Month: March 2004

be careful what you ask for

John over at inluminent was wondering about the proposed benefits of Longhorn and WinFS, the datastore that is slated to to replace filesystems, as we know them, with a database.

I’m skeptical of anything that abstracts away files and replaces them with SQL queries. That just seems like a potentially brittle solution.

If you just need to index and query some on-disk repository, try this: Nav4 Search Engine Patch Kit – Think Tank 23 Contextual Navigation Solutions.

If Googling your email is what you fancy, try Zoë. Runs everywhere Java does (OS X, Windows, linux, FreeBSD . . . ) and does more than I can explain here.

And in the time it takes for Longhorn to lurch into existence, even with the full understanding that bits and pieces will ship early, expect other solutions to emerge.

evolution

Wired 12.03: Some Like It Hot:

If piracy means using the creative property of others without their permission, then the history of the content industry is a history of piracy. Every important sector of big media today – film, music, radio, and cable TV – was born of a kind of piracy. The consistent story is how each generation welcomes the pirates from the last. Each generation – until now.

Interesting. Haven’t read the book yet, but it will be worth reading to learn more about how the media companies are so outraged by someone doing to them what they did to others. It seems to me the big media companies of today — Time Warner, CBS, Disney — go back far enough to have profited from one or more of these waves of change. Now they shocked, shocked to learn there’s copyright infringement going on . . . .

the politics of software

ongoing — The Last Emperor:
Tim Bray notes some conflicting ideas about Open Source as a business proposition and, as excerpted below, a political statement . . .

Choosing software is not a neutral act. It must be done consciously; the debate over free and proprietary software can’t be limited to the differences in the applications’ features and ergonomics. To choose an operating system, or software, or network architecture is to choose a kind of society. We can no longer pretend that free and commercial software, or Internet standards and protocols, are just tools. We have to admit at least that they are political tools. After all, fire and the printing press are ‘just tools.’

Part of that political decision-making goes to how much control and authority you want to keep and how much you’re willing to cede to a vendor. Defining capacity, performance, and stability/maintainability are all very well, but there are intangibles to consider as well. As people are finding with the perpetual virus/worm threats, instability, and lack of choice with the Leading Brand, maybe they can decide where they want to go today by themselves.

blame the victim

SecurityFocus HOME Columnists: Faith No More:

Microsoft is making great strides toward product security, and I’m proud to be part of the movement. But now it is time to fully commit to security by stopping support for products that can’t be secured. If clients are still using Windows 9x along with the associated legacy support software, it should be a pretty good indication that they are not really interested in paying for decent software security.

Maybe they think they already paid for it and don’t see why they should pay for their vendor not doing it right the first time . . .

And the notion that it’s only the older versions (WIN9x) that are unsecureable is laughable. We see exploits against the newer, more secure versions as well. Great strides, indeed . . .

Iraqi Freedom . . . from what?

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: February 29, 2004 – March 06, 2004 Archives:

So, to get a feel for the impact of these attacks on the country, the number of people who lost loved ones, know others who did, and so forth, multiply that death toll by 11 or 12 times in order to get a feel for the number in American terms.

A good ballpark point of comparison is what it would be like to have around 2000 people killed in one day in this country. And, of course, that’s not that different from the 3000 who were killed here on September 11th.

So multiply each victim of the current instability by 10 or so to get a sense of how painful their liberation is proving to be. And picture how it would play out in domestic newspapers, to have 2-3,000 worshippers killed in places of worship on a religious holiday.

men of the cloth, but not blended

BLB Versions Lev 19:

“neither shall there come upon on you a garment made of two kinds of material.”

Now that literal interpretations of holy writ are being discussed more widely, isn’t it time we addressed the evils of permanent press fabrics and other blends? As Leviticus 19:19 shows, wearing blended fabrics — along with sowing with mixed seeds (so much for that wildflower mixture we see along the nation’s highways) and cross-breeding animals (so much for the humble mule) — is an affront.

Apparently, there’s more sin hidden in the nation’s closets than we realized . . .

dilemma

So how to make use of the the CD settlement checks we’re all getting? (You did get yours, right?)

Some folks are putting their money where their beliefs are: they’re signing them over to Creative Commons or the EFF.

I decided to take a different approach and find some way to reward good behavior: I bought a $15 iTunes Music Store prepaid card at my local Target. Selfish? Maybe. But I want to see an experiment like this work for everyone: the artists, the fans, even the greedy music cartel.

Of course, I can’t even figure out what I want to buy, now that I have some money to spend.