A House subcommittee has passed the Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA), which would require disclosure from companies about their human rights practices and limit the export of technologies that
“serve the primary purpose of” facilitating government surveillance or censorship to countries designated as “Internet-restricting.”
“When the Chinese told Google that they had to block sites or they couldn’t do [business] in their country, they managed to figure out how to block sites.”
2011 Jul 6, 7:28"Over this past Fourth Of July weekend, we neglected to note that it was the 15th anniversary of Roland Emmerich’s 1996 blockbuster Independence Day. New York comedian Sean Kleier remembered, and
decided to make his own tribute, going to various locations around New York City—Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge, the subway, and inside a Victoria’s Secret—reciting Bill Pullman’s rousing speech
before the movie's final battle sequence, megaphone and all." humorvideobill-pullmanindependence-daynew-york
2011 Jun 5, 4:56"What's an engineer's worst nightmare? To realize that the supports he designed for a skyscraper like Citicorp Center are flawed---and hurricane season is approaching."articlehistorydesignbusinessengineering
2010 Jun 20, 1:18Protocol for doing distributed commenting and implemented by Google Buzz! "This document defines a lightweight, robust, and secure protocol for sending unsolicited notifications — especially comments
and responses on syndicated feed content — to specified endpoints; along with rules to enable resulting content to itself be syndicated robustly and securely."commentblogatomrssgooglebuzzsalmonreferencespecificationprotocolsyndicationtechnical
2010 Mar 12, 9:20Charles Stross on the business and technical aspects of writing and selling a series of books - specifically The Family Trade series for which the next in the series is due out soon.charles-strossfamily-tradebookliteraturebusiness
2010 Feb 26, 8:50Did I read this already on Paleo-Future? Anyway still an awesome 1995 rant on why the Internet will fail. "Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for
great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an
afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of
capitalism: salespeople."humorinternetfailarticlehistory
Tim Berners-Lee's principles of Web design includes my favorite: Test of Independent Invention. This has a thought experiment containing the construction of the MMM (Multi-Media Mesh) with
MRIs (Media Resource Identifiers) and MMTP (Muli-Media Transport Protocol).
The Internet design principles (RFC 1958) includes the Robustness Principle: be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving. A good one, but applied too liberally can lead to interop issues. For instance, consider web browsers.
Imagine one browser becomes so popular that web devs create web pages and just test out their pages in this popular browser. They don't ensure their pages conform to standards and accidentally end
up depending on the manner in which this popular browser tolerantly accepts non-standard input. This non-standard behavior ends up as de facto standard and future updates to the standard
essentially has had decisions made for it.
2009 Dec 31, 1:50Har har: "I had a fantasy in which the Fed and the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) switched roles. If a bank failed at 9 a.m. one morning and shut its doors, the TSA would announce that
all banks henceforth begin their business day at 10 a.m. And, if a terrorist managed to get on board a plane between Stockholm and Washington, the Fed would increase the number of flights between the
cities."economicshumorairplaneemanuel-dermantsafedgovernment
2009 Dec 18, 2:27"...this week we launched an improvement to Google Maps India that describes routes in terms of easy-to-follow landmarks and businesses that are visible along the way. We gathered feedback from users
around the world to spark this improvement to our technology, and we thought we'd give you a glimpse at our thinking behind this launch."googlemapgeographygeoindia
I was reading Makers, Cory Doctorow's latest novel, as it was serialized on Tor's website but with no ability to save my place within a page I set out to find a book reading app
for my G1 Android phone. I stopped looking once I found Aldiko. Its got bookmarks within chapters, configurable fonts, you can look-up words in a
dictionary, and has an easy method to download public domain and creative common books. I was able to take advantage of Aldiko's in-app book download system to get Makers onto my phone so I didn't
have to bother with any conversion programs etc, and I didn't have to worry about spacing or layout, the book had the correct cover art, and chapter delimiters. I'm very happy with this app and
finished reading Makers on it.
Makers is set in the near future and features teams of inventors, networked 3d printers, IP contention, body modifications, and Disney -- just the sort of thing you'd expect from a Cory
Doctorow novel. The tale seems to be an allegory for the Internet including displacing existing businesses and the conflict between the existing big entertainment IP owners and the plethora of fans
and minor content producers. The story is engaging and the characters filled out and believable. I recommend Makers and as always its Creative Commons so go take a look right now.
Makers is set in the near future and features teams of inventors, networked 3d printers, IP contention, body modifications, and Disney -- just the sort of thing you'd expect from a Cory
Doctorow novel. The tale seems to be an allegory for the Internet including displacing existing businesses and the conflict between the existing big entertainment IP owners and the plethora of fans
and minor content producers. The story is engaging and the characters filled out and believable. I recommend Makers and as always its Creative Commons so go take a look right now.
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