Friday, December 14, 2001
Here's a stocking-stuffer
Found in Slashdot: the Penisruler.
WaSP bites self, Meg rolls on
Interesting news drift. First, the Web Standards Project — WaSP — pitches a snit that includes this:
IN SPITE of the efforts of the W3C, the browser makers, and a leading-edge minority of designers and developers, most of the web remains a Balkanized mess of non-valid markup, unstructured documents yoked to outdated presentational hacks, and incompatible code fragments that leave many millions of web users frustrated and disenfranchised.
Browser makers are no longer the problem. The problem lies with designers and developers chained to the browser—quirk—oriented markup of the 1990s. It lies with “helpful” software that generates sites optimized for 4.0 browsers with nary a thought for document structure, open standards, separation of structure from presentation, or the long-term durability and viability of web documents.
Then this:
AT THIS TIME, The Web Standards Project, which has been winding down for the past two years, takes a gentle leave of absence. When needed, we will make ourselves heard in other ways, in other places
Then the news gets posted on Metafilter.
Then Network World Fusion picks it up as news (with credit to Metafilter), and distributes it. They also pump Megway, which only becomes an ever-more-beautiful web site hack (and QuickTime movie). Where there's a Meg, there's a Way.
And the beat goes on.
[Later... on the WaSP matter, got pointed to this pointed and prescient piece by Shelley Powers that ran about a year ago at O'Reilly.]
But deep down, we're still riff-raff
Jennifer blogs from bed, wondering already (she's a newbie) if there's a 12-step program for all this. Also...
Blogs do have insight. This has been one of the pleasant surprises of butting in on this thriving community. So far, all those I've run across seem to be well-read, deep-thinking, lively writers. I'll be honest: I expected to find a lot more riff-raff--
And...
There is one thing I haven't quite gotten my finger on yet, though: Do most bloggers gravitate toward and cross-link to like-minded folk?
So it seems. Not exclusively, but to a large extent. Most of what I blog comes from three sources: email, the list on the right and the referer logs. But here I'm not just looking for the usual suspects. I also like to look down the referer list to some of the low numbers, where I discover blogs like this and this.
Next month, today
David Scott Williams just pointed out that my Interview with Bill Goldsmith of Radio Paradise and KPIG is up at LJ. It's in the January issue, which is out now.
Where do you want people to come today?
Remember the symmetrical Net? Like, the way it was designed in the first place, before the content pumpers and cable pipefitters of the world tried to re-architect it as a distribution system?
Well, it's back. The Web's envelope is right there on your home server.
My translation of the Bin Laden tape
Mm mmfff bm mn ninm ffmm woonbf oob bwooba hnnroom ff muub dn buun doo wah.
A worthy reversal
Chris Locke has taken to posting EGR on his blog, which beats the shit out of the usual Topica thing. I don't know what he was on (fire, probably), but it's a good'n:
And in Cairo tonight, a fire, 12 deaths. According to our latest intelligence, the moon has permanently disappeared. Deadlines and bloodlines, lapis and turquoise in Chiapas. So many sorties. So many stories. Getting harder and harder to keep track.
And beneath it all, bass line and grace note, the sounds from which it all began: echo of thunder, cadence of wave and rain and waterfall. Syncopation and counterpoint of fire. The music of heat, the beat of the heart, of the blood, of desire. Vox. A calling...
Aside from the better venue, it's much easier to pull quotable shit out of the blog than out of that email reproduction, with all its line returns, on Topica.
I'll drink to that
Hey: I just went to Fishrush by way of Marek (how could I refuse "Kent is a fucking genius"?) and discovered that my very blog is, along with Norlin, Tom, Marek, Saltire, RageBoy and Many More, the recipient of a 5 Fish blog award.
Subtract one clue
I get about 50 e-spams a day, so when David Weinberger sings praises for SpamSubtract ("Grade A genius-level programmers and first-class, good-hearted folks") I'm all links. Then I go to their survey, to help them "design the best anti-spam software available. Then the first question punches me out: What kind of connection does your Windows PC have to the Internet?
Crosspromo
I've got a piece on Google's expanded Usenet archive over at the Linux Journal site.
Late for the train
Here's a Cluetrain review at Traffik.com.
It's a post hoc thing:
At first, in fact, it seemed downright strange when comfortable ad industry types and veteran business reporters suddenly turned around and started parroting the grating Cluetrain-style anti-corporate jargon. Telling admittedly clueless captains of industry to "stick forks in their heads" and "get on the cluetrain" and such sounds more like summer camp gone wrong than the type of behavior we'd expect from adults. Yet the style has become common currency now, since it tends to make even dull business reading fun. Whoever allowed me to publish an article in Report on Business last year entitled "Corporate America, Stay Out of My Inbox," must have been a secret Cluetrain fan. Every week, it seems, there is a new RageBoy wannabe.
Microlith
Our government is kind of hilarious... It prosecutes Microsoft for being a monopoly, and turns around and grants it a monopolizing patent
Some key languge in that patent:
A fundamental building block for client-side content security is a secure operating system. If a computer can be booted only into an operating system that itself honors content rights, and allows only compliant applications to access rights-restricted data, then data integrity within the machine can be assured. This stepping-stone to a secure operating system is sometimes called "Secure Boot." If secure boot cannot be assured, then whatever rights management system the secure OS provides, the computer can always be booted into an insecure operating system as a step to compromise it.
Secure boot of an operating system is usually a multi-stage process. A securely booted computer runs a trusted program at startup. The trusted program loads an initial layer of the operating system and checks its integrity (by using a code signature or by other means) before allowing it to run. This layer will in turn load and check the succeeding layers. This proceeds all the way to loading trusted (signed) device drivers, and finally the trusted application(s).
This looks like something Microsoft bakes into its OSes (if it isn't there already) and sells to upstream content providers, so Maria Carey's Xth album will only play on Microsoft OSes — or on ones that license Microsoft's patented DRM.
But the patent goes on to describe a hardware setup, including public key authentication.
The real question: who wants it?
Whatever else it's about, lock-in appears to be, literally, the strategy.
Pains in the ass
Big deadline day today. Also Monday. Also lots of holiday/family stuff. Also I'm some kind of sick. Gas pains, lower intestinal business. Not fun. No fever, though. Hit me yesterday afternoon. I've had these before, though not in a few years. Should pass soon. Excuse me.