Category: Technology

Categories
Diversity Technology

Coders-only-club strikes again

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Catching up on reading tonight, I stumbled over the following at Mark Pilgrim’s:

 

On a side note, remember that flap just before the holidays about the Coders-Only Club? Well, look at it this way: some people have strong opinions about the way computers should work. Other people have strong opinions about the way computers should work, and back them up with code. It seems obvious to me which people deserve more attention. Maybe that’s just me.

Since this was addressed to little ole me, I thought I should respond.

What can I say Mark? I don’t throw a lot of code around here abouts, primarily because I’ve been saving most of it for the book. Hard as this is to believe for some folk, especially employers in St. Louis, writing a computer book is quite difficult. Especially writing a book on a specification that’s changing, constantly, and working with technology that’s in beta — if I’m lucky.

However, as additional credentials, you all can help yourself to the resume in the upper left-hand corner and take a peek; you’ll see that I’ve thrown my mind around a line or two or 100,000 of code.

It also seems to me, though I am getting older and my brain’s been rattled a tad by the falls, as if I have thrown out code a time or two in this weblog, including a new version of RDF/RSS and other odds and ends. Seems to me that most of technical gentlemen hereabouts didn’t take all that much notice of the little woman and her bits of code. Kitchen things.

(Hey! Isn’t SOAP a kitchen thing?)

Seems to me that some people have put me into a box and are now wrapping that box with a bow and then dismissing me without due consideration, because I don’t put code into this here weblog. But you know, I really don’t like bows, and I really don’t like being clapped into a box. And I really haven’t mastered the skill of pissing standing up so I’ll forgo pissing contests if you don’t mind.

If, and when, I put code out at this site it will be because I want to, for fun, for interest, to help others — not to ‘prove’ something to anybody. And if you want to get into a debate, then you all might want to consider judging a person on the merit of their words, not the elegance of their regular expressions.

Categories
Technology

Apple’s open core

As happened last year with the Macworld conference, you might as well bag writing about anything else because this week will be Apple, Apple, Apple.

Two big stories — a newer, longer TiBook and Safari, Apple’s entry into the browsing market.

I liked some features of the new TiBook such as the backlit keyboard, which I think is one of the best ideas I’ve heard with a laptop; I know I wish I had this with my TiBook. However, I’m less impressed with the length of the TiBook — 17 inches. My 15 inch works nicely, I drag it about the house and everywhere I go with no effort. All that extra length with the new TiBook does is make it too long for most computer carry bags. Heck, it’s too long for most laps.

What Apple needs to do is incorporate all the other goodies into its 15 inch model. Including the airport, Bluetooth, the graphics card, and that nifty backlit feature. That would be a tasty morsel, and I’d be putting up a PayPal donation button to have you all buy it for me.

And the Titanium PowerBooks are still the sexiest computer on earth.

An even bigger story is Apple’s release of the new Safari browser, which I don’t think is a huge surprise, was it? The best place to get a re-cap on all of the excitement is over at Mark Pilgrim’s. He did a nice first review of CSS support within Safari, and links to others who also reviewed the browser. Better yet, everyone else interested has linked to him and they’re all showing up in his referrals. Sticky Strand technology hits again.

I tried Safari and didn’t have too many problems. My weblog is quarked, which makes sense — automatic resizing of table columns that don’t contain any data, such as my outer columns, almost always looks bad in beta browsers. I also tried the browser on my more markup savvy weblogging neighbors such as Dorothea, Jonathon, Allan, and Mark and their weblogs look great. I guess there is somthing to be said for all that they’ve been trying to teach us this last year.

If you don’t have a Mac OS 10.2 equipped machine, holler and I’ll take screenshots of your weblog with the browser and email them to you so you can see for yourself how your pages look.

Despite of all the hooflah about the TiBook and Safari, I was more interested in seeing additional examples of Apple’s unique and successful blend of open source technology paired with commercial interests. Steve Jobs has an uncanny ability to mix the two and have it work. Timothy Appnel captured the essence of Safari and it’s impact on open source when he wrote:

 

Apple’s use of the Konqueror/KHTML rendering engine as opposed to Mozilla Gecko is a bit controversial (or more accurately intruiging), but in the long run will be beneficial to the space. Instead of one open source engine, developers will have more choice and the inheritent flexibility that two different efforts provide.

I agree — two open source engines are better than one. I know it’s going to be a hassle, and we have yet another browser we have to test against with our web pages. However, competition is good — do you want to be stuck only with IE?

The browser’s interesting, and the computer’s sexy, but the top story for me is Apple’s release of an X11 Windows system for Mac OS 10.2. It’s based on the XFree86 project, just like XDarwin, the most popular X11 for Mac OS X at this time. Again, an effective blend of open source and commercial use, and increased competition among vendors.

Apple may have added entries for both the browser and the X11 markets to their stable, but they left the barn door open and anyone with a keyboard and an inclination can trot in and hunker down at the same oat bin.

Categories
Technology

Tiny Steps and Big Leaps

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Challenged by Clay Shirky, Ben Hammersley has created a special post to collect trackbacks related specifically to the LazyWeb.

What is the LazyWeb? Well, do you have an idea and need help with technical implementation? Do you need specific functionality or an application or utility, but you’re not a coder? Capture the idea as a LazyWeb request and ping Ben’s special site. Chances are the request will be filled before the ink is dry on the page.

Ben’s idea, a demonstration of LazyWeb in action, is great. I agree with Poetic Geek’s delight in the concept, though I’m not sure that I’m “…giggling with girlish delight” over it.

I think we’re seeing a new form of open source development, based on technology developed for the community and its immediate, expressed needs. A case of community searching for technology rather than technology on the hunt for a users.

I would like to see additional efforts associated with this. For instance, it would be great if people would flag weblog posts that provide solutions for LazyWeb requests, or that provide technical help, especially within the weblog community. A case in point is my MT Comment How-To, further refined by other contributions in the comments. By isolating these items we can begin to build online technology centers that are anything but centered — true distributed technology, and true distributed technology documentation. There are just some things that shouldn’t roll back into the dustry reaches of the archives.

Perhaps Ben can stretch his LazyWeb post to a complete LazyWeb weblog, tracking LazyWeb implementations and providing a focal point for this effort in 2003? Not that I’m volunteering Ben’s time, and I am more than willing to volunteer to do this myself if Ben would rather. After all — we want to track fulfillment as much as request.

Additionally, I would also like people to start putting their code online. This last week there was a great deal of discussion about the CITE tag and how it can be used to provide specialized processing. Well, that’s great and good, but let’s see the processing? Can we see the code that Mark used. Or Sam’s code? I played with CITE a bit and created some code, which I then packaged for people to download. Not great code. Maybe not even good code. But at least it’s there if anyone wants it.

For instance, the code allows me to reach into Ben’s new LazyWeb RDF/RSS file and pull out existing topics and descriptions, as shown here.

There. I guess that’s my LazyWeb request — put your code online, let us take a peek. We promise if we shoot ourselves with it, we won’t blame you.

Categories
Technology

Working on Techie Stuff

Recovered from the Wayback Machine. What’s particularly rough about this post is a link to a discussion thread I had with Aaron Swartz. Because of legal issues, Aaron committed suicide ten years later— an incredible loss to us all. I just wish we had told him more how important he was to all of us. 

No blogging for me until the RDF book is finally finished. If it seems to be taking forever, it feels that way to me at times, too. However, there’s been many a change since I put fingers to keyboard for first word of the book and writing has morphed into re-writing and re-writing.

Additionally, in the last few months I’ve promised some tech tools and utilities to people hearabouts. I’m not coming up for air until these are finally done and published for people to use if they have an interest.

In the meantime, Lawrence Lessig has responded to some of the questions about the Creative Commons license, here and here. No answers, but responses. (Thanks to Denise for pointing these out.)

I have continued the CCL discussion over at the metadata discussion list attached to the CC web site. As you can see by my comments on the thread, my fractured writing is a good indicator of my level of frustration related to the discussion.

Back to book. Back to code. Happy New Year.

Categories
Technology Weblogging

The story of the RSS feeds and the little CC license that could

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Again the consideration of exactly what it means to put an RSS feed online has reared its head. Specifically, Mitch Wagner found out that his RSS feed — which includes full posting content not excerpts — was re-published online at LiveJournal. He wrote:

 

That site is my intellectual property. You do not have permission to post the entirety of my weblog to your site. Please take down the site

http://www.livejournal.com/users/mitchwagner/

immediately.

Well, all sorts of interesting commenting occurred, as you can imagine. In particular the implicit assumption that RSS feeds come with ‘tactic approval of republication’ was raised.

What was a surprise is that Mitch reversed himself and now offers a Creative Commons license on his material, though the license information isn’t duplicated in Mitch’s RSS feed directly. Mitch also brings up the ‘commercial’ aspect of re-publishing the material at LiveJournal, and what’s to stop someone from grabbing the content and putting it behind password protected sites that charge money for access.

Easy — don’t publish all your entire posts in your RSS feed. Keep the RSS feeds to excerpts only. Remove the content-encoded field and just leave the description. And adjust your blogging tool to publish excerpts, only. If your weblogging tool doesn’t allow this adjustment, ask the tool builder to provide this capability. The RSS feeds are there to help promote your ideas, not promote their theft. But you have to control the technology, not let the technology control you.

I have a feeling that 2003 is the year when technology and the law will finally find ways to learn to live together, or forever exist in a state of permanent hostility.

(Thanks to Ben for the story.)