news

Why I stand up for Stallman

Why I stand up for Stallman: A few years ago I met Richard Stallman, in Berkeley. It was arranged by my friend Sylvia Paull, who was his publicist (she might still be, I’m not sure). It was amazing, because one of his associates there (whose name I don’t remember) was teasing me just like people in workgroups on the net were. I looked at him, and asked him if he seriously was going to do this, in front of Stallman. Yeah, he kept at it. That’s how pervasive this culture of disrespect is. To Stallman’s credit, he not only stopped it, but dug in. He wanted to understand what was at the root of this. I told him I had GPL’d my life’s work. And this is the kind of treatment I was getting fairly widely. It wasn’t a long conversation, but I could see in his eyes the empathy that Sam had been looking for so many years ago. People think Stallman is oblivious, but my feeling is he’s a lot more aware than most people.

[Anil Dash in the comments on the above story: “using that power to cow conference organizers and academics into submission to an arbitrary set of whims, the same as a rock star refusing to eat certain colors of M&Ms. Just make good music, and ignore the unwelcome M&Ms in the bowl. And be thankful someone wants to hear what you’re singing.”

Here’s where I step in… most people get that story wrong and Anil does here. And I think it helps make a point, I’m simply trying to be pedantic about a often mistold story.

The “no red M&Ms” (or whatever color) wasn’t about arbitrary control and power but about trust. Setting a venue for a show requires a lot of technical work. There’s an awful lot of voltage flying around those lights and plenty more in the audio systems. Cross connect something by mistake, lift a ground in the wrong spot, etc. and you greatly increase the chance that someone will get electrocuted and seriously harmed (if not killed).

The remove one color of M&M while it seems arbitrary was a test. For something that the venue or promoter might feel is bullying or a power trip, if they attended to the detail of it, chances are that they’re attending to the details that really matter as well. It’s a litmus test for attention to detail.

While I had no problem pointing to a story about Stallman’s inconsistency’s, that’s not a reason to jump on him. It doesn’t smack of power trip to me. It simply seems like the a “possibles bag” of collected things that have gone wrong in the past, and an attempt to improve things in the future. Anyone who has done even some of what he does knows that expectations aren’t ever clear enough. You arrive to give a talk and suddenly “could you just” do this event or something. And a million other assumptions that may or may not be true. That document rings true to me, although some of it might seem odd. So what.

So while Anil has a point in the “you must call it” section, you might want to consider that most of this has probably happened and is there to prevent it from happening again, if at all possible, and is no more a power trip than saying “These things have gone wrong in the past”.]
Source: Scripting News

User-led RSS advocacy

User-led RSS advocacy:

A picture named loveRss.jpgIf you’re a regular reader of this blog, take a few moments and read this manifesto by actress Felicia Day about the importance of supporting RSS. She says that some sources are turning off their feeds. I was not aware of this. I subscribe to new feeds all the time, and rarely do I find a source that updates regularly that doesn’t have one. I think I’d notice.

But what’s reallly cool about this is that passionate and intelligent advocacy is coming from users. For me, that’s new. And very welcome. I’ve felt like the only person who’s willing to stick his neck out of the idea that we could have news flows that were not controlled by the tech industry. I was told that users would never understand why this is important. Well, looks like the people who said that were wrong.

This happens regularly in the tech industry, as I’ve written about so often. In the early days of a technology, in this case news feeds, users need training wheels on their tools. But a few years later, they understand how it works, and they can see how they’re being controlled. Shortly after that they break free of the bonds and a new layer of tech comes online.

If you’re a developer, it seems now is a good time to take a fresh look at building networks of news flow that doesn’t run exclusively through Google, Twitter or Facebook. There is an architecture possible here, built on formats and protocols we all know well. XML, JSON, HTTP, DNS. All of it lightweight and easily cloned for lots of choice for users.

But at least read Ms Day’s screed. :-)

[+1]
Source: Scripting News

O’Keefe vs. Rosen, Shirky

O’Keefe stings Rosen, Shirky: My thoughts: It’s okay to go undercover and publish the result if you actually caught someone doing something inappropriate. Based on what I know about journalism classes, and what Clay does (there’s only one quote from Jay in the 10-minute video) he did what guest lecturers do, give their opinions on the topics of the day. This kind of stuff goes on in J-schools everywhere, every day, with people of all political persuasions.

[The first problem I have with this is with the first few seconds of video where the word “caught” is used. Dave in his piece used the word “stings” which might be closer. But certainly the word caught implies that either one of the subjects of the piece were doing something wrong. That’s the kinda of crappy journalism we can expect from the next generation, who are busy trying to make a name for themselves pointing out the supposed flaws of the previous generation. It’s all a terrible loop.]
Source: Scripting News

Two less cables

Two less cables: Services like Hulu Plus and Netflix streaming have a huge problem getting content, and I continue to think that this is in no small part because they vastly underprice their services—which they do because consumers continue to decide how much they’re willing to pay for content based not on the content itself but on the delivery mechanism. If you watch a dozen shows and pay $120 a month for HD cable, you’re paying around $2.50 per episode. An iTunes season pass for a 24-episode show in HD is probably going to be about $45, or $1.88 an episode. Yet consumer behavior suggests we think iTunes is the service that’s priced unreasonably.*

I wrote a few months ago that I doubted you could do a streaming service that was really capable of supplanting cable or satellite unless it was at least $30 a month, and that’s probably including ads. I don’t think Netflix or Hulu could ask that kind of price and have a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding. I doubt even Amazon could.

[Lisa and I were discussing the math of cable just last night. Generally it doesn’t provide the value you think it does. It’s worth looking at what you use cable for… you might be able to drop it.]
Source: Coyote Tracks

Steve Jobs « The New Adventures of Stephen Fry

Steve Jobs « The New Adventures of Stephen Fry: It was a large and popular conference and Tim was pretty much at the end of the line of black NeXt boxes. Each developer showed Steve Jobs their new word-processor, graphic programme and utility and he slowly walked along the line, like the judge at a flower show nodding his approval or frowning his distaste. Just before he reached Tim and the world wide web at the end of the row, an aide nudged Jobs and told him that they should go or he’d be in danger of missing his flight back to America. So Steve turned away and never saw the programme that Tim Berners-Lee had written which would change the world as completely as Gutenberg had in 1450. It was a meeting of the two most influential men of their time that never took place. Chatting to the newly knighted Sir Tim a few years ago he told me that he had still never actually met Steve Jobs.

[Incredible.]

Roboto is a Four-headed Frankenfont

Roboto is a Four-headed Frankenfont: I’m all for the strategy of developing a unique identity typeface, and I commend Google for employing type designers in house, but this is an unwieldy mishmash. Roboto indeed has a mixed heritage, but that mix doesn’t have anything to do with the gibberish from the press release. Its parents are a Grotesk sans (like a slightly condensed Helvetica) and a Humanist sans (like Frutiger or Myriad). There’s nothing wrong with combining elements of these two styles to create something new. The crime is in the way they were combined: grabbing letters — almost wholesale — from the Grotesk model, along with a Univers-inspired ‘a’ and ‘G’, welding them to letters from the Humanist model, and then bolting on three straight-sided caps à la DIN.

[Nice rant.]
Source: Typographica

A Week With iOS 5

A Week With iOS 5: Put it this way: I’m home now and there’s not one task that cropped up during the week that I had to say “I’ll have to wait until I get back to my Mac to finish this”. That, to me, is the interesting bit.

[Indeed. If you have a chance, hook up a blutooth keyboard to your iPhone. It can be an eye opening experience to have a full sized keyboard attached to that device.]
Source: Fraser Speirs

Samsung Lawyer Cannot Tell Samsung Tablet From Apple iPad

Samsung Lawyer Cannot Tell Samsung Tablet From Apple iPad: John Paczkowski, AllThingsD:

Fielding questions from U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, Samsung attorney Kathleen Sullivan was asked if she could distinguish between Apple’s iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, which Koh held up for all the court to see. Her reply, as first reported by Reuters: “Not at this distance, your honor.”

The distance in question was ten feet.

I bring this up not (solely) for mocking purposes, but because it underlines something that many people I’ve heard from about this case don’t seem to get. Apple is not, to the best of my knowledge, claiming that they’ve patented fundamental and obvious things about iPad-like devices, they’re claiming that Samsung deliberately copied the iPad. There are a lot of tablet makers that Apple is not suing, and Samsung was not chosen as an arbitrary example.

[every market has this. Designers do there thing and if it transits at all it gets knocked off. Talk to anyone in the jewelry or “shmata” business. That doesn’t make it right, good, or anything, but only the largest companies can actually afford to do anything about it.]
Source: Coyote Tracks

Occupy Election Day

Occupy Election Day:

A picture named thinkUsa.gifI guess he thought that was funny. I don’t. I think the vote is sacred. I don’t care who you vote for, but the thought that one American would even think to deprive another American of their vote, is well un-American, in the extreme.

Helping people get to vote is a very powerful way to flex political muscles in a totally legal way. And prove that there is no specific agenda for the #OWS movement. Help all kinds of voters get to the polls. If a member of the ruling class needs help, we’ll help. Anyone means anyone.

There’s a pulse to this thing. I get that now. We have a really big election coming up in 2012, but the one this November is important too.

[Yeah, there’s some awful stuff being brought to the for. Here’s hoping that sunshine will disinfect the country.]
Source: Scripting News