Red Neck Valentine

My wife told me not to buy her candy for Valentines Day. So I bought her a two inch thick steak in the shape of a heart for her Valentine. For mine, she will cook it. It must be a good idea. Last time I saw her she was pounding on it with a wooden mallet and repeating my name.

Connecting The Right Dots: The Legal Use of Surveillance

President Bush claims that had the NSA surveillance of American citizens been in place prior to 9/11, the terrorists could have been intercepted. He says we have to be able to 'connect the dots'. He is possibly right.

On the other hand, had a perfectly legal message switch connected the police records systems of South Florida, the same result would have occurred because Mohammed Atta in a perfectly legal traffic stop was subject to a perfectly legal name query that would have returned information sufficient to detain him.

It isn't that we need to connect the dots. That is too simplistic. We need to connect the right dots legally, then I believe we would have all the connections we need.

The Executive Branch of the government is attempting to persuade us that in times of war, laws don't matter. When laws don't matter, we are a government of men, not laws. While I have no evidence that the information gathered by the NSA is or has been used for some purpose other than those claimed, the fact of law is that it is illegal to have done so. If the only reason for breaking the law is 'wouldacoulda', then one that is speculation, and two that is not the only 'woulda coulda' so it is loose speculation. The second coulda is also legal.

Law is sometimes imprecise and in need of rewriting to meet the changing technology and times, but it is not speculative. We are now confronted with evidence both of outing a covert officer and of using the covert systems to commit possible high crimes from the same Executive Branch. The Executive Branch must be held to account for the commission of acts that may on inspection provide evidence of high crimes, If we are to remain a nation of laws, not men, then this evidence must be discovered and deliberated to determine grounds for prosecution if indeed these grounds are supported by the evidence.

... even if the acts were mostly just stupid.

Cosmic Evolution

Open source is both politic and software model applied to the business model.

Is it a business model? No. I agree with Tim Bray. It isn't.

IMHO, it is shared values. Not ideology, but values.

I won't enumerate those but for one by example:

Many turtle graphic systems have been developed, but
<canvas/> works because there is one language we all speak:

HTML.

HTML's ubiquity is not based on a business model but on a model of how software should evolve for the betterment of those who use it: by always being there. That was the choice of those that built it. Read their books, read their blogs, read their lists, love their flames, style, mendacity, eagerness to challenge and eagerness to learn and eagerness to explore.

... but most importantly, to share.

For that reason, HTML is the language we all speak.

That did not come of business, it came because of what we wished for and worked for for each other: to communicate across the boundaries, to seek each other out, to want to know the differences, and to discover in all of that those things by which we are the same embracing those we choose as we choose. Freedom to know ourselves and each other isn't a business model. It is yearning for each other.

It is the mammal in you. The human.

The older I get the more I find I only really believe in two things: music and love for these reliably bring us together in yearning. The web is that desire made very large. While governments watch nervously, we have opened up the world to each other.

Cosmic evolution is choosing the means to find each other. That's all. That's enough. But if in all of that you feel an even higher power, know that it is not an uncommon feeling among the humans. If the wisdom of crowds is usually reliable, then it is wise to yearn for each other for it is something we all want to do. And if we feel in that or life in numbers there is a greater power of yearning that touches all, it is possibly true.

Self-directed evolution is cosmic evolution. You choose and become.

As ye olde Hippie bands sang, "Who Do You Love?"

Roll The Dice On Likable Choices: A Left Wing Lunatic Set of Amoral and Completely Unworkable Ideas Because No One Likes Me

Extremist Jihad Osama Bin Ladin Allah Muslim MightLikeNakedWomen... is that enough keywords to get the attention of the attention-obsessed with their hands on the dials?

You know who you are. And now, so does the rest of the world.

Now that I have your attention:

Re-elect Jimmy Carter for President

He is experienced, above moral reproach, hard working, well-educated, fiscally conservative, well-liked internationally and ... eligible. He can't be bribed because at his age, he doesn't need anything. He is an evangelical but not a neo-con. He is the perfect spoiler and has good hair. He can pronounce 'nuclear'. He is on a first name basis with most of the world's leaders and as far as we know, no one wants to assassinate him. With a solid staff and an eminent but trustworthy VP, he can do this. It would be fun to watch the attack dogs set on him because he could turn and say, "Now, there you go again." Priceless.

We elected him last time because we were tired of crooks and meanies. Anyone really happy about the current choices? Let's roll the dice on a person we all like.

Make Open Source Code Development Tax Deductible

Fess up to reality. The illusion of a frictionless community of zero cost code is made of models of the code itself, not models of the cost of owning the code. To improve that, reduce the amount of it you need, increase the quality of what you use and don't waste all of your time trying to measure that and control it. It is a ecosystem of cooperators who share costs for code evolution. Just stimulate it. It already knows how to do the rest.

I realize it's not in the nature of sales to espouse a commissionless system, but it may not be their choice. Software ecosystems don't require sales. They require non-negotiable price lists.

Services, of course, are negotiated. However...

Understand The Middle

If the top and bottom of the stack are free to use, all the IP and non-open source software is in the middle. That's a cosmic d'oh in the software development community, but I'm not quite sure the businessHeads get this. To control costs, you either

Accept a business model where the middle is commoditized (translation: no legacy interfaces, all standard business documents and forms, single roots for the ontologies, standard contracting and licensing, in short, very few negotiated options in the software costs, or

You measure and cut and name and send out an RFP with the best wishlist the organization or your consultant can produce. RFP authors take note: you have champagne tastes, you pay champage prices. If you can party on beer, prices are better.

Model one is cheaper. It means change for the organization but the mammals are quite adaptible. Be aware that the perceived value of local code is better costed as frequency of use/cost of use across some organizational boundary. The second term provides for the fact that low frequency cost hits even at higher costs are unavoidable because of the value proposition of the service. Software costs are not the source of the highest costs: the cost of use is.

Make Internet Legal Services A Tax Deductible Purchase

The problem of the middle is local variations on common processes. Accelerate the purchase of XBRL and other standard contracting systems. Gains here scale all the way through the economic model of in both government and business operations. Provide grants for government systems that provably conform to the open standards.

Real In Alabama

When Dr. Martin Luther King said,

I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

my generation was embroiled in the painful integration of the schools. We were the guineas, the living material of a Petri dish of social change. For all said on both sides, it was our daily routines, our social interests that had to adapt to the strangers put among us by law and not always out of choice. For all the praises now of that time, it was a hard slog to get past stereotypes and baiting, but most hard to get past the fear bred into us. Fear was our inheritance, a legacy of separate worlds, separate cultures and separate destinies. With every riot in the halls, every protest, every fight behind the gym, every kid held up to a wall for money, or threatened with bricks, or threatened with worse, we thought it a terrible time and a wonderful time, so great were our differences. It would take generations to make Dr. King's dream real. So we thought.

When my daughter asked me last weekend what she should write for her school assignment for the holiday my generation had celebrated as Robert E. Lee Day, I told her that she should remember her black friends and that part of Dr. King's speech. She should understand that some dreams are realized, if imperfectly, if late, if only in part, but that part realized is to be celebrated. Here in 2006, almost 40 years and most of my life later, it isn't a dream. It is real. My son and my daughter are that dream.

For justice' sake, for the sake of our children, for the sake of all children, be hopeful, be patient, be determined. What is dreamed can become real. Fear may live on, but a generation of praiseworthy parents can choose not to will it to their children.

As Dr. King said rightly, "Thank God almighty."

Famous On the Internet

I see some are comparing the haves and have-nots of Wikipedia. Last time it was Google numbers. Yes, friends, the vanity of the web's super heroes is showing. Of course, being mammals and web geeks, we their fans, turn that into hierarchy:

"You aren't listed in WikiPedia? How CAN I be related to YOU???"

Tough life for sidekicks, too.

"Well, yeah, you sorta came up with the idea, but I WROTE THE CODE!!!"

There are two distinct forms of fame on the internet:

o Wikipedia famous: has a distinct wikipedia entry containing approved facts about the person of note. This is bounded fame. It's value proposition is location. In this sense, the fame is bounded within an ambient: typically, professional contributions establishing authority.

o Google famous: has no Wikipedia entries but many entries in various sites such that the person is often referenced in conversations. This fame confers no authority yet is unlimited. The fame cannot be bounded within an ambient as this form of fame has no operational boundary. This is folk fame, aka, legend.

Examples of either form of fame are easy to find. Since folk fame could become WikiPedia fame, the Wikipedia entry is a star on the walk of fame, not the restaurant at the end of the walk.

Writing On the Stone

I picked this up at CNN:

Tonino Tola is a 75-year-old farmer from Sardinia, Italy. He starts his day at dawn with a little coffee, some cheese and one or two glasses of wine from his small vineyard. By midmorning he has milked his cows and walked miles to reach his pastures.

"If you don't drink to avoid dying, if you don't eat to avoid dying, if you don't smoke to avoid dying, and if you see a beautiful woman and you don't go after her... then you may as well be buried alive!"

Zorba lives.

In these days of overocculated existence, relentless pursuit of digital perfection, and the elitist bad habits of the boomer generation that strangle the careers of our younger compadres while we try to hang on to that title as the Magic Bus Generation, it's nice to know some folks still get it. Living is live, it is messy, it is fun and it breaks your heart but without that, you can't know how good it is to have one.

Rock on, Tonino.

We watch too much TV, too many DVDs, and too many web sites with airbrushed perfect professionally posed pop tarts. To keep our attention, the images get brassier, the colors more colored, the music too loud and the emotions too cruel to contemplate. Working on the Dickens reading and giving it away as digital Christmas cards, I am being reminded of the joy of listening... just listening, as if the ear for so long the servant of 5.1 HDTV, becomes glad to be the main sense, to let the mind make up images in accordance with the dictates of the sound, the reading, the voice actors, the sound effects and Ludvig.

God bless Ludvig where ever he is. And thank you.

People say emotions are bad for business. Possibly. Do I really want to be in a business where that is true? I don't. Modern life in TechnoLand is too much like London in winter, and maybe that was Dickens' point. The relentless pursuit of any perfect moment, color, sound, love or just a cup of mocha is too much like sanding off my skin with coarse grain because I think beneath the blemishes of real life there is a better one. I don't think there is. There is this one. The difference is how much pain I create trying to perfect a world that already endures so much pain it has to paint it digitally and remake it into surround sound to escape. It is as Scrooge's fiance says to him as she irrevocably releases him, "You fear the world too much." and in her tears for what he once was, his heart dies.

So as the merchants go about taking Merry Christmas off the signs, making sure the ads are neutered of all special emotions and replaced with politically correct ones, while the hard Christian right has to face the facts that using Christ's name in the pursuit of power over others, to defend the unforgivable, that in doing that they caused the very pushback they say they are afraid of, that in their fears they found their demons and embraced them, I say listen to Dickens.

See the writing on the stone. It is a name.

SOA: Like Ludwig Did It

What are the qualities one wants from federated aka, 'mashup' pages built over services?

• Seamlessness: no big glaring boo boos in format or behavior.


• Reliability: no piece mysteriously failing and causing the other pieces to look bad


• Composability: pieces can be assembled together quickly and intuitively

Web components should fit together as neatly as Ludvig Von Beethoven's music and assemble as easily as Adobe Audition. Music tools are always about a decade ahead of the rest of the software industry; so if like other aphoristic models of technical development (see Moore's Law), I should get this eventually.

For my Christmas card this year, I recorded Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" doing all of the characters (except the Cratchits: my wife and kids took those parts), narration, sound effects, etc. I used Adobe Audition to do that in case that is interesting. Audition is good easy to use multitrack recording and mastering software with plenty of clean effects and an intuitive interface. But the real serendipity was choosing to use Ludvig Von's music over composing my own.

Why?

Beethoven and Dickens are close in era, so in timing, tone and theme, they are quite composable and reliable, but the delight is that Beethoven's works are seamless. I avoided the 'hits' (say Fur Elise, Moonlight Sonata, opening of the Fifth, etc.) and grabbed bits of lesser known pieces and inner pieces of the symphonies. Some of these were composed years, even decades apart and recorded by different performers in different periods. Using various recordings both vinyl and CD, I had to do some serious click and pop removal but, that is what Audition does well.

They fit together seamlessly. The effect is as my wife says, 'enchanting'.

Web Services Should Work Like Beethoven's Music: you can slice it and dice it and it just works. The level of knowledge of keys, transitions, melodic development, chordal progressions, dynamics and orchestration required are enormous yet almost all of his works are memorable, hummable and accessible. When he applied technical virtuosity, it was in service of the dynamic perceived by the user as emotional anticipation, fulfillment and release, not the performer's angst about playing fast and accurately on the device of the day. It's a high standard for musicians and I wonder if there are similar prodigies in the world of software services.

That is the challenge for the mashup component builder. When someone puts the services together, they have to just work. I can get that fromBeethoven.

The question would be, what would be the experience if I tried that with Beethoven and Mozart and Bach and Schumann. The challenge of today's software behemoths is exactly that: what happens if I take your components and mash them together? Will they just work? Will certain melodies stand out garishly in bad taste where taste matters? Or is it a matter of taste where taste is knowing what to choose or to stick to one company just as I stuck to Beethoven even with that Mozart CD staring at me like Marley on the knocker?

If we are to pick common formats, we should choose based on the ability of the web service builder to compose, mashup, and serve up without seams, without glaring bugs, and with the ease of putting together slices in sequencing/recording systems that are to web pages what Adobe Audition is to audio production. If Enterprise Engineering is to come to the Service Oriented Architecture, that's what we need for productivity.

Having discovered the joy of working with dead collaborators who don't object to me remixing their work, I plan to work with more famous decomposers in the future.

The Meaning Of Life and What We Can Do About It

Life has meaning. As soon as the intellectual property issues are settled, the Americans will license it to the English so they can sell books about it not being worth discussing, the French will claim the meaning is really different or at least not what the Americans are selling, the Russians will implement it faster, the Japanese will improve it, the Germans will write precise algorithms for identifying it on sight, the Indians will sell services for it and the Australians will live it.

If there is someone I managed not to offend with that, I apologize in advance.

Kate Bush: Aerial

There it sits on the desk in front of me, opened but unplayed. It was twelve years in the making. The last time I had a new Kate Bush album, I weighed a lot less and had a lot more hair. I lived in a different neighborhood, worked for a different company, drove a different car, had different friends, still had my band, well.... lots of things were different.

What hasn't changed: my utter fascination, admiration and adoration of the music of Kate Bush. I won't explain that. It's like explaining a nicotine addiction to people who have never smoked cigarettes. You won't understand and I don't care. She simply is the one real genius of modern pop for the last fifty years. Every disposable tart act out there stands in her shadow, and so do most of the modern songwriters. It isn't that she is perfect. Kate takes some getting used to if you were as I was raised in the American South on country and blues and whatever the radio served up in the Sixties. On the other hand if like my son, you never are too far from your Pink Floyd mp3s and have a slightly cynical attitude toward whatever the machine is serving up this week, well then you might understand. I dunno. If you understood, you'd have this CD.

And maybe like me, it would be sitting there open and unplayed. You see, when I get a new Kate Bush CD, my mind goes away for awhile. It's like getting a sugar straw full of liquid LSD. It makes me doubt my talent, my skills, my music, my romances, my life, my job.... it makes me weak kneed and slobbery. For you readers who think this is a sex thing, well... you are right about that. She is 47 and I am 51 and so the f**k what.... she is Kate Bush. No one does it better; no one ever has.

I've simply too much to do to risk losing it to this sultry delicious maddening woman. I may have to stare at that soundwave profile of a bird call for another month until I've completed mixing my own album and finishing this production of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". If I listen to that album, I'll stop working, start analysing and comparing, and dammit, another silly season will be done before I've the guts to get back to my own work.

.... it's just too risky.... it's like... well... you know what it's like.... but i just gotta... too weak... too overcome by.... KateLust.

Bye bye focus... hello Kate.

The Secret Poobahs

I saw this earlier at Kurt Cagle's blog and that is a nice compliment. I'm not an important person in the world of XML nor was I ever important in the world of SGML. And I am not an expert in 3D. Just a hacker. Think of me as a fair witness, but not a contributor, and like Marley, I will fade backward out a window that opens magically into a world of nothing.

So I'm not a hero but I've seen some. Like Jim Mason and Lynne Price, they take care of young people, they see to it things connect, and even in anonymity, wield incredible power over world events by working for those who share their values.

I've seen a lot of office politics, proven performers, up and comers and all the rest. They don't impress me. If you pick a target and shoot often, you hit something. Who cares? That is the question. Shared values are the keys to the suite of the secret poobahs who change the world.

So I ask you, what are your values and who do you share those with?

No matter what games you learn to play, your ultimate impact on the world will be determined by those values and who shares them. Some people want to run the place, and they can get what they want. Some people actually want to change the world and the rules for doing that are quite a bit different.

Winning is not owning.

You discover the closer you get to the top, the less real power you really have because you are too closely watched and the system is too sensitive to your every mood. When that happens, you have to spend so much time controlling yourself, you can control very little else. That isn't much of a victory, I'd say.

So you must always ask, qui bono? Who benefits? If it is just you, that is a very small kingdom. True power is knowing where the system is sensitive and thumping it just a little even at risk to your own career because if the values are right, the results will be right and in the long term, you will win.

Dare to do but do that for those who share your values. That is all you need to know.

For those of you who celebrate it, have a Happy Thanksgiving. For those of you who don't, have a Happy Thanksgiving.

All The Gold In California

Dave Pawson sends the URI for Paul Graham's blog about what Web 2.0. is. I know what it is. My question: qui bono? Who benefits?

iTunes is Web 2.0ish in this sense. Finally you can buy individual songs instead of having to buy whole albums. The recording industry hated the idea and resisted itas long as possible. But it was obvious what users wanted, so Apple flew under the labels. [4] Though really it might be better to describe iTunes as Web 1.5. Web 2.0 applied to music would probably mean individual bands giving away DRMless songs for free.

Paul Graham

Notice that this is one big monolithic corporation taking over the turf of other big corporations. In the old days, it would be iTommyGuns.

If you are on the production side of music instead of the consuming side, you notice that the last sentence is right precisely and only because iTunes will sell you individual songs, BUT they don't accept songs from individual artists.

Good for you. However, those hoping for freeing the artists from groveling to the record labels take note: now they grovel to Apple or one of Apple's designated MiddleGuys.

That's right. If you are an independent artist who wants to get a few shekels for your work and you see iPods as the new transistor radio, take note of Apple's policies: artists deal with middleGuys who deal with Apple. The middleGuys only deal with artists who make CDs (no submission of individual tunes) and have representation in the form of a label that represents many artists and they do this for tadaaaa: a percentage. Now I ask you, as iTunes proves, why should we be making CDs when they are selling individual songs?

Qui bono? The guys in the middle taking the bite are also selling CDs. And taking a bite. The artists, ahem, the labels still have to produce CDs and kids, that ain't cheap.

So that's Web 2.0 for the artist: the bad old business model reconstituting itself on the web and Apple making sure that happens. Volitionally. Good guys? Think again. These are business people with a market to conquer. Apple and their "contributors" take lots of little bites making one big bite into the product with no value added but to say 'yes'.

Umm... excuse me but that is exactly what we were doing before the web, during the web, and now Web 2.0 comes along to tell us no 'natch for the content makers without representation. Wow. Some victory....

So for you dweebs out there dwelling on how good it all is, Web 2.0 is good for programmers, venture capitalists, and people who believe the cost of software should be an item on their phone bill. Big artists are still a product of marketing. Street musicians and garage bands are still street musicians and garage bands. The only real improvement is they can pick the corner. The cost of recording is time and a few thousand bucks for gear. So sure, the good artists can record cheaper but that is about it. They are still on the street, on their own, out of luck and out of the money.

So if you pass one of them, toss a few coins in the hat and they'll toss back a few DRMless mp3s which by fact of having given them away, reduced their economic value to zero.

So artists are what they always were: meat. Smart ones build their own Web 2.0 web sites and have Paypal or its ilk anyway. The rest of us do it for boo.

What does Web 2.0 mean? It means exactly what the market always means: the same people get to make money again for the same software except this time it will be cheaper, come in smaller boxes, and do less than it did last time which means you will buy/download/subscribe to more to get the same. But this time, when it gets obsoleted, you will change like it or not. You may not notice, and you won't have to hunt through your old CDs for the backups but if you lose your credit card number, it won't matter anyway because they don't know your name, just your credit card number.

The Web 2.0 is the next version of progress for the same reasons for the same people: items based on scarcity may not be interesting to investors, but scarce capital is everyone's problem. The ownership society never acknowledges that and that is Graham's social network.

"All the gold in California is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills in somebody else's name..." The Gatlin Brothers.

XML 2005: Document Formats

As chair of this session, it seems appropriate I provide personal notes. First, let me compliment all attendees on the tremendous and evident respect they brought to the discussion and each other. You are clearly leaders and deservedly so. While none, I think, believed decisions could be made in the town hall, your seeking common understanding in respectful debate was a marvel to experience. Thank you.

The following are questions that were in my opinion, pivotal in the discussion with my personal opinions about the issues arising from them.

1. What is open?

A clear consensus for this question did not emerge. All sides have valid arguments for the technologies they sell, specify and standardize. Questions of the open and closed market models resolve to company choice.

Opinion: The participation agreements of the consortia make adoption and participation separable. While there is an emerging consensus on the qualities of openness, their is no policy or means of enforcement without a clear means of identification. It may be sufficient to say that open is best defined in accordance with the policies of the publishing authority such as OASIS or the W3C given an ontology of concepts for that term and the provability of assertions of duty in the records of authority for the obligated parties. It will be well for the market if such ontologies are sharable among consortia and government alike. This is a significant challenge.

NOTE: Tim Bray made the valid point that the participants in the discussion are not legal experts. IANAL.

Opinion: It is clear that all sides have market ambitions. Mutual interests are likely to converge around costs of sustaining loss leader technologies. A specification represents opportunity; a standard represents market reality as costs to producer and consumer. The advantage of a standard to the vendor is that development costs can be shared and components are interoperable. The advantage to the consumer is that costs can be controlled. A clear shared interest is cost control.

2. What is open enough?

Given item one, there is no consensus here. However, this is where the most progress is being made. XML provides the opportunity to create a common markup for word processing document types and much technology is being provided for systems to share formats. At issue is sharing semantics such that the rendering and behavioral qualities are predictable and reliable for the end user as far as possible.

Opinion: The concern expressed by Microsoft was early adoption of standards such as XSD are costly and if not well liked, contribute to premature obsolescence. In my opinion, this is a risk all early adopters take. The vendor is expected to evaluate a specification and the process of its development. Thus, this is not simple a question of open enough, but also, good enough. In the market, I expect consumers to understand the relative development maturity of software and to choose wisely. It works for cars and other consumer goods. All sides assume this risk.

The concern expressed by open software advocates has both practice and egalitarian appeals. They assert that open specifications developed by all of the market vendors provide the best software, a position sometimes known as, the wisdom of crowds. However, XSD. It is a workable technology, but is it the best or good enough? So in fairness, this wisdom does not always work as advertised. If the best advice is to create as few languages as possible, parties must create very good ones or this strategy saddles the market with mediocrity.

Again, this is a risk of early adopters. RelaxNG is a viable alternative. The problem of the market is sales cycle. A vendor does not see a customer again for some time. The question of standardization can vary by application. The strategy of specification over standardization is to give the market time to decide. Given this, for specification of new products, it is prudent to standardize as little as possible to enable decisions to be made more granularly and timely.

The winning strategy is found in reducing the complexity of the application itself, such that the end user is receiving only those components clearly needed by role and task or preference. This is where the question for egalitarian positions is: given the disadvantage accrues to the vendor with the most legacy, how does the vendor adopt an open specification if the immediate results break fiduciary duty to the company ownership?

But is this question that cut and dry?

Metaphorically, legacy is to market what mass is to momentum and distance traveled over time. If one suddenly cuts the mass, the distance over time can beat the speed of light. An example as Matt Fuchs pointed out over breakfast is XML itself. The task of refactoring SGML for web applications cut mass. Then the market achieved momentum and distance.

So, if the answer to what is open enough is, the market chooses and what the market chooses becomes the standard, then a specification must achieve enough mass in terms of users to achieve momentum. The conundrum is the vendor of a product with sufficient legacy releases a large number of customers as well as software support when legacy is terminated. So the vendor will wait until the software components and the language achieve a point of inflection.

Analysis of Outcome: The open document community must keep up the pressure. Microsoft will implement openDoc as part of a strategy to move their customers from their loss leaders to lower cost software that enables a switch to service systems. The question is timing and the complaint is that this is not an open market. This is not as open a market as some need or think more provident to more companies, but it is an opportunity to do this better than the current marjority market leader.

Because a standard becomes a game model where the evolutionary stable strategy is a Nash equilibrium, it is best to defer standardization until need is clear to all parties. Disruption isn't always good, but winning need not be defined as owning.

Offtopic Lessons Learned at XML 2005

Bloggers with technical training and technical assignments are blogging the important lessons of XML 2005. I am neither. I've never contributed a single topic or technical item of any importance to XML or the web in general. I am a pundit, an observer of the mammals, and really, just a poet/songwriter. Life among the mammals fascinates me and I do pay attention to that. In a technical world of technical assignments, that is offtopic. Let those who care to read, read, and otherwise, must-ignore applies here.

Lessons learned:

Once a greased pig is let loose, no man or woman is its master. There may be a profound lesson about XML and/or the web there.

To keep coyotes away, kill one and nail its corpse to the fencepost. Texans have known this for years. That explains the career of the Dixie Chicks.

In the American South, addressing a woman as "mad'm" is a gesture of respect. In other parts of the world, it's a putdown. Tolerance is best.

Science often gives evidence for things best ignored in polite conversation. Let the world work out the consequences for that which it cannot admit.

Snakes fear their handlers. Understanding that is the key to keeping them as pets.

At every markup conference I've attended, there is a group of contractors and civil servants telling the audience that the lack of interoperability among Tri-service (think DoD) systems nearly caused the last war to be lost. This problem either has no solution or the lack of a solution is profitable. Since the web is an existence proof that whole continents of festering souls have achieved communications over systems that interoperate, it may be time to look at that second possibility squarely and meanly.

On the other hand, in a world where keeping secrets and only giving information within a legal framework designed to protect human rights and freedom, it is very hard to interpret the law and apply the technology while still doing those jobs. Future-proof seldom is.

I am told that at the last three markup conferences I've attended, I've 'chatted up' at least one brilliant beautiful woman. Guilty as charged. No remorse. Brilliant beautiful woman are not only fun, they can be the best friends a po'boy ever has. It's not about one-nighters; it's about life long friendship with someone I wish to care about because they are capable of caring even if they don't. As the song says, "I can't make you love me if you don't.", but I can get to know you in that short time granted. That is treasure enough and a good reason for what others might consider, bad behavior. As a friend said to me, "You can never know what goes between two people". It is possibly less than you think and more important than you can know.

It isn't always best to sit at the front table. The informative conversations are often with people who's acquaintence was a random accident. I crabwalked my way into my career and that is a design pattern.

The music industry is corrupt because of its origins in the nightclubs and speakeasys of the early part of the 20th century. The book industry is not corrupt because of its origins in the patronage of nobles some centuries earlier. The people managing the room make the difference. The reason for the success of the web and XML is because of the values of the very small groups of scientists, technicians and humanists who created these. That they cohere and persist are the driving and shaping forces. As these people fade from the scene, the only guarantor of future success, that this *stuff* does as little harm as possible, is the persistence of those values. For that reason, even though there may be no technical contributions, it is important that stories be told, examples made, and that these people be both honored and remembered. I was most glad to see Jim Mason honored and to converse with some of the other SGML cognoscenti. They took care of me when I was younger and just as dumb as I am today. It is about the people, not the stuff. If you really intend to "do no evil", remember that while you are building these marvelous toys.

If the room staff accidentally breaks your $50 Norelco, it is good luck that it happen in an expensive hotel that replaces it out of the overpriced gift shop with a $100 Remington. ;-)

Kids always like the t-shirts you bring home. Dad's live for the hugs.

The Goblet of Fire

After a long drive, a nap and a cup of coffee, I went to see Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire with Dana, Buddha and the Boo. It is excellent. The makers really got this right. It is not for younger children but for anyone else that likes this kind of thing, this is that kind of thing. The special effects are purposeful and stunning. The action is fast and the plot is not belabored as it is in the book with foreshadowing details.

Because the main characters are well-established at this point, they play no more time on the screen than necessary to keep the plot moving. Yet, the movie does take all the time needed to put the values the author says are so important to the stories front and center: loyalty, courage, tenacity, inventiveness, friendship, love and learning. When Hermione chews Ron after the dance, we see that magic or not, the struggle to grow up is what establishes those values, and at the end, change will come; so we best value what we value, fight for it and understand life is not without loss no matter how strong we are, how magical, how clever, or how well loved.

Well done. Go see. Enjoy.

XML 2005: Y'all Come

Off to Atlanta this week for XML 2005. I am looking forward to spending the time with friends and being tutored on the latest developments in XML and the Web. These are exciting times. Many years of work have blossomed and the world wide open communications we dreamed about years ago have come into being. Many of the people who made that happen will be there.

This is fun. This is real. And it makes a difference. Since this year XML 2005 is being held in a great Southern city, as we say here in the South, Y'all come.

Sam (For Liz): Video

For giggles and an experiment, I made this video of pix and music. It's a lovely thing at full size but that is around 22mb, so this reduced version is on the web.

Sam (for Liz)

The music has been up at my web site for awhile. The pix are gathered off of download sites. Many thanks to the people who provided those.

I miss her too.

The Sociopaths in The White House

The paper cited below is about the sociobiology of sociopaths and their social strategies. The media talks about culture wars. This isn't that. My theory is this: the Republican leadership at this time is made up of sociopaths, and given their prominence, they created an environment that made it attractive to the sociopath in each of us.

http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.mealy.html

A sociopath is typically created by early childhood experiences plus genetic disposition in the case of primary sociopathy. The emergence of that personality feature is frequency dependent particularly in secondary sociopaths.

As Linda Mealy puts it, the sociopath becomes "apparent at a time when immediate environmental circumstances make an antisocial strategy more profitable than a prosocial one." and that is exactly what the strategies of the Republican and evangelical right have done: made cheating advantageous. Karl Rove is the exemplar.

What is fascinating about the sociopaths in charge at this time is how much emphasis they place on morality while pursuing immoral ends. That is almost the clinical definition of sociopathy at the extremes. America saw this once before during the administration of Nixon and Agnew.

I've been explaining this to my son who wants to know why things are as dark as they are and why we are seeing a sudden upsurge in student violence here in the South where the solid base of support for the Republican agenda is. I am noting smaller examples of it in behavior of some who now confronted with the evidence of the sociopathy of the administration are in deep denial and actively hostile toward anyone who was not historically supporting the hard line conservative position.

But the damage and concern are much greater and more insidious than what we do to ourselves. In effect, unless the moderates of both parties pull toward the center, we are poisoning our children for at least a decade much as we were poisoned in the late Sixties and early Seventies. The impact on our lives varied by environment (parents and other social advantages/disadvantages) but they are there.

We've seen this movie before. It is long, fatiguing and ends with the sound of children screaming followed by a terrible silence.

XML: When We Wuz Fab

Innovation is when someone folds the universe, taking two distant points and connects them. Otherwise, it is incrementalism. The vision for innovation is most always outward seeking. That means someone knows just enough about something to try or say something they won't if they know too much. I'm writing a course on XML this week and had to get XML for Idiots to do it. It isn't that I don't know enough; it's that I know too much. Even then, I keep looking up pointsto be sure I'm right. So the chances that I will ever innovate on XML are pretty slim.

That's Ok. XML is mostly done and the undone parts are undone to keep us honest. Otherwise, we'd cheat and take LISP and a Volkswagen repair manual and come up with something really cool and totally obsolete. But reallllly efficient.

And that would die. Why? Too hard to innovate on that... and the heater wouldn't work. You have to leave something undone for the next guy. Otherwise, he won't take possession and get passionate about innovation. When something becomes plumbing, everyone thinks they can do it, and where's the fun in that?

When XML was SGML and not well-liked by the programming community, the documentation and hypertext communities that did like it conceived of many extraordinary uses for it. When SGML became XML and was well-liked by the programming community, most of those extraordinary uses dwindled as the programming community was as it always is, absorbed in the minutiae of tools and syntaxes, content to treat it as bits on the wire, not as a fertile ground for extraordinary uses. Thus to the world at large, XML became plumbing, a dull subject and mostly one that is well understood.

I cannot conceive of a commercial like the one for faucets where an attractive venture capitalist is shown a software firm. She places a chunk of XML down on the table in front of a CTO and asks, "Can you design a business around this?"

But I think perhaps someone will. I want to work for that guy or live with that girl.

The Rules of Sex For Men

So many serious subjects; so little bloggin' time.

Tonight, the rules of sex for men.

Not wanting to blog about topics I have no expertise in, these are the rules for Hetero-mutual sex for men. Women may have rules but they don't tell. That may be a rule. Men need help.

Not the how; there are no rules for how. That is a topic for scrupulous study and experimentation, so take it to the lab and make careful observations. Watch some films. Or do both at the same time. It's all ok as long as it's mutual. Oh... and ask questions when in doubt... laughter is not no. No is no.

Anyway, the rules:

Rule #1: Everybody gets their cookie. Otherwise, it ain't mutual.

Rule #2: Women come first. Otherwise, given nature's machinery, men break rule #1.

There may be other rules, but those will get ya by until she tells you what they are. She can break the rules. Men... don't. Rule number one is there to make sure you get enough chances to master rule number two in case you break it.

That's all. That's enough rules for a lifetime for men. We are simple creatures and too many rules will make us forget rule number one.