Tim O’Reilly responds to Phil Ringnalda’s post publicizing O’Reilly’s participation in the search engine spam game. I was particularly interested to see his response because his company has so much credibility that they never even needed to say anything like, “Don’t be evil.” Everybody already knows that O’Reilly isn’t evil. Now w’re confronted with a [...]
Entries from August 2005
Equal time
August 24th, 2005 · No Comments
Google Talk
August 24th, 2005 · 6 Comments
As was widely rumored, Google has released its instant messaging client, Google Talk. The download is small and the installation is quick, and the UI is rather simple as you might expect. I haven’t even used the instant messaging features yet, but I’m pretty enamored with its functionality as an incoming email notifier for Google [...]
Good news for democracy in Iraq
August 23rd, 2005 · 1 Comment
Eric Umansky notices the following today:
Only the Journal highlights a crucial bit of procedure: If two-thirds of the population of any three of Iraq’s 18 provinces vote no in a constitutional referendum, then the political process goes back to square 1, requiring not only a new draft constitution but a new transition parliament. [...]
The ownership society
August 22nd, 2005 · 1 Comment
Mr. Jalopy has some interesting thoughts on what it means to own something. Inspired by the outrageous cost of a replacement part for a Chevrolet pickup truck, he writes:
With the rise of DIY, hardware hacking and the rise of basement tinkerers, perhaps this is the time to demand our rights to truly 0wn [...]
Ain’t that a shame
August 22nd, 2005 · No Comments
Looks like O’Reilly has added its name to the list of companies whoring out their PageRank to search engine spammers. I expect better from them.
By the way, don’t miss the comments on Phil’s post, inspired by the fact that Shelley Powers mentions that she has the same links on her site and that they help [...]
My current thinking on Iraq
August 22nd, 2005 · 1 Comment
Last week I attended the local vigil in support of Cindy Sheehan organized by moveon.org at the behest of my neighbor. About 100 people showed up here in Raleigh, which was more than I would have expected. Even though I sympathize with Cindy Sheehan, who is trying to deal with the fact that her son [...]
Earn $250,000
August 19th, 2005 · 4 Comments
The editors of BoingBoing are offering $250,000 to anyone who can provide empirical evidence that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Good luck!
Ruby the gateway drug
August 18th, 2005 · 7 Comments
The current bit of nonsense floating around among people who think in Manichean terms about programming languages is that Ruby is going to kill Java. Like many other Java developers, I’m not buying it. I think Ruby will be quite successful, but it’s silly to say that Ruby will kill Java. Obviously, Ruby isn’t going [...]
RSS version 3
August 18th, 2005 · 1 Comment
I just noticed on Slashdot that Jonathan Avidan has announced RSS version 3. I’m just going to sit back and watch the fireworks on this one.
Update: There’s a different proposal for RSS 3.0 from 2002.
Serendipitous communities
August 17th, 2005 · 4 Comments
The New Yorker has a little article about how a message board posting about loneliness on an unrelated message board turned into sizable community thanks to Google’s indexing. I’ve been fascinated with the way communities take on lives of their own in surprising ways on the Internet, and that’s one of the reasons I had [...]