"...imagine what would happen to Pulp Fiction if, when the
character of Jules looked into the briefcase, he "woke up" in
mid-scene and not only realized that he was a character in a movie,
but also realized that he "was" also Mace Windu and Shaft and a bunch
of other characters in realities he can scarcely comprehend, while
also glimpsing an uber-reality where all of those realities are just
movies and he's an actor called Samuel L. Jackson."
Science fictional edition of The Onion06/22/2005 01:49 AM Cory Doctorow:
The Onion has posted a science fictional edition from the year 2056.
There are some fantastic gags here, a few that fall flat -- by and
large, though, this is some funny futurism ("Abraham Lincoln's DNA now
available over the counter!" "47th Amendment grants iPod Sufferage!")
Link
Two rants on Geneva's crappy WiFi, one fictional, one non-
Two rants on Geneva's crappy WiFi, one fictional, one non-12/13/2003 12:43 PM Lessig's just got back form the World Summit on the Information
Society in Geneva, where he ran into the Swiss version of WiFi, a
craptacular extravaganza of telecom stupidity compounded by the irony
of hosting a summit on the "Information Society" where it's easier to
get a gift bag of conference schwag than an Internet connection.
Lessig's rant on the subject is entertaining, and it put me in mind of a section I
wrote for my novel-in-progress, "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves
Town," which is about community wireless hackers (among other things)
and this chunk was inspired by my trip to Geneva a couple months ago
to attend the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights.
I've uploaded the relevant section.
"No problem -- outside every hotel and most of the cafes, I can
find a signal for a network called 'SwissCom.' I log on to the
network and I fire up a browser and I get a screen asking me for
my password. Well, I don't have one, but after poking around, I
find out that I can buy a card with a temporary password on it.
So I wait until some of the little smoke-shops open and start
asking them if they sell SwissCom Internet Cards, in my terrible,
miserable French, and after chuckling at my accent, they look at
me and say, 'I have no clue what you're talking about,' shrug,
and go back to work.
"Then I get the idea to go and ask at the hotels. The first one,
the guy tells me that they only sell cards to guests, since
they're in short supply. The cards are in short supply! Three
hotels later, they allow as how they'll sell me a 30-minute card.
Oh, that's fine. 30 whole minutes of connectivity. Whoopee. And
how much will that be? Only about a zillion Swiss pesos. Don't
they sell cards of larger denominations? Oh sure, two hours, 24
hours, seven days -- and each one costs about double the last, so
if you want, you can get a seven day card for about as much as
you'd spend on a day's worth of connectivity in 30-minute
increments -- about $300 Canadian for a week, just FYI.
"Well, paying 300 bucks for a week's Internet is ghastly, but
very Swiss, where they charge you if you have more than two bits
of cheese at breakfast, and hell, I could afford it. But Three
hundred bucks for a day's worth of 30-minute cards? Fuck that. I
was going to have to find a seven-day card or bust. So I ask at a
couple more hotels and finally find someone who'll explain to me
that SwissCom is the Swiss telco, and that they have a retail
storefront a couple blocks away where they'd sell me all the
cards I wanted, in whatever denominations I require.
Race to Succeed Pope Includes Even the Fictional (Reuters)
Race to Succeed Pope Includes Even the Fictional (Reuters)04/06/2005 09:46 AM Reuters - The race is on to succeed John Paul
II as pope and bookmakers are already getting in on the act.
But not all the candidates are quite what they seem.
Lexicon: CC-licensed RPG based on compiling fictional encyclopedia
Lexicon: CC-licensed RPG based on compiling fictional encyclopedia04/15/2005 09:01 PM Cory Doctorow:
Morbus Iff sez, "Ghyll is a Creative Common licensed player-created
world per the rules of "Lexicon: an RPG" (think: a fictional
wikipedia, constrained by integration, consecutive letter definitions,
and cranky scholars that write before 'before scholarly pursuits
became professionalized (or possibly after they ceased to be)'). It
has reached nearly 30 players, 200 pages of text, an incredibly large
timeline, a hundred characters, and a to-scale ASCII map of the known
world. Darkly humorous? Possible. Odd? Mmhmmm. All CC? Ayup.
"We're starting Round 2 next month (in essence, starting over again at
letter A to further define the world). Notes about the announcement
here, as well as links to the timeline, characters, and ASCII map."
Link
(Thanks, Morbus!)
Bloggers Select Their Favorite Fictional Characters - Right Wing News (Conservative News and Views)
rightwingnews.com/special/fictionalcharacters.php track this
site | 4 links
First impression: JOE
First impression: JOE01/09/2004 09:57 PM As work on my books moves into a higher gear, I've just installed the
open-source Java Outline Editor, or JOE, on a Windows XP box.
Interestingly, my collaborator knew all about JOE already even before
I mentioned I was considering...
Update: Impression 2.505/14/2004 10:37 AM The backup-to-disc software adds "a tremendous speed boost for backup
operations," selective file restores, an enhanced interface, and other
improvements.
My First Impression of iTunes 4.504/28/2004 10:18 AM Movie trailers in iTunes? No idea why it's there. Where's the value?
Unless, of course, the next version of iPod is capable of playing
videos? Haven't updated QuickTime, so I cannot try out the new
Apple codec. But, seeing that I am mostly tone-deaf, I doubt I can
tell the difference from MP3 and ACC. Link to Music Store?
Initially, I thought there will be close integration with the music
store, allowing the store to analyse what I have on my hard
disk and make recommendation. Turns out it's just a link to the search
engine. Which is useless anyway because firstly I can buy from the
music store (duh!), and secondly, half of my tunes are in Chinese.
Update: Impression 2.0
Update: Impression 2.001/07/2004 02:09 PM The backup utility adds a completely redesigned interface,
bookmark-based backup management, full compatibility with FileVault,
an option to add individual files to the backup list, and other
changes.
Just like any good geek I like to dig right into a service or
software package to see what surprises it holds for me. Geeks usually
portray this type of behavior and we only go to the manual when
needed, if your lucky enough to have one. But some people are not as
technically blessed and many people either want or need to read the
manual before using a product.
So when I evaluate a product, I also evaluate the documentation and
look to see if the author has created examples of how functions are
intended to work.
As I reviewed the online demo of Marqui I quickly clicked through the
different tabs which contained functions that on initial inspection
looked to flow well and were laid out in a way that a typical computer
user would understand. A question did arise about a function in one of
the tabs, I loaded the online help file and was impressed. So often
today companies race to put a product together and skimp on the
documentation which is beyond aggravating when you have spent your
hard earned dollars on a advanced program or product. What I found on
the Marqui demo was a concise explanation of the tool and a real world
example on how to use it.
Wanting to test a theory, I had my wife take a look at the function
and had her read the help file. Folks she has been a stay at home mom
since we were married 10 years ago, but used to work at a major travel
firm in Japan and has not been around modern business software tools.
As she clicked through some of the other functions she mentioned it
would have been real nice to have this tools available when she was in
the workforce as it would have eliminated mounds of paper and
increased productivity.
Case in point, one of the functions in the console tab is called
Task Manager. This function is designed in such a way that a office
staffer can create a document that needs to be reviewed at several
levels before it can be approved for release to the general public.
The creator loads the document onto the content management system and
initiates a approval task to his superior. Upon initiation the
superior will get a e-mail that their is a task for him or her to act
on. Opening that task in e-mail will load the CMS Console allowing him
to review approve/disapprove the document and add notes. If further
review is needed by a superior the task can then be re-assigned to the
next level. This keeps the approval process flowing and allows for
quick changes to be made in order to get the document on the
street.
As I dig deeper into Marqui over the coming weeks I will definitely
refer back to the documentation. On a scale of 1-10 I think they have
scored about a 8 in there online documentation. I did notice a couple
of referral links that did not re-direct perfectly so I deducted a
couple of points for that. It is important for companies to insure
that all links in their online documentation take them to the intended
link. The only thing I could see that could use improvement in the
task manager section would be to develop automated routing rules for
standard documents.
Most organizations go to great lengths to develop approval chop
chains, most organizations use a folder with the document tucked
inside to route it through the chop chain which is time consuming and
wastefall of resources. Most approval chains are well established and
do not change from day to day so introducing a chop chain routing rule
in the task manager would be the icing on the cake. Or even being able
to create one on the fly.
You can get more information about Marqui at www.marqui.com and if you are
interested in becoming a developer for Marqui drop me a line at
geek@geeknewscentral.com as I have the direct line to people who count
at Marqui. I will ensure you get a call back. For those companies
sitting on the fence about a Content / Communications Management
System make sure you check back here often as I will be reviewing all
of the features of the Marqui CMS platform. [www.marqui.com]
Dan Glickman's Bad First Impression09/02/2004 03:56 AM Well, you can be sure of one thing: there's still going to be plenty
to talk about concerning how the MPAA continues to shoot itself in the
foot now that it's under new management. Just days after everyone
went around trash
ing Jack Valenti for his clueless statements about technology, we
now have Dan Glickman, talking about how Valenti gave the MPAA
"enormous credibility" in a new interview that should give you a sense of
just how bad things are likely to get. He talks excitedly about
his experience in international trade issues in saying he wants to
"further market-opening free-trade discussions," by which he
apparently means "market shrinking, innovation killing discussions,"
as he praises the recent export
of the DMCA to Australia as somehow being a good thing. One good
thing, is that while Jack Valenti denies fair use exists, Glickman at
least seems to realize it's there -- though, only in the sense that he
hopes to kill it off. When asked about Boucher's DMCRA bill that will
help clarify fair use to make sure it's not taken away by the DMCA, he
says: "it goes way beyond what we think is necessary to protect fair
use." That's because the MPAA doesn't want to protect fair use at
all, so any protection is too much. He also goes down the ever
popular trail of saying that "piracy" is the biggest threat to the
industry, and pulls out the "it's pure, downright theft" quote while
also calling it a "plague." Of course, the Supreme Court has already
made it clear that copyrigh
t infringement is not theft, and as many times as the
entertainment industry declares it so, it does not get any closer to
being theft. As for moving the industry forward in face of these
things, he says they have a "multifaceted strategy," which includes:
"aggressive law enforcement by state and federal authorities, use of
litigation, civil litigation (and) education." Obviously embracing
new technologies, innovating, and keeping up with the times have no
place. The only bone he tosses to the tech industry is telling them
that he wants to make sure he gets to approve advances first, by
saying he wants to explore with technologies how to "permit" new
technologies to "flow and develop." There we go with the permiss
ion to innovate again. At what point did the technology industry
become some flunky to the entertainment industry where they need to
ask for permission before creating the next great technology? And,
for good measure, he makes sure we realize how important all this is
by letting us all know that "nothing creative will be produced -- in
the intellectual sense, the creative sense and in the hard-goods
sense," if our intellectual property laws change towards being more
open. Ah yes, because all those examples of innovation
and economies thriving in the absence of strong intellectual property
laws and reports showing how overly
broad intellectual property laws are slowing down innovation and
development are simply figments of our imagination. Welcome, Dan
Glickman, and good luck holding back the tide. It would be nice if
you learned to surf, instead, but you have a long legacy of clueless,
ineffective tide stopping to continue.
First Impression: Be Herd06/17/2005 03:40 PM "People aren't going to listen to you
unless you're part of their
world."
-Wenda Millard ,
Chief Sales Officer, Yahoo
Impression 1.0 released
Impression 1.0 released03/19/2003 10:44 PM Impression is a low-cost backup utility for Mac OS X which can be used
to back up and restore data. Impression incorporates various OS X
technologies, including AppleScript, to perform its tasks, and it
allows users to burn archives to CD-R, CD-RW or DVD-R discs.
Update: Impression 2.607/13/2004 10:03 AM The backup utility adds a new 'imps' hfspax-based restorable archive
format that improves backup and restoration speeds, plus full Unicode
support for all catalog, log and session files.
Fark photoshopping contest: Google banners for fictitious holidays.
Link<
/a>
The Onion has posted a science fictional edition from the year 2056.
There are some fantastic gags here, a few that fall flat -- by and
large, though, this is some funny futurism ("Abraham Lincoln's DNA now
available over the counter!" "47th Amendment grants iPod Sufferage!")
Link