Wednesday, April 16, 2003

Importance of open document standards Hey, this is not a "Microsoft bash", really :-) But, as someone who spent a painful day or two hacking some code to extract plain text from Microsoft Word (97, 2000) .doc files, I could complain if I wanted to. Seriously, the "innovation space" for new ideas for software is basically infinite, but not being able to easily extract information programatically from work processing files, etc. does eliminate entire categories of new software that can be developed by independent software developers. I would ask that developers of word processing and other proprietary applications use open document formats, but I realize that it is not in their business interests to do so. Note: I realize that future (professional - not standard) editions of Microsoft Office (which I bought for OS X - love it) will use XML, it remains to be seen how useful this 'open' format will be for developers to use. 9:27:29 PM

Next big thing in software? I was just reading through the May issue of WiRED Magazine tonight. An article by J. DeLong (page 94) on the rapid increase in disk mass storage go me thinking: DeLong makes the point that as the cost of disk space effectively goes to zero, we will start to store everything. For me, this is not quite true: I am constantly writing CDRs, then keeping my drives tidy. However, the only reason I do this is because it is difficult to organize a life's worth of digital information. Some ideas, like LifeStreams(tm) seem like an OK way to retrieve information, but it seems like indexing data based on time/key words, semantic concepts, etc. is only part of the problem. An equally large problem to solve is dealing with minor changes to documents (deciding if you REALLY want to keep everything), automated backup strategies (you do back up, right?), etc. Anyone want to do a startup :-) 9:13:28 PM

President Eisenhower had it right President Eisenhower had it right: "May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion." Eisenhower was complaining about Senator McCarthy's attempt to rip up the U.S. Constitution and use it for toilet paper. Now, with historical perspective, everyone agrees (I hope!) that Senator McCarthy's attempted stiffling of dissent by U.S. citizens and his anti-communist whitch hunts were evil. I believe that something similar is happening today: right wing conservatives are questioning our rights to openly discuss the war, the economy, or anything else that might be an embarrasment to the current Bush administration. These same conservatives who maliciously try to brand people as un-american for "not supporting our president" slung some foul mud at then President Clinton. As Americans, we are allowed to both privately and publicly discuss politics, what we like and don't like about our President's actions, etc. That right, my friends, is what our troups fight to protect. For the right wing "new age McCarthys" all I have to say is: history will be hard on you. 3:22:06 PM

© Copyright 2003 Mark Watson. Last update: 9/16/03; 7:36:06 AM.