Blue Sky On Mars

There has been huge discussion about Echo, the in-progress replacement for RSS and the Blogger API. I agree that the notion of coming up with a new, clean, unambiguous syntax can help the state of blog reading and production tools. Something that has bothered me for some time, however, is the question of “why are RSS feeds provided on a pull basis?”
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The last time that I really spent any time directly working on web interfaces was in 1999, and I didn’t have a lot of time then to spend on a web UI. Lack of browser compatibility (and even support, in the case of CSS) made Javascript and CSS painful to use. Since 1999, my work has been focused on server-side technologies, because I have had other people to lean on to do the front end. Now, I’m in a 3 person group and the HTML is my concern… but, I’m actually enjoying it!
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New here? This post gets a fair bit of search engine traffic. I just wanted to note that it was written in 2002. It’s obviously outrageously wrong. Who cares? I was just having some fun. Read on…

J.K. Rowling told reporters that she has already written the final chapter of book 7 of Harry Potter. The chapter tells of what happens to the main characters after graduation. This is doubtless going to be one of the most sought after documents on the Net, and there will be many fake variations that surface. I thought I would make a pre-emptive strike and release my version of the last chapter of Harry Potter. Feel free to post a link to your own Potter final chapters.
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It turns out that The Software Commons is more compelling than I had first thought.

The Software Commons Revisited

When I wrote The Software Commons article, I was focusing on Open Source on the desktop computers in offices. However, I had been looking at it as a direct replacement for Microsoft Windows and Office. Some recent articles have made me realize that the financial advantages of using Linux are even larger than I had been thinking.
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The parallel I’m drawing is less about the participants and more about the people caught in the center. Thank goodness the software business is not a two party system.

Microsoft : FSF :: Republicans : Democrats

The parallel I’m drawing is less about the participants and more about the people caught in the center. Thank goodness the software business is not a two party system.

The traditional view of Republicans is that they are business-oriented, conservative when it comes to individual liberties, are in favor of a strong defense infrastructure, but want to keep taxes low. The traditional view of Democrats is that they are more oriented towards people, wanting more social programs and liberal individual liberties, and that they are willing to pay a little more in taxes in order to see their social programs enacted. I’m sure there will be people out there who may disagree with these characterizations, but bear with me because that’s not the main point.
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and buy with your conscience. Quit complaining about the actions of megacorpations, because it’s really easy to do something about it.

(note: this article was originally written in June. I had basically finished it with the second draft in July, but I never got around to fixing up the links. So, now it’s all set!)

Many Americans feel powerless next to the enormity of the government. It’s important to remember that the government is simply a bunch of people that we chose to represent our interests when making policy. Recent history has shown us how much difference an individual can make: a Senator from a small state single handedly changed the balance of power in the Senate. The Presidential election was as close to a tie as it can get, making it the kind of election in which the votes of each person add up to a significant difference.
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In New York Times v. Tasini, freelance writer Jonathan Tasini sued because the NY Times published an article of his online without his permission. I agree with the Supreme Court and with Anupam Chander’s article on the issue, in which Chander states that the case may have an impact for Napster.

In all of the talk about Napster, it has seemed like musicians are pretty powerless in the music industry. That is true, because musicians sign away their copyrights when they sign up with a major label. However, writers are a different story. They often retain their copyrights and just give a license to a publisher for a specific use.
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The open source software revolution is just heating up. Though some would portray it as a destroyer of intellectual property, the truth is that it is a chance for companies to work together to save billions of dollars and retain the intellectual property that is truly important to them.

The Software Commons
Where Is Open Source Taking Us?

Though the GNU project has existed since 1984, the notion of thousands of developers collaborating remotely on software projects was inconceivable before the Internet came along. The rules of business haven’t changed; companies still need to turn a profit. The rules of software, however, have changed. This article explores how open source software is creating a “software commons” that will significantly alter the landscape of the software industry.
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From Salon: The music revolution will not be digitized. “The power, then, is consolidated squarely back in the hands of the same record industry executives that held the reins before.” There are still some groups that have the power to change things, though…

So far, the music publishing organizations haven’t completely signed off on many of the models that the major labels are trying to build. The music publishers represent most of the songwriters, and without their permission none of the major label services can take off.
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