Category: observations

Don Park’s Blog

This is very energetic thread: this comment opens things up in a new way.

Just to make a new point in the conversation, there may be an America/Europe divide opening up here. Don’s comments seem to me unarguable: if there is a choice between a commercial monopoly on the one hand, and a free alternative on the other, there will be no room for the market, and that is a bad thing. But it is not the fault of Mitch Kapor. The market vanished once the monopoly was established. The remedies Don suggests might have restored the market, but the American government, which alone could have enforced them, shied away.

So what can we do about that? Within America, the only people who can do anything are the rich and idealistic, like Mitch Kapor or Andy Herzfeld. I wish them well. But companies and governments outside America have to pay the MS tax too. And there is nothing in European culture to stop, eg the EU from subsidising open source development. Doing so seems to me a prime example of enlightened and far-sighted self-interest. An office suite, pim software, and a browser are by now pretty much as necessary for a modern economy as a road system or functioning telephones. Why shouldn’t they be developed in our universities (thus teaching generations of students practical software engineering) and then delivered free to the wider world, thus doing something to repay the taxpayer costs of student education?

Comments by Andrew Brown [alloneword at dial.pipex.com]

Lawrence Lessig

is there any vice in free code?

The best advice I can offer is to go read the thread at Professor Lessig’s blog and the ones he links to (no cheating: you have to follow the thread yourself).
Continue reading “the software ecology”

Google Search: related:http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/

my site is like Jenny’s but hers is not like mine. Ours are both like Rebecca’s.

emailed to the coalition for offleash areas

Good morning,

I have long felt the offleash area at Magnuson Park was a good idea, and I was pleased to see the recent renovation and expansion of it: as I say, I like dogs.

However, I met with an incident today at the Magnuson Park OLA that makes me wonder if this is something that deserves my support.

I was walking with my children, aged 4 and 5, along the fence that borders the walkway from the parking area near Junior League Playground to the beach when I noticed the fence was in obvious disrepair. I noted to myself that I would need to take care, since my children are a little fearful of animals who seem to be the same height but are so unpredictable. Next I noticed that dogs were being permitted to jump the fence and run on the grassy meadow outside the OLA, and then others were being encouraged to jump the fence. Now, recall that I have young children with me and that I’m outside the OLA fence.

One dog owner told me I had nothing to fear, since her dogs — Vizhlas, they appeared to be — were friendly — in all my life, I’m not sure I have ever heard anyone tell me their offleash dog was an unpredictable killer and that I should take extreme care — and my response that young children are sometimes nervous of dogs and could she keep her dogs in the OLA. Her reply was that “dogs jump” with the implied message she was unwilling or unable to control her dogs as a responsible owner. I reminded her again that I was not in the offleash area, and her reply was that if it bothered me, I should go somewhere else, and she walked away, ignoring one of her dogs who was still outside the fence and focusing her attention on her human companion. I fervently hope she has no children to neglect as totally.

The dog did eventually make his way back into the OLA, but it was a teachable moment for my children: I got to explain that one of the reasons we have rules is because people can’t always think for themselves and do the right thing and that you have to take responsibility for your actions.

Now, as I said, I think the OLAs are a great idea and I think it’s a great place to take dogs and let them be themselves. I’m not prepared to let their owners act like self-absorbed jerks and let their dogs destroy the wildlife habitat or menace the public.

I will let the City know of the state of the fences at Magnuson — it won’t be the first time, but I was looking out for the welfare of the dogs while construction debris was about — and I will follow up to see that I can take my family there in safety.

I hope you can remind your OLA users that we all share the parks, and I’d like to see the off-leash areas flourish, as long as the owners don’t ruin it for the dogs.

Fees Forcing College Radio Stations to Scale Back Webcasts

“Webcasters have built businesses on the backs of performers and record companies,” said Amanda Collins, a spokeswoman for the recording industry. “They’re paying for everything else except for the key element — the music.”

Let me see if I understand this. The college radio stations, either over the air or over the internet, play music that mainstream program directors at commercial stations won’t play, providing airplay to artists the record companies who won’t get any support otherwise, and they’re the bad guys?

Where are the artists’ voices in this? Why don’t we hear from them? Why don’t enough of them who have been around awhile start up some artist-centered enterprises to shake things up? The movie stars of the 20 and 30s did, starting United Artists to take control of their careers in the days of the studio’s iron rule: in those days, the studios owned the actors and could pay them what they liked, casting them in whatever they liked. Musicians may not be as completely shackled, but they’re far from free, even now. So why don’t they speak up?

More on this story here.

BarlowFriendz 8.8: Pox Americana

More evidence of Lincoln’s wisdom:

[The Founders’] reasons were eloquently restated by Abraham Lincoln in an 1848 letter to his law partner, William H. Herndon. Herndon had suggested that the United States would be prudent to attack Mexico before they attacked us, as they clearly appeared willing to do. Lincoln replied:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – – and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, ‘I see no probability of the British invading us’ but he will say to you ‘be silent; I see it, if you don’t.’

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.

I referred to GWB’s coronation here. It’s a more popular meme than I supposed. And people wonder why I keep my EU passport up to date . . . .

Found in Rebecca’s Pocket.

pygoogle

Hmm, looks straighforward enough . . .

>>> import google
>>> google.LICENSE_KEY = '...' # must get your own!
>>> data = google.doGoogleSearch('python')
>>> data.meta.searchTime
0.043221000000000002
>>> dir(data.meta)
['directoryCategories', 'documentFiltering', 'endIndex', 'estimateIsExact',
'estimatedTotalResultsCount', 'searchComments', 'searchQuery', 'searchTime',
'searchTips', 'startIndex']
>>> data.results[0].URL
'http://www.python.org/'
>>> data.results[0].title
'Python Language Website'

Watch what happens when I do it.
Continue reading “why I hate programming”

how to make SOAP4R read WSDL files?

Here at Google, we’re about to start offering an API to our search-engine, so that people can programmatically use Google through a clean and clearly defined interface, rather than have to resort to parsing HTML.

This little message “inspired more than two dozen implementations and 10,000 developers sign up in the first week alone,” according to Sam Ruby.

This contrasts sharply with the position adopted at my last startup: the prevailing wisdom there was to give nothing away, share nothing. Messages in newsgroups and mailing lists that revealed nothing more than the fact we existed, no details about technology or implementation, were considerered a Bad Idea. I can only imagine what the result of an aggressive effort tto publicize an API might have yielded.

Ad Campaign Leaves Pie on Microsoft

What does all of this say about a company’s corporate psyche that it feels the need to fabricate evidence of the public’s love?

Maybe Microsoft is jealous of the genuine affection Mac fans seem to exhibit for their machines. Maybe, improbably, the company actually feels rejected by the quirky (and, as far as anyone can tell, real) people in Apple’s “Switch” ads.

But more likely, Microsoft’s latest blunder demonstrates is neither jealousy nor wounded pride; it’s pure arrogance. The company thinks it can get away with anything. This time, at least, it’s wrong.

Well, I can’t ever recall anyone saying they *loved* any MSFT product: plenty will say it’s faster or better in some other way, but never purely subjective love.

As David Pogue points out, MSFT evidently thinks we’re gullible dolts with their continued professions of ignorance of their own actions (“Once we realized . . . “).

Do the people who work at MSFT, either as employees or contractors not realize that many of their products run, for now at least, on both their OS and the Macintosh? At one point, they supported IE on Solaris.

There seems to be some myopia at work there that rivals Steve Jobs’ fabled reality distortion field. But rather than being based on charisma and passion, it stems from paranoia and fear.

I wonder how many groups of alumni from companies, not just dot-bombs, have setup email lists or other virtual gathering places? I know some people who are on three or four mailing lists from old jobs: looks like a news story to me. Yahoo! has almost 27,000 groups with alumni in their names: they’re not all schools . . . ..

The ease of setting up a virtual community, the elimination of distance through technology, and the impersonal aspect or virtuality as aspects of the technology combine to make this possible. Perhaps it puts the notion of the web as an impersonal space to the test, since you can continue an association with old colleagues in a more immediate way than the telephone permits, regardless of location.

Anyone have John Markoff’s email address?