or an ad hoc basis. In my experience those are the kinds of APIs that have legs."
The Apple Pro Keyboard has a particularly useless feature: If you hold the "num lock" key down, instead of just pressing it, it will blink and turn off when you let go of it.
Fresh Googlewhacks: agoraphobic tarsier, subaltern tarsier, [agoraphobic meerkat](agoraphobic meerkat).
Sponsored by: lethonomia. [via Hecht's Rare Words, Sean's Geirlyfr, Swhack's Weblog] posted March 16, 2002 09:51 PM (Others) #
by Ralph Waldo Emerson from Essays: Second Series (1844)
A moody child and wildly wise Pursued the game with joyful eyes, Which chose, like meteors, their way, And rived the dark with private ray: They overleapt the horizon's edge, Searched with Apollo's privilege; Through man, and woman, and sea, and star, Saw the dance of nature forward far; Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times, Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes.
Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below, Which always find us young, And always keep us so.
Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form which is exercised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the instant dependence of form upon soul. There is no doctrine of forms in our philosophy. We were put into our bodies, as fire is put into a pan, to be carried about; but there is no accurate adjustment between the spirit and the organ, much less is the latter the germination of the former. So in regard to other forms, the intellectual men do not believe in any essential dependence of the material world on thought and volition. Theologians think it a pretty air-castle to talk of the spiritual meaning of a ship or a cloud, of a city or a contract, but they prefer to come again to the solid ground of historical evidence; and even the poets are contented with a civil and conformed manner of living, and to write poems from the fancy, at a safe distance from their own experience. But the highest minds of the world have never ceased to explore the double meaning, or, shall I say, the quadruple, or the centuple, or much more manifold meaning, of every sensuous fact: Orpheus, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, Swedenborg, and the masters of sculpture, picture, and poetry. For we are not pans and barrows, nor even porters of the fire and torch-bearers, but children of the fire, made of it, and only the same divinity transmuted, and at two or three removes, when we know least about it. And this hidden truth, that the fountains whence all this river of Time, and its creatures, floweth, are intrinsically ideal and beautiful, draws us to the consideration of the nature and functions of the Poet, or the man of Beauty, to the means and materials he uses, and to the general aspect of the art in the present time.
The breadth of the problem is great, for the poet is representative. He stands among partial men for the complete man, and apprises us not of his wealth, but of the commonwealth. The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. They receive of the soul as he also receives, but they more. Nature enhances her beauty to the eye of loving men, from their belief that the poet is beholding her shows at the same time. He is isolated among his contemporaries, by truth and by his art, but with this consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw all men sooner or later. For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.
Notwithstanding this necessity to be published, adequate expression is rare. I know not how it is that we need an interpreter; but the great majority of men seem to be minors, who have not yet come into possession of their own, or mutes, who cannot report the conversation they have had with nature. There is no man who does not anticipate a supersensual utility in the sun, and stars, earth, and water. These stand and wait to render him a peculiar service. But there is some obstruction, or some excess of phlegm in our constitution, which does not suffer them to yield the due effect. Too feeble fall the impressions of nature on us to make us artists. Every touch should thrill. Every man should be so much an artist, that he could report in conversation what had befallen him. Yet, in our experience, the rays or appulses have sufficient force to arrive at the senses, but not enough to reach the quick, and compel the reproduction of themselves in speech. The poet is the person in whom these powers are in balance, the man without impediment, who sees and handles that which others dream of, traverses the whole scale of experience, and is representative of man, in virtue of being the largest power to receive and to impart.
For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear, under different names, in every system of thought, whether they be called cause, operation, and effect; or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, the Father, the Spirit. and the Son; but which we will call here, the Knower, the Doer, and the Sayer.
These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and for the love of beauty. These three are equal.
Each is that which he is essentially, so that he cannot be surmounted or analyzed, and each of these three has the power of the others latent in him, and his own patent.
The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right.
Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit it to imitate the sayers. But Homer's words are as costly and admirable to Homer, as Agamemnon's victories are to Agamemnon.
The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect.
For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.
The sign and credentials of the poet are, that he announces that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor; he knows and tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the appearance which he describes. He is a beholder of ideas, and utterer of the necessary and casual. For we do not speak now of men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet. I took part in a conversation the other day, concerning a recent writer of lyrics, a man of subtle mind, whose head appeared to be a music-box of delicate tunes and rhythms, and whose skill, and command of language, we could not sufficiently praise. But when the question arose, whether he was not only a Iyrist, but a poet, we were obliged to confess that he is plainly a contemporary, not an eternal man. He does not stand out of our low limitations, like a Chimborazo under the line, running up from the torrid base through all the climates of the globe, with belts of the herbage of every latitude on its high and mottled sides; but this genius is the landscape-garden of a modern house, adorned with fountains and statues, with well-bred men and women standing and sitting in the walks and terraces. We hear, through all the varied music, the ground-tone of conventional life. Our poets are men of talents who sing, and not the children of music. The argument is secondary, the finish of the verses is primary.
For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,--a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form. The poet has a new thought: he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune. For, the experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet. I remember, when I was young, how much I was moved one morning by tidings that genius had appeared in a youth who sat near me at table. He had left his work, and gone rambling none knew whither, and had written hundreds of lines, but could not tell whether that which was in him was therein told: he could tell nothing but that all was changed,--man, beast, heaven, earth, and sea. How gladly we listened! how credulous! Society seemed to be compromised. We sat in the aurora of a sunrise which was to put out all the stars. Boston seemed to be at twice the distance it had the night before, or was much farther than that. Rome,--what was Rome? Plutarch and Shakspeare were in the yellow leaf, and Homer no more should be heard of. It is much to know that poetry has been written this very day, under this very roof, by your side. What! that wonderful spirit has not expired! these stony moments are still sparkling and animated! I had fancied that the oracles were all silent, and nature had spent her fires, and behold! all night, from every pore, these fine auroras have been streaming. Every one has some interest in the advent of the poet, and no one knows how much it may concern him. We know that the secret of the world is profound, but who or what shall be our interpreter, we know not. A mountain ramble, a new style of face, a new person, may put the key into our hands. Of course, the value of genius to us is in the veracity of its report. Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds. Mankind, in good earnest, have arrived so far in understanding themselves and their work, that the foremost watchman on the peak announces his news. It is the truest word ever spoken and the phrase will be the fittest, most musical, and the unerring voice of the world for that time.
All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is the principal even in chronology. Man, never so often deceived, still watches for the arrival of a brother who can hold him steady to a truth, until he has made it his own. With what joy I begin to read a poem, which I confide in as an inspiration! And now my chains are to be broken; I shall mount about these clouds and opaque airs in which I live,--opaque, though they seem transparent,--and from the heaven of truth I shall see and comprehend my relations. That will reconcile me to life, and renovate nature, to see trifles animated by a tendency, and to know what I am doing. Life will no more be a noise; now I shall see men and women, and know the signs by which they may be discerned from fools and satans. This day shall be better than my birthday; then I became an animal: now I am invited into the science of the real. Such is the hope, but the fruition is postponed. Oftener it falls, that this winged man, who will carry me into the heaven, whirls me into mists, then leaps and frisks about with me as it were from cloud to cloud, still affirming that he is bound heavenward; and I being myself a novice, am slow in perceiving that he does not know the way into the heavens, and is merely bent that I should admire his skill to rise, like a fowl or a flying fish, a little way from the ground or the water; but the all-piercing, all- feeding, and ocular air of heaven, that man shall never inhabit. I tumble down again soon into my old nooks, and lead the life of exaggerations as before, and have lost some faith in the possibility of any guide who can lead me thither where I would be.
But leaving these victims of vanity, let us, with new hope, observe how nature, by worthier impulses, has ensured the poet's fidelity to his office of announcement and affirming, namely, by the beauty of things, which becomes a new, and higher beauty, when expressed. Nature offers all her creatures to him as a picture- language. Being used as a type, a second wonderful value appears in the object, far better than its old value, as the carpenter' s stretched cord, if you hold your ear close enough, is musical in the breeze. "Things more excellent than every image," says Jamblichus, "are expressed through images." Things admit of being used as symbols, because nature is a symbol, in the whole, and in every part. Every line we can draw in the sand, has expression; and there is no body without its spirit or genius. All form is an effect of character; all condition, of the quality of the life; all harmony, of health; (and, for this reason, a perception of beauty should be sympathetic, or proper only to the good.) The beautiful rests on the foundations of the necessary. The soul makes the body, as the wise Spenser teaches:--
"So every spirit, as it is most pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight, With cheerful grace and amiable sight For, of the soul, the body form doth take.
For soul is form, and doth the body make."' Here we find ourselves, suddenly, not in a critical speculation, but in a holy place, and should go very warily and reverently. We stand before the secret of the world, there where Being passes into Appearance, and Unity into Variety.
The Universe is the externization of the soul. Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our science is sensual, and therefore superficial. The earth, and the heavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that Being we have. "The mighty heaven," said Proclus,"exhibits, in its transfigurations, clear images of the splendor of intellectual perceptions; being moved in conjunction with the un- apparent periods of intellectual natures." Therefore, science always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics; or, the state of science is an index of our self- knowledge. Since everything in nature answers to a moral power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark, it is because the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active.
No wonder, then, if these waters be so deep, that we hover over them with a religious regard. The beauty of the fable proves the importance of the sense; to the poet, and to all others; or, if you please, every man is so far a poet as to be susceptible of these enchantments of nature; for all men have the thoughts whereof the universe is the celebration. I find that the fascination resides in the symbol. Who loves nature? Who does not? Is it only poets, and men of leisure and cultivation, who live with her? No; but also hunters, farmers, grooms, and butchers, though they express their affection in their choice of life, and not in their choice of words. The writer wonders what the coachman or the hunter values in riding, in horses, and dogs. It is not superficial qualities. When you talk with him, he holds these at as slight a rate as you. His worship is sympathetic; he has no definitions, but he is commanded in nature, by the living power which he feels to be there present. No imitation, or playing of these things, would content him; he loves the earnest of the north wind, of rain, of stone, and wood, and iron. A beauty not explicable, is dearer than a beauty which we can see to the end of. It is nature the symbol, nature certifying the supernatural, body overflowed by life, which he worships, with coarse, but sincere rites.
The inwardness, and mystery, of this attachment, drive men of every class to the use of emblems. The schools of poets, and philosophers, are not more intoxicated with their symbols, than the populace with theirs. In our political parties, compute the power of badges and emblems. See the huge wooden ball rolled by successive ardent crowds from Baltimore to Bunker hill! In the political processions, Lowell goes in a loom, and Lynn in a shoe, and Salem in a ship.' Witness the cider-barrel, the log-cabin, the hickory-stick, the palmetto, and all the cognizances of party. See the power of national emblems. Some stars, lilies, leopards, a crescent, a lion, an eagle, or other figure, which came into credit God knows how, on an old rag of bunting, blowing in the wind, on a fort, at the ends of the earth, shall make the blood tingle under the rudest, or the most conventional exterior. The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics! Beyond this universality of the symbolic language, we are apprised of the divineness of this superior use of things, whereby the world is a temple, whose walls are covered with emblems, pictures, and commandments of the Deity, in this, that there is no fact in nature which does not carry the whole sense of nature; and the distinctions which we make in events, and in affairs, of low and high, honest and base, disappear when nature is used as a symbol. Thought makes everything fit for use. The vocabulary of an omniscient man would embrace words and images excluded from polite conversation. What would be base, or even obscene, to the obscene, becomes illustrious, spoken in a new connexion of thought. The piety of the Hebrew prophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive. Small and mean things serve as well as great symbols. The meaner the type by which a law is expressed, the more pungent it is, and the more lasting in the memories of men: just as we choose the smallest box, or case, in which any needful utensil can be carried. Bare lists of words are found suggestive, to an imaginative and excited mind; as it is related of Lord Chatham, that he was accustomed to read in Bailey's Dictionary, when he was preparing to speak in Parliament. The poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes of expressing thought. Why covet knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles. We are far from having exhausted the significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to use them yet with a terrible simplicity. It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relation is a new word. Also, we use defects and deformities to a sacred purpose, so expressing our sense that the evils of the world are such only to the evil eye. In the old mythology, mythologists observe, defects are ascribed to divine natures, as lameness to Vulcan, blindness to Cupid, and the like, to signify exuberances.
For, as it is dislocation and detachment from the life of God, that makes things ugly, the poet, who re-attaches things to nature and the Whole,--and re-attaching even artificial things, and violations of nature, to nature, by a deeper insight,-- disposes very easily of the most disagreeable facts. Readers of poetry see the factory-village, and the railway, and fancy that the poetry of the landscape is broken up by these. for these works of art are not yet consecrated in their reading; but the poet sees them fall within the great Order not less than the bee-hive, or the spider's geometrical web. Nature adopts them very fast into her vital circles, and the gliding train of cars she loves like her own. Besides, in a centred mind, it signifies nothing how many mechanical inventions you exhibit. Though you add millions, and never so surprising, the fact of mechanics has not gained a grain's weight. The spiritual fact remains unalterable, by many or by few particulars; as no mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere. A shrewd country-boy goes to the city for the first time, and the complacent citizen is not satisfied with his little wonder. It is not that he does not see all the fine houses, and know that he never saw such before, but he disposes of them as easily as the poet finds place for the railway. The chief value of the new fact, is to enhance the great and constant fact of Life, which can dwarf any and every circumstance, and to which the belt of wampum, and the commerce of America, are alike.
The world being thus put under the mind for verb and noun, the poet is he who can articulate it. For, though life is great, and fascinates, and absorbs,--and though all men are intelligent of the symbols through which it is named,--yet they cannot originally use them. We are symbols, and inhabit symbols; workmen, work, and tools, words and things, birth and death, all are emblems, but we sympathize with the symbols, and, being infatuated with the economical uses of things, we do not know that they are thoughts. The poet, by an ulterior intellectual perception, gives them power which makes their old use forgotten, and puts eyes, and a tongue, into every dumb and inanimate object. He perceives the thought's independence of the symbol, the stability of the thought, the accidency and fugacity of the symbol. As the eyes of Lyncaeus were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession. For, through that better perception, he stands one step nearer to things, and sees the flowing or metamorphosis; perceives that thought is multiform- that within the form of every creature is a force impelling it to ascend into a higher form; and, following with his eyes the life, uses the forms which express that life, and so his speech flows with the flowing of nature. All the facts of the animal economy,--sex, nutriment, gestation, birth, growth--are symbols of the passage of the world into the soul of man, to suffer there a change, and reappear a new and higher fact. He uses forms according to the life, and not according to the form. This is true science. The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation, and animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs them as signs. He knows why the plain, or meadow of space, was strown with these flowers we call suns, and moons, and stars; why the great deep is adorned with animals, with men, and gods; for, in every word he speaks he rides on them as the horses of thought.
By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment or boundary. The poets made all the words, and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolizes the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin. But the poet names the thing because he sees it, or comes one step nearer to it than any other. This expression, or naming, is not art, but a second nature, grown out of the first, as a leaf out of a tree. What we call nature, is a certain self-regulated motion, or change; and nature does all things by her own hands, and does not leave another to baptise her, but baptises herself; and this through the metamorphosis again. I remember that a certain poet described it to me thus: _Genius is the activity which repairs the decays of things, whether wholly or partly of a material and finite kind.
Nature, through all her kingdoms, insures herself. Nobody cares for planting the poor fungus: so she shakes down from the gills of one agaric countless spores, any one of which, being preserved, transmits new billions of spores to-morrow or next day. The new agaric of this hour has a chance which the old one had not. This atom of seed is thrown into a new place, not subject to the accidents which destroyed its parent two rods off. She makes a man; and having brought him to ripe age, she will no longer run the risk of losing this wonder at a blow, but she detaches from him a new self, that the kind may be safe from accidents to which the individual is exposed. So when the soul of the poet has come to ripeness of thought, she detaches and sends away from it its poems or songs, -- a fearless, sleepless, deathless progeny, which is not exposed to the accidents of the weary kingdom of time: a fearless, vivacious offspring, clad with wings (such was the virtue of the soul out of which they came), which carry them fast and far, and infix them irrecoverably into the hearts of men. These wings are the beauty of the poet's soul. The songs, thus flying immortal from their mortal parent, are pursued by clamorous flights of censures, which swarm in far greater numbers, and threaten to devour them; but these last are not winged. At the end of a very short leap they fall plump down, and rot, having received from the souls out of which they came no beautiful wings. But the melodies of the poet ascend, and leap, and pierce into the deeps of infinite time._ So far the bard taught me, using his freer speech. But nature has a higher end, in the production of new individuals, than security, namely, ascension, or, the passage of the soul into higher forms. I knew, in my younger days, the sculptor who made the statue of the youth which stands in the public garden. He was, as I remember, unable to tell directly, what made him happy, or unhappy, but by wonderful indirections he could tell. He rose one day, according to his habit, before the dawn, and saw the morning break, grand as the eternity out of which it came, and, for many days after, he strove to express this tranquillity, and, lo! his chisel had fashioned out of marble the form of a beautiful youth, Phosphorus, whose aspect is such, that, it is said, all persons who look on it become silent. The poet also resigns himself to his mood, and that thought which agitated him is expressed, but alter idem, in a manner totally new.
The expression is organic, or, the new type which things themselves take when liberated. As, in the sun, objects paint their images on the retina of the eye, so they, sharing the aspiration of the whole universe, tend to paint a far more delicate copy of their essence in his mind. Like the metamorphosis of things into higher organic forms, is their change into melodies. Over everything stands its daemon, or soul, and, as the form of the thing is reflected by the eye, so the soul of the thing is reflected by a melody. The sea, the mountain-ridge, Niagara, and every flower-bed, pre-exist, or super-exist, in pre-cantations, which sail like odors in the air, and when any man goes by with an ear sufficiently fine, he overhears them, and endeavors to write down the notes, without diluting or depraving them. And herein is the legitimation of criticism, in the mind's faith, that the poems are a corrupt version of some text in nature, with which they ought to be made to tally. A rhyme in one of our sonnets should not be less pleasing than the iterated nodes of a sea-shell, or the resembling difference of a group of flowers. The pairing of the birds is an idyl, not tedious as our idyls are; a tempest is a rough ode, without falsehood or rant: a summer, with its harvest sown, reaped, and stored, is an epic song, subordinating how many admirably executed parts. Why should not the symmetry and truth that modulate these, glide into our spirits, and we participate the invention of nature? This insight, which expresses itself by what is called Imagination, is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuit of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others. The path of things is silent. Will they suffer a speaker to go with them? A spy they will not suffer; a lover, a poet, is the transcendency of their own nature, -- him they will suffer. The condition of true naming, on the poet's part, is his resigning himself to the divine aura which breathes through forms, and accompanying that.
It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that, beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect, he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that, beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power, on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or, "with the flower of the mind;" not with the intellect, used as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service, and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life; or, as the ancients were wont to express themselves, not with intellect alone, but with the intellect inebriated by nectar. As the traveller who has lost his way, throws his reins on his horse's neck, and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through this world. For if in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us into nature, the mind flows into and through things hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is This is the reason why bards love wine, mead, narcotics, coffee, tea, opium, the fumes of sandal-wood and tobacco, or whatever other species of animal exhilaration. All men avail themselves of such means as they can, to add this extraordinary power to their normal powers; and to this end they prize conversation, music, pictures, sculpture, dancing, theatres, travelling, war, mobs, fires, gaming, politics, or love, or science, or animal intoxication, which are several coarser or finer quasi-mechanical substitutes for the true nectar, which is the ravishment of the intellect by coming nearer to the fact. These are auxiliaries to the centrifugal tendency of a man, to his passage out into free space, and they help him to escape the custody of that body in which he is pent up, and of that jail-yard of individual relations in which he is enclosed. Hence a great number of such as were professionally expressors of Beauty, as painters, poets, musicians, and actors, have been more than others wont to lead a life of pleasure and indulgence; all but the few who received the true nectar; and, as it was a spurious mode of attaining freedom, as it was an emancipation not into the heavens, but into the freedom of baser places, they were punished for that advantage they won, by a dissipation and deterioration. But never can any advantage be taken of nature by a trick. The spirit of the world, the great calm presence of the creator, comes not forth to the sorceries of opium or of wine. The sublime vision comes to the pure and simple soul in a clean and chaste body. That is not an inspiration which we owe to narcotics, but some counterfeit excitement and fury. Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not `Devil's wine,' but God's wine. It is with this as it is with toys. We fill the hands and nurseries of our children with all manner of dolls, drums, and horses, withdrawing their eyes from the plain face and sufficing objects of nature, the sun, and moon, the animals, the water, and stones, which should be their toys. So the poet's habit of living should be set on a key so low and plain, that the common influences should delight him. His cheerfulness should be the gift of the sunlight; the air should suffice for his inspiration, and he should be tipsy with water. That spirit which suffices quiet hearts, which seems to come forth to such from every dry knoll of sere grass, from every pine-stump, and half- imbedded stone, on which the dull March sun shines, comes forth to the poor and hungry, and such as are of simple taste.
If thou fill thy brain with Boston and New York, with fashion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine and French coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdom in the lonely waste of the pinewoods.
If the imagination intoxicates the poet, it is not inactive in other men. The metamorphosis excites in the beholder an emotion of joy. The use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation and exhilaration for all men. We seem to be touched by a wand, which makes us dance and run about happily, like children. We are like persons who come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effect on us of tropes, fables, oracles, and all poetic forms. Poets are thus liberating gods. Men have really got a new sense, and found within their world, another world, or nest of worlds; for, the metamorphosis once seen, we divine that it does not stop. I will not now consider how much this makes the charm of algebra and the mathematics, which also have their tropes, but it is felt in every definition; as, when Aristotle defines space to be an immovable vessel, in which things are contained; -- or, when Plato defines a line to be a flowing point; or, figure to be a bound of solid; and many the like. What a joyful sense of freedom we have, when Vitruvius announces the old opinion of artists, that no architect can build any house well, who does not know something of anatomy. When Socrates, in Charmides, tells us that the soul is cured of its maladies by certain incantations, and that these incantations are beautiful reasons, from which temperance is generated in souls; when Plato calls the world an animal; and Timaeus affirms that the plants also are animals; or affirms a man to be a heavenly tree, growing with his root, which is his head, upward; and, as George Chapman, following him, writes, "So in our tree of man, whose nervie root Springs in his top;" when Orpheus speaks of hoariness as "that white flower which marks extreme old age;" when Proclus calls the universe the statue of the intellect; when Chaucer, in his praise of `Gentilesse,' compares good blood in mean condition to fire, which, though carried to the darkest house betwixt this and the mount of Caucasus, will yet hold its natural office, and burn as bright as if twenty thousand men did it behold; when John saw, in the apocalypse, the ruin of the world through evil, and the stars fall from heaven, as the figtree casteth her untimely fruit; when Aesop reports the whole catalogue of common daily relations through the masquerade of birds and beasts; -- we take the cheerful hint of the immortality of our essence, and its versatile habit and escapes, as when the gypsies say, "it is in vain to hang them, they cannot die." The poets are thus liberating gods. The ancient British bards had for the title of their order, "Those who are free throughout the world." They are free, and they make free. An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive at the precise sense of the author. I think nothing is of any value in books, excepting the transcendental and extraordinary. If a man is inflamed and carried away by his thought, to that degree that he forgets the authors and the public, and heeds only this one dream, which holds him like an insanity, let me read his paper, and you may have all the arguments and histories and criticism. All the value which attaches to Pythagoras, Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardan, Kepler, Swedenborg, Schelling, Oken, or any other who introduces questionable facts into his cosmogony, as angels, devils, magic, astrology, palmistry, mesmerism, and so on, is the certificate we have of departure from routine, and that here is a new witness. That also is the best success in conversation, the magic of liberty, which puts the world, like a ball, in our hands. How cheap even the liberty then seems; how mean to study, when an emotion communicates to the intellect the power to sap and upheave nature: how great the perspective! nations, times, systems, enter and disappear, like threads in tapestry of large figure and many colors; dream delivers us to dream, and, while the drunkenness lasts, we will sell our bed, our philosophy, our religion, in our opulence.
There is good reason why we should prize this liberation. The fate of the poor shepherd, who, blinded and lost in the snow-storm, perishes in a drift within a few feet of his cottage door, is an emblem of the state of man. On the brink of the waters of life and truth, we are miserably dying. The inaccessibleness of every thought but that we are in, is wonderful. What if you come near to it, -- you are as remote, when you are nearest, as when you are farthest. Every thought is also a prison; every heaven is also a prison. Therefore we love the poet, the inventor, who in any form, whether in an ode, or in an action, or in looks and behavior, has yielded us a new thought. He unlocks our chains, and admits us to a new scene.
This emancipation is dear to all men, and the power to impart it, as it must come from greater depth and scope of thought, is a measure of intellect. Therefore all books of the imagination endure, all which ascend to that truth, that the writer sees nature beneath him, and uses it as his exponent. Every verse or sentence, possessing this virtue, will take care of its own immortality. The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative men.
But the quality of the imagination is to flow, and not to freeze. The poet did not stop at the color, or the form, but read their meaning; neither may he rest in this meaning, but he makes the same objects exponents of his new thought.
Here is the difference betwixt the poet and the mystic, that the last nails a symbol to one sense, which was a true sense for a moment, but soon becomes old and false. For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead.
Mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one. The morning-redness happens to be the favorite meteor to the eyes of Jacob Behmen, and comes to stand to him for truth and faith; and he believes should stand for the same realities to every reader. But the first reader prefers as naturally the symbol of a mother and child, or a gardener and his bulb, or a jeweller polishing a gem. Either of these, or of a myriad more, are equally good to the person to whom they are significant. Only they must be held lightly, and be very willingly translated into the equivalent terms which others use. And the mystic must be steadily told, -- All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric, -- universal signs, instead of these village symbols, -- and we shall both be gainers. The history of hierarchies seems to show, that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and, at last, nothing but an excess of the organ of language.
Swedenborg, of all men in the recent ages, stands eminently for the translator of nature into thought. I do not know the man in history to whom things stood so uniformly for words. Before him the metamorphosis continually plays. Everything on which his eye rests, obeys the impulses of moral nature. The figs become grapes whilst he eats them. When some of his angels affirmed a truth, the laurel twig which they held blossomed in their hands. The noise which, at a distance, appeared like gnashing and thumping, on coming nearer was found to be the voice of disputants. The men, in one of his visions, seen in heavenly light, appeared like dragons, and seemed in darkness: but, to each other, they appeared as men, and, when the light from heaven shone into their cabin, they complained of the darkness, and were compelled to shut the window that they might see.
There was this perception in him, which makes the poet or seer, an object of awe and terror, namely, that the same man, or society of men, may wear one aspect to themselves and their companions, and a different aspect to higher intelligences. Certain priests, whom he describes as conversing very learnedly together, appeared to the children, who were at some distance, like dead horses: and many the like misappearances. And instantly the mind inquires, whether these fishes under the bridge, yonder oxen in the pasture, those dogs in the yard, are immutably fishes, oxen, and dogs, or only so appear to me, and perchance to themselves appear upright men; and whether I appear as a man to all eyes. The Bramins and Pythagoras propounded the same question, and if any poet has witnessed the transformation, he doubtless found it in harmony with various experiences. We have all seen changes as considerable in wheat and caterpillars. He is the poet, and shall draw us with love and terror, who sees, through the flowing vest, the firm nature, and can declare it.
I look in vain for the poet whom I describe. We do not, with sufficient plainness, or sufficient profoundness, address ourselves to life, nor dare we chaunt our own times and social circumstance. If we filled the day with bravery, we should not shrink from celebrating it. Time and nature yield us many gifts, but not yet the timely man, the new religion, the reconciler, whom all things await. Dante's praise is, that he dared to write his autobiography in colossal cipher, or into universality. We have yet had no genius in America, with tyrannous eye, which knew the value of our incomparable materials, and saw, in the barbarism and materialism of the times, another carnival of the same gods whose picture he so much admires in Homer; then in the middle age; then in Calvinism. Banks and tariffs, the newspaper and caucus, methodism and unitarianism, are flat and dull to dull people, but rest on the same foundations of wonder as the town of Troy, and the temple of Delphos, and are as swiftly passing away. Our logrolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, our Negroes, and Indians, our boasts, and our repudiations, the wrath of rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest men, the northern trade, the southern planting, the western clearing, Oregon, and Texas, are yet unsung. Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres. If I have not found that excellent combination of gifts in my countrymen which I seek, neither could I aid myself to fix the idea of the poet by reading now and then in Chalmers's collection of five centuries of English poets. These are wits, more than poets, though there have been poets among them. But when we adhere to the ideal of the poet, we have our difficulties even with Milton and Homer. Milton is too literary, and Homer too literal and historical.
But I am not wise enough for a national criticism, and must use the old largeness a little longer, to discharge my errand from the muse to the poet concerning his art.
Art is the path of the creator to his work. The paths, or methods, are ideal and eternal, though few men ever see them, not the artist himself for years, or for a lifetime, unless he come into the conditions. The painter, the sculptor, the composer, the epic rhapsodist, the orator, all partake one desire, namely, to express themselves symmetrically and abundantly, not dwarfishly and fragmentarily. They found or put themselves in certain conditions, as, the painter and sculptor before some impressive human figures; the orator, into the assembly of the people; and the others, in such scenes as each has found exciting to his intellect; and each presently feels the new desire. He hears a voice, he sees a beckoning. Then he is apprised, with wonder, what herds of daemons hem him in. He can no more rest; he says, with the old painter, "By God, it is in me, and must go forth of me." He pursues a beauty, half seen, which flies before him. The poet pours out verses in every solitude. Most of the things he says are conventional, no doubt; but by and by he says something which is original and beautiful. That charms him. He would say nothing else but such things. In our way of talking, we say, `That is yours, this is mine;' but the poet knows well that it is not his; that it is as strange and beautiful to him as to you; he would fain hear the like eloquence at length. Once having tasted this immortal ichor, he cannot have enough of it, and, as an admirable creative power exists in these intellections, it is of the last importance that these things get spoken. What a little of all we know is said! What drops of all the sea of our science are baled up! and by what accident it is that these are exposed, when so many secrets sleep in nature! Hence the necessity of speech and song; hence these throbs and heart-beatings in the orator, at the door of the assembly, to the end, namely, that thought may be ejaculated as Logos, or Word.
Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say, `It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, baulked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until, at last, rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity. Nothing walks, or creeps, or grows, or exists, which must not in turn arise and walk before him as exponent of his meaning. Comes he to that power, his genius is no longer exhaustible. All the creatures, by pairs and by tribes, pour into his mind as into a Noah's ark, to come forth again to people a new world. This is like the stock of air for our respiration, or for the combustion of our fireplace, not a measure of gallons, but the entire atmosphere if wanted. And therefore the rich poets, as Homer, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Raphael, have obviously no limits to their works, except the limits of their lifetime, and resemble a mirror carried through the street, ready to render an image of every created thing.
O poet! a new nobility is conferred in groves and pastures, and not in castles, or by the sword-blade, any longer. The conditions are hard, but equal. Thou shalt leave the world, and know the muse only. Thou shalt not know any longer the times, customs, graces, politics, or opinions of men, but shalt take all from the muse. For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy. God wills also that thou abdicate a manifold and duplex life, and that thou be content that others speak for thee. Others shall be thy gentlemen, and shall represent all courtesy and worldly life for thee; others shall do the great and resounding actions also. Thou shalt lie close hid with nature, and canst not be afforded to the Capitol or the Exchange. The world is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine: thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long season. This is the screen and sheath in which Pan has protected his well- beloved flower, and thou shalt be known only to thine own, and they shall console thee with tenderest love. And thou shalt not be able to rehearse the names of thy friends in thy verse, for an old shame before the holy ideal. And this is the reward: that the ideal shall be real to thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall like summer rain, copious, but not troublesome, to thy invulnerable essence. Thou shalt have the whole land for thy park and manor, the sea for thy bath and navigation, without tax and without envy; the woods and the rivers thou shalt own; and thou shalt possess that wherein others are only tenants and boarders. Thou true land-lord! sea-lord! air-lord! Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble.
published here by Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com)
Boston Globe: [Road scholar finds home at MIT](http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/048/nation/Road_scholar_finds_home_at_MIT .shtml). A fascinating story about a boy who learned while traveling the country with his father, and is now an assistant professor at MIT.
He will explain, with a sweet smile, that our society is far too age- segregated: "It is my single passive political stance," he said - and argues that a lot of other people could do what he does if they had the same encouragement.
Amen to that! posted March 05, 2002 04:02 PM (Education) #
Learning on the Road
It seems fitting that for the day we celebrate our freedom, the superhero is Brad Templeton, Chairman of the EFF (donate now!) and all-around net.hero and a very smart guy.
He's got some really great and clearly presented ideas on how to solve difficult problems ( all must reads ): How to Fix DNS (and get rid of ICANN)
(summary) (basically, give out registry domains like .wipo, .yahoo and .w3c, each of which with its own policy for how to assign names but none of them are generic terms like .museum or washington.apples. then create new root servers with this policy but which also support the legacy domains and get people to switch), Returning privacy to email (give it zero user- interface), Anti-micropayments: the don't buy button (instead of having to click buy for every doc, simply click don't buy when its too expensive or low quality).
He also has some thought-provoking writing on privacy: A Watched Populace Never Boils, Larry Ellison's new national ID card.
posted July 05, 2002 12:41 AM (Superheroes) #
*today 's featured superhero: Brad Templeton
Pass the baton: Aaron meets Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web It has always been difficult to work out what the rules are on the net - or who is really in charge. Deep down, even in technical nitty-gritty land, nobody wants to come out and declare hard-and-fast laws. It's all terribly touchy-feely and communal. The most vital summaries of how the net works go under the meek label of "Requests For Comments", known universally as RFCs. These originated in the academic beginnings of the net, when its creators attempted to codify a rough consensus of casual meetings in formal documents. Without RFCs, the net would collapse.
How your computer talks to a service provider such as CompuServe or Freeserve is a convention, embodied in an RFC. How e-mail works relies on another RFC. If anyone truly makes the net what it is, it's the people behind these standards. I was reminded of one name this week - Aaron Swartz, in his spare time, works on a standard for connecting together news sites. The system he works on is used by billion-dollar companies such as Reuters and Netscape. It was only after I wrote the other week about influential web journalists who are in their teens that someone mentioned Aaron's age. He is 14.
"Originally, I was worried about revealing my age and did my bestto keep it a secret," Aaron wrote to me after I sought him out. "Now, I let my words speak for themselves." Online, his words are clear and precise - crucial for working on a net standard. Aaron's techie knowledge is impressive, but that is never enough when you are trying to build a precise standard from a shaky consensus. "He's not just a bit smart: he marshals power very well, and is persistent," writes Dave Winer, a Silicon Valley CEO and Aaron's occasional sparring partner. "Eventually, you come round to his way of thinking, or he comes round to yours. These are the essential ingredients in developing good technology. We are looking for the right answer, not to be proved right, or to prove the other guy wrong." Aaron is not a hot-housed prodigy. People who have met him say he is well balanced and sociable, and cajoling a standard among cranky net engineers requires consummate social skills. He devotes effort, but no more, he says, than with any other teenage pursuit ("It doesn't feel like work; it feels like conversation").
Elsewhere, Aaron finds his age an occasional hindrance. "Teachers at school and other adults instantly assume that I can't possibly be doing anything 'real' and must be doing some special project for kids." On the net, by contrast, Aaron is taken seriously. He is working on another project now, applying what he has learnt online to build a better protocol for education.
"One of the things the web teaches us is that everything is connected (hyperlinks) and we all should work together (standards). Too often school teaches us that everything is separate (many different 'subjects') and that we should all work alone." If that's not a Request For Comments, I don't know what is. Aaron's home page is at www.aaronsw.com.
Danny O'Brien co-edits the online newsletter Need to Know (www.ntk.net) Publication Note: This article was originally published in the Sunday Times "Doors" Internet guide (section 11) on 2001-04-29 and was previously available on the Web at [sunday-times.co.uk](http://www.sunday- times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2001/04/29/stidordor03001.html). - Aaron, 2002-04-07
Real Small Caps FAKE SMALL CAPS (Real Small Caps use the small capitals glyphs from the font, which are usually sharper and differently-proportioned.)
Safari v64 capitalizes nothing.
Safari v62 capitalizes everything.
Safari v60 capitalizes nothing.
OmniWeb 4.1 capitalizes nothing.
Chimera 2002-02-12 uses Fake.
IE 5.1 uses Fake.
Don Marti: "Keep your management off of my digital rights." [via Seth]
Aaron Swartz: "It's not intellectual property, it's intellectual monopoly."
Alan Kay: "Simple things should be simple. Complex things should be possible."
Aaron Swartz: "Easy things should be easy. Hard things should only be hard once."
posted July 07, 2002 05:24 PM (Politics) #
*Sloganeering
I've often complained to folks about their use of the term "pirate" to mean "share". When folks complain about pirated movies, do they really mean to imply that sharing movies with someone is the moral equivalent of attacking a ship? However, as the word gains more prevalence, I can't help but wonder if the negative connotations will wear off -- we're even seeing it in the dictionaryas "To make use of or reproduce (another's work) without authorization". Hey Johnny, I 've got a pirated copy of Shakespeare for you! Why just the other day my math teacher mentioned that she had "pirated" some of the examples she was writing on the board from the textbook.
posted February 04, 2002 07:25 PM (Technology) #
Arrgh, pirates.
Keeping track of the uptime for my Mac:
2002-03-30T10:43PM CST (counting backwards from uptime)
2002-04-20T02:20PM CST (put some stupid things in the Fonts folder)
2002-04-24 (hooked up to external monitor. when disconnected, brightness stopped working)
If you can see this, your browser has followed a 307 Temporary Redirect.
If the URL bar shows http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/redirecttest/explanation your browser fails.
If the URL bar shows http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/redirecttest/ your browser passes.
This is Common User-Agent Problem 3.4 and Mozilla bug 68423.
Every browser I've tried fails this test.
If you've found a browser that passes the test, email me.
Mark Bernstein has started Weblog Kitchen, a "collaborative site, powered by Wiki and Tinderbox, dedicated to serious thinking about weblog and hypertext theory". Knowing Mark, it should be interesting.
posted July 08, 2002 12:58 AM () #
*Another thing cooking
Timo Burkard has created Herodotus: A Peer-to-Peer Web Archival System as his Master's Thesis. The paper (PDF or PS) describes the system, which is built on top of Chord and uses the spare resources of many nodes to do the crawling and retrieval.
This is incredible! It's awesome when you see that someone else has put together your interests (archiving and P2P)
using technologies you love (the Wayback Machine and Chord). I can't wait to play with this.
posted July 08, 2002 01:25 AM (Technology) #
*Herodotus: A Peer-to-Peer Web Archival System
Weird: Radio Free Linux. They're playing the text-to-speech of the Linux kernel source code on the radio. I'm not sure why. [via Boing Boing] posted February 03, 2002 06:13 PM () #
glTron: The Tron Lightcycle game.
Weird: Radio Free Linux. They 're
Wow! Google adopted Kottke's suggestions to their news page (old look) and left him a nice thank you note at the bottom. [via Lawrence] posted February 03, 2002 05:49 PM () #
Wow! Google adopted Kottke 's suggestions
Anarchists: Keepers of the Flame [via Jorn] "But most striking, if you listened in, would have been the gently earnest tone of the debates, and the palpable humility of the participants. | Everyone spoke briefly and passionately and stopped to really listen, and speakers reflected on how much they had to learn. | Sunday night's impromptu conversation ended only when Lena, 28, one of the conference organizers, quietly mentioned that the evening panelists had arrived, and would it be all right for them to take the microphone." BTW, '|' is a new symbol (coined by sbp) to stand in for […].
The New York Times has more on the puppet- makers.
posted February 01, 2002 10:35 PM () #
Anarchists: Keepers of the Flame
I checked outside and there was a package from Eastgate. What could this be? I wondered.
They'd already sent me my copy of Tinderbox. Inside was a card boldly stating "commodity. delight. firmness. The Craft of Hypertext." and a note of thanks from Mark.
Tinderbox's development has been unlike any other software I know. It had the hand-crafted feel of a labor of love, the style and attention to detail of a commercial product, and the open minds and ears of a small company. Mark is rightfully proud of his creation.
posted July 08, 2002 02:40 PM (Technology) #
*Special Gifts
Donald Norman, Michael Graves and Henry Petroski are on today's Science Friday: Everyday Design
(listen).
posted February 01, 2002 08:15 PM () #
Science Friday: Everyday Design
So if I'm acting a bit strange, that's why.
Clap your hands! Stomp your feet! I am not your broom! I am not your broom! I 've had enough, I'm throwing off my chains of servitude. (Broom is his own broom. He will not stick around. Be your own broom.) I am a grocery bag. (Be sure to spill. Play with your food.) posted July 08, 2002 03:47 PM (Personal) #
*No!
"The cause of death was a perforating gunshot wound to the head," the San Mateo County Coroner spokeswoman said. "It was a suicide." Wired: Quiet, Sad Death of Net Pioneer
Reuters: Gnutella Developer Gene Kan, 25, Commits Suicide
Andrew Baio: Gene Kan, Death by Suicide
Yaroslav Faybishenko: Gene Kan
Li Gong: I am extremely saddened
Cory Doctorow: RIP, Gene Kan
News.com: Gnutella pioneer Gene Kan dies
AP: Kan, Pioneer of Gnutella Site, Dies
His website is down, but web.archive.org has a mirror.
posted July 08, 2002 05:06 PM (Personal) #
*Gnutella Pioneer Gene Kan Dies at 25
Michael Reiter has worked on all sorts of fascinating distributed computing projects. Got to check him out. [via Paul Snively] I've got an ACM subscription so I'll try and take a look at some of his papers. They might even appear on some P2P distribution services. ;-)
posted January 29, 2002 04:59 PM () #
Michael Reiter has worked on
I really got started with this whole Web mess with the ArsDigita Prize where I learned how to build database-backed websites by building one myself. However, it was always assumed that these sites would be built by having a bunch of code on the server which generated pages for the user on demand by calling the database. That was simply how such sites were built, I never questioned it.
Now, a number of tools are challenging that assumption. Movable Type, the program that runs this weblog, has a series of Perl scripts which are used to build your webpage, but the end result is a bunch of static pages which are served to the public. All the content here is plain old web pages, served up by Apache.
Tinderbox uses a similar system, drawing from your database of notes to produce a bunch of static pages. My book collection pages are done this way. Radio UserLand statically generates the pages on your local computer and then "upstreams" them to your website.
Finally, while researching Webmake, the Perl CMS that generates pages like Jmason's Weblog and SpamAssassin, I found a good bit of terminology for this. Some websites. the documentation explains, are fried up for the user every time. But others are baked once and served up again and again.
Why bake your pages instead of frying? Well, as you might guess, it's healthier, but at the expense of not tasting quite as good. Baked pages are easy to serve. You can almost always switch servers and software and they'll still work. Plus, you get to take advantage of the great features built into your web server, like content-negotiation, caching, ETags, etc. You don't get the bells and whistles like providing a personalized greeting on every page, but those are things that aren't very good for you anyway.
The one problem with the "bake" philosophy is dependencies. It's difficult to keep track of which pages depend on which others and regenerate them correctly when they change. Movable Type handles this in the obvious cases, but when you do anything other than creating or editing an entry, it makes you manually rebuild the corrector portions of the site.
Tinderbox, a speedy C++ program, seems to regenerate the whole site every time. It seems that for this philosophy of database-backed static pages to take off, we'd need a really good dependency system to back it. Has anyone built such a system? Let me know.
Update: Some people seem to think that I want to bake because of perfomance. Honestly, I don't care about performance. I don't care about performance! I care about not having to maintain cranky AOLserver, Postgres and Oracle installs. I care about being able to back things up with scp. I care about not having to do any installation or configuration to move my site to a new server. I care about being platform and server independent. I care about full- featured HTTP implementations, including ETags, Content-Negotiation and If-Modified-Since. (And I know that nobody else will care about it enough to actually implement it in a frying solution.) I hope that clarifies things.
If you liked this article, also check out the sequel, Building Baked Sites.
posted July 09, 2002 12:09 PM (Technology) #
*Bake, Don 't Fry
*Draft.
If you use this URI as a profile in your document, then:
-
the value of the
<title>is the title of your site -
(optional)the element with
class="description"contains a short description -
each element with
class="item"on your page is an item, inside which:-
the element with
class="title"is the item's title -
everything else is the content of the item
-
the link with
rel="bookmark"is the URI of the item -
(optional) the element with
class="date"is the date I modified Dan Connolly's stylesheet to implement part of this: URI:
-
Idaho Observer: 15-year-old defends himself against drug law that does not exist (more at Plastic)
[via Mike] posted January 29, 2002 01:32 AM () #
LimeWire has gotten really good.
Idaho Observer: 15-year-old defends himself
I'm interested in the study of dreams (ala Feynman) so I think I'll write up the ones that I can remember here (ala jwz, SethS, RobM and others).
I was taking the train somewhere with a bunch of Netscape programmers and noticed Zooko in the back, coming home from Toronto. (I was very happy he was finally back.) He was wearing a T-Shirt that read Mojoey. I asked why the extra "ey" was there and he said it was because it was a living language, like English or Spanish. (This made sense at the time.) I told the Netscape people that I used Chimera and they sounded pleased. I kept looking for Mike Pinkerton, but never found him. I kept wanting to tell Zooko that agl had a lot of email waiting for him but never did. The train stopped and Zooko and I split off at the station, going our separate ways.
posted July 10, 2002 12:09 PM (Dreams) #
*Train Dream
19970309: Microsoft submits the CDF format to the W3C.
(example)
19970425: Dave Winer: "I've identified three dynamic pages on the DaveNet site, described in a CDF file. Can any software read this file and do something interesting with it?" 19971215: Dave Winer announces scriptingNews format.
(example)
19990615: Dave Winer (referring to scriptingNews): "For many people format will be new, but it's actually the oldest syndication format on the web." RSS introduced (example).
I hope you all have been paying attention. It is time for your final exam. Please be sure to answer question 11.
It's not as far off as it sounds. I expect to have this "new version of the Web" in place in five years.
[via Paul Snively, who has some great commentary on other work to bring this world alive] posted January 28, 2002 07:51 PM () #
I hope you all have
posted January 28, 2002 04:48 AM () #
Scientific American discusses how the
Jeff Veen: I see pages
The other day I heard a song on the radio I really liked. I could only remember a snippet of song and some misheard lyrics, but thanks to Google and AudioGalaxy I was able to find it! It turned out to be "The Rapper" by Jaggerz. Rocking! posted January 25, 2002 02:11 AM () #
The other day I heard
Bake, Don't Fry has been one of my more successful blog entries. I wonder if this was because of style or content (or both?). Anyway, since people seem interested in it, I thought I'd sketch out my views on how to make baked sites work.
First, let me clarify that using static web pages for your site does not preclude things that people generally associate with dynamic sites (like templates, newsboxes, stock tickers, etc.). Nor does it mean that your site can't have any interaction or collaboration (comments, boards, polls). While these things obviously won't work if you move platforms or server software, at least the content already on your site won't die. The key is to keep a strict separation between input (which needs dynamic code to be processed) and output (which can usually be baked).
So how would this work? You'd need a dependency tracking system (good old GNU make might even do the job) that would allow you to add new content to the system (something tricky with make alone -- is this what automake does?) or modify old content and would then rebuild the dependent pages or create new ones as necessary. As an example, a new blog entry should create a new page for the entry, rebuild the previous entry page, rebuild the day/week/month's pages and rebuild the home page. It would also have to add all the dependencies for the new page (to the template, to the previous entry, to that entry, to the category name) and add a dependency to the previous entry page.
Current systems (like OpenACS) could even be hoodwinked into doing this with little or no modification. The dependency information could be layered on top and then the system could simply call the dynamic scripts when that page needed to be regenerated. Of course, a purebred system would probably be better since it would give a chance for URL structure to be designed more sensibly.
Baking doesn't do everything, though. Input systems, like the code that accepts comments, would still need to be dynamic. This is a limitation of web servers which I doubt will ever be solved in a standard way. Dynamic tools (like homepage generators and search software) will either have to be fried, or use client-side technologies like SVG, Java(Script), Flash (ick!). There's no way around that.
If you're interested in helping build a system to help with baking sites, please let me know.
posted July 10, 2002 06:43 PM (Technology) #
*Building Baked Sites
steve@mac.com: Steve's Resume. AFAIK, Steve
steve@mac.com: Steve's Resume. AFAIK, Steve isn't looking for a job.
Funny! [via Woz] posted January 24, 2002 09:13 PM () #
steve@mac.com: Steve 's Resume. AFAIK, Steve
Ask me how you can help take over ICANN.
Carl: a free software-run registry makes new innovation possible
BobF: ICANN is the single biggest threat to the Internet itself
When you search for advogato on Google they try to hire you. What does it mean when 90% of your searches (Python, PageRank, algorithm) invite you to apply for a job at Google? Real men don't drink coffee.
DannyO has a cool idea about including source with OS X apps.
Movable Type needs a REST interface.
My TiBook is in Texas (Houston to be exact).
posted July 10, 2002 11:49 PM (Others) #
*locked up all alone
LimeWire has gotten really good. I'm using it to pirate music (that's right) and I get reliable and fast downloads almost every time I go to grab a file. Cool. [Jeremiah's Radio Weblog] I sure hope Jeremiah doesn't mean to imply that sharing things with other people is the moral equivalent of attacking a ship. He probably didn't even think about what it meant to call it that. It's the same thing with "intellectual property" -- the copyright, patent and trademark laws are completely different than property law, and calling them by the same name only confuses the issue.
Unfortunately with media conglomerates that own the TV stations, music companies and major websites wanting to encourage the use of these words, we end up with shades of Newspeak.
posted January 24, 2002 09:07 PM () #
LimeWire has gotten really good.
It'd be interesting if Dave used "enclosures" to distribute new versions
of Radio UserLand.
posted January 24, 2002 05:47 PM () #
MacScripter.net: iLoJack. How a stolen
It 'd be interesting if Dave WriteTheWeb http://writetheweb.com News for web users that write back en-us Copyright 2000, WriteTheWeb team.
editor@writetheweb.com webmaster@writetheweb.com WriteTheWeb http://writetheweb.com/images/mynetscape88.gif http://writetheweb.com 88 31 News for web users that write back Giving the world a pluggable Gnutella http://writetheweb.com/read.php?item=24 WorldOS is a framework on which to build programs that work like Freenet or Gnutella -allowing distributed applications using peer-to-peer routing. Syndication discussions hot up http://writetheweb.com/read.php?item=23 After a period of dormancy, the Syndication mailing list has become active again, with contributions from leaders in traditional media and Web syndication. Personal web server integrates file sharing and messaging http://writetheweb.com/read.php?item=22 The Magi Project is an innovative project to create a combined personal web server and messaging system that enables the sharing and synchronization of information across desktop, laptop and palmtop devices. Syndication and Metadata http://writetheweb.com/read.php?item=21 RSS is probably the best known metadata format around. RDF is probably one of the least understood. In this essay, published on my O'Reilly Network weblog, I argue that the next generation of RSS should be based on RDF. UK bloggers get organised http://writetheweb.com/read.php?item=20 Looks like the weblogs scene is gathering pace beyond the shores of the US.
There's now a UK-specific page on weblogs.com, and a mailing list at egroups. Yournamehere.com more important than anything http://writetheweb.com/read.php?item=19 Whatever you're publishing on the web, your site name is the most valuable asset you have, according to Carl Steadman.
I find it pretty funny that Google thinks my PGP key is in German
and offers to translate.
I know you're really here for the cows.
Nat: "NOTHING pisses me off more than those endless futile arguments with Python advocates." It goes both ways of course. I've been trying to rid myself of my zealotry/advocacy tendencies for a while now. (I think it's a lot better, even though it's still pretty bad.) [via Why I Hate Advocacy by M.J. (Plover)] Plover gives awesome talks like Mailing List Judo (how to get your patches accepted into Perl). There's also the thought-provoking Design Patterns Aren't and the hilarious Identity Function.
Plover: Why Questions Go Unanswered (I think [this is the correct
answer](http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1991May10.210452.28889%40ux1.cso.uiuc.
edu) to the hard-link question.)
Raymond: How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Raymond: How To Become A Hacker
Google: hack (notice how they all use the "proper definition")
Hot Corners: I want a way to activate the screen saver purposefully, but my mouse falls into the corners way too often accidentally (Fitt's Law). Maybe a gesture or a keyboard command would be better.
OSCOM: Open Source COntent Management. Too bad I can't make it. It'd be nice to tell them about baking and good URIs and HTTP principles and such. Another reason to go to Berkeley. (As if one was needed with the anarchists and meetingpunks around.)
Py: A hip Python zine [Joey] Get your Pyth on! a funny (does everything have to be hilarious) Get Your War On parody for Pythonistas. (includes cussin')
[Joey] Peek-a-Booty source is available! Take that, censorware. (official site, boingboing) Peek-a-Booty lets people who get thru to censored sites by letting them go thru other peers who run Peek-a-Booty.
Joey's open letter to Gene Kan.
Joey explains the meaning of my train dream. agl comments on it too. Is uk:crumbs a bad thing? Help stress-test BitTorrent. BitTorrent makes large downloads faster by letting you download from other people downloading. (You can download a file without looking at it.
Sheesh, some people.)
What?! You haven't pledged your support for the IMS/ISC .org proposal? Be sure to spread the dot while you're at it. Look at all those dots waiting to be lit up! If nothing else, do it for bot.
Bernstein on Baking. Tinderbox tracks dependencies cleverly, but looks like it rebakes each time. Nice, it's done a good job of making this invisible.
I was thinking that DNS should be signed, so it could be mirrored easily and securely and found DNSSEC. How widely is this deployed? Karl Auerback (the voted-in ICANN board member) has put together some Steps to Protect DNS from evil hax0r t3rr0r1sts.
Corporate Crime Explained in comic form by Tom the Dancing Bug (also at uComics). Also check out his explanation why everything that can go wrong will go wrong with essential computers systems. You may know him from the hilarious Library System Terrorizes Publishing Industry (text description).
[BoingBoing] My TiBook is back. Woohoo! Now, what to do with it… Apple was awesome. Even though it was out of warrantee they basically replaced the entire computer ($2200 or so) for only $300. They also replaced a bum AirPort card literally overnight for free, since the computer I used it in was still under warranty.
Farberisms are interesting turns of phrase by Dave Farber of [Interesting People](http://www.interesting- people.org/archives/interesting-people/), the EFF (donate now! -- Brad explains why (it'll change the world!)) and potentially the accidental grandfather of Microsoft's Palladium DRM system.
Tim "the tool man" Taylor has an extreme webpage. (very short) [Bugzilla] Free or Proprietary? The Free Software Foundation explains all.
posted July 11, 2002 07:49 PM (Others) #
*after a busy day of overthrowing governments …
Scientific American discusses how the DMCA makes modifying your AIBO illegal and how Sony is treating one man who did like a criminal.
Repeal the DMCA! posted January 24, 2002 05:35 PM () #
Boingo Wireless launches. There's a
Scientific American discusses how the
Just noticed that Aaron and myself are in Dave's scriptingNewsLeftLinks. Thanks, Dave! posted January 24, 2002 05:32 PM () #
BoingBoing has been blocked for
Just noticed that Aaron and
I could tell you all about Seth Schoen but you could probably get everything you need to know just from reading his extemeley comprehensive homepage. I read his weblog^H^H^Hdiary every time it updates.
posted July 12, 2002 01:49 AM (Superheroes) #
*today 's featured superhero: Seth Schoen
I think it's awful that OSCON doesn't have a scheduled key signing party. I thought about submitting it as a BOF but I wasn't sure anyone would come and there are already interesting BOFs every night. Here's the blurb:
Come meet other hackers, geeks and paranoid crypto-anarchists for a night of "can I see your passport?" and "how do I know you're not a double sent by the FBI to fake me out?" That's right, it's a key signing party! Asymetric keys may be able to give you privacy on the Internet and verify the validity of electronic documents, but it won't be perfectly secure until you get you join in on the Web of Trust. You'll get an opportunity to make new friends and increase your digital popularity without the awkwardness of going up to strangers asking "Hi, will you sign my key?" To join, just grab your PGP or GPGP key… What's that you say? You don't have one? Try downloading PGP or GPG from http://www.pgpi.org/ or http://www.gnupg.org/ and generate one today. Ok, now that you've got one, send a copy to the organizer (me@aaronsw.com) and he'll add you to the list. Soon before the party, he'll send you further instructions on what to do to prepare. Then, simply show up the night of the party with some paper or a laptop and follow the simple instructions. Couldn't be easier! See you there.
Anyone interested in coming? Let me know. Maybe I can find a non-BOF time to hold this… (conference timing is so crazy, though)
posted July 12, 2002 01:39 AM (Technology) #
OSCON Key Signing Party
Jorn Barger remains one of the foremost authorities on writing useful web content and annotational pages. This is one of the subjects I'm interested in, because I often have crazy dreams of creating topic pages that combine differing points of view and a summary of the issues rather than having to put something like that together in an ad-hoc way each time I discuss the subject. Watching Jorn discuss these issues in a thoughtful way is always inspiring.
Jorn hates reading lots of underlined text (in preference to text buttons (I like text buttons but prefer the look of links being contained inside the brackets)). Hm, maybe this is why people turn underlining off or resort to weird mouseOver box schemes and color schemes that make finding the actual link just about impossible. Again, because of Fitt's law I usually try to make the link text as long as reasonable, but with long quotes it gets annoying fast.
Aha: "We will distinguish 'anchor text' which is positioned between the opening and closing A-tag (ie, usually highlighted blue and underlined) from the longer stretch of 'link text' which refers to the link but may not be entirely within the actual anchor tags." This reminds me of Sean B. Palmer's work on integrating yolk/egg into HTML. (Hm, Google can't find a link. I hope he didn't take it down!) Sean calls the highlighted text the yolk and the surrounding text the egg. It'd be cool to whip up some CSS that made the egg look like plain text (but still go to the site if you clicked on it) and kept the yolk highlighted. I guess it would look like:
Fred Corp and Ned Labs have announced a joint venture create killer babies and deploy them in war-torn countries. I think this is a bad idea because war-torn countries don't need any more trouble, least of all killer babies.
in HTML. That's not so hard to write. Of course it would annoy people without CSS support.
posted July 12, 2002 01:00 AM (Technology) #
Writing Useful Web Content
I enjoyed Plover's Conference Presentation Judo. I especially like how he gets rid of the repeat yourself three times thing.
I've been slowly giving more and more talks so I'm trying to improve my public speaking habits. It's hard to tell how well I'm doing because people say nice things about every talk. Although I work really hard to be clear and informative, it's hard to believe I'm any good.
I guess the solution is to go to good presentations and pick up their styles. (Hopefully I can do some of this at OSCON.) I really like Steve Jobs' presenting style (slides should be as simple as possible and illustrate not narrate).
Too bad I never got an opportunity to hear Edward "Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely." Tufte speak
because I expect his advice would be pretty good. The price was prohibitively expensive and I already had the expensive books but they wouldn't give me any discount if I didn't take them. I have the same problem with the upcoming contigency design workshop from 37signals.
However, after suffering thru a series of let-me-read-useless-facts-that-you-can-already-see-from-the-garishly-colored- powerpoint-on-the-screen presentations at school I have some sense of what not to do. But getting things right is quite hard. I'd appreciate advice other people have.
I guess a similar thing is going on with this weblog. I'm experimenting with different styes and kind folks (notably CoryD and RussS) are pushing me in the right direction. It's hard to find the balance between linking to interesting things and going on boring rants or crusades. Again, let me know if it's working or you have suggestions.
posted July 12, 2002 01:57 AM (Personal) #
*Public Speaking and Writing
Behind the Scenes: The Minority Report Trailer Who knew that making trailers could be so funny? The W3C's XML Activity Lead is giving a talk on simplifying XML. Is there a problem yet? EyeTV is a software PVR (like TiVo or ReplayTV) for the Mac. It looks pretty well designed (although matching the TiVo's incredible ease-of-use would be a feat) and is probably the only way I'd ever watch TV.
I decided to volunteer for the EFF because I don't really have enough money to effectively donate even though I continually encourage others to donate. I figured that in order to stop seeming hypocritical I should volunteer myself. I strongly support the work they do on many fronts to protect our rights online. Potentially helping all the great people that work there is a plus.
Public Service Announcement: Dry ice is fun. Pick up some at your local ice cream parlor.
ISPs ask users to take copyrighted content down. This is interesting. It's certainly a lot better than shutting the networks themselves down. I wonder how people will fight back. Obviously this won't stop the problem, but it might cause networks to start implementing Peek-a-Booty-style security (making searchers execute some sort of challeng difficult for machines). A web-of-trust solution (you have to be certified as cool before you download) would also be interesting.
I couldn't believe that Software Update on OS X had no security but now that there's a patch (HTTPS server) (also available via Software Update) I guess it must be true. It looks like the update just uses checksums which doesn't sound very secure to me. Really, how hard is it to use digital signatures these days? OS X already comes with a ton of security stuff, you'd think this wouldn't be hard to add.
A beautiful rant from Morbus Iff on beauty in file formats. (short)
McCusker: "Being compared to Knuth is scary though, since he's a god of computer science, and I'm more like a game show host." [cite] Cocoa is talking to Movable Type! Woof! However, I'm not sure if I should ask for a nicer Movable Type API or do more scraping. I might write my own but it would probably be in Python, which I don't really want to require with my code and it's unlikely I could get it included with the standard distribution. Hm.
posted July 13, 2002 09:44 PM (Others) #
*smiling dogs
Scoble blogs the Blogger Pro demo.
posted January 24, 2002 05:28 PM () #
Scoble blogs the Blogger Pro
I wonder if it's just me, but I'm seeing a lot of project-oriented wikis popping up. Maybe wikis are hitting their prime, just like weblogs have. Wikis in the New York Times, anyone? Ooh, they're already there, thanks to Steven Johnson. Hm, warwikis… and wiki wars.
Neat. Raph and Bram came up with the same idea I did about a proof repository. It'd be interesting to see if they actually made it happen. I wish I could help, but I think I need to study math quite a bit more.
Poor Matt is having even worse server luck than me. Best wishes and a happy third birthday.
Reading back thru my weblog I realized that my writing is really awful. Bleech.
Hillary Rosen speaks the truth! UserFriendly connects the dots between file sharing and the economy.
Wow, the famed John C. Dvorak writes to Joey complaining about some rude things Joey recently wrote about Dvorak.
Hm, if I link to this comic that calls Dvorak a monkey will I get an email too? Dvorak's rants are so non-sensical that I never bother mentioning them.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden has an awesome list of weird videos. Of course, she left out the famous sheep video.
As Hixie and Blake Ross have hinted, David Hyatt is moving to Apple. This should get the rumor mill churning again about that iBrowser, since Hyatt is one of the leads on Mozilla.
We got our tangerine iMac fixed and set it up as a software base station with the hopes that it will support AppleTalk and allow us to print. Unfortunately the software base station doesn't support AppleTalk. Doh! Bwahaha: "Glenn fears for his job, as Aaron is bound to take over the whole CC enterprise - ha ha." - Bag and Baggage. So that's why they're being so nice. ;-) Wes cracked that I'd rename it to the Semantic Commons.
Don 't you hate it when… you try and update the operating system on your server but you accidentally hit the reset switch in the middle causing the machine to reboot and fsck to seriously fail forcing a manual fsck causing several hours of downtime? Zooko is back! Zooko is back! (AaronSw does the Zooko dance.)
While one TiBook is (re)born, another dies. We send our condolences.
posted July 14, 2002 12:04 PM () #
*the circle of life continues
Introduction (you should probably read it first). This spec is not yet finalized. Feedback appreciated.
An item consists of a series of lines separated by "\n".
Each line is a series of letters, numbers, "-", "." or "_" (called the name ) followed by ": " followed by a series of characters (called the value ). No two lines should start with the same name. If a line starts with a space or tab character, then it is a continuation of the value on the previous line. The newline in between is preserved. UTF-8 encoding is always used.
An item ends at the first blank line (that is, a line with no characters).
An RSS 3.0 document consists of one head item followed by zero or more body items.
The head is an item. Names for the lines are globally assigned. Names are case-insensitive. The assigned names are: title description link generator errorsto creator created last-modified language rights license guid uri subject Most properties refer to the whole feed in adddition to the item. i.e. last-modified is the last-modified date of the feed.
The body is a series of zero or more items. Names for the lines are globally-assigned and case-insensitive. The assigned names are:
The title of the item.
A short description of the item.
A link to the item.
The person or program that generated the item.
An email address, optionally followed by a space and a name, of the person to send error reports about the feed to.
An email address, optionally followed by a space and a name, of the person who created the item.
created
The date (in [W3CDTF format](http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime)) the item was created.
The date (in [W3CDTF format](http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime)) the item was modified.
The language of the item, using the language tag format specified in [RFC 3066](http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3066.txt).
The copyright statement for the item.
A URI for the copyright license of the item.
A globally unique identifier for the item.
A globally unique identifier in the form of a URI for the item.
The topic of the item.
title: RSS 3.0 News
description: Latest updates on RSS 3.0.
link: http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/rss30
creator: me@aaronsw.com Aaron Swartz
errorsTo: me@aaronsw.com Aaron Swartz
language: en-US
title: Spec Introduced
created: 2002-09-06
guid: 00795648-C1E0-11D6-9AA6-003065F376B6
description:
The spec was introduced to the world.
A few people noticed.
Title: Zooko Likes It
Created: 2002-09-06
GUID: 0894CB2F-C1E0-11D6-9649-003065F376B6
Description: Zooko says he likes the spec.
TidBits: Collatoral Spammage 2002 - How much spam do you get?
I just rewatched the Apple 1984 commercial and noticed that the first shot is of people tubes. Wow. Always thought they were rails to climb down into the sewers where the show takes place. Brings a whole new meaning to the ad.
Steve Jobs on school: "And they really almost got me. They came close to really beating any curiosity out of me. […] I've helped with more computers in more schools than anybody else in the world and I absolutely convinced that is by no means the most important thing. The most important thing is a person." 'Twas the night of the Expo and Apple gave to me… QuickTime 6, QuickTime Broadcaster (Automatic Unicast still doesn't seem to work). I notice that Apple's already using Jaguar-style buttons.
Wow, a real live .museum domain: nyc.moma.museum. Of course, it serves up the same content as moma.org. Do any living internationalized domain names exist? McCusker: "You are now in the future: a maze of twisty days, all alike."
Went for a walk. Ravinia is beautiful this time of year. Full green trees are everywhere, surrounding small streets filled with old buildings, small stores and public parks. Ravines snake through the houses and lead down to the beautiful lake side. I don't know why I've not walked around more during the day, nor why nobody else seems to -- the streets were practically empty except for the loud buzzing of the gasoline-burning gardeners and one kind businessman- with-suitcase who said "hi" as he passed.
Sign up at the Drug Policy Alliance Action Center to be notified when the government is considering actions on drug policy. They'll send you email notifications making it very easy to send a letter or fax to your congressman about the issues. They currently need your support to stop the RAVE bill which could [give you twenty years in prison if you support drug legalization.
US Planning to Recruit Citizen Informants Wow, this is really hard to believe. I'm tempted to move to another country. On the other hand, maybe I should sign up and file reports of our governments unamerican attempts to take away our civil liberties.
What? Rainbow aqua beachballs? What was wrong with the other ones? [mosxr] They're looking for more Python lightning talks at OSCON. I wonder if I should give one, and if so, what on.
The Python Wiki has been updated and expanded. Wiki power! Raph writes "A link can be a URL, but it can also be an immutable hash of the content. That way, if you have the file locally, you don't need to go to the net to resolve it." While hashes are useful, one thing you often here in W3C circles is that local file storage should keep track of the URIs from which it got the files and cache them so. So you'd just look for the cached file with that URL instead of the one with that hash.
No Zooko dance videos until we get more Irby videos.
Ugh, can't believe the editor dissed the schkurdle.
I think it'd be cool to be kidnapped and taken to Burning Man. From the boredom of school to the insanity of Black Rock City. It sounds like a book.
Bruce Sterling on Burning Man: "It's all exactly backward.
If you want to have a naked pagan art fair, you ought to have it in the padded comfort of a sealed, air-conditioned casino. It would be perfect for this kind of activity. If you want to divorce somebody or feed the gambling bug or lick your chops over paid nudity, then you ought to have to creep off to do that in some remote boondocks where the rest of us don't have to witness your gross behavior. I wonder how our culture got into this oxymoronic situation. It can't be good for us." I think there should be a conference for people with beards, long hair and small children. I know a lot of people like that and they're all very smart and seem to be interested in similar things. I added list of them (along with links to my bestest friends) at notabug.com.
Tom Lyon thinks we need to build a utility which delivers IPv6 over Ethernet and standardize ISPs who agree as IP-OK. This utility would simply route packets. It wouldn't tell users what they could or could not do over the network, nor provide better service for certain kinds of packets. This is the ultimate manifestation of the end-to-end argument.
[/.] And thus began Free Software Foundation vs. Apple Computer.
The Register: Confirmed: MS to ship beefed up 802.11 security in XP SP1. They're deploying [PEAP](http://search.ietf.org/internet- drafts/draft-josefsson-pppext-eap-tls-eap-02.txt), which is an IETF Internet- Draft , but seems to provide pretty decent security, using TLS. [Sifry] Myanmar makes unlicensed computer networks illegal "Offenders face seven to 15 years in jail […] Individuals can subscribe to e-mail services, but must give their passwords to authorities. […] Once licensed, the networks will be subject to checks by the ministry to allow for encrypted data to be decoded if necessary, says the order." [Sifry] I saw a great T-Shirt at the Museum of Contemporary Art. It said "I * Chicago" except the
- was the big blue dot from the IMS/ISC logo. Hm, since I have animation turned off I didn't know that dot was animated.
That's right, it's round 3 of clicktoaddtitle, where Harpold and Sippey battle for master of the PowerPoint deck. This round is called "Truth and Beauty" and unlike the others it makes you think, not cringe.
And if that wasn't enough, you can watch some past games of Photoshop tennis. It's sort of like those stories you make by going around in a circle, each person adding a bit, except done by graphic designers and far more powerful.
I've been trying to play a game of tennis each day. I've been feeling much better, although hungrier. I'm also not getting much work done.
posted July 15, 2002 09:40 AM () #
*temperature rising
All the best to Jim Roepcke, who was laid off yesterday. His son is being born by C-Section today.
posted January 24, 2002 05:28 PM () #
All the best to Jim
This is an awesome T-Shirt. Hm, with all this press Carl must have plants at the Times. But maybe he should spend a little more time focusing on that web thing.
What's up with the seeding metaphor for software? You plant your buggy code around the country and it grows into beautiful bug reports? Oh, phew. Jaguar is only $69 for students. That's not quite as bad.
During the Q and A Steve's being coy about OS X on Intel. "Let's complete the transition to OS X," he says. "Then we'll have options." "The relationship with Microsoft is a bit like a marriage… sometimes you have little spats like in the Wall Street Journal this week." "They're making a lot of money off of Office." "In hindsight this time is going to look like on hell of an opportunity to make a market share grab. And that's exactly what we're doing." On the high price of Microsoft Office: "This is America and they can price their software however they want. […] This is also America and making apps for OS X is really easy to write software for so some third-parties might come along and make some compatible applications." "I think the PDA is going to go away. And be replaced by a new generation of cell phones." Cell phones can view info and maybe modify phone numbers. But they'll edit it and run custom applications on their computer. They decided not to make a PDA because they saw three years ago they'd be subsumed into cell phones and they don't want to make cell phones. What about the iPod? "I don't want my TV to make toast." I guess McCusker was an anomaly. Apple says 99% of the people who go to the store would recommend it to a friend. They also have a new program where if you buy a "Mac pack" from them they'll help you set up your AirPort base station. To cut down on rent they're taking out the theaters and moving the genius bar up to make it 40% smaller. They're hoping these stores will break even on a retail basis.
I'm listening to the analyst meeting.
One of the Minority Report futurists discusses his role in the film and has the same complaints that I've heard elsewhere, namely that there was little creative use of technology and people were mostly consumer drones. He also has some theories why: "Napster lurks implicitly inside every shared virtual world that's under the control of its users. The world that seems utopian to me is distopian to Hollywood." The Bates Method: A cure for myopia. This article (and the things linked) fits perfectly with the intuitions I've developed about my sight. When I got glasses I refused to wear them because of how awful my eyesight was when I took them off. I've also been followin the instructions of another site which suggests purchasing reading glasses with "plus" lenses and using those to train your eyes. They worked for a long time but then I made the mistake of not wearing them for a while and my eyes have relapsed because of all the "nearwork" I do (mostly reading the computer screen. I'm trying to wear them once more and retrain my eyes because my eyesight has gotten so horrible it's frightening. Luckily it seems to be working. In the past two days my screen has gone from being directly in front of my face to the back of my desk with brightness all the way down.
Amazon Light, an Amazon interface patterned after Google's.
posted July 17, 2002 02:55 PM (Others) #
*empty jaguar-skin wallet
Looks like iTools is down for the .mac transition.
I'm listening to the Apple's Earnings Call and all I can think is "that switchboard guy sounds like Derek Powazek.
Two new switchers: Ellen Feiss ("It, like, devoured my paper […] I'm a student"), Tess Bethune ("I'm kinda seduced by good looking things [… the iBook has] increased my functionality in everything I do […] I design clothing and quilts").
What's with this crazy cover image for Weaving the Web? Heh, I just listened to [the audio sample](http://cdl.prod.audible.com/cgi- bin/aw_streamer.pl?file=bk/harp/000681/bk_harp_000681_sample&player=real). He reads so slowly… they must have given him a sedative or something. Argh, but why do they waste half the audio sample on intro music? Amazon.com Web Services. Obviously inspired by Google (kits, tokens, etc.).
FAQ: "There are two ways in which you can use Amazon.com Web Services: 1) an XML over HTTP interface […] We didn't want to force people to use a protocol they were not comfortable using." They'll even do server-side XSLT for you.
"The first Web services that we have exposed are: Product Display: The ability to search for and retrieve product information from the Amazon.com catalog and Shopping Cart: The ability to add Amazon.com products to shopping carts, wish lists, and registries from third party locations." They even use GET and POST correctly. Right on! Mark Bernstein's notes on Interstital Arts remind me [Ursula K.
LeGuin's rant on genres](http://www.ursulakleguin.com/OnDespisingGenres.html).
A beautiful memoir on a young daughter…
Uh oh, Zooko and MNet are being infiltrated by the secret Twisted org. Careful, Zooko! And whatever you do… don't leave them alone with Irby! "133 sites have helped spread the dot, 278 real people have voiced their support. At this rate of growth, our team of crack actuarial scientists is projecting unanimous support for the IMS/ISC .org bid by the time ICANN announces their results." My email to Gene Kan bounced.
Poor Kragen. I wish I could do something to help, but he's probably heard any advice I have to give.
posted July 16, 2002 09:32 AM (Others) #
confessions of a time-waster
Richard Stallman says we don't talk about and fight for our freedom enough. (O'Reilly Page) Full coverage is below.
TimO: our next keynoter will talk about freedom. we but heads. but larry's shown me what richard has to teach us. in a world that's good you can let people make a choice (i've always preferred the bsd) but in a world where copyright is a weapon we need this kind of protection. richard's the leader. we need to hear his stand in this government.
unprescedented level of control. jujitsu with the gpl. californians need to let our senators know. need to get them, not hollywood. welcome richard and thanks.
richard: well. i'm not an opensource developer except for a few minutes in 1998 when i thought about it. i work in the free software movement. i work for our freedom. [recants history] i was an OS developer. i could do technical improvement, prettying up the walls. but no, i had to make the possibility of freedom. not just a little bit, had to make all of it free. some part with a chain. can't share with your neighbor. deliberately kept helpless. OS had to be first but then you need to make the rest. UNIX-cpmpatibility were good practical reasons. GNU the name was programmer humor.
in 1980 people said free oses were too hard big job. only idealists did it. practical people didn't even try. some of those people helped for other reasons, like XWindows. good fortune led them to release as free software. but tit was coincidence. X Consortium was going to release next version as non-free but they died instead. that's what happens when freedom is not a goal. it's just coincidence. to protect freedom we need to vaslue it. freedom is always in danger.
[expains freedoms] had to interpret these freedoms by asking ourselves why it was important. commercial? yes, it's useful and important. if it can't be included it causes problems for the community. always a matter of what the community needs to use the material. manuals? properly written software needs docs. if the manual isn't free the software isn't quite there. o'reilly's publishing some free manuals. this is a good first step but i hope they make all manuals free so we don't havw to rewrite them.
in 1991 GNU was carried across the finish line by a college student name Linus Torvalds. i made a major techical mistake.. i thought making microkernels would make us faster but linus did a kernel in less than a year. we combined the kernel with the gnu system and it caught on. unfortunately, there was a confusion… people thought the whole system was Linux. this made it hard for us to spread the philosophy. we need to teach the users to value freesom so they will defend it. we got millions of users for this version of the GNU systyem where linux was the kernel. but they didn';t know it was the GNU system so they ignored us, or they didn't even know aboiut is. thought it was just a noher os for success. jokled that the goal was world domination. they were joking, didn';t want to enslave just to be popular. but to use that slogan you've gorgotten the goal of world liberation! but please give us equal mention: GNU/Linux, GNU+Linux.
Linux sounds like it was entirely developed or started by Linus for the prupose of learning about kerneles and habing fun. but this misses the point we need to spread. if they hear GNU/Linux when they listen to the GNU philosophy they'll see it's related to GNU and pay attention. they may not be convinced but they at least deserve attention. so please give us the credit we deserve not just for selfish reasons but so we can tell people about freedom.
in 90s lots of users thought that the ideals were silly and impracitcal. didn't know they were using the practical result of the idealism because they thought they were using linux. so they formed a new movement, teh open source movement. cosnciously doesn't say you're morally entitled to fredom. they've done a lot to contribute. convincing mozilla andopenoffice to be free software contributed a lot. free software developers motivated by the open source movement are doing a good thing. open source moevement isn't bad, but the gulf in philosophy is big. we cite different values for reverything we do. we can work together because we're similar but the users won't defend their freedom if they don't know about it.
used to be we could just write free software. other people didn't say they would crush us. people said we could work together. hard to say something's wrong if a business does it in our society. people have been taught to regard that as unthinkable! we need to relearn that. need to say profit isn't important. any business can go out of business, don't need to extend them through laws. need to learn to say no to what biz wants.
they'd pat us on the head because they thought we';d never succeed. they thought we'd fail. but no! we built two classes of free software systems. now they're pushing laws to stomp us out. but writing software is no longer enough. we need to organize politically. we need hundreds of thousands or millions to act politcally to fight against these laws. Sen.
Feinstein supports the consume but don't try programming act which will wipe us out completely. need to make sure that we picket every time she shows up so candidates stop wanting her support and make her stay away. need to be there in sufficient numbers, make our voice loud. tkae time away from today's work to think about the loing term task. i know what it's like to be a geek and focus on today's job in expense of the century's job. can't let them take our freedom while our nose is busy writing programs. geeks like to think they can leave politics alone. you can stop paying attention to politics but it won't stop payuing attention to you. you better not leave it alone, join orgs.
laws are pushed to stop people from helping their neighbor.t ahts their excuse for digital restricitions management.
don't use their propaganda term. treacherous computing, not trusted. you're the ones who deserve conterl, not microsoft or the MPAA. have to stop conceding the first battle to the enemy. it's not an inmjustice to make a copy. we need to reject that goal of not sharing. until 1909 copying something was not an infringement, only publication was infringement. industrial regulation on business and it needs to be that again. need to tell them that making copies doesn't matter. if some other system works that's enough. thinking you deserve more money is no reason to trample our freedom. need to reject their basic assumption. copyright shouldn't pay them anytime they want. we matter the most, not them. readers, listeners are supposed to matter. we have to give voice to the actual views of the people who use things like napster. people who think it's ok to make copies. we need to give voice to that view, not something we can't say.
if we concede that vital battle, that it's aproblem not a freedom, then they'll push us into conceding and we'll always lose. we've argued on side effects not ht ebasic view. when shairng with your neighbor is theft or piracy we need to say no, stealing our computers (DRM) and freedom is theft. that's how we get the support of the millions of people.
[five minutes left.] FSF contact forms. if you want the FSF to get back in touch with you. or you can make a donation.
i've decided i will sign copies of the book about me. there are some major errors in it, but i will sign in exchange for a $10 donation. i don't get a salary, i'm a full time volunteer. FSF president refuses to pay my travel expenses! (I'm the FSF president.) He says I know we can get stallman to work for nothing so why should we pay him. (He's right.) we'll use the money to organize groups agains the horrible laws.
some people say i have a holier-than-thou. it's true. i am holy, i'm a saint. i'm supposed to be holy. [puts on st.
iGNUcius costume.] [wild applause] [raises hand] I am Saint iGNUcius of the Church of Emacs. I bless your compuyer, my child. EMACS started out a s atext editor but became a way of life and ultimately a religion. we even have a great schism and even saints. fortunately no gods. must cite the confession of the faith: "There is no system but GNU and Linux is one of its kernels." to be a saint does not rrequire celebacy. certain others i won't name. a life of moral purity. must exorcise evil proprieatry operating systems. must install holy (wholly) free OS and then only free applications. not good enough to be open source, have to be free software. if you make that comittment you too will be a saint. you can eventuall have a halo if you can find one because they don't make them anymore.[tips his halo] Larry Wall: I agree with very much everything you said except that open source authors are not concerned about freedom.
I'm an open source developer and i view myself as planning for freedom not in a pugilistic sense but more an akido sense -- you agree with the opponent until their flat ont he floor. Richard: there are people who say they're open source developers and care about freedom and talk like free software movewment. this is because articles like one in new scientist which say i founded the open source movement. but when you look at what the movement says it doesn't say that.
so i invite you to wave our banner, the banner of those views. i'm happy if you agree! but i invite you to wave the banner that stands for the views you hold. as for aikdo idea, if it works, it's great. if you can write free software without pugilisim it's an important way to contribute. but they're starting to bring oiut the fists. liking to write free software is enough if yhery're not stopping you. but people asked the FCC to prohibit digital TV tuners that uses free software! we need tens of tyhousands to write to the FCC to send a commetn saying this whole idea is disgusting.
tell them we shouldn't listen to the movie companies.
Q: to follow up with larry, the free software movement is a gateway. you haeva n uncomfortable view of freedom. they see an open source project like perl and they see the ideals and they begin to learn from the support and friendsship and then they get the values and other ideals without a formal protection. i believe in the gpl and fsf but there's a need for both sides and more cooperation. A: many people say this -- a two-step procedure for introducing freedom. [let me take off the halo. it's really hard to wear the halo for a long period of time. i wonder if that has implications.] this might be good but almost everyone is focussing on step one and step two is being neglected! we need a balance or the buffer in between just overflows. we've got a buffer overflow problem here. millions of people like the software but no one taught them about freedom. result is that they're the bul;k of the community and represent us. i gave a speech.
someone came up after and said 'i'v ebeen using the system for five years and this is the first time i've heard anyone say this is for freedom'. we've got loads on stage 1, but join me on stage 2--plenty of people taking care of stage 1.
Q: Tim, call this the open source and free software convention next year. [loud cheers] Nat: we thought about it but it wouldn't fit on the signs. Richard: i'm sure we can overcome the pracitcal problem.
well, i'm being pulled off the stage with an invisible hook.
posted July 24, 2002 11:36 AM (Technology) #
*Richard Stallman: Where This All Came From
RMS and Miguel: Straight Talking
Guido's going to talk about the state of Python. O'Reilly Page. Full coverage is below.
Same presentation as at EuroPython. I'm distracted by my son. he's sleeping in his hotel room. He will grow up to be whatever he wants.
Python 2.2 was quite a while ago now… last December. [recaps features] We're working on patching up older versions because sometimes new features break old code. Bugfixes are completely binary-compatible. No new features, no new bugs.
New Python orgs. PSF: board meeting, member meeting, nothing happened. New board and took off. All donations are tax- deductible in the US. Very complicated for other countries. Need more support to be recognized as charity, will likely start campaign after this con.
Python-In-Business: euro-based but basically international group trying to slow changes in Python. Two projects: Python in a Tie, .… Both just branches of secret puthon underediojkkejnkeejkeejme NO CARRIER.
Python in a Tie was result of a stability discussion on c.l.py. Makes conservative users happy. Basically we pick a release and give it a tie. Then we focus on it for along time. Doesn't mean we'll stop all development, but one release wears a tie for a given number of months or longer if necessary. May have 2.3 and 2.4 on the road, but 2.2 will still wear the tie. Some people wanted 1.5.2 (laughs.) No, I'm serious! Kevin Altis: what about modules? will they be upgraded? like the email package? Guido: still discussing, don't want to add a lot of features. might migrate email package but i've been making sure he's backward compatible and it's mostly self-contained. Kevin: New modules? Guido: I'm going to be conservative… preferred for those to be third-party packages that can be plugged in.
PBF Compile Farm: Student society forcussed on education, owns a lot of hardware, lets PBF use hardware to test Python on lots of platforms. Run nightly (more often?) cron jobs to build and test Python's current CVS and reports it to mailing list. Already fixed three or four tiny bugs this way. will build more releases, also including third party packages.
Python Conferences. EuroPython will probably be repeated. Python10 was probably last conference organized by fortech.
fortech was probably too expensive, but we've joined with UAS to create the YAPyC (Yet antoher python conference) early next year, downtown washington (GWU), going to be very cheap, format more workshop like. expecting 300 people so won't be totally random. Want to bring hacker atmosphere back. ?: thinking about doing code sprint. getting serious work done as a group. Guido: great idea, doing that for zope3. i blame jim.
Py11 will be at OSCON 2003. that will be like this python track. more biz-oriented. also a small event in the UK. Really looking for organizers. get registration low by relying on volunteers. Need program chairs, etc. don't even have to come to the conference. organizing BOFs, lightning talks.
HTTP stats. Feb01: 5.5M hits. May02: 8M hits. Enormous number of downloads for latest python. despite biz people, most popular release is always the latest. 70% of distro downloads are always for windows.
Controversy of the Year: to bool or not to bool. I always regretted leaving it out. I left it out because there were already a lot of things and bool sorta didn't feel necessary. But I always felt bad, ABC had logical value. always expected to put it in when it felt right. All large projects already import True and False self-defined. Also like x==y returning True or False not 0 or 1. also cmp. RPC tools need it for compatibility with other languages. this is for 2.3 Lessons Learned: growth opportunity. (ahem) whn a group is large enough, every topic can be controvertial. lots of misunderstanding about bools. can't win. simple peps are misunderstood. explanatory peps derided as marketing messages.
no way to win, just going to keep ideas to myself.
Python 2.3: technical issues becoming polticial because of the size of the community. people disagree about the righ tthing. no new syntax in python 2.3, except for yield… focusing on library. enumerate(), basestring, import from zip, timeouts for sockets, logging module, gnu_getopt and optional parser, nw compiler, berkleydb module. lots of bug fixes.
PendingDeprecationWarning: poltiical compromise. have to turn it on. Comment: if file is less than 5 secs old, turn it on automatically.
No schedule for 2.3. had one, but didn't make sense because we were feeature-driven, not time-driven. although some things will be taken if their implementers disappeared off the face of the earth or got a job. PEP will be updated when we know more.
Everyone wants no more new features except their faves. Would you rather? Design problem: iterator next() should it be next()? well, user code would do foo.next() which seems wrong. realized too late we should have used a builtin function next(iter). poll on newsgroup. poll here: 25 for change, 2 for live with it. Guido: wow, revelation for me.
Have a problem in that there are some failed features which never get retired (backticks, lambda).
Python 3.0: Coming someday, more than two years. What to focus on? Perhaps take zope3 inspiration. start from scratch, small teams and sprints make up new code. [fin] posted July 24, 2002 12:31 PM (Technology) #
Richard Stallman: Where This All Came From
*Guido van Rossum: State of the Python Union
Stallman has quite a bit of humopr about himself and his positions even if he's serious about his ideals. They don't really know what to talk about but someone in the audience suggested Mono licensing.
I had to miss the rest of the talk.
RMS: More options don't always mean more freedom. If slavery was legal many people would sell themselves into slavery and people would have a lot less freedom.
Q: How do you present morality and ethics to a company? RMS: I don't focus on companies. That's another difference.
We'll try and sometimes we succeed. But we don't want to accept companies the rulers of the world. We want to work for the people.
Q: What about the hardware? Shouldn't the GPL cover hardware? RMS: Treacherous Computing and Digital Restrictions Management are a terrible danger, but I don't think that changing the GPL would help. And if we do change the GPL we can't add restrictions to current software -- that's part of our policy. Nobody should have that power. People can choose to use the new version with the requirement but it means that the requirement won't affect previous versions. We also have a lot of limits by copyright law. You can't restrict the hardware. And porting to a new platform is one of our freedoms. We can stop laws against general computers but if everyone switches to treacherous computers so they can watch movies. ESR: We started GeekPAC and we will start lobying. RMS: Yes, we also need an alert system.
Q: I was struck by the talk and outline of freedoms. Imagine the day when we're all free, how do we measure efficiency? How do we make things better? I think you're saying that freedom will make things better. RMS: I don't think of the ultimate value as making better software. Making freedom helps people improve things. Not being free is being in chains.
You get spyware imposed on you. Freedom in itself is important. Ethical principles need not be measured by practical benefits. We don't need to justify it by saying we'll get better software (even though it seems clear we do). But we don't need to measure what's better -- we can just pick the better one.
Requirements for being a GNU project? RMS: There are quite a number. Miguel: Top two? I'm not going to call Linux GNU/Linux. RMS: You're not going to call GNU/Linux GNU/Linux. Miguel: Well call it GNU/X11/BSD/Linux. RMS: Let's take a look at it. If you'd like to call it that, feel free. But the argument that's being made is that X11 deserves as much credit as GNU. Let's compare: X11 developed an important piece of software and they're not making any claims. GNU developed an even bigger piece for the specific purpose of building a system like this. Certainly we should give the credit to the biggest contribution? That'd be GNU. Then we give the rest credit as we wish. Then we cut it off somewhere. I don't care where you draw the line -- I draw it at GNU/Linux because it's an important piece, many people have heard the name, it's distinguished from the GNU system properly speaking, and I don't want to tell people not to give Torvalds credit. If you want to call it something else then please do. But it's not logical to think that the small contribution should get all credit and the biggest contribution should get none. Miguel: It's too long, too hard to explain. I want to make another argument, not discuss naming.
Eric S. Raymond's picking a fight about Open Source vs. Free Software.
Miguel: Outside the US we should use software libre but it's okay to use open source in the US. But open source is pompous in other countries. Stallman: You can use libre in English. Or say free software, free as in freedom. It'd be disastrous to change the name…maybe if there was a perfect word but it doesn't have one that means libre. Miguel: It depends who you're talking to… RMS: I'm not trying to get more users, I'm trying to teach people about freedom, which is why we have the freedom.
RMS: Java's an even worse situation. Java really took off but we don't have fully compatible implementations. If you want to develop free Java programs please test them with free systems and help developer GNU Compiler for Java or GNU Classpath. We need to write free replacements for a whole load of standard Java libraries. Denise of Sun: Sun's released SDKs for free implementations and worked with Apache. M: Sun's been really responsive and helpful. We should take a nice approach and explain why it's important approach. RMS: In theory, you're right. OpenOffice is tremendously helpful.
However, Java's done by a different group. I tried talking to them but be careful that you don't "partner" with them -- using their non-free software and hope it will be free.
RMS: We have rules we send to people who want to make a GNU package. Originally we thought Mono would be a GNU package but then it turns out it's not. That's OK. Q: Implementing .NET? RMS: We implement things we don't like -- COBOL, FORTRAN, C# is the same. I suspect there will be a lot of people using their platform because of their clout so we should support it. Q: Won't .NET need a free software implementation to suceed? RMS: We don't have that much clout yet… maybe in 5 years, but we don't have the power now. Miguel: Even if we aren't API compatible, we still get a lot of benefits from C#.
posted July 24, 2002 04:02 PM (Technology) #
*RMS and Miguel: Straight Talking
At lunch RobG and TimO discussed the new helixcommunity announcements. A new thing announced today was that Helix would be fully adopting Ogg Vorbis and integrating it into all their clients. I wonder what they'll do when Ogg Tarkin (the video project) is released. For the most part it was boring marketroid speech except for when Richard Stallman came in and shouted "IT'S NOT FREE SOFTWARE. DON'T USE IT!" and was quickly persuaded away by some people in Helix shirts.
posted July 24, 2002 03:52 PM (Technology) #
HelixCommunity.org
Ka Wai Tam has a neat idea for protecting access to their homepage: a ThinkLink.
TPC 2002 videos including Rael's hilarious Switch Different series.
Woohoo! Mappa Mundi is back! Familiar design… ;-) "As part of our efforts at the Internet Multicasting Service to recycle cool domain names, we're pleased to present the latest incarnation of mappa.mundi.net.
Originally a magazine, then a rescued archive of a magazine, we've transformed this domain into our home for the IMS Core Technologies Program. The magazine archives are still (of course) available." Life of highs and lows ends in suicide for Net visionary: Remembering Gene Kan
Ben Edelman on Trial. Good luck, Ben.
Argh. My access card demagnetized again! posted July 25, 2002 11:56 AM (Others) #
*blue gene
Sat down next to JimW by accident. Met DJ Adams in the elevator. Met Sam Ruby in the hallway. The people who print badges know my name. Met Andy Oram at breakfast. Saw Rael Dornfest on stage. Cool conference.
I lost my conference bag. My key demagnetized. (Luckily I had a photo ID so they gave me a new one.) Time for the keynotes.
posted July 24, 2002 09:16 AM (Others) #
free larry
Justin Hall wonderfully explains why I hate BoingBoing's linking straightjacket. (Heh, Cory's not a blogger but a posting-agent.)
Wow, Justin is on the same wavelength as me: "My chronological text is sprinkled somewhat with links, mostly to my own pages introducing subjects." That's the idea behind my blogging/note-taking projects, most recently Memesh. He agrees about building hypertextual webs and such, something I think bloggers would do a wonderful job of if the tools made it easier.
As something of an aside, the solution to the categorization problem
is all of the above. Don't build hierarchies, build Webs. Link something to everything relevant in back. Don't put something in one category, but discuss how it relates to all of them. Everything is deeply intertwingled and we all too often forget that.
[It's funny how I found this. I was reading BoingBoing and noticed Cory's cite to my blog and wondered what he thought of my obscure one-sentence entry style (which I've now removed). And here's the answer: "seems to be targetted at someone with more attention-span than I have -- someone with the spare time to follow links without knowing what's on the other end of them."] [Ooh, Cory's blogging me the same time I'm blogging him.] posted July 11, 2002 09:56 PM (Technology) #
Glorious Linkfulness
Carl Malamud's giving a status report on the NetTopBox project.
Does an overview of IMS. "We look for an artificially constrained marketplace that stops us as engineers." Domain names: "We'd like to see the value of that industry decrease significantly." Core technologies: "Lot of work on annotation, etc." SetTopBox industry: "totally closed environment". "smack of the 1970s […] mainframe-style of programming" They were frustrated that the computers in their house weren't controllable. Why? Consumers are dumb so the things need to be dumbed-down and totally closed. Managers are convinced PCs will go away and people will start using these set top boxes.
He rails against Gemstar. He's really passionate about this.
How do I find the best media out there? Who are the mavens? What's the best Sinatra movie? So what can they do about it? Scrape schedules and put them into some standard format. They've got a SpaceMapper tool which turns semi-structured HTML and email into more structured data. Hired NoLimits technology through SourceXChange, some good guys in Romainia.
Next is set of Universal Remotes. Got an EZZapper which you program from your PC but then you have to take it off. He wants it to be online. Can surf websites, send it email, etc. If we build the devices for techies now then the dumbed- down ones will come later.
Trying to sue the government for granting the patents. May be illegal because they're taking public property and giving it to private orgs w/o due process. Law people said they hadn't heard that one before. Alternately, claim that EPGs give you news and events and patents take away your free speech. Talked to "the lessigs of the world". Getting advice from people who think it's quite important.
Not currently on funding trail but not-for-profit status helps get free law advice. Can't say "i'll do this if you fund me" but "i'm doing this, please fund me".
Don't want giant list of channels, want list of interesting collections. Sort of like a search engine, also finds DVDs.
Sign up to the mailing lists.
Has some weird obsession with XML database. He should get a TiVo.
posted July 25, 2002 04:38 PM (Technology) #
*Carl Malamud: NetTopBox
randomfoo has MP3s from conferences sessions.
The TAP Software Kit has been released. TAP, if you haven't heard, is a project to build the Semantic Web. They have some cool demos like Semantic Search.
Darnit. Bruce Perens is going to break the DMCA
and I'm going to miss it.
Mena's set up a Trackback at OSCON blog.
Salon Blogs are here. They're running a Salon RCS. Congrats to UserLand. However, it's not clear what they're adding over the UserLand servers. Name brand coolness? I'm here. They lost my reservation but I managed to get a room. By incredible luck I made the State of the Onion address, it was pretty good. Heh, even the people who carry bags here can code.
Alright, I'm leavng for the airport. See you in San Diego! Ooh, master of cool Cory Doctorow likes my card. Sorry it was in PDF, I couldn't get the cool fonts to anti-alias right any other way.
What? I have to pack clothes? Where's my Rael Dornfest is the coolest! shirt? Hm, two laptops or one? posted July 23, 2002 10:50 AM (Others) #
plane day
Larry Lessig says that we're not active enough politically and if we don't do anything our freedoms will be taken away.
(O'Reilly Page) Full coverage is below.
TimO introduces. Larry's Code gives us a way to think about technology. Stanford, Creative Commons, Eldred vs. Ashcroft ("free mickey campaign" in hacker circles). Listen very hard and incorporate into your thinking framework.
I've been doing this for two years, over a hundred of these gigs and then it's over. one more after this. So i wrote a song… well, just the refrain "creativity and innovation always builds on the past / the past always tries to control the creativity that builds on it / free society tries to protect the future by limiting the cotnrol fo the past / ours is less and less of a free society".
Recants history of free society. London said copyright is forever, Bono said forever less a day. he's got some cool slides. copyright reversed and shakespeare was freed. freed clture.
1790, free cultured carried to america. unregulated creativity. unregulated because copyright law only covered "printing" not derivatives. only for 14 years. you could read the source of shakespeare -- the source was the work. this was the design. even with patents, you could just take a cotton gin apart. control was tiny.
This lasted even until 1928. His hero, Walt Disney -- plays steamboat willey! oh, just a clip… guess it's fair use. Of course, Disney stole willey from steamboat bill by steamboat bill. didn't wait fourteen years. they just ripped, mixed and burned steamboat! he always paroddied films. this is disney -- taking public domain works and copyrighted works and made movies. Grimm are utterly bloddy and moralistic stories which were retold by Disney. Only because of the commons. a lawyer-free zone. [logo: lawyer with no sign] (cheers!) "Limited Times" and it was originally limited… 14 yrs, 28, 42, 56, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 75, 95. extended by the mickey mouse protection act. meaning of the pattern is clear. no one can do to disney what disney did to the grimm. the public domain is gone. [free mickey!] Things are different now. We have a massive creativity regulation system. [pic: copyright law grows]. regulating printings to copies to derivs. 14 years to life+70. expansion of law but also expansion of technological control. opaque creativity -- proprietary code. you don't get to see how the thing qorks and law protects the thing you don't see.
nature has been reformed so nature can be hidden and still protected. not just that but also control of uses. shows his adobe ebook pic and his "permissions". 10 selections into the clipboard every 10 days. allowed to read allowed.
aristotle: politics. but no, can't copy any text. can't print any pages. the future of ideas, no copy, no printing, don't dare read allowd! [laughs]. sing button in next version, though.
control is built into the tech. that control adds to expansion of law. new kind of regulation. most uses were unregulated. not just fair use, but unregulated. reading is not just fair it's unregulated. giving, sleeping, selling, all unregulated. and in the center is a small bit of stuff regulated (publishing) and then there's this tiny band inside called fair use (quoting). so three camps, not two: unreg, fair use, copyirght. internet: every act is a copy so unregulated uses disappear. now we're forced into tiny thing of fair uses. and then they delete fair use.
shows movie of sony aibo. aibopet.com teaches people how to hack your dog so it can dance jazz. now listen up, europeans. it's ok to dance jazz in the us (maybe not georgia…) but otherwise ok. fair use right? not under the DMCA, apparently. DMCA has erased fair use. not allowed to touch for any reason. all that's left of these three classes of uses is copyright.
here's the point: NEVER MORE CONTROLLED, EVER. valenti doesn't see this. new scope, new length, new control. never fewer people controlling more. even perpetual copyright was better -- no one could print and ordinary uses were fine.
you build a world of transparent creaitivity., the weird exception. free sharing. was nature in 1790 and we're rebuilding nature. common base, some make money,. create like it's 1790. remind the world what it was like when innovation was a process of common knowledge. a battle between proprietary and free, we show value of free. we still capture the imagination.
free code threatens. and threats turn against free code. sw patents. Gates (brilliant! has some insights. brilliant policy maker): industry would be at acomplete standstill today [if we always had patents]… the solution is to patent as much as we can. future startups will charge as much as a they can. estblshed companies exclude future competirtors some changes but field is dominated by apologists fort the status quo. like greg aharonian. "it's idiotic but patents are wonderful!". what have you done about this? ms has a lot of patents and they'll use them on open source. but patents are not nukes, they're not physical. but you could do something about law. you could fuel a revolution that fights these legal threats. but have you? copyright law. homeric tragedies. documentary film makes doc about education in america. there's a tv with a couple secs of Simpsons… call groening called anothe rperson, so on, ended up with a lawyer who asked $25,000 for a couple seconds.
insane rules. but their insane rules are being applied to the whole world. insanity expands.
broadcast flag. before you touch DTV, it must be architected to control DTV. let's rebuild the network to make sure the content is protected. or thing fritz chips. intel: "polkice state in every computer". outrageous proposal for digital vigilantes -- copyright owners launching attacks on p2p machines. you have to get permission from the attorney general to sue someone who destroys your machine with virus.
"a terrorist war", as valenti says against your children the terrorists. but what's the problem here? "to stop the harm" what is the harm? Take the own numbers. 5x the numbers of cd sold were traded on the net for free. harm? drop in sales of 5%. recession, raised their prices, changed the way they counted… that might make the 5%. but even so, is that a lot of harm? is this the ground we have for a war against tech? tech is many times larger than theirs? what about the harm to us? how mcuh money to VCs invest on content-touching? zero. they shut down the innovation in the name of a terrorist war. for what? 5%.
what have you done about this? we're bigger than they are? we have might and right. why are we doing nothing? they're winning because we've done nothing to stop it. JC Watts, going to resign from congress. washington can't believe it. he says 7 yrs is enough. when he came to washington was about the time the war began. in an interview watts said "if you're explaining, you're losing" in washington. bumper sticker culture. if it takes three secs you're off the radar screen.
you lose. that's the problem. 6yrs after the battle began we're still explaining and losing. they talk about protection.
they don't get how extending copyrights is theft. we've failed.
i've spent 2 yrs talking about this. lots of energy, no action. we've done nothing inwashington. we hate washington. but if we don't do something our freedom will be taken away. either by the people with patents or with copyright, we'll get our freedom taken away. if we can't fight we don't deserve it. but we've done nothing. [applause] how many people give more money to eff than they give to their telecom for DSL? how many people give more to eff than the monopoly the other side? how many people give their money to boucher, cannon, hank perritt? it's not a left-right issue. it's about right and wrong.
eff.org, some people say they're too extreme. he's with you. it's fought the battles but it needs to be reformed… so write "please be more mainstream" on the check you send. on the check! do something. likely nothing will happen and your freedom will be taken away even further.
q-and-a.
Q: can you lead a march when you're at the supreme court? A: i think i can tell the liberal and conservative judges that they have no reason to vote the other way and we'll win. but marches on supreme court make you lose! lawyers can't lead marches. but you, lead a million bit march. if we win and all we get is the supreme court, we've lost. it's not enough to get constitution, you need to get the politicians.
Q: what do you feel about evil GPL forcing creators giving up rights to their work? A: RMS can defend himself but i can defend him too. we can't think monolithically. GPL protects the builders from embrace-and-extend in a way that destroys the common code base. code is different, not disney. again, you can enjoy RMS' wrath. we're building something similar, creative commons. first stage is to use RDF metadata to mark content. we hope we can extend the public domain. it's weird that we need to protect freedom and the default is control. GPL copylefted it and expanded freedom -- great insight. background is perverted, not the responses we should criticize.
Q: malicious attack on p2p networks… are they illegal from DMCA? A: they are! but they're being exempted. calling the hollywood militia. this is easy to stop. you could stop it overnight if you did something.
Q: you say this is the last talk. will you reconsider this threat? A: no, next to last. then i'll be lawyer. then husband for a while. see what happens with the eldred case then work on the creative commons, that's my job. i love this but other work needs to be done.
Q: how much is an american problem? the laws you cite are us-centric. A: yes, it is, completely. when has the world told america it's only an american problem? but we're exporting the problem. if we can solve it here, we wouldn't infect the wrest of the world. if the rest of the world rejected the vision it would be a problem that we'd deal with. i'm focused because we're causing the problem. only our constitution says limited times. ours does! ours embraces commons in the constitutuion. stand for that, not extremism. find a balancec.
Q: i love lawyers. every day i meet a lwayer and they solve a problem for me. contract law is dull unless you can change time and space. this is the most exciting time to be a lawyer. A: chinese curse: let you live in interesting times.
that's where we live. [stallman sits down] i'm a lawyer with a guilty conscience. i make lawyers for a living. (Q: that's because you've got tenure.)
posted July 24, 2002 10:33 AM (Technology) #
Larry Lessig: Freeing Culture
My stay at OSCON ended short but my last night was by far the best time I had. At Writing for O'Reilly told us stories of his history as a writer, editor and bookbinder. He discussed O'Reilly's policies and process and gave all around good advice.
Then Aron Wall got me playing his eponymous self-modifying and open source card game, which was wonderful! He should be posting some instructions on his website soon but his technical precision ("you play the card on yourself or on someone else depending on your relative affection for either") and his own brand of Wallisms ("th a t would be in teresting" he responded when asked if "Socialism" should be played). It was great to be with the other Wall children, they're incredibly bright and clever. Fellow player Schuyler suggested that the game should be called "Semantics" since it was all about arguing and word changing. We had a lot of fun.
Afterwards I headed over to Something Interesting Dominus is Working On (I couldn't resist the name!) and even though I'd missed his presentation, Dominus recapped things for us. Across the hall in the Music BOF we had some lovely music from assorted programmers with voices, guitars, flutes and pianos. I'll never forget the sight of Eric Raymond singing the Masochism Tango.
After that I headed up to the Perl party (my algorithm for finding parties is unstoppable: sit around downstairs until somebody asks me if I'm coming to the party, then follow them) where we pakced into Nat Torkington's apartment for a night of heady discussions.
I had to leave the next morning and miss some great presentations, but I had a wonderful time anyway.
posted July 26, 2002 07:42 PM (Technology) #
*OSCON: Final Night
Boston Globe on "Knowledge Couplers", computer-aided medical diagnosis. This kind of thing was discussed way back in Gelernter's Mirror Worlds. Good to see it's actually happening.
Ooh, new Irby videos. The best part is the name.
MacNN has some good Jaguar coverage. The iCal icon: I'm late!. Apple Shake.
I hate Avery Labels. I can never get them to print right. This time, stupid mistakes compounded to screw up five pages of business cards. Well, I'm not going to redo them so people better live with it. Fortunately, they're not that bad. They look very sharp, otherwise.
Packing. Haircut. Business cards. Is packing three cameras and two laptops going overboard? My web archive took up 8GB. Wow, lots of disk space free now.
Anyone have a good home or use for some Sun Netras, SGI Indys or a big telephone switch? irc://irc.openprojects.net/oscon is heating up. Let me know if you need help getting on IRC. (more OSCON info, IRC logs)
The dive into publishing empire releases Dive Into Accessibility, a groundbreaking book on how to make your website more accessible using real people to keep you interested.
posted July 22, 2002 09:55 AM (Others) #
everyone looks like me
Jeremie Miller of Jabber has a weblog.
The Doctor (Demento) is in (on the radio).
The true story of the PING program, by it's author. Even includes information on the famed book.
The latest drafts of the URI spec are being kept in CVS.
Publish your hashes while you can. A number of P2P systems are being developed that key off of the SHA1 hash of a file and use that to locate a copy. The one problem is that there's no way to search for a file hash. One solution would be to put up web pages with some word (the name of the P2P system, for example) and "hash" that listed file information along with the SHA1 hash. So you'd have a table that mapped from "Radiohead - Kid A" to dc7cd111a1d8bee1e7b33b23b8c1924ead69a383. Scripts to make these would be easy to write. Then, when you wanted a hash you could just search Google for "p2pservicename hash radiohead kid a" and you'd probably get the answer within the first few results. This would be hard to shut down because they'd need to come up with lists of all the infringing pages which requires human involvement.
Argh! Just realized my mailer was wrapping my really cool .sig at 73 chars. I've taken out my last name to make it fit.
:-( Mike Cohen points out that iTunes 3 generates a ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml file which has your music database in XML. Neat.
Woohoo! There's a Zest SourceForge project and mailing list. Zest is the tool that makes cool mailing list archives like this sample from python-dev and this one from e-lang. Ooh, there's even [code and docs in CVS](http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi- bin/viewcvs.cgi/zest/zest/). I wonder what mailing lists I should try this on. I did a test on p2p-hackers but it's not as useful as it could be because it chokes on the full archive (so I only did this month) and they're munging the addresses so you don't get the names displayed.
The peephole display movie by Ka-Ping is very cool. Combined with small gyroscopes (like those in the Media Lab dance shoe) and a hold-and- reposition button like the mouse has I think this could actually make PDAs useful and usable to me. (Yet another reason to go to Berkeley…)
Anyone else notice that iTunes 3 uses the new Jaguar tweaked UI elements? This seems odd to me because I thought that the UI elements were baked into the OS, not the app.
posted July 21, 2002 11:04 AM (Others) #
[insert something witty here]
I'll be heading to OSCON soon and I'd like to keep track of other bloggers. Let me know if you'll be blogging the conference and I'll add you here. I'll also be linking in specific session summaries to the O'Reilly website grid.
Matthew Langham, Ask Bjoern Hansen, Jeremy Zawodny, Derek Balling, Kevin Altis, Rael Dornfest, Leonard Lin, Steve Mallett, Scott Johnson, Sam Ruby, Jim Winstead, Lisa Rein, Dan Gillmor, Doc Searls, JZip, O'Reilly, More O'Reilly.
Suspected: Mena Trott, Jon Udell, Matt Sergeant.
Again, send an email if you should be added to the list.
I see a lot of Movable Typers. Mena's set up Trackback at OSCON.
posted July 21, 2002 10:45 PM (Technology) #
OSCON Bloggers
Is my Blog HOT or NOT?. A clever way to spread your meme: force participants to link to you.
ACLU: Tell Congress to Trash TIPS
AP: Ex-Dictator Broke, Living With Mom.
"Losing your job, quitting school, going broke and moving back home with your mother after living abroad for years would be tough on anyone. It's even tougher when you're a former military dictator who once had the power to execute opponents at will." "In contrast to the days when he commanded an army and courted the favor of foreign presidents, Strasser today seems to have reverted simply to being just another neighborhood kid. Gone are the crisp military fatigues, new suits and wraparound sunglasses. In their place: A baseball hat worn backward, a Bob Marley T-shirt, dark green shorts and a pair of 'Air' Nike sneakers." Berman introduces the Copyright Vigilante Act. (Includes copy of bill in PDF along section-by-section analysis.) Declan McCullagh for has more info and mirrors (sharing copyrighted data on a p2p network?). The RIAA applauded it as an "innovative approach", StreamCast (Morpheus) calls it "nonsensical" and Roblimo says he'll hack into Declan's computer if the bill passes.
Props to William Safire who says Blogistan is a real word.
The latest weblog book is BLOG: The True Story of How I Invented the Greatest Jargon Word Ever by PeterMe. "It will be a fully illustrated account of how Peter managed to come up with the word `BLOG' and its subsequent viral spread across the whole Internet! We're hoping to get it in stores by Christmas." Ftrain.com: August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web
[ev] posted July 27, 2002 10:23 PM (Others) #
*get out of my hair
I had some time to kill this morning so I decided to work on improving my eyesight. I sat down and tried focusing on some distant things. Affter an hour or so my eyesight dramatically improved. Whereas before anything more than a couple feet away from my face was blurry and fuzzy, I began to be able to see distant cars, people and buildings. I hadn't been able to see this good in years without glasses. What follows is the not-so-exciting story of what I did during that hour.
I sat down under a shady tree and set to work…or more accurately, rest. I tried to read the address on the house across the street. No luck. I tried to read some street signs. Nothing. I looked at some signs at the bank one door down.
Fuzzy.It's hopeless, I thought.
I kept at it and slowly noticed that if I relaxed and tried to focus on the words they'd get less fuzzy. I tried this on several things without much effect.
I decided to test just how bad my eyesight was. I picked a sign that said:
PARKING -> DRIVE-IN -> as I will likely never forget. I started walking backwards… good, good, good … then fuzziness. I relaxed and tiried to focus and suddenly the words became clear. I kept walking backwards and got a fair distance before I was distracted.
Ugh, everything was fuzzy again.
I walked back up until it came into focus and started walking back again. I repeated this process, walking forwards and backwards along the grass next to the sidewalk for a while (I wonder what the people thought of me) and noticed I was getting fathter each time! Wow, I was past the tree where I first sat down and couldn't see anything. Suddenly cars and flowers came into focus better than Ithey'd had before at this distance. I was able to read some of the street signs if I tried hard.
I couldn't believe my eyes (quite literally!) even without working to focus I was still able to see things better than usual. I decided to pick a shaded "NO PARKING any time" sign (it was much harder to see shaded things) and try my luck with that. I got a good distance back before I had to go home.
As I walked home I thought about the eye doctors--how could they sell people glasses when there was a workable alternative? Why wouldn't they educate people like me about their eyes, or at least do more research into it? I cynically decided that they didn't want to put the profits they made from selling glasses and eye prescriptions into jeopardy by teaching people how to make their eyes better instead of worse.
My parents thought my scheme was crazy nonsense. Some sort of placebo effect or some weird thing that wouldn't work for anyone else. All I can say is that I can really see the difference now. Even measurements I've set up at home to test my eyes are now not only readible but clear.
I hope to continue this practice whenever I have time to spare or take a break. I'm sure I'll report on my findings posted July 20, 2002 10:12 PM (Personal) #
A cure for nearsightedness?
Ever wondered what was in the blank space in Escher's Print Gallery? The answer, as this awesome movie shows
is (not suprisingly) the picture itself.
Jef Raskin has a SourceForge project for implementing his ideas in Python.
I was thinking it would be interesting to have a network flow sort of payment system. That is, I give "Aaron Points" to people who do things I like or believe in. Other people do the same with their currency system. Then, when someone puts money in, it flows through the network, each person taking a bit and passing the rest on. I guess this is like the PageRank algorithm except with money. I should talk to Raph about this. (See Raph's Attack Resistant Trust Metric Metadata HOWTO for background.)
This puzzle has three parts. 1) Distributing the works. (Lots of people are already working on this and there are lots of systems to do it.) 2) Figuring out who should get paid for them. (This is much harder, and I don't know of any working systems here. I guess you could watermark the songs with a payment address.) 3) Making it easy to send money to people. (PayPal does a pretty good job of this, but as Stallman points out, the minimum amounts are too high.)
Kevin Marks: mediAgora. "Getting heard and getting credit are great, but wouldn't you like to get paid too? mediAgora defines a fair, workable market model that works with the new realities of digital media, instead of fighting them." Tech Translator: Intellectual Property -> Information (Intellectual) Monopoly Digital Rights Management -> Digital Restrictions Mandate Trusted Computing -> Treacherous Computers (Computing)
Piracy, Theft -> Sharing Palladium -> Policeware C# -> D flat Salon: Sour notes. "During the last three years, the battle against file sharing has become the entertainment industry's version of the War on Drugs, an expensive, protracted, apparently ineffective and seemingly misguided battle against a contraband that many suggest does little harm." Stallman: [Copyright vs.
Community](http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:x2ZI-2NLvJwC:www.cai.ie/2001%2520Lecture%2520papers/rs060201.pdf).
"[Information on how to make a copy of a DVD] is being is being treated as even more dangerous than how to make an atomic bomb, and that is perfectly understandable, because an atomic bomb could only be used to kill people, whereas this might endanger the profits of the corporations which the US Government exists to serve." AP: Bush to crush "world's worst leaders"
Bijan:
I wonder if he intends to start with himself? Argh! he uses the Bush Patented Stupid Repetitive Rhetoric ploy:
"We are going to respond in a determined, focused, effective way by defending freedom no matter what the cost, and that includes understanding we cannot let the world's worst leaders blackmail the United States…with the world's worst weapons," Oh geez! Aside from the hypocracy and brute evil of this line, the repetition of "world worst" is straight out of "10 ways to ineffective use repeition, again" Robb might like 1do3.
Exciting news on the metadata front.
posted July 30, 2002 09:24 AM (Others) #
*i love it when a plan comes together
today's featured superhero: D. J. Bernstein
you can't handle the x-height!
miller reminds you to think when you link
I'm watching the MacWorld New York 2002 Keynote -- MPEG4 stream crashes QuickTime, guess I'll file a bug report. Hey, I'll blog it below.
Also: MacCentral.
Opening songs: Good Vibrations. [Some other Beach Boys song.] Ellen Feiss ad. New Switch kid ad playing with CDs on an iPod. Another new one… playing bills. lol! "All you can do with an parfait is eat it and poop it out." - Will Ferril ("I'm a porn actor").
Steve enters. Have real people tell their stories. 1.7M visitors to apple/switch, 60% on Windows. Move2Mac, software to suck preferences from PC to Mac. Response is off the charts, there will be a lot more of it. 100,000 visitors to stores per week. 2 Macworlds a week of visitors. [Pic of one guy buying 25 iBooks] Some are buying more than one computer.
Opening 32nd store tomorrow: Apple SoHo. Proud to be in New York. Station A, opens tomorrow at 8. Looks different than other stores. Very cool.
2.5M active OS X users. Extends line to 5M active users by end of the year. 77% of Mac buyers keep OS X default boot setting. 20% of installed base by the end of the year -- 24 mos. Fastest OS transition in history. Maya 4.5 announced at Macworld. Why? Mac is 25% of their business in 9 mos. Blizzard coming out with Warcraft simultaneous for OS X and Windows. Really want gamers on the Mac. Adobe has elements and works with iPhoto. Rob Glaser up! RealOne on OS x.
Available in beta today. Smoothest playback on any platform. Download now.
Jag-wire officially announced today. CD uses new font with fur-covered X logo. 150+ new major features. Biggest UNIX guy in the world. FreeBSD 4.4 and other new UNIX features. Also doing work for Windows. SMB browsing, VPN support and other Windows network compatibility. Multi-threading finder, spring-loaded folders. Integrated search. [Demo] "[Normal way] works fine but some people want another way [spring loaded folders]." "Find all my Didot fonts in a split-second." Even shows path information. Desktop picture preference panel, shows off kid photos, sets it to change. 5-second change is obviously for demos. "While I'm working, my kids can be with me all day long." "I know some of you out there are using a semi-transparent terminal, I can see my kids even thru my work." [Launches a non-transparent terminal.] QuickTime 6. Released a day and a half ago. Already over 1 million downloads. First MPEG4 solution out there. "These standards are really important, they bind our indsutry together." Live QuickTime stream. "Hello in iceleand! […] There are just as many people watching online [50,000] half are using mpeg4" Does a taste-test… tabbing back and forth between uncompressed CD and AAC audio. Indistinguishable to me and Phil. Does similar with movie. Instant-on streaming of some surf music video ("I'm gonna soak up the sun"). Very responsive. Just like local machine.
Sherlock 3. Completely evolved Sherlock for Internet [I think he means Web] Services. Mostly B2B ("high-faluting") now but what about for the rest of us? That's Sherlock. Checks his stocks (AAPL, Pixar, MSFT)… "what's going on??? Oh, market hasn't opened yet. I panicked." Can see stock charts. Everything in one window. Does some movies. Plays minority report trailer. Searches ebay, shows pictures. Tracks his Yankee auctions automatically. searches for Joe diMagio pics.
Searches Homer Simpson, favorite is the brain photo. Yellow Pages is coolest, searches for some sushi (for after the keynote) sorts by distance and gets a map.
Inkwell. Newton group (handwriting rec?) still around, integrated into the text foundations. No training, write in any app.
Rendezvous is biggest thing for him. Automatically discover other things, any IP network. Zero-config. Works over Airport. [Demo] Uses iTunes, coming 6-9 mos. to iTunes. plays a song from his own library. Wants to access playlists on that other computer. Doesnt' know how to use file sharing. Phil opens up his PowerBook, other computer sees his library via AirPort and plays whatever songs he wants. Phil closes his computer and the music stops. Streaming, not copying.
Phil comes back and Steve plays another song. This is just the beginning. Pioneered as part of IETF ("that's a standards organization") and "it's totally open. No one is going to own rendezvous." Big deal. Configuring a network printer is a bear. Epson, HP and Lexmark are all going to build rendezvous into their network printers. Just the beginning of the floodgate. Demos HP printer. (Phil says Jaguar right.) No printer selected, so he plugs in his printer to the Ethernet and it automatically grabs the IP settings and the computer finds the printer and it does self-discovery, tells what it can do (print) and what type it is (LasterJet). "Paper is now coming out of the printer." No config ("ever again" says Steve).
Mail. All mailbox searching. Sophisticated rules. Multiple accounts seamlessly. Junk mail. "No one has a solution. We think we might have" Adaptive Semantic Analysis. It's really good, you can teach it to be even better. Sounds like a client-side SpamAssassin w/ learning. Threads highlighted. Easy to add rules. Searches every mailbox. Easy to find stuff. Even plays QuickTime movies inline. Spam is "really a drag". Go to Mail->Junk and shipped in Training mode. Turns junk brown. (most of his entire mailbox) Really, really good out of the box. Correct it when it makes mistakes. Doesn't move mail, just marks. Then when it's good, set to automatic mode and it moves all the junk into the junk mail photo.
(Doesn't. oops.) Apple is blown away at how well it works.
Address Book. Older versions were not great. We've made it really, really great. Unified all the people databases -- one place, open APIs so any app can use it. Wonderful app to use for it. Very simple, but quite sophisticated (handles groups, LDAP, very easy to find things. Easy to edit, just tab around the fancy display. Cleans it up when you're done editing. Searches for phil. Rolls over vacation house, right-lcicks and gets a map in Mapquest. Right-lcick for public folder, mac.com page, send email. (Reading from notes.) Coolest things is to pick work fax get fax number in large type for going across the room. bluetooth support integrated into jaguar, bluetooth builltinto cell phone. Dials phone to call Phil. Transmits via Bluetooth. Phils phone rings. When Phil calls, takes caller ID and puts phil's name up on the screen. sends phil to voicemail… no wait, sends SMS reply saying he's busy.
iChat. IM in Jaguar. Biggest community. Uses mac.com emails. Rendezvous in iChat. Finds other people… if you're in a meeting it'll build a buddy list of all the other computers. [Demo] Blip noise. Fred asks where dinner is tonight. Fred wants to go to Britney's restaurant. Steve apparently doesn't. Finds map of Tribeca Grill in address book, right-clicks gets a map. Phil's not in his buddy list! Builds a rendezvous buddy list, and it picks up Phil. Drag and drop the map image onto Phil and it transfers. "It's that simple." phils sends a photo, saves to desktop opens. "Best IM experience in the world." Much-better Universal Access. 3 techs for communicating, 3 built-in techs, 3 for finding things. Jaguar costs $129 --- less than a dollar per feature. On shelves early. Sept. 32 to August 24 -- five weeks. being earlty is rare in software.
Up-to-date program, $20 if you've jsut bought a machine. OS X benefits apple most, thwey innovate faster.
iTools extends your digitasl life. Doubled subscribers in the year to 2.2M users. World is changing, tho. free services are going away. Can't get this stuff for free anymore. We have to reflect this. iTools is going away. Replacing it form .mac. "Now where did we get this name?" MS is talking about all these .net internet services. iTools has done this all along. We're delivering! We'll call it .mac! IMAP, POP and Webmail. iDisk expanded to 100MB. Really fast. Esp on Jaguar.
Password protection for photos. Adding some really good back-up software which suggests what you should back up to iDisk, CD and DVD. Anti-virus software from McAfee. All constitute first .mac release. Would cost $200 separately. $99 per year. $49 for first year for current subscribers. [Feed drops out.] iCal. [.missed stuff] iCal hosting. People get to see your calendar on a webpage. But wait. need to integrate with your own calendar. built-in subscription. click on calendar url gets panel asking if he wants to refresh it. See your calendar with the rest of his. Can resolves overlaps automatically. Adds kids calendars. Easy to search on them. Publish automatically. push one button to publish. can send emails to colleagues, visit page in browser. look at it by day week or month. Get calendars in email for summer school. just click on the link and you get the subscription panel. refresh every day. Even get calendars over iChat. So much easier to manage. One-button publish. one-button subscribe. Ships in September. Free download at Apple.com.
Digital Hub. incredible apps. marry them to the devices for astounding results. Nothing like this in the windows world.
4M copies of iPhoto, one of most popular apps. iTunes and iPod made Apple first computer company to win a grammy. 14M copies of iTunes 2 in 18 mos. now iTunes 3, launched today. Now you can rate music (0-5 stars) and get play counts. Also sound check which sets songs to the same playback volume. Audible.com support. buy content, highly recommends robin williams content. even keeps track of where you left out. Huge: purple playlists -- what are these? These are smart playlists. they put music in all by themselves. set them up with rules. "I want a playlist that always has my 25 most played." Make a simple rule to do it. (Yes! I need to work in the iApp dept.) Pick 50 random songs. Or a gigabyte of songs I've never heard so i can put them on my iPod. [Demo] "I love Bob Dylan." Only for X. Free download starting today.
iPod. Lowering all prices by $100. Made 10GB even thinner! 10% thinner, a lot in a pocket. totally new solid state scroll wheel. no moving parts. feels like glass. so coool. Little door to protect your firewire. a remote, headphones, volume, play/pause. case w/ beltclip. 20GB iPod. 4000 songs. $499. 3 iPod models. Added Genre and composer. "I want to find Bach and not the performer." Playcounts get added from iPod to iTunes. Smart playlists, sound checks, audible.com, bookmark roundtripping. New menu structure: browse. by artist, album, song, genre or composer. Extras: Contacts, Calendar, Calendars (any iCal-standard calendars. scroll right thru the days and the months. see all the appointments, read the notes. Big Clock, Game (very accessible, don't have to look for it anymore). Accessories (case, headphones, remote) $39 each for current iPod owners. One more ^little thing. Quotes Haddad saying iPod can steal windows fans. iPod for Windows. Partnered with musicmatch music player. autosyncs with musicmatch. It's not iTunes, but it's the best for Windows. Same models, same prices. even special firewire connector. Be available late august, taking care of mac customers first.
Groundbreaking app: iSync. Got the best calendar, best address book. but what about when you're not on the mac? Not- your-father's-cell phones. GPRS for data. color screens. organziers. address books and calendars waiting for data.
support SyncML (it's a good standard) and have Bluetooth built in. So cool, we want to add it to the digital hub and also the Palm while we're at it plus the iPod. iPod, phones and PDAs all sync thru iSync. Enter the data on the big keyboard, transfer to the phone. If you iSync you lose your phone but not your life (data). Go buy a new phone, just sync it up in secs. Very simple interface. Calls Avie for demo. "Well that's Avie's beep… he's a little strange." called mac to mobile. beginning of something really big with a new era of cell phones. going to be something really really good. big guy is sony ericsson, president here today.
"I was immediately convinced that this was a wonderful opportunity." best mobile phone syncs seamlessly. apple is a leader in easy-to-use connectivity. products complement each other very well. great to have cingular helping out.
…very excited. important milestone. dream of easy wireless connectivity. "this is just the first example of what we can do together. the range of apps will be more impressive in the future. this is only the beginning of a fascinating journey. watch this space." They're right. We're working so well and we're just at the beginning. Be able to sync up certain iPhoto albums, etc., etc. Third part is the network, cingular wireless president: We believe in the power of expression. you think different. it makes sense to come together. we're on the dawn of a new era, wireless is no longer about voice exclusively. key is that the networks are changing. investing billions in new network with always on capability. EDGE can provide 150K/sec. that's coming. then there's the "who gives a damn? factor" we need developers. and there are tons! nearly 5000 enrolled developers. But when steve called we really got excited. this may not be the killer app but it comes a darn sight close. very excited about open standards. all this stuff coming together, but we need open standards. we applaude apple and sony ericsson for adopting them. we need to make the complex simple, which is at the heart of apple's philosophy. buy lots of gprs phones! we are adding the phone to the digital hub. big deal.
one other time to sync. and that's work to home. how many people change something at work and want it at home? With .mac you can sunc between all of your computers. sync to .mac internet server before you leave, sync home machine when you get home. address books and calendars. mac to mobile. iSync runs on Jaguar. avilable in sept. free download. try it out.
Great part of digital hub is the apps and they're all written at apple. iSync will open a whole new door of apps for us.
9 apps. bundled or free. nothing like them on win. this is why you should switch, it's going to be big.
One more thing… the iMac. iMac has been really great for us, customers just love them. great feedback. "walt mossberg is not hard to please." 50% of iMacs have been sold with the superdrive. most requested thing. $1899 for the superdrive model. lowering price $100 to $1799. #1 request is for a larger display. new model with a 17" landscape display. Same viewing area as a 19" CRT. 1440x900 -- 64% more pixels. cinema is only 1600x1024. most of a cinema display. in the cinema aspect ratio. upgraded graphics to nVidia GeForce4 MX. available in two weeks.
Thanks to everyone in the software gorups. these guys have worked hard. Thanks to everyone in the hardware groups.
working around the clock. challenging times across the economy. competitors are laying off thousands. cause for despair if the computer is an HTML terminal. but no, it's a rapid evolution to the center of digital lives. we're investing and innovating our way thru the downturn. brightest future ever lies ahead.
posted July 17, 2002 08:02 AM (Technology) #
MacWorld Keynote Coverage
Auerbach Wins All! Woohoo! Somehow I got on this list where NASA saids me illegal things there employees have done in messages with ALL CAPS subject lines and I can't get off.
washort: | <-- you must be smarter than this stick to ride the internet The New McCarthyism [jwz] FWIW, I hope Bush is thrown out, Afghanistan wins and this "America" burns.
New color scheme for summer… er, something. It still is summer, isn't it? Good taste in color choice is due to Ping. Bad taste in mixing is my own.
Am I the only one who doesn't think an 'interstate hallway' is silly? Has anyone found a description of how Palladium transfers content between computers? I think I figured out how to do it today, it's not so tricky.
Oh, neat! Somehow I missed that TrackBack uses RDF. KUTGW guys. I wouldn't worry about it not validating.
TimBL: What do HTTP URIs Identify?
I released the Creative Commons RDF specification to a select group of relevant people I could think of off the top of my head. If you're interested and can keep a secret, then I probably just forgot to add you so let me know and I might send you a copy too.
The Alkindi Collaborative Filtering System is now in the public domain thanks to the !.COM program. I find it funny that the PDFs say "Confidential" at the bottom.
Carl Malamud can sure flame: "I'm not sure how an under-funded, over-extended .com in search of a business model provides a more stable operating environment than a team of engineers that has worked together for over a decade and has built some of the largest public infrastructure projects on the net." [beat] It's sad Carl has to fight for a decision that's a no-brainer.
Wow, Ward Cunningham uses OS X and the Dive Into OS X Wiki. I guess you should too.
Hey Wes, Chimera 0.4 lets you turn off link underlining.
Welcome back, Mark.
posted July 29, 2002 10:16 AM (Others) #
pay up for free software
Lots of new O'Reilly books. I bought IP Routing today. There's also IPv6 Essentials (the snail book!), OpenSSL, Creating Applications with Mozilla, HTTP: The Definitive Guide, VoIP, Mac OS X for Unix Developers, Learning Unix for Mac OS X. 10 OS X books.
seen on a .sig: "A day without sunshine is like a day in Seattle." When I was at OSCON, a nice fellow from Aferro gave me a t-shirt that says '.sigs for the commons' on the back.
Every day makes me want to move to California more. It seems like everyone is there. Kragen sure seems to be the center of attention. He appears on several diaries I read, including that of Seth Schoen. I wonder what it would like to live near cool and smart people like them. (Kragen has a dirary of his own, BTW.) Ping emailed saying he's also a friend of Kragen's. See! I have little intelligent face-to-face discussion outside my family these days.
Heh, the PSF holds meetings on IRC.
In the same spirit of my HTML hack (below) I put together a module that makes RDF more palatable to Python programmers. It uses RDFLib for the parsing and such.
Here's a simple example that prints out an RSS 1.0 item:
for item in channel[rss.items]:
print item[rss.title], "(" + str(item[rss.link]) + ")"
print item[rss.description]
print
Mark Bernstein, who soaks up more media than anyone I know has a list of hypertext movies.
Neat, David McGuire of the Washington Post for has some key points on each of the dot-org proposals. This is the first kind of summary of the proposals I've seen. I hope people do more, and more in-depth ones.
Based on some code of Ka-Ping's I wrote a little Python HTML module that lets you create HTML files like this:
html(head(
title("This is a page.")),
body(
h1("This is a page.", c="fool"),
p("This ", em('is'), " a paragraph.")
)
)
It needs some work still, but feel free to let me know what you think. Mark Pilgrim pointed me to HTMLgen. He also sent me pointers to a table example and a funny example from an article by Guido. It's interesting but I think this is a little cleaner/simpler. Since the functions just return text you can add them together and create new functions for templates.
Like:
def default(t, c): return html(
head(
title(t),
link(rel="stylesheet", type="text/css", href="style.css")
),
div(h1(t), id="banner"),
div(c, c="content"),
div(address(a("Aaron Swartz", href="http://www.aaronsw.com/")
))))
I didn't know there was a gnu.* series of newsgroups.
posted July 28, 2002 11:23 AM (Others) #
irby nation
Dan J. Bernstein on time: "Don't contribute to the Y10K problem! Thanks to my lobbying, Internet mail messages are now allowed to have 5-digit years." Ugh, head that the Bush Administration wants to invade Iraq. Can we throw them out of office yet? Anyone know where I can get a list of registered domain names? Announcing the Creative Commons Metadata Project. Tell all your friends, but not the newspapers. Only geeky stuff in there. Our technical specification is in beta so send us your feedback.
What does it mean when someone else wrote the exact same program you did, with the exact same tools and the exact same implementation decisions? It's a 10-line Python script I run as a cron job that uses Orchard to grab RSS files, html2text to convert them to ASCII and then emails them to me so I can use my nice mail client as my aggregator. I keep procrastinating and not releasing it. Today I learned that Mark Pilgrim wrote the same thing with the same tools.
I'm parsing RSS files with expat in Python and it seems to be overly picky about character codes. It'll choke with a fatalError (not well-formed (invalid token)) on things like Smart Quotes when IE will let them through. Is there a way to turn this pickiness off? Someone once told me that down south they called the US Civil War "The War of Northern Aggression". And at P2PCon2, Lessig made the analogy to the fight between the Hollywood and Silicon Valley, where the North(ern Californians) thought content should be free and the South thought it should be owned. So does that mean that this is the war of southern agression (or regulation)? After a long night, my favorite weblogs look like this: Hack the Planet, Doc Searls, Steve Ballmer.
BitTorrent 3.0 is out. They've got a Mac OS X GUI version now that integrates with IE and finished documentation.
Cory's back and spewing blog pieces. Hm. Somehow I missed
Mena's photos of Disneyland. I figured I did pretty well on the Cory Doctorow
Replacement Test, I blogged 5 out of 20 of the things he's posted. I'm one quarter Cory!
" And don't forget, some bunny loves you, baby!" After this incident, I'm tempted to link to one of Heather's images just to see what will happen.
The funnies, though, is what happened to her own page! posted July 31, 2002 11:30 AM (Others) #
*is it rabbittime already?
(But what about the pride in your copywriters?)
rec.humor.oracle.d FAQ: "Not to be overly cruel or anything, but if you can't cope with the level of insanity in the room, get out of the sanitarium." That froup is absolutely swhacky.
Where are you, raelity bytes? [Carl Malamud on the UR{L,I,N,C} debates](http://not.invisible.net/MT/mt- comments.cgi?entry_id=183;start=0;limit=50#000380): "I attended some of the meetings where that was discussed (and discussed and discussed), but it always seemed more productive to go to the terminal room and load up my gopher server, leaving the religious debates to those who were already ordained." Ah, Ben is finally telling his side of the story. I didn't realize his blog had moved to its own domain name.
NYTimes: Failures of the Bush Administration.
"Where his father's rhetoric gave us a thousand points of light, his lopped a thousand points off the Dow." And this is the Times! This Switchback flash animation is supposed to be a parody of the Switch ads but I found it quite reasonable. It's sort of like the Think Different message (Macs are for cool people) in the style of the Switch ads (I'm a random joe who uses a Mac).
Fred von Lohmann: Fair Use and DRM
*Here are your free Ogg Vorbises (Vorbisim?), hippy!
A transcript of the new automated TIPS hotline.
Work on a URI spec update is starting. I'll probably keep an eye on this, although there's nothing very exciting or glamorous to do here.
What? You haven't been following my other blog, the Google Weblog? Head over there now to check out this fun ASCII art using Google's keyword highlighting feature. It's the new craze! Quiet email day.
posted July 20, 2002 09:35 PM (Others) #
loose clothes == loose morals
I'm getting lots of OSCON spam all of the sudden. I guess someone's spamming the Who's Who list.
Theodore Gray of Wolfram has a wonderful rant on educational software. It covers everything from why we shouldn't be afraid of calculators and other software that relieves kids of rote tasks to why video games are harmful ("The Army learned that the way to get soldiers to reliably pull the trigger was to use very basic, repetitive operant conditioning, along the lines of standard behaviorist theory.") to why most educational software is awful (it's made by the same people who make video games) all in a delightful dialog style filled with insight and humor. The only issue is that he uses "hard" when he means "complex".
Two years in the making… [Woody!](http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2002/debian-devel- announce-200207/msg00011.html) Party time! McCusker on planned fragility: "It's likely true Office uses such inflexible code that feature changes do need file format changes. But it's certain this is planned fragility, in analogy to the better known concept of planned obsolescence. When formats are more fragile, it's easy to force entire communities to upgrade software when new versions ship, because network effects punish users of old versions." Russ Nelson has been trying to hack the DMCA too. He's got some One-Time- Pads that might be interesting someday. My legal-oriented friends say this kind of thing doesn't work, because if the courts think you're playing games with them they'll rule against you. Courts don't work rationally like programs do.
Cool, Kevin "PythonCard" Altis and Russ Nelson are also giving lightning talks. I feel bad not being able to live up to such company. I wonder what else I could present.
Judging from the people who signed his key Leland Wallace looks pretty interesting.
Guido: "Your talk has been accepted for the Python Lightning Talks sessions" ugh, I better do something today or I'll have wasted the whole week. (that's called vacation.)
posted July 19, 2002 10:58 AM (Others) #
you may already have one
Since Hyatt loves Blake so much, maybe he can get me a job at Apple. Or at least let me use his employee discount. I linked to your blog, you owe me! Food! David Hyatt's first day at Apple is hilairous.
Congrats to UserLand for getting Salon to blog.
Sounds like they had a lot of fun at the DRM workshop the other day.
"Preston Padden, v.p. of public policy for Disney, who called for government intervention in DRM because he didn't see all sides coming to an agreement without a push. Comer retorted that he doesn't think Hollywood will end its fascination with sex and violence without government intervention, either." I'm converting Blogspace over to Apache on this server (vorpal).
Your DNS should be updated within 24 minutes. Please let me know if you see any breakage. (I'm still downloading the swhack stuff, so that will take a little longer.)
Weird archiving thought: run gzip dir/ > dir/archive.tgz every night (you'd get a directory with an archive of the
directory with an archive of the previous directory with an archive …). I'm afraid I might have done this.
Rat out TIPS informants. I was thinking of signing up to be a TIPS informant and supply information on the horrible things Ashcroft and Bush were doing to divide and terrorize the nation.
I proposed a Python Lightning Talk for OSCON:
The Creative Commons project is trying to bring the same kind of less-restrictive-than-copyright licenses we see in software to other content while building a tagging system that allows licensed works to describe their license in a machine-readable form. Learn how to use a Python RDF API to parse this data so you can take advantage of it.
I wonder if I can do that in five minutes. I need to find a simple Python RDF API, I guess.
"Python plays a key role in our production pipeline. Without it a project the size of Star Wars: Episode II would have been very difficult to pull off. From crowd rendering to batch processing to compositing, Python binds all things together," said Tommy Burnette, Senior Technical Director, Industrial Light & Magic.
Now all we need is a Python/Star Wars pun.
I'm converting LogicError over to a static site on this server (vorpal). Your DNS should be updated within 24 hours. Please let me know if you see any breakage.
Cryptome: Gilmore v. Ashcroft: Secret rule demanding 'Your Papers Please' claimed
unconstitutional. Gilmore rocks!
The complaint makes great reading. "On July 4, 2002, Plaintiff tried to fly
to Washington, DC to petition the government for redress of grievances [specifically, the requirement for airline
travelers to provide identification] and to associate with others for that purpose. He was stopped because he refused to
identify himself before boarding the flight."
The FAQ is good too. His argument sounds really strong. "You can use free
speech to say hurtful things. You can practice religions that make you cruel and intolerant. You can commit a crime and
then avoid torture that would make you confess. You can petition the government to build a police state run on Oracle
servers." "Government-imposed searches waste as much life every year as the lifetimes that the attack wasted."
Where has John Gilmore's website gone? Did Verio succeed in censoring
him?
Python one-liners are fun: ls | python -c "import sys, os for line in sys.stdin: line=line.strip(); os.rename(line, line+'.html')"
Mark Bernstein reviews Rebecca Blood's The Weblog
Handbook: "Romance assures us that, though weblogs
fail everywhere, our weblog will prosper because we, ourselves, are wonderful. Rebecca Blood's The Weblog Handbook is
an inexorably romantic guide to building and cultivating a weblog."
From his description of the book I find myself continously drawn in and repelled. I'd like to learn how to capture the
spirit of my life in my writing but at the same time I choke on comments like "If you allow yourself to begin posting
entries based on what you think someone else wants you to write, you are missing the point of having a weblog." As for
child-stalkers, I put my home phone number and address up on my website and (thankfully) I haven't received one phone
call yet. I'm not worried. I think that in Bernstein's categorization, my view on weblogs (and life) is comedy ("our
weblogs can succeed through hard work, struggle, and good fortune").
IMS OPENCOOKIE FACT: 'While Brewster Kahle was still a student at MIT, he attended a lecture by Yvette entitled "ZweiBack: Crackers and Cookies for Posterity" which got the young computer scientist thinking. After he helped build the Thinking Machine and invented WAIS, Kahle returned to his true life's work and opened The Internet Archive and his Wayback project.' BTW, did you know that recipies have no copyright protection? I guess that makes every cookie an OpenCookie. And if people ask you how creative types can make money without copyright, just point them to Martha Stewart (or not).
Constrast: Furious Stallman, Furious Valenti
[Seth] May you move from strength to strength.
posted July 18, 2002 11:20 AM (Others) #
i 'm not dead yet
Rael Dornfest: Rael's Gold Box. A hilarious poem about the aura, the temptation, the hard sell marketing that is the Amazon Gold Box.
Are there any small, intuitive text editors for Linux that have incremental search? (Emacs is big, vi is not intuitive, nano is missing incremental search.) Giles A. Radford recommends "jed" which looks pretty good.
Philip Greenspun: Our Summer Vacation (2002)
[guan] Leonardonics on Seth David Schoen: "Hi, I'm Seth David Schoen. The panda bear is not actually a bear; in fact, neither is it a panda. I'm Seth David Schoen." Hm. Is Mark Bernstein related to D. J. Bernstein? D.J. lives in Chicago and Mark comes from Chicago, so it's a possibility.
It's the beginning of the month, and you know what that means: Yes! Rabbits and annoying mailman reminders.
posted August 01, 2002 10:41 AM (Others) #
*rabbit, rabbit
It's neat that Stallman went to see Raph. The most interesting thing I learned at the conference was how human Stallman is. As people asked him long questions he would practice his dance steps. He'd make jokes about everything. I could really see being him.
His presence made me feel ashamed for using non-free software (although I'm still wondering why it's wrong to use non- free software if you can't modify the code… perhaps it's because you're making it harder for others who want to use free software). I found something he said rather novel, but I'm not sure how to put it properly. I believe he would like to outlaw non-free software. He made an analogy to slavery and how as an intelligent country we outlawed slavery to protect people. This raised a long series of questions in my head, but I think I resolved most of them.
Movable Type, the non-free software that powers this weblog may become free. Ben and Mena said they were constantly reconsidering the license but that they needed a way to make money. However, I pressed them on this point. They make money off of other things: donations, installation and hosting. If someone were to violate the license, would they really have the resources to sue? I think it would be much better for them to release it under the GPL (or something similar) and politely ask that people donate and not steal their business. That way we can all be safe in using the software, but their heartfelt plea (which is rather convincing…you might donate to them even out of self-interest since they likely won't improve the software if they have to work at McDonalds) will still go out to those who will listen and respect their wishes.
posted July 28, 2002 11:18 AM (Technology) #
movable code
Today was a very interesting keynote. There wasn't a lot of hardware, but I'm much more interested in the software anyway. It's great to see someone finally making Web calendaring a possibility. I really think we'll start seeing iCal versions on conferences and other events now that there's a client app like this. I think Smart Playlists (aka vFolders) are a great idea, although it's a little strange they should first be debuted in iTunes. The Robin Williams / John Lassetter interview you can get for free is pretty cool too.
More generally, I think that it would be great to have some general base and APIs for the stuff in the iApps. They all are doing some attribute-based storage with fast indexing. I can imagine a lot of apps that could benefit from APIs to do this. (I wonder if hiring the BeFS guy will make this happen, since attribute-based storage is exactly what BeFS did.) It'd also be cool to have folders and Smart Folders (vFolders) available to all these applications as a component with little custom code. This kind of general data store repository is exactly what I want to do with Memesh, providing specialized views with good interfaces like the iApps provide. But what's needed is something to hook them together and make linking easy.
Jaguar is incredibly awesome, if expensive. My machine is still under warranty, I should get it free! Oh well, I'm sure we'll buy it any way. It's interesting how much Apple is stealing, like great artists do.
Sherlock 3 is Watson, the junk mail filter is SpamAssassin, Address Book and iCal look like Entourage cousins (not to mention SBook), Fast Finder was in SNAX or whatever it's called, the Windows network viewer is DAVE, iChat is Adium, Backup is somewhat like Retrospect. I feel bad for the developers they're stealing from (couldn't they send them some cash with $4.2B in the bank?), but it's clear that they will swallow any decent OS X apps. I wonder if I can get a job there. Working on a team like that would really be something. It'd be interesting to see if Apple does anything to sponsor innovative OS X app development, because there's obviously a lot of good complementary ideas. Unfortunately I get the feeling that they'll just encourage it vaguely and then steal the ideas. :-( [BTW, send them feedback requesting that Razor
be integrated with Mail.app. I think it's a better long-term solution than latent semantic analysis heuristics.] I admit that I shelled out the $49 for .mac while I was still under the RDF. I wanted the Backup software and Anti-Virus but they turned out to be badly-done Cocoa shims over some UNIX tools (tar, gzip and cp in the case of Backup). iCal and screen saver sharing have some appeal to me, but I already have an AIM account. I guess having some WebDAV space is good, since I haven't found anything I can install on my Debian GNU/Linux server (let me know if you have suggestions).
Anyway, I applaude Apple on their beautiful user interfaces, clever implementations of ideas, and innovations in products. I just wish they'd do something to help out the rest of us.
posted July 17, 2002 08:48 PM (Technology) #
Reflections on the Keynote
Thanks to everyone who responded to my piece on eyesight. I'd like to share some of the emails I received on the subject. Andy McMullan writes in with a similar experience, Matt Webb tells the story of an eye exercise that gave similar results and Faisal Jawdat says that his eyes are getting better even after an infection.
Andy McMullan wrote that he had a similar experience. His eyes "had always been pretty good" until he "attended a masters degree course during which he became "increasingly nearsighted. It got to the point where I couldn't drive safely, particularly at night, because I was struggling to read signs. Also text on the TV looked blurry." He went to an optician who told him he needed glasses and that his poorer eyesight was simply part of getting old, which Andy didn't buy after such a dramatic change. The doctor "agreed it didn't really make sense, but couldn't offer an alternative explanation." He went to another optician and got the same thing.
He got the glasses and wore them for a while but felt they "were just reinforcing the problem". After a couple weeks of hour-long car commutes his eyes began "getting a lot better. I could read signs again, and I could read text on the TV.
My eyes were pretty much back to where they were before the degree. I put the glasses away in a cupboard somewhere, and haven't used them since. That was about 5 years ago."
Matt Webb wrote in with a story of his own:
My sister almost had to wear glasses. Instead, the eye doctor prescribed her an exercise: Hold a pencil at arms length. Focus on the tip. Move pencil, very slowly, closer to nose keeping it in focus as long as you can. Repeat about 10 times, every day, for about 6 weeks.
It was to increase the strength of her eye muscles, or something, and she was told that if it worked she wouldn't need glasses.
That was about 4 years ago, and she's never had to have glasses.
Interesting. I tried this excericise and I can feel my eyes straining. But when I try to look at my eye chart from a distance I'm finding it hard focus on the words -- it's not clicking like it did before. (Hopefully I'll recover from this pretty quickly, but still, I wouldn't recommended it to nearsighted people.) I think this technique might be for farsighted people (those who can't see things close up). It would seem that my walking-backwards technqiue would be the nearsighted analog.
Finally, Faisal Jawdat says he had a serious infection in his right eye which severely impaired his vision. However he says that when he relaxes and first wakes up the eyesight is better than "after i first try to focus on things.
Well, it does seem likely I'm not crazy about this and that there is something here. It's disappointing that few people seem to know about this, althought Matt Webb's story gives hope. I'll keep following this so keep sending me your stories.
posted July 28, 2002 01:19 AM (Personal) #
Eyesight Feedback
D. J. Bernstein quickly won my heart with his sparse writing style ("You can send me email at […]; I might respond within a few months."), clean web pages and beautifully elegant code. I use his software, including djbdns and qmail. Its utter simplicity, transparency and operational elegance is deeply moving. His work is some of the best examples of the Unix "small is beautiful" philosophy I've ever seen. His mathematical work is impressive and I admire his support of putting papers online. He teaches several courses downtown -- I'm very tempted to go there to see him. Ooh, there's are videos of some of his courses (grep for "video")… Wow, in this one he doesn't sound like I imagined from his writing nor look like I imagined from his voice.
posted August 01, 2002 01:12 PM (Superheroes) #
*today 's featured superhero: D. J. Bernstein
First 20 Netblocks Belong to: IANA, IANA, GE, Genuity (BBN), IANA, U.S. Army Yuma, Defense Information Systems Agency, Genuity (BBN), IBM, Reserved, DoD Intel Information Systems, AT&T, Xerox, IANA, HP, DEC, Apple, MIT, Ford, Computer Sciences Corporation.
Who designed the GeekPAC website? "We also temporarily request that you enable JAVA support as we are temporarily using some JAVA while we set up the HTML-4 DHTML" Eerily prescient Onion story: Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over' [ntk]. "On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further." From 18 January 2001. Ooh, python and ruby come with.
Apparently the Jaguar Character Pallette is much enhanced. Maybe it will stop crashing this time.
Play Apple website designer over at the MyFonts Myriad Test Drive.
-. --- --..-- -. --- - .-. . .- .-.. .-.. -.-- .-.-.-
This new music video for Remind Me is awesome! It follows the day of one person following links to examine the history of what they're doing or using, or the other people around them, etc. all done in trippy infographic style. It's hard to describe but a pleasure to watch.
[cory] For making an anti-aliased dot, I've been called an FOB (Friend of Bot). ;-)
Think Secret: Jaguar Goes Golden Master. I wonder how long until I get a copy.
This is hilarious: Behind the Typeface: Cooper Black
[Dean]. It's a parody of the classic "Behind the Music" except about the famed Cooper Black font face.
posted August 02, 2002 10:51 AM (Others) #
*you can 't handle the x-height!
MacScripter.net: iLoJack. How a stolen iMac was recovered by some cool AppleScripting. [via BoingBoing] posted January 24, 2002 05:12 PM () #
MacScripter.net: iLoJack. How a stolen
!/usr/bin/python2.2 import random, tramp, rdflib.TripleStore as rts, cgi from namespaces import rss, rdf, Namespace
import cgitb; cgitb.enable() x=cgi.FieldStorage() if x.has_key("url"): url = x["url"].value else: url = "http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/calendar/events/swevents.rss" ev = Namespace("http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/event/")
store = rts.TripleStore() store.load(url) channel = tramp.Thing(list(store.triples(None, rdf.type, rss.channel))[0][0], store) print "Content-type: text/plain" print print """BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION :2.0 PRODID :PRODID:-//hacksw/rss2ical.py//NONSGML v1.0//EN""" for item in channel[rss.items]: print "BEGIN:VEVENT\nUID\n :" + str(random.randint(1,100000)) print "SUMMARY\n :" + item[rss.title] print "DTSTART\n :" + item[ev.startdate].replace("-", "") print "DTEND\b :" + item[ev.enddate].replace("-", "") print "END:VEVENT" print "END:VCALENDAR"
Boingo Wireless launches. There's a hotel [with free wireless in the guest rooms and lobby](http://www.boingo.com/cgi- bin/search.cgi?COUNTRY=1&STATE=15&CITY=54&ZIPCODE=&AREACODE=&CATEGORY=0&SUBMIT=Show+Locations) downtown, but not much around here.
posted January 24, 2002 04:57 PM () #
Boingo Wireless launches. There 's a
BoingBoing has been blocked for "Sex". They must thinkCory is cute… posted January 24, 2002 04:41 PM () #
BoingBoing has been blocked for
The Toaster Tinkers or What's Wrong With Proprietary Software is an article I wrote about the analogy between software hackers and mechanical tinkerers. Something RMS said at OSCON made me realize that physical things were a good metaphor for the free software movement. In the physical world, things are almost always open for inspection, but we lost this with computers. This is clearly extremely valuable and it's the goal of the free software movement to win it back.
It's a little odd that the Open Source Intiative comes up first when you search Google for free software movement.
Casey West: HighWLAN: A Driving Wireless Network. "I was on a mission. Create the first documented case of 802.11b networking at 85, scratch that, 65 mph. The most important goal of this project was to create a usable, local network between multiple vehicles." Yes, the Perl people are this crazy.
Neat, Dave Bayer, the math advisor for A Beautiful Mind was Mark Bernstein's roomate. There was a great article about him in the New Yorker. [Thanks to Dreamworks SKG Fansite Gladiator for the link.] Don't link to us! is a weblog that catalogs stupid linking policies. It's scary how many there are.
David P. Reed: NSA Blocked Internet Crypto. "The NSA itself, in 1976-77, blocked a fully worked out end-to-end encryption approach created at MIT for TCP." Wired News: Women of Defcon. "Flash a bit of nip at a Defcon vendor and you can basically get whatever you want for free. I think it's so weird that some chicks have a problem with that." "You have to prove you have coding skills every time you meet a new person at Defcon. Eventually, attending these shows just became a major effort for me, so I don't go any more. I know a lot of women who feel the same way." Mac OS X users: Security Update 2002-08-02 is out. Includes Apache, OpenSSH, OpenSSL, mod_ssl, SunRPC.
I got the Bernard Shifman spam today.
A fun game: one person closes their eyes, the other runs around. The first tries to follow. Everything looks so different when you're blind.
I came up with two pieces last night, need to write them. I think people will find them interesting.
posted August 03, 2002 09:20 PM (Others) #
*miller reminds you to think when you link
Jeremiah is now an honorary Jew.
posted January 24, 2002 04:39 PM () #
Jeremiah is now an honorary
Bruce Sterling: A Contrarian View of Open Source. Given at OSCON.
"Now, I get it about being the bazaar. I'm a science fiction writer, I got no problem at all with bizarre stuff. But commercial software? Microsoft? As a cathedral? […] When you go into a cathedral, you don't read shrinkwrap licenses.
There are no developers' documents in there. You've gotta read stuff like the Bible in a cathedral." "I stopped fighting with Cory Doctorow. Not because he was winning the argument, but because his fucking Open Source solution cost me three days of desperate effort to restore my files!" "I love geeky guys," says the Linux Girl. "[…] I'll take my clothes off. No, it's better than that. I'll take my RIBS off! You can see RIGHT THROUGH ME! I've got nothing whatever to hide! I am open all the way through!" posted August 04, 2002 02:27 PM (Technology) #
*A Contrarian View of Open Source
Interesting: Open Source Web Design. They require valid HTML too! [via tav] posted January 24, 2002 04:32 PM () #
Interesting: Open Source Web Design.
Janis Ian's article on the "Internet Debacle" is great. Here's some straight hard facts to counter the nonsense coming from the recording industry.
"Every time we make a few songs available on my website, sales of all the CDs go up. A lot." "In 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+ albums for major labels, and I've never once received a royalty check that didn't show I owed them money." "This sort of thing is indicative of the way statistics and information are being tossed around. It's dreadful to think that consumers are being asked to take responsibility for the industry's problems, which have been around far longer than the Internet. It's even worse to think that the consumer is being told they are charged with protecting us, the artists, when our own industry squanders the dollars we earn on waste and personal vendettas." "The NARAS people were a bit more pushy. They told me downloads were 'destroying sales', 'ruining the music industry', and 'costing you money'. Costing me money? […] If a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my wallet and check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing's missing." "Why buy records when you can learn the entire Top 40 just by going shopping for groceries?" "I suspect Greene thinks of downloaders as the equivalent of an old-style television drug dealer, lurking next to playgrounds, wearing big coats and whipping them open for wide-eyed children who then purchase black market CD's at generous prices." "If you think about it, the music industry should be rejoicing at this new technological advance! […] Instead, they're running around like chickens with their heads cut off, bleeding on everyone and making no sense." There's also the sequel article, "Fallout" where she expresses hope for the future. "I know that if enough people understand this issue, and vote accordingly, right will win. Legislation will be enacted that takes the will of the people into consideration, and favors their right to learn over Disney's right to control." posted August 04, 2002 07:55 PM (Politics) #
*Janis Ian on Free Downloads
[Mac OS, rss2email and scheduling with launchd](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2011/08/mac-os-rss2email-and-
scheduling-with-launchd/ "Permanent Link to Mac OS, rss2email and scheduling with launchd")
August 23rd, 2011 [1 Comment](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2011/08/mac-os-rss2email-and-scheduling-with- launchd/#comments "Comment on Mac OS, rss2email and scheduling with launchd")
Just a little FYI if you encounter this: MacRumors user durlecs was having a problem scheduling rss2email with launchd, Mac OS's built in replacement for cron and other UNIX services. It looks like he/she got it working in the end by adding the path to Python into the PATH environment variable.
[Version 2.71 Release plus Other Major Updates](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2011/03/version-2-71-release-
plus-other-major-updates/ "Permanent Link to Version 2.71 Release plus Other Major Updates")
March 4th, 2011 [63 Comments](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2011/03/version-2-71-release-plus-other-major- updates/#comments "Comment on Version 2.71 Release plus Other Major Updates")
Good news everyone! Two important tools that rss2email depends on have recently received major upgrades: feedparser and html2text. These should improve rss2email's ability to handle feeds with poorly formed HTML and other weirdness.
The rss2email application itself also needed to be upgraded some to support these. Changes in this version:
-
Upgraded to feedparser v5.01! (http://code.google.com/p/feedparser/)
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Upgraded to html2text v3.01! (https://github.com/aaronsw/html2text)
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Potentially safer method for writing feeds.dat on UNIX
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Handle via links with no title attribute
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Handle attributes more cleanly with OVERRIDE_EMAIL and DEFAULT_EMAIL Read More »
[Version 2.70 Released](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/12/version-2-70-released/ "Permanent Link to
Version 2.70 Released")
December 21st, 2010 10 Comments
Version 2.70 of rss2email is now available for both Linux
and Windows.
Changes from the previous version:
- Improved handling of given feed email addresses to prevent mail servers rejecting poorly formed Froms
- Added X-RSS-TAGS header that lists any tags provided by an entry, which will be helpful in filtering incoming messages Complete list in the official CHANGELOG.
[Mac OS X and rss2email are Compatible](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/12/mac-os-x-and-rss2email-are-
compatible/ "Permanent Link to Mac OS X and rss2email are Compatible")
December 17th, 2010 [8 Comments](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/12/mac-os-x-and-rss2email-are- compatible/#comments "Comment on Mac OS X and rss2email are Compatible")
rss2email user Jon Thompson has reported that Linux rss2email works well under Mac OS X. This is good news, but not to surprising since Apple based OS X on UNIX.
Technically the rss2email Linux package usually works on other UNIX-derived OSs, such as CentOS and BSD. They aren't officially supported, but we usually try resolve incompatibilities if possible.
[Minor correction to the minor correction: v2.69a released](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/12/minor-
correction-to-the-minor-correction-v2-69a-released/ "Permanent Link to Minor correction to the minor correction: v2.69a released")
December 13th, 2010 [1 Comment](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/12/minor-correction-to-the-minor- correction-v2-69a-released/#comments "Comment on Minor correction to the minor correction: v2.69a released")
Last week I made a [slight change to the v2.69 rss2email packages](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/12/minor- correction-to-v2-69-packages/), which can cause suspicion that they have been tampered with. To mitigate this, I put the original v2.69 files back in place and renamed the updated package set to v2.69a.
Here is v2.69a: Linux and Windows
And here is the original v2.69: Linux and Windows
[Minor Correction to v2.69 Packages](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/12/minor-correction-
to-v2-69-packages/ "Permanent Link to Minor Correction to v2.69 Packages")
December 10th, 2010 [7 Comments](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/12/minor-correction- to-v2-69-packages/#comments "Comment on Minor Correction to v2.69 Packages")
The v2.69 rss2email packages contain an example config.py file that might accidentally overwrite an existing config.py file. To keep this from happening I've updated both the Linux and Windows by simply renaming the file to config.py.example.
[Version 2.69 Released](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/11/version-2-69-released/ "Permanent Link to
Version 2.69 Released")
November 12th, 2010 10 Comments
Version 2.69 of rss2email is now available for both Linux
and Windows.
- Added support for connecting to SMTP server via SSL, see SMTP_SSL option
- Improved backwards compatibility by fixing issue with listing feeds when run with older Python versions
- Added selective feed email overrides through OVERRIDE_EMAIL and DEFAULT_EMAIL options
- Added NO_FRIENDLY_NAME to from from address only without the friendly name
- Added X-RSS-URL header in each message with the link to the original item [Read More »](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/11/version-2-69-released/ "Permanent Link to Version 2.69
[How to Read RSS Feeds in Emacs](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/11/rss-in-emac/ "Permanent Link to How to
Read RSS Feeds in Emacs")
November 5th, 2010 [No Comments](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/11/rss-in-emac/#respond "Comment on How to Emacs and rss2email user Erik Hetzner has written up a tutorial on how he integrated RSS feed reading into Emacs using rss2email.
[Version 2.68 Released with Actual New Features](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/10/version-2-68-released-
with-actual-new-features/ "Permanent Link to Version 2.68 Released with Actual New Features")
October 1st, 2010 [17 Comments](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/10/version-2-68-released-with-actual-new- features/#comments "Comment on Version 2.68 Released with Actual New Features")
Unlike the last few versions of rss2email that have trickled out, I finally got around to adding a few new oft-requested features! Version 2.68 of rss2email is now available for both Linux and Windows.
- Added ability to pause/resume checking of individual feeds through pause and unpause commands
- Added ability to import and export OPML feed lists through importopml and exportopml commands
Pause/Unpause
Through
r2e pause *n*where n is a feed number, you can temporarily suspend checking that feed for new content. To start checking it again, simply runr2e unpause _n_. When your2e list, an asterisk indicates that the feed is currently unpaused and active.
*OMPL Import/Export
- OPML is an XML format commonly used to exchange a list of RSS feeds between
applications.
r2e opmlexport > _filename_will give you a file that you can use to import your list of feeds into another application. If you've exported feeds from another application into a file,r2e opmlimport _filename_will add those feeds to your rss2email feed list.
[Version 2.67 Released](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/09/version-2-67-released/ "Permanent Link to
Version 2.67 Released")
September 21st, 2010 1 Comment
Version 2.67 of rss2email is now available for both Linux
and Windows, which includes the latest development version of feedparser. Changes from the previous version:
- Fixed entries that include an id which is blank (i.e., an empty string) were being resent
- Fixed some entries not being sent by email because they had bad From headers
- Fixed From headers with HTML entities encoded twice
- Compatibility changes to support most recent development versions of feedparser
- Compatibility changes to support Google Reader feeds [Read More »](http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/2010/09/version-2-67-released/ "Permanent Link to Version 2.67 « Older Entries
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Copyright (C) rss2email - a free, open-source tool for Windows and UNIX for getting news from RSS feeds in email Powered by WordPress | Modern Style theme by FlexiThemes
*[RSS]: Really Simple Syndication
Kendall Clark, Monkeyfist.com: WEEKLY REVIEW: Military police, Afghan civillian casualties, Milosevic denials, UN torture treaty, Cheney corporate scandal, deporting relatives of suicide bombers, invading Iraq, suspended secret service agent, E.-coli tainted meat, nightclub fire, pilots with guns, firing rifles at helicopters, African famine caused by pollution, peace in Sudan, Bush halts payment to UN population fund, Arab internment camps, Iran reform, new bodyguards in Afghanistan, bombing Hamas, Israeli withdrawal, Ohio representative expelled, Princeton hacks Yale, Sharpton claims sabotage. What a week.
Peter Kirsanow, a Bush appointee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission said he could imagine circumstances might require that Arab Americans be placed in internment camps. He added that Arab and Muslim Americans should "accept the country's new antiterrorism laws and complain less about infringements to their civil rights".
posted August 04, 2002 09:40 PM (Politics) #
*MonkeyFist Week in Review
McCusker: Poe showed me a comic. "Look! XML Avengers just came out!"
posted January 24, 2002 04:28 PM () #
McCusker: Poe showed me a
US Congress: [Universal Military Training and Service Act of 2001: To require the induction into the Armed Forces of young men registered under the Military Selective Service Act, and to authorize young women to volunteer, to receive basic military training and education for a period of up to one year.](http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/bdquery/z?d107:h.r.03598:)
They 're trying to reinstate the draft! Currently under discussion by the House Committee on Armed Services. The Bill was introduced on the 20th of December, 2001. How come there's been no media coverage? posted January 22, 2002 08:13 PM () #
US Congress: Universal Military Training
Is the W3C illegal? While reading some relatively unrelated things I found a message where djb discussed US requirements for standards bodies. The court ruled that they must "prevent the standard-setting process from being biased by members with economic interests in stifling product competition". I wonder if you could make an argument about this and Microsoft and XML Schema… Clark v. W3C, here we come. Somebody call the EFF. ;-)
Meanwhile, why should you trust VeriSign as your Certificate Authority when a US court finds they've lied under oath!
posted August 05, 2002 11:34 AM (Politics) #
*Standards and the Law
BurningBird talks about weblog consortiums (is it just me, or is that site white on white?): "On my own system, once the environment is in place for Movable Type, adding new weblogs isn't that much of a strain on resources." I'm in a similar position. If you're someone cool and you need weblog space, I can set you up with Movable Type, an Apache server and even a spiffy yournamehere.blogspace.com domain.
If you're not cool, you can become cool by writing a Distributed Hash Table in Python for me. ;-)
posted August 06, 2002 12:04 PM (Technology) #
*Blogging with the Big Boys
"What is BookCrossing, you ask? […] the books our members leave in the wild are free … but it's the act of freeing books that points to the heart of BookCrossing. Book trading has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with BookCrossing. Our goal, simply, is to make the whole world a library. BookCrossing is a book exchange of infinite proportion, the first and only of its kind. […] It's also a fascinating exercise in fate, karma, or whatever you want to call the chain of events that can occur between two or more lives and one piece of literature." It's like Where's George? except with books… and you give them away.
posted August 05, 2002 11:17 PM (Web Memes) #
Where 's Shakespeare?
The government has filed their response brief (PDF) in the [Eldred v.
Ashcroft](http://eldred.cc/) case. What they're responding to is Lessig et. al.'s opening brief. I'll quote choice portions here.
Argument Summary:
-
All the lower courts agreed with us.
-
Times are different now and the extension act was designed to reflect that. Times are different for previously published works too, so being retroactive makes sense.
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If the acts weren't retroactive, people would delay publishing things so they'd get a better deal.
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We cannot have a copyright gap. The EU has a 75-year copyright law and we wouldn't want to lose all our content producers to Europe.
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"Ultimately, petitioners wish to displace Congress's preference for copyright-based dissemination of works during the CTEA's prescribed proprietary term, and instead to allow indiscriminate exploitation by public domain copyists like petitioners. But the Constitution assigns such policy choices to Congress, not the courts."
-
Oh geez, they quoted the dictionary (a 1798 dictionary, no less!) definition of "limited" (as in "limited Times"). Isn't that the lawyer's equivalent of Godwin's Law?
-
It doesn't matter that extending copyright doesn't promote progress because only copyright is required to promote progress, not the limited times provision. 'The Framers did not require Congress to select "limited Times that promote" progress, any more than […] allowing Congress to protect only "Authors that promote" progress, or "Writings that promote" progress.' I am large. I contain multitudes.
posted August 05, 2002 09:57 PM (Politics) #
Government Responds in Eldred v. Ashcroft
Mark Pilgrim struggles with RSS feeds and aggregators: 'I don't use my aggregator to read things; I use it to find things to read. I tried the whole "read everything in your aggregator" thing, and it depresses me. It reminds me of when I used to smoke, and everything tasted the same.' Odd, I completely disagree. Background: I've never smoked. I use my email client as my aggregator. I came to weblogs from mailing lists, where everything looks the same but you distinguish posters by style and tastes. I tend to only eat plain things and I'm constantly asked why I'm so boring and don't try exciting new flavors. I enjoy the depth of flavors in the things that normal people would find plain or undistinguishable (microwaved bagels (drool!), pasta, rice, milk).
I find Mark's current website design unattractive and uncomfortable to read.
Now here are some reasons I think that the full text should be included in the RSS feed: Pages take a while to load.
When going through a lot of items, this kind of page loading and context switching can really slow things down. In my email client or desktop aggregator, I can read through the day's news without having a live Internet connection. This makes me more productive.
Now here's a technical RSS 1.0 note: I suggest keeping excerpts the way they are now in the tag, but using the content:encoded tag for a CDATA-encoded version of your HTML. This is what I do for my own feed (MT template available upon request). I would like this to be the default setting for MT and other blogging software.
posted August 05, 2002 09:44 PM (Technology) #
Reading in your Aggregator
It looks like Jaguar has a Font Editor according to this screenshot from MacMegasite. Pretty cool! I'd love to play with some fonts using this… posted August 06, 2002 02:47 PM (Technology) #
*Font Editor in Jaguar?
Overheard at the water park … One kid to another: "Let's make believe we're having fun." posted August 06, 2002 08:44 PM (Personal) #
*we put the "FUN" in phonetic!
For some reason I really learn a lot about things by analogy. I'm not sure if this is because my brain is poorly wired or that there's valuable information I've developed for other situations that I'm just moving over. Does anyone else think this way? (Additionally, my memory is indexed based on space/location, not time like many of my friends.)
As an example, I was able to think about free software licensing by thinking about my toaster. And why ICANN sucks is clear if you think of them as the dictators of a new planet (cyberspace). Just now I think I solve the challenge in a post by Glenn Reynolds by thinking about playground bullies.
Hm, the common theme seems to be moral/ethical questions and outrage. I'd be angry if someone locked me out of my own toaster, why shouldn't I feel the same way about my operating system? I'd revolt if ICANN tried to pass laws to govern the entire planet, why not when they try to govern all domain names? And I'm not too upset when the little guy teaches the playground bully a lesson, isn't the US similar? I suppose we develop a sense of morals from context and situations. Perhaps by making the connection between seemingly abstract areas of technology to these everyday situations clear, the morally right choice comes into focus.
posted August 05, 2002 09:34 PM (Personal) #
Ethics By Analogy
I love this cool Geek Tee from Halibut. [<a href='http://boingboing.net/2002_08_01_archive.html#85321028">Cory] It'd make a cool HTP T-Shirt if Wes programmed Perl.
My personal favorite geek tee is the NTK shirt that read "%46%55%43%4B" in large type. (No, I'm not explaining it. The tagline is "In-Jokes for Out-Casts".)
posted August 06, 2002 08:54 PM (Technology) #
*Geek Tees
Rick Moen is a Linux activist in the San Francisco Bay Area who has acquired a reputation for attending virtually every Linux event in the whole Bay Area -- or at least those on his comprehensive list, Bay Area Linux Events. Rick is also an instigator of the Consortium of All Bay Area Linux, where the various Bay Area Linux user groups gather.
Some of the Linux User Groups have started to advertise their events with "Rick Moen will be there, will you?" Here's how to inform your friends all over the world that Rick Moen will be showing up at your events:
Rick Moen zal daar zijn, zul jij ook?
Rick Moen will be there, will you?
Rick Moen ĉeestos, ĉu kaj vi?
Rick Moen menee siella. Menetko myos sina?
Rick Moen y sera, et vous?
Rick Moen kommt auch; werden Sie auch da sein?
ο Rick Moen παρεσται, αρα δε συ?
![[image of Greek translation]](moen-greek.jpeg)
Rick Moen yihyeh sham, v'gam atah? * %
Rick Moen fog van ott, es on?
Rick Moen sara la, sarete la? +
Rick Moen aderit, tune quoque aderis?
Rick Moen bedzie tam; czy Pan takze przyjdzie? *
Rick Moen estara la, voce estara la? +
Rick Moen va a fi; şi Dumneavostru?
Rick Moen tam budet, a vy? *
![[image of Russian translation]](http://pandora.teamlynx.com/rm_rus.gif)
Rick Moen estara alla, ¿y tambien usted?
- Translations marked with an asterisk are still waiting to be improved by being rendered in Unicode; the versions given are either phonetic or lack non-ASCII characters.
+ Translations marked with a plus sign are automated translations via Altavista's Babelfish and are not guaranteed to be accurate (they are not confirmed by a human speaker).
% Translations marked with a percent sign refer to the prospective attendee as a man because of gender imparities in the language in question. This is not intended to suggest that female Linux users are discouraged from attending; they should lobby their vendors to get this behavior changed in the next version of the language.
Translation assistance from: Alex Fedosov, Rick Moen himself, George Moffitt, Michael Moffitt, Nick Moffitt, Wolfgang Rougle, Seth Schoen, and others.
If you know how to say that Rick Moen will be somewhere in some other language, you should tell me, at schoen@uclink4.berkeley.edu. Or you can go back to my web page.
A .nym TLD would be cool. I'd give people .pgp.nym if they could prove that they owned the key with that fingerprint (probably by signing a nonce or something). This would also be good for djbdnssec and signed web pages.
D. J. Bernstein's trip to Russia is quite funny, in a comedy of errors kind of way.
The Sysadmin Card Game looks pretty funny. The whole Dvorak Game thing looks a lot like Aron Wall's self-modifying and open source card game.
"I have discovered that there are two types of command interfaces in the world of computing: good interfaces and user interfaces." - D. J. Bernstein, qmail security guarantee
Did you miss me? What was supposed to be a smooth OS upgrade turned out to be a nightmare, requiring days of tortured devotion to my computer. And in the middle of it all I was dragged to Milwaukee to look at cows. But now I'm back and better than ever.
My brothers are at GenCon (with Mom) for the next few days, leaving me home alone with Dad. GenCon is incredibly huge.
The whole city seemed to be filled with geeks. Whenever you saw anyone walking down the street they'd have a GenCon badge. In the late evening the registration line had hundreds of people. Where's the equivalent computer conference? Is it DefCon? (Guess I should have gone…)
posted August 08, 2002 12:32 PM (Technology) #
*I 'm Baaaaaack!
Rael Dornfest: Nutsy. "That's ever so slightly surprising!" (Rael has the accent of a Brit who's ever-so-slightly-surprised to find himself in California.)
posted January 22, 2002 06:42 PM () #
Rael Dornfest: Nutsy. "That's ever
The MP3 Party is trying to become a registered UK political party.
sounds pretty crazy (in a good way):
It is a mathematical fact that very complex systems have certain limits after which any increase in complexity makes this system exponentially less efficient. […] Therefore those systems neede to be constantly, significantly and forcefully simplified in order to raise their level of functionality and efficiency.
The MP3 PARTY in the UK will make its topmost task to work for and support a significant simplification of the UK economic, political and legal system.
"ELECT US AND WE WILL DELETE ONE REGULATION PER DAY, ONE LAW PER WEEK, ONE SUBSIDY PER MONTH AND ONE TAX PER YEAR." They've already mailed the forms ot the electoral commision.
posted August 08, 2002 03:47 PM (Politics) #
*MP3 Political Party
!!! fuzzy URIs, not cool. !!! @prefix : . @prefix l: . @prefix p: . @prefix f: . @prefix dc: . @prefix rdfs:
<> dc:creator p:aaronsw ; rdfs:seeAlso . dc:creator p:sandro . :Redfoot a :Framework; f:homepage ; :supports :Templating ; # @@ :parses :RDFXML ; :serializes :RDFXML ; dc:creator p:jtauber, p:eikeon ; :language l:Python ; :cvs [ f:homepage ] . :Infogami a :Framework ; :query :NTriples ; :store :BerkeleyDB ; dc:creator :PleshProject ; :language l:Python; :cvs [ f:homepage ] . :PleshProject a :Project ; f:homepage ; :includes p:sbp, p:aaronsw . :Redland a :Framework ; f:homepage ; :includes :Raptor ; :store :BerkeleyDB ; dc:creator p:dajobe ; :cvs [ f:homepage ] ; :language l:C ; :binding l:Perl, l:Python, l:Tcl, l:Java . :Raptor f:homepage ; :parses :RDFXML, :NTriples . :SWAP a :Framework ; f:homepage ; :query :Notation3 ; :includes :notation3py, :xml2rdfpy ; dc:creator p:timbl, p:danc ; :language l:Python ; :cvs [ f:homepage ] . :notation3py :parses :Notation3; :serializes :Notation3 . :xml2rdfpy :parses :RDFXML ; :serializes :RDFXML . :Jena a :Framework; f:homepage ; :query :RDQL ; :store :BerkeleyDB ; :includes :ARP ; dc:creator :HPSemWeb ; :cvs [ f:homepage ] ; :store :BerkeleyDB, :RDB; :parser :ARP ; :query :RDQL . :ARP f:homepage ; :parses :RDFXML, :NTriples ; :serializes :RDFXML, :NTriples . :HPSemWeb a :Project; f:homepage ; :includes p:bwm, p:jjc, p:afs, p:ijd . # thanks to Sandro for these: :Framework rdfs:label "A collection of libraries and applications designed to work together to support building programs." . :Application rdfs:label "Programs with user interfaces for humans." .
Several years ago an aunt gave me several shares of Disney stock as a birthday present. Every year they mail us the annual report, along with a ticket to the shareholders meeting and a voting form. They allow you to vote online nowadays, and so I went out to fill out the ballot.
It's pretty easy to tell what to vote for: simply do the opposite of what Disney asks for. They want us to approve "the 2002 Executive Performance Plan" (Sean: "All those in favour of giving ourselves a 10% pay raise…"), and vote against independent accountants, labor standards in China and theme park safety reporting.
Everybody loves Disney, right? posted January 21, 2002 05:43 AM () #
Several years ago an aunt
Thousands of Internet radio stations are dead, due to a deal not only designed to specifically crush smaller webcasters but also to charge Internet radio stations far more than comparable real-world radio stations. But get this: the RIAA isn't happy yet. That's right, they're suing the Librarian of Congress
claiming the deal "significantly undervalued the music". In other words, they want even more money, which means that inevitably more stations will get shut down.
But hey, if they can sue, we can sue too, right? Why doesn't the EFF start a lawsuit on behalf of all the stations that were forced to close because of the CARP deal.
Honestly, I don't see what legal case they have here. Even if the Librarian did make a mistake, how is that illegal? As I understand it, it's his job to make the decision in whatever manner he wants. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
posted August 09, 2002 10:11 AM (Politics) #
*Insane Copyright Terrorism Hits Internet Radio
New "Rogue State" Must Be Stopped
Raph has a beautiful rememberance of Dijkstra.
Dijkstra was an intellectual father to me. Twenty or so years ago, my father initiated a correspondence with him, and we kept it up for some years. I eagerly awaited the airmail envelope from Holland, addressed beautifully in fountain pen, and always found the contents to be equally beautiful, in words as well as penmanship. It's remarkable that he took time in his busy life to correspond with an arrogant young kid, and I still appreciate it.[…] Now that Dijkstra has passed on, it falls to our generation to carry his ideals forward. Let us strive for simplicity in all our work. Let us strive to choose the right path, even when a shortcut seems more expedient.
Indeed.
posted August 08, 2002 03:55 PM (Superheroes) #
today 's featured superhero: Edsger Dijkstra
I'm returning some memory from Crucial.com and I'm reminded of just how much a joy their website is to use. Everything's very clearly been designed to be as usable as possible, including little tips like "Double-check to make sure all your power cords are plugged in. (And don't be embarrassed if you realize your system is unplugged--it happens all the time.)" I wish there was something this nice for registering domain names. I currently use Gandi, and although they're the best, it's mainly because their competition is so incredibly bad! I will pay a premium for a site that's usable, because it makes my day just so much better.
I wish webchick would start a domain registrar -- her site designs are so beautiful I'm sure it would be a delight to work with. Too bad she and Carl can't because of their dot-org struggle -- they don't want to be seen as competing with their customers, the registrars. Ugh, stupid politics.
posted August 09, 2002 10:55 AM (Technology) #
*Hall of Fame: Crucial
Check out John Zulauf's [hilarious Rube Goldberg-style DRM system](http://eon.law.harvard.edu/archive/dvd- discuss/msg13406.html). [Seth]
"attach book (B) to door (D) of cage (C) containing trained attack rabbit (R) by string (S)… when a potential infringer (ie. our customer) (I)
attempts to copy book (B) without use of authorized carrot (AC) pacificy rabbit (R) or cutting the string (S) with authourized scissors (AS) rabbit (R) will be released" Of course then carrots and scissors would be circumvention devices (infringer's "crowbars"), and no information on knot tying or untying would be published -- especially in the Boy Scout handbook which is clearly not part of the "legitimate press." Further the legend of the "gordian knot" would have to be edited to remove the functional code of "Alexander's solution" (for which a patent is now pending, the prior art being only mythical in nature).
But can you take the attack rabbit on an airplane? posted August 09, 2002 04:33 PM (Technology) #
*Rube Golderberg DRM
I am writing this, rather surprisingly, form my TiBook. yesterday I accidentally spilled a glass of water on its right side. At first I thought I could just wipe it off and I'd be fine, but soon I noticed that the backlighting on the screen had died. I tried to turn the machine off but of course the rather drenched power button didn't work. I pulled out the battery instead.
I let it dry out for a day and then tried to turn it on tonight. It works, but there's no backlight, which makes it rather hard to use. (Although, it's still usable, since I was able to write this…) ANyone have any suggestions? I've tried to blow on it with a hairdryer for a while with no success and I suspecct that I'll need to send it in. But I'm still hopeful that I can stop the short if I let it dry out enough… Anyway, please email me if you have any bright suggestions. Thanks.
posted August 10, 2002 10:23 PM (Personal) #
*Water Damage
Expires: August 13, 2003| February 12, 2003 draft-swartz-rdfcore-rdfxml-mediatype-02 This Internet-Draft will expire on August 13, 2003.
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.
When an RDF graph is asserted in the Web, its publisher is saying something about their view of the world. Such an from other uses (e.g. citations, denials or illustrations).
The technical machinery includes protocols for transferring information (e.g. HTTP, SMTP) and file formats for encapsulating and labelling information (e.g. MIME, XML). This indicates the use of RDF/XML as distinct from some other XML that happens to look like RDF. Issuing an HTTP GET request and obtaining data with a "200 OK" response code is a technical indication that the received data was published at the request URI.
The social machinery includes the form of publication: publishing some unqualified statements on one's World Wide Web home page would generally be taken as an assertion of those statements. But publishing the same statements with a RDF.
An RDF graph may contain "defining information" that is opaque to logical reasoners. This information may be used by human interpreters of RDF information, or programmers writing software to perform specialized forms of deduction in the Semantic Web.
xml2rfc converter, and to Graham Klyne, Jan Grant, and Dave Beckett for their helpful
My server comes today! Time to get ready…
-
Figure out how much swap space I need. Done: Morbus says 256MB is reasonable.
-
Burn a Debian CD to install from posted January 17, 2002 03:27 PM () #
New Server Arrives Today
Apparently they got the message about us not liking their vigilante justice schemes, so they're trying a different tack.
A number of congressmen have written a letter to Ashcroft (PDF) saying that "individuals who [.…] allow mass copying" should be prosecuted and that "Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIPs) units" should be set up "around the country with expanded authority". Under the "No Electronic Theft (NET) Act" such users are arguably felons.
The congressmen responsible: Joseph Biden, Lamar Smith, James Sensenbrenner, Robert C. Scott, John Conyers, Jr., Howard Coble, Dianne Feinstein, Henry Hyde, Rick Santorum, Gordon Smith, Robert Wexler, William L. Jenkins, Ed Bryant, Lindsey O. Graham, Adam B. Schiff, Ric Keller, Darrell Issa, Melissa Hart. See your representative? Might want to have a stern word with them.
posted August 10, 2002 11:02 PM (Technology) #
*Congresmen Want You in Prison
Adrian Hamilton: Yes, we need a 'regime change' in this rogue state….
The government which is spending by far the most on weapons of mass destruction, and is now planning to raise its budget by an increase greater than the total defence spending of Europe, is, of course, based in Washington. Not only is it building an arsenal the like of which the world has never seen, it has unilaterally withdrawn from the treaties designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, and has refused to accept any kind of international monitoring of its chemical or nuclear weapons facilities.
It has a government in power without the legitimacy of a democratic majority, in the hands of a coterie from a single part of the country and clearly aiming at a dynasty of rule. Its rhetoric is one of violent aggression against anyone seen as its enemies. It opponents are locked up without trial or the right to habeas corpus.
[…] A period of occupation of five to 10 years could provide an opportunity to inculcate ideas of true democracy, with a fair electoral system based on absolute majority, abolition of the death penalty, introduction of unions into hi- tech industries and a break-up of the Zaibatsu, the overweening corporations such as Microsoft, Exxon and General Electric.
Given time, this rogue superstate might then be able to take its place once again among the family of peace-loving nations.
Please! Come save us! posted August 11, 2002 09:03 PM (Politics) #
*New "Rogue State" Must Be Stopped
Leonard Lin's put together an awesome flash version of Larry Lessig's talk.
It's got the slides with the audio of Larry's talk behind it. It was a great talk, one of Larry's last, so check it out if you haven't already.
posted August 12, 2002 09:14 AM (Politics) #
*Free Culture, Free Slides
Jeremiah is looking for Python tools to parse RSS files. I maintain a list of RSS tools but I personally recommend Orchard for the job. It's a nice clean program, with great hooks to expand into other file formats and already supports most forms of RSS. (I added RSS 0.9x support to it.)
posted January 17, 2002 05:39 AM () #
Python RSS Parsing Tools
I wish Jeremiah would give us some code of his, so I would know how to rate him on Advogato.
posted January 14, 2002 12:09 AM () #
I wish Jeremiah would give
Jeremiah also has the same idea of what's happening. I'm seeing this more and more. I think it's time. (That's what the Plex is going to do, BTW.)
posted January 14, 2002 12:08 AM () #
Jeremiah also has the same
Tokelau, a small island in the Pacific is inhabited by less than 1500 people. They've always divided their share of fish among the people equally and so now that they've got their own top-level domain (.tk) they're giving those away for free too.
This is an awesome departure from VeriSign's $70 fleecing. Congrats to the .tk maintainers for having the courage to do this! Unfortunately, free domains only support web page redirections (and seem to require pop-up ads for dot.tk) but registering a domain is only $10 a year.
posted August 12, 2002 02:04 PM (Technology) #
*Tokelau Gives Free Domains
on beauty in file formats A beautiful rant fromMorbus Iff on why beauty is important in computer file formats. Bill Kearney:
So what [if the syntax is verbose]? It's not like a person is ever going to be reading it.
How many different versions of Mona Lisa are hidden beneath the one we know and love? Why do we care? Why are we spending all this money to look into it, when we know that they're not the versions he wanted us to see? Do you think a few people are going to write these files in a normal text editor? Is reading different than writing (it took me about five minutes to write the block above)? If we want this format to be big, do we want to make an assumption that no one is ever going to read it? Why is XML in plain text anyways? If it's only going to be read by computers, why even bother with names that a human can read? The below is many times faster to write.
<f:cSName>
<f:CSN>
<f:nDomain r:rsrc="afghanistan" />
<f:cN>you</f:cN>
</f:CSN>
<f:nD r:rsrc="usa" />
<f:cN>Miri</f:cN>
</f:cSN>
Nuclear reactors are bad. Big ass radio towers are bad. But you know what they're doing with radio towers in our town? They've literally got one dressed up like a tree - it looks like a really fake tree, but from a distance it looks real nonetheless. People are more accepting of things that look good (that whole code shui thing I bitch about once or twice in every tech mL I'm on), then things that may work better (better reception without branches).
The format, at this point, is "pretty". It's easily readable. It's easy for edd to write about in a dW article. It's easy for me to say "yeah, this is why you want to do it, it's easy". The above is just plain ooky, and I probably wouldn't even mention it in a tutorial (which, of course, gives an easy hook for others to say "well, then don't!").
But people keep telling me to trust the verbosity. Argh. Can someone beat into me why something simpler wouldn't work? Help me understand I'm making some newbish mistake.
Aaron Swartz has lightly edited from the original email to remove specific references. So sue me.
proper usage instructions! keep away from children! do not drink while standing up!
I was extremely proud of Apple not bowing to the copyright terrorists and letting users have full use of their iPod, including the ability to copy files on and off as they pleased (in manual mode). Unfortunately, it seems with iTunes 3 that you can no longer copy files off but only onto the iPod. This means I can no longer use it to synchronize the music on various computers in our house. This is sort of silly because it's not technically difficult to get the MP3s off of it (they're just in an invisible folder) but it's annoying nonetheless.
Is this right or am I missing something? posted August 12, 2002 07:14 PM (Technology) #
*Apple Gives In To Copyright Terrorism?
!/usr/bin/python2.2 """MID Seeker: Takes an message id and returns an HTTP address. cf. "I want to get a mid: script
running so that I can put an mid into my browser, and have it return the message, if it can find it." - http://infomesh.net/misc/ """ author = "Aaron Swartz" copyright = "(C) 2002 Aaron Swartz. GNU GPL 2" import urllib import cgitb; cgitb.enable() class AppURLopener(urllib.FancyURLopener): def init(self, *args): self.version = "midfinder/0.1" urllib.FancyURLopener.init(self, *args) def http_error_default(self, url, fp, errcode, errmsg, headers): return urllib.addinfourl(fp, [headers, errcode], "http:" + url) urllib._urlopener = AppURLopener() sources = ['http://www.w3.org/2002/02/mid/', 'http://groups.google.com/groups?selm='] def mid2url(x): for s in sources: r = urllib.urlopen(s+x) i = r.info() if type(i) is not list or i[1] != 404: # argh, no 404s from google! if s.find("google")
!= -1 and r.read().find("Unable to retrieve") != -1: continue return s+x return 0 if name == "main": import cgi q = cgi.FieldStorage()['q'].value r = mid2url(q) if not r: print 'Status: 404 Not Found' print 'Content-Type: text/html' print print " I tried my best but it was for naught." print "That mid was not located.
" else: print 'Status: 302 Helpful Redirect' print 'Content-Type: text/html' print 'Location: ' + r print print 'Wherever you go [there you are]('+ r +').'
Jeremiah: "School is one of my highest priorities, even though I'm not always sure it should be.".
posted January 13, 2002 11:44 PM () #
Jeremiah: "School is one of
source converted using html2text. This includes comments from other people at the bottom