The real-time collaboration in Croquet is cool. It provides a very different way of structuring applications that will allow things that nothing else can. The croquet team is working hard on this aspect. But we’re just begining to consider the implications of shared persistence. I think this is just as radical in itself, and will inspire truly extroadinary software when combined with Croquet’s other aspects.
Month: November 2004
TotSF: Industry Mobilizes to Stop Philly WiFi
Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! As recorded in this article about last night’s community meeting in Philly, Verizon has mobilized to squash municipal wifi in Pennsylvania. This little gem, called House Bill 30, is a classic: it provides huge new public subsidies for Verizon while squeezing out competitors. My analysis below.
Eclipse Laszlo plug-in from IBM
Last October, Laszlo Systems announced that they were opening up their rich client technology and making it available for free download from Open Laszlo .org.
Today, IBM’s Emerging Technology group released an Eclipse plug-in for Laszlo. You can grab it from their alphaWorks
site.
TotSF: Public Knowledge Action Alert on IP bills
I’m republishing below the action alert from Public Knowledge on the latest intellectual property hijinks in Congress.
Stay tuned . . . .
Total Government Awareness going the way of John Ashcroft?
A long time ago, I think I mentioned in a comment to something that there was a project at the MIT Media Lab to keep a database of uncorroborated information about government officials, analogous to Ashcroft and Poindexter’s “Total Information Awareness” monstrosity.
The project had been written up in several places, including Wired and slashdot, but now it seems to have shut down.
Why? Lack of interest (we get the government we deserve), or were they shut down? I have no idea.
The TIA project (ephemistically renamed “Terorist Information Awareness”) seems to have disappeared from the DARPA site, too. Does that mean it has been abandoned, or just gone silent.
TotSF: The Wireless Circle Jerk
Sascha Meinrath has this blog posting on how Motorola’s acquisition of MeshNetworks is a prime example of corporate welfare gone wild. Of course, in D.C., we call this “the circle of life”. Taxpayers, however, may see it as the Circle of Jerk.
It is unclear to me if Motorola, one of the fiercest foes of expanding unlicensed access, is simply trying to take out a competitor or hedge a bet. I do not expect their filings to change — in fact,I expect them to leverage MeshNetworks as a means of undermining manufacturing comments from folks like Tropos. OTOH, FCC staff are not stupid, and understand how industry filings work.
Stay tuned . . .
TotSF: I agree with the American Conservative Union
Well, on one thing anyway. ACU — one of the backbones of the conservative movement, is opposing attempts by Congress to pass yet another stupid bill on copyright enforcement. Details in this Wired article. The quote that caught my eye was:
“’It’s just plain wrong to make the Department of Justice Hollywood’s law firm,’ said Stacie Rumenap, ACU’s deputy director.”
Couldn’t agree with them more.
Stay tuned . . .
TotSF: Speaking in Philly
I will be speaking tomorrow night (Wed. Nov. 17) at a community forum organized by Media Tank on the Phildelphia proposed municple wifi project and why it is cool. Not surprisingly, Comcast and other local incumbents are mobilizing to pounce upon the proposal like my cat Quantum on a lame sparrow — but with much less respect for the sanctity of life than Quantum usually shows. At least Comcast is unlikely to stuff the corpse in the vents between the walls of my house, so that when I try to sell it the inspector discovers a grave yard of bloated, dead municple infrastructure projects. Hmm… I think that analogy went on a bit too long. (Becky, please provide a link in the comments to a suitable picture of Quantum, preferably pouncing on a municiple wifi project in our computer room).
Stay tuned …
TotSF: A modest fling of Theses
Just got back from Adam’s event at DNC. Not a bad beginning, but if this is gonna move to a real movement within the DNC it needs to energize itself ASAP.
our computer is gross
Our home desktop Windows machine is used only by my wife and two pre-teen girls. We’ve been infected by some crapware lately and I tried to clean it up. In addition to the stuff visible on the hard disk, there’s this thing called the Windows registry. This is is used for all sorts of nefarious purposes, such as boot-time start-up of programs that you never heard of and don’t want running on your machine. I couldn’t believe what I found in there.
I did this:
start->run
(and then type)
regedit
(In the regedit menus do:)
edit->find
(and type)
fuck
(or erotic, or anything else you’d be surprised to find on your computer).
I feel so violated.
-
TotSF: Industry Mobilizes to Stop Philly WiFi
Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! As recorded in this article about last night’s community meeting in Philly, Verizon has mobilized to squash municipal wifi in Pennsylvania. This little gem, called House Bill 30, is a classic: it provides huge new public subsidies for Verizon while squeezing out competitors. My analysis below.
Eclipse Laszlo plug-in from IBM
Last October, Laszlo Systems announced that they were opening up their rich client technology and making it available for free download from Open Laszlo .org.
Today, IBM’s Emerging Technology group released an Eclipse plug-in for Laszlo. You can grab it from their alphaWorks
site.
TotSF: Public Knowledge Action Alert on IP bills
I’m republishing below the action alert from Public Knowledge on the latest intellectual property hijinks in Congress.
Stay tuned . . . .
Total Government Awareness going the way of John Ashcroft?
A long time ago, I think I mentioned in a comment to something that there was a project at the MIT Media Lab to keep a database of uncorroborated information about government officials, analogous to Ashcroft and Poindexter’s “Total Information Awareness” monstrosity.
The project had been written up in several places, including Wired and slashdot, but now it seems to have shut down.
Why? Lack of interest (we get the government we deserve), or were they shut down? I have no idea.
The TIA project (ephemistically renamed “Terorist Information Awareness”) seems to have disappeared from the DARPA site, too. Does that mean it has been abandoned, or just gone silent.
TotSF: The Wireless Circle Jerk
Sascha Meinrath has this blog posting on how Motorola’s acquisition of MeshNetworks is a prime example of corporate welfare gone wild. Of course, in D.C., we call this “the circle of life”. Taxpayers, however, may see it as the Circle of Jerk.
It is unclear to me if Motorola, one of the fiercest foes of expanding unlicensed access, is simply trying to take out a competitor or hedge a bet. I do not expect their filings to change — in fact,I expect them to leverage MeshNetworks as a means of undermining manufacturing comments from folks like Tropos. OTOH, FCC staff are not stupid, and understand how industry filings work.
Stay tuned . . .
TotSF: I agree with the American Conservative Union
Well, on one thing anyway. ACU — one of the backbones of the conservative movement, is opposing attempts by Congress to pass yet another stupid bill on copyright enforcement. Details in this Wired article. The quote that caught my eye was:
“’It’s just plain wrong to make the Department of Justice Hollywood’s law firm,’ said Stacie Rumenap, ACU’s deputy director.”
Couldn’t agree with them more.
Stay tuned . . .
TotSF: Speaking in Philly
I will be speaking tomorrow night (Wed. Nov. 17) at a community forum organized by Media Tank on the Phildelphia proposed municple wifi project and why it is cool. Not surprisingly, Comcast and other local incumbents are mobilizing to pounce upon the proposal like my cat Quantum on a lame sparrow — but with much less respect for the sanctity of life than Quantum usually shows. At least Comcast is unlikely to stuff the corpse in the vents between the walls of my house, so that when I try to sell it the inspector discovers a grave yard of bloated, dead municple infrastructure projects. Hmm… I think that analogy went on a bit too long. (Becky, please provide a link in the comments to a suitable picture of Quantum, preferably pouncing on a municiple wifi project in our computer room).
Stay tuned …
TotSF: A modest fling of Theses
Just got back from Adam’s event at DNC. Not a bad beginning, but if this is gonna move to a real movement within the DNC it needs to energize itself ASAP.
our computer is gross
Our home desktop Windows machine is used only by my wife and two pre-teen girls. We’ve been infected by some crapware lately and I tried to clean it up. In addition to the stuff visible on the hard disk, there’s this thing called the Windows registry. This is is used for all sorts of nefarious purposes, such as boot-time start-up of programs that you never heard of and don’t want running on your machine. I couldn’t believe what I found in there.
I did this:
start->run
(and then type)
regedit
(In the regedit menus do:)
edit->find
(and type)
fuck
(or erotic, or anything else you’d be surprised to find on your computer).
I feel so violated.