Inside View

150,000 views

CLONMEL -- Eight months into my Typead experience and I'm blowing through more than 150,000 cumulative page views. But that's a composite picture--the 80,000th visitor hit this blog yesterday and the 70,000th visitor hit one of the assorted photo albums sometime last Thursday. It's important to note that people like to browse various ways. Some take hypertext links from blog entries or the miniature. Just as many follow the thumbnails photos. Based on Adam Curry's experience, an equal number would follow the audio tracks if I put them up. We'll try that later this summer.

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Bladerunner Neuroethics

NEW SCIENTIST -- As I slip Bladerunner into its sleeve for another first year film review, I thumb through New Scientist for some interesting discussion on detecting traumatic memories. Getting suspects to respond to memory events is a tactic used in the film by Harrison Ford, the police detective. The movie (and the scientific article) raise ethical questions. Do you want to block traumatic memories from scarring your mind? What if someone else did it for you? Or how about receiving marketing messages beamed directly at you in hypersonic waves? Mind control is getting smarter by the minute, says Richard Glen Boire, co-founder of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics in California. He told Liz Else much more.

CDs Lose Data

INDEPENDENT -- After finding 60 year old photographic treasures in a family attic, I'm hesitant to trust my digital photo albums to a digital safe-keeping. After all, has anyone ever opened a 60-year old GIF? It costs pennies to use CD-Rs as a storage medium but I'm worried about them because I've see students cut bad copies every week. Some of my CDs get scuffed. Others were stored in direct sunlight and were toasted within a year. It's a scientific fact, extending from the way CDs are made. When Nero burns my CDs, my laptop "burns" dye on the disc. The dye becomes dark, to represent a "1" while a "0" will be left blank so that if the dye fades, there's no difference. Enter sunlight and everything blanches out into a long string of nothing to the playback laser.

Patent-happy

TAINT -- Justin Mason points to several interesting analyses concerning patents for software. Mason raises points that deserve to be calls to arms for the Irish software community. The underlying ideas about what the Treaty on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights must be correctly articulated to Enterprise Ireland and to the Minister for Enterprise.

Talking blog

PULVER -- Thanks to Ed Guy, Jeff Pulver has a talking blog. Pulver explains, "when you dial FWD# 19020, you will be able to hear the latest entries from my blog." Before you do that, you need to be an Asterick user and use a SIP phone.

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Jeff Pulver -- "FWD # 19020 - The Talking Blog"
Broadband Reports -- "What does everybody think about P8 and SIP phone news?"
DSL Reports -- "Packet8 and FWD"
XVOIP -- "Stealth Telecommunications Knowledgebase"
Learn more. Join the mailing list.
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Plugging memory hole

I FLEW 67944 (the C-141 at left) several times in the 70s and 80s. I carried coffins aboard her too.

I logged nearly 2000 flying hours in the Starlizard--the affectionate name of the big bird when it was painted camogreen. The reliable transport remains in the public eye, this time through The Memory Hole Coffin Photos. If anything, getting these photos released proves why every democratic society needs a freedom of information system that works. The American system is levels above Ireland's. But the pictures (several making the inside of the Irish national papers without attribution to their source) can cost people their jobs, as Tami Silicio discovered.

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Click on the C-141 to see an inside view of flag-draped coffins strapped down inside a cargo aircraft.
The Memory Hole -- 361 photos from Dover AFB, Delaware.

Dana Milbank -- "Curtains Ordered for Media Coverage of Returning Coffins"

Seattle Times -- "Woman loses her job over coffins photo"

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USB Troubles

KILKENNY -- One element of collateral damage in my battle against spyware is that the USB port on my XP Pro laptop fails to communicate with my Sony Clie. I get the message "the connection between your handheld computer and the desktop could not be established." The Device Manager shows the USB Controller from Sony (Location 0, Palm handheld) is not installed. There is a hidden challenge in this error message because Palmsource did not standardize the Palm Universal Connector--the Sony Clie would be a lot more accessible if it integrated the PUC. You cannot assume that if a product has a USB port, it can magically connect to any other device that has a USB port. That doesn't work with the Clie. It doesn't work with most Bluetooth devices.

I can only use the USB cable with the Clie when on sync. The Cie doesn't like wires. From an engineer's point of view, wired connections defeat the purpose of pocket portability. The Clie USB cable can be a generic one with a Type A connector on one and and a Type B connector on the other will work. You do not have to buy Sony's cable. I use the one that came with my Clie at work and a camera cable at home.

Cluetrain comes to Dublin

Doc Searls rolls into Dublin to address Linux World Ireland during the ICT Expo and for anyone who read The Cluetrain Manifesto, the Coming of Doc is akin to a personal reading of the Manifesto. Searls always has insightful perspectives--on topics as wide-ranging as ecosystems, marketing, computers and visual art. When listing to his anecdotes, it's no wonder that his book is on the shelves of other quality writers.

A magazine editor friend of Micah Sifry asked for some notes on the subject of the Internet and dissent. As he explains,

Along the way, this thought occurred to me. If it's true that, as the New Yorker cartoon put it, "On the Internet, no one knows if you're a dog," it's also true that on the Internet no one likes it if you don't come across as a human being.

In other words, The Cluetrain Manifesto explained while standing on one foot.

I wonder how Searls would take that perspective.

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Doc Searls -- "The entire text of the Cluetrain Manifesto"
Micah Sifry -- "Cluetrain while standing on one foot"

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Law of Two Feet

HARRISON OWEN supplements his four rules for conferences with one law. "The Law is the so called Law of Two Feet, which states simply, if at any time you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, use you two feet and move to some place more to you liking. Such a place might be another group, or even outside into the sunshine. No matter what, don’t sit there feeling miserable."

As Lance Knobel explains, "The logic behind this is more than procedural. Think what establishing a typical conference panel involves. However open the organisers, the panelists and the participants, by making the choices of subject, framing the question, choosing the panelists, you've already predetermined much of the argument (which for a polemical organisation may be a good thing). You may want your participants to make an intellectual journey from A to Z, but you're starting them on K. Why not let everyone start at A?" If you have a credible moderator for each conference session, you're set up for a much more productive occasion.

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Lance Knobel -- "Arguments for un-conferences"
Harrison Owen -- "Opening space for emerging order"
Dave Winer -- "Speakers, Panels, Sponsors and Audiences"
BloggerCon -- for Newbies

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Clie Reader

KILKENNY -- You can buy better technology in the medieval Irish city of Kilkenny now that many photography shops carry PDAs and iPods. But if you intend to stock up on reading materials in Kilkenny bookshops, you need to sharpen your focus on Irish titles or mainstream best sellers. You won't find Wired anywhere but in Power Newsagents.