Scripting News

Pay now or pay later

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:47:50 GMT

Paul Ding: "You don't have to change the oil in your car. You can always replace the engine instead. Works the same way with health care."

Great essay on the cost heath care.

Been here before

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:57:00 GMT

Allfacebook: "Last night the MySpace platform went live. This follows the launch of Bebo and Google will begin providing support to OpenSocial developers."

I've had a long career in an industry with incredibly short cycles. I've been to this place before.

As O'Neill says above, platform wars are raging, this time the front line is in social networking. 20 years ago the front was in basic networking protocols, before that software to operate laser printers. What always happens is a low-tech winner emerges, a consensus platform, usually not from the biggest company.

Guidelines: Simplicity rules. You'll know it when you see it.

Until then, I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing.

It would be great if someone developed a network address book with a simple API that everyone could build on. An event system built on it. Either fully distributed or hosted by a company we trust. That's what we're waiting for.

Agence France-Presse in FlickrFan

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:47:56 GMT

We have some big news today for FlickrFan users, a major new source of high-def photography for the networked living room. They come from Agence France-Presse, one of the world's great news organizations, and a fantastic source of high-resolution news photography.

I met with Agence France-Presse when I was in Paris in December, introduced them to FlickrFan and explained what we were doing with the Associated Press. They got excited, it took a little while to work out the technical details, but now we're ready to go. The updates are all out, here's the howto for FlickrFan users.

Change #30: Agence France-Presse photos in FlickrFan.

There were unique challenges in this project because their flow is huge. Yesterday we got over 3000 new photos. Because there are so many, I asked my friend Matt Mullenweg, if his company Automattic could help us out with server space and bandwidth, and he said yes. The AFP pictures are hosted on wordpress.com. Many thanks to Matt and his company for helping us out. To the extent we're bootstrapping a new use of the net, which I hope is what we're doing, Matt's company has made the kind of contribution we'd like to see more companies make. Usually the companies are happy to make the money, but not willing to help out with the bootstrap, which often costs money. Matt has always been a great guy and a visionary. I thank him and hope that FlickrFan users find an appropriate way to thank him too.

And also, please consider the generosity of Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. We all hope that there's a market here, a way to monetize the flow of high-resolution photography to enrich and inform. Other content companies have been reluctant to take a chance on the Internet, we saw that in the early days of RSS and podcasting. I feel that these two media companies are playing the same pioneering role that the New York Times played with RSS 2.0 and NPR played in podcasting. Associated Press and Agence France-Presse deserve our respect and admiration for steping out, for going first, this is how new Internet activities get going. This is what we call market leadership, the real kind. Bravo!!

And this couldn't come at a better time, with tomorrow being Super Tuesday here in the USA. Think of all the great photographs we're going to get in the next few days!

Kevin Tofel helped test the feed over the weekend.

Philosophy in Boston

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:18:56 GMT

Tim Jarrett understands what I'm saying.

What a great Superbowl, and what an opportunity for Boston sports fans to learn the value in losing.

What? Value in losing? You bet.

It wasn't that long ago when Boston was one of the best cities in the USA for sports precisely because Boston teams were such spectacular losers. I'll never forget the misery of the Dowbrigade after the Red Sox lost something (or did they win, I forget). They must have lost because he swore he'd never let them break his heart again the way they had for his whole life (he's about my age).

Losing teaches you that there's more to life than winning, and that's the best lesson possible and it's the one lesson you keep needing to learn over and over until you lose everything, which like it or not is what we all do in the end.

People write poetry about losing, great music is composed about lost causes. Who writes an ode to winning? They're too busy getting drunk or getting laid.

Never have I loved a team more or felt more kinship with my fellow fans than when our team goes down in flames after a season of great ups and downs. No doubt there are no smiles or tears of joy in Boston today. But there is hope. And that, even when you win, is all that's left after a great season.

Campaign moments

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:10:59 GMT

Yesterday CNN's Ballot Bowl, which continues to be an excellent and very useful program, ended with Caroline Kennedy at a campaign rally in Los Angeles. She was introducing Oprah, and they had to cut to a tape of Thursday's debate, which struck me as odd. I totally wanted to hear what Oprah had to say.

Update: Oprah at UCLA on YouTube.

Later in the car driving to a SuperBowl party at the Scobles in Half Moon Bay, I listened to the debate which was being broadcast on KQED, the local NPR station, and I was struck by how intelligent the two Democratic candidates are. I had totally missed that the first time, when I watched it live, I was paying too much attention to Twitter, and I was looking for the zinger. They had a thoughtful debate, both candidates were very well-informed. At one point I imagined Obama saying, "There you go again, see that's what I'm talking about" and saying how lucky he was to have an opponent who is so intelligent and thoughtful.

We are lucky. After eight years of Republican appeals to our naivete it is refreshing to be talked to as adults on TV by political leaders.

In contrast, the Repubican field is a mess. The front-runner, McCain is a petulant angry sore-winner, he argues about nothing. Ron Paul tells the truth, and they laugh at him. Huckabee cracks jokes about how irrelevant he has become. While the Dems were talking about real stuff, and arguing the fine points, the Republicans have been reduced to talking about nonsense like being a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution and waving the white flag of surrender. Obama is right when he says the wheels have come off the Straight Talk Express.

I want Obama for President. I'd love to see Hillary as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, so she can drive the effort, this time for real, for universal health care. The difference this time is that it's one of the central issues of the campaign. It's going to happen this time if a Democrat is elected. We have to make sure of that.

This piece is cross-posted on the Huffington Post.

Obama live in Boise

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 16:27:58 GMT

Blogs win the LongNow bet

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:55:29 GMT

Decision: Blogs vs. New York Times.

For the last couple of weeks I've been emailing with people from the LongNow Foundation and Martin Nisenholtz of the NY Times, to determine who won the bet.

Ultimately we asked the foundation to consider all the arguments and make the decision.

They published their decision today. It's well worth reading because it answers some of the questions raised by the bet, for example, what is a blog, and how does Wikipedia relate to blogging. I don't agree with everything in the decision, but I do like the result -- we won.

The beneficiary of the bet? The World Wide Web Consortium. I chose them as the charity to receive the proceeds if I won the bet because web standards are what make it all work and the W3C is central to standards on the web.

Best feel-good picture of 2007

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 22:24:19 GMT

Okay, a few days ago I wrote a review of the Diving Bell and the Butterfly saying it could be the best picture of 2007, but even so you might want to skip it because the truth it reveals might be something you don't want to look at. It's a fine picture, but a tough one.

Another wonderful but tough picture is No Country for Old Men. It's one of those movies that leaves so much unresolved that you walk out of the theater not sure which foot goes in front of the other. On a second viewing it makes much more sense. The world isn't necessarily as crazy as it at first seemed.

But there's a movie that is also incredibly well crafted, and gets better every time you think about it -- Juno. I didn't realize how much I liked it until I heard someone compare it to Little Miss Sunshine, a movie that I did not enjoy, unlike everyone else it seems. I loved Juno because it organizes its sweetness into love for one person, the star of the movie, Juno. But everyone, no matter how dorky or clueless (and some of the adults are truly dorky and clueless) shares the love. The movie has a wholeness, an unqualified goodness, you not only walk out of the theater in love with Juno and everyone else in the movie, but your heart is warmed for everyone, including yourself. It's that good.

All three remind how good movies can be.

And there were some not-too-bad movies at the end of 2007, for example, Atonement, which some didn't like, but I did. 3:10 to Yuma is a well-crafted genre picture. Michael Clayton was a perfect showcase for the talents of George Clooney. Great acting and a simple story in The Savages.

Which one was the best? I'd hate to have to choose!

Yahoo + Microsoft

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:26:39 GMT

Should Yahoo accept Microsoft's offer?

Sure. What else do they have to do?

Most tech companies are pretty aimless, people think there's a grand plan to Apple or Google, but I bet there isn't. They just throw stuff up on the wall, if it sticks, do version 2.0.

Does Yahoo + Microsoft make sense?

Nahh. It's like the dead leading the blind.

The only reason the deal makes sense is because it's the only thing either company could do that anyone might possibly care about.

It would make more sense for Twitter to acquire Yahoo. At least then they'd get some servers that could stay up for 24 hours straight.

Anyway, I might have been too hard on em. But then again...

PS: To those who think Twitter couldn't acquire Yahoo, I might have agreed until we saw NeXT "buy" Apple.

PPS: Scott Rosenberg sees it as "a path to failure for both companies."

PPPS: Scoble thinks it's interesting.

Why does Twitter go down?

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:46:11 GMT

Over the last 24 hours Twitter has been down as much as it's been up. As always this gives us a reason to think about what the world would be like without Twitter and then those of us who are engineers or would-be engineers, start thinking about ways to fix the problem, whatever it is.

The Twitter folk say that the recent problems are related to an infrastructure overhaul. Of course I believe them, I take it at face-value. I think the MacWorld Expo outage was about traffic, I don't think last night's Republican debate took Twitter down.

Anyway, I'd like to really understand what's going on behind the scenes at Twitter, Inc. They say they're confident the new infrastructure will hold up better, I'd like to understand why. Can we have a meeting, with a few people from the tech community who actively use Twitter and a few people from the company, to be briefed on what's going on. The same way the President briefs Congress when there's some kind of international crisis.

Twitter wouldn't exist without its users. Everyone wants to know what's going on. Let's have some real honest direct communication?

PS: I was going to post a link to this on Twitter, but arrrrgh!

PPS: I'd like to try the Jabber interface. Does anyone have a server I could have an account on. Yes, I know Gmail is a Jabber server, but I want to run scripts against it, and they use interfaces my scripting environment doesn't support.

PPPS: Andrew Baron's Twitter-down art colletion.

Who is Gore for?

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:03:51 GMT

David Weinberger asks a question I've been wondering about, who does Al Gore endorse for President in 2008?

Micro-Digg, oy -- honeypot for idiots

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:02:20 GMT

I should have known...

The idiots want to rule the Reddit I started for Scripting News readers. I couldn't figure out how to delete it, and while trying, I deleted my account, so forget the experiment, and if anyone at Reddit is listening, could you please delete it for me. (I sent an email but there was no response.)

Still diggin!

FlickrFan belongs in schools

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:45:19 GMT

Lance Knobel: "I'd install FlickrFan in every middle school and high school social studies class. I guarantee it would provoke endless discussion and ensure engagement in the issues of the day."

I totally agree. It would be great to see it at checkout lines in supermarkets and on kiosks in BART stations too.

Covering eTech in March

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:49:54 GMT

I'll be covering the eTech conference in San Diego in early March. It's been a few years, last time I went was just before my surgery in 2002. I'll be going as a blogger, not presenting. Many thanks to O'Reilly for approving the press pass. I look forward to catching up with many old friends.

Light posting

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:17:35 GMT

I have a juicy project I'm working on, a new source of great pics for FlickrFan. In the meantime Stan Krute did a new version of the Obama poster, to the right, with the "Progress" swapped out and "Make change" in its place.

Update: Jim Posner suggested the original was better, on reflection I agree, so I switched it back.

I'm a California voter for Obama

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:57:27 GMT

I've got an Obama poster in the right margin of the home page of Scripting News. It'll stay there for the duration as a virtual equivalent of one of those signs people put on their front lawns. I live in California, one of the Super Tuesday states and I'm an Obama voter. That's what the poster means. Pass it on.

After Google indexes Scripting News, this query will have exactly one match. Right now it has none. Let's load up Google with lots of blogs with Californians voting for Obama. And of course every other state in the union.

PS: This is where I got the poster.

Chris Matthews said something intelligent

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:36:31 GMT

Most of what Chris Matthews says is mindless trash, but today he pulled out a great analogy immediately after Ted Kennedy's stirring endorsement of Obama.

He compared Hillary Clinton to the character Salieri in the movie Amadeus. Until Mozart came along he was the leading composer in Vienna, but he was just a workman, a technician. Mozart had inspiration, feeling, the spirit. Salieri, even though he lived a long life and Mozart died young, is a footnote to Mozart's lasting greatness.

Matthews nailed it.

Maybe this makes up for his calling the voters of New Hampshire racists because he and every other pundit read the polling data wrong.

Bill Clinton as Trent Lott 2.0

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:07:01 GMT

Yesterday's piece, lightly edited, on the Huffington Post.

http://x98.us/jz

I think it looks pretty good over there!

Find a shared vision, v2.0

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 02:33:16 GMT

It was an interesting election until the Clintons started calling Obama the nice young African-American candidate. Yeah, I lived in the south long enough to understand what that means. When I went to Tulane I was often explained as soandso's Jewish friend Dave. It meant that I could come over for dinner, but there would never be a marriage.

I should say The Old South. The problem for the Clintons is that the country has changed, as recently as the generation that's now in its early 20s. Because of my experience at Harvard, I know quite a few of them, and I promise you, race doesn't mean to them what it meant when I was their age. To them, this country is a melting pot where we've not only accepted blacks and Hispanics, but people from incredibly far away with incredible complexions, hair, clothes, traditions and names. Amazingly, it's still America.

This time around a young African-American with a funny name is very mainstream, so much so that the blatant appeal racism of the white-haired old man is as ridiculous as the praise Trent Lott gave to the almost-dead holdover from the Old South, Strom Thurmond.

The problem for Clinton is actually much worse, we now saw how she'd govern. Let's say a young African-American Senator from Illiinois got in the way. Would she argue the issues with him in a respectful way? Why bother when you can smear him into silence. Now she spins around like her husband oblivious to what the rest of us suspected, and now knows for sure. If there isn't now a landslide of support for Obama, from all segments of the Democratic Party and from many Republicans, then our country truly is without hope. I suspect that's not what will happen, and we'll see the same kind of weak attempt at redemption that Trent Lott tried after his fiasco. It won't work, because, as with Lott, we've seen too much.

Now do we know that Obama would be any different? We don't. My cynical side says of course he's just like the Clintons say. "Give me a break" -- it's a "fairy tale." (BTW, I'm quoting the Clintons accurately, a form of respect they don't practice.) Maybe they're right. Maybe this is the last (futile) gasp of hope in America for America. Okay, maybe so. But I'm willing to give it one more try. I think it would say to the rest of the world that America has caught up with reality. Look at how we've changed. Maybe they'll put pictures of Obama in their public buildings as they did with JFK. I could think of worse things. (Caroline Kennedy thinks it's possible.)

What a fantastic way to recover from Bush, who so completely represented the greed and arrogance and uglyness of America, to reinvent ourselves in the image of our best, in the image of hope.

Hope, that's the difference, and it's not just a word. We've all been disempowered during the Clinton and Bush years, sidelined. I remember when I gave up on Clinton, it was during the brightest period of hope for the web, when they passed a compromise that said that the First Amendment didn't apply here. There are some things that are so important that you can't compromise on them. It was then that I knew that Clinton (and Gore) were phonies. Maybe Obama isn't. I never thought I'd get another chance to use my vote to say, along with so many other Americans, that we still believe the bullshit they taught us in school and that our grandparents taught us, and that the flag says to us every time we think of what it means. There's a reason this country is so great. We forgot it. Let's remember.

Bill Clinton wanted us to think well of him when he spoke at Davos in 2000. I choose to remember what he said then, Find A Shared Vision. If by any chance he should read this, I'd say it's time for you to not just say those words but to live them.

A Reddit for Scripting News

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 03:40:27 GMT

Here's the new Reddit for Scripting News...

http://reddit.com/r/scripting/

Please, if you're a regular reader of this site, bookmark it, and when you want to contribute a link to the community, add it there. Do the normal thing you do with Reddit or Digg, move articles up or down, according to your opinion of how relevant they are to the community defined by this weblog.

Warning: I will moderate, heavily if necessary, to keep it from being abusive or overly immature. Sorry for having to post the caveat, but you know how it goes.