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Wednesday, August 28, 2002 |
The Incredible Tale of LambdaMOO: Learn how one of the first virtual
worlds ballooned into a real-life nightmare, by Pavel Curtis the
founder of LambdaMOO, still home to more than 150 virtual communities and
8,000 members. Curtis is also the founder of the Web-conferencing company
PlaceWare.(Tech TV).
11:28:10 PM 
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Simon Fraser U.
Committee Rejects Hiring Complaint From Bypassed Technology Critic, by
Dan Carnevale, CHE.
[A] Simon Fraser faculty search committee had selected him for
the J.S. Woodsworth Chair in the humanities. But after some Simon Fraser
administrators opposed the appointment of Mr. Noble, the search was
suspended and the university started a new one.
[ . . . ]
There were no grounds, based on the documentation provided by Dr. Noble
and the university, to actually hold a hearing, Ms. Aberle [director of
media and public relations for Simon Fraser] said. The university is
satisfied at this point that Dr. Noble has been treated fairly, and it's
time to move on.
But Mr. Noble said Tuesday that he isn't going to stop fighting. This is
just the beginning, he said.
10:28:02 PM
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Vie
wers question reality TV (BBC News).
Television viewers are becoming increasingly cynical about
reality game shows, according to a study.
The viewers have become aware of how contestants "act up", and now look for
"moments of truth" that reveal a person's real nature.
Programme makers need to regain their viewers' trust, according to Dr
Annette Hill, of the University of Westminster.
7:27:43 PM
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Demography and the West: H
alf a billion Americans?
By 2040, perhaps earlier, America will overtake Europe in
population.
And it will be a younger, more colorful population, hailing from more
corners of the world as well.
The long-term logic of demography seems likely to entrench
America's power and to widen existing transatlantic rifts. [Arts and Letters Daily]
6:27:33 PM
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A diary of baseball's coming crunch time: Posturing
owners! Angry bankers! Scary lawyers! Rats who gnaw the eyes out first! A
day by day guide to the last weeks of the labor war. By Keith (the
inimitable) Olbermann, in Salon.
2:26:56 PM
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Hacking for
Democracy: Shift.com talks to Oxblood Ruffin, founder of Hacktivism,
about the ethics of political hacking. by mark moyes. (You can also go
directly to page
two, or to page
three of the interview.)
[thanks, politech!]
[A]rticle nineteen of both [the Universal
Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights] talks about what we call information rights -- the
ability to access information, regardless of how that information might be
transmitted, whether it's a newspaper on the internet or whatever. It's
sort of an umbrella statement that covers all those things. We're
specifically interested in maintaining the free flow of what we call
lawfully-published content. Information could mean anything, it could mean
your bank statements or it could mean kiddie porn or it could mean national
security secrets. That's not the information we're talking about. We're
essentially talking about any publicly available information on the web,
that's available throughout the liberal democracies. So essentially
anything we see, we think anybody else should have the right to see as
well. Lots of governments disagree with this and that's why they have
internet censorship.
[ . . . ]
China aside, one of the greatest threats to liberal
democracies is Microsoft itself. . . . . China is really big on virii and
the easiest system to exploit in the world is anything Microsoft. So it's
almost like a national vulnerability -- as well as some kind of great IT
success story. But Microsoft is like, the single, weakest link in the
international system.
The Chinese are madly trying to come up with their own
operating systems right now, largely as a result of knowing how vulnerable
Microsoft is. So it's kind of interesting times, I guess.
[ . . . ]
One of the other things that's important to talk about when
you're talking about internet censorship is that most of the time, people
just mention the governments involved. Like, "Oh, China = bad, Iran = bad,
United Arab Emirates = bad." But it's not as though they're doing this
stuff by themselves: They're pretty much almost completely supplied by
Western software companies. So when people in the same breath are talking
about internet censors in Beijing, I think it's appropriate to mention that
they're managing to do this with the help of Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft...
You know, all of the major software companies. I'm horrified that these
companies are allowed to even do business with them. But they keep claiming
that, "We have no business or right to intervene in the internal policies
of whatever government, plus we don't even know what they're doing." Which
is a big giant lie, anyway.
[ . . . ]
But trust in China or Iran or wherever... You're not going
to have this Napster in a trenchcoat running, with everyone secretly
trading all kinds of files and information. It's not going to happen that
way. You might have a huge network -- we're hoping that the Six/Four
network does roll out to a fairly substantial size -- but it's going to
operate more like on a cellular level, where there'll be four to five
people working in what we're calling an H2H network, hacktivist to
hacktivist. They'll all know and trust each other, and can allow each other
various permissions.
But it's not going to be like, "Oh, everybody in the world,
come use my machine." That's a great way to get yourself caught.
(See also, the Hacktivismo
Declaration.)
12:26:38 PM
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User Empowerment and
the Fun Factor (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, July 7, 2002).
Summary:
Designs that engage and empower users increase their enjoyment and
encourage them to explore websites in-depth. Once we achieve ease of use,
we'll need additional usability methods to further strengthen joy of
use.
4:25:01 AM
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