The Blog
18 Oct 2005 What a year. First there was the Tsunami. Then Katrina. And Rita, And Stan. And Wilma.
Meanwhile there are 40,000 already dead in Pakistan in one of the most inhospitable and remote areas of the world as it heads into winter. It's instructive to think about which ones got the most media coverage. And then go to DEC and donate. I'm an extra-terrestrial from a civilization approximately 10 million years older than yours.
Now what question are you going to ask me? David Sifry has posted his quarterly round up of the blogging world. The figures are simply staggering.
* As of October 2005, Technorati is now tracking 19.6 Million weblogs At this rate, I figure we're about 3 to 6 years away from one blog for every person on the planet. The spam problem is becoming significant. It's become way too easy to create robot driven spam blogs (Splogs) on Blogspot to generate Google page rank for dubious websites. And so yet another medium is polluted by the excesses of the few. [from: JB Ecademy] University of Cambridge department bans Skype, citing security concerns | connect.educause.edu : University of Cambridge department bans Skype, citing security concerns
The Physics dept of Cambridge University (My alma mater) has banned Skype citing the EULA and the possibility of relaying as a supernode. This is couched with language that suggests there's a potential security risk. in the middle there's this statement. Users were alerted to recent security compromises and back-door intrusion attempts on machines running Skype. Really? If this was true surely it would reach the mainstream web coverage of Skype? Now presumably Cambridge runs firewalls? And they use VPNs? And NAT? In which case there's zero possibility of a connected computer becoming a supernode and relaying traffic. And I know they do because I've tried to connect to CU Wifi that was apparently open but walled off as soon as you tried to connect. And even if a connected machine did become a supernode, any intrusion via that route would a be a huge source of concern for both Skype and the Skype community. This just looks like more scare stories to me from a party with too much control and some vested interest. [ 18-Oct-05 8:24am ] 17 Oct 2005 Anyone want to join in on a Web2.0 project in php-mysql? If we start soon, we can launch at EtCon 2006 and then sell out to Yahoo at Etcon 2007.
 Over the weekend I knocked up an OPML browser. Still not quite sure what it's for or if it's useful.
http://www.voidstar.com/opml/ Things I noted mostly to do with validation against Dave's proposals. - OPML not served with an XML content type so that the browser doesn't know how to display it. - Wholesale abuse of the Type attribute. There's lots of OPML out there with a type of LINK pointing at RSS. - I could do with a list of all possible values of TYPE. Is there only LINK and RSS? - Confusion over the use of URL, XMLURL and HTMLURL. Most of the OPML I've looked at uses only URL even for feeds. - The lack of a HEAD.DESCRIPTION element. - All the same issues as in RSS around the inclusion of HTML in the TITLE and DESCRIPTION elements. - Confusion over the use of the TITLE vs TEXT elements. They seem to be interchangeable. - Using the file extension to identify the target URL type as another OPML file seems old fashioned. Particularly where the target URL is so rarely a static file but much more likely to be a RESTful directory or CGI string. I think it would be more useful to be explicit and use a TYPE attribute of OPML to tell the reader what's at the other end. Overall the OPML standard badly needs some more concise guidelines, validation and for people to go round and complain when well known OPML feeds don't follow them. A web site which should exist; Last.Fm for books.
Last.fm works so well because it's easy to automatically find out what people are listening to. The challenge with books is to get people to tell you manually what they are currently reading. I picture a collection of things like bookmarklets where I can browse Amazon or isbn.nu for the book I'm currently reading and then tell an API on your site the ISBN number. There's also a system in the USA (I forget exactly where) for building an inventory of books (among other things) by scanning the barcodes with a small cuecat reader or by using a mobile phone camera. Once you have data like that there's a raft of possibilities around recommendations for book reading, social networking based on reading habits, reviews and gossip, tagging and so on. http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/ is a start but there's way more potential here. Anyone want to try and build it with me? http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=P12063_0_4_0_C
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=12132_0_1_0_C http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=12133_0_1_0_C Part 4 due shortly. This is essential reading and full of links for anyone interested in where Web 2.0 is right now and where this is all going. Boing Boing: Model railroader's model slums : This model railroad hobbyist makes miniature slum-scenes for his trains to roll through, replete with liquor stores, blowing trash and graffiti.
I should note here that this is the real USA and not the image of perfectly manicured 'Burbs full of tortured souls obssessing over their next SUV purchase and divorce settlement that we are fed via the global lamestream media complex. Fly into just about any major US city and the taxi ride to your hotel more than likely goes through neighbourhoods that look like a third world warzone. New York is particularly bad for this. 16 Oct 2005 15 Oct 2005 Guidelines for validating OPML
For some reason that I'm not really clear on, I have this desire in the back of my head to build a PHP OPML navigator [from: del.icio.us] 12 Oct 2005 Here we go again.
Live from the Steve Jobs Keynote One more thing - Engadget - www.engadget.com : iTunes 6.0 will also feature video and the iTunes Music Store will feature Fairplay DRMed video downloads (big surprise, right?). At launch over 2,000 music videos will be made available at a cost of $1.99 apiece. You can download iTunes 6.0 starting today. It's not only music videos you can buy. No, Apple's set up to allow you to purchase TV shows for $1.99 apiece. Get Desperate Housewives or four other ABC shows premiering on iTunes at two bucks an ep. Videos are native QVGA resolution. A quick google search took me to Isohunt and numerous Bittorrent downloads of Desperate Housewives for free. Who in their right mind would pay Apple $1.99 for these? When they've already been shown free to air. Then there's the bandwidth issue. So an iTMS music track of 6Mb is $0.99 but a 350Mb video track is $1.99 Did I miss something here? Just say no to DRM, m'kay? 05 Oct 2005 Qnext > Home
Almost universal networking IM client with added private file sharing and streaming. Wot, no Skype? [from: del.icio.us] Computerworld > Skype: hazardous to network health?
That was quite a scare story, but it was also full of half truths and downright lies. Your corporate desktops and notebooks are the peers that are consigned as Skype pleases to relay traffic and function as mini-servers in the Skype universe. If your PC is directly connected to the net with no intervening firewall then there is a possibility of it becoming a supernode. That eliminates every corporate PC. Have you ever seen a corporate network with no firewall? According to Skype — and validated by our research — a VoIP call will consume between 24 and 128kbit/s. When a Skype station is functioning as a relay the bandwidth is doubled. If your PC becomes a supernode, you will relay switching traffic and not voice traffic to an expected maximum of 5kbps, according to Skype staff on the Skype forums. Go ahead and do the tests to prove them wrong. And, lest you think that you can stop all this by exiting Skype, think again. You might not be using Skype but it might be using you. Skype continues to run in the background unless you uninstall it or kill the process. If you quit Skype it does not leave anything running on your PC. There's a lot of FUD about how Kazaa was riddled with spyware so Skype must be. Try this. Quit Skype and then look at Task manager. Is anything left running? I don't think so. If Skype did leave anything running, don't you think there would be a completely justified witch hunt against them? There is an article to be written that digs into Skype's Supernode architecture and it's security but this definitely isn't it. You have to wonder whether this article is a shill for some competing VoIP company or Telco. As a moderately respectable publishing house, IDG should be ashamed. And as for the Tolly Group who apparently did the study and wrote the article, would you trust anything else they wrote? 04 Oct 2005 Cory Doctorow has written a tremendous piece (The Digital Video Broadcasting' Project Content Protection and Copy Management: a stealth attack on consumer rights and competition.) about the work being done in the EU behind closed doors to force you to accept less in the coming digital TV age and to take away basic rights you thought you had. It's a big long piece so I've extracted the main summary points. But even that is hard to get worked up about so here's the management summary.
For 20 years now we've grown used to being able to record an ITV program on Sunday night and watch it on Monday. While watching it, we'll fast forward through the adverts. If our mother missed it, we'll lend her the tape. And for those favourite programs like Black Adder we'll build our own library for a rainy day. The big media corporations are using the EU to try and make sure we can never do this again and to make it a criminal offence to try. They want the VCR manufacturer to sell you a box that will record ER but not 24; that will stop you lending the result; that will force you to watch the adverts; and will expire your copy of all the Black Adder episodes after 6 months. And crucially, to be able to change the rules after you've bought the box. Last week 24 would record. This week it won't. In order to do this, they have to lock down every device that might be able to receive or display the TV picture. That includes your computer, your computer monitor, your xbox, your mobile phone, your psp, your portable media player. And that means that every electronic device with a screen will have to be certified CPCM friendly. Even the ones you build yourself. And every operating system whether from MS, Apple, Linux or embedded from Palm or Phoenix will similarly have to prevent anyone from writing software that could circumvent it. And this isn't just a computing standard, it's proposed to be the law, with criminal consequences if you break it. So bye, bye, general purpose computing. Now it's pretty hard to know what a private consumer can do about this, but you might start by writing to your elected representative and making it clear that people who take away the right to watch TV how we like it, don't get re-elected. Anyway here's the bullet points. Overview: * DVB creates digital television specifications for use in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Australia * A DVB project called Content Protection and Copy Management (CPCM) goes beyond the customary work of setting television standards to set out specifications for restricting how television programmes are used after reception * CPCM represents a grave danger to nations that mandate it as part of their digital television strategies About DVB, digital television, and the broadcast flag * CPCM is the DVB's answer to the failed American Broadcast Flag, an attempt to buy the studios' co-operation with the digital TV transition by offering them control over DTV devices * The studios have no credible new threat from DTV, nor is there any reason to believe that they will avoid DTV in the absence of a CPCM regime * It is crucial to keep CPCM from being mandated in national laws CPCM overview * CPCM's main areas of specification are Usage State Information (complex instructions for restricting use after reception), definitional elements such as "Authorised Domain" (a proxy for one household's worth of devices), and compliance (rules that all manufacturers are required to follow in implementing CPCM) * CPCM is intended to form the basis of regulatory mandates in Europe, Australia and parts of Asia and Latin America * CPCM exists to "enable business models" for rightsholders, even if doing so means destroying the business models of some manufacturers CPCM and copyright * Copyright has many limitations, exceptions and exemptions that allow the public to make "unauthorised" uses of copyrighted works * CPCM does not respect copyright: it runs roughshod over the public's rights in the copyright bargain, allowing rightsholders to misappropriate any exemption they desire * Coupled with a regulatory mandate, this amounts to permission to write private laws to underpin business-models, at the public's expense CPCM and competition * CPCM's interoperability with other technologies will be limited by contracts that ensure that no disruptive entrants to the market are permitted * These licensing regimes limit implementers' freedom to contract with other technology vendors * Historically, these licensing regimes limit innovation in the industries to which they are applied CPCM and consumer rights * It will be impossible to know, a priori, whether a CPCM device will allow you to use it in the way you intend on using it * Even if a CPCM device does work "out of the box," its functionality can be constrained at a later date by disabling its features or activating USI in programming that limits a desired feature CPCM and free/open source software * CPCM's robustness requirement will make it impossible to implement CPCM in free and open source software (FOSS) and hence FOSS programmes will necessarily be precluded from the market if CPCM is mandated into national law * The right of programmers to publish their work through FOSS regimes is often equivalent to other forms of scientific publishing and is often protected under free speech laws and traditions * The CPCM robustness regime will therefore stifle free and open source software and the scientific inquiry that relies upon it The Broadcast Flag, the Broadcasters' Treaty and CPCM * CPCM is the latest salvo in a global campaign to restrict consumer rights that encompasses US initiatives like the Broadcast Flag and WIPO (UN) initiatives like the Broadcasters' Treaty * CPCM encompasses many failed US regulatory initiatives and the move to encase it in international treaty obligations will likely be used as leverage to get these initiatives reintroduced in the USA * CPCM compromises national self-determination by allowing US culture-exporting companies to dictate public policy [from: JB Ecademy] Here's a question. Is there a service out there that can take a URL and return a list of tags that people have used against that URL? I'm thinking that del.icio.us, technorati and the other tag aggregators could provide this, and a generalised service could call each one and assemble the list.
03 Oct 2005 A kerfluffle of OPML and web directories » Archive » Blog » 0xDECAFBAD : # OPML is a sucky and under-specified format, with implementations subject to approval by one guy.
# OPML is a working format already in use by lots of code, so offer something better or shut up. Both groups are right. The problem is that standards without implementations are just academic wanking (c Julian Bond, 2003). And implementations without standards won’t get widespread adoption. What’s intensely irritating is the egos involved who can’t see the truth in the above statement. It should be possible to criticise OPML as a standard while still applauding the experiments and without necessarily offering an alternative. If done with respect, just the criticism on its own should move the debate onwards. Re OPML based SuperOpenDirectories. It is indeed neat. But I’m still struggling to see the point. Does it just re-invent Gopher? Then there’s the inspired chaos of it all. At least with something like DMOZ, Yahoo, Wikipedia, the hierarchy has some formalised structure and editors (perhaps community editors). An open mesh of decentralised outlines is going to have lots of dead ends and missing cross links. Perhaps that’s just an artifact of the browser Apps we’ve seen so far and the breadcrumb approach being used. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. And finally, I’d love to see an OPML browser app written in PHP. Perhaps I’ll write one. 02 Oct 2005 Just done a major redesign of the Ecademy site and went live on Friday night. I'm shattered. Damn it's hard doing this stuff on your own even if this time I got quite a bit of help from a web design company.
Still plenty more to do but it's up. Gosh. Freemasons want to give me money. Will I have my tongue cut out and be buried where my body will be covered by the high tide with bricks in my pockets for publishing this?
The Freemason society of Bournemouth under the jurisdiction of the all Seeing Eye, Master Nicholas Brenner has after series of secret deliberations selected you to be a beneficiary of our 2005 foundation laying grants and also an optional opening at the round table of the Freemason society. 30 Sep 2005 Dave's up to something. Directory And here's the same outline viewed through my directory browser.
But I don't get it. Did he just re-invent Gopher? 
  1 to 20 of 3860 |