O'Reilly Community

RhymBox Dispute Resolved

November 03 2009

Back in 2004, a controversy erupted in the XMPP developer community regarding the RhymBox instant messaging client. Through a series of unfortunate misunderstandings, the parties to an agreement regarding further development of that client went their separate ways in a rather public fashion, resulting in a cloud over the RhymBox… read more

Small Books

October 24 2009

I’m really starting to like small books. Yes, I recently wrote a book that’s 320 pages long, but in my own reading I’ve taken to books of under 200 (and preferably 100) pages. Oxford’s series of Very Short Introductions is a good example. Another might be the original 1855, 92-page… read more

Financial Thinking

October 14 2009

As mentioned, I’ve been reading intensively about personal finance since early May. While that doesn’t make me an expert (far from it!), I have drawn a number of tentative conclusions: When it comes to money, no one has your best interests at heart. Financial advisers, bankers, brokers, mutual fund managers,… read more

FTC v Blogosphere

October 08 2009

An instant classic from Perry de Havilland: The notion that the US blogosphere is going to allow the US state to require it to register certain content is something that has me wondering if some cunning conspiracy was not at work by a shadowy cabal of Good Guys (who inexplicably… read more

Keyboarding

October 05 2009

It seems that every six months or so I have a relapse into wrist problems caused by too much keyboarding (the last time was back in April). To help remedy the problem this time I’m going to work offline more (editing on paper with a red pen), take more keyboard… read more

William Safire

September 28 2009

The great language maven William Safire died today. Despite the fact that he called himself a libertarian conservative, I never read much of his political commentary, preferring instead his writings on what Mencken called the American language. Indeed, as previously mentioned, a letter that I wrote to him circa 1982… read more

Alicia De Larrocha

September 28 2009

I heard today that Alicia De Larrocha, one of my favorite pianists, has died. I listen regularly to her recordings of Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados, whose music I adore. One of my prize CDs is her long-out-of-print recording of the Seis piezas sobre cantos populares españoles and Escenas románticas,… read more

Systemics

September 21 2009

We can have no better illustration of the deeply systemic nature of America’s continued and inexorable fall from Constitutional innocence than the nearly immediate capture of Barack Obama, supposed agent of change, by the powers-that-be (I do say supposed, because I never possessed a whit of confidence that he would… read more

The XMPP Council

September 10 2009

As just posted to the members@xmpp.org discussion list, I have decided not to stand for election to the XMPP Council this year. Although I have served on the Council for many years, I think it is time for me to open up a place on the Council for some of… read more

ACTive Architectures

September 01 2009

The term REST is often used to describe the architecture of the World Wide Web, following chapter 5 of Roy Fielding’s dissertation. Because this architectural style has a catchy name, it tends to receive quite a bit of attention. Indeed, some people seem to think that REST is the only… read more

Remembrance

August 31 2009

My father passed away ten years ago this weekend. I still remember. read more

American Winter

August 22 2009

While on vacation this week high in the mountains of Colorado, I found time to read The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe, which I discovered via a recent essay by Daniel Galland. Strauss & Howe provide the kind of historical context I referred to not long ago… read more

MackeyCare?

August 16 2009

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, published a fine essay in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday about some private, voluntary alternatives to the health care reform proposals emerging from the swamps along the Potomac. Unsurprisingly, some fair-weather customers of Whole Foods are now threatening to boycott the store. For… read more

Colorado Invasion

August 13 2009

Over the last few months I’ve seen a lot of out-of-state license plates in the Denver area. The preponderance seem to be from four of the most failed states in America: California, Oregon, Michigan, and Illinois (we’d probably see a bunch from New Jersey if it weren’t so far to… read more

The Disunited States of America

August 13 2009

In my copious spare time (not!) I’ve been paying attention of late to some prognostications about the near future. It surprises me that even geopolitically sophisticated thinkers like George Friedman of STRATFOR (author of The Next 100 Years) never question the continued geographical cohesion of the United States of America.… read more