15 Aug 2002
Thu, 15 Aug 2002
Jon Udell: Blogs and High Tech PR
For my friends in the PR biz, here's an interesting read from Jon Udell on the changing world of high tech PR and the impact of weblogs.
Posted at: 23:30 | permalink
Joe Gregorio Makes A Good Point About GPL Quiz
Joe Gregorio at bitworking says:
I took the GNU GPL and LGPL Licensing Quiz and only got 4 out of 9 correct. I don't know if this quiz is such a great idea, after doing so poorly on the test and reading my mis-interpretations of the licenses I'm pretty leary of using the GPL or LGPL for any project.
This was my point exactly. I didn't even take the quiz though I read the questions. Normal human beings do not want to have suffer through this kind of legalese. We call those people attorneys. I like open source and free software as much as the next guy, but I'll take the simplicity of the MIT license any day.
Posted at: 23:12 | permalink
Mark Pilgrim Blogs More Cool Tools
I was reading Mark Pilgrim's weblog and what I love about it is that I often find stuff that I was looking for by reading articles that have little to do with the target subject - a kind of weblog synchronicity, if you will. Anyhow, Mark pointed me to Brad Choate who's got a cool little Movable Type macro plugin. But what I really dug was this little overlib script that Brad references in his article on the macro plugin. Ultramod javascript tooltip mouse-overs. Try saying that 10 times fast!
Posted at: 09:03 | permalink
PHP and MySQL Go The Distance
My friend Bryan Mills has a demo of a neat little system that he's built for a local insurance company. He implemented this in a weekend using PHP and MySQL running on Linux. That system's running on a little 500MHz P3 with a couple hundred MB of RAM and it's quick!
Bryan and I have been talking about the potential for systems like this to reduce costs for small businesses and provide fast, usable technology that can be a real competitive advantage for these companies. What Bryan's doing is important because companies like this don't want to be BS'ed and I believe that they can appreciate a system that yields big cost savings with little investment. Cool.
Posted at: 08:50 | permalink
Dave Winer Goes Captain Insano on Hillary Rosen
I usually agree with most of what Dave Winer says about things, but this time he's gone totally bobo. Dave says:
Offer the same service that Morpheus and Kazaa operate, with high quality scans, and a $50 monthly fee. Run an ad campaign aimed at parents, saying that this is the responsible and honest thing for their families to do. Give Mom and Dad an easy way to spend a few bucks on the kids' happiness (and find some of their favorite oldies too).
Whoa! No! Yikes! Wait a minute. That's just what we don't need - record companies having the taxation power of the telecom companies. Most people in this country can't afford a cable internet connection, let alone a $50/month tax from the music industry. If parents are dumb enough to sign up for such a plan, I'm getting further into the music business than I am already, and I've been involved in it since I was 7 years old. Do you really think Hillary and the RIAA are going to be satisfied by a miniscule tax on the less than 5% of Americans that would be able to afford, let alone willing to endorse, such a plan? I don't; nor do I think that Americans are that goofy.
Posted at: 08:44 | permalink
Dave Copeland Reports on FBI Wireless Watch
Dave Copeland says:
This might be old, this might be new (it's relatively early in the morning and my memory is still asleep). The FBI released its memo on Warchalking, saying it could be a federal crime and making extra-special reference to Pittsburgh.
What I still don't understand in these cases is the issue of intent. That is, if I've got the laptop in the back of my friend's car and I'm working on my slides for an upcoming talk while he drives us to lunch and my wireless card picks up a signal and connects, am I then considered a felon in the eyes of the FBI? Does the FBI expect me to remove my wireless card whenever I use my laptop and/or disable it's software? Further, is the use of netstumbler considered an important diagnostic criteria for this type of crime? What if I want to try netstumbler as a means of testing or understanding the security of my own wireless network?
Posted at: 08:28 | permalink
