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Thursday, January 02, 2003 |
One year ago on
'tother blog:
2002
We're living in a palindrome!
The Year in Internet Law: edited excerpts from e-mails written by six legal
experts about the year's most important developments in law and technology.
(NYT)
According to a report in the RISKS in Computing Digest:
A recent series of four newscasts on the Fox Network alleged
that U. S. telephone call records have been falling into the hands of
international organized crime.
Sadly, the news transcripts referenced (and hyperlinked) there now show as
"story no longer exists" at the FOXNews site.
The year in tech: the highs and lows, by Dan Gillmor, Mercury News.
Don't recall whether I said it on the weblog at the time, but I thought the
Ashcroft AG appointment would be an interesting test. In particular, I
wondered what would become of his support for private, secure crypto; in
general, I wondered about the civil liberties vs. security state tradeoffs.
Now, with some evidence in, check out Ashcroft's Hypocrisy, by Peter
Schrag, in The American Prospect.
Major Religions of the World Ranked by Number of Adherents (thanks, rebecca!)
Ever had a bad experience with hotel staff? Two guys from Seattle had a bad
time of it in Houston, and prepared a PowerPoint-style complaint: Yours is
a Very Bad Hotel. (thanks, rebecca, too!)
They promised me picturephones: This Modern World, by Tom Tomorrow.
1:40:05 PM 
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Copyright Concerns Lead the Year's Big Fusses and Flaps, by Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post.
In 2002, the important developments in the computing business had little to do with hardware or software; instead, they revolved around a comparably bug- ridden realm, that of politics -- specifically, copyright politics.
How creators and distributors of art should be paid for their work -- and how they might go after people who refuse to pay -- dominated the important discussions this year.
. . .
Elsewhere in personal technology, change appeared only in disguise. For example, Microsoft won its judicial battle with the Justice Department, but its biggest threat actually may lie in such open-source software as the Mozilla Web browser, the OpenOffice productivity suite and the Linux operating system.
I installed the first two programs this summer for curiosity's sake but stuck with them out of satisfaction. OpenOffice opened every Word document, Excel spreadsheet and PowerPoint presentation in my e-mail since July without complaint -- while insulating my PC from Office macro viruses. Similarly, Mozilla gave me a Web without pop-up ads, at the price of the rare site-specific glitch; better yet, it's already spawned both a couple of useful upgrades and speedy offshoots, including Phoenix and Chimera.
Linux continues to frustrate and fascinate. It got easier to load but remained too persnickety with added software or hardware.
8:51:02 AM
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AP story on the new Pew Internet study:
According to the telephone-based survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 64% of nonusers expect to be able to find information in at least one of the following four categories — health care, government, news and shopping.
In fact, 16% of the nonusers say they would turn to the Internet first the next time they need health care and government information.
8:46:07 AM
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Dave: It's January 1, time for new beginnings. Believe it or not I'm applying for a job in academia, so it's time to put together my curriculum vitae. It's a fancy name for a resume. Basically, the job I want to do is the one I have been doing, with some extras (like teaching), but not in the context of a commercial software company. UserLand has been getting along fine without me since early summer. And of course I remain the major shareholder in the company, so I'm very interested, and I help out whenever I can. But if it goes as I hope it will, you'll see a gradual separation. All the stuff that I write on the Web, Scripting News, DaveNet, the specs and discussion groups will stay independent, but the software -- Radio, Manila, Frontier, etc -- that's UserLand. As I've been talking with people about this, it's been hard for them to separate me from UserLand, but that's what I want to do. I'm going to get a new job with a new title, and it's going to be quite different from being the CEO of a commercial software company. It's time to set my life in a new direction. My health, quitting smoking, my father's illness, all have given me the chance to make a big change in lifestyle. Wish me luck! And as I do this corner-turn, in the spirit of weblogs, I will document as much as I possibly can, publicly. [Scripting News]
Far out.
8:25:10 AM
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