The Observer | Business | The genius of blogging
What's happening now is that Google has realised that the conversations being conducted by members of the weblogging community has become an important body of content. Acquiring Blogger moves the search engine into pole position for organising and exploiting this amazing resource. It's so simple that only geniuses could think of it. But that's Google for you.
In the new York Times (free registration).
The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.
macosxhints - A script to use voice recognition with iTunes
Oh joy! If only this was possible with the iPod.
CNN.com - Pioneer 10 falls silent after nearly 31 years - Feb. 25, 2003
Off it goes, deeper into the night.
Very interesting.
It seems that *somebody* at the University of Alberta refuses to memorise my URL...
This person, let's call him "N", rather remember that he can find me in a Google or Yahoo Search if he queries for my first name and my hostname.
"N", I'll make it even faster for you: Search Google for "rowboat". I'm the first result.
Don't Google gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
(requires Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth "wetware" antennas and the whole inexistent smogashbord of hardware-to-brain, software-to-mind technologies... let us dream...)
Lying in bed.
Close your eyes... and think:
# access mind/dream engine/luciddreaming/gui-interface
# access local wireless network
# open IPSec VPN tunnel
# access "My Mac"
--- mount hard drive
--- open remote admin
# compose new email:
--- to: Anders
--- subject: The Streets
--- message: Thanks for those tunes. They are really amazing.
--- message: taking a nap now, call ya later.
# send email
Hmm... Speaking of those tunes, gonna clean up their ID3 tags and store them in my music library...
# access /Volume/Music/fromAnders
# open in iTunes
--- select all, set "Artist" to "The Streets"... (etc etc etc)
# close iTunes
# move directory to /Volumes/Music/Cleaned/The Streets
Later that day, walking down the street, bump into Anders. "Hey, I've got some tunes I want to give you.. hold on they ar at home."
Close eyes... and think:
# access mind/dream engine/luciddreaming/gui-interface
# access Bluetooth
# access cellphone
# access VPN to "Bopuc home network"
# access "My mac/Volumes/Music/Cleaned/StereoTotal
# access Bluetooth
# access Ander's iPod
# copy ...
# tear down all connections
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Ignoble peace prize
Given the fact that previous nominees include Adolf Hitler and Henry Kissinger, can anyone take the Nobel Peace Prize seriously, asks Paul Hamilos
Which word connects Bono, the European Union, Jacques Chirac and George Bush? Peace, apparently. It has been announced that they have all been nominated, by the rather convoluted method by which these things are done, for this year's prize.
Bono? Sure! He's the only one of that lot who actually qualifies!
CBC Radio | Ideas | Massey Lectures
Chronology of the Massey Lecture Series, started in 1961.
Features such names as Northrop Frye, Martin Luther King, George Steiner, Carlos Fuentes, Noam Chomsky, John Ralston Saul and Robert Fulford.
My good friend N posted this comment on a previous entry of mine and I felt it important to repost it here as an entry of its own. Thank you Naz.
Take this test:
Here's a list of the countries that the U.S. has bombed since the end of World War II, as compiled by historian William Blum:
China 1945-46 Korea 1950-53 China 1950-53 Guatemala 1954 Indonesia 1958 Cuba 1959-60 Guatemala 1960 Congo 1964 Peru 1965 Laos 1964-73 Vietnam 1961-73 Cambodia 1969-70 Guatemala 1967-69 Grenada 1983 Libya 1986 El Salvador 1980s Nicaragua 1980s Panama 1989 Iraq 1991-99 Sudan 1998 Afghanistan 1998, 2001 Yugoslavia 1999
In how many of these instances did a FREE government, respectful of human rights, occur as a direct result? Choose one of the following:
(a) 0 (b) zero (c) none
By Joe Gregono at "BitWorking.org":
The World-Wide Web is the first stimeric communication medium for humans.
/.../
In order for an environment to support stigmeric communciation the messages must be readable by everyone.
/.../
In order for an environment to support sitgmery everyone has to be able to not only read it but to be able to write into it also.
Mr. Gregono breaks it down for us VERY nicely. All communciation of "complexe concepts" should be this clear.
Are we all not just writing in the same big book?
Are we all not just contributing to one large account of our lives, our thoughts, ideas and dreams?
Are we not writing our own history?
Who really are the history writers of today? Will someone take on the herculean task of revising the inumerable stories of our times in order to formulate "a historical narrative"? If someone does, they will most likely refer to journalistic sources mostly, which arguably cannot be considered truthful or authorative or complete.
A comment I left on Joi Ito's weblog:
Can it be that the 'Net, through weblogging and collaborative writing, is the Master Narrative to end all master narratives? A massive chronicling (and shaping) of history and experience as we live it?
And, to whit:
"It may be that universal history is the history of a handful of metaphors."
-Jorge Luis Borges
I highly recommend (again!) reading "The Triumph of Narrative" by Robert Fulford.
A quick stop at the patisserie across the street afforded me one again a brief conversation with an old friend. A former english professor from college, whom I never had as a classroom teacher but with whom I'd spent some interesting times with.
On one occasion he had shown me the Nobel Prize in Chemistry his grandfather had won in 1905. The write up for the award states:
"in recognition of his services in the advancement of organic chemistry and the chemical industry, through his work on organic dyes and hydroaromatic compounds"
This was, at the time, a major achievement. Blue turns out to be the most difficult color to synthesise and work with, both chemically and with light. Webdesigners know that trying to do any kind of blue fade results in display nightmares, and researchers in laser optics considered the blue laser, and the blue LED, the holy grail in their fields (until recently).
Matthew, my friend the professor, is a man of literature though. The story of his grandfather's Nobel Prize (which he showed me: a huge heavy gold disc) arose when he gave me a copy of his self-published book of poetry and "lieder" (poetry set to music, which at the time he was doing performances of with an acid jazz ensemble).
The book was titled "Indigo".
Interesting summary of the economics of a hypothetical rock band, as broken down by a journalist at the NY Daily News.
[update]
Another money breakdown
Now, read what some "with it" people inside the recording industry have to say about the future of their system.
Bye bye fellas. Hollywood, you and journalism are next... and government after that. Considering the speed at which we are moving... I'd say the next ten years are gonna be mighty interesting.
I don't know how much fell but it hasn't stopped since last night.
Shoveling this out will take upwards of a half an hour, at least.
It'll wait till tomorrow: from experience I know that the snowplows will come by at least once more before I head off for work tomorrow. If I shovel now, I'll just have to do it again tomorrow.
Sure is pretty though. :)
Mark Federman, again, commenting on some ideas by Steve Mann about mediocrity in the arts:
Steve says:
Many traditional curators love mediocre artists, because they provide an intellectually blank canvas upon which they can paint their curatorial and philosophical discourses. Especially loved are groups of mediocre artists, who share a sufficiently shallow vision (or no vision at all), such that the curatorial creativity shines through. Often we also see a mixture of mediocre living artists, put together with famous dead artists. The famous dead artists don't challenge our intellect because their art is so well known, that it no longer surprises us or makes us think anymore than when presented with the works of mediocre living artists. Thus a curatorial canvas may be painted from the cliche colors of the dead, overlaid with light and fluffy hues of the living limp. As a result, none of the artists really makes us stop and think. Instead, we are struck by the profoundness of the curator's vision in putting together these mind-numbing artists in a creative new way.
And Mark opines:
In an interesting fashion, the curator is a performance artist, whose media include the art itself, the physical environment of the showing, and (in the case of a particularly "cool" exhibition) the audience.
Round one, first pitch lobbed by Joichi Ito
(repost)
Ok I just read the whole thing. I strongly urge all of you, no matter what your interests are, to read this. It not only discusses the possible effects of "weblogging" on democratic political systems, but also explains how and why.
I will comment on it further on my new, upcoming, separate, more "serious" weblog, when I get it going.
(update)
Mark Federman adds:
It is the effect of the medium that informs us of its nature and characteristics. [McLuhan 101: Medium = anything we conceive or create from which emerges change; Message = the changes or effects that so emerge. Medium = Message means that the nature of a Medium is precisely equal to the emergent changes. It has precisely nothing to do with the TV and its program...] The blog as a conversation (not as a "medium of conversation") means that a newbie to the blogging world will be as confused as someone who steps into the midst of a small group at a cocktail party in the middle of their conversation. One of two things will happen: Either the person will "pick up" the conversation and join in, or they will quit the group and move on - possibly to the buffet table to load up on more "content." While someone may, in context, recap aspects of the converation up to a particular point, few will take time to explain the rules of conversation, the context of conversation and so forth... at least during the party. However, there are indeed venues for such education, particularly when one is crossing into a different, and unfamiliar, cultural ground.
Relatively few in the general population know (or care) what a blog is, and the rest completely ignore the effects of the blog and the blogging community on our society. The same "rest" ignored the Web a few years ago, dismissing it as a computerish fad... But then again, most people march backward into the future, watching where they're going through the rear-view mirror.
Ok, switched to MT tonight. Bear with the look until I can squeeze some time to change me templates... :)
This gets better with every release! Now incorporates an RSS aggregator, supports the Blogger and MetWeblog APIs, AND SpamAssassin!!!
Where are you taking us Mr. Szwarc?! :D
Yes, sometimes, just sometimes, patterns arise that DO have meaning.
Consider another "cultural" pattern: How many recent Hollywood films have you seen in the past 2 years that had the phrase "the war has begun" pronounced (solemnly) in them? I count at least 4. LOTR 2, XMen 2, StarWars 2, The Matrix 2. "Bush family war in the Gulf 2" anyone?
Hello Michael!
100% agreed.
Here's what I am wondering as well:
Since most of the political world agrees that Saddam must go (for whatever reasons), then why dear God do they need to bomb the place to smithereens? I am pretty darn sure that (heh, yeah like I can be sure of such things... but anyways) if they all agree "ok let's take him out", this could be done with ONE casualty.
I see ONE way for the Bush administration to save face at this point: all the massive troop deployments in the area and all the posturing et al are a smokesceen. Let Saddam think they're gonna destroy the whole place. Then, one night, send in the Delta Force, or the highly trained British Commandos, and *pop*. End of story. I mean hey this is what America is used to no? Hollywood tells us this is the way! Or were all those movies lies and we have to kill hundreds of thousands of people, destroy an entire nation (one of the oldest on earth I might add) to get one guy?
I would like to believe we are past the era of carpet bombings... the death and destruction of Dresden, Iwo Jima, Berlin, Tokyo.. and I don't even want to think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki...
Dammit Sly?! Arny?! Bruce?! There has to be ONE of you guys left with the balls to do this? We're all behind you! Especially if it means saving thousands!
No BlockBuster tonight my friends. :(
Some excellent protest slogans spotted in front of the UN last Saturday (Feb 15th).
To whit:
"Somewhere in Texas a village is missing its idiot."
"Stop Mad Cowboy Disease!"
Rage on!
Well sort of. I can't believe I forgot until now... almost midnight and passed the date.
My father passed away today four years ago after a heart attack put him in a coma for 3 days.
He was a wonderful man. He taught me the basic things about life that I would need to know, without saying a word. By being honest, kind and generous he instilled in me a deep need to be those things as well.
He certainly is sorely missed.
Brainwave Receivers, Multimodal Information management.
In Switzerland, scientists at the Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence (IDIAP) have developed a new technology which can roughly tell what a person is thinking about.
The U.S. electronics megachain "Circuit City" has a brilliant feature in it's online store. It allows you to pick physical store locations near you and, as you browse around the site and look at products, it will tell you if those products are available at those locations or not.
This is great because they realised that far more people use such online stores just to research prices and availability than to order. It also encourages "I want it today" buyers such as myself. (It happens every now and then that I'll wake up and tell myself: "today, I will buy myself this". Try to find it online, bingo, go get it. Most often in fact it is with books. I will check the Chapters website and then head down to Ste-Catherine St.)
The Circuit City feature came in handy last year when my ex wanted a car radio with an audio jack on the faceplate. We found one model and realised it was only avaliable in the States. Within an hour we were on our way to Williston, VT.
The record of the race [dive into mark]
Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
- Vannevar Bush, July, 1945
Bombing the Starving, Sick & Homeless
Mark Federman, of the McLuhan Program at U of T, commented as follows:
His Report from Iraq is both heart-wrenching and serves as a dire warning to the Western World about the Reversal effects we can expect once the U.S. bombs start falling. From the letter: "we may well unleash forces of hatred and resentment that will haunt us for decades to come in every corner of the world. I can just hear Osama Bin Laden saying now, "Please President Bush, attack Iraq. There's nothing better you could do to help the cause of Al Qaeda!"" If you read anything about the current world crisis this week, read the article.
'PR'-otaku: Logging and annotating William Gibson's 'Pattern Recognition' (Joe Clark: fawny.org)
This is interesting mainly because I started taking notes of books I read on a Wiki site I have. But looking at this makes me thing we need a CMS geared directly at such endeavors, using all the "community features" of blogging...
Been following Steven Mann's doings for a while. Awesome stuff.
Are you ready to be a cyborg? You most likely already are.
Thinking about future technologies, and how they could be made real today, i find it's important to follow a "way-out" process and then scale it back to the realm of the near-term possible and the presently possible.
For example: a device which would interface with all others one has and which could be used as an input/output, or remote control/monitor, for each device.
Way-out solution: a microchip in my skull. ;) Directly recieves input and transmits thought-based outputs etc. Useful for computer interface, TV/PVR remote control... grocery list maintenance (hehehe had to throw that in).
Near-term solution: tablet type "computer" device. Bluetooth as the transport between it and computers, TVs, PVRs, game consoles, cellphones, etc. Heck why not the cellphone? Once it does voice recognition and the interfaces to all the external devices are standardised, etc. technically possible. Politically tricky because cellphones aren't open-source, or easily hackable for that matter.
Present solution (assuming all your devices have the necessary transport support, i.e. Bluetooth.): Apple iBook (with touchscreen and Inkwell handwriting recognition) is a perfect candidate to develop the beginings of such a networked environment.
It is possble right now for me to sit in my living room, type a letter and have it automatically archived on my main computer, upstreamed to a blog and emailed to a friend. However, and again this depends on the other devices having the capability, so it is also a political thing, the iBook could also be aware of the TV. I could turn it on and change channels and otherwise control it. meanwhile the PVR is broadcasting it's existence and it's set of control possiblities. Accessing it I get on my iBook the control console check local listings and set it up to record or download a movie later. Incomign phone call automatically announces it self and allows me to see who is calling. With GPRS data optionally I avaliable I could tell where the callis coming from too.
Let's look at what is required and what exists to fulfill those requirements:
Hardware layer: Bluetooth for I/O, 802.11x for data transfer. (Built into iBook.)
Transport layer: TCP/IP (ubiquitous)
Application layer: HTTP, zeroconf, SOAP et al.
Data layer: XML, RDF, SVG. MPEG-4. AAC. videogame data formats...
I realise it is very possible that Sony, or Apple for that matter, are already playing with this stuff.
Wish I was in on it. Hmmm.
I've always known this inherently of course, which is always the case I suppose. It has however just popped full center in my awareness: I am too physically lazy to write. Be it code or other stuff, I, without fail, trip up when it comes time to record textually.
Pen and paper are frustrating for I can never write as fast as I think. By trying to keep up, the output is invariably nearly illegible. Also pen and paper don't afford the easy and clean editing that one becomes accustomed to from using a keyboard.
Oh and the keyboard. Let's just say my typing skills are classifiable as "accelerated hunt and peck", at best. Sheesh.
It's the "thinking faster than I can output" part that is frustrating. (I must say that I know full well that I am not alone in this... I'm sure we ALL think faster than we can output.)
Sitting here working (coding PHP) I find myself stopping all the time... sitting and staring, wishing I could just "brain dump" onto the screen. This is why I also spend waaaay too much time thinking about such things as voice dictation systems et al. I've written about all that here before.
I mean really there is NO reason why my cellphone shouldn't be able to function as a voice capture device which streams it through a dictation software and then pops it into my personal CMS/FileSystem...
Sigh.
Till then, a huntin' and a peckin' I will go...
It's 5:00. Do you know what your Google results are? (Google Weblog)
Internet search engine Google is changing what we can find out about one another - and raising questions about whether we should.
The Axis of Weasels - France, Belgium, and Germany
This poor sod is a shining example of how it can be sad that "survival of the fittest" doesn't seem to apply to humans all that much anymore.
However there is some funny stuff sprinkled in there. One can only laugh...
About the Keynote XML File Format (APXL Schema)
This Technical Note contains the schema describing the XML file format used by Keynote documents (refered to here and in later documents simply as "APXL" -- Apple Presentation XmL). It is intended for developers who wish to create or modify Keynote presentations programmatically.
Advent of fall Photo Gallery by Christopher DeWolf
It is a strange feeling to go though someone's photogallery and see one's neighborhood.
Oh me oh my...
My first car was an '83 Subaru GL (2 door sedan). I loved it. I killed it. I was so stupid.
Last fall, parked across the street from my appartment, lo and behold, an '83 Subaru GL. Same model, but obviously well loved. Chrome a -sparkling, bright yellow paint job: it was a beauty. I left a business card with a message on the windshield.
So mademoiselle emails me this week. She says it is in top shape with only 75 000km on it. She's asking "around $3500".
I just have to sell this VW Golf first... :)
Lorem Ipsum - All the facts & Lipsum generator
"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."
"There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain...."
The current Republican White House of George Dubya isn't just being stupid about Iraq. Of course this is nothing surprising really, considering.
Take a look at this insanity:
And then, just as Bush announces almost $15 billion for AIDS research funding for Africa and the Caribbean, we hear this:
Can't seem to do anything right, this boy.
Mi iPod be a natty congo mon!
Both me iPod and me iTunes seem to have a predilection for Bob Marley. The Pod currently has about 4Gigs of various MP3's on it, 400megs of which is Marley. In shuffle mode, Bob comes up on average every third or fourth song.
Ev'ytin cook an' curry. :)
Dude, you're getting locked up.
Isn't this sort of like busting Capone on tax evasion charges? This kid should be locked up for life for perpetuating the miserly of millions of people by inciting them to buy Wintel computers!
Mr. Winer, in telling us about the work on some new templates he's doing for some site or another, gives us this: an OPML outline of the html structure of the template.
Brilliant. He just made the cost of OmniOutliner 100% worth it.
I guess you could say I'm a bit of a World War II buff. Nothing too in-depth, mind you: I don't know any dates by heart or any such thing. It's mainly due to the fact that when the kids at school started calling me a nazi because of my german heritage, I figured I should shore up on some facts to prove, without my fists, that I am not... a nazi that is. I read some books, spoke to some relatives. They were all around back then. Heard some rather grizzly stories. Vienna, Bavaria, North Africa.. and atop the cliffs of Normandy.
But that isn't the point of this entry.
I just finished watching the second installment of a wonderful "Masterpiece Theatre" production entitled "Foyle's War". Now I have never been in the least interested in detective stories. Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and the lot; they are not "my thing" really. In any event, this Foyle character: brilliant. A warm, humane man, in touch with what is going on around him and doing his job as best he can. A tear welled when I realised the actor reminded me of my father. More on that in 10 days.
What I appreciate very much about this series however is that it is quick paced, and not stuffy at all as so many overly dramatic british detective stories brough to film tend to be.The villains are realistically detestable and the protagonists are people you really would wish as friends. Everybody, and every situation, is human, and believable.
It truly is a beautiful production and I recommend it to anyone who likes a good story well presented.
The Fishbowl: Filesystem sacrilege
This of course would be the extreme opposite of where we are now with filesystem management. I believe the best solution, as always, lies in-between.
(merci Karl, pour le lien)
There's plenty of shit to be pissed off at in the world.
But if you fear it as well, you'll never change it.
While at the faubourgh Ste-Catherine yesterday afternoon, I bought some ham. Or so I thought.
After paying for the "ham", I walked over to the SAQ ("Société des Alcools de Québec" - government body that sells all booze here) to get some wine. Looking at the Australians (Lindemans Bin 50, Shiraz... Mmmmm...), I hear a faint "Sir? Uh.. Sir!?" The girl who had served me the ham.
Turns out she charged and gave me the wrong package. In my bag I had sliced turkey breast. We check the label quickly; indeed! Ok, let me buy these two bottles of wine and I'll come right back over to the deli to straighten this out.
So we straighten it out. I get the other package, marked "Jambon de Paris", and she gets her turkey (apparently she had cut it for herself as she was getting off work soon).
So here I am at work... with my Delba Pumpernickle, my chunk of Edam cheese... and 100g of sliced smoked turkey breast. (in a package with a sticker that clearly says Jambon de Paris...)
I'm not complaining mind you... just funny. :)
"the sound of bells... halted by sunlight"
tomato preview (Quicktime 6 required)
These guys blow me away. Dammit. To hell with web... I wanna do video. Argh.
Tomato is one of the UK's top design firms. They rock. They rule. Two of the founders are international electronic music superstars (Underworld).
Sigh. If I have one unattainable wish in my life, it is to be tomato.
CNN.com - Bishops seek saint for Internet - Feb. 1, 2003
Hehehe, I especially like how Mark Federman nominates McLuhan...
I decided to actually get to work on time today. So I stumbled out of the house, half asleep. I picked my clothes, half asleep. Half asleep, I thought I could wear this t-shirt one... more... day.
Wrong.
Thankfully, I don't deal with people too closely. Or at all really. :)
No sir. These are not potholes; these are tire shredders.
The radical warm up and rain of the last few days has caused severe frost heaves and asphalt decay. It doesn't help that Quebec's road-makers seemingly have NO know-how when it comes to the physics and chemistry and engineering of their task.
As I was saying. Imagine big gnarly bear-traps, which when struck at just the right speed and just the right angle, will RIP the rubber right from your wheels.
And they are EVERYWHERE. Who needs videogames? Swerve to avoid destroying your wheels and suspension! Narrowly miss a pedestrian!
Insane.
I thought of a bunch of interesting things to post this weekend and never did. Now they are gone. Obliterated by a staff dinner and party last night. I don't know how I got home last night, or when... or even how I got to work today.
I literally am more stupid today than I was yeserday. Obviously I am still intoxicated to a certain extent. Motor skills are sluggish and thoughts are nebuluous, at best. Typing this post is requiring an inordinate amount of concentration.
Stop. Must get some sleep.
Embrace file-sharing, or die
"A record executive and his son make a formal case for freely downloading music. The gist: 50 million Americans can't be wrong."
