Posts from — February 2003

again from the raven

profquotes.com is a site with all those jewels of wisdom no one ever wanted to find.

from the raven:

“Slow down,” say Simon and that other guy, and so did a bunch of other artists this weekend at Pomona College in a colloquium on the effects of the Information Age on human concentration.

This is light artist James Turrell, who likes to make light “inhabit a space so fully that it changes our perception of our surroundings.” According to the story, it can take hours to fully appreciate one of his installations. Another artist at the shindig, composer Pauline Oliveros, is a proponent of “deep listening,” where she asks the audience to “get inside a sound and let it resonate through their bodies until they can no longer separate themselves from the surroundings.” She plays slow, hypnotic trance-accordian music that can take a half-hour to get through one song. Does anyone have enough time for this kind of thing?

If you're like me, the idea of pausing in the mad rush of life to take in an experience at extreme leisure seems almost blasphemous, and strongly tempting.

Usability and Open Source Software.

href="http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~daven/docs/oss-wp.pdf"
>This article was recently published on the subject of involving human-computer interaction (HCI) experts in Free/Open Source development.

Juicy quote from the conclusion:

Raymond (1998) proposed that 'given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow.' For seeing usability bugs, the traditional open source community may comprise the wrong kind of eyeballs.

[Advogato]

an example of “not our idea”=bad….

Culture Clash. Recent experiences with Debian, which i love more than any other distribution, compel me to relate what has happened to other developers. Basically, i feel that i am caught between not being an inexperienced Debian User but am not an experienced Debian Developer. Consequently, by meandering into such territory i am left high and dry when encountering problems.

problems that i would not want any other debian user, whatever their level of experience, to go through. [Advogato]

this is one of the problems with knowledge based meritocracy, you can find it in all od them. there are gaps that one can inhabit, willingly nor unwillingly, from which you cannot proceed without sufficient momentum

The Semantic Web Illustrated (http://www.semaview.com/c/SW.html) is a
well done poster conveying the basic SW concepts. It was done by
Semaview, a Toronto based company developing commercial products based
on SW. technology. They describe it as:

“Designed as a one minute overview of the Semantic Web, this
illustration discusses a half dozen key points in language that
can be understood by managers and techies alike.”

jeremy says: i gleened this from seweb

Overview

The FreeNetworks Conference (FN-CON) 2003 is focused on giving the
public an in-depth look into the the fast growing worldwide movement of
Community Wireless Networking (CWN). In the past few years, these
decentralized, non-commercial networks have gained world recognition
and populist support as the adoption of the IEEE Standard for wireless
ethernet, 802.11b, more commonly known as WiFi has gained ground.
FN-CON will show you how these networks started, the directions they
are taking, and provide you with enough technical knowledge to
bootstrap your own networking group.

FN-CON aims to gather the experts and implementors in community
wireless networking groups from across the globe, innovators from the
wired community and municipal networks, and the technologists designing
the hardware for future phases of this amazing movement for a
conference like no other.

The conference will combine overviews of the technologies and
motivations, status reports from the frontline, and in-depth coverage
of implementation details that provide the conference attendee with the
knowledge to bootstrap their own CWN in their locale.

The conference will start with one day of in-depth, hands-on tutorial.
Attendees will leave the tutorial with a working piece of hardware that
they can build, configure and replicate for use in their own community
wireless network.

The second and third day will be done in standard fashion with multiple
tracks and multiple speakers on each track.

Purpose
-Bring together both wireless and wired FreeNetworks participants.
-Educate people on the benefits and impact of FreeNetworks.
-Enable people to use available technologies (802.11b and others) and
to prepare for future technologies.
-Showcase the status of FreeNetworks worldwide and learn from the
experience of the early adopters.
-Discuss upcoming social, political and technological developments that
affect the FreeNetworks movement.

Where
Alexis Park Resort – Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

When
June 6-8, 2003

Call For Papers
We are now accepting presentation proposals for FN-CON.

Here are some possible topics that come to mind however we are in no
way limiting it to these, and we expect that you will have some
creative ideas in addition to those listed below:

-New advanced routing protocols that could benefit Free Networks and
ad-hoc networks in general, reports on use of said protocols in a real
world environment.
-Examples of community networks in use serving a real world purpose
that may or may not be possible on traditional carrier-built networks.
-Research and development of networking technologies that can help
further the FreeNetworks movement.
-Applications/tools which might be considered useful for FreeNetworks.
-Hands on tutorials that will enable people to build their own wireless
router or some other cool and useful wireless device.

What To Send Us

A brief description (two, three paragraphs max) of your topic.
Your bio, resume, portfolio or whatever you have that says something
about your experience, why you are qualified to discuss said topic and
any other major achievements you may have accomplished. Please include
URLs wherever possible.
If you plan on doing something other than a traditional slideshow,
please let us know of any special requirements you may have; i.e.
duelling projectors, laser shows, two turntables and a microphone. We
want to know if you will need anything other than the usual projector
and PA setup.
Contact information; at the very least, you must provide us with an
email address that you check on a frequent basis. Physical address and
phone numbers if you desire.
Submit material in ASCII or PDF format to fn-con@freenetworks.org.

Program Committee

SeattleWireless – Ken Caruso (Chair), Matt Westervelt
Bay Area Wireless Users Group – Matt Peterson, Cliff Skolnick, Tim Pozar
NYCwireless – Terry Schmidt, Ben Serebin
Consume – Ben Laurie
NoCat – Rob Flickenger
Security Travel – Tina Greene

Sponsorship
Think you would like to sponsor what has the potential to be one of
the coolest and most unique conferences yet? Please let us know.

Libeskind plan chosen for WTC site.

It's a beautiful design. Libeskind's design study for the WTC site is a very interesting read. (Why couldn't I find this link on any of the news sites?)

[Sjoerd Visscher's weblog]

sweet, as an architecture junky, this was my choice by far… for one it is inhabitable, which is a tribute to those that come before….

“OK – I smell a bit” – but leave us BoFHs alone! [The Register]

new bofh, woo hoo… nope, just letters, but still…

The 40GB iPod?.

Last month we wondered whether a 40GB iPod was coming; now rumors are running wild that Apple is very close to announcing one and that they'll phase out the 5GB model. The even juicier gossip is that Apple plans unveil a “radically new successor” to the iPod sometime later this year.
Read Amazon

[Gizmodo]

I heard this too, the radical new ipods, and the discontinuance of the ibook, all rumormill churning…. who knows….

E-Voting Victory (Probably). Santa Clara County, California, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, has decided that their new electronic voting machines must… [Freedom To Tinker]

open voting, woo hoo! maybe not…..