Sunday, 6 October 2002

Telecommunications Scarcity David Reed, Wall Street Journal on Open Spectrum. Lee says it will probably take 5-10 years before we realize these ideas fully in the marketplace. I'm hoping for sooner, but these new ideas threaten some very entrenched interests in limiting and controlling communications. 802.11, with all of its limitations, has scared these interests with its market success. Already major technology companies are trying to "embrace and extend" that technology to bring it under control. There are rumors that the US DoD is trying to take back the 5.8 GHz UNII band. Motorola's lobbyists have filed a brief with the FCC that calls for all future unlicensed radio bands to be put up above 10 GHz, which delays for years the effective use of Software Defined Radio in unlicensed transmitters, a key element of the innovation cycle that enables Open Spectrum. This isn't an issue that can be categorized as "left" or "right", "Republican" or "Democrat". It's about change vs. control. The spectrum owners want control of communications, to block competitors who might provide a cheaper, better alternative for their customers. So do some on the left and right who like to use the FCC to control speech. And then there are the folks who like scarcity because it lets the government raise revenue for their favorite causes (conservative or progressive) by auctioning off spectrum a bit at a time. I once attended a meeting in DC about communications policy with Mitch Kapor and a dozen lobbyists from big companies. Asked to state who we all represented, when Mitch's turn came, he said "I represent the companies yet to be born, using technology yet to be invented". More of us need to represent the future, not just the future companies, but all future communicators. [Smart Mobs] The entrenched fighting for their lives. I wish I could say they will lose. But, there is no possible way to say that for sure. There is too much money in the current arrangement. But, for how long? 3:23:26 PM

Pour, stir, serve Corporate blogging wiki portal. Looks like Hugh Brian is experimenting with combining the Roller weblogger, the Chiki wiki, and the Jetspeed portal to form a corporate website. Looks like a useful combo and it looks like a fun project. I hope he will give the Roller project some feedback and tell us how we can help to make this sort of integration easier. BTW, I don't know Hugh, but he popped up in my referrers log this morning. Now you know why Roller does not have a referrers feature yet: I've still got a valid Radio account. [Blogging Roller] Hmmm. Blogger/Wiki/Portal blend. All it needs is a decent search tool. 3:19:48 PM

Cultured Perl Cultured Perl: Genetic algorithms. Doing GA in perl. I wouldn't have thought about using a scripting language for what is usually a cpu bound task. Oh well. :) 3:14:12 PM

OSX Futures Why Unix Matters to Mac OS X. In their keynotes from the Mac OS X Conference Tim O'Reilly and Jordan Hubbard talk about the significance of Unix to Mac OS X. [O'Reilly Network Articles] It will be interesting to see how OSX grows. It would be so helpful if they released their x86 version for those of us with PC's sitting around chewing desk space. 3:12:23 PM

XDoclet 1.2.0 beta 1. Kevin beat me to the news that xDoclet 1.2.0 (beta 1) has hit the street. And yes, they're using JIRA now! *cheer* [kev's catalogue of this and that.] [rebelutionary] More toys?! 2:25:36 PM

XML Binding Just started playing with Castor's Java-XML data binding. It looks very nice, and appears to be really simple to use. [Pushing the envelope] Do post some example code after you have explored. :) 2:22:10 PM

Project Management Hal Macomber blogs about lean project delivery.. Great post after great post. Hal is blogging his personal path to project management reform. I don't understand all the ideas yet, but it is captivating like my first experience of Extreme Programming. A sense of bottom up, peer-to-peer, emergent project control. New thinking in a hidebound profession. [a klog apart project management] [a klog apart] I'd love to see better project management. I have seen some honestly horrible project management in my time. Not helped by the fact that I am such an optimist on build time predictions. 2:20:54 PM

Upgrade cycles Top Ten New Things You Can Do with NIO. NIO brings a host of powerful new capabilities to the Java platform and sweeps away many barriers to the adoption of Java where I/O performance is critical. In this article, Ron Hitchens, author of Java NIO, lists the new things you can do with NIO that you couldn't do before in Java. [O'Reilly Network Articles] [Stephen S Kelley's Web Surfing] Y'know, this would be tonness of fun, but only if you can make the assumption that your target market is running Java1.4. Having worked at a large corp that considers 1.3.1 bleeding edge, I'm not sure that is the sane thing to do ... 2:19:02 PM

Barse Ackwards 48 Hours. According to the "compromise" the Congress has worked out with the Bush adminstration "limiting" Bush's ability to wage war against Iraq, "The president would also be required to inform Congress in advance of a military strike or no later than 48 hours after the attack," reports the Boston Globe. [JOHO the Blog] Is America the only country in the world where advance notice can be given after the fact? I wonder if someone is going to patent this one ... 1:57:32 PM

Clay Shirkey on the worth of Blogs Mass Amateurization of Publishing. Clay Shirkey: destruction of value is what makes weblogs so important. [Sam Ruby] Damn fine writing on the economics of weblogs. Or, the economics of the disintermediation of the publishing field. Take your pick. Read it anyway. 1:50:29 PM

Securing Windows Tweaking.... Quick post: I just discovered this kick-ass Window Services FAQ. I just went through the started services on Windows 2000 and stopped everything I wasn't using - but double checked the list first. My computer now uses less memory and cutting out all the NetBios and Remote Registry crap made it much more secure. Speaking of secure - I'm now also running Tiny Personal Firewall and it rocks. I had to bring my laptop into work the past few days and the network (like many big corps) is like a virus-laden sesspool. Really basic, but it works perfectly. A definite for those of you still running Windows. -Russ [Russell Beattie Notebook] [BlogFish] Running ZoneAlarm on a PC direct connected to telstra's cable was an enlightening experience. It seemed as if every man and his dog was attempting to look for the backdoors installed by various virii. Feh. 1:44:05 PM

Castoring about, part II Using Castor JDO for SQL Mapping. Here is one for the reading queue: Jeff Lowery's new OnJava article about Castor JDO. [Blogging Roller] [BlogFish] Compare and contrast with a previous article on Developer Works. From my history, as found by kit. Yehaw. 1:17:19 PM

Technically Incompetent Programmers Oxymoron ahoy. Java and Java IDEs have been criticized for being needlessly complex, excluding many non-technical programmers. [The Register] Say what? How do you have a non-technical programmer? Perhaps I should be complaining that the fact I can't draw is excluding me from ever being a famous artist. [Pushing the envelope] ROFLMAO Actually, I remember someone telling me that Visual Basic was going to spell the end of high programmer salaries. That was a few years ago ... 12:31:44 PM

Anteater Anteater with Jelly. Anteater with Jelly. Jeff Turner just released a new version of Anteater which integrates with Jelly. It's interesting to see things moving so... [Ovidiu Predescu's Weblog] Nice work Jeff. The nice thing about the approach of Anteater is it can drop straight into Ant, Maven or Jelly. Cool. [James Strachan's Radio Weblog] Another thing I must get around to trying. 12:00:14 PM

DVD Backup PC World: DVD Copying Software Sparks New Legal Battle. The company has taken a preemptive strike against its movie industry foes by filing a lawsuit aimed at protecting the software from being squashed. Moore and his lawyers argue that people should be able to create backup copies of their DVD movies, just as they can copy VHS movies or music CDs. [Tomalak's Realm] I wish these guys luck, because with the amount of money being thrown around by Bollywood, I don't like their chances. Or our current rights, for that matter. 11:57:24 AM

Computer Controlled Greenhouses Look Ma, No Pesticides. A new environmentally friendly agricultural technique generates crops year-round inside climate-controlled tunnels. Just don't call it 'organic.' Daithí Ó hAnluain reports from Dublin, Ireland. [Wired News] I really hope to see these here soon. I hate the thought of eating "fresh food" that is loaded with pesticides. The only thing I don't get about the article is the assertion that they are growing these things in "tunnels". They are greenhouses. D'uh. 11:55:59 AM

Kit Finally got around to upgrading Radio with Kit. I wish some other software groups get around to putting up RSS feeds announcing their software releases and the like ... 11:38:33 AM

CVS Stuff CVS Tools. Been doing my technology evangelist / mentor bit at work this week, trying to encourage migration away from sourcesafe onto a half-decent scc system. Not having cross-platform access to our source is hampering us in so many ways. We have no budget, so I've been focussing on ways to make CVS as attractive as possible. Shamelessy stealing ideas from sourceforge, I find the following combination of tools work very well together: CVS (duh) on the server. TortoiseCVS integrated Windows client. Pageant for SSH key management and passwordless connection. ViewCVS for a web browsable view of the repository. Syncmail for doing automated diffs-by-email on commits. [Pushing the envelope] Nice collection of CVS links. I wasn't aware the TortoiseCVS did ssh CVS auth. Nothing on the website. Does it actually work? It would be HellaCool if it did :) [Later...] According to Darren TortoiseCVS does ssh auth fine. Cool. And Joe reminds us about WinMerge and CVSQuery. I love blog.communities. 11:32:24 AM

Phoenix Some interesting tidbits on Phoenix from MozillaZine: Phoenix XUL Notes Mitchell Baker on mozilla.org and Phoenix I must say, breaking out a new area for the creatives to play will hopefully bring a new revolution in usability. The XUL Notes above certainly give a view of impending change. :) 11:25:24 AM

Governmental Accounting European Governments urged to 'stop pushing' DTV. From the Guardian, an article of how Forrester Research is urging European governments not to force TDV/iTV on people with the digital switch over deadline in 2010. Instead Forrester suggests leting market forces dictate teh timing of the switch to digital. [ShareMe News] That would be smart. I can say here and now, having seen a local tv station's digital channel shown on a 10k plasma flatscreen, I won't be buying. The digital artifacts, starting with cascading blocks, then frozen frames while the decoder finds enough information to paint the next frame, and finally having half the screen go blocks of green for 30 seconds. It was unwatchable. But the governments of the world can't stop the roll out because most of them have already booked the expected income from the spectrum auctions, along with signing agreements with companies to enforce demise of current analog channels to bump up the price of said spectrum. In short, Enron and Co weren't the only ones to pull dodgy accounting tricks during the last decade. 11:17:00 AM

© Copyright 2002 Brett Morgan.