Accept no substitutes

Category: Alumni and other friends (Page 19 of 38)

Day trip to DC – new MSFT on services

Why I didn’t type anything much today: I left on the 7 o’clock plane to DC and am just home at 10:30. I did catch this most interesting (and probably most blogged about) set of links from Dave Winer who was selected to leak a Bill Gates memo on Microsoft’s new direction (hint web services and things like Google maps that other may use to innovate and build) lead by the newly more powerful Ray Ozzie. Ray Ozzie’s followup email, The Internet Services Disruption, is also on Dave’s site — this is a more important read than even Gates’ memo. There is a lot of harping on how wonderful and successful .Net is which sorta makes you wonder what planet they are living on, but beyond that…

Jones taped for 22

Ric Swiner and Brian his camera came by and we did a little chat outside Manning Hall about filesharing systems. I explained how bittorrent has many legal uses just like your car or Brian’s camera — even though folks can use any of those things for evil. I explained briefly how Grokster was found in violation of the law but that BitTorrent should not be. Grokster was even marketed as an inducement to illegal behaviors while BitTorrent is a content neutral protocol (I was simplier than that).

In no way did I advovate illegal behavior or illegal sharing, but I did point out examples of legal behaviors using BitTorrent.

Probably I’ll be on a few seconds. But I’ll likely not be watching tonight; it’s election night in Chapel Hill and I leave for DC early tomorrow morning.

Jones on WLFL WB 22 on p2p

I got a frantic series of calls during a meeting (a day of meetings but that’s a sadder story) on my cell. Finally I went out in the hall to at least listen to the voice mail. A producer from WLFL WB 22 (got all that) wanted an expert on p2p, copyright, and file trading. I am listed on the UNC experts pages as knowing about technology and copyright. Since I did put together the panel (and part of the audience/attendees) for the UNC Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity and the Innovation Process last week and I paid attention to what the folks were saying, I guess I am.
The story they want to do is about Grokster being shutdown. Okay. But “Have you heard of this other thing out there that’s even worse? BitTorrent?” Err. It’s not worse, only worse if you wanted to be anonymous. It uses a tracker that remembers who had been trading. And we use it for legal downloads at torrent.ibiblio.org. “I guess you are an expert. Ric Swiner will come by at 11:30 tomorrow and we’ll talk with you.”
I do a lot of this but if you have suggestions and advice, do sent it my way.

McGuinn at Country Music Class in NandO

I asked Roger McGuinn if he would come to town a little early for the UNC Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity and the Innovation Process and talk to/play a bit for Joselyn Neal’s History of Country Music class. There are about 200 students in the class which meets in a large auditorium (Hanes Art). Naturally the word got out a little and a bunch more folks showed up which was fine. The class went very well and all had a great time.
The News and Observer (Anne Blythe writing) did a good story with pictures that was on the cover of the City & State section and jumped to the center of the University section.

Confederate Goliath: Tonight at 10 on UNC-TV

Edward Tyndall’s documentary airs tonight at 10 on UNC-TV

Confederate Goliath, produced by Edward Tyndall and Kenneth Price, chronicles the battles to capture Fort Fisher and close the port of Wilmington, NC during the American Civil War.

Late in 1864 and again in January of 1865 Federal troops attacked Fort Fisher with a massive naval armada and a large contingent of ground troops. Fort Fisher was the largest earthen fort in the Western Hemisphere at the time of the attacks. The campaigns to capture the fort boasted the heaviest naval bombardments seen during the Civil War. The fort fell during the second battle but only after brutal hand-to-hand fighting that lasted into the night. With the fall of Fort Fisher, the port of Wilmington, NC was effectively closed and the supply line to Robert E. Lee’s Army in Virginia was cut. Lee surrendered his army three months later and the American Civil War came to a close.

Matzoh Ball Gumbo Blog

Food and culture expert, Marcie Ferris has a blog based on her book, Matzoh Ball Gumbo.

My favorite review quote:

“It may sound trivial, but no doubt the invention of Crisco was the answer to the prayers of some Jewish women in the South. . . . The miracle of Crisco is just one of the fascinating facts presented in Matzoh Ball Gumbo. . . . Ferris . . . tell[s] the history of the Jewish South from a cook’s perspective.”—Raleigh News & Observer

Upcoming on November 9th from 6-8:30 PM is a Southern Season Cooking Class here in Chapel Hill, NC with a promising dinner menu of Matzoh Ball Gumbo and creole matzoh balls, Temple Israel Brisket; Simmered Black-Eyed Peas and Tomatoes; Rosh Hashanah Jam Cake and Pecan Kugel. Call 919-913-1241 to participate or sign up online.

Voting Day – early

Sally and I went down to the dedication of the Unsung Founders Monument this morning. On the way we stopped by for early voting. There was no waiting. Well, almost no waiting. We ended up chatting with my former collegue Bert Dempsey and his wife Molly as we all walked in. Bert who travels quite a bit with his tech company says that early voting has allowed him to participate in elections like never before. Even at that, we were in the 700s of those who voted early in this election.

400th anniversary of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot

On 1604 on November 5, a man was found hiding in a woodpile in the basement of the House of Lords. With him, were 36 barrels of gunpowder — dry and ready. Guy Fawkes had intended to blow up the building at the start of the session of Parliment. The Guardian explains in an interactive (sorta) brief feature.
It’s too dry for bonfires here in Chapel Hill; our English friend John Ager has been looking for one and having no luck. There is a rumor that somewhere in Carrboro there will be a burning.

Triangle Blogger Bash – Nov 15

MisterSugar writes to invite is all to:

Triangle Bloggers Bash
A social event for Triangle-area bloggers to meet and greet each other at Durham’s American Tobacco Historic District.


Who

Bloggers, podcasters and anyone who wants to socialize with us.

What
A reception at the new WUNC studios and a happy hour with free drinks.

Where
American Tobacco Historic District, Durham (across from the Durham Bulls Athletic Park)

* Start at new WUNC studios for tour, talk about podcasting and reception with catered food. Short welcome messages from Joan Siefert Rose and Keith Westin of WUNC, Michael Goodmon of ATHD, Stephen Fraser of Lulu. Then move next door to Tyler’s Speakeasy for drinks and socializing. Short welcome messages from John Conway of WRAL.com and Henry Copeland of blogads.

When
Tuesday, November 15, 2005 7-9 p.m.

[more at link above]

Note: ibiblio is one of the sponsors of this event.

Resident or Residue? Fred and Facebook Fear in DTH

Gerry Cohen notices, in a comment on this blog, that Fred Stutzman and his work on Facebook are quoted in a Daily Tar Heel OpEd called “Danger, Danger.” The article is full of Facebook Fear warning students that pictures on the Internet can lead to unintended consequences. Fred was amused to be identified as “local resident” as in Research by Fred Stutzman, a local resident, indicates that more than 90 percent of UNC-Chapel Hill undergraduates have a Facebook account[.]

Boyle in Financial Times on Web are Unrepeatable Event

Jamie Boyle writes in his Financial Times (London) column on the “Web’s never-to-be-repeated revolution” which begins:

The web is having a birthday. This month, we will have the 15th anniversary of the creation of the first web page. It is the birthday of Tim Berners-Lee’s amazing idea that there could be a world wide web, linked not by spider silk but by hypertext links and transfer protocols and uniform resource locators.

How should we celebrate? We are too close to the web to understand it. And those who lost money in the dotcom boom greet any celebration of the web the way a person with a hangover greets a mention of the drink of which they overindulged. The knowledge of shameful excess produces a renunciant puritanism. No more tequila or web romanticism for me!

That is a shame, because there are three things that we need to understand about the web. First, it is more amazing than we think. Second, the conjunction of technologies that made the web successful was extremely unlikely. Third, we probably would not create it, or any technology like it, today. In fact, we would be more likely to cripple it, or declare it illegal.

Cory Doctorow at IP conf

Cory begins with talking about John Phillips Sousa and his opposition to to recording devices. “If the infernal talking machines were not curtailed, we will surely loose our voice boxes just as we lost out tails when we came down from the trees.”
Instead of requiring clearance of rights, we got compulsary licenses.
Next radio as pirates, they played recordings on the air for many many listeners.
Next p2p. We are taping this and will have it digitized in about a week or so.

Red Hat/UNC IP Symposium – tomorrow and Wednesday

IP Symposium Logo
Tomorrow and Wednesday are the days for the Red Hat/UNC System sponsored Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity and the Innovation Process. Although the attendence at the conference site is extremely limited, we’ll be working with WUNC-TV to capture as much as possible on video and we’ll be making torrents available on ibiblio as soon we can process them.
For more on the Symposium see the UNC System site.

Being a garbage brain pays off

Sally and I became winners of a box of chocolate covered blueberries last night. At a local Halloween party, the costumed guests were encouraged to mix by participating in a hunt for clues about gruesome deaths of famous and nearly famous people. How is it that I would realize that Atilla the Hun died of a nosebleed, that William Klemmer was the first person killed in a not very effecient electric chair, that Tennesee Williams choked on the top of his nasal spray bottle, that Isadora Duncan was strangled by one of her flowing scraves, that Guy de Maupassant, the author of the Inn, killed himself after being driven mad by syphilis and about 15 other odd deaths? Paid off somehow though.

Factiod: For nutritional reporting the serving size of chocolate covered blueberries is 18!

Testing Lyceum

I’m spending a little fun time trying to be helpful to the Lyceum developers — JJB and Fred — by using their test environment and trying to find bugs.
If you visit my blog there, poke at it a bit and see if you can get a bug to show up. [Changed to point to Lyceum front page per JJB suggestion].

UPDATE: Lyceum has been reloaded a few times over the night. JJB has been working hard. That means I’ve recreated the test blog there a few times. Each time the location changes. That’s one thing to work on. Any how, when you test things may have changed and will likely change again.

Alright, All Right, Already

Sally who has taught grammar tells me that my alright is either a misspelling or vulgar. I prefer the second of course. I would rather be vulgar than wrong.

Merriam-Webster online says:

The one-word spelling alright appeared some 75 years after all right itself had reappeared from a 400-year-long absence. Since the early 20th century some critics have insisted alright is wrong, but it has its defenders and its users. It is less frequent than all right but remains in common use especially in journalistic and business publications. It is quite common in fictional dialogue, and is used occasionally in other writing. “the first two years of medical school were alright” — Gertrude Stein.

But those 20th Century critics include the American Heritage Dictionary and Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage both of which nurtured Sally’s English PhD.

Still more recent versions (1996) of the American Heritage Book of English Usage are milder on alright while not giving in to it:

Is it all right to use alright? Despite the appearance of alright in the works of such well-known writers as Flannery O’Connor, Langston Hughes, and James Joyce, the merger of all and right has never been accepted as standard. This is peculiar, since similar fusions like already and altogether have never raised any objections. The difference may lie in the fact that already and altogether became single words back in the Middle Ages, whereas alright (at least in its current meaning) has only been around for a little over a century and was called out by language critics as a misspelling. You might think a century would be plenty of time for such an unimposing spelling to gain acceptance as a standard variant, and you will undoubtedly come across alright in magazine and newspaper articles. But if you decide to use alright, especially in formal writing, you run the risk that some of your readers will view it as an error, while others may think you are willfully breaking convention.

The Columbia Guide to Standard American English is blunt:

All right is the only spelling Standard English recognizes.

Evan Morris, aka Word Detective, is broader and gives a better feel for the what and why for alright. WD is a bit long but worth the read:

After mentioning how Fowler dismisses alright (in 1926) and later how Harper did as well, Morris gives us this:

On the other hand, Bergen and Cornelia Evans, in their “Dictionary of Contemporary Usage,” point out that there’s a case to be made for “alright.” Using “alright” as a synonym for “O.K.” or “satisfactory,” they note, “would allow us to make the distinction between ‘the answers are alright’ (satisfactory) and ‘the answers were all right’ (every one of them).”

Convinced me (but that didn’t take too much. Will it convince Sally?).

Morris also covers the rise of O.K. on the same web page.

The Word Maven at Random House has interesting tales to tell in the alright/all right wars including how people were outraged over the “Kids are alright” or are all the kids right as in the “Kids are all right“? Obviously the first is clearer but…

Well, read the article, alright?

Thanks to Roger for stirring this up. As he says “I trust everything will turn out all right” or is it “I Trust (Everything Is Gonna Work Out Alright)”?

UPDATE: Pam Nelson the NandO Gammar Mediator is not all right with alright either, but when it comes to rock and roll, the kids are more likely to be alright than all right even she somewhat admits.

Open Library and MSFT

Brewster Kahle was trying to get UNC involved in the Open Content Alliance for digitized public domain books while he was here for the Wilson Knowledge Trust meeting.
Now he announces that Microsoft Network will not only join the Alliance, but will commit to scanning 150,000 books in 2006!
Brewster’s brief press release includes a link to a Word version of the MSN release

The Open Library site which will house the collections has a very nice book browser.

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