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Monday, July 08, 2002 |
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Jeffrey P Shell thinking out loud about Zope
Here's Jeffrey P Shell thinking out loud about a Zope optimization puzzle:
I have a critical Zope Python Script - Python code objects in Zope that are editable through the web, and are subject to being run in a "restricted mode" interpreter that enforces Zope security policies. It's quite long for a single script, weighing in at approximately 170 lines. But it does its job well, and is written with maintainability in mind (there's only one variable in there that I find non-obvious, and whose usage I might change). Unfortunately, it seems to do its job slowly. I think there are a few contributing factors to this. [Industrie Toulouse]
Jeffrey goes on to ponder some things that I, too, have wondered about -- like the convenience/performance tradeoff of Python scripts versus external methods.
Although Jeffrey reaches no conclusions in this posting, I find his thinking-out-loud process incredibly valuable. Writing is a way to clarify thinking. Doing such writing on a weblog is the primal act of knowledge management. Here are some of the useful outcomes:
- Jeffrey thinks a little harder about this bit of analysis, because he's making it public.
- The fact that Jeffrey is wondering about these issues creates the possibility that, by manufactured serendipity, answers will come to him from people made aware of his interest.
- Now that I know Jeffrey's on the case, I'll remember to check his weblog (or contact him personally) when I next encounter a similar problem.
Thinking out loud isn't always useful, of course. You have to think about interesting things, and articulate them in useful ways, as Jeffrey always does. Dave Winer calls this "narrating the work." Knowledge management is really just about cultivating that habit and that skill.
11:41:32 AM 
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Phil Windley's 12-point manifesto for public information officers
Phil Windley, Utah's CIO, has written a terrific list of guiding principles for those who publish data for public consumption. The list begins:
- All queries for data from a web server should produce at least XML. If human readability is required, post process the XML with XSLT. As an example, if I go to the professional licensing division and query about doctors, the application should, at a minimum, produce XML.
- Data queries should be accessible as a URI and a URI should be associated with each resource (a resource includes even a single data element). For example, I should be able to query for a professional license using a URI like: http://www.dopl.utah.gov/llv?last_name=windley (this is not a valid URI.) If this query returns a list of results, each of those results should be available individually as XML using a URI reference.
[Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]
His 12-point manifesto should be nailed to the door of every government information office. He asks: "What am I missing?" Nothing, Phil! If just your first two principles were broadly applied, the world would be a much better place.
11:06:31 AM
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DRM, active paper, and the future of publishing
Joshua Allen maintains that e-books are stalled because we lack a DRM solution:
Lack of good, ubiquitous DRM is the only thing holding us back from some really cool advances. More than two years ago, Microsoft started making some big bets on e-books...
...The main thing standing in the way right now is lack of content due to publisher (and author) mistrust. Publishers won't publish their stuff if it's going to get ripped off, period. E-books have stalled for two years over this issue. It's about time to solve it. Better Living through Software
I can't agree. What we mainly lack, I think, is what was so beautifully envisioned in the movie Minority Report: active paper. In a scene on a subway, passengers hold newspapers made of this stuff. An issue of USA Today is a single fullsize spread on which text and images continuously update themselves. Achieving that same effect for books is, in my view, the major technical obstacle standing in the way of ubiquitous e-books.
To control content, publishers will need to balance the four mechanisms articulated by Larry Lessig: law, code, the market, and social norms. Even if airtight DRM were possible, publishers wouldn't really want it. Various kinds of "leakage" -- pass-around readership, fair-use citation -- are essential, and become more so as mindshare is increasingly weblog-driven.
When I worked with O'Reilly on its electronic reference library, Safari, protecting the IP was a top concern. We implemented such controls as are possible in a web-based medium, including spider detection and digital watermarking. But I'm sure I lost more sleep over these issues than Tim O'Reilly did. His experience tells him to trust his customers to do the right thing: pay O'Reilly a fair price for its content, and publicly uphold that social norm. By and large, they do. When O'Reilly content shows up in unauthorized form on the web, it's often customers who first spot it and report it.
DRM has its place in the world. But I wouldn't sacrifice the open architecture of the PC on the altar of DRM. It's not the thing holding e-books back. Active paper is the real technical hurdle. And beyond that, there's a purely intellectual challenge. As more and more people write for the web, publishers will have to work harder (and smarter) to create content that's worth paying for.
10:36:51 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Jon Udell.
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