Scripting News

Fri, 21 Nov 2003 03:58:49 GMT

Packed house tonight. This is going to be something, a beta group for a new software product at a university that meets once a week. Even in the old days, in the 80s, I never had so much contact with users. Off to a great start. BTW, I'd love to read other people's accounts of tonight's meeting.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 21:03:01 GMT

My talk at Stanford Law School is at 12:30PM on Monday. Open to the public. Depending on how it goes tonight, I may demo the new authoring system I'm working on.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 17:49:13 GMT

Bill Joy: "Open source doesn't assist the initial creative act."

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 18:30:13 GMT

My demo list for this evening's meeting.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 20:32:03 GMT

Chris Sells explains how Longhorn SDK annotations work.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 17:33:06 GMT

Dave Pollard: "I'm just trying to save the world. Someone else will have to save the blogosphere."

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 16:13:42 GMT

Jon Udell: Working with Bayesian Categorizers.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 16:33:46 GMT

Fascinating map shows where each of the candidates' money comes from.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 13:27:29 GMT

Just the barest hint of a clue over in Jack Valenti Land. Hey Jack, people are watching first-run movies on the Internet right now. But, this is a good sign, the entertainment industry is trying to market to customers, selling a benefit. But there's no benefit to copy protection, not for people who use the stuff, in fact it's a negative feature. Yeah I know the rationales, been there done that, went to Comdex, but in the end the customers aren't that stupid.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 13:47:52 GMT

BTW, I know I'm really rude when it comes to talking about entertainment industry execs. No, I wouldn't like it if people talked about me that way in public. When I read someone saying Dave Winer has the barest hint of a clue, I think, yeah sure, what makes him so smart. Okay, I need to express my inner-arrogance. Many apologies to Jack Valenti, who surely is a fine human being, for using him as my foil. No kidding.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 14:23:54 GMT

Now, on the other hand, Jack dreams of modifying our operating systems, hard drives, networks, routers, servers, you name it -- so that he can tell us which bits we can copy. This rewrite makes the Y2K corner-turn look tiny in comparison. The cost is incomprehensible. Does that make him an asshole? You bet.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 12:10:50 GMT

Five years ago today: "How much thinking goes on on the Internet?"

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 11:39:17 GMT

Michael Feldman's tutorial is a great resource for people learning how to use Manila.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 11:55:39 GMT

It's really great to see O'Reilly embrace RSS 2.0. The power of two growing platforms, Microsoft's Longhorn and Really Simple Syndication.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 11:59:42 GMT

Tim Bray: "Jean Paoli called last week to tip me off about the release of the MS Office XML schema-ware."

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 12:07:22 GMT

I just noticed that Al Gore looks a lot like Robert Scoble.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 12:13:16 GMT

Yesterday I met someone who had not read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. I expressed envy. I wish I had not read it so I could read it again for the first time. A delicious book. Then it occurred to me that some of you might not have read it either. You have no excuse now. ";->"

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 12:18:59 GMT

Here's the NY Times review, published in 1969. The book came up in conversation because it offers a reasonable and highly optimistic view of existence. No one is actually dead, they're just reliving the important moments of their lives, maybe the not-so-important ones too. A philosophy that suggests that you should pack life with lots of interesting moments because you're going to be experiencing them for eternity. In this view, deja vu is a little leakage in the matrix (as it is in The Matrix).