Curiouser and curiouser!
31 October 2003
: How to lose friends and influence peopleGoogle becomes part of Microsoft? Then watch me drop Google like a shitty stick! I'm sure I wouldn't be alone in that.
: Still working...The MT client is nearly done. Unfortunately I'm still wrestling to get the conversation of data
between Usertalk, Javascript, and Perl formats working seamlessly. Shouldn't be long now though.
30 October 2003 : It's not too late to save Longhorn
Michael Parker has some screenshots and description of his Symbolics XL 1200 lisp machine running Genera 8.3. (It's also for sale; $3000.)
And since the system comes with source for pretty much everything, and is essentially a debug build without the associated speed penalties, it makes for an eminently hackable box. :-)
Quickly now. Ssomebody get Bill onto eBay.
29 October 2003 : K-Collector for MovableTypeI've spent a fair bit of time today working on the K-Collector client for MovableType.
We tried implementing a client about 6 months ago but it was very
brittle and, ultimately, even I couldn't write instructions for how to
install it on a new server. This didn't seem like a good way
forward with MT Pro and Typepad around the cornern.
Our new approach we're much happier with. It only requires 1
change (adding 1 line) to an existing MT template, 1 perl module
(HTML::HeadParser) and the installation of a handful of new files. It
does not depend upon the MT database or other plugins. It's
pretty lightweight.
There is about half a days worth of clean-up required I think and then
it should be ready to beta test. I'm hoping to start that on
Friday afternoon, interested parties should look out for an
announcement with a link to instructions.
I'm grateful to Timothy Appnel for his guide on writing MovableType plugins. It was really helpful when things just weren't working.
- More about:
- k-collector
- movable-type
[ : Wizard of Id
[ : Get funnyBefore I go on, I just remembered this: over at Dave's site (I know Dave from the #mobitopia IRC channel) there's a set of RSS feeds for comics. My favorites are Dilbert and Calvin and Hobbes. Very cool.
[d2r]
Two of my favorite comics. RSS can do anything.
Fabulous. I'd also add Garfield, Peanuts, and the Wizard of Id. Of course the nice thing is that I can also sample a weeks worth of other comics i've never heard of without having to remember to go look for them.
28 October 2003 : Hooking Javascript event handlersWorking on the K-Collector client for MovableType I have the need to
add an onload handler to a page and onsubmit handler to a form. In this case I
have no control over whether there may already be handlers and I
certainly don't want to interfere with them if they exist. I
couldn't see an obviously supported way of doing this and came up with
the following Javascript function which seems to do the trick.
var currentHandler = objectRef[handlerProperty];
objectRef[handlerProperty] =
function() {
if( currentHandler ) {
currentHandler();
}
return eval( handlerCode );
};
}
This can be invoked from within a <script> section at the appropriate point in a document, for example:
or
The caveat to this approach is demonstrated in the second example. By default you would return false in a handler where you wanted to prevent the default behaviour. However return is only valid within the context of a function so you cannot use it in an eval(). However eval itself returns the last expression so making that false amounts to the same thing.
- More about:
- javascript
: More die in Falluja car bombThis is very ugly and I have little confidence in either the American or (for the little they have to do with the policy on the ground) British governments to improve it. Whither the UN and NATO?
- More about:
- iraq
: In defence of the GPLI was initially a little fearful on reading this, particularly with all the talk of social contracts. Although I do value the social aspects of the GPL I would be afraid if that was all that protected works since I don't reckon large companies for their social awareness. However reading Eben Moglen's strong rebuttal of SCO's case was quite comforting.
- More about:
- gpl
27 October 2003 : Building quality with faces
Reality lies somewhere betw Cringely
and Ballmer and Linus. How about this. Both guys (Ballmer and Torvalds)
make really shitty software. Microsoft, after decades of Windows
development still can't make a robust operating system that a normal
person can use. And Linux ships with every security feature wide open.
An end user who actually installed it (a amazing accomplishment in
itself) would end up (instantly) hosting a playground for script
kiddies everywhere. And the user interface of Linux sucks. Windows
isn't totally terrible. It's a huge embarassment that with many
billions of dollars, dozens of years, and billions of man-hours, this
is the best the human species can produce. [Scripting News]In reading the Cringely piece I had a sudden vision of how we can get sharp improvements in the quality of Microsoft products without them having to give it away.
Linus Torvalds says:
I think he's right. I know the pressure I feel to deliver something good and the pain of failing. I'm not saying that Microsoft programmers don't feel the same things, but they are hidden behind the behemoth they work for. When the pressure to ship gets too great they can, ultimately, acquiesce and nobody will know. There is no public shame.
If these guys were in the spotlight for their work then they could take either the heat or the praise as appropriate. I'd like to see a site at that shows each product, the team who works on it with pictures, bio's, links to weblogs, email and so on. And why stop at Microsoft, lots of people make crappy software (I'll refrain from saying "us too" since you know that already!)
- More about:
- how-to-develop-software
- microsoft
- reputation-trust
26 October 2003 : Knowledge CentrifugeAs we get closer to release I've found myself explaining what Paolo and I are doing with K-Collector, what the product is about. So far the best explanation I have come up with is:
What I've been trying to do is make the case that knowledge management and document management aren't the same thing. Most knowledge in a company begins life as a granule of information, micro-knowledge. It exists for a time and, if not exploited, likely dies away to be discovered again later if needed.
Quite often the inertia that has to be overcome in order to turn such a granule into the sort of document you would load into Livelink, Documentum or some equivalent product is overwhelming compared to the perceived value, at that moment, of the knowledge itself. It is only when the cost of repeated rediscovery begins to bite that someone finally does the decent thing.
The corrollary to this is that the benefits of knowing that you know this information are not felt until quite late in it's lifecycle. I would guess that, by the time a lot of information is formally documented, it's probably well on the well to being out of date or irrelevant (is this your intranet?)
By contrast the K-Collector approach collects information while it is still fresh and combines it with other related information before presenting to users for them to see if it meets their needs. That which is good can be promoted to a more appropriate place (for example a Wiki) Things which don't make the cut fade into the background but, crucially, are not lost.
I imagine K-Collector as being a kind of knowledge centrifuge, spinning together all kinds of different bits of information and separating out the good stuff for you.
At the heart of K-Collector and determining what makes 'the good stuff' are topics. Topics act as markers for points of interest around which information can be clustered. The Who, What, Where, When metaphor we have adopted is - we think - a really simple way of considering what is important to us all (although, prompted by Stuart Henshall, I have been wondering about Why as a 5th W).
I think of K-Collector as a kind of multi-dimensional database where each topic slices through the available information. We're working on some pretty cool topic related trickery for future versions that will take this idea and make it a lot more powerful.
I'm hoping to get back to writing soon and share more about what we are doing. I hope this is useful in the meantime.
: SS-GBIf you liked Fatherland or The Man in the High Castle (both favourites of mine) then do yourself a favour and read Len Deightons SS-GB.
I read it a couple of years ago and still remember it vividly.
I've just listened to it unabridged (over 12hrs) and wow, even better. Highly recommended.
: More skype talkHad Skype conversations last night with both Terry Frazier and Stuart Henshall.
Terry and I have spoken a couple of times now thanks to Skype and it's
much better than IM. We were ruminating on how our circumstances
have changed since we first 'met.' It was the first time I had
spoken to Stuart but I warmed to him straight away. We talked
about K-Collector/MovableType (which should be forthcoming RSN), Skype
and the opportunities it offers and about some knowledge management
issues close to our hearts.
- More about:
- skype
- stuart-henshall
- terry-frazier
15 October 2003 : Sidebar frenzyThe Mozilla foundation has released new versions of most of their toys today. Just released:
- Mozilla 1.5 (the browser/email/composer/etc. suite)
- Mozilla Firebird 0.7 (standalone browser)
- Mozilla Thunderbird 0.3 (standalone email client)
I'm still using the full Suite. Firebird
doesn't have Mozilla's sidebars, which I find extremely useful
(specifically, the dev-centric sidebars for HTML, CSS, JS,... [TruerWords]
Mozilla 1.5 + MultiZilla
(to improve the tab support) is a great browser combination which has
fully displaced IE as my default browser. I do have 2 complaint thoughs:
- Checkbox selection is really fiddly in Mozilla compared to IE
- Ctrl+Arrow changes tab rather than moving the cursor forward/backword by word.
I'm also just beginning to learn about the power of the sidebar. It seems that writing new sidebars is dead easy and there are many cool sidebars available (e.g. Javascript reference, DOM inspector).
- More about:
- mozilla
14 October 2003 : K-Collector as an RSS catalogueWe're publishing several hundred topical feeds (in RSS2.0 + ENT format) from K-Collector. You can navigate the feed structure quite easily. Start at the top-level and select a category such as Who then browse the available topics under that category. Pick one like Don Park or Phil Wolff and then add the XML feed to your aggregator to read posts concerning that person.
- More about:
- ent-1.0
- k-collector
- rss-2-0
12 October 2003 : Mozilla tolerancesHas anyone else noticed that Win Mozilla (1.5) is much pickier
about selecting checkboxes than Win IE? I really notice this
using Radio's news page where I find myself clicking down a long
(sometimes several hundred) list of items. With IE I found that I
rarely missed, with Moz I seem to do it all the time and it's really irritating.
Has anyone else noticed this?
- More about:
- mozilla
- radio-userland
11 October 2003 : Adding new commands to Windows explorerEvery now and again I end up in a bothersome situation where I have
files in multiple sub-directories that I want to bring together into
one directory. This usually entails descending into each
directory, selecting the contents and doing a cut & paste into the
parent. It gets tiresome.
As I pondered the explorer context menu I wished that there was a "copy
contents into this directory" option... it bothered me that there
wasn't and I pondered just how hard it would be to add one. Turns
out the answer is "not hard at all."
A quick Google search turned up an article about adding new shell context extensions to explorer which taught me the general principle. The hard part was tinkering with cmd and xcopy to get the right effect.
Now I have a shiny new "Promote contents" item in my explorer context
menu. It would be nicer if I could have figured out how to do
this without a dos box popping up but, for now, it's quite good enough.
[Update: For completeness I suppose I should add the actual command I came up with...
: Rocket powered appsHey, Windows users, a friend is raving about CandyLabs' AppRocket. They have some Mac-based utilities too. I'm in PDC crunch mode, so don't have time to try it out now. Anyone want to give us a report in my comments? Looks awesome and gives Windows users launch-bar functionality that Macs have built in.
Update: I mispoke. It's actually a close copy of the Mac utility LaunchBar. Thanks to Brian W for pointing that out to me. Gotta check these things out a little more before I post them. I'll leave this up, though.
Euan Semple put me onto LaunchBar for the Mac and it is really neat. The closest PC analogy I had was ActiveWords but, although ActiveWords is arguably more powerful than AppRocket, I never got on with. AppRocket looks neat, I guess I'll see if I'm still using it by the time they want to charge for it.
10 October 2003 : Gurteen Knowledge QuestWent to the a meeting of the Gurteen Knowledge Cafe last night. A
slightly different meeting to usual in that the topic was, broadly, how
David can make his community
building work into something that can support him
financially. At heart it's a common enough problem:
It was a very interesting session as we tossed around the issues and ideas. There was lots of energy and good humour which is really the hallmark of these meetings. It was also interesting seeing the interplay between those who had been to some or all of the previous cafe's and the relatively high number of newbies. That definitely added to the mix.
I know from my own experience that it's a tough quest to be make a living doing things you enjoy and working with good people. But it definitely has it's rewards. Hopefully we've given David food for thought.
- More about:
- david-gurteen
: Good decision on DRMThe latest news is that SunnComm president and CEO Peter Jacobs has decided not to sue after all saying "I don't want to be the guy that creates any kind of chilling effect on research." This looks to me the right decision and I think he should be applauded for making it. His next decision ought to be about replacing his companies dreadful website.
As an aside I am wondering if the DMCA legislation has a sunset clause? If not, is it possible to add one retrospectively?
- More about:
- dmca
: Impeach shrubBush being impeached seems about as unlikely to me now as pretty much everything that has happened in US politics since he came to power. So I guess there is still hope ;-)
: Don't learn from this exampleQuite apart from the fact that I agree with the thrust of the red cross' argument and that I reject the notion that camp officials can be certain that all the mental health problems of their captives were present before they arrived, this article presents an angle I hadn't considered before and is, I believe, important:
The argument filed to the Supreme Court by Mr Guter and others said: "The lives of American military forces may well be endangered by the United States' failure to grant foreign prisoners in its custody the same rights that the United States insists be accorded to American prisoners held by foreigners."
That view was backed by ex-prisoners-of-war, some of whom told the Supreme Court they owed their lives to the fact that their captors abided by the Geneva Conventions.
I'm not suggesting that Al-Qaeda would necessarily abide by the terms of the geneva convention in respect of captured British or American soldiers, I just believe that the best teacher is example and the example of Guantanamo is not one I would wish anyone to learn from.- More about:
- guantanamo-bay
09 October 2003 : Why Anti-virus vendors can act this wayJust reading a recent GnomeREPORT
about one users battle with their anti-virus provider. It sounds
a lot like my recent struggles with Norton Anti-Virus 2002 which lead
to me ditching Norton, completlely rebuilding my laptop OS and
installing another product swearing never to do business with the scum suckers at Norton/Symantec again!
I'm now reasonably happy using McAfee Virus Shield. So who do you think is the antagonist in this latest saga?
Okay an observation. Anti-virus software companies have realised
that they can act like unmitigated shits to their customers because:
- All customers must have virus software, it's no longer optional.
- There are only 2 name brands.
- We make the software impossible to remove properly.
- More about:
- viruses
: Considering RSS-DataI was going to leave this as a comment on Don's piece on RSS-Data
(hello Don!) but it grew to the point where a post felt more
appropriate. Anyway my grateful thanks to Don, for his short but
sweet explanation.
Okay i'm glad it's an RSS2.0 extension. But is it a good thing?
I guess I have bought into the idea that one of the things we bought when we paid for XML was the notion that the tags carry semantic value. Applications having to understand the semantics is one of the prices of doing something useful. Or at least that was what I thought.
But maybe that shouldn't be the case for things such as extensions. I guess i'm wondering whether ENT would have been written as a separate module if RSS-Data had been around in April. Maybe it would have been easier to simply identify a few RSS-Data entries to add to an item to convey topic information...?
My gut instinct is that it might have been easier to sell, but that it wouldn't make as much sense. Describing ENT tags strictly as a set of attribute:value pairs would be more confusing and possibly harder to process. I think ENT has a distinct flavour and that this is not a bad thing.
There's room for both approaches, we'll just have to see.
Oh and a caveat: Your data isn't going to be named signature, value and cert unless you want them clashing with any other possible applications of those names, so you'll probably end up prefixing them as in:
- com.docuverse.blah.signature
- com.docuverse.blah.value
- com.docuverse.blah.cert
08 October 2003 : MIT Not-So-Tech ReviewI took out a subscription about 18 months ago and couldn't get to the online articles. Their explanation "Must be a problem with Internet Explorer." Their solution "Use a different browser." Right. I never did get to read those article online and I certainly didn't renew (despite the many pleading paper spams they sent me)
They should read their own magazine once in a while.
: Ungrokked RSS-DataWhat I like about Jeremy Allaire's RSS-Data proposal:
- Reduced need to change RSS schema, binding, and parser to support new payloads.
- Possibility of reusing XML-RPC code and SOAP code.
- Arguably faster to parse.
In my experience, element-rich XML documents are faster to parse than attribute-rich XML documents. But this is not important given readily available processing power at the consuming end.
What I dislike:
- Ugly and harder to read although not as bad as RDF.
- Increased need to change RSS application to support new payloads.
- Contextually inconsistent and verbose.
value
name
value
With RSS-Data, developer's attention will shift from RSS parsers to RSS application frameworks capable of supporting new payload types and routing mechanics via plugins. Despite irksome cosmetic downsides of RSS-Data, I like that.
Only problem is that one can make the same arguments for RDF which makes me a hypocrite. No news there, but I find it ironic to see RDF folks attacking RSS-Data.
Hmm... .I tried to read Jeremy's posts on RSS-Data but found there was too much stuff in the way of understanding the basic proposal. What seems to be suggested is a generic framework for transporting data in an RSS item which isn't terribly astounding so I guess there must be something more exciting going on to raise all this fuss.
Is there an RSS-Data in a Nutshell post to be had?
- More about:
- don-park
- jeremy-allaire
- rdf
- rss-data
: Diff tools for UserTalkPaolo just pointed me to a resource from Eric Sooros for Radio/Frontier developers. It's basically a set of diff & patch tools for Usertalk. This could be pretty useful for us.
Update: It looks like Eric is looking for work. He seems to have a wide range of skills including Frontier, Perl, PHP, Java, Linux, Apache & OS X.
: Knock yourselves outI was going to be ticked off about this and then I had one of those blinding flashes of the obvious:
I don't live in California. I don't care. Knock yourselves out :-)
: Darkest tempatationsI sense a man struggling with a deep, dark, temptation.... ;-)
- More about:
- apple
- euan-semple
: The only weapon we have leftSo the vested interests have managed to bring us to heel. The European Copyright Directive has now been incorporated into British law. They say they it won't be used to attack P2P file sharers and individuals but, as the article says,
I guess I'm pretty disgusted with how it is so easy for big companies to twist the legal system so that people who rip them off get huge fines and prison sentences but they themselves are never held accountable for stealing from pension funds or cheating the markets.
This is going to be really hard for me. I love music. In my impoverished state it is the one thing I can still justify buying from time-to-time. But boycotting seems to be the only weapon left to the individual.
If these corporations are going to attack me, even indirectly, then by god I am going to attack them back.
: How Skype does itInteresting. You find out there is a call for you and make an outbound TCP call to the SuperNode to meet it. That's neat thinking ;-)
Also as an aside when I installed Skype a couple of weeks ago I was regularly seeing around 30,000 online users. Last time I checked it was regularly around 60,000.
- More about:
- instant-messenger
- skype
: K-Collector top 10 since last nightLast night I enabled some new code in K-Collector to track visitors to
each topic. In combination with other data we are collecting in
the system it should allow us to do some neat tricks, but for now it
tells us which topics people are visiting the most. The top 10 in
descending order:
Knowledge Management
Don Park
Robert Scoble
BloggerCon
Joi Ito
Ideas
Rolang Tanglao
Open Standards
Laszlo
K-Collector
The BloggerCon topic has been quite interesting since we added most of
the feeds from the BloggerCon blogroll. With the new
auto-discovery code in place this has allowed it to link in quite a lot
of posts and relate them to other topics in the system.
Take a look and let us know what you think.
- More about:
- k-collector
Last update: 22/10/2005; 14:22:13 .
