Monday, March 10, 2003

Browsers fight it out. Millions use Microsoft's Internet Explorer to surf the web, but there are alternatives. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition] 5:51:59 PM    comment []

Social Software's Emerging Norms. Clay Shirky: Social Software and the Politics of Groups. The last time there was this much foment around the idea... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal] 5:50:23 PM    comment []

Annan Warns Against War Without U.N. Approval. Secretary General Kofi Annan warned today that a war to disarm Iraq without Security Council approval would violate the U.N. charter. By Reuters. [New York Times: NYT HomePage] 5:49:17 PM    comment []

SCO: We're After IBM, not Linux Developers. SCO does business on both sides of the proprietary/open-source fence. With its lawsuit against IBM, it shows which side it's really on. [Linux Journal] 5:48:17 PM    comment []

Revamped Macromedia site irks customers. Macromedia's redesigned home page is drawing criticism from customers, partly because it locks out some Web browsers, including Apple Computer's new Safari. [CNET News.com] 5:47:15 PM    comment []

Dan Gillmor's anonymous correspondent says: "Little companies like Oddpost and ours could not raise a dime from investors to build a Mac version."  [Scripting News] 5:46:11 PM    comment []

Boston Herald: Blog expert sets sights on Harvard.  [Scripting News] 5:45:49 PM    comment []

Thomas Friedman Lecture. The lecture Thomas Friedman gave at SAIS a few days ago. A longer form, very interesting and informative explanation of what he's learned post-Sept. 11th about the Middle East. Windows Media video and Real video and audio all available. [MetaFilter] 5:45:04 PM    comment []

A more humanitarian war. An interview with Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch. Roth describes how his organization is trying to pressure the U.S. to wage as humanitarian a war as possible. To this end, HRW has not taken a position for or against a war, but rather on how a possible war should be waged. But this raises the question of to what extent the U.S. is still concerned with international humanitarian law. As Michael Byers of Duke University warns, "some U.S. politicians have begun to think of war, not as the high-risk recourse of last resort, but as an attractive foreign policy option in times of domestic scandal or economic decline... When war is seen as an ordinary tool of foreign policy - 'politics by other means' - political and financial considerations impinge on the balance between military necessity and humanitarian concerns." [MetaFilter] 5:44:17 PM    comment []

Computers in Libraries Make Moral Judgments, Selectively. Public libraries can't shield their patrons from the evils lurking in cyberspace, nor can technology eliminate the problems it creates. By Geoffrey Nunberg. [New York Times: Technology] 8:34:36 AM    comment []

Eminent Domain: Seizing Web Sites. Two weeks ago, after the government shut down 11 Web sites that trafficked in drug paraphernalia, visitors were routed to a message from the Drug Enforcement Administration. By Tina Kelley. [New York Times: Technology] 8:33:15 AM    comment []

Is Mac OS X Only For Techies? : It's up to you to decide whether that change is for the better or not. The workarounds you devised to make the Mac work reliably may no longer apply, so you have to learn new ones. (Mac Night Owl via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu] 8:32:10 AM    comment []

ThinkFree Office 2.1: Would-Be Office Killer Trades Features And Speed For Price : ThinkFree Office is an impressive attempt to crack the seemingly impenetrable productivity market. Sure, it lacks features that will matter to some power users, but anyone on a budget should definitely give the free, full-featured, 30-day demo a try. (MacHome via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu] 8:31:19 AM    comment []

'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom': After the Advent of the Bitchun Society.. NY Times: 'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom': After the Advent of the Bitchun Society. Cory was walking around waving this at us this morning. [Hack the Planet] 8:30:08 AM    comment []

Where's Cindy?. Here's a Google employee who's cutting me a new asshole for complaining about his employer. Of couse this is one of the cool things about weblogs, you can drill into an organization and find out what people are really saying, without having to filter through the PR suits. (In this case it's predictable, this is how Silicon Valley tech companies react to criticism and developers, wait until they have to deal with competition from Microsoft, they're even worse at that.) BTW, the employee, Steve Jenson, is the guy who does their XML-RPC work. Oy. He got a lot of facts wrong. For example, I've been praising Google for much more than four months. And it's never been "suck up" -- that's disgusting. I don't think of them as "up" from me. Typical BigCo attitude. Yuck. But here's the question that's been much on my mind -- where is Cindy McCaffrey? She's the Google PR voice, and she's the best there is in her biz. Both Doc and I have worked with her. You always come out feeling great. So Google is acquiring companies, getting new patents, starting new businesses, etc etc and all we hear from are the soldiers, not the generals. As my buddy Doc might say: What the fuck? [Scripting News] 8:28:24 AM    comment []

Jimmy Carter: Just War -- or a Just War? [Scripting News] 8:27:34 AM    comment []

Dave Aiello explains how "Roogle" came into existence. [Scripting News] 8:27:07 AM    comment []

Slashdot thread on a new search engine that's bound to raise the fur of Google's lawyers. [Scripting News] 8:26:46 AM    comment []

Out of the tube    Until he gets his own blog together, CNN correspondent Kevin Sites is getting through on Boing Boing.   Meanwhile RageBoy is on a mission: Y'all got your duct tape in place though, right? So you should be OK. I'm only going after the evildoers. Carrying on    Among the hundreds of mails Dr. Weinberger and I have received are offers to translate WoE into German, French, Italian and Portuguese (which Rainer Brockerhoff has already supplied). And maybe other languages as well. I'm losing track.   From the mailbag...   A 1995 letter from Al Gore calling for a versatile, general purpose infastructure with a "Jeffersonian" architecture that allows individuals to be producers as well as consumers of information, that enables "many to many" communication, and that provides a "general purpose" infrastructure capable of supporting a wide range of services, rather than one that is capable of providing one-way video delivery but not a broader range of services   Right arm, Al.   From the linkbag...   Denise Howell (whose blog has a whole new look) Elliot Noss, via Donna Wentworth Jeff "Hemos" Bates Kevin Werbach Grabbingsand Ross Mayfield Joe Grossberg Jordon Cooper Lasciate ogne speranza, foi ch'intrate... Brian Linse Floating Planet Michael O'Connor Clarke (long and thoughtful one there) Rajesh Jain Jaquess.org Juan Carlos Cammaert   Marc Canter sums up a whole lot of dialog, but I can't seem to find the permalink. Right now it's the top item.   In Plastic Bag Tom Coates writes about World of Ends and The Pentagon's New Map (fromthe current Esquire), which improbably associates connectedness with the international security state the current U.S. administration seems hellbent on building out. Sez Tom:   There seem to be some significant parallels that could be drawn between these two models of global scale-free networks that call into question the appropriateness of our ( my ) judgements about both globalisation as a democratic / capitalist process and the internet as a communications / publishing process. There's a collision here that I feel the need to investigate.   And this from a blogless reader:   My heat pump is the power company's consumer, I am the power company's customer.   My car is a consumer of the gas companies' products, I am a their customer.   My TV is a consumer of the cable company, I am the customer.   My heat pump, car, etc. cannot make choices. I can. Sometimes the only choice I have is to let my TV use the cable or not, but it is still my choice.   Being a customer is a choice, being a consumer is not a choice.   Making choices is at the heart of relationships.   Inanimate objects don't have relationships. People have relationships.   Ergo, things are consumers; people are customers.   I refuse to be reduced to a thing. An eyeball is a thing, unless it is in my head.   Right up Jerry's alley, I'd say.   Finally, a visual for World of Ends, courtesy of the brilliant and funny Kim Garretson at Pulp-It.com. SCO no!    Yesterday SCO, a Linux community member, sued IBM for allegedly giving SCO intellectual property away to the Linux community.   Here's my write-up on the matter for Linux Journal. [Doc Searls Weblog] 8:06:26 AM    comment []

Who Owns the Internet? Inventor Loses Patent Suit on Internet Software [New York Times: Technology] 8:03:30 AM    comment []