Scripting News
Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution...
First, there's a spoiler here. If you haven't seen The Departed, do not read the rest of this post. It's a fantastic movie. Go see it. Don't let this post spoil it for you.
Remember the final scene? Matt Damon is coming home with groceries. He unlocks the door, walks in. Mark Wahlberg is waiting for him. Watch the scene, below, and remember what Damon says.
That's Obama. He must know this NSA thing isn't done blowing up on him. He's finished. If he weren't President he'd want the guy who is President to expose the whole thing proactively, pardon Snowden, and resign in disgrace.
This has to be vetted. Time to clean up the mess, pay the piper, whatever. We have totally lost our way. This is the last moment we get to turn back and get things right.
Once again I've done a re-design of the Scripting News home page.
This one is built by Fargo. So now I've got just one CMS instead of two.
That's also why you see a post in the stream called About Scripting News.
We have many mottoes, but the title of this post is the one constant.
Sometimes I think the life of a developer consists of moving a pile from one place to another, and then back again.
PS: Here's a snapshot of the last pre-Fargo home page.
PPS: And my notes on the transition.
Bootstrapping the blog revolutions
We're in the business of bootstrapping new forms of social behavior.
Scripting News was started in 1997, by me, Dave Winer.
Or 1994 or 1996 or whenever you think it actually started.
I wrote my first blog posts in 1994, that's for sure.
It's the longest continuously running blog on the Internet.
Some people were born to play country music, or baseball. I was born to blog.
At the beginning of blogging I thought everyone would be a blogger. I was wrong. Most people don't have the impulse to say what they think.
So when you meet one, you'll know it -- if they write letters to the editor, or if they voluteered to go to the blackboard when they were students. In my day, we were the kinds of people who started underground newspapers, or who volunteered for the student radio station at college.
I've had an About page for many years. Here's the one before this.
I always like to say what my mottos are on this page. So you know when I use them in a post it's not something casual. I'll try to list them all eventually. I know -- good luck with that!
My favorite mottos, slogans and ideas
We make shitty software, with bugs!
People return to places that send them away.
It's even worse than it appears.
Still diggin.
Let's have fun!
Only steal from the best.
Narrate your work.
Sources go direct.
Tim Berners-Lee for HTML and HTTP.
Chuck Shotton for teaching me how to write an HTTP server.
Adam Curry for giving me the basic idea of podcasting.
Jean-Louis Gassee for all his wisdom and slogans.
Marc Canter for being the Father of Multimedia.
John Palfrey for giving RSS 2.0 a good home at Berkman Center.
Martin Nisenholtz for letting me have the NY Times feeds.
Jay Rosen for teaching us about the Voice from Nowhere. (And authority.)
Doc Searls for being an outliner extraordinaire.
John Doerr and Gordon Eubanks for buying my first company and freeing me up to make software. (I was never meant to be a company exec.)
Guy Kawasaki for seeing Bullet Charts in my humble outliner.
Steve Jobs for "insanely great" shit like the Apple II, AppleTalk, Mac, iEverything.
Woz for the Apple II programming model, his humor, and love of freedom. It's important for techies to get that we make tools for free expression.
John Lennon for imagining peace and love and Paul McCartney for great music. This duality keeps showing up in the creative world. A person with something to prove and a partner who writes great songs.
NakedJen for being a paradox and bundle of joy in a small package with a huge spirit.
Doug Engelbart for envisioning almost everything I've spent my life creating.
Ted Nelson for writing the anthem for my generation of developers.
Coach Walsh for applying the scientific method to football.
Richard Stallman for telling it like it is.
My father for loving outlines. "Every day is father's day," he would say.
My mother for being a natural-born blogger.
The second OPML Editor community, and all previous instances of Frontier and ThinkTank communities (so many of them). This project has been going for a very long time.
Still diggin!
1. First if you don't like any of this there's a simple solution -- unsubscribe. And don't slam the door on your way out.
2. When I point to something that doesn't mean I agree with it. It also does not mean I've read it. I use my linkblog as a way to remember to read something, the way people used del.icio.us.
3. People have a need to vent. Fine. But do it to the world, not to any one person in particular.
Imagine walking down the street and grabbing a stranger by the lapel and saying "I've had it with liberals! They stink! They're ruining everything!" Well for all you know that person agrees with you. Or maybe they're a liberal and find you offensive. If you have to embarrass yourself do it for everyone. No speechifying in personal comments. Thank you.
4. I don't care if what I said is the same thing you think someone I despise said. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
5. Don't say I'm lame without saying what you think, so we can judge how lame you are.
6. I voted for Obama and gave him money and yes I think he's a failure as President.
7. But then I think we're all failures as American citizens. So I don't just blame Obama.
It's even worse than it appears. © 1997-2013 Scripting News, Inc.