Last week I ruminated publicly (which is basically what one does in a weblog, duh) about writing fiction in public, as opposed to just ruminatin’ .
The idea’s been knocking around in my head ever since. Tonight I got around to doing a Google search for “blog novel serial.” Lo and behold, there’s a growing number of serialized novels presented via blogs. Just a few:
I haven’t done more than peruse the table of contents of these, so I can’t attest to the quality of these attempts. But it has my gears turning — weblogs seem like an excellent medium for the serialization of a novel.
Hey, it worked for Dickens. :-)
Books, Writing & Literature
Stephen Downes in Online Learning Daily:
Google doesn’t rank ‘first’ it ranks ‘most’ (the one interesting exception to this being Google news, where ‘first’ counts but ‘accuracy’ doesn’t). And though many articles break first in the mainstream, they are discussed most in the Blogsphere. . . . The Google algorithm should attempt to trace – and credit – the origin of a meme. Otherwise we will be in a situation where, according to Google, Dave Winer is the originator of all thought.
And probably according to Dave Winer, too. ;-)
Technology & Internet
Dana Blankenhorn of Moore’s Lore on why IBM Should Pay The Blackmailer:
If SCO’s claims are upheld, Linux simply ceases to be open source until the open source community can rewrite something compatible that uses none of SCO’s source code, and even then the new code must be tested in court (as well as in computers and the market).
The wise thing for IBM to do, it seems to me, at this point is to accede to SCO’s blackmail, buy the company, and then put the entire code into the public domain. This isn’t just right for egalitarian reasons. It’s also right in terms of IBM’s strategy, which is based on millions and billions of programmers banging on Linux and stamping out bugs.
Oooh, SCO is sneaky.
Technology & Internet
Cue the Darth Vader heavy breathing sounds:
Microsoft to Buy Unix Technology From SCO Group
Microsoft Corp. has agreed to buy rights to Unix technology from SCO Group Inc. , a boost to SCO’s controversial campaign to exact royalties for a predecessor to the Linux operating system, Monday’s Wall Street Journal reported.
In case you’ve had your head under a rock, SCO owns proprietary Unix code that it claims is being used in the open source Linux kernel. They’re suing IBM and going after other Linux vendors.
Unix was developed by AT&T. Much of it was licensed out (the BSD, or Berkely Systems Distribution), but some of it remained proprietary and was eventually acquired by SCO. SCO itself was acquired by Caldera, a Linux distribution provider, but Caldera jettisoned their brand and kept the SCO name. If there’s merit to the claim that these proprietary parts are being used in the Linux kernel, that could bring Linux distribution to a halt.
With this acquisition, Microsoft would own the proprietary parts of Unix. The implication of the acquisition is, of course, that Microsoft will continue SCO’s attempt to stomp out Linux by waging an intellectual property rights war against it. And, of course, Microsoft has the resources that SCO did not to go after IBM & other big Linux providers.
I can’t imagine that the Department of Justice would let this go through untouched.
This could get ugly.
ADDENDUM (4:10pm): I just realized I should have titled this “Microsoft MAY Now Control Unix” because it’s far from a done deal.
ADDENDUM (5:20pm): As Anthony Hersey points out in a comment to this post, even my toned down headline is probably hyperbolic. Microsoft has licensed the rights to the SCO UnixWare code because the “license ensures that Microsoft’s software complies with SCO’s intellectual-property rights and that the software giant can ensure compatibility with Unix software.” [NY Times (free registration required) ]. Microsoft doesn’t “own” Unix exclusively — they just have the right to use the proprietary Unix code to their hearts’ content.
Why would Microsoft want to do this? Probably not because, as they claim, they want to respect intellectual property and comply with SCO’s patents in any Microsoft-Unix interoperability. More likely, they believe — probalby correctly — that this will add credence to SCO’s lawsuit against IBM and SCO’s warning letter to 1,500 other enterprises that use Linux. If SCO can make every Linux distibutor — or, worse, every Linux-using business cough up patent license fees to them for using Linux, that puts a hurt on Linux total costs. Putting a hurt on Linux helps Microsoft.
Technology & Internet
Absolutely nothing! Say it again!
James Farmer responds to my previous comments about weblog hype:
“[T]he reason I’m interested in Weblogs as VLEs actually comes out of a frustration with other tools and a weblog is a KM tool already, no? Also, and I’m probably quoting out of cotext here… ‘every professor wants to be (and, granted, sometimes has to be) the duke of their own little fiefdom.’ So… cool! In educational terms ego’s as important as it is anywhere else, isn’t that what weblogs are good for. OK, you get lots of reinventing the wheel going on… but that’s the same as everywhere else.
A weblog is a personal publishing tool, not a knowledge management tool. And, as D’Arcy Norman pointed out last week, knowledge management is “unpossible” anyway.
By definition, re-invention isn’t innovation. Instead, it’s usually wasted energy. That re-invention happens frequently doesn’t make it valuable.
I certainly don’t object to people cobbling their own solutions, particularly if they feel that existing solutions don’t meet their needs . . . or can’t be made to meet their own needs. However, I believe there are many existing commercial or open source solutions that are designed to meet (or could be used to meet) any of the needs people are attempting to force weblogs into solving.
Over the last several months, I consistently see people attempting to use weblogs to solve problems that have already been solved by other means or attributing wondrous innovation to weblogs that, had they researched the landscape a bit more, they would have found are neither that wondrous nor that innovative.
As a former professor of rhetoric and composition, and someone committed to the value of writing across the curriculum, I see tremendous educational potential for weblogs. I’ve always believed that writing is one of the best paths to learning. I think some of the faux innovation is coming from people, particularly technologists, who never thought of using writing in their classes starting to see the potential. And, of course, that’s only a Good Thing™.
However, I believe the urge to turn personal publishing systems — weblogs — into something they’re not inflates the value of the technology and damages its credibility. I would rather see people focusing on the ways personal publishing makes a real difference in pedagogy rather than trying to use weblogs as a platform to re-invent every tool, but the kitchen sink . . . particularly since weblogs are a pretty lousy platform for doing that.
Education, Weblogs
Can anybody tell me why <BLOCKQUOTE> causes my page not to validate as XHTML 1.1 Transitional?
UPDATE: Ryan Eby’s comment to this post were dead-on. I am now valid. Whew. :-)
Technology & Internet
I’m enjoying SharpReader as my aggregator. Sort of.
See, I’m a multi-computer guy. It informs everything about the way I compute. I dislike having my necessary information tied to one computer. (See all my rants about why I dislike the “desktop server” approach to weblog tools for more info.)
I’d like a news aggregator that gives me the option to publish/store my subscription list and appropriate metadata about the status (e.g. read/unread, etc.) of posts online. When I refresh the feeds, it grabs that subscription list from the online location, and uses it to refresh. That way if I add a feed while at work (on the aggregator on my office desktop), I don’t also have to add it at home (on either or both of the two computers there).
And while you’re at it, could you make my Mozilla bookmarks work exactly the same way? Oh, and why not just integrate the aggregator into Mozilla while we’re at it? Thanks!
Syndication & Aggregation
This morning, I finally got around to importing all my old posts from my last two Blogger-powered weblogs, the original Ten Reasons Why and good ol’ Monkey-Mind.
You’ll notice a bunch of new monthly links in the Archives area to your right (and a new “Uncategorized” category with 389 entries). They don’t work yet, because I haven’t rebuilt the MT archives. I’m hoping this isn’t going to generate an RSS feed tomorrow with 389 new posts. Yikes!
All the internal links to other posts in those imported entries are going to be screwed, of course. Any recommendations on dealing with that are welcome. In retrospect, it probably would have been easier to deal with it prior to import, perhaps. Dunno.
Looking through some of those older posts, I realized how much more personal my weblog was when I first started. Nor did I realize I took almost all of 2001 off from blogging!
UPDATE 4:54 PM: Just got around to rebuilding the site, so all the archives should work now.
Personal, Weblogs
David Carraher suggests ways shortcomings of education could be addressed through weblogging technologies.
Oops. Unintentionally posted the draft of this post before I finished writing. (Hence the first comment — no, it wasn’t a test. Edit notice: I have now deleted the first half-sentence of my comments to avoid further confusion.
Maybe I’ll get around to commenting in detail on Carraher’s post later, but here’s the short version: Another example (grrrr) of the frustrating “Everything is a weblog and weblogs are everything” mentality!! The benefits Carraher talks about in his first point are primarily benefits of writing, not weblogs, and don’t have to rely on technology any more complex than a pen and paper to achieve.
Education, Weblogs
I hate knowing things that I can’t talk about. I’m such a gossip.
Other