Posts from — August 2003

Gamers Struggle to Preserve Past. Thousands still long to play video game classics like Joust and Tempest. Unfortunately, the originals are becoming harder to find. Some are actually in danger of being lost forever. And the industry isn't willing to help preserve them. By Suneel Ratan. [Wired News]

I loved Joust! [A blog doesn't need a clever name]

Its amazing. even in old atari games you can find a much broader variety of games types than you can today…. the mass market kills histories and traditions…..

Loads of comparative national stats. There are several sites available to let you compare your favourite nations to one another online. Each has its merits… [Blog.org]

This is will be a good resource for teaching students in my comparative class.

The Public Goods Problem. During a course on IP rights at SIGGRAPH, Bob Ellis (the org's public policy program chair) commented on how many people perceive music (or more specifically MP3s) as a “public good”. That is, once a musician creates a piece of… [Reality Panic]

Well, what the IGDA has, like DIGRA, and AoIR, and others is a free rider problem. The problem is when the cost of goods provided is considered relative to everything else, instead of comparative goods, people choose to only take what is given, a variation of free-riderism, instead of paying for the extended service. How do you get them to pay? good question…. I know i can't afford all the groups i should belong to.

Creativity Techniques Catalog. Ever been stumped with a difficult problem and looking for just the right tool or techique to break the impasse? Here's handy online catalog of creativity and systematic thinking tools with short, concise descriptions and helpful examples.

Creativity Techniques — At a New Address.
A while ago I posted a link to a comprehensive compendium of creativity tools and techniques. The original collector had abandoned it for some philosophical reason, but fortunately, the folks at mycoted (Creativity & Innovation in Science & Technology) have taken in the orphan, and sited it here. If you revisit the list, wander around the parent site a bit. They've got a equally interesting collection of puzzles there as well. [Frank Patrick's Focused Performance Blog]

[b.cognosco]

There are some neat toys here…..

Open Source Philosophies: 3 Takes.

tobias c. van Veen sent along:

The Architecture of Information: Open Source Software and Tactical Poststructuralist Anarchism

Raises some interesting parallels between the open source movement and various forms of poststructuralist thought. And then it stops, just as the questions get interesting. I assume (hope) there is more to come.

Brought to mind Manuel DeLanda's Open-Source A Movement in Search of a Philosophy, which raises a couple sharp questions, but never digs for any answers.

And finally, because not all anarchism is poststructuralist, its worth pointing to Eben Moglen's Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright. As best as I can tell from his writings and some of his lectures I've sat in on Moglen subscribes to a hyperlogical view of anarchism, if the whole world thinks like programmers, we'd be in utopia. Super intelligent but quite strange all the same.

Bottom line, open source + philosophy = more exploration needed

[Abstract Dynamics]

Not just exploration, some strong theorization. I'm working on my dissertation on more of a social theory/political economy take, both are forms of philosophical or theoretical study. However, most of what i have seen is an attempt to either dislocate open source from context or to constextualize it…

Bridging the gap between research and practice of communities.

My colleagues are organising a workshop “Bridging the gap between research and practice of Communities of Practice“ during C&T Conference (19 September, Amsterdam). The plan is to bring together presentations of a researcher and a practitioner for each topic, so there are opportunities to contrast their approaches and discuss them. The topics are:

• Communities in a R&D environment
• Communities of commercial employees (btw on this topic - Knowledge management for front-line staff by James Robertson)
• Communities and learning

These are some of the challenges around communities in corporate KM context and the last one is about one of my KM&learning interest. Hope to be there, but not 100% sure yet.

More:

• workshop announcement at KnowledgeBoard (you can add comments there)
• workshop details at C&T web-site  and registration form (these are deep links without navigation, if you want proper menus start from C&T Conference site and look for Workshop G)

[Mathemagenic]

This looksl ike it will be a good workshop, if you are going to be in that area, check it out.

What the Wha? Bush Admits He Destroyed the Economy.

George W Bush: Yes. No, to answer the last part of your question. First of all, let me — just a quick history, recent history. The stock market started to decline in March of 2000. Then the first quarter of 2001 was a recession. And then we got attacked in 9/11. And then corporate scandals started to bubble up to the surface, which created a — a lack of confidence in the system. And then we had the drumbeat to war. Remember on our TV screens — I'm not suggesting which network did this — but it said, “March to War,” every day from last summer until the spring — “March to War, March to War.” That's not a very conducive environment for people to take risk, when they hear, “March to War” all the time.

Damn. you read it. He said it. Could it be he can't make the connection that his drive to war is what was producing that “not a very conducive environment for people to take risk”? And he lets his scapegoats in the media off the hook before even dropping the bomb. Whoa. I usually try and give the fool a little credit, he can't be as dumb as it seems if he got to the White House, inbreeding and all. But this is retarded. Can someone give him an IQ test so we can know the real answer once and for all?

[via Eschaton + original source]

[Abstract Dynamics]

I would also add that when he first took office he said repeatedly that the economy was failing, and nothing spurs growth than the president saying there isn't and won't be any. consumer confidence is a fickle beast, when someone who should know says things are in the pot, consumers listen and act.

A New King of Beers?.

Who'd have thought that Scottish breweries would pick up the title for the Best Beer in Britain two years running?

Judges in the Champions Beers of Britain contest named Bitter and Twisted its Supreme Champion in a ceremony today.

The beer, from the Harviestoun Brewery in Dollar, Clackmannanshire, is described in this year's Good Beer Guide as “a refreshingly hoppy beer with fruit throughout.”

Last year, the Caledonian brewery took the honors with Deuchars IPA.

[Electric Venom]

mmmm, beer, beer is good.

Lincoln Caplan, Censoring Science, LegalAffairs, J …. Lincoln Caplan, Censoring Science, LegalAffairs, July/August 2003. Excerpt: “The Bush Administration is treating American universities as if they can't be trusted to make their own judgments about restricting sensitive information, but the responsibility of balancing security and openness isn't a new one for academics. Ever since the Manhattan Project, centers of research have been required to weigh the interests of science and of national security cautiously and work with the government to guard both. Before September 11, the government had respected the vigilance of universities by establishing what scientists call 'high walls' around only 'narrow areas' of research. Since then, the Administration has recalibrated the balance between security and liberty in this country, shifting the fulcrum in favor of security. But the lesson of SARS is that global security depends on allowing scientists to benefit from a free flow of ideas and from the easy cooperation of experts from home and abroad. After all, had the Chinese government not restricted the free flow of information within its borders, SARS might have been contained long before it became a global problem. Keeping secrets shouldn't be contagious.” [Open Access News]

Governments should not control research they should just sponsor it, but as you look around the world, more and more, ideological governments are pushing their own scientific agenda and limits, enforcing controls and reducing disemination, etc. this is not going to be a good thing in the long run.

Battles over Web Services Messaging.

CNET has an article on the battles over web services messaging: Standards stupidities and tech's future: “Microsoft is pushing something that it calls WS-ReliableMessaging, which was co-developed with IBM, BEA Systems and Tibco. Meanwhile, a competing specification called Web Services Reliable Messaging is being backed by Sun, Oracle, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC and Sonic Software.”  The latter is being tuned up by the OASIS consortium.

The article also mentions the long-running battle over RSS standards and and the recent news that the Harvard Berkman Center has taken over ownership of the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) 2.0 specification this week after UserLand, a company owned by RSS 2.0 author David Winer, transferred the copyright to the center. The SPU newslog is based on Radio Userland's Radio Community Server and distributes its feeds using its RSS 2.0 channels.

[ITU Strategy and Policy Unit Newslog]

It is interesting that now the corporate powerhouses have entered into the fray, things will probabably change significantly. I personally prefer whatever i hack together out of whatever standards are out there, but generally use rss…