Well I just finished reading a very interesting article over at particletree.com. Keeping abreast of the latest developments relating to RSS feeds and how they are being leveraged to track and supply information has been a weak point of mine but this article has once again got me looking at searching and information retrieval in a new light. I had already noticed the power of blogs and RSS though as I was recently playing around with some web stat generation tools and I ran the tools against a set of data that included all the logs for all of the sites that Disciplina Networks hosts for the last 9 months. What was really interesting to note was that initially the sites were basic static sites but that nonetheless contained some interesting material. Almost immediately google and the other robots came along and start indexing it but still the overall traffic and hits on the various sites remained quite low. A few months into the data set and I started putting up some blogs and immediately you could see the average amount of hits and overall profile of the sites started to change. Of course the coup de grace in this respect was the moment I had a link from my planet gentoo blog back to here with my average traffic now spiking about ten times higher then what it was before that point.
Despite all of this though I wonder to what extent technical people are driving RSS at this point. All of my friends that I would consider tech savvy are using RSS, to differing extents but still they are using it, but outside of that circle of people almost no one else I know is using it. This makes me wonder, are all technologies like this? Driven almost exclusively by a (comparatively) small crowd of technologically savvy people and only making it into mainstream after a certain event / level of popularity pushes it there? Or all of this really just helping those who spend their time on the web surfing in the first place? Will RSS really change how we use the net or will it just be another tool that helps a small amount of people regain some lost time?
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Monday, June 13, 2005
Technologies - directions and failures
Well caught up with Greg Ferro today and went for a walk around London while having a chat. It was very enjoyable actually and one of the topic of conversations was Wifi and its impact. Greg was of the opinion that it was completely overrated whereas I think that it could be the thing that really changes the face of technology so long as they get over a few current obstacles, like speed and standards. In particular I think that if you can access a network, of any description, it doesn't even have to be the Internet, from anywhere in the world that a LOT of things will change. In particular it seems to me that the abililty to search and lookup information on the move will radically change things like street directories and mapping services, but thats just the tip of the iceberg.
Imagine for a moment what things you would be able to do if you had no bandwidth limitations (or perhaps more accurately limitations that you weren't likely to run into in "normal" usage) and that you could access it anywhere. In my opinion some very fundamental things would change about our society. Increasingly it seems that more and more people rely on computers for their job, now obviously I am biased in this observation because it is all I do for a living, but I think its not unfair to say that as a generalisation the prevalence of computers is increasing. If you agree to that then in almost all cases the ability to do that from anywhere challenges our current conceptions of the "workplace" and what it means to be at work. Already I would argue that I can do my entire job remotely, gone are the days of not having full, secure remote access, not only to the computers themselves but to their powersupplies and every little function of their environment (air conditioning, lighting, electricity phases etc). Given that kind of access I could work from anywhere provided I had the ability to connect. Now my own belief as to why that is not already the case for many people, in particular for people in positions like me, is that the mindset of everyone involved is not ready for it. Think about it, not only is management still very wary of people "working from home" but even the people involved actually quite enjoy working with other people on the whole, we are after all social creatures. Still, at least personally, I find I am more productive at home in my own environment then I am at work and there would be direct benefits for any employer of me to allow me to work away from the office and I don't think I am alone in this matter. All of this is just one way in which I think real, effective ubiquitous communication would change our society. The changes go a lot deeper then just the technology. In that line of thinking I saw an interesting article that seems to suggest we are heading down that road already. Of course with our current technology I don't think it will change things that much, but give the technology an iteration or two and I think it will be a very different story. Poor telco's will have to rethink how they are doing business, already there are skype phones available, fairly soon phone numbers will be a thing of the past and instead everyone will be using IPs to address each other (of course these will be made presentable by some nice username interface).
Another thing that caught my attention recently was TOR. This is something that I think is incredibly interesting and from a security standpoint could seriously challenge the established paradigms. I pick this concept, maybe not this implementation, but the concept, to be the biggest thing in security for some time to come. Not only does it enable truely anonymous Internet usage but its secure! Finally to add insult to injury to various governement agencies around the world you can now anonymously host services. Of course the media will focus on the bad uses for such technology, and don't get me wrong as a powerful tool it can be used for both good and bad, still the obvious benefits of what it can do for everyone should ensure its survival.
On a different note I am getting really sick of so called professional, IT savvy companies fucking up basics. I have this week off work to study and sit the CISSP exam. You would think that a certification system that targets security professionals and is trying to establish a worldwide repurtation as leading the field would make sure that their web presence and its functionality is flawless. I just sat the "practise exam" (with no studying, was curious as to just how much study I had ahead of me) and it seemed to work ok, though it was a tad slow, but when I got to the end and went to submit my final answers it broke with some stupid IIS error and asp warning. The reason it would seem is that it didn't like firefox. How can you possibly take anyone seriously at this point in time who doesn't deal with Firefox sanely (I won't even start about them running an ASP site or using IIS as the webserver). I look forward to having the opportunity to tell one of their staff personally what I think of their site :)
Imagine for a moment what things you would be able to do if you had no bandwidth limitations (or perhaps more accurately limitations that you weren't likely to run into in "normal" usage) and that you could access it anywhere. In my opinion some very fundamental things would change about our society. Increasingly it seems that more and more people rely on computers for their job, now obviously I am biased in this observation because it is all I do for a living, but I think its not unfair to say that as a generalisation the prevalence of computers is increasing. If you agree to that then in almost all cases the ability to do that from anywhere challenges our current conceptions of the "workplace" and what it means to be at work. Already I would argue that I can do my entire job remotely, gone are the days of not having full, secure remote access, not only to the computers themselves but to their powersupplies and every little function of their environment (air conditioning, lighting, electricity phases etc). Given that kind of access I could work from anywhere provided I had the ability to connect. Now my own belief as to why that is not already the case for many people, in particular for people in positions like me, is that the mindset of everyone involved is not ready for it. Think about it, not only is management still very wary of people "working from home" but even the people involved actually quite enjoy working with other people on the whole, we are after all social creatures. Still, at least personally, I find I am more productive at home in my own environment then I am at work and there would be direct benefits for any employer of me to allow me to work away from the office and I don't think I am alone in this matter. All of this is just one way in which I think real, effective ubiquitous communication would change our society. The changes go a lot deeper then just the technology. In that line of thinking I saw an interesting article that seems to suggest we are heading down that road already. Of course with our current technology I don't think it will change things that much, but give the technology an iteration or two and I think it will be a very different story. Poor telco's will have to rethink how they are doing business, already there are skype phones available, fairly soon phone numbers will be a thing of the past and instead everyone will be using IPs to address each other (of course these will be made presentable by some nice username interface).
Another thing that caught my attention recently was TOR. This is something that I think is incredibly interesting and from a security standpoint could seriously challenge the established paradigms. I pick this concept, maybe not this implementation, but the concept, to be the biggest thing in security for some time to come. Not only does it enable truely anonymous Internet usage but its secure! Finally to add insult to injury to various governement agencies around the world you can now anonymously host services. Of course the media will focus on the bad uses for such technology, and don't get me wrong as a powerful tool it can be used for both good and bad, still the obvious benefits of what it can do for everyone should ensure its survival.
On a different note I am getting really sick of so called professional, IT savvy companies fucking up basics. I have this week off work to study and sit the CISSP exam. You would think that a certification system that targets security professionals and is trying to establish a worldwide repurtation as leading the field would make sure that their web presence and its functionality is flawless. I just sat the "practise exam" (with no studying, was curious as to just how much study I had ahead of me) and it seemed to work ok, though it was a tad slow, but when I got to the end and went to submit my final answers it broke with some stupid IIS error and asp warning. The reason it would seem is that it didn't like firefox. How can you possibly take anyone seriously at this point in time who doesn't deal with Firefox sanely (I won't even start about them running an ASP site or using IIS as the webserver). I look forward to having the opportunity to tell one of their staff personally what I think of their site :)
Friday, June 10, 2005
humour and correctness
I just spent some time cruising around ESRs site. I always find it interesting to read older hackers thoughts and opinions, they seem somewhat more clear then so many activists these days. One page that caught my eye in particular and completely cracked me up was this. Truely empassioned and, imo, absolutely hysterical.
On a different note I find it quite intimidating reading through sites like ESRs and Stallmans if for no other reason then the amount of things that they have done and continue to do. Their productivity seems so incredibly high that I really don't know where they get the time to do it all. Then I started thinking perhaps the reality is with a lot of these people is that they don't have jobs like I define them. For me my job, by that I mean the job I do to make money as opposed to anything else, takes up an unavoidable 10 hours a day (9 hour working day + travel time which if I was truthful would be closer to 1.75 hours). Then I have to eat on top of that and I end up with about ~5-8 hours to do things depending on how demanding I want to be of my body. Now I realise that the majority of people have similar time demands, but I think, and I could well be wrong, people like ESR and other people don't actually spend as much of their time working for cash as the rest of us. At least thats what I want to believe, otherwise wtf have I been doing with my time ? oh and don't say the obvious like wasting time reading weird geek sites ;)
On a different note I find it quite intimidating reading through sites like ESRs and Stallmans if for no other reason then the amount of things that they have done and continue to do. Their productivity seems so incredibly high that I really don't know where they get the time to do it all. Then I started thinking perhaps the reality is with a lot of these people is that they don't have jobs like I define them. For me my job, by that I mean the job I do to make money as opposed to anything else, takes up an unavoidable 10 hours a day (9 hour working day + travel time which if I was truthful would be closer to 1.75 hours). Then I have to eat on top of that and I end up with about ~5-8 hours to do things depending on how demanding I want to be of my body. Now I realise that the majority of people have similar time demands, but I think, and I could well be wrong, people like ESR and other people don't actually spend as much of their time working for cash as the rest of us. At least thats what I want to believe, otherwise wtf have I been doing with my time ? oh and don't say the obvious like wasting time reading weird geek sites ;)
Thursday, June 9, 2005
Nice machines
Well things have continued to be busy, but I stumbled on to some interesting things since I last blogged. The first thing that caught my eye was the Z machine. Not only does it look kewl but it might be the answer to our power problems!
I also stumbled across this article. Basically it describes what happens when you have a bunch of geeks taking over your local neighbourhood. Of course in their case it is a neighbourhood in the most technological place on the planet so it makes it particularly geeky. Don't know that I would like to live there, but I will definitely visit it next time I am in Japan.
On a personal note its looking like I am going to have a busy June, Astrid is moving back in with me for the school holidays and I have my Father and step mother coming to visit me as well. The scary part about that is that I need to find someway of making my spare bedroom aka the computer room, quiet enough for people to actually sleep in, right now it sounds like a jumbo jet idling for take off.
I also stumbled across this article. Basically it describes what happens when you have a bunch of geeks taking over your local neighbourhood. Of course in their case it is a neighbourhood in the most technological place on the planet so it makes it particularly geeky. Don't know that I would like to live there, but I will definitely visit it next time I am in Japan.
On a personal note its looking like I am going to have a busy June, Astrid is moving back in with me for the school holidays and I have my Father and step mother coming to visit me as well. The scary part about that is that I need to find someway of making my spare bedroom aka the computer room, quiet enough for people to actually sleep in, right now it sounds like a jumbo jet idling for take off.
Saturday, June 4, 2005
"discussions"
I saw an interesting essay today that made me think about how I discuss things with people. I have always enjoyed discussing things. In fact, as many people know, I sometimes err on the side of over analysing, especially when something is a little complex, but, even so, I reject being labelled as "too serious" or the claim "you think too much". For me there is little other point to life then thinking..
It is this that makes it hard at times interacting with other people. Very often something someone says or does provokes me to consider something that I havn't thought about and consequently I become very interested in the topic at hand, equally unfortunately it seems is that the person that might have instigated this thought process is not really interested or ready to have a discussion at the level I wish to. Of course my habit of playing devils advocate to new ideas (I do this to challenge the person who brought the idea up so that I can better get an understanding of how it works / fully fleshed out it is) tends to set people in apposition to me fairly quickly, and unless they come from a kind of "free discussion" background, normally found at uni's or philosophical type arena's, then they get angry pretty quickly. Being a geek I always fail to fully heed the warning signs and often push people over the edge from having a discussion to something that becomes quickly heated and very emotional. I guess this is the key difference, for me almost no topic I ever "discuss" ever evokes emotions, and even if they do, then I make sure to quash them so as to be able to be objective about the subject being discussed. The result is that I am happy to talk about almost anything that comes to mind or seems vaguely relevant to the conversation which includes many taboo areas (a few discussions about abortion and handicapped people come to mind).
What is interesting in relation to the original essay I referred to is that I often have conversations with friends that the entire point of which is to out manouvre the other person with quick logical points, there is an implicit recognition and understanding of the other persons view (this only comes when you know someone well), but the point of the immediate conversation is the mental sparring. I enjoy this a lot, but again I have problems translating that back into normal discussions where people think you are not taking them seriously, or become threatened by the tone, which invariably, becomes brusque, logical and perhaps slightly arrogant. All that said, please feel free to discuss this with me :)
It is this that makes it hard at times interacting with other people. Very often something someone says or does provokes me to consider something that I havn't thought about and consequently I become very interested in the topic at hand, equally unfortunately it seems is that the person that might have instigated this thought process is not really interested or ready to have a discussion at the level I wish to. Of course my habit of playing devils advocate to new ideas (I do this to challenge the person who brought the idea up so that I can better get an understanding of how it works / fully fleshed out it is) tends to set people in apposition to me fairly quickly, and unless they come from a kind of "free discussion" background, normally found at uni's or philosophical type arena's, then they get angry pretty quickly. Being a geek I always fail to fully heed the warning signs and often push people over the edge from having a discussion to something that becomes quickly heated and very emotional. I guess this is the key difference, for me almost no topic I ever "discuss" ever evokes emotions, and even if they do, then I make sure to quash them so as to be able to be objective about the subject being discussed. The result is that I am happy to talk about almost anything that comes to mind or seems vaguely relevant to the conversation which includes many taboo areas (a few discussions about abortion and handicapped people come to mind).
What is interesting in relation to the original essay I referred to is that I often have conversations with friends that the entire point of which is to out manouvre the other person with quick logical points, there is an implicit recognition and understanding of the other persons view (this only comes when you know someone well), but the point of the immediate conversation is the mental sparring. I enjoy this a lot, but again I have problems translating that back into normal discussions where people think you are not taking them seriously, or become threatened by the tone, which invariably, becomes brusque, logical and perhaps slightly arrogant. All that said, please feel free to discuss this with me :)
Thursday, June 2, 2005
time time time see whats become of me..
Well things have been very busy for me recently. I have been doing a fair amount of work for Gentoo, and you can see a blog of activities here. I ended up deciding to have a different blog for gentoo related things so that I didn't overlap interest realms and incurr the wrath of people short on time reading my various wandering thoughts. If you are interested in running linux on a laptop or some more sophisticated suspend2 options then you might want to check out the HOWTO's I have written that are up at Disciplina Networks. Feedback is welcome.
Geek stuff aside work has been periodically frantic and then relaxed, which works out alright as I am able to focus on some other things now and again, but also get some work accomplished during the periods of frenetic activity.
An article caught my attention late last night. The reason being that it echo's my thoughts / discussions I've been having for some time, namerly that in order for a really revolutionary new bit of technology to come along in the mobile market, more power is required.
Geek stuff aside work has been periodically frantic and then relaxed, which works out alright as I am able to focus on some other things now and again, but also get some work accomplished during the periods of frenetic activity.
An article caught my attention late last night. The reason being that it echo's my thoughts / discussions I've been having for some time, namerly that in order for a really revolutionary new bit of technology to come along in the mobile market, more power is required.
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