20 Aug 2002

Tue, 20 Aug 2002

Peter Coffee: Beyond the Buzz

I always enjoyed Peter Coffee's columns in PC Week when I was still reading paper trade rags years ago. I don't see those much anymore, but I managed to catch a column titled Beyond The Buzz: Putting Web Services Theory Into Practice in eWeek. This should be required reading for developers, managers, and executives hoping to capture part of the burgeoning web services market. Thanks Peter!

Posted at: 18:33 | permalink

Geeklog: PHP and MySQL-based blogging system

While poking around sourceforge this afternoon, I found an entry about this weblogging system called geeklog. It looks pretty cool. If you're in the market for a new blog system and you favor PHP and MySQL, check it out. One of the things that I love about sourceforge is that I can go searching for something like "log analysis" and wind up finding something off-topic, but still relevant to me.

Posted at: 16:35 | permalink

Winer Goes on Whining

If this isn't one of the more self-absorbed pieces of work from Dave Winer that I've read in a while:

Check this out. Another political weblog, in Canada. To Lessig, who says we're doing nothing, up yours. We will rock the western political system. In five years every member of the US House will have a weblog and will be communicating directly with the electorate. Two more election cycles. The house will rock as the economy will. Don't worry about JC Watts' story. He's a quitter. So what if the old guys don't listen. Throw em out. You'll see. And we'll throw you out too, Professor Lessig.

Yeah, uh huh, right - when elephants roost in trees.

First, I agree with Lessig. Second, maybe Dave should walk a mile in JC Watts shoes before he condemns him. I think Dave and John Robb are living on the same software-induced fantasy island. That fantasy island has clouded their thinking to the point where they think the entire country is going to be writing a weblog next week. That's bullshit and I've said it before.

The argument that Dave presents seems to be largely constructed from Eric Hoffer's Nature of Mass Movements. Demonize the enemy - Lessig the Great Satan. Sound familiar? Only one issue: Lessig is not the problem. When Lessig makes his comparison between literature and software, Dave immediately jumps up and cries foul saying that the two aren't comparable. He then goes on to explain that he paid to go to college and he has a right to be compensated, dammit.

Compensated? I have a right to be compensated.

Why, you ask? Radio is opaque - a black box. And it breaks. Perhaps Dave should be compensating all of the people who work for free to keep Radio running? They're the ones keeping Userland afloat while Dave argues with Lessig. You know what I think? I think the source inside Radio is a heinous mess and Dave's afraid to expose that to the world. That's the real reason behind Dave's attack on all things open source and Larry Lessig.

Kind of like the time that Userland's servers blew apart at the seams a few months ago and Dave said something to the effect of, "we're not sysadmins". Oh, really? If that's the case, Lessig's defense should be, "I'm not a technologist." But I think Larry knows more about technology than Dave does about systems administration.

A little too much cluetrain even for you Dave? Well, I'm sure we'll be hearing the words push back and have a nice day tomorrow. I surely can't be the only person out here that finds the attacks on Lessig and open source to be inane.

Posted at: 01:33 | permalink