I spent my High School years here in the Seattle area, in the days before Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks. Back then Boeing was king and one rite of passage for young men was going to a dance at the Sons of Norway hall and (this was extra points) eating some Lutefisk without puking. (Note that you didn't have to be a son of Norway to go to a Sons of Norway dance, there were plenty of that sort around and they would always invite their friends. Probably so they could laugh uproarously when their friends tried the Lutefisk)

Now some of you are wondering 'What the hell is Lutefisk?' I urge you to browse the google for edification. The rest of you already know and are probably sniggering at the thought of a teenage Jack screwing up his courage to either ask the tall blonde in the red dress to dance or to down a cracker full of a nasty, gelatinous, fishlike substance. And wondering which will have the worst immediate result...

What made me think about all this was this Ode to Lutefisk and its comprehensive instructions for how to eat the stuff. Although I am not certain it really does taste like Python (the snake, not the language), partly because if Python tastes that bad I don't want to find out.

Left in Front thinks that /. is too ugly to link to and goes on to opine that "In this day and age, superficiality most times supercedes content." Brendyn then goes on to beg the /. people to overhaul the look and feel.

Uh... Well sure /. is ugly, that I cannot deny. But I do believe that Content wins the race, at least for me. And, well, how can I put this with the proper tact... Readability is also paramount and, Brendyn, white text on a pink background is not a good choice. Please click through to a good color chooser and pick something a bit more legible.

Update: After reloading LiF I apparently picked up a missing CSS stylesheet and now most of the text is a more readable brown on pink, however the article headings and some other bits of text are still white (or a light grey that is nearly as bad). So the complaint remains, but I feel less strongly about it. At least so long as the stylesheet loads correctly.

Notes Toward a Moderation Economy is a fascinating Kuro5hin article that takes an economic view of moderation/reputation systems like /. and Kuro5hin.

This is something I have spent a lot of time thinking about myself, albeit in a somewhat larger context. As far back as 1997 the examples of /. and Epinions.com had me wondering if a computer moderated reputation system could be used as a kind of currency. This became my answer to a common question in SF circles: Given that one effect of nanotechnology and robotics is an end to scarcity and given that the money economic systems we have now are built on scarcity -- what happens to money economies in a post-scarcity world?

In these discussions the usual answer given is that human creativity will retain value and that people would still buy and sell hand-made items, artwork, books and songs. But this rings false to me on a number of levels, not the least of which is the fact that not everyone is talented enough to participate in such an ecomomy. A more important problem with this answer is the fact that, with the exception of hand-made items and original artwork, this actually relies on the continuation of false scarcity by requiring intellectual property limits which could not be maintained in a digitally networked world. (All this was before I ever heard of DRM of course.)

Reputation ecomonies, however, could be based on anything people valued in other people -- not just their personal creativity. And such a currency would bring value to the creator of a song even if the song was freely traded without intellectual property limits. So, should money ecomonies collapse, you could still have a valuation system built on how others percieved you.

Of course I was not entirely certain how something like this would work, but I also wasn't the only one thinking about it. In 1998 Bruce Sterling published 'Distractions', which I reviewed on Epinions.com. 'Distractions' is set at the earliest cycle of a post-scarcity future and includes, almost as a throwaway subplot, a culture of ex blue-collar workers who were entirely marginalized because they had no skills of any value. However groups of them did have machinery which could turn any vegetation into edible food so they didn't have to starve. Also they could make things, provide entertainment or could do manual labor in exchange for anything else they needed. These groups travelled about, living in tents and other temporary housing, existing entirely outside the 'real' economy. In fact they had their own economy, built using a computer mediated status system, which determined each individual's worth and clout.

I remember talking about this kind of thing at SF conventions back then; using /. and 'Distractions' as examples. But I didn't make much headway; even on panel discussions about the future of money people often had a difficult time accepting something so far outside their normal experience. They often insisted that you could not have an economic system built on reputation, even when I could get them to agree that reputation is limited and can be measured. Meaning that reputation meets the requirements of establishing a thing's value.

Since then things have changed. For one thing more people have personally experienced reputation systems like /. and Kuro5hin. For another Corey Doctorow published 'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom', an SF novel about a post-scarcity future with a working reputation economy where reputation is measured in 'Whuffie'. Now, suddenly, everyone is talking about it. The Kuro5hin article linked to at the beginning of this rant is another brick in this structure of thought and it brings up many interesting points. Before long I expect to see articles in Newsweek and Money magazine about such alternative economic systems. Followed by schools teaching this new theory of economic valuation...

But then again, maybe not. After all the basic idea is damn subversive at its core since, in a reputation economy, you would see major shifts in the kinds of people who become 'rich'. Certainly 'stars' of every kind would still be on top, but could today's 'captains of industry' retain their position? I doubt it, and quite likely therein lies one reason we have such a strong push for DRM and other artificial barriers to the free-flow of ideas and creativity in which reputation systems work best.

Your thoughts?

Processing is a Java based language and environment that translates to Java and compiles to run on the standard JRE. Processing has syntactic sugar for a wide range of built-in multimedia and 3D run-time APIs and the rest of the language has a clear, clean syntax. If you are developing cross-platform or browser-based multimedia apps Processing should definately be in your toolkit.

However, as is common when something like this is developed in a higher education setting, they seem to have greater ambitions for Processing than the current release is able to live up to. From the project description:

"Processing is a context for exploring the emerging conceptual space enabled by electronic media. It is an environment for learning the fundamentals of computer programming within the context of the electronic arts and it is an electronic sketchbook for developing ideas."

Yeah... Whatever...

Say it isn't so! After 150 years Levi Strauss & Co. is changing the fit of their classic 501 jeans. Apparently they are making the legs and rear a bit wider.

I predict Jay Leno is going to be all over this. "What is happening in this country? Are our butts so big now that even Levi's has to do something?"

Anita thinks I shouldn't care. After all I just buy whatever jeans Costco has in stock. But I remember my first job in a western clothing store, having to explain to the customers how to properly fit 501's because they would shrink two inches in height and one in the waist. Including explaining that this was a good thing because the jeans would form themselves to your body in the process...

Chris Phoenix has published a design for a personal 'Nanofactory'. Quote: "This paper describes the mechanisms, structures, and processes of a prototypical macro-scale, programmable nanofactory composed of many small fabricators." It seems this design could build many products, including a duplicate nanofactory. Of course it would be even more cool if the nanotechnology existed to create the first one...

Update: Submitted to /. front page.
Update update: Rejected.
Update update grumble: What? They rejected a story on nanotechnology, but accepted one on talking shopping carts? What is up with that?

I feel like a freaking idiot...

I have been waiting for more than an hour for an important call, an over the telephone job interview. I was all prepared, with software already loaded on computers, reference materials handy and plenty of caffiene. But no joy: The phone never rings. Did they forget? Did something else come up? Did they have the wrong number?

Finally I checked the telephone. The power cord was pulled out just enough that it wasn't working.

Crap!

Kathryn Cramer is reporting that SF writer Hal Clement has died.

One of the good things about working in Michigan last year was that I got to meet Mr. Clement. The first time I ran into him was just about exactly a year ago at ConClave in Lansing. I didn't know who he was; I just saw an older guy struggling with a suitcase and offered to help. He seemed embarassed, but allowed me to carry his luggage. Later I attended a panel discussion featuring him and realized who that affable old man with a cane was.

Over the rest of the year he was at every SF convention I went to in Michigan, often hanging out in Hospitality and talking with anyone about anything. In many ways he reminded me of Pacific Northwest SF writer John Dalmas: Gentlemanly, unimpressed with his own fame, committed to the genre and always willing to stretch his mind with new thoughts.

I didn't know Hal Clement well, but already I miss him...

As has been noted elsewhere, Microsoft has released the C# 2.0 draft specification. (Joey deVilla did an HTML version.)

I don't see anything earthshaking here. But Frans Bouma has a 'Short list of non-obvious things determined from the C# 2.0 draft'.

I found this months ago, but somehow forgot to blog it: In part IV of 'A Conversation with Bruce Eckel', Bruce talks with Bill Venners about the way the Python language itself acts as a kind of 'tipping point' for programmer productivity.

Also don't miss parts I, II and III.

YAML (aka YAML Ain't Markup Language) is a human readable format for serializing and storing data. There is even an HTTP transport RPC mechanism (similar to XML-RPC) defined for YAML called OkayRpcProtocol.

I seriously think this is something which could change the Internet drastically 1. I also think it is something the 'powers that be' 2 will be very concerned about if it does gain critical mass.

1 I suspect this change will accellerate the 'Balkinization' of the Internet as users start creating private zones of the like-minded. Among other things of course.

2 'Powers that be' is defined here as meaning anyone that thinks too much freedom is bad for people...

Kathryn Cramer is raising her kids right .

Some friends came down from Bellingham and stopped by last night. The purpose of their trip was to go to a coffee 'cupping' at the home of another friend of theirs (and acquaintance of mine). And then today they are attending the Seattle Coffee Fest. All very Pacific Northwest, don't you know...

This sounded pretty interesting to me, and I haven't been out of the house much lately, so I tagged along to the cupping. I am what you might call a 'coffee connaisseur' in that I really like the stuff, scorn drip coffee makers and can talk knowledgably about coffee varietals and roasts. But I am not a patch on Ulysses who is probably best described as a coffee otaku, (except that he does have a life outside of coffee). So I expected to learn a lot about coffee, but had no idea the extent of education I was about to receive. You see Ulysses (who has worked as a coffee roaster in the past) is now roasting his own coffee at home using a hot-air popcorn popper! Furthermore, he and his wife are looking seriously into starting a small gourmet coffee shop specializing in hand-roasted coffees.

So the pupose of the cupping was to determine which, and what quantity, of several varietals should go into a special espresso blend. There were six coffees from different areas of the world (and a seventh that was decaffienated and wasn't for blending), each with varying degrees of flavor and body. We stood there slurping the brew from spoons and discussing the characteristics of each. Then Ulysses demonstrated the roasting method using my favorite from the varietals (a very nice Kenyan with all the good florals and grapfruityness of typical Kenyan coffees, but less of the characteristic acidic sharpness). Aftwards I was presented with the results to take home.

Fascinating! Anything involving process appeals to my geeky nature, and (like brewing beer) if it also results in an end product I enjoy the appeal increses exponentially. So now I am thinking seriously about digging out my old popcorn popper and buying some green coffee beans. Oh, and I had some of that Kenyan this morning and it is really quite good when made in a french press, although I think in the future I will blend it with a Columbian dark-roast for more body...

The Open Mobile Alliance has been plugging away for several years now, generating documents describing the architecture and standards for wireless applications for small devices (WAP). Thousands of man hours that are mostly going to waste because, well, WAP is dead just as soon as the next generation of cell-phone/PDA hybrids becomes the standard and there is no longer a reason not to use good old TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML (and all those other protocols that require more horsepower than 1998 cellphones could provide and more bandwidth than 1998 cell systems could pump out). Sometime soon, probably less than two years from now, WAP will become yet another footnote in computing history.

In a way that is too bad, but it is an old story. I can't tell you how many projects I know of that did some cool stuff only to disapear forever, victims of 'design rot' where they became obsolete even before they got off the drawing board. Perhaps because someone else (possibly with a worse design) got there first and owned the market. Possibly, like WAP, they fell victim to Moore's Law. Or maybe the problem they intended to solve really wasn't a problem in the first place.

Of course much of WAP is over designed and therefore too complicated to easily implement, so perhaps it deserves to die off. Certainly they could have thought ahead a little and realized they didn't need to re-invent quite so many wheels...

But one cool (and really needed) thing the WAP people did was create a standard for Binary XML known as 'WBXML'. This is something that W3C has been unable to do despite the fact nearly everyone wants it. Of course the WBXML design is a bit over the top (with bizaare things like arbitrary byte-count integers using bit-fields -- that is what happens when data size is your first priority). But the design exists and can be implemented and that is more than anyone else I know of can say.

Interestingly WBXML might actually be something that survives WAP. There is a GPL licensed implementation of WBXML called (appropriately enough) 'libwbxml2'. So if W3C doesn't get off its butt soon and come up with a better design it seems likely people are going to start using WBXML as a stop-gap. Which means WBXML may become a de-facto standard; weird bit-fields and all.

Meaning that one victim of design rot might just have a legacy that causes design rot somewhere else. It could happen!