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March 19, 2003
Hank Blakely of Dystopical has decided to continue his weekly comments on the Bush administration. Hank’s writing is funny the way Delft is blue.
He reports this week that he was going to suspend operations during the upcoming carnage, but his wife convinced him that this is precisely the wrong time for critics to go silent.
Good.
March 18, 2003
I’ve published a new issue of JOHO, my free newsletter:
| The Web Matters: Familiarity breeds ennui. A little wonder wouldn’t hurt. World of Ends: Reaction and discussion about an article Doc and I wrote together. The Right to Anonymity: Is there such a thing? Opinion Tags: A proposal to let you link to a site without it counting as a recommendation. Notes from SXSW: Some highlights from a conference. Cool Tool : NewzCrawler. It’s newz to me. Politics: Wailing and gnashing of teeth. I am so depressed. You First seconds: A couple of responses to the "You First" proposal. Anals of Marketing: Dumb and ugly. Links: Your recommendations. Email, Denials of Service and Refusals to Serve: Your always insightful email.l Bogus contest: Net monikers. |
I wish that Bush were strong enough to admit ambivalence. But he’s not. He has the courage granted by a big rare-wood desk.
Niek Hockx giving one Dutch citizen‘s despairing reaction to Bush’s cowboy ultimatum last night: “Evil is out of its cage.”
Steve Kirsch on The Five Lessons of 911.
Eric passes along this article about ending spam by altering the terms of the Internet, something World of Ends recommends against unless the new agreement is genuinely in the interests of the users. In this case, the group discussing changes to SMTP has been convened by the group that created SMTP 20 years ago.
I blogged that the Google translation of a French article on World of Ends said that the piece is “corrosive and didactic.” Kenneth Powers writes from Spain:
As a professional (i.e. I generally get paid for it) translator, I am happy to see that I will not be out of a job for some time yet. I would recommend the translation “scathing and educational”, and yes, I would say they liked it, as did I. Of course, given the roots of the term “Mordant”, they could be saying “it bites”, translation is such an uncertain science, :)
Too bad. I sort of liked being corrosive and dictactic at the same time.
Ben Hammersley, noting that a change in one site’s query parameters broke another’s plug-in, writes:
The trouble with small pieces loosely joined is that if one goes, the others look really silly
True enough. And since the initial site’s change actually broke Ben’s page, we can all Feel His Pain. But remember the old tightly coupled days when we thought that CORBA was going to provide the Nirvana of inter-application integration? Tight coupling works if everyone agrees to it ahead of time, but no one does, so it doesn’t.
As Jonathan says:
While the distributed, loosely-coupled nature of the web is good for innovation, the dependency on others for correct function is bad…
Jonathan concludes: “…on a personal level the interconnectedness is a mess that frankly I can’t see the end of.”
Obviously, there are ways we can make the loose coupling less fragile: registries, for example. But the Web is always going to be a little bit broken, as Tim Berners-Lee supposedly said. That leaves a whole lot of ways in which the Web works surprisingly well.
It’s good to be joined in befuddlement by none other than the Docster. He, too, can’t figure out Trackback.
I’ve got the general idea. I just can’t figure out how to get it working in Movable Type. Maybe someone should write a “Trackback for Dummies” and post it. And, please, only use small words.
Thank you.
Tim Bray, one of the fathers of XML, blogs about the NY Times reporting that Comcast is going to add services to its delivery of broadband. Tim knocks ’em upside the head:
Let’s lay it out in maximally-simple bullet-point form so anyone can understand it:
Fast pipe.
Always on.
Get out of the way.
You can’t get much clearer than that.
March 17, 2003
Jack Bury, a 20-year old poet, is co-creator of a Microsoft IE add-in called Eyebees. If you join a “swarm” – people interested in the same topic – the add-in shows you the movement of all other swarm members as they go from site to site. Click on one of the dots representing a swarm member and you are taken to whatever site they’re visiting. It’s a visceral visual experience.
To join the peace swarm, download the Eyebees software from www.eyebees.com and join the “Eyebees March on Washington” swarm (under the category of “The Rally”) at Eyebees.com. Jack is suggesting that Friday at noon EST might be a good time to flock together for peace.
This software is way new. There have been a handful of downloads so far. So if you don’t see anyone in the Peace Swarm, check back later.
Writes Jack: “The enveloping presence of thousands of minds, tracing across the Internet Sky in strange union – hissing and livid and one in censure of war – would be a conspicuous, awe-inspiring sight of this next social revolution taking firm hold.”
John has told Doc that he plans to open source Eyebees. Good move. That’s the only way to get an idea like this off the ground.
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