I'm still at the SPIE meeting here in Florida, and haven't been reading the web, nor really answering my email unless it's hideously important. So I didn't hear about the Web 2.0™ copyright mess until today.
Like Nick I'm willing to give Tim O'Reilly a break, he's earned a by, but I'm sure many others won't. He's supposed to be on vacation, but is presumably contact-able, and I'm guessing he's going to be seriously annoyed if someone at the office hasn't rung him about this and just tried to handle it without telling them. Especially when they don't seem to have realised how important this sort of thing is to the open source community, and how it hurts even more when it's "one of our own". Lawyers making a mess of things we can understand, Tim O'Reilly? It hurts that much harder the further you have to fall...
O'Reilly Publishing have built their business off the back of a reputation for ethics, honesty and integrity. Surely their reputation is worth more than their trademark on Web 2.0™?
Update: A sensible and measured post from Tim O'Reilly on his return from vacation, which will hopefully go a good way to settling people down so we can actually talk about this problem. I must admit to being more riled than I probably should have been over the apparent cluelessness shown by O'Reilly Publishing in handling the mess, precisely because this was O'Reilly and I expected better of them, rather than for any other real reason. The initial statement from Sara probably would have dealt with the mobs, it certainly would have dealt with me, if people weren't holding O'Reilly and specifically Tim himself to a higher standard.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Delta IV launch
I've been out at the SPIE meeting in Florida for a couple of days now, but predictably have been really busy. However a few of us had heard that GOES-N, the first in a series of new Earth monitoring weather satellites, was due to be launched today on a Boeing Delta IV from Cape Canaveral. There was nothing for it but we had to go and try and see the launch...
The GOES-N satellite launch (Quicktime Movie 13MB)
Unfortunately we didn't really get organised until the last minute, and mostly my fault, we left things a bit late considering Canaveral is around 40 miles from the conference hotel. So therefore Robert White, Rick Hessman, Rob Seaman and myself were still barrelling east along SR 528 towards the cape when the launch took place at 6:11pm EDT. I spotted the rocket arching upwards through the thin cloud near the horizon, and we pulled over and bailed out of the car for a better look. It's a shame we didn't get closer, but at least we saw it...
The GOES-N satellite launch (Quicktime Movie 13MB)
Unfortunately we didn't really get organised until the last minute, and mostly my fault, we left things a bit late considering Canaveral is around 40 miles from the conference hotel. So therefore Robert White, Rick Hessman, Rob Seaman and myself were still barrelling east along SR 528 towards the cape when the launch took place at 6:11pm EDT. I spotted the rocket arching upwards through the thin cloud near the horizon, and we pulled over and bailed out of the car for a better look. It's a shame we didn't get closer, but at least we saw it...
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Couldn't make this stuff up...
I was listening in on the tower chatter while my flight taxied towards the runway in Vancouver and overhead an incoming Air Canada flight being warned about a coyote on the runway. After touch down the pilot informed the tower that the coyote had crossed the runway as they were descending past 700 ft and flaring for landing. You couldn't make this stuff up...
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Hijacking the DNS
I'm sitting on the Datavalet wireless network in Vancouver International, and I've just noticed something really weird. It appears that the network is hijacking the DNS, if I type google.com into the browser, it redirects me to yahoo.com, and I don't seem to get a choice about things.
If I was using a Windows box I'd immediately suspect some sort of trojan or other nasty, but I'm using a Apple Mac, so I'm provisionally ruling that out. Whatever the cause, I don't really regard that as "nice" behaviour, and I'm left wondering where this is happening in the chain of routers between me and the outside world. I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this one?
Update: The "problem" seems to have gone away now, if it starts happening again I'll grab the output of dig for google.com and post it. I really should have thought of that in the first place, but it was just too spooky...
If I was using a Windows box I'd immediately suspect some sort of trojan or other nasty, but I'm using a Apple Mac, so I'm provisionally ruling that out. Whatever the cause, I don't really regard that as "nice" behaviour, and I'm left wondering where this is happening in the chain of routers between me and the outside world. I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this one?
Update: The "problem" seems to have gone away now, if it starts happening again I'll grab the output of dig for google.com and post it. I really should have thought of that in the first place, but it was just too spooky...
Round trip to the UK
I've currently holed up in the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge in Vancouver International on my way back into the UK. I'm scheduled to do a rapid turn around there, and will be back on a plane to Orlando out of Heathrow on Tuesday morning on my way to the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation conference which starts next week. Err, wish me luck...
Thursday, May 18, 2006
In the darkness bind them...
I was taken by a snippet from Tim O'Reilly's commencement speech at SIMS a few days ago...
Walter Mossberg has also recently argued that the desktop era is at an end, which brought a response from Bill Gates, predictably arguing that there was life in the old model yet, and I was really interested to see this picked up by Slashdot where the comments for once were predominantly in Gate's favour. As regulars on the site should know, this is more than a little unusual, but it's not hard to figure out why for once the assembled hordes are supporting Gates.
I've often argued that the desktop computer is a dead end, and like the VCR its a piece of technology whose time has come and gone. This isn't a popular opinion, either with Gates, who amassed a fortune selling commodity software for commodity boxes, or to the Slashdot hordes, who see a computer as a general tool and don't like the new world of single use devices. These devices tend to be designed to do one thing, and do it well, and although there are exceptions, the new generation of devices generally run proprietary code and are much less hackable than your average desktop machine.
Both the new generation of embedded devices and the emerging Web 2.0 infrastructure is all about the interfaces. We are now treating both devices and software as black boxes, and the utility and the user interface is in the mashups between these interfaces. While, perhaps through familiarity software mashups are more common, some people seem to get it. Black box hardware doesn't mean no hacking, it just needs a slightly different toolset.
The days when you could produce cool stuff just by playing around with a stand alone machine are pretty much over, the secret is now in the sauce...
Internet pundit Clay Shirky memorably summarized the shift to network computing with a story about Thomas Watson Jr., the head of IBM during the birth of the mainframe. Watson famously remarked that he saw no need for more than 5 computers worldwide. Clay noted, "We now know that Thomas Watson was wrong." We all laughed as we thought of the hundreds of millions of personal computers sold today. But then Clay socked us with the punch line: "He overstated the number by four." - Tim O'ReillyAlthough there actually isn't any evidence that Watson ever actually said anything of the kind, I was struck by Shirky's comment on the famous misquote.
Walter Mossberg has also recently argued that the desktop era is at an end, which brought a response from Bill Gates, predictably arguing that there was life in the old model yet, and I was really interested to see this picked up by Slashdot where the comments for once were predominantly in Gate's favour. As regulars on the site should know, this is more than a little unusual, but it's not hard to figure out why for once the assembled hordes are supporting Gates.
I've often argued that the desktop computer is a dead end, and like the VCR its a piece of technology whose time has come and gone. This isn't a popular opinion, either with Gates, who amassed a fortune selling commodity software for commodity boxes, or to the Slashdot hordes, who see a computer as a general tool and don't like the new world of single use devices. These devices tend to be designed to do one thing, and do it well, and although there are exceptions, the new generation of devices generally run proprietary code and are much less hackable than your average desktop machine.
Both the new generation of embedded devices and the emerging Web 2.0 infrastructure is all about the interfaces. We are now treating both devices and software as black boxes, and the utility and the user interface is in the mashups between these interfaces. While, perhaps through familiarity software mashups are more common, some people seem to get it. Black box hardware doesn't mean no hacking, it just needs a slightly different toolset.
The days when you could produce cool stuff just by playing around with a stand alone machine are pretty much over, the secret is now in the sauce...
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
What about the 12 inch?
The rumours of a zero boot time 12 inch (or 13 inch widescreen?) Powerbook replacement, with instant on flash memory, almost had me lining up outside my nearest Apple Store with my credit card in my hand. But the fate of the 12 inch PowerBook now seems sealed...
I've been waiting for something "much cooler" than a replacement for the the 12, 15 and 17 inch Powerbooks ever since the introduction of the 15 inch MacBook Pro in January, and unless rumours of the "real" video iPod and the supposed Mac tablet turn out to be a range of Newton style replacement devices, it looks like I'm in for a disappointment. It currently doesn't look like there isn't going to be replacement, "cooler" or not, at all...
Which is confusing. I've talked before about how the core demographics of the laptop market is splitting into two with the road warriors, who would kill for another half hour of battery, or half a kilogram less of laptop, and the power users who desperately want another couple of inches of screen real estate, and another hundred gigabytes of hard drive.
But Apple no longer offer something for the road warriors, who are unlikely to want to settle for a MacBook instead of a MacBook Pro. Surely Apple must be planning something in the new line up to fill the gap?
Update: It's official, there will not be a replacement (via TUAW) for the 12 inch Powerbook. So, where now for the road warrior?
Update: Some of us aren't waiting for something much cooler, but instead something insanely great. It looks like I'm not the only one disappointed in the new laptops. I guess I just expected more from Apple, something truly innovative, something that persuaded me that I wanted to sell a kidney to poses it...
I've been waiting for something "much cooler" than a replacement for the the 12, 15 and 17 inch Powerbooks ever since the introduction of the 15 inch MacBook Pro in January, and unless rumours of the "real" video iPod and the supposed Mac tablet turn out to be a range of Newton style replacement devices, it looks like I'm in for a disappointment. It currently doesn't look like there isn't going to be replacement, "cooler" or not, at all...
Which is confusing. I've talked before about how the core demographics of the laptop market is splitting into two with the road warriors, who would kill for another half hour of battery, or half a kilogram less of laptop, and the power users who desperately want another couple of inches of screen real estate, and another hundred gigabytes of hard drive.
But Apple no longer offer something for the road warriors, who are unlikely to want to settle for a MacBook instead of a MacBook Pro. Surely Apple must be planning something in the new line up to fill the gap?
Update: It's official, there will not be a replacement (via TUAW) for the 12 inch Powerbook. So, where now for the road warrior?
Update: Some of us aren't waiting for something much cooler, but instead something insanely great. It looks like I'm not the only one disappointed in the new laptops. I guess I just expected more from Apple, something truly innovative, something that persuaded me that I wanted to sell a kidney to poses it...
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
The new MacBook
I've obviously been working too hard today as, at least until Brad pointed it out, I'd entirely missed the release of Apple's new 13 inch MacBook...
Apple Insider is carrying some of the first pictures of the new MacBook, while it seems that some people (via TUAW) have already got their hands on one of the new laptops...
Update: Ars Technica has posted a review of the new MacBook.
Apple Insider is carrying some of the first pictures of the new MacBook, while it seems that some people (via TUAW) have already got their hands on one of the new laptops...
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| CREDIT: Apple Insider |
| The new 13 inch Apple MacBook |
Update: Ars Technica has posted a review of the new MacBook.
Geotagging Manhattan
Earlier today Nikolaj Nyholm passed on the rumour that the lamp posts in Manhattan were being geotagged...
Start looking at all the light posts in the city, about 7-8 feet off the ground. Every single one has a barcode. Steve Bull clued me in to this on Wednesday night. He said a few weeks ago, he was walking along and ran into a few guys with a huge GPS unit and a 6-foot antenna. They were placing the bar codes and correlating them with their respective geocoords. He didn't know who they were or why there were doing it. - Dennis CrowleyIt turns out it's down to the new accounting regulations that require cities to inventory virtually everything, including lamp posts, to keep their credit rating. Despite this you have to hope that they'll publish the data, but considering the "security concerns" that would doubtless be raised by that I guess they'll probably manage to avoid it. I'll be pleasantly surprised if this potentially interesting dataset makes it into the public domain.
Monday, May 15, 2006
A week in Victoria
I'm currently catching up with my email in the run up to the IVOA Interoperability Meeting, which starts tomorrow. While Gemma and I have been out here in Victoria for a week now, we've been on holiday, although since we've got four cell phones and two laptops between the two of us it hasn't exactly been a "get away from it all" vacation. None the less I've got a stack of unread email to deal with, and a couple of talks to write before the meeting.
We spent last week in the Dominion Grand Hotel, but today moved across the inner harbour to the Laurel Point Inn which commands an impressive view over the harbour.
While it's a move up in comfort and room size, the wireless network isn't any more free here than it was in the last hotel, and to be honest I think the Grand has more character than the Laurel Point. The Grand's recent refurbishment was obviously aimed at making it into a boutique hotel and while there were a few rough edges to the make-over, it's less than half the price of the Laurel Point and the service seemed friendlier. Maybe I'm turning into a tired and world weary traveller, but it takes more than floor space to impress me these days, although some hotels obviously take things too far...
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| Posted via Flickr by aallan |
| Sitting amongst the drift wood on the beach at Oak Bay |
We spent last week in the Dominion Grand Hotel, but today moved across the inner harbour to the Laurel Point Inn which commands an impressive view over the harbour.
While it's a move up in comfort and room size, the wireless network isn't any more free here than it was in the last hotel, and to be honest I think the Grand has more character than the Laurel Point. The Grand's recent refurbishment was obviously aimed at making it into a boutique hotel and while there were a few rough edges to the make-over, it's less than half the price of the Laurel Point and the service seemed friendlier. Maybe I'm turning into a tired and world weary traveller, but it takes more than floor space to impress me these days, although some hotels obviously take things too far...
Sunday, May 14, 2006
cloud.lic.io.us
I just stumbled across cloud.lic.io.us (via the Apple Blog) which is a widget to display your del.icio.us tag cloud in Apple's Dashboard, thought it was cool, so thought I should share...
My tag cloud in cloud.lic.io.us
My tag cloud in cloud.lic.io.us
Friday, May 12, 2006
Mossberg and the iPhone
Walt Mossberg says that the iPhone is coming (via Apple Matters), and who are we to argue with the likes of Walt? But like many others I'm tired of the continuing iPhone and Apple MVNO rumours. We've been talking about this for over two years now, can't we just leave be..?
Update: More iPhone rumours, this time naming Softbank as a partner for a 3G phone to be released in Japan sometime this year. However, at least to me, this one sounds bogus. Apple just don't work that way, and I'd be amazed if they ignored their core U.S. market for the release of something as (potentially) big as the iPhone. But then, maybe I'm just being cynical from over two years of iPhone rumours which led to nothing beyond the clunky Motorola ROKR E1.
Update: Amongst others, Gizmodo are taking the latest Softbank rumours as gospel. Do they know something, or someone, I don't? Or are they just so desperate for an iPhone they'll clutch at any straws to come their way?
Update: Apple Insider is now carrying the official denial of the Softbank rumour...
Update: More iPhone rumours, this time naming Softbank as a partner for a 3G phone to be released in Japan sometime this year. However, at least to me, this one sounds bogus. Apple just don't work that way, and I'd be amazed if they ignored their core U.S. market for the release of something as (potentially) big as the iPhone. But then, maybe I'm just being cynical from over two years of iPhone rumours which led to nothing beyond the clunky Motorola ROKR E1.
Update: Amongst others, Gizmodo are taking the latest Softbank rumours as gospel. Do they know something, or someone, I don't? Or are they just so desperate for an iPhone they'll clutch at any straws to come their way?
Update: Apple Insider is now carrying the official denial of the Softbank rumour...
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Sheep!
The mysterious "draw a sheep" HIT on Amazon's Mechanical Turk has been causing confusion amongst participants for a while now, however all has now been revealed...
Aaron Koblin's Sheep Market
Ten thousand sheep drawn over a period of forty days by over seven thousand individuals, who were paid at a rate of two cents a sheep, now form part of Aaron Koblin's collaborative art project the Sheep Market (via the AWS Blog).
Aaron Koblin's Sheep Market
Ten thousand sheep drawn over a period of forty days by over seven thousand individuals, who were paid at a rate of two cents a sheep, now form part of Aaron Koblin's collaborative art project the Sheep Market (via the AWS Blog).
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Back in transit...
I'm holed up in the Renaissance London Heathrow on my way out to Canada, with an early morning check-in tomorrow, as I've decided to take a weeks holiday in the run up to the IVOA interoperability meeting out in B.C. the week after...
Update: Transferring to a Vancouver bound flight in Chicago O'Hare. I've got bumped to first class for this leg, not that this means a lot on a "domestic" leg. But you can't complain...
Update: Got seriously delayed at O'Hare, and we came within a few minutes of the flight crew on my Vancouver leg going illegal. I think we pushed back three minutes ahead of the time when they'd have had to find a new crew, or cancel the flight. From overhearing the chatter with the agent at the gate, there wasn't a crew available, so I'd probably have ended up stuck in Chicago. That'd wouldn't have been good.
Update: On the ground in Victoria...
Update: Transferring to a Vancouver bound flight in Chicago O'Hare. I've got bumped to first class for this leg, not that this means a lot on a "domestic" leg. But you can't complain...
Update: Got seriously delayed at O'Hare, and we came within a few minutes of the flight crew on my Vancouver leg going illegal. I think we pushed back three minutes ahead of the time when they'd have had to find a new crew, or cancel the flight. From overhearing the chatter with the agent at the gate, there wasn't a crew available, so I'd probably have ended up stuck in Chicago. That'd wouldn't have been good.
Update: On the ground in Victoria...
Friday, May 05, 2006
Ubiquitous umbrellas?
We've had smart clothes pegs, intelligent spoons and thinking carpets, so it should come as no surprise that we now have the ubiquitous umbrella (via Engadget & Inhabitat).
The WiFi Umbrella from Materious
The umbrella gathers real time weather information via built-in WiFi, and then glows to alert you when its going to rain. If your umbrella isn't glowing, then you don't have to take it with you when you leave the house, but if the handle is pulsing blue, the umbrella is telling you that you're probably going to need it...
Like the Flashbag this sort of device represents ubiquitous computing at its best, the computing power is hidden from the user, and the user interface is obvious and tactile, and doesn't require any intervention to understand and react to the changing state of the device. As odd as these sorts of things are today, this is the future of computing and the desktop is dead.
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| CREDIT: Materious |
The umbrella gathers real time weather information via built-in WiFi, and then glows to alert you when its going to rain. If your umbrella isn't glowing, then you don't have to take it with you when you leave the house, but if the handle is pulsing blue, the umbrella is telling you that you're probably going to need it...
Like the Flashbag this sort of device represents ubiquitous computing at its best, the computing power is hidden from the user, and the user interface is obvious and tactile, and doesn't require any intervention to understand and react to the changing state of the device. As odd as these sorts of things are today, this is the future of computing and the desktop is dead.
Monday, May 01, 2006
The ABC divide
I was actually sort of looking forward to the free streaming experiment from ABC, despite it being ad supported content. I'd happily pay for shows ad-free via iTunes, if I could. But of course they aren't available outside the US. However it turns out that the ABC streams aren't available outside the US either, err, great! Again, so much for the global economy...
Why?
Update: As several people have pointed out, to view the shows all you need to do is go via a free proxy located somewhere inside the USA. Of course, it's presumably a violation of the DCMA to do that, so if you travel to the States, you might want to think seriously about not getting caught...
Why?
Update: As several people have pointed out, to view the shows all you need to do is go via a free proxy located somewhere inside the USA. Of course, it's presumably a violation of the DCMA to do that, so if you travel to the States, you might want to think seriously about not getting caught...
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