O'Reilly Digital Media

I hate the idea of Passport. I don’t want anyone knowing everything (anything?) about me. But for a certain, large percentage of users, a centralized online identity may be appealing. I manage a few mailing lists and subscribers’ email addresses change frequently. Surprisingly few people own permanent, personal domain names like bruceepstein.com. For people whose primary web access is through their employer, or novices who don’t understand that they can’t keep their AOL email address if they leave AOL, a stable identity server might prove attractive.

Defining one’s online identity is elusive. Few people present themselves as 3D avatars on a daily basis (although I know several women who intentionally go by androgynous names online). We’ve all heard of “identity theft” in which someone steals another’s credit cards or social security number. Are biometrics (fingerprints, retinal scans, etc.) the answer? Mike Loukides of O’Reilly points out that biometric security can be compromised, at which point, you’ll find it hard to change your retinal pattern or fingerprints.

So are we better off using our true identities or an abstraction thereof? Once our online transactions are identified with the abstraction, doesn’t the abstraction become our primary identity? For example, most of my professional colleagues know me primarily by my email address. To date, it is easier to change snail mail addresses than email addresses.

When the community becomes large, it becomes impossible to define ourselves solely by, say, our first and last names. However, there are drawbacks in abstract identities, like social security numbers, that can be stolen. At present, my favorite solution is an abstract identity whose particulars are under my control. For example, I prefer to use an online identity such as “bruce@zeusprod.com” because I am the owner of the zeusprod.com domain. I can change ISPs at will without having to change the face of my online identity. But most computer users don’t understand that they’ve created identities tied to their ISP, until the ISP goes belly up. Even those who understand namespaces might already have a vested interest in identities they don’t own (such as company email addresses). I haven’t used my AOL account in 5 years and I still get a few emails a year from old contacts at that address.

AOL, Yahoo, Juno, and HotMail realize the value of namespaces and many universities offer permanent addresses and free email forwarding for life to alumni. Many of my relatives and colleagues use university email addresses for both prestige and convenience. I’d prefer to preserve a modicum of anonymity, thank you. It is none of your business where I went to college.

What are your biggest concerns about managing your online identity?

Related link: http://www.econtentmag.com/Magazine/Features/02/bannan1_02.html

nice article from econtent about RSS (maybe because they quoted Rael?)…

Related link: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20020122/wr/pope_internet_dc_1.html

The Pope recently praised the Internet as a great invention and called on church members to take advantage of it. But he warned: “The Internet offers extensive knowledge, but it does not teach values and when values are disregarded, our very humanity is demeaned. … Understanding and wisdom are the fruit of a contemplative eye upon the world, and do not come from a mere accumulation of facts, no matter how interesting.”

Related link: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20020123/tc/cheap_satellite_1.html

Pretty damn neat, maybe soon we can all have our own satellites…

Also visit the website: www.ew.usna.edu/pcsat

Inexpensive Satellite Does the Job

By TOM STUCKEY, Associated Press Writer

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) - Once every 100 minutes, a bargain basement satellite loops around the earth, sending and receiving digital messages over antennae made from a metal tape measure.

After four months in space, the U.S. Naval Academy’s “bird'’ is proving surprisingly resilient, to the delight of the midshipmen and faculty advisers who designed and built it.

The so-called Prototype Communications Satellite (PCSat) was the 44th amateur satellite put in orbit. It is one of more than a dozen built by university students around the world.

At a cost of just $50,000 - including plane tickets to the Alaska launch site - it was constructed using off-the-shelf parts not designed to withstand the rigors of space.

“Dog” - by Zoë Epstein (6 years old)

I like just one kind of dog.
The kind of dog I like is called a hot dog dog.
I like hot dog dogs
Because I like hot dogs.
I like hot dogs
Because I like hot dog dogs.
And I like hot dog dogs
Because I like hot dogs.
And that is why I
Like hot dog dogs.

Share your favorite thing about your kids

I suspect that this will be my most popular blog entry ever. None of you were able to resist the tractor beam sent out by the simple title. But in another ten years, the phrase “I need more power Scotty” may no longer be recognized by the majority of Americans. (They’ll all be too young, too old, or simply growing senile like me).

While you can certainly search on the web to find a cultural reference, you’re only tempted to do so if you detect the allusion in the first place.

Last night I had to try to explain the difference between plagiarism and allusion to my six-year-old. She wanted to write a poem, and the first place she went for inspiration was Shel Silverstein’s, “A Light in the Attic.” When I told her not to copy from someone else she said, “But you said the three-headed dog in Harry Potter (Fluffy) was the same dog from Hercules (Cerberus).”

In a world without shared cultural experience, everything is either plagiarism or an uncaught allusion. As a friend said the other day (probably quoting someone else) “I understand the words, but I don’t speak the language.”

I once thought fame was being a clue in the NYT crossword puzzle. Then I realized fame was when people knew the answer. Words like “dot com”, “Napter”, “ISP”, and “online” appear regularly in the NYT crossword now. But Mr. Ed is suddenly a “TV horse of old” (I apparently grew up in the middle ages). How many of you understand why the room fell silent when Eddie Murphy was about to give financial advice in “Trading Places”? How many of you know that Eddie Murphy is not Rex Harrison?

I now understand why ABC hired Dennis Miller for Monday Night Football. It is for people like me who are nostalgic for Howard Cosell’s toupee. I know that there is an Annotated Dennis Miller site, but we need a global Nostalgia and Cultural Literacy server.

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What is your favorite cultural reference that will soon be lost?

Related link: http://www.rand.org/publications/P/P8014/

Great RAND paper on reviewing history to discern the future (even though it was written in 1998) by comparing publishing to the Internet. It’s always good to review where we have been.

Unable to shoot down Air Force one with a stinger missile, terrorist elements apparently planted a sleeper pretzel in the President’s snack bowl yesterday. Thankfully the coffee table performed the Heimlich (sp) maneuver, saving the President’s life.

I believe that the President passed out from lack of sleep. He just isn’t used to the pressure of a job that requires an ocassional all-nighter. This is what comes from swearing off the bottle and going to bed early with baseball memorabilia under your pillow.

We clearly need a computer hacker for a president, someone who can live on Cheetohs and Jolt Cola for long stretches in a windowless bunker. I’m as patriotic a programmer as you’ll find, and I’ll gladly put the President on a strict training regimen to ready him for the next inevitable all-nighter.

Epilogue: The President is resting comfortably. The coffee table is to be awarded the Medal of Honor in a Rose Garden ceremony on Tuesday.

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Do you believe for a minute that the President passed out from swallowing a pretzel? Was it a Soviet pretzel?

Related link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A11361…

Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig says that copyright holders who are comfortable with the old ways of doing business are strong arming the new innovations that the Internet presents, and Congress hasn’t legislated anything yet to ensure that old technologies don’t veto the new.

O’Reilly editor Nat Torkington pointed out this news story about an allegedly revolutionary compression technique from ZeoSync. Here are my thoughts on the subject:

Maybe I’m jaded. My first impression is that this story is bigger news for mathemeticians and theoreticians (and patent lawyers) than your average geek. Among other unanswered questions is the time (i.e. computational power) required to compress and decompress images and other data. Most compression algorithms are assymetric, meaning that it takes longer to compress data than to decompress it. Fast decompression is essential for real-time streaming. (For example, a Zip file isn’t an appropriate format for real-time streaming.)

Within reason, the time required to compress something hasn’t been a factor to date. Traditionally, the rendering time for CGI has been substantially greater than compression time.

But any technology that, say, makes it possible to stream large, high-quality videos over a 56K modem, will result in huge server loads as millions of people access it. There might also be a substantial computational cost to compress the data in, say, realtime, apart from transmitting it. It won’t be as popular as ripping MP3s if it takes too long on a typical desktop PC. Also music includes a lot less data than typical video. So if it is an order of magnitude better compression, you might see a lot more video swapping, but I wouldn’t call it revolutionary.

Given the legal opposition from various copyright holders (RIAA) to digital transmission, I’d be surprised if we see commercial products from any new algorithm in less than a year. Maybe they mean the end of 2003.

I suspect that ZeoSync is less of a crock than Ginger/IT/Segway, which I said from day one was either some kind of fuel cell or ridiculous hype. If anything, it seems ZeoSync has exaggerated how revolutionary any compression improvement will be, but that gives me no reason to suspect that they can’t improve on current compression ratios. Lossless compression of video is nice but not mandatory. The kind of data sets for which lossless compression is mandatory (such as numbers and text) tend not to be very large. So unless you run out to buy widescreen HDTVs, I’m not sure you’d care about lossless video.

I don’t think your average Joe is ready to pay for compression, per se. It would have to be licensed and built into a service, kind of like VCR+ programming, which adds a few dollars in licensing fees to any VCR you buy. Now, if it incents studios to release movies over the internet before releasing them to theatres, that would be revolutionary.

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Will ZeoSync’s compression technology revolutionize computing in our lifetimes?

Related link: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8363449.html

At least one lawmaker, Rep. Rick Boucher, has decided to not turn a blind eye to the Audio Home Recording Act, put into law way back in 1992, which gives the consumers the right to make digital copies from their personal collection of music. This could be a major setback in the music industries quest for copy-protected CD’s, especially after the worst year for them in a decade and file-sharing networks hotter than ever. Even more interesting is that he plans to introduce a bill to amend section 1201 of the DMCA by early 2002, which says says: “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.”

While Boucher is in the minority in his views towards the DMCA, it’s good to see one congressman that chooses to protect the rights of the public over the music industries persistent lobbying to protect their own interests.

Even professional writers can’t simply write on command. To avoid writer’s block, choose your writing assignments carefully, and write when you are motivated to do so. Writer’s block is often some other malady in disguise. For example, if you are distracted by health problems, family disputes, hunger, etc., you don’t have writer’s block.

True writer’s block has several causes. For example, you can’t write about a subject you don’t know well. You’ll need to do research or pick a different topic. So writer’s block can be caused by being either incompetent or too lazy to become competent. If you have writer’s block due to a lack of motivation, write about something else.

Writer’s block can also stem from a combination of perfectionism and fear, which are two faces of the same beastie. All good writing requires revising/editing. If you are afraid that you won’t stay motivated to revise something, you might feel compelled to make it perfect the first time. Likewise, if you fear being exposed as incompetent, you’ll want to perfect your writing before ever publishing it. As Frank Willison once said, “Timeliness is part of quality.” IOW, it won’t do you any good to perfect something that is obsolete by the time you publish it. Do not allow yourself to perfect every sentence. Force yourself to (at least) complete a paragraph before revising.

So while good writing requires practice, research, intelligence, and bravado, it also requires a bit of recklessness and trust. You must be reckless enough to publish something that is less than perfect and trusting enough that readers will find the good and not just the flaws. (Blogs are great practice for this, BTW.) In a professional writing situation, an editor will help you to refine a rough draft. If you don’t have an editor, find a friend or family member to help you hone your writing. Let your material age overnight, which will give you the perspective to be your own editor.

It’s been said that a writer writes every day. Hogwash! (Not Hogwarts, for you Harry Potter fans.) Write only when you are motivated and inspired. Write only what you want to write. If your school classes or job require you to write something you hate, change majors or change jobs. I never have writer’s block because I don’t attempt to write until I feel like it. Which brings us to procrastination.

Procrastination is a big beastie for me, but I’ve developed techniques to work with and within my limitations. If I’m too depressed or anxious to face a particular project, I try to do what I can in other areas. So even though I might not finish a particular project, I can immerse myself in another one until the time comes when I can face the first one. If I can’t motivate to write a chapter for a book, I might write a story, or read a book, or organize my office. It is important for me to take advantage of what I am motivated to do instead of obsess on what I can’t face at the moment.

However, eventually, even a project you can’t face must be tackled. I plod through mechanically until I can face the more creative requirements. For example, suppose you need to organize all the paperwork in your home or office. Make sure that you have a filing cabinet and plenty of folders. Then take each piece of paper in turn and file it. If you don’t have (or can’t find) an appropriate folder, create one. Do not allow yourself to pick among papers to file. File the first one you pick up, and keep going until the pile of papers is gone. Do not leave papers out that need to be dealt with. File papers in appropriate folders and then place those folders in, say, the front of the filing cabinet to ensure that you deal with them next. If necessary, make a separate list of things you need to deal with.

When writing, you can take a similar approach. If you can’t write full sentences, “file” your ideas into different buckets by creating an outline. Once you have the skeleton in place, fleshing it out with full sentences is much easier. By adopting primarily mechanical approaches that alleviate the decision-making minutae temporarily, you can unclog the mental log jam preventing you from starting (or finishing) your project. Once all your papers or thoughts are stored in an organized manner, the task of dealing with what’s left won’t seem so daunting (and you’ll have made good use of what would have otherwise been downtime).

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How do you fight procrastination or writer’s block?

There are at least two English words that are there own antonyms. “Cleave” can mean to join together or to tear apart. “Sanction” can mean to punish or to approve. I think we can add “resolution” to the list.

A New Year’s resolution is a promise of a new beginning, whereas in other contexts it typically denotes finality. I asked my kids what their resolutions were. My son’s resolution was to get a remote control Tele-Tubby, namely Po. My daughters resolved to have more playdates and take their parents to the mall. I’ve obviously been putting too much pressure on myself all these years.

So this year, I’m going to make my resolutions simple:

1. I resolve to get angry whenever I damn well please.

2. I resolve to blame other people for my own faults.

3. I resolve to buy bigger pants rather than bothering to lose weight.

With this more realistic list of resolutions in hand, I think I can wrap them all up this month and enjoy the remainder of the year. Best not to promise too much (a lesson yet to be learned by many software theorists and practitioners).

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What are your New Year’s resolutions?