January 31, 2003
Tomorrow's life is too late. Live today.
As I mentioned earlier, today was Chuck's last day on the farm. Predictably, there was a send-off for him at the local pub. I couldn't make it because of plans that I had made with my little brother Gavin and his girlfriend Amber. In a few days they are heading out on a one year "world-tour" and tonight was the last chance that we'd have to spend some time together until they returned early next year.
At some point during the evening I realized how little time I've spent with Gavin over the past few years. Always something else on the go. I was also pretty disappointed knowing that it would be another year before I could take some steps to change this. The realization was very disappointing because even though I had figured out that there was a problem there wasn't anything I could do about it. I had to take some comfort in the knowledge that at least he would be back next year and I could make the extra effort to spend more time with him at that point.
Somewhere around 9:30pm, Gavin asked the three of us whether or not we thought that the flickering lights he noticed in an apartment across the way looked like a house fire or not. We live in a smaller apartment building, 12 stories on the east side of the building that faces two larger buildings a few hundred yards away. The unit in question was about 20 stories up and was definitely in flames. We made a quick call to 911 and tried to provide the dispatcher with directions to the numberless apartment in the numberless building on the unknown street. Thankfully, the operator was familiar with the area and was able to pin down the location within seconds.
The fire deparment showed up pretty quickly, even though it felt like it took them forever to get there. Watching the to and fro from our balcony Gavin remarked how brutal it would be for that family or person that lived there to come home and find their home in ruins. My only thought was that we could only hope that those people were fortunate enough to come home and find their place in ruins rather than being at home at that time and having to live through the ordeal - or worse.
As I write this, the evening news informs me that the blaze had indeed claimed a victim. Its strange how quickly denial turns into guilt. Had we noticed the fire early enough that we could have sprinted over there and perhaps pulled this person out of their apartment? Its pretty unlikely given the distance and uncertainty involved, but it was the first thing that crossed my mind when the newscaster related the story.
The second thing that crossed my mind was how terrible it was that the person that had died in the fire had just run out of chances. This was someone who didn't get to say goodbye to a loved one, someone who wouldn't get another chance to make amends on something that was bothering them and someone who wouldn't be able to stop and marvel at a small wonder that they drove by everyday on the way to work, but had always ignored.
All of this made me appreciate the time that we spent together just a little bit more. It also makes me look forward to my second chance when the two of them get back to Canada next spring.
"Tomorrow's life is too late. Live today."
- Marcus Valerius Martialis (40 AD - 103 AD), Epigrams
Chuck's Last Day
Today was Chuck Daminato's last day at the farm. Chuck joined us many many years ago back when we were still an ISP. He has been a strong player since day one and I will sincerely miss having him around the place. I really hope that he does well in his future endeavors.
What I think is Chuck's first message to the OpenSRS mailing list can be found here, his last, here. The cool thing about these two messages is that it really illustrates one of Chuck' most impressive qualities - he hit the ground running and worked hard right through to the end. Not only could he be counted on for some very wry humor when one might need it the most, he could also be counted on to get the job done. Chuck lays out some of the finer details of his departure here.
Thanks for everything Chuck, while we probably could have done it without you, it just wouldn't have been the same. ;)
January 30, 2003
Patting myself on the back.
According to my handy-dandy desktop tracking software system thingy, it was exactly 4 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 10 hours and 18 seconds ago when I first quite smoking (read: stopped buying and cut back from a pack a day to one or two or five a day during the week, and none on the weekends).
It also tells me that it has been 1 month, 2 week, 30 minutes and 42 seconds since my last cigarette. In the four months since stopped buying, I've saved well over a thousand dollars, save the one pack that I bought in Amsterdam (Elliot smoked most of those anyways ;).
The strangest thing is how much most things smell. Oddly, I've also found that I really don't like pickled herring. Some more thoughts later...
January 29, 2003
Hmmm.....
A bunch of things that I'm not so sure about today.
First, after watching three episodes of American Idol (three shows in one), I'm now not so sure that I can be convinced that Paula Abdul and Michael Jackson aren't the same person. Well, maybe I could - she doesn't look like her nose is going to fall off.
The second thing I'm not so sure about is my new laptop. I mean, I like it and all, rather, there are a whole whack of things that I'm just not sure about. Like, what's i.Link. I'm so used to buying desktop clones or using the corporate loaner, that I've never really gone through the entire BigCo OOBE thing.
I can't say that I dislike it thus far. :)
January 28, 2003
MT Templates Are Goofy...
Apparently there is something goofy with IE6 that screws with the rendering of a page in certain circumstances.
Apparently there is something goofy in the templates that ship with Movable Type that trigger this bug. Apparently there are a number of ways to fix it as described in this thread. Apparently, the easiest fix for me to understand makes the pages look goofy. Someday, someday, I might get around to fixing this. Or Microsoft will. In the meantime, get used to the elephant-man layout.
VOTE FOR TIM!!
If any of you reading this actually has a vote, your support for Tim Denton would be appreciated. He has served in this capacity for the past two years and has unfailingly represented registrars in a positive fashion without backing down from the hard issues.
From the careg-discuss@egate.net mailing list...
"As a service to our registrar community please read the following:
CIRA has selected The Committee of Canadian Internet Registrars to appoint a representative to the 2003-2004 CIRA Board of Directors for the purpose of representing registrars.
The Committee of Canadian Internet Registrars is a one-registrar, one-vote organization. If you are a CIRA Certified Registrar, you are entitled to vote. Voting commences on January 29, 2003.
Please visit http://www.ccir.ca/ now to ensure you do not miss your opportunity to participate.
Voting details:
The nominees to the position are: (in alphabetic order by last name):
Paul Andersen and Timothy Denton
Voting begins anytime after 2:00 pm January 29th, and finishes on February 4th (11:59:59 pm, Pacific Time). Voting will be conducted by E-mail. All accredited registrars are entitled to one vote for one of the above."
More details on the CCIR website...
Dude, where's your analytical skills?
The Register asks "Where the hell is my website?" [via ICANN Googlenews] Perhaps it should have asked "What are the differences between ICANN and Nominet?". The article lays many atrocities at the feet of ICANN and neglects to recognize that responsibility for enforcement lies not with the regulator, but with the registries such as GNR, Verisign etc.
So the question should really be "Why aren't the registries moving to fix these problems?"
Please, allow *me* to introduce myself. First.
Spammers don't need more rights as this bit seems to imply...
[via MediaSavvy] Spammers, legitmate direct emailers, direct mailers, and telemarketers must be required to disclose where they got your name and how to get your name off the original list.
Mo' blogging, Mo' problems...
In the spirit of the dynamic that this bit over at Techdirt describes, I'd like to propose that a whole whack of new blogging terms be invented.
In addition to "Moblogging", which is presumably a contraction of "Mobile Blogging" (lets ignore the fact that this is actually a nested contraction because that would mean that we would have to once and for all settle what "blog" is a contraction for), we need some other contractions that can act as convenient labels for the following behaviors;
- Blogging in your underwear (Underblogging?)
- Blogging in the winter (Toblogganing?)
- Elitist Bloggers (Snogs?)
- Racist Bloggers (KKKloggers?)
Ahhh forget it, its too early to try and be this funny.
Verisign in violation of Registry Agreement?
Yesterday, as Bret noted first, the IAB has responded to ICANN's earlier request regarding the technical legitimacy of Verisign's recent IDN "launch". As expected, the answer coming back from the IAB is hardly flattering to Verisign.
In reporting these developments, "The Register" asks "what, if any, powers ICANN has relating to this kind of service". The answer to this is actually quite clear. From a layman's perspective, if Verisign has violated the terms of their Registry Agreement with ICANN then ICANN can seek compliance of their agreement as per the terms of section II-14 of their agreement, take the dispute to arbitration per 11-15 or ultimately move to terminate the agreement per II-16.
The problem is that the IAB doesn't come out and say whether or not Verisign has violated the terms of their contract because this isn't within their purview. They have stated on what basis Verisign doesn't conform to the various relevant specifications, but the problem is that they aren't directly required to adhere to any of the relevant specifications that the IAB notes. According to Section 4 of Appendix C to the .com Registry Agreement between Verisign and ICANN, Verisign is only compelled to abide by the implications of RFC 1034, 1035 and 2182 in the operation of their names servers.
It gets more complicated from here. For instance, the IAB notes that Verisign is in violation of RFC 2308 which describes negative caching of DNS records. RFC 2308 updates RFC's 1034 and 1035, but it isn't clear whether this would count as a violation of Verisign's contract.
Further complicating the matter is Leslie Daigle's role as chair of the IAB. Rather than attempting to manage the conflict as The Register implies she is attempting to do, it would be completely appropriate, nay nessecary, that she publicly declares her conflict on this matter and steps aside for the purpose of this dispute if ICANN requires further involvement from the IAB. Without impugning her motives thus far, this is what she should have done in the first place.
Another brick in the [chinese] wall...
Bret notes that the folks over at GNR are taking things into their own hands. While I'm a strong believer in "what's good for the goose is good for the gander"; creating more registries possessed of more conflict of interest doesn't intuitively seem like a step in the right direction. Instead, ICANN needs to devote some of this energy towards the creation of net new registry operators and the registry operators needs to focus on upholding their contracts. In fact, new TLDs are almost secondary to this goal, although it only stands to reason that because there are limited opportunities for registry operators, that there will be a limited number of registry operators.
Of course, none of this even gets close to what many see as the central issue: the Registry/Registrar construct was implemented to ensure that the gTLD zones were indeed competitive and not controlled or unduly influenced by particular monopolies. PersonalNames should never have been accredited by ICANN in the first place unless it goes to further competition and increase diversity. This deal doesn't appear to do that.
There's another story here that no one is talking about either - what is it about the dotNAME opportunity that compels the folks at GNR to continue throwing money at the string? I'll give you a hint: its not about GNR management failing to recognize the size of their money pit (although that may yet prove to be the case), its about the behavior of the market. Customers are self-organizing in ways that very few people in the business understand or have even noticed. The typical gTLD registrar thinks that their organization is focusing on the big market opportunities. They haven't even recognized what these opportunities really are. Reminds me of the perennial favorite about the three blind men and the elephant.
Obdisclaimer: I work for a registrar, therefore my self-interest should be as plain as the nose on your face. Also note that I have a pretty good nose for what competition smells like ;)
January 27, 2003
Last Post
This is the very last post that I will be making to the Radio iteration of the blog. Over the next 72 hours, DNS will propagate the pointers to the new site, which is already up and running in a preliminary form. The URL for the new site will simply be http://www.byte.org. There's much housekeeping to do over coming weeks, but now is the time to get out of Radio and fully into the new content management system. There are a lot more details regarding this transition that can be found on this post at the new blog. Please note that the archives and RSS feeds will continue to work at the URLs that they should, but that they are, in the case of the RSS, obsoleted by feeds at the new site, and in the case of the archives, will be duplicated by archives that will be moved to the new installation. There are also more details regarding this on the new site.Todo
Make sure that you sync up the "Local Links" category in the right-nav and also include a self-apparent link back to the main page.
More Tweaks...
A lot more tweaks went in place today. In the process of working through a blog installed for internal use (reminder to self: make a corporate donation to MT.org) I uncovered a lot of tweaks that needed to be made to the default templates - far too many to enumerate here, but suffice to say, I think we're done with the tweaking of both.
This should put me in the position of doing the final few things that I need to do to take byte.org live under the new look and feel as well as cut-over the internal project to live this week as well. While the tool is definitely easier to use than Radio, I can't say that this is at the point where I'd want to allow my dad to use it yet - too many knobs to break off ;)
Lastly, I'm pleased to note that I've found a way to import all of my Radio items into MovableType. The problem is that I have to go "old skool" to do it: cut and paste. Needless to say I've got mixed feelings about this. On one hand it means that I can finally put to rest the question of where the content lives, on the other hand I've got 289 (according to Joe) entries to manually import and massage. Hat's off to the software architects that made this easy to do and raspberry's to those that didn't.
The Continuing Battle for the Living Room...
[Article via Tomalak's Realm] The Civil War Inside Sony. I get two things out of this story. a) Companies like Sony will have to realize that closed can't beat open. b) Open isn't nearly as beat up as RIAA driven reports would have one believe and c) that the multinationals are enaged in a very quiet but massive battle for the living room. Open will rule the living room - now which company is going to be Open's biggest supporter?
January 26, 2003
Sun, 26 Jan 2003 20:01:48 GMT
The prior three posts were actually leftovers from this past Friday that got stuck in the mailqueue for some reason. Yet another reason why I need to finish moving to MT.Sun, 26 Jan 2003 19:57:01 GMT
12:31pm - I have been on hold on my ISPs tech support line for 2 hours, 9 minutes and 38 seconds. I'm afraid to hang up and call back in case they are doing first come first served. Agh.Rebid the Registry Now.
RGP will be a test of how much competition we have with the TLD registries. If they all launch at or about the same price, we've got some serious problems with competition. If we don't see at least one that offers this at a substantial discount, the ICANN community needs to have a serious conversation about how we can quickly provide the market with some real choice.Rebid the Registry Now.
RGP will be a test of how much competition we have with the TLD registries. If they all launch at or about the same price, we've got some serious problems with competition. If we don't see at least one that offers this at a substantial discount, the ICANN community needs to have a serious conversation about how we can quickly provide the market with some real choice.January 24, 2003
On the third day of spam season, Verisign sent to me...
I rarely get mail at home. My wife does, I don't, that's just the way it is. Today is different though. I got mail delivered to the house to the attention of <A href="http://alex.grinberg.does-not-exist.org/">Alex Grinberg</A> from a company called "Network Solutions, A Verisign Company." Now I just need to find Alex so that we can open it together. More details tonight...On the third day of spam season, Verisign sent to me...
I rarely get mail at home. My wife does, I don't, that's just the way it is. Today is different though. I got mail delivered to the house to the attention of Alex Grinberg from a company called "Network Solutions, A Verisign Company." Now I just need to find Alex so that we can open it together. More details tonight...Fri, 24 Jan 2003 05:58:37 GMT
ahhh...its the email that I get that makes all of this so much fun. Scott swears that its spelled "knarley" and even funnier, I just had someone drop me a note asking me what a mock spammer was. *Ahem*. I was using it in a verb sense, not in the adjective sense. Made me laugh though. Scott also recommended that I cut back on the trolling a little bit (it sounded much more threatening when he said it...) which makes some sense - I do need some snooze.Remembrance of The Real Options Approach to Network-based Service Architecture
I met Mark the first time a few years back at a seminar that Lessig put together with some help from Red Hat and a few other organizations. The event was really my first exposure to what living in an e2e world meant. It was a rather heady event (I see stars) and I can still clearly hear Mark proudly describing his new paper to Denton, Isenberg, Auerbach and myself over dinner.Earlier this same evening I was exposed to the fact, for the first time, that Verisign might have to give up dotORG some day in order to keep what would ultimately be left of their monopoly. It didn't happen as quickly as was implied that night, but a few years later its nice to look back on the wisdom of that conversation with the knowledge that PIR is in place helping all of us make a new history that doesn't revolve around a monopoly.
January 23, 2003
You can tell its a slow day when...
I have nothing better to do than arrange fights between readers and mock spammers. Apparently there are two other people that read this blog as well - Scott, meet Joe. Joe, meet Scott. Joe and Scott, meet Dan and a bunch of Dan's co-workers. Scott - Dan thinks have no taste in blogs and Joe said he'd rough you up unless you lightened up...or something like that. I suppose that all of this is better than ranting about Radio.Thu, 23 Jan 2003 22:38:06 GMT
"The company is also reasonably certain that none of the e-mail addresses are confidential, but are instead those listed in the Whois database" More at The Register.Thu, 23 Jan 2003 22:34:36 GMT
Scott says my blog sucks and that no one reads it. thhppppt to Scottie-o.They should know better than to send a 2mb attachment...
Unbelievable...Eric Longman writes on Tucows reseller discussion list that "...at 6:47 this morning I got a 2MB email apparently from Network Solutions that contained nothing but a list of THOUSANDS of email addresses and the subject ".ORG Domain Name Update" More here.January 22, 2003
Wed, 22 Jan 2003 21:58:05 GMT
Wow - Radio really mangled that one eh? Sometimes its fun to chuck things into the radio-refinery via email and see what comes out - didn't expect that mess. I will fix it when I get home ;) [update: Fixed.]The New Network Solutions - still sends the same old spam...
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| If you haven't done business with Network Solutions lately, you may not know about all the changes we've made to make working with us easier.
Maybe you're familiar with the name. But while we started out as Network Solutions and were the first company to provide Internet domain names, we've evolved, as a division of VeriSign, to provide E-mail and Web site services as well. etc....etc....snip... Sincerely, John Donoghue | ||
January 21, 2003
Wed, 22 Jan 2003 04:28:06 GMT
At some point over the next two weeks I am going to be cutting over to MT and my new webhost. I'd like to time it as close to the end of the month to make navigation as straightforward as possible because it doesn't look like I will be able to properly convert my Radio content into MT content - something which still bugs me to no end, but I've got to give up on as simply being impractical at this point. Given that this weekend is really the last one of this month, I will probably try to make things happen this Sunday.
I'm not sure what the TTL on my DNS looks like, so I might be off the air for a while...c'est la vie - this isn't a mission critical resource, so I'm not going to sweat it. :)Its not Piracy if its been paid for...
Someone whom I would characterize as being a respectable, principled and honest person said something interesting to me today. Roughly paraphrased he said "I'd always been strongly opposed to piracy in any form for the obvious reasons until I realized that I've been paying for content that I've never bought through levies on the media that I buy."January 17, 2003
Hard stuff for smart people
This slashdot piece certainly reinforces what I was mentioning earlier this week. Surprise, surprise, more pleasant evidence that we haven't figured everything out yet. While breakthroughs of this nature are eminently predictable, they bode well for the future of wireless communications. We may not see innovation occur at the pace here that it has in the chip space, but any progress in areas such as these, the high-resistance areas I call them (just another way of saying "hard stuff that smart people still have to figure out"), have a profound influence on the applications we will be using tomorrow. And I look forward to that.
Some thoughts on "Commons assumptions"
via Doc, Arnold Kling states in an article that "If you want to overthrow incumbent publishers with Internet-based alternatives, you are better off starting from the assumption that Content is Crap" in reference to Dan Gillmor's enthusiasm for Creative Commons. "The economics of content are that most of the value-added comes from the filtering process, not the creation process." Kling says.
Doc notes that "much snot flung in the general direction of the old content companies" - which I suppose is what comes next from me in Arnold's direction :)
Kling is right in stating that there is a lot of crap out there, but he's mistaken in assuming that a lot of the value-add comes from the filtering exercise. The filtering exercise has only become a value-add exercise because of the crap that is being passed off as content. To be more precise Arnold, lets start off with the assumption that Crap can be Content. Which is a wonderfully compelling illustration of why Creative Commons is "a good thing" (or "productive" as Searls says). We're talking about my Crap here, and now I've got access to a license, a commons, that will provide others with an accessible opportunity to use my Crap in a manner that we can both agree on. And perhaps, just maybe, their use of my Crap will evolve my Crap into our Content - which could be re-licensed, reused, reissued and repurposed under Creative Commons for the benefit of those that appreciate the Content (or view it as more Crap). I guess what I'm getting at is that given enough eyeballs, filtering all crap becomes trivial.
Now get on with it.
Fri, 17 Jan 2003 06:47:48 GMT
via icann.blog, Sen. Burns "Tech Agenda" causes me some concern. Not only is it a no-win proposition as Brett points out, but it sounds more like something written by a hysteric. Whomever is paying the lobbyist that wrote this certainly got their money's worth. I just don't like the agenda.Good night...
...and good night. Dropped in a ton of small tweaks tonight. Still haven't really started messing with the real structure of the templates or the stylesheets - I'm still figuring out what I want to do with the site as far as look and feel is concerned.
I have decided however to keep as much of the content as possible within the content management system. It only makes sense. I can say that I'm quite surprised that things like blogrolling.com don't live inside MT (or at least, that someone hasn't developed a plug-in...at least one that I've seen ;)
I've also spent a little bit more money this time around. Convinced that this exercise needs to be as sane and reasonable as possible so as to ensure that I spent more time writing and thinking than I do maintaining, I'm looking for tools that assist me, rather than tools that sort of assist me that are free...
Anyways, it has been a good night, and with that, I bid you all a good night.
January 16, 2003
Scientists discover how embryo "catches" in womb
When I see news pieces like this I am always intrigued by the sheer number of things that we simply don't know anything about. Puts knowledge in context; even smart people don't know anything - relatively speaking.
Where's the beef?
I've been slowly but surely beefing up the MT installation over the last week, so I haven't had a chance to keep up with writing the blog as well. Hopefully over the next few days I can cut-over and get back to posting with some semblance of regularity. I'm still wishing that there was an easier way to do this...:)PlayStation 2 shipments top 50 million
PlayStation's are selling like gang-busters. So why are all of the console gamers that I talk to still getting turned on by the XBox? I can't remember the last time someone said "PS2" to me in a casual conversation.
January 15, 2003
Ringtone royalties top $71m
The Register reports that Ringtone royalties paid to songwriters topped $71m last year. Ummm. Wow. Gets me to thinking about how different things would have been if Napster and RIAA had been able to come to a friendly royalty agreement (or whomever would have had to be at the table to make it work out...)
Lazy is not the word.
Tima says that "Lazy is not the word." I'd tend to agree, but also add that "Web is not the word either". Its just a bad term altogether. Customers aren't lazy and its not about the web. Something that describes the interplay between developers and customers would be more interesting methinks...how about "Communication"? "Iterative Development"? "Demand Driven"?
On using plug-ins in the DNS...
Simon Higgs in response to Jeff Workman on NANOG:
">If it's *my* DNS server running on *my* equipment using *my* bandwidth,
>then I can do whatever I want to with it, right?
Good punt. But you're returning data owned elsewhere (like someone else's A
record). If you are responsible for returning accurate data to a public
audience, and it's not your data to alter, then you are liable for the
consequences. If you want to run a different .COM in private (i.e. no
public audience and no consequences), go right ahead."
Register.com: "It's a pie in the sky concept unlikely to get traction long term. I think anything that undermines the existing Internet is bad for consumers and the Internet as a whole. If it's able to extract value and doesn't hurt the overall Net, then that's fine, but anything that causes confusion for consumers we would (be unlikely to support)."
Verisign: "Our commitment is to the betterment of the system that 99.99 percent of Internet users use on a daily basis."
Of course all of these players are referring to the evil new.net.
Brett talks about IDNs again this week with an emphasis on the aggressiveness of Verisign's approach. D. Laine has a slightly different view.
My view on this particular point? Plug-in's are a terrible way to achieve world domination.
Last bit in the round-up, the registrars are in the process of electing someone to the president's standing committee on IDNs. Small problem though, the candidates are three North Americans, one of which is an IDN vendor.
January 14, 2003
Decisions, decisions.
Okee dokee...with a swift flick of the wrist, I think that I've got what I need to know for now about categories taken care of. Methinks that I've just made a decision to abandon the XP look and feel for this one...hmm...need sleep.Whats old is new and whats new is...broken?
Apparently I have no clue what the categories are for in the first damned place. agh. I do like the new style sheet however.Working on categories and general setup...
This doesn't seem to be that rough at first blush. I'm still peeved that Joe is having such a hard time getting the imports done, but I'm getting close to conceding that point. Philosophy is so hard to let go. sigh.Tue, 14 Jan 2003 18:00:47 GMT
Guy Kewney on Mira: "The worst problem is that you can have two displays, but you can only use one of them at a time. You can, for example, leave the standard PC on your desk, with a standard display; and then switch to the Smart Display and wander off downstairs with it. Now comes the crunch: you leave the portable thing in the kitchen, because Microsoft says it is just ideal for the cook of the family to have around while they work. Except; as long as the cook is using it, the machine upstairs is disabled. Equally, if you're using it upstairs, in the den, the cook can't get access to the network. The reason for this isn't complex: it's Microsoft's decision. It's a meaningless, bureaucratic, penny-pinching bit of customer-indifference which shows, more eloquently than any amount of court-room argument, why people fear a Microsoft monopoly. You may be paying a thousand bucks but you don't get a Windows licence with that.January 13, 2003
Tue, 14 Jan 2003 04:23:58 GMT
A reader points out that it is pretty easy to get content out of data using the backup facilities that exist within the configuration (both XML and HTML). I guess I shouldn't be so hard on Radio/Dave because the reader is right - it is easy to get data out of Radio. My problem is that there's nothing that will seem to take the data. The reader also points out that I can always just cut-over and leave the archives in static HTML. This has always been my last case option - I really want to keep the content in the content management system.As a sidenote, I never realized how testy I got when I've got a splitting headache. Little things like this shouldn't put me into rant mode. Something for next years resolution list I suppose.
Now lets figure out how Elliot can manage the entirety of his content inline and I can write off all of that last post.
(And lest you think that I'm just picking on Dave because I'm in the process of abandoning his software, I'm starting to piece together a whiney list of MT's deficiencies as well...static HTML? Feh.)Tue, 14 Jan 2003 01:35:16 GMT
John doesn't obviously have a clue how difficult it is to get *my data* out of Radio and into Movable Type. I don't want to rain on your parade Dave - you seem to be a decent guy and you've obviously earned the accolade, but I have a really serious problem with how closed Radio seems to be turning out to be. Of course, this could just turn out to be another wonderful example of a situation where a dumb user didn't read the well-written instructions. I'm not so sure myself.And while we're dwelling on the subject of complexity, why is it that the blogmakers only make it easy to manage the substance of the blog and not the form? Elliot is trying to get a blog up and running and he very succintly illustrated to me why blogs are falling short of their promise - he can't easily add links to his templates. If he wants to make this happen, he has to edit HTML or figure out how to get his templates into an HTML editor without wrecking the content tags. This is too complex for users.
Jon, by way of Doc, notes that "The two-way Web is being printed on HTML pages, distributed over the RSS network, and woven together with links. " but that he has concerns "...that we'll get hung up once again on applications and protocols, and miss the big picture. Ultimately, it's not about RSS any more than it was about NNTP." He goes on to say that "It's about the evolution of our species toward shared consciousness. When I started tinkering with the then-new Radio UserLand 8, about a year ago, I got fired up again with the vision that had inspired my book. I saw, in the emerging blogosphere, a next opportunity to reach critical mass -- by which I mean a world in which transparency and information-sharing are the rule rather than the exception."
Jon is a little bit more exuberant concerning where this is going than I am. A world in which transparency and information-sharing are the rule rather than the exception requires a world that is willing to be transparent and emphasises the importance of sharing information. This isn't the blogosphere. Don't get me wrong, the blogkeepers want to share and the blogmakers talk a good game, but the reality of the situation is much different. This isn't the blogosphere until I can migrate from Radio to Movable Type and Elliot can easily add links to his templates without either of us pulling out our hair (or each others for that matter....)
I'm not sure if this is a rant fulfilled or notes for a longer story. I'll see how cynical I'm feeling in the morning.
January 12, 2003
<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=562&ncid=738&e=6&u=/ap/20030112/ap_on_hi_te/verisign_s_woes">Stratton on Internet Fashions...</a>
<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=562&ncid=738&e=6&u=/ap/20030112/ap_on_hi_te/verisign_s_woes">Stratton on Internet Fashions...</a>January 10, 2003
Squats of the Day
Seems that some people just haven't figured things out... EMAILFROMNETWORKSOLUTIONS.COM NETWORKSOLUTIONSEMAIL.COM NEWNETWORKSOLUTIONS.COM NEWNETWORKSOLUTIONS.NET NEWNETWORKSOLUTIONS.ORG etc...[Update: I really should start doing whois lookups on these things before I post them. In this particular case, these are all owned by Verisign or Verisign employee's. So I suppose that people have figured things out (like don't leave obvious squats out there for registration if you are paranoid about your brand...) - I'll stop now. Waiting for the other half of my fishing trip to show up.]
The dry side of the ice...
Great - I'm goin' ice fishin' and it looks like there are more people in the water than there are fish. Almost looks like it might be a better weekend to sit inside and talk about fishing than it would be to actually go fishing. Especially if that means fishing each other out of the water.MT 0, Me 1
In setting up the new blog, I've been pleasantly surprised quite a few times. There is still far too much complexity in their system, but the positive results have thus far exceeded any obstacles that I've run into (Joe would have a substantially different opinion I fear - perhaps it is more of a pleasure working with Joe than it is working with MT ;) One thing that I have discovered is the wicked combination that Newzcrawler's Aggregator is when combined with the Newzcrawler Blog Client, MT's XML-RPC interface and MT itself. This is exactly what I wanted from a blog refinery in the first place. Data goes in, content comes out. MT has thus far left me with the feeling that I've been doing something productive, whereas Radio always left me feeling like I was tinkering around with something until it worked.
Fri, 10 Jan 2003 14:55:36 GMT
A Wiltshire dad, "Children need to be force fed standards, they need to be made to do right." What, does this guy work for Sony?Fri, 10 Jan 2003 13:05:03 GMT
I'm off on an ice-fishing trip this weekend and I'm reminded of this quote..."Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man to create an artificial shortage of fish and he will eat steak." - Jay LenoWhich is probably exactly what we will be doing ";->"
Fri, 10 Jan 2003 05:00:47 GMT
Looks like Apple figured it out - even without announcing an eyePod. Autodiscovery even. Drool.January 09, 2003
Where are the Layer 7 Guys ’n Gals?
Stuart Lynn: "...potential problems [with IDNA] cannot be solved at the protocol level; they must instead be addressed by registries in their technical implementations and registration policies. Because these problems are common to all DNS registries that choose to implement IDNA, it is essential to have a global forum for registry-level dialogue, consultation, and exchange of information, open to the registries, registrars, and technical experts closest to the issue."IETF IDNA Draft: "IDNA depends on updates to user applications only; no changes are needed to the DNS protocol or any DNS servers or the resolvers on user's computers."
Rader: "I'm praying that somewhere in the IDN Implementation Group room is made for the application developers that will need to make the changes. The DNS world isn't just "Registries", "Registrars" and "Users". This is why an Infrastructure Services Provider Constituency is sooo important to the development of reasonable policy within ICANN. Without it, the entire range of problems can't be explored and solved." Sidenote: I'm heartened to see that steps are being taken to grab this bull by the horns. I can't stress enough (as I tried to earlier this week) how disastrous this could become if an appropriate administrative framework isn't put into place.Thu, 09 Jan 2003 16:38:36 GMT
BTW - if things are flaky, its because I am migrating to a new colo and new software. Things are going to be upside down for about a week I figure.Thu, 09 Jan 2003 13:48:57 GMT
Nice, but its not addressable. Make it addressable and toss in a Wi-Fi card. Please?Secure before internet...
Sclavos: "The bigger concern is whether the open Internet allows someone into a network that is less resilient--into a power grid, for example, or into a water treatment plant. Because the Internet now has an open connection, and somehow you can figure out a way to get into that other network that was thought to be secure before. That's where the greater risk is. It' s not the Internet itself, but to what the Internet now allows access. "
Frankston: "Naive models of trust have not only festered but have become endemic. Simple (minded) file sharing has an us/them model with the assumption that them is still us. Microsoft's Trust model and Verisign's certification give me a Hobson's choice of 100% trust or 0% trust. I can't have qualified trust which might allow a program to help me edit a picture but not run rampant through my file system. This naive model of trust is endemic throughout Microsoft's systems. Microsoft is far from alone in this naiveté. Identifying someone as a spammer is little different -- I might want the catalog that you consider junk. This is a complex topic in its own right and I will write about this in more length. There are many related issues including confusing identity with certification. "
January 08, 2003
Surprised that this hasn't been
Surprised that this hasn't been blogged yet - I just noticed tonight myself. For the first time, <a href="http://www.icann.org/registrars/ra-agreement-17may01.htm">the *entire* ICANN Registrar Accreditation Agreement is online</a> for review. Previously, the various appendices had not been accessible.Thu, 09 Jan 2003 03:07:53 GMT
Surprised that this hasn't been blogged yet - I just noticed tonight myself. For the first time, the *entire* ICANN Registrar Accreditation Agreement is online for review. Previously, the various appendices had not been accessible.Thu, 09 Jan 2003 01:31:23 GMT
Bob explains why I'm dumping Radio and moving what's left of my home area network to Los Angeles from Toronto. I tried to explain this to Elliot earlier this week in much different words - I'm glad that Bob has taken the time to put substance to my objections. The analogy that I was using for Elliot was that running internet services from home was sort of like trying to manage eight remote controls. Even with a universal remote, it is confusing, none of the real potential is tapped and 90% of the interactions between the application and the user are frustrating.January 07, 2003
Me hating Radio.
I've reached that critical intercept on the "Happy With Radio" graph where the diminishing productivity curve meets the increasing problem curve. Rather than ranting about it, I leave you with the insightful comments of a few other victims of technology."When PCs run new applications successfully, most people feel relief and almost pathetic gratitude - a standard of reliability tolerated in no other consumer product. " - Source Unknown
"There is only one satisfying way to boot a computer." - J.H. Goldfuss
"While modern technology has given people powerful new communication tools, it apparently can do nothing to alter the fact that many people have nothing useful to say." - Lee Gomes
"Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other." - C. P. SnowTue, 07 Jan 2003 23:26:53 GMT
I try and keep my nose out of local issues when it comes to the ccTLDs (except for the one belonging to my great country of Canada), so don't take this comment as anything but an excerpt that resonates with me for reasons other than those which Nominet intended. Anyways, in their filing, they state that "Since the majority of ccTLD managers are not "natural persons", but rather corporations, associations or some other form of legal entity, the ccNSO members should be these legal entitites."(sic) The point that resonates here is that company's can and should be members of the various elements of ICANN. This is something that I've long believed that needs greater emphasis at the constituency level. I mean, when someone is appointed to a Task Force, gets elected to a committee or even gets up and speaks, it, all too often, isn't clear on who is standing in front of you - the corporation, or the individual. I'd like to see some constituencies pick up the ball and write in some rules that give greater credence to the "corporation as member" concept.Tue, 07 Jan 2003 18:58:05 GMT
A Call for CIRA Reform. Tim Denton has posted a memo that was recently distributed to dotCA registrars, the registration authority's board of directors, and Canadian government officials. On a number of points, this document calls for what can only be dubbed "CIRA Reform". As Tim puts it on his homepage, "After a year of operation, and measurable progress and improvement, I am calling for both the Board of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), together with the federal government, to review how CIRA is working in the public interest. Issues to be examined include:- opening the policy process to public participation
- the role of corporation law in the functioning of CIRA
- whether other registry models should be examined
- dealing with monopoly rents from registry operations
- role of appointing organizations
- registrar-registry relations and efficiency of business processes"
January 06, 2003
VGRS not the only one mucking up IDNs
As I mentioned earlier this week, there is a lot more to be said about Verisign's IDN initiative. There are severe problems with IDNs but, VGRS isn’t solely to blame.As Dr. Tan Tin Wee points out, the IETF hasn't been quick in coming to consensus on the technical issues and that no workable model of administration has emerged from ICANN. There can be no doubt that the IETF won't eventually come to settlement on the technical issues - they don't like failure and are far too smart to let things get that far. But what they deliver won't give the community the full package of goods needed to deploy IDNs. The implications of the technology will need to be fully understood before it can be implemented to any appreciable degree. This implies, as Tin Wee notes, that a workable model of administration and attendant policies are just as critical to a successful deployment as the technical aspects. This aren't aftermarket parts that we can simply install later. These are critical aspects of the total solution that we need now - before more rogue "testbeds" further complicate the issues.
The Verisign IDN roll-out got a lot of attention - ICANN issued an advisory noting that they had received "expressions of concern", press reports started to surface (I got dubbed as a "pundit") and the pot generally started to boil over. These events don't fundamentally change anything - action still needs to be taken, there are still problems to solve.
What is clear is that without an appropriate administrative framework and clear policy, Registry Operators will continue to develop and deploy IDNs into the zones according to what best suits their interest – not necessarily those of the community. This isn't an indictment, but rather an acknowledgement of the natural tendency of corporations. In the case of the DNS, the registry operators received their delegations with the implication that they would operate the zone in the interests of the community. Somewhere along the way, this condition has been watered down, or at the very least, conveniently ignored.
Paul Hoffman is getting close to the right idea when he advocates that ICANN needs to “demand that VGRS immediately stop [the IDN trial in its current form]. If VGRS refuses, that ICANN should re-delegate the .com and .net zones to registries that are more willing to follow the DNS standards.”
There’s a small problem with this though. Verisign has no obligation to follow the suggestions of the the IETF (surprise, RFCs aren’t binding) and there isn’t a clear ICANN policy in place for the registry operators to atorn to. Fixing the problem is simple. ICANN needs new policy and the IETF needs to finish up their work on IDNs (as they inevitably would anyways.)
ICANN has issued an advisory and started asking questions of the technical community in response to Hoffman’s inquiry, but there is no indication that they are going to put their foot down. Further, the historical absence of activity from ICANN’s IDN Task Force continues. This is the group that is supposed to be making policy recommendations to the Names Council for consideration and possible adoption as policy. Even the Board IDN Committee, which is clearly chartered to deal with the issue, has been silent for quite some time. While there may be quiet work going on behind the scenes, ICANN is not publicly conveying strong signals that they are willing to take a progressive stance on this issue.
The logical proposal to proceed is quite simple. ICANN needs to call upon the community for proposals, synthesize the responses into a coherent statement of consensus policy and amend the contracts in such a way that the results become binding upon those that have been tasked to operate the zones.
I might even be talked into writing a proposal for consideration.Tue, 07 Jan 2003 01:23:33 GMT
ROTD: Now that Verisign has cleaned up their house brandwise with the re-re-re-renaming of their registrar division, it looks like they might be branching out into other interesting areas...VERISIGNCARS.COM
Mon, 06 Jan 2003 20:26:23 GMT
Please mark this day on your calendar as the day that I officially became a pundit. Too cool. Thanks to Kevin for the promotion and Brett for the pointer ;)Mon, 06 Jan 2003 13:20:25 GMT
Hmmm...'The Computer Dealers Exposition' - Comdex is pretty much done as of their last show by most accounts, but the 'Consumer Electronics Show' - CES is picking up steam? More evidence that there is something of Mooresian proportions going on here.Mon, 06 Jan 2003 13:20:24 GMT
Ill fares the land, to hast'ning ill a prey,Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;
Princes and Lords may flourish, or may fade:
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
but a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.
- Oliver Goldsmith
January 05, 2003
King of the Home Network
If Apple does unveil a "Video iPod", they are going to need some serious traction in the marketplace (Aside: They are also going to need a name for it, I'm pushing for "eyePod" - get it?). Consumers don't really take TV with them anywhere now...they simply show up at their destination and the content they crave is already there waiting for them - well some content anyways. I wasn't able to watch Survivor or The Amazing Race while I was in Europe recently - I could only get the content that the hotel subscribed to on my behalf and only in real-time (no going back in time to catch up on something I missed). If Apple is progressive with this one, they have a tremendous opportunity to get some traction for their product before the wannabe's hit the street. All they need to do is make it open enough to allow it to talk back and forth with TiVO and similar devices - heck, make it open enough that others can write applications that leverage the video capabilities of the device.An open device with capabilities like this would cause a small, but important shift in how people deal with video content (ie - television, movies, etc.) For instance, how many people would start using this as a way to catch up on their favorite television program(s) while sitting on the subway or during their lunch hour or while walking the dog or....
We would also need a new term to describe the behavior: "Space-timeshifting"
There are some neat things that can be done to increase the utility in this context as well - for instance the Personal Shopping Assistant. In the context of this device, video on demand becomes possible because of the ubiquity and capacity that a "close-area" high-speed 802.11 network can provide, coupled with the lower throughput demands that come with smaller files designed for smaller screens. Imagine a nice little network running in the department store that streams video to one of these devices wirelessly based on the RFID data the network is receiving from the interaction between the unit and the customer. Personal Tour Guide? Same network infrastructure, slightly different application. The list goes on and on and interestingly, at least in my conception, it really only depends on Television (the industry) for the short-term to spur adoption. Once people have these things, different applications will be built for them that don't appreciably include a force-fed diet determined by the studio execs.
Interestingly, this is where lines that defines the differences between the various devices that we carry around starts to blur even further. What's to stop the audio and/or video iPods from becoming PDAs or phones or even what would stop these devices from adoption video the same way they are adopting MP3. More importantly, every home is going to need a device that keeps track of the to and fro on the home network. Home users don't really want to manage a network to the same degree that a corporate IT department does. Home users simply want to make sure that they've properly space-timeshifted "Survivor" so that they can watch it on the train on the way to the office. They want to make sure that their copy of the Wall Street Journal is dropped on to their Audible-ready device so that they can listen to it at the gym. They want to make sure that the MP3s that they ripped from their newest addition to their CD collection is just as accessible from the car as it is from their home workstation.
But, the big question still hasn't been answered - whose technology will coordinate these devices on the household area network (HAN)? Microsoft would like to see their Xbox pick up this honor, Sony would similarly prefer the PS2. It seems unlikely that these two giants are simply battling it out for console supremacy - it looks a lot more like a battle for control of the "home network furnace". Why else would these giants continue to invest so heavily into such a highly competitive space that doesn't directly hold a lot of upside. While these two titans are tackling each other head on, Intel has very quietly, but convincingly, further entrenched the home computer as this device.
A lot of people don't realize this, but Intel invented USB. Intel also opened up the USB spec so that anyone can implement it. As a result, the technology is supported by hundreds, if not thousands of manufacturers. This ensures that all devices that need to communicate with a centralized computing device can. By ensuring that a broad range of consumer devices can talk to the Intel chipsets easily and efficiently, Intel has given itself a tremendous chance to capitalize on the market's desire for a simple, coordinated household area network. Until the Xbox or PS2 can effectively communicate with the broad range of devices that Intel has brought together with USB, neither product can convincingly replace the Intel desktop and earn their spot on the throne as the 'King of the Home Network'.
--
At some point I should get some thoughts together that describes why HANs will prove disastrous for .Net and Passport....Sun, 05 Jan 2003 14:33:36 GMT
Obviously that's one way to spam Google's index...now if they could just figure out how to make these pages link to one another, they might be able to improve that ranking.January 04, 2003
Sun, 05 Jan 2003 04:48:26 GMT
Geeky Project Notes is online...I'll work on the form more over the next few weeks and get the standard navigation and branding settled out, but this will have to do for now - I can't stop yawning ;) The substance will also evolve as my thinking on the various topics evolve as well...Moving Radio went without a hitch as well - I think this is a much better solution than having it installed on my laptop. Now I can post from anywhere via email or through the console as well. This gives me the same flexibility that I had before, but with the added convenience of being able to fix posts after hitting send as well.
Now if I can just figure out the few final formatting glitches that Radio forces on me, I think I'll be set...Sun, 05 Jan 2003 03:59:37 GMT
test via remote access - this should work with no problems - thanks for the motivation Brett. :)Sun, 05 Jan 2003 02:49:50 GMT
ROTD: This just in from Joe... ALLOFTHEGOODDOTCOMNAMESAREGONESOIHADTOTAKETHISONE.COM ...and now they officially are I suppose...Sat, 04 Jan 2003 19:56:54 GMT
I don't really like Technorati - mainly because it works quite well. While it does a great job of illustrating the blog cosmos, it does an even better job of making me feel like I'm off in my own universe. But, it also told me this morning that (amongst other bits of gossip) Mark McFadden has started a blog. This is cool - Mark is one of the people I met through ICANN circles. He's a neat guy with a good sense of humor - you can already see traces of it through the beginnings of his blog. Hopefully he carries on with it past Radio's 30 day freebie. Some blog notes - I've decided to add two new experimental sections to the blog - one will act as a diary for my photographic experiments and the other will be a running geek "to-do" list. I've been thinking that using the outliner would be a really neat way to collate my mental plans with the online resources that make them work...it'll make more sense when you see it. Lastly, I'm changing Radio homes this weekend as well. If you notice anything weird, drop me an email and I'll try to fix it as quickly as I can wrap my head around it.January 03, 2003
Jones Day Complicit in DirectTV Hacking Scandal
Well, not really, but the accused allegedly worked for a scanning shop on JDRP premises and scooped the IP as it came through his office...more here.Fri, 03 Jan 2003 20:21:20 GMT
....and it simply uses http redirects like 90% of retail domain resellers, and it uses the "frame trick" and the redirect engine is written in PERL - if you don't use the plug-in. And, it eats non-http requests and pretends that Verisign's webfarm @ 198.41.1.35 is authoritative, when it is most definitely not.I knew this solution was coming down the pipe, so why do I suddenly feel ripped off by the internet? Before today, some things, like the DNS, had almost magical qualities. Today I feel like we've looked behind the curtain and only found that the wizard is out to lunch.
Fri, 03 Jan 2003 20:13:10 GMT
As Brett points out, VGRS starts resolving IDN's effective today - sort of. What they are in fact doing is providing responses instead of error messages to certain types of queries for a specific protocol. Translation: They are sort of providing IDN in the DNS for web-only traffic. It’s a hack of roughly the same complexity as the search function built-in to IE or the former Realnames implementation. While there are obvious technical differences between these three approaches, they are all based in and around the same cruft. I don't like this - resolution needs to work across the entire protocol-space, or it doesn't really resolve much now does it. Effective today, this is no longer true in a hugely broken and irresponsible way. Please mark this on your calendar as the day that internet marketers officially won out over internet technologists. The loser here is, again, the internet user. There is a better solution here that no one is talking about. Take IDNs away from the gTLD-space and allow them to be run along cultural/national lines a la the ccTLDs. My naïve understanding of the technology leads me to believe that this is the only way that we can avoid the technical, economic and political pitfalls that have plagued the development and rollout of IDN technology since it was first conceived. I'll describe more later tonight - in the meantime, I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out a) what I'm getting at and b) whether or not ICANN would have the chutzpah to make it happen. Hint: This is largely a social solution that is currently being dealt with, inappropriately, by the IETF. Of course, the IETF is increasingly dealing with social isssues that ICANN simply won't - makes me wonder who is really calling the shots nowadays - perhaps more on that later as well.... [ObDisclaimer: I work for Tucows, Tucows sells and supports VGRS IDNs, I'm not involved in Tucows IDN initiatives, but I do work in policyspace on IDN issues. None of this is Tucows officialspeak per the standing disclaimer at the bottom of this page that applies to all of the content here.]January 02, 2003
Fri, 03 Jan 2003 04:49:28 GMT
Wow, that was quick. In about ten minutes I not only got a hostname for my desktop, I also managed to set up the software and resolve http requests directly to the Nomad. I'm getting kind of sleepy right now, but I will be sure to post complete instructions etc. in the AM. I'm quite excited because not only does this mean that my CD collection is now available world-wide (to myself thank you very much), it also means that I will be able to fairly easily get Radio running at home again and take advantage of the remote console features finally - spelling mistakes begone! ;)Fri, 03 Jan 2003 04:48:18 GMT
As further conflict in Iraq seems unavoidable (the questions now seem not to be "yea" or "nay", but rather, "to what extent" and "how soon"...) the Bush administration should take a few of these last pre-conflict minutes to consider these thoughts... "Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. " - Sir Winston ChurchillFri, 03 Jan 2003 03:58:08 GMT
Some neat date tricks going on today... For instance, the clock read 01/02/03 01:02:03 early this morning...1/2/03 12:03 also jumps to mind. Off to plug my jukebox into the web...I'll report back in a few hours. WeatherWatch; 9 stories up, the snowstorm is bad enough that I can't see the ground.Thu, 02 Jan 2003 22:09:02 GMT
I hadn't realized how much Google is shaping the way that we navigate the web until I realized a few weeks back that it was a much better (read: faster) way of finding dinner candidates at my favorite recipe site - neat. If you care, I went with this one.Thu, 02 Jan 2003 21:18:03 GMT
I'd meant to drop a link to this worthwhile effort many moons ago and then forgot about it. Don't ask me what googlisms brought me back there this afternoon...
...because I'm not
talking :)