This result, that the brain learns and reasons in a continuous, not step by step, fashion is unsurprising to readers of Jeff Hawkins' book On Intelligence.
In the same week Google Earth is (re)launched as a completely free version of Keyhole, Google adapts to the intense interest in Google Maps and publishes an API. Bloody excellent.
I can't be fun competing with that.
It is interesting how much easier it is for Google to launch all this stuff without a public backlash because there is absolutely no question of monopoly for search (nobody has one) and also because Google behaves so very well interop-wise (free and available API's for anyone to tinker with). Yahoo also gets it. Amazon also gets it. Microsoft only partially gets it and Apple, despite having an extremely hackable platform, doesn't get it at all in terms of communication and the data services Apple also offers.
It seems Douglas Rushkoff's latest book is about bootstrapping and small as the new big.
Hvis Computerworld ellers kan finde ud af at referere undersøgelsen rigtigt, så har Klaus Bruhn Jensen fundamentalt misforstået pointen ved internettet som en demokratisk game changer.
Han fremhæver, at der på internettet er masser af topstyret information, men langt mellem hjemmesider, som virkelig inviterer brugerne til at blande og ytre sig.
Det er jo ikke det der er pointen. Det handler ikke om at borgerne skal gøre noget mere ved staten ved at bruge debatforum på danmark.dk. Det handler om at staten skal tage sig sammen og tage ud at møde borgerne.
Det understreger hvor god Lee Bryants pointe egentlig var på Reboot: Med internettet og f.eks. weblogs i hånden, så tilhører offentligheden ikke længere magthavere med et stort kapitalapparat. Det er ægte demokratisk nærhed, ikke nærhed som et politisk program fra et velmenende magtapparat. Det staten kan gøre for at bruge det i demokratiets tjeneste er at følge med i denne nye offentlighed. For en nation af talende borgere der har vænnet sig til at kunne ytre sig frit i eget regi, vil alle forsøg fra offentlig side på at formidle en offentlig debat med staten som ordstyrer virke som en tam erstatning for den ægte frihed til at udtale sig.
For at forbinde det til teoretiske overvejelser, så sker der en forandring af offentligheden fra et tempel til et netværk.
Der er en fantastisk forskel fra land til land på hvor politisk den ikke-ejede offentlig er. Jeg har også længe undret mig over hvor apolitisk f.eks. den danske blogosfære er, sammenlignet med f.eks. den amerikanske. Men det er tilsyneladende karakteristisk at den er mindre politisk i et lille land som Danmark end den er i store lande som Frankrig og USA. En forklaring melder sig umiddelbart: Afstanden til magten i Danmark er virkelig ikke særlig stor, ligesom adgangen for den enkelte til den styrede offentlighed egentlig er ganske god. I et enormt land er forholdene nogen andre og derfor er der mere tryk på sikkerhedsventilen.
(For de der ikke helt er med på forskellen på et tempel og et netværk, men istedet er fortrolige med softwareudvikling, er det måske en hjælp at det er nogenlunde den samme forskel man finder på en katedral og en bazar.)
Dagens absolutte TV højdepunkt var en genudsendelse. DR2 genudsendte en temaaften om dans, hvori indgik et program om breakdance i 80ernes Danmark. Man når også forbi fænomenet Electric Boogie og minsandten om ikke det er lykkedes at støve et interview op med en meget ung Olafur Eliasson. Nu, international kunststjerne bosat i Berlin. Dengang københavnsk B-boy med afbleget hår og store runde briller.
It's no wonder, given the fact that the designers of Java completely botched the implementation of generics, that sentiment along the lines of Generics Considered Harmful begins to appear. But generics aren't harmful. They just need to be done properly, used properly and tooled properly. It is quite possible that no programmer has ever been in a situation that all of these preconditions were met.
The generics in C# and java are just badly done. Pure and simple. Too much work left for the developer, and not nearly enough reliance on the compiler. This takes away the breathtaking flexibility of C++ generics, but still adds the complexity.
That's the "done properly" part. Clearly, even C++ gets it partially wrong, but mostly in ways that you could tool your way out of. As for "used properly" - obviously you can do horrible things with templates. If you use it for it's basic usefulness - which is to provide the equivalent of all the useful helper words and verb and noun modifiers from natural language - then generics work just great. And not having them, leaves you with the alternative of a rich external build environment - you need code generators to not go insane.
Tooling is abysmal in all cases I have seen. The compilers I've used are just to slow. They expose the complexity of template definitions to unwitting template users (a horrible, horrible problem - you should never have to know the insides of a template you use) and fail in other ways to tool templates properly. I've made more comprehensive notes here.
Jeg er næsten fristet. Alle Penguin Classics, 1082 styk, for kun 8000$ - det er 50000 kr for lidt mere end en fordobling af min bogsamling. Reolplads bliver en udfordring - det er såden rent gætvis omkring 30 hyldemeter man skal finde derhjemme. Og så en meget, meget lang sommerferie.
Jeg har regnet på hvor meget min egen samling egentlig har kostet mig. Mest fordi jeg har spekuleret på at bøgerne næsten allesammen er købt mens jeg har studeret, hvor jeg havde tid til at læse, men ikke råd til bøger. Jeg købte dem jo alligevel. Det meste af min studiegæld står på mine bogreoler.
Når amerikanere udtaler Champs Elysee Chams A-lee-zay så er det ikke af ond vilje. De har fået at vide at man siger sådan.
Det er heller ikke underligt de hader franskmænd, de tror de er Klingons, fra port oh Kling-n-core og iøvrigt er franskmænd nogen sjofle svin - hvorfor skulle de ellers have en bydel der hedder Moan-mart.
Everybody knows stock market analysts always recommend 'buy', a recommendation to hold is a recommendation to drop everything and sell, sell, sell.
Apparently it's as difficult to find less than a thumbs up in Infoworld product reviews. What a pity - usually I like Infoworld a lot; they have very good columnists.
Microsoft's plans to "extend" (that MS speak for break) the RSS standard, as reported here.
Just wanted to have a post to reference back to, when Microsoft's patent application for RSS appears in a few years.
På Vesterbro har man i de sidste par år har med jævne mellemrum kunnet høre en klarinet spille klart gennem natten. Navnlig i sommervarmen, navlig under jazzfestivalen og navnlig henimod midnat.
Klarinetten spiller ikke nogen egentlig melodi - bare nogen løse ranker. Jazznoder der bliver ved og ved.
Lyden skærer igennem kvarteret. I sommervarmen underholder klarinetten hundrevis af vesterbroere, der holder vinduer åbne for natten. Af samme grund ledsages musikken tit af en slags talekor der gentager linjen "Så hold dog kæft!" fra mange hold i mange stemmelejer.
Jeg har længe undret mig over hvem det er der spiller, og man kan forestille sig meget. Selv har jeg altid tænkt at musikken nok blev spillet af en ældre vesterbroborger, en slags happyjazz-nisse. En lille halvskaldet mand med guldbriller og et glad smil på læben. Hans hår, det han ikke har tabt endnu, er lidt for fedtet og alt for langt, og han har brede røde seler på som sidder spændt ned over en hyggelig ølmave. Og fordi han synes han gør noget godt for hele kvarteret når han spiller, så lader man ham spille. Også over midnat.
Stor var min glæde her til morgen da midnatsklarinettisten pludselig begavede Vesterbro med en gæsteoptræden i dagtimerne. Endelig ville jeg få ham at se, jazznissen. Større end min glæde var overraskelsen da jeg endelig så ham.
Det var slet ikke en nisse. Det var istedet en lettere forhutlet, yngre mand - en mellemting mellem en bums og en christianit. Han stod på Istedgade, lige ved krydset med Abel Cathrinesgade. Klarinetkassen stod foran ham, klar til at modtage mønter.
Jeg ankom til krydset samtidig med at ejeren af det pizzaria han stod foran fik for meget. Han skældte ud. Som en sand professionel pakkede midnatsklarinettisten sit habengut og ville flytte sig, men pizzamanden ville mere.
Han var i færd med at give klarinettisten den klassiske narkomanbehandling. Klarinettisten skulle ikke bare skride. Han skulle dukkes. Pizzamanden insisterede på at han skulle rydde op i det vesterbroske gaderod han spillede i.
De snakkede. Der blev truet med en opringning til politiet. Men pizzamanden havde forregnet sig. Klarinettisten havde, i modsætning til narkomanerne, livskraft og selvrespekt.
- "Så foretag det opkald", sagde han, "Foretag det opkald!"
Pizzamanden blev stående.
"Foretag det opkald. Nu" råbte han mere ophidset. "Gør da noget, med dit forspildte liv. Mit liv er ikke forspildt. Det er bare ... utraditionelt!"
Pizzamanden havde ikke noget svar. Han gav op. Jeg gik videre.
Et minut senere sang klarinetten igen.
Lidt reklame for brormands kollaborative fiktionsprojekt. Projektet har fået en loveden afslutning, men mangler en begyndelse. Skriv med i kommentarerne. (Altså ovre ved brormand).
Man kan også få anmeldelser af kartoffelchips via RSS.
(det var Søren der så det. Han har en ting med læskedrikke.)
I guess it was inevitable, but it's worthwhile to note that AT&T is turning IT-security into entertainment (and yes, that is what I think CNN does for news)
Insert your "Office of Homeland Security threat level already there" comments below.
How odd: A South African investment company has reversed the usual roles in internet badmouthing: Instead of being the target of a corporate defamation site, this company set up a defamation site to attack an investigative reporter in quite a vicious way.
I have no idea of the merits of the journalist and/or the company, but this tactic at least is unusual.
The Cosmos 1 Solar Sail Weblog reads like background material for the plot for an upcoming James Bond movie: Cosmos 1 is something as high concept as a navigable solar sail, launched (the plot calls for nothing less) from a submerged Russian submarine in the Barents Sea in a converted ICBM left over from the cold war arsenal. But Cosmos 1 suddenly vanished over the Kamchatka Peninsula and now nobody knows where the sci-fi spacecraft is.
Sounds to me like a Blofeld-like supervillain is probably responsible.
(Nr 5 in a series of lives imitating art)
So "small is the new big" we're told. That means it's probably time to read or reread Joel Spolsky's excellent comparison of two kinds of company - organic growth vs. forced growth you could call it.
It's no surprise that for the Web 2.0 wave, most of the companies we hear of are organic growth in some respect. It is only rarely visible for these companies that they have indeed broken free and created a 'space' all their own to dominate - for the web at large the 800 pound gorillas already roam the jungle.
Maybe the article would be better by acknowledging some successful transitions from organic to forced (the other way I think is close to impossible with anything like the original idea of the company intact). Google is, I think, an example. I think you could argue that Google started out organic, even launched product (in beta) in organic fashion, and only later switched the commercial engine of adwords into full growth gear.
På et tidspunkt hvor EU er i krise, hvor den dagsorden der sættes for EU fra politisk hold underkendes af EU-landenes befolkninger og hvor man end ikke kan finde en linie i budgettet, så er der heldigvis en EU-sag hvor det demokratiske underskud, trægheden og den byzantinske forvirring bare kører videre og videre: Sagen om software patenter.
Siden Bendt Bendtsens pinlige kujonerede adfærd for nogen måneder siden er det desværre bare gået bagud i patentsagen i EU systemet. Det virker stadig ikke som om de nationale parlamenter bakker beslutningen op, og på den måde får EU slået fast at det administrative apparat i EU har sin egen logik, sin egen agenda, og ikke bryder sig om demokratisk kontrol.
Det skal nok få flere til at stemme for den næste forfatning.
The bright new world of weakly typed, hackable web services also hold new perils. Google just switched GMail from using the domain gmail.google.com to mail.google.com - and at least the GMail power tweaks I'm using just blew up.
[UPDATE: What really seems to break everything is in fact the path part of the url: It switched from being rooted at /gmail to being rooted at /mail]
I'm betting tons of people's little compiled micro-applications just blew up too. That'll teach you to use static resources to bind to anything as dynamic as a web site.
I wonder how long it will take before companies start achieving notoriety when they break 3rd party hacks for websites. Clearly they could claim that their service wasn't intended for hacking, but according to Microsoft old timers (and from reports also according to the leaked source of some time ago) Microsoft, of compatibility breaking notoriety, could actually claim the same thing. The main problem on Windows was always use of undocumented calls. Again: This is according to reports.
When will Google start feeling Microsoft's pain?
Interessante tal om mængden af ansøgninger per land til Google Summer of Code. Både i absolutte tal og per capita rater Danmark virkelig elendigt. Vi er det lavest ratede land i Norden.
De højrratede lande er alle sultne østeuropæiske lande efterfulgt af de kendte tekniklande incl. hele skandinavien, men ekslusiv Danmark. Muligvis er den virkelige grund det kedelige fact at Danmark er et rigtigt Microsoft-land.
"Why don't you put on this biometric gear and lut us take care of you, so you'll have the experts on your side"
The permanently on, wearable computer of Steve Mann integrated with big brothery web based monitoring to create the real nightmare of tomorrow: Big Mother - the dictator we asked for.
My rule of thumb is that it should take no more than 3 months to go from conception to launch of a new web service. And that's being generous. I'm speaking from experience here. I developed the first version of ONElist over a period of 3 months, and that was while working a full-time job. I developed the first version of Bloglines in 3 months. By myself. It can be done. And I suck at it! Just ask all the engineers who have had to deal with my code.Some more of the bootstrapping gospel.
Det er blevet tid til at efterrationalisere lidt mere på Reboot end bare ved at referere foredrag - og bare for at holde fast i den globaliserede virkelighed vil jeg gøre det på dansk, selvom det er helt ligemeget at det er på dansk.
Om få år er det jo alligevel ligemeget. Og hey, som alle ved, blogger man jo mest for sin egen skyld.
David Axmarks foredrag om open source havde en vigtig pointe:
Open Source is brilliant at getting the little things right
Det blev sagt i sammenhæng med den sædvanlige anklage at open source ikke gennemfører de store innovationer. Axmark brydede sig af at man til gengæld gør det små ting rigtigt. Han har ret og der er en rent økonomisk forklaring på det:
Langt det meste closed source software bliver skrevet til ét projekt. Dvs langt de fleste kodelinier kun har ét projekt til at finansiere deres udvikling. Det sætter en ganske lav grænse ved hvor mange penge der er til at lave den enkelte linie kode korrekt og nyttig i sammenhængen.
Open source har den gigantiske fordel at koden bliver genbrugt og genbrugt og genbrugt. Der er tonsvis at projekter til at finansiere den enkelte kodelinie og derfor bliver den bedre samtidig med at det enkelte projekts prisbidrag til koden falder mod nul.
Spørgsmålet er om man ikke kan lave en rationel økomisk model af open source ud fra den tankegang hvor prisen 0 simpelthen kommer ud som 'naturlig'.
DR's sommerhaveprogram med Signe Wenneberg sætter ny rekord i Københavner-selvlækkerhed. Egentlig virker Lars Brygmann og Katrine Salomon som flinke og rare mennesker, men selvfedmen i at Signe Wenneberg går rundt i solbeskinnede haver med andre overskudsmennesker er bare ... for meget.
Via Tveskov - David Byrne has an online journal with good long posts on art and stuff.
Also remember his Radio as previously mentioned.
There's no RSS feed unfortunately, but while I was viewing source to think about making one up, I found a comment
HIDE FROM OLD BOWSERS
It seemed like a bowser might actually be a real thing, so I looked it up and true enough it was. So the question remains: What could be the problem with bowsers and why would you hide from them.
Det ligner en Damsted-dissning af Tveskov, men er vist bare et tilfælde, at lydfilen for Damsteds samtale med Tveskov hedder "kreatveskov". Det er lige præcis bedre end "Krea-Bjarne", men ikke meget. Der bliver sagt mange rimelige ting, helt nede på jorden, om at være kreativ og måske skulle Tveskov udvide sit blogimperium med et getrealcast.
I always found the 20-way drop down with language pairs ("English to French, Portuguese to English" and so on) on web translation sites annoying. The proper thing for these services to do is to detect the language of the page you want to translate on their own and just show it in english already - an expert interface could be a button away, but simple things ("this page to English") should be simple.
I've made a bookmarklet (and a perl script) that does exactly this. It loads a webpage, tries to guess the language used, if Google translate supports it it is then translated and you're done.
Drag it to your toolbar. The usual Javascript bookmarklet security caveats apply. The code will know about pages you load, and clicking on the link will let me send you anywhere. But I don't.
Don't abuse it please, or I'll have to take it down.
The underlying language categorizer is TextCat. This service works no better than TextCat does.
[UPDATE: This actually works directly on Google]
David Weinberger goes looking for a "Da Vinci Code"-esque opening chapter for his book on the tree and leaves of knowledge and finds the beautiful and story full Linnean Society. If Weinberger buries those beautiful images later in the book, his agent is not going to be happy...
(yes, this is the same project that his reboot talk was about)
Som tidligere nævnt er den siddende regerings intense brug af begreber om ordholdenhed og respektabilitet, som var brækfremkaldende lige fra begyndelsen, snart ikke mere end en pinlig grimasse fra fortiden som det er lidt pinligt at blive mindet om i en valgkamp.
I en kommentar i dagens Berlinger rammer Niels Krause Kjær den særlige borgelige magtkorrumpering sognerådsmentalitet(ikke online - Det Berlingske Officin fører skarpt an i de danske papirmediers digitale cluelessness). Det skal forstås som den borgelige pendant til socialdemokratisk kammerateri og regeringen slæber en stadig større samling af sognerådsbeslutninger med som lig i lasten. Glimrende ord. Adopteret.
Lykketofts valgnederlag var åbenbart mere end brormand Holger kunne klare, men nu blogger han igen.
Velkommen tilbage. Og husk det nu. Hver dag.
As long as it is a separate service there's no problem, but if Yahoo ever integrate the search behind paywalls feature into their standard search that will be the same as selling paid placements in search.
The user will be shown results that will lead him nowhere, except to an invitation to pay money to someone.
A slashdot thread refers the story of a child pornography case where the debate is over whether you've had child pornography in your possession if you have viewed a webpage with child pornography. This brings to the fore the discussion over metaphors for the web that Doc Searls was talking about at Reboot a week ago. Whether a conclusion that viewing stuff on the web is possession means that the web is a medium or a place is another matter though: possession would indicate place, but since that place would seem to be "our place" maybe a ruling that viewing is possession actually indicates web as conduit instead. Interesting stuff.
At a more practical level this raises the question of whether or not we are legally entitled to control what is shown to us in the webbrowser. Is a company responsible for the content of pop-ups we are shown on the web? If we are ultimately responsible for what gets shown wouldn't the natural conclusion be that it should be illegal to show us anything we have not explicitly agreed to view?
It would seem that a pop-up becomes some kind of "breaking and entering" albeit with the strange objective of putting things into our homes, not taking them out.
[Update: Better version over here, that stores the searches serverside so this works from multiple machines]
God bless Greasemonkey. Now I can have stored searches in GMail implemented as a Greasemonkey user script. Justerens comment was on the nose "Isn't that what filters and labels are for?". It is - but filters only applies to new email - and spamfiltering overrides filters. I have consistent problems with specific kinds of ham, that I actually have rules to pick up, that ends up filtered as spam.
Jimmy Eat World er hverken de første eller største amerikanske stjerner der har haft fat i Tommy Seebach.
Det første jeg tænkte da jeg hørte Justin Timberlake nummeret Nothin' Else var "Tommy Seebach har ikke levet forgæves", men Thomas tænkte heldigvis længere end det.
(via min referrer log)
Jeg kunne virkelig godt tænke mig nogen bud fra jer, kære læsere, på et ord for "fejl" - som ikke samtidig udpeger en skyldig som skal straffes for at have lavet fejlen.
Hvis vi kan undgå at havne i drønende falsk newspeak a la "Vi har ingen problemer, kun udfordringer" så er det klart at foretrække.
Brugssituationen er nem at forstå. Noget som nogen har lavet gør noget på en måde der ikke er hensigtsmæssig eller gør måske ligefrem ikke det som det var meningen det skulle have gjort. Man vil nu gerne kunne spørge, såvidt muligt uden sproglig mulighed for at høre forespørgslen som en anklage, om ikke det var bedre at det lavede noget var hensigtsmæssigt og fungerende, og derved opfordre til at det gjorte bliver rettet op.
Den normale teknik for at tale uden om vil omskrive "I har lavet en fejl i ledningsføringen i min lejlighed" til "Den lejlighed jeg er endt op med er ikke optimal rent ledningsføringsmæssigt", men man ender meget, meget hurtigt i en vatindpakning der virker decideret uærlig.
Er der nogen kan kan nogen gode, reelle formuleringer som fungerer og ikke er fuldstændig nedslidte?
(Jeg modtager også gerne jeres bud på de elendigste vatindpakninger I har observeret "in the wild". Den slags er altid sjovt.)
Glimrende Per Arnoldi hadesang fra orkestret Bazookahosen.
Jeg maler en top
Jeg maler en bold
Jeg maler hvadsomhelst
- jeg skal nok få det solgt
I like Google as much as the next guy, and I can't wait till the translation we saw in the Google Factory Tour comes out of the lab.
But that is in fact not the most shocking revelation of the factory tour. This questionable honour fall on the "fun facts about Google employees" sprinkled throughout the presentation. These turn out to be almost exclusively about employee sock buying habits. And from this simple fact we can determine that apart from being driven and brilliant, the Google people are also terminal bores.
Sock buying habits just aren't that funny. Relying on sock jokes for comic relief for an antire hour long presentation is just...painful.
Item II about that presentation: The frequency with which the word monetize was used in presentations made me think of that horrible web 1.0 term, sticky eyeballs.
Good post by Don Park on an web-based witch hunt for a girl who acted bad in public:
Among the comments to the Korean news story I linked to above was this:"Thanks to technology, we are able to build a better society in which citizens are the police, prosecutors, and judges."
This problem will visit us rest of us with more immediacy in the near future.
Control is a drug.
It's a badge to be proud of, almost like when you were 8 and got to stay up late and watch the movie, but a small crowd at Reboot held out for the amazing 1968 Doug Engelbart demo of a fully functional, if mechanically and electronically primitive, visual time sharing computer system.
I took notes during the talk and got at least the following list of things Engelbart had in his system that it has taken time to get to:
Stuff we have today
- Mouse
- Visual word processor
- Outliner
- Hypertext
- Metadata searchable text using XPath like expressions (a la XML)
- Mixed mode drawing and text
- Presentation software (by way of mixed mode drawing and text + hypertext)
- Folding (i.e. user defined text visibility)
- A compiler compiler
- Terminal forwarding and remote control
- Menus (by way of hypertext)
- System modality indicated by sound (e.g. there was a specific carrier tone on when ever some data was in the 'select buffer')
- Total link addressability (address space = data = address space, it's not metadata grafted on)
- Cursor's called a bug - even though they also call bugs bugs
- System built almost entirely using Domain Specific Languages
- White shirts
The humbling fact about this system is that it took 18 years for Engelbart to put it together. That is a lot of time.
The most intriguing feature to me was the use of sound to indicate system modality. I would love something like that to indicate e.g. a nested layer of concerns that the user needs to wind his way out of. Using classic musical scales here would work - the user would experience a strong desire to bring the system back to the base note of the system after some upset of state had moved it out of there (See earlier notes on same idea: "While working, this code-immersed hacker would listen to delicate code-induced electronica" - Engelbart had that)
I had the opportunity to ask Engelbart about the sound during the Q&A after the film and it turns out that this was semi-accidental design. At some point they added an oscillator to the system and simply drove it off the electronic noise from the equipment. As time passed, they got to know what the various sounds meant - so they kept the sounds on. Engelbart was almost shy about this brilliant idea, suggesting they maybe should have turned it off, as if it was something frivolous. I thought it was great.
En opfølger på en tidligere historie: Balder Olrik, Netsummary-redaktør, har både forklaret hvorfor der pludselig var et about.com-agtigt banner på alle linktargets på siden og gjort noget ved det. Der var simpelthen for mange lamme dyblinkere, og da netsummary poster mange store mediefiler gik det bare ikke at være så large når nu man bare lavede noget der var gratis. Sitet er fixet nu, så anti-dyblink kampagnen ikke går ud over off-site links.
Et stort target for dyblinkere var ifølge Balder den nu berømte Seebach video som både Ekstra Bladet, norske aviser og såmænd verdens mest populære weblog har haft fat i.
Jeg havde kun set en samlerpost til en linksamling for dårlig tysker-disco, men der var sørme også en direkte post der har trukket et stort publikum og derfra er Seebach rykket op i den højeste klasse af kult: Videon er blevet et remix og spoof target for bandet Jimmy Eat World. Tommy burde være stolt. (og det var nettet der gjorde det).
Og ikke at man ikke ved det sker, men vorherre til hest - en dag kunne man godt tænke sig at bare én "rettighedshaver til digitale medier" ville se i øjnene at katten er ude af sækken/løbet er kørt/lortet har ramt ventilatoren/man ikke skal græde over spildt mælk når de ser et link til en snippet af noget de synes er deres. Det er helt og aldeles utænkeligt at nogen kommer til at gå Seebach-løse i seng uanset hvor mange breve en hær af advokater sender til Netsummary.
Hurtig review af lineuppet af kollegabloggers: Just, Nikolaj, Simon, Michael, Søren og siden Reboot også Martin, omend hans blog indtil videre bedst kan beskrives som en blog der ... findes.
So I was missing something new and interesting at Reboot, but later I was talking to Dalager and he reminded me of ActiveGrid (that I didn't remember knowing about at the time) which would have fit right into the conference, possibly along with this Adam Bosworth talk.
Basically ActiveGrid + what Bosworth is talking about is the "Small is the new big" of data. It's about not going big, but just using the network to build big applications fast on a free platform and lots of cheap hardware. The free availability of easy to use quality tools (To Be Evaluated) for this kind of thing is to my mind what makes for exciting times.
Underholdningssystemet på en flyver er faktisk (nogen gange) et Linux cluster. Via BoingBoing.
(day 1 covered here)
So Reboot day 2 rolls around and brings
Cory Doctorow on the broadcast flag. Doctorow has a problem with his pitch in that it's basically the same "free is better" pitch regardless of the specific issue he's currently concerned about. It's not that these issues aren't important, but it weakens the message that it has the shape "We found another problem!".
Christer Lindholm does an overlong talk on the mobile future. Sounds a bit dated. The best moment in the talk comes when Lindholm talks about the fierce competion among objects for getting put into your pockets. Pocketspace is cramped and electronic devices are competing with some nonelectronic essentials, so size is at a premium.
I then hang around Chris Heathcote's tangible computing talk, the first talk today that will mention the visual computer interface from Minority Report (here in the negative)
I catch a bit of Tor Nørretranders - it's quite an old piece of his from the "we're only in it for the sex" book he published in 2002 and also surf by Nicolai Peitersen's talk on Kesera (danish). I had forgotten that I actually knew about Kesera already, and suddenly remembered finding the combination of shameless self promotion (count the number of times the name Nicolai Peitersen is mentioned on the Kesera website) and offbeat, simplistic ideas on creativity off putting.
Ben Hammersley thinks we have a fundamental problem with our technology in that it challenges our ideas on good manners and that we can't keep up, which means we're slowly disenfranchized from modern society.
I think you need to broaden 'manners' to something like 'social situation and behavioural patterns' for this to be true and saying that on the other hand makes the point kind of obvious. Thats almost what technology is for - to change the way we interact with each other and the world. But it's an OK talk - much, much better than the one Hammersley gave at the last Reboot. Also, Hammersley looks a little less like Sideshow Bob this year, even if the likeness is still quite scary.
I think it's about this time I catch part of a talk about why some social software services fail and why some succeed. The argument it pretty clear: The ones that bring to focus objects that we have an independently sustainable interest in (e.g. photos, links) work. The ones that bring to focus objects that we latch onto as part of the game of using the service, fail. I'm quite happy to buy that argument, and it's nice to see it made.
Next good talk I attend is Lee Bryant's talk on applying some of notions from social tagging to some concrete public sector community projects. The discussion revolves around some of the notions about the metaphors we use to describe things and how explicit and implicit tagging can be used to alleviate some of the disconnect between the government sector and the public.
David Weinbergers talk is good. As much as I manage to hear of it can be found in the issue of Release 1.0 about tagging Weinberger recently edited (intro here)
We try to have a debate about patents with Kim Østrup from IBM, Morten Helveg-Petersen, David Axmark and Cory Doctorow but the time we have for the debate is just too short. Basically we're not able to get beyond initial statements of position. Østrup has a nice perspective on the debate, even if am still completely unconvinced that software patents are a good idea (for these reasons among others). I am also slightly underwhelmed by the "we want patents, but in a sane manner" pitch. If you're saying yes, you're not putting up enough of a fight to get a decent system and then the "patents with moderation" stance just like like a convenient position that is affordable because it will never matter.
Bonus feature of the debate is the presence of "The Luke Skywalker of the Copywars", Jon Lech Johansen aka DVD-Jon who is later interviewed about DRM.
It's around this time that Matt Webb is the second speaker to bring up the visual computer interface from Minority Report. Amusingly, Webb thinks the interface is great and the shape of his argument is almost the same as the one Heathcote gave that the interface was bad (namely, answering the question: "How does the interface match the way we absorb visual information?").
It's getting late and sessions are winding down to "blogs, blogs, blogs, blogs, blogs, blogs, blogs". We make money not art does a presentation which is essentially "a blog archive read out loud". If you follow the blog, it's not that interesting.
Finally, the A-list blogger love in between Hugh 'Gapingvoid' Macleod, Robert Scoble and Doc Searls turns out to be intensely boring and not very interesting. What a disappointment.
Summing up, what was good and what wasn't so good.about Reboot?
There was a little too much looking back at "what we've already accomplished", too many topics that could have just as well been at a conference a year ago. On the other hand, the huge extension of the program and the focus on technology culture was a definite plus. I think this was the best reboot I have attended, but I'm missing that clear new idea that the very best speech gave me at previous Reboots I've attended. At Reboot 2001 there was Douglas Rushkoff impressive talk on the importance of the web's 2-way nature. At Reboot 2003 there was Tim O'Reilly's Web 2.0 characterization and Dan Gillmor's citizen journalism talk. I wouldn't say any of the talks I saw this year had that quality, but on the other hand the pervasive "let's bootstrap our way to something new" message in almost all talks, almost make up for that. Maybe that is the big new thing this year.
Lots of interesting talks here at Reboot.
Doc Searls repeats his analysis, a la George Lakoff, of the words we use to describe media vs text/speech, giving us a subset of the Les Blogs slides. It's a good point, and a good talk and Doc is engaging
Robert Scoble: I'm still not a fan - as a counterpoint to Searls' talk Scoble even uses some of the "bad" (according to Searls) metaphors for media in his speech.
Jason Calacanis. I'm mainly here because I don't need to be elsewhere, but Calacanis is surprisingly clear and uncompromising in his message on the blog effect, notable point is the DON'T SELL OUT (in any way shape or form) message.
David Axmark Good points on making a business out of open source. Key thing: Don't compromise your open source approach for the sake of your business. It does not work. Giving away stuff is the ultimate marketing exercise. Also, ease of use is key even for free stuff, even for "developer only" products (this ties in with Zero Training). Ease of use is what get's your product picked up in the first place. Fun fact: MySQL is named after Monty Widenius' daughter, MaxDB after his son.
Ben Cerveny I'll have some related notes later, but for now the fun fact is simply that Ludicorp is not a variation of ludicrous but a derivation of ludic, i.e. playing.
Jimbo Wales Same talk given at 21C3. Impressive talk, due to the all-around "take the high road" approach of Wales. Pure message, pure goals, pure knowledge (no plagiarism) etc. etc.
The interesting fact here is the important distinction Wales makes between a statistical reputation system like e.g. slashdot uses, and the purely community-based reputation culture within Wikipedia. It's actually a quite narrow community of people who are defending the quality just like old media protects it's quality: Human reviews, open discussion (oh wait, old media doesn't do open discussion).
Thomas Harttung Fun, and interesting, analogy between networks and the modern "everythings emergent" network economy and natural systems. Examples of complex bio-cooperation illustrate how communication mechanisms the etwork economy is beginnign to emply resemble those in natural systems. Paradoxical thing is that modern agricultture doesn't really do things like this, even though farmers have inspiration close at hand.
Paula Le Dieu - didn't catch all of it, but got the following soundbite (not a direct quote, but words to that effect): It's unfortunate that our system of copyright is driven by our interest in Mickey Mouse not in the works of Albert Einstein. The talk is about applying Creative Commons to science.
Jason Fried Describes how 37Signals applies agile methods in their work. sound bite: "Small is the new big". This of course is the trend of the whole conference and quite possibly the main message of all the talks. Stay with the roots.
Plazes.com demo Very good talk about plazes.com - bootstrapped location based services. The talk is good in itself. It talks about how you need to approach a problem if you don't have the economy to build your own infrastructure (use one that's already there) or to deploy 1000s of developers (make your work hackable and free).
Then came dinner, and then the famously mindblowing Doug Engelbart demo - introduced via iChat by Engelbart himself. This is interesting enough that it merits an individual post, which will follow later.
All in all a very good day of talks. If I have a complaint it would be that the talks are only culturally forward looking, focusing on the small, "bootstrapped" companies. There are no new technological trends here, only stuff we already knew (OK, I hadn't seen plazes.com). Obviously a conference such as this is much more likelu to have a cultural impact anyway, but still there are few new visions on how technology shapes us and shapes culture.
I'm at the Reboot conference here in Copenhagen and I am taking notes on paper to enjoy the luxury of rewrites when I blog this properly later.
So far, it's a pretty good set of talks. Jimbo Wales impressed by being all about taking the high road in every aspect of his project. Doc Searls was very professional and interesting and engaging, but the talk was a rehash of the slides from Les Blogs.
I'll have specific comments on what they said later - for now I'm just enjoying a better than last time speaker lineup.
Webbureauet reaxion.dk understreger med sin hjemmeside hvor svært det er at vedligeholde sådan et bæst...
[UPDATE: Balder har dels forklaret hvoffor topframen er der (alt alt for mange latterlige båndbreddestjælere - specielt på Seebach-filmen og dels rettet netsummary op, så det kun er links til egne ressourcer der får en "tilbage" side]
Linksamlingen Netsummary, hvor jeg af og til poster et link, har indført en irriterende hotmail-agtig topframe sådan at man kan komme tilbage til netsummary. Back knappen virkede allerede, og nu kan man til gengæld ikke få lov at komme væk fra netsummary (sitet er fixet). Not to worry, classy's bookmarklet service har råd for det hele.
Gå ikke tilbage til netsummary
Linket ovenfor er en bookmarklet der dropper topframen. De sædvanlige regler for bookmarklets gælds. De er farlige i princippet og man skal ikke stole på nogen, men den her gør virkelig ikke noget.
Hvis du bruger firefox og greasemonkey, så er bookmarkletten i user script format [UPDATE: ikke] her. Så slipper du for selv at skulle aktive bookmarkletten. Installer som man plejer.
If the dog and pony show at the Google Factory tour is anything to go by, Google already have close to perfect universal translation in the lab. The lesson learned, for artificial intelligence, is that intelligence is just data. Once you have enough to do good pattern recognition the limits for what kinds of problem require uniquely clever algorithms and what problems just require high quality pattern matching algorithms becomes very, very fuzzy.
As a future user of such a technology all I can say is that perfect translation always available online will be much like seeing the world wide web for the first time all over again. The implications of having access to this in mobile devices is even more staggering. Imagine all of a sudden being able to travel everywhere with good cell coverage and actually understanding everything in any language. The idea that I could have this ability with a cameraphone in 5-10 years, and not in some distant Star Trek universe hundreds of years away, almost brings tears to my eyes.
I'm imagining a future where the poor math skills of modern day kids, who never had to add, let alone multiply, two numbers by hand will migrate to languages as well. Obviously, if the machine can translate for you, why would you bother to learn yourself. For Danes, all 5 million of us, this is a big deal. From a situation where pessimists can see nothing but a certain death of local Danish culture, we may soon face another scenario altogether with everybody happily sticking to their own language - without that handicapping anybody in any signinficant way.
Justeren og jeg sad og nød en kop kaffe på Vesterbros torv i nogenlunde ly for seneftermiddagens lortevejr da vi blev vidne til følgende korte samlivskrise.
På fortovscafeen sidder også en mand, med lange stilige grå og mørke hår, tilpasset en kreativ branche hvor gammel er et skældsord. Han passer halvanden stor fadøl og også to små børn. Snakker lidt med dem.
Når barn nr 1 løber lidt for langt væk rejser han sig ikke.
"Du bliver pissevåd!". Han kalder på barnet for at holde afstanden nogenlunde nede. Barn 2 sover.
Ind på torvet kører en Citroen Xsara Picasso. Ud stiger en pige, klart yngre end manden, velklædt, men stram i betrækket, enten vred eller fortravlet.
Barnet ser hende, og vender om og løber tilbage mod manden. "Hvad laver du?" vrisser hun, halvt til barnet, halvt til manden.
"Hvad laver du?" - hun samler barnet op, går hen til bilen og sætter barnet ind i børnestolen på forsædet.
Hun rejser sig og kigger tilbage mod manden, de 1.5 fadøl og barn nr 2.
"Kom så!"
"Hold nu op! Har jeg ikke en gang tid til at pisse!?"
"Kom nu, vi skal afsted"
"Hold nu op. Jeg har også hende her, ikke. Og jeg skal lige ind at pisse!"
"Kom" siger hun næsten igen. Manden forlader barnevogn og fadøl og går indenfor.
Hun står lidt. Da det er helt klart at han er gået ind går hun over til barn nr. 2, kører barnevognen til bilen. tager det sovende barn og sætter det i bilen, på bagsædet bag barn nr 1, pakker barnevognen sammen, åbner bagagerummet, lægger barnevognen ned, og lukker.
Han er stadig inde at pisse.
Hun sætter sig ind i bilen, vender, lader motoren køre.
Han kommer ud, og sætter sig igen, med sin sidste selvrespekt og de en og en halv fadøl.
Ingen rører sig.
Til sidst ruller hun vinduet ned og taler til ham, uhørligt.
"Den har jeg aflyst", siger han
Hun ryster afvisende på hovedet og taler videre, lavere.
"Hvad siger du". Hun taler videre ud gennem det kvart nedrullede vindue.
"Hvad?". "Jeg har aflyst det".
Hun ruller op, sætter bilen i gear og kører sin vej.
Han sidder.
Tony ringer. Han taler lidt med ham og taler stadig, da Xsaraen ruller
ind på pladsen igen, en strafomgang senere.
"Så kommer hun, Tony", "hun ser ikke glad ud " - han lægger på.
Hun ruller ned igen, og taler hurtigt til ham.
"Heej Solveig", siger han kælent til pigen i barnestolen, "Du lyder helt kinesisk" vrænger han af den hurtigttalende chauffør.
Han rejser sig, ringer op. Han taler. Aftaler.
"Hvor kan vi støde ind i hinanden. Christianshavn Torv? Om.. syv minutter. Godt. Hej."
Han taler mod bilen,og snubler sløret i udtalen.. "Chrshavn Torv"
Først da sætter han sig ind på bagsædet og kører væk.
I'm beginning to think that web 2.0 doesn't really indicate 2nd generation but rather the new aggressively 2-way nature of the web. Case in point, this years edition of Reboot. It seems the social momentum of blogging (and a grassrootsy turn of the program, maybe) has changed the dynamic of the conference from wanting to be an audience drive event to actually being one. It is in fact almost as if the audience has taken over, which I'm sure is very much the idea. The conference home page is a wiki - and none of the pages are edit locked. There's already a reboot podcast and this was not put together by the organisers. A number of reboot related semi-official and unofficial events are popping up before and after the conference
In contrast the 2-way approach wasn't tried 4 years ago and at least partially failed 2 years ago.
Teknologirådet har udgivet en rapport om patenter. Den handler om det hele, ikke specifikt om software-patenter - men mange af de specielle forbehold der gør sig gældende i software er nævnt. Det økonomiske afsnit i rapporten er desværre, og betegnende for hele patentdiskussionen, det svageste.
Jeg fastholder min tidligere påstand.
Google has taken the '00s concept of open source code bounties to new heights. This summer Google will sponsor, a large number of of open source projects, offering a bounty of 4500$ for up to 200 participating developers - if they complete their designated project.
Projects that take on developers will also receive a smaller sum to help in managing the summer coders.
Maxing out on the developer limit, the project will amount to a 1 mio$ contribution to open source.
The companies that sponsor/employ the important members of the large open source projects probably contribute more money than this - but even if this is mainly good advertising it's still a huge deal for the projects that benefit.
Boing Boing har frustrerende mange posts, og det virker som om der er kommet flere og flere på det sidste, og kvaliteten daler derfor (hvilket gør denne Dilbert kommentar dobbeltlagsagtigt morsom). Men det er et guldkorn at der faktisk er overvågningskameraer på Pl. George Orwell i Barcelona - 24 timer i døgnet.
[Update: It's x86]
Can't say I knew before I read the infoworld story but the huge fuss (also on slashdot) over Apple's supposed switch to Intel seems to be completely unaware that OS X already runs on x86. There are obvious commercial reasons not to go to a highly clonable platform, but technically Apple seems to be well along the way already.
I think it is reason enough to disallow software patents that the system is so extremely abusable and that the incentive to abuse the system is extremely high. The abuse: Throwing the book at the patent office. A massive landgrab in ideaspace. There's just no chance that patent offices anywhere will be able to properly evaluate all patent claims and momentum being what it is patents will most likely be awarded not discarded by default in lieu of a proper examination.
A good case in point is the XML serialization patent story - patent flip-flopping software behemoth Microsoft has done the equivalent of patenting the wheel in patenting, successfully, XML serialization of objects.
Not only is there plenty of prior art that will eventually lead to the patent being discarded, but at a deeper level, that's pretty much what XML is from a certain point of view.
The morale of the story is obvious: It doesn't really matter that the patent will hopefully be discarded at some point, the friction it has already created wil slow evolution of software. Absolutely no invention of anything was protected by the grant of this patent.
Det regnede, lyden var lav, Elvis og band havde måske lidt travlt med at spille mangehits og måske havde de også lidt for lidt energi til med overbevisning at kunne aflevere Pump It Up, men af en Tivolikoncert at være var det slet ikke dårligt faktisk ganske godt.
Det var det klassiske debut og "& The Attractions" materiale der var i centrum for koncerten, suppleret med materiale indspillet med det nuværende turband The Imposters, og det er vel ikke overraskende at det var materialet indspillet med det band der stod på scenen der kom bedst over, selvom det er forbløffende få af de gamle numre Elvis decideret ikke kan synge mere. When I was Cruel og Deliveryman var højdepunkter.
Før de løb tør for saft sidst i koncerten, 20 minutters afjappede versioner af 10 gamle hits, rockede bandet godt.