Technology: May 2006 Archives
I still haven't gotten over a country hip enough to even have a Minister of Culture, much less one as totally cool as Gilberto Gil:
Minister Gilberto Gil, a renowned musician who accepted President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's invitation three years ago to join his cabinet, commented at the opening of the Global Internet Congress here. Participants in the four-day conclave are discussing current tendencies in cyberspace and challenges facing the World Wide Web.
"I, Gilberto Gil, as minister of culture of Brazil and as a musician, work every day with the impulse of the ethics of hackers," he said.
Though hacking - or unauthorized access to Web sites or other Internet-borne information - is a criminal activity in most nations, he said hackers should be distinguished from those he called "crackers," or pirates intent on stealing or otherwise doing harm while overcoming Web security barriers.
Gil, 63, called hackers "counter-cultural militants who see in the computer a fantastic tool for communication."
He said the Internet allows good hackers "to create permanent spaces of equality" that give them, as they pursue universal free software, strength against "the reactionary orthodoxy" controlling much of the sector.
"Hackers create, innovate, solve problems and voluntarily exercise a mutual help organization," which he said meshes with the founding principles of the Internet.
from www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/05/29/1661679.htm.
Thanks, Bruce!
There's an interesting article by Kate Rothgeb in last Wednesdays issue of the Daily, the University of Washington's student newspaper.
Students have accused members of Housing and Food Services (HFS) of going on Facebook and discovering pictures of resident advisers with cups in their hands. HFS staff assumed they were drinking alcohol and used that as evidence against them, said Hansee Hall resident John Stevens.
As a result, the Student Senate is calling for the university to let them know how students' online presences will be used.
The resolution requests staff and administrators to tell students how online social networks will be used "so students know what to expect," McCuin said. It also aims to protect admissions and awarding of scholarships.
If an administrator or admissions counselor is going to use online social networks to see what a student is involved in, students have a right to know what is being used against them, said senator Sam Al-Khoury.
There's a really interesting dynamic at work here. Students are living large parts of their lives in public on social networks like Facebook and MySpace, but largely assuming that it's only their peers who will be looking at those sites.
But what do you expect if you belong to a group with a name like I'm Not Going To Lie, I'm Completely Wasted In My Face Book Pic...?
The students here are trying to paint this as a free speech issue, but that doesn't quite seem like the heart of the issue to me. I think it's actually more of an authorization and access control issue on the social networks. People using the networks assume that the use of the network is limited to their peers, without stopping to worry how that is defined or enforced.
Facebook, for example, limits accounts to people who have email addresses in the .edu space. While that includes most students, it also includes all faculty and staff of educational institutions, as well as alumni, donors, friends of the institution, etc.
This is all part of us learning how to live in the new social reality created by technology. It's a fascinating ride.
Technorati Tags: privacy, social software, social-software
People are always accusing government and academia of being inefficient, and saying they should be run more like businesses. Now Gizmodo is reporting this:
Not sure why we didn't see this earlier, but everyone's favorite wireless brand, Cingular, is going to go bye-bye. AT&T is currently purchasing Cingular's parent company, BellSouth, and will remove the Cingular name, replacing it with the euphonious AT&T Wireless. Gone, too, will be the dancing orange fellow we all know and love.
Branding and building the Cingular line cost BellSouth $4 billion. Oh well.
Does this mean when I need service I'll have to report now that I have a service that is AT&T that used to be Cingular that used to be AT&T?
The rest of this week I'll be in Wisconsin. I'll be attending the Spring Common Solutions Group meeting in Madison, where there will be a workshop on data center futures and I'll be leading a short workshop on Thursday on social software. I'll be blogging those sessions as we go. CSG is a small meeting, usually in the 50-75 people range, where IT leaders from 25 leading US research universities attend. It's always a convivial and highly interactive experience, and I always learn a lot.
Next weekend I'll be in Milwaukee visiting my friend Jim Fricke, who is now directing curatorial efforts at the soon-to-be-built Harley Davidson Museum, and my old college bud Bryn is coming up from Chicago. Should be great fun!
Technorati Tags: CSG-Spring-2006
Over the last few months I've consulted some with the folks from KEXP radio, Seattle's famous indie station, about how to get going with blogging.
I'm pleased to say that the KEXP blog is now live and on the net at http://blog.kexp.org.
The DJs at KEXP are extremely knowledgeable and highly opinionated - that's a good thing in a DJ!
I look forward to keeping up with the posts from some of my favorite DJs, like DJ Michele, Jon Kertzer, Don Slack, Darek Mazzone, and (especially) John Gilbreath.
Nice work, Jason, Louis, and all!
My colleagues and friends who develop the Catalyst Web Tools here at the UW have done an open source release of their Solstice framework. Solstice is a web app development framework for perl developers. It's what the Catalyst folks use to develop tools that we use heavily, including the highly regarded (and recent award-winning) WebQ quizzing and survey tool.
Solstice is a model-view-controller framework (as is Ruby on Rails) that can make it easier for perl developers to build robust, maintainable, and highly functional web applications.
Next up the Catalyst team is working on open sourcing the web tools code, which should be widely useful as both apps to use as-is and as starting points for how to develop and extend Solstice applications.
Technorati Tags: open-source, tools, software
There's a terrific article on the network neutrality debate by Farhad Manjoo in Salon. If you're wondering what the fuss is about I urge you to take the time to read it.
Dan Gillmor got eloquently passionate about the issue when he gave the New Media lecture at Columbia University:
I've talked a fair amount about openness here. This is not only an issue for journalists in their own work. It's one of the most important policy issues facing us all. If you think media consolidation is an issue today, it's nothing compared with what we're facing tomorrow.
Earlier, I mentioned a clear and present danger to the open Internet that has nurtured a more diverse media ecosystem. The threat, in America, is the dominance of the cable and phone companies in what we laughingly call broadband data connections. I say "laughingly" because the U.S. is falling way, way behind the rest of the developed world in providing broadband access, and one reason is the dominance of companies that grew up in an environment where they dominated their worlds, and really preferred it that way.
The cable and phone companies want to control not just the pipes through which our data moves. They also want to decide what will get delivered, in what order, and at what speed. They haven't pulled this off yet, but they're getting closer every day.
Yesterday, a committee in the House of Representatives voted down an amendment to a new bill that would have required what many of us call "network neutrality." This is the idea that the people getting data -- you and me -- should make the decisions on what we get and in what order, and if necessary pay more for higher speeds. It should not be a decision made by Verizon or Comcast or Time Warner or the fake new ATT.
If they succeed in capturing the kind of control they want -- and they're closer than I would have believed possible -- we'll all be harmed.
I beg you to write and call your member of Congress and U.S. senators, and your state representatives -- the duopoly is well-wired, in the wrong way, in our state capitals, too. Tell them you want an open Internet, not a walled garden or fortress where giant companies get to pick what innovations will succeed or fail.
Last week Dan posted about AT&T's apparent participation in helping the NSA perform what may be illegal spying against American citizens, and noted:
There's plenty of shame to go around, and you expect this from the current government. But one of the most disturbing parts of this is the phone company's seeming eagerness to give up its customers' most private information without appearing to care that it's violating basic rules of business and decency.
And these companies are run by the people who want to control the Internet by ending any semblance of network neutrality. Feeling safer?
Technorati Tags: net-neutrality
