Forrest Duncan's Radio Weblog

	26 December 2002

Matt Pope spots an interesting article... The New York Times reports that DARPA is using Groove for the TIA program: The early version of the Total Information Awareness system employs a commercial software collaboration program called Groove... Groove makes it possible for analysts at many different government agencies to share intelligence data instantly, and it links specialized programs that are designed to look for patterns of suspicious behavior. [Matt Pope's Radio Weblog] This sounds like an alpha version of something from Minority Report and whether that is good or not is a moot point. Like many, I am very excited about the prospects of how we will be able to build software in the future using 'Web Services' (although I do wish we had another name for them).   However, whilst the story that Matt refers to is not 'Web Services' specifically, much of what is being delivered as the output of the Total Information Awareness system could be delivered using the webservices model.  And your point caller?... My point is that there will be many hackers out there who put together some great code that will be the foundations of web services.  These people whilst extremely generous with their ability and time, may NOT want to see these 'products' used in a military situation.  I have been following the Creative Commons initiative with great interest, because I believe that it is one of the most significant developments in recent Internet history.  It feels to me that it is one of the first new initiatives that has been developed by experts for the common good.  In fact, I feel as if it will help get back to a culture of 'Information wants to be free', which was somewhat lost during the crazy last few years when 'non-experts' thought the Internet was their perpetual bag of gold.  Now that these bozos have largely been eliminated, this could get fun again. So, caller, your point is? Well, I have also been following the debate about whether the Creative Commons licences could or should be used for software - this strikes me that a small addition to the Creative Commons licence, 'No Military Use', just like the current 'No Commercial Use' would be a good starting point.  Still keeps the licence simple. As an aside to this, whilst I agree with RMS's view that there is a proliferation of software licences already.  I disagree however with the inferred suggestion that the CC licence would merely add to this proliferation.  (Any error in this understanding of the positions being taken is mine btw).  There are lots of licences, sure, but quantity rarely beats quality.  I understand and respect Lawrence Lessig's contention about why creative product other than software is getting the early attention, but I do hope that in time, the creators will see that they have created a wonderful thing, that IMHO could become the defacto standard for MUCH of the software world, especially in a web services future, even if not it all.   11:21:04 AM

Hmmm,  I am getting bored with the gaming already.  I can only kill so many people, dwarves, orcs, programmers, monsters etc..  Even with some 'fantastic' weapons at my disposal, it just gets too 'samey'. Shame, because I DO recognise that many hours of hard work went into all of these. So, what do I want?  Something like a story is vital.  Warcraft III did well on this, but the fighting seemed pretty arbitrary to me.  Unreal was just mayhem.  Americas Army was good fun doing the training, but I couldn't get to fight properly on-line.  (Probably my fault).  Battlefield 1942 just quickly bored me. In saying this, I am sure that I could start some more holy wars between fans of the respective games, but this is my last intention.  I am an out and out amateur remember, so my comments can safely be ignored by anyone who takes this stuff seriously. Will I play more?  Probably.  But for the last three nights I have been having a dream about a new Groove application.  The funny thing is, that it has been roughly the same dream each night - and that's weird.  The model hasn't been worked out properly (as far as I can remember) so I intend to see if I can sketch this out in some sort of framework.  A more interesting challenge to me than fragging away... Obviously, I cannot say more at this stage.  Not because it is a secret, but because they are only dreams!  Even writing this far probably qualifies me for the loony bin for most people.  What I can say is that I think it all reveolves around 'trust'.   We are hitting trust issues all the time these days.  Peer to peer is such a powerful paradigm that the current trust models just do not do it for me. Back to pen and paper!   10:42:28 AM

	25 December 2002

Great to have a couple of days off.  This has been an extremely busy year for us and next year doesn't show any sign of slowing either. What has been fun the last couple of days though is playing games.  It has been a long while since I played any computer games properly. Probably the original Quake was the last one I played.  Over the last couple of days I have downloaded and started to play Warcraft III, Battlefield 1942, Unreal Tournament 2003 and am currently downloading America's Army.  These are big games (thank god for my broadband connection).  That was a bit of a surprise.  The quality of the graphics and sound were pretty inspiring too.  I will put up a report of how I get on over the next few days.    12:13:25 PM

Seasons Greet to anyone foolish enough to find themselves in here!    12:04:18 PM

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