News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
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Mail Starting 10/9/97 | |
Standards bodies are voluntary. Had Sun committed Java to a standards body, there would have been no leverage to persuade Microsoft to continue volunteering to the standard. Microsoft would have been more likely to ram their "new standard" down everyone's throat.
From: petej@clickvision.com (Peter M. Jansson);
Sent at 10/9/97; 5:00:39 PM;
Sun V. MicrosoftMost successful standards were adoptions of established practice. Many of those that went to standards bodies before there was widespread established practice are still not established (ask me about the optical memory card business sometime). I'd like to believe that Sun knows this, and that's what drove them to keep Java non-public.
Thanks Vicky!
From: dwiner@well.com (Dave Winer);
Sent at ;
Re:Heads UpI'm glad you liked the Jobs piece.
I got feedback from people who thought I was belittling him.
I wanted to try exactly what you thought I was trying. Let's get over this inability for men to express approval of other men. If I saw beauty when I looked at the young Steve Jobs, why not say so?
Dave
The book is a great idea, but please don't think of it as three years of DaveNet. Pick a theme and select the 30 best (or whatever number) essays that support the theme.
From: vicky@vickyh.com (Vicky Hastings);
Sent at 10/9/97; 11:22:13 AM;
Re:Heads UpWant more suggestions? The theme should relate to what you want to be known for -- how you want to be positioned. But it should also relate to the user. For example, let's just say that you were considering calling the book Three Years of DaveNet. That relates to your point of view, but doesn't relate to the reader's wants or needs. Put yourself in the reader's shoes. Something the reader might relate to would be something like Heart and Soul: Dave Winer's Personal Essays on Life Inside the Silicon Valley: ...or something like that.
You are unique among any industry insider luminary/writer I can think of because you write from such a personal point of view. Full of romance, heart and soul. Analytical but in a whimsical way. So I think your book and its title should reflect that.
One essay I suggest you include is the He Was Beautiful story on Jobs. Most men would not write that way. That story touched me, and I remember it vividly.
That's my 2 cent's worth, anyway.
I'm curious... did it ever become public knowledge as to who bought the Exponential assets?
From: mmcavoy@ix.netcom.com (Michael McAvoy);
Sent at 10/9/97; 11:15:08 AM;
WANTED: The Rest of the StoryThere is nothing fundamentally wrong with a company monitoring an employee's email. Which is not to say that a company should do it. As a sysadmin, I despise the idea. There are better things to spend time and money on, and if you spend it on monitoring your employees, you've got deeper problems. Any company considering it should be fully aware of the morale problem it will almost definitely cause. (Companies should also realize that personal email can be read as a short break, and is not inherently a drain on productivity.)
From: pgor@netcom.com (Paul Goracke);
Sent at 10/9/97; 11:09:54 AM;
Email privacyBut employees should understand that for the same reasons that anything created on the company's time and equipment becomes the company's intellectual property, email created on the company's time, and sent through their equipment, is (or should be) legally their property as well. A message sent with a company's return address also implies more authority than the sender may actually have, same as sending a letter on company letterhead. Any person wanting personal mail to _be_ personal should drop the small amount of money to get a personal account somewhere else. I have personal letters and bills sent to my home not work, why should email be any different?
I think the best way to do a book would be to print some "threads" of DaveNets. You have had several pieces that have gotten a lot of response, and have spawned other DaveNets from the responses.
From: xtian@Eng.Sun.COM (xtian);
Sent at 10/9/97; 11:03:39 AM;
Re:Heads UpIf you put a few DaveNets together to build a little history on a particular subject, then followed it with the "threaded" DaveNets, it would provide an interesting story that started somewhere, developed, and finally ended somewhere else. A final commentary from you (that summarized how that thread continues to affect you today) would be a nice way to wrap it up.
Put a few of these threads together, and *Voila!* you have a book.
It would also be good to pick DaveNets where you were just flat wrong, somebody responded and pointed it out, and you then wrote another DaveNet talking about your newfound knowledge. This is a unique aspect of DaveNet: If you provide Dave with a better case than the one he is supporting, he will scrutinize his attachment to his pet argument, determine what is wrong with it, and will print a new DaveNet outlining his change of heart. Can you imagine if a newspaper worked with that kind of honesty and courage?!?!???
Anyway, keep up the good work...and congrats on the 3 years! I didn't realize that I was one of the charter members, but I remember articles from your first weeks of writing!
Cooooooool.
The fence seems shakey to me. How can we support, even advocate for free speech, then consider spying, yes, covertly monitoring ... employees.
From: priviet@sirius.com (Steven Gilman);
Sent at 10/9/97; 10:21:44 AM;
Re:Heads UpFor me, it's a little out of sync. My question: Why do I need to monitor people to trust them? As if I am really admiting that I don't trust. Look in the mirror.
Another way to express opinions, safely, with corporate big brother over our shoulders: PGP. why not use it for submittals to Davenet? Security and autonomy have advantages in a world where we are all under surveillance.
I'd love to read DaveNet, the Book, but I'd like more of the context, history, background and influences on you and the subject matter. I'd be interested in reading the responses you got and how they affected you and your word. I know you often mention highlights of these, especially when they are from the big guys.
From: cindy@solmn.com (Cindy Solomon);
Sent at 10/9/97; 9:51:43 AM;
Re:Heads UpI have learned much since becoming a subscriber in the 2nd year of Davenet, but often you are speaking to industry insiders - granted that is your audience, but you have a universal message when you reflect on your own humanness, and the rest of the world is better as a result of your sharing what you see. I guess I'd like to see Davenet, the Epic or "putting a human face on a heartless valley", or Daveman, Superscripter.
You've been taking us on a discovery of the nature, meaning and power of relationship between humans, with themselves and between humans and their creations.
Also, add to your list juno.com, free email service.
We wanted to pass along some good news about the Document Object Model -- the foundation the Dynamic HTML. The W3C Document Object Model Working Group has just published the "Core" Level 1 Document Object Model (DOM) Working Draft (http://www.w3.org/Press/DOM-core.html).
From: willgreg@MICROSOFT.com (Will Gregg);
Sent at 10/9/97; 9:40:01 AM;
The W3C Document Object Model Working Group has just published thThis is a clear win for the W3C; the Draft takes the DOM one step closer to interoperability. It is the first in a series of drafts from the DOM Working Group and presents a minimal, abstract mechanism by which every page element is surfaced in a language and platform-independent way.
In the next month, we expect HTML and XML DOM Drafts to be published by the DOM Working Group. These drafts will be based on the Core Draft, and will more relevant for authors looking to use the DOM. Specifically, these drafts will address how authors can access every element in an HTML or XML document in a more direct and convenient way, compared to the Core Draft.
Microsoft's DOM implementation is in-line with this work, as it surfaces all page elements and attributes for authors. Microsoft remains committed to the W3C and will support the final DOM recommendation in Internet Explorer. e "Core" Level 1 Document Object Model (DOM) Working Draft
Today's DaveNet strikes a chord with me.
From: chris@ewerks.com (Chris Chapman);
Sent at 10/9/97; 9:30:51 AM;
Email PrivacyA member of the executive management of another corporation I work for once approached me to implement an email-monitoring system, such as you speak of.
I looked him in the eye and flatly refused.
Why? I believe in the privacy of the individual. I believe free thought contributes to the betterment of the group as a whole. Free thinking hatches new, often better ideas. I do not believe the management should stand over you, screaming "WORK" while swinging a big, threatening red hammer. That just causes stagnation and "nine-to-five-ism".
If you do not trust your employees, why are they still working for you? Do you think squelching email would make or keep them any more loyal to the corporation? If so, you're fooling yourself.
I saw a great quote somewhere on the net the other day: "Companies exist to make people happy. Corporations exist to fulfill a sick need to conquer." I wish I knew who said it because it's true. I've seen it first hand and it's not pretty.
I doubt that you remember me but I was one the testers for ThinkTank (Apple II) and More back in the old days, we even had adjacent booths in one of the early Comdexes. Anyway, I think the last time I saw you was at the Next roll out, we sat at the same table while you asked Steve Jobs why there were no floppies on the cube. So much for the passage of time.
From: tanseyf@SONOMA.EDU (Frank Tansey);
Sent at 10/9/97; 7:54:49 AM;
Congratulations and memoriesI wanted to write the other day to congratulate you on the 3 year anniversary. Scripting.com is a daily read for me, even when I am on the road domestically or overseas. Your views are appreciated because they boil the pot with an intent rather than to simply create a mess.
I noticed in today's piece a reference from another reader to 10 wishes. Since More was on the list I wanted to second that. A truly great program which I still use, and my brother Scott used to get through law school 4 years ago. I consistently give Symantec a hard time about orphaning More every time I talk with them. By the way say hello to your brother for me as well.
Finally, could you fix the now broken finder scripts in the next release. I found that when I went to OS8 I could no longer change file types and I was using that feature all of the time to switch files to BBEdit.
I think the format of a DaveNet book is pretty obvious. It seems like it's already on the tip of your tongue (or frontal lobe). All the DaveNets ever written were in response to some external (or sometimes internal) event or events. It seems like a cooool format for the book would be to make it a sort of historical novel where you discuss the events leading up to a DaveNet, then the actual piece (or do it vice versa).
From: cshotton@biap.com (Chuck Shotton);
Sent at 10/9/97; 8:26:03 AM;
DaveNet bookProse interspersed with a story line, sorta like Micro Serfs. Read about what was happening in the industry, with Dave's business, relationships, etc., then get the DaveNet synthesis of it. The more I think about it, the more it might make sense to order it so the DaveNet piece is followed by the history behind it. Either way, it'd write itself. You could be done in a couple of months.