buzz buzz buzz

Roland: "The spaces buzz is building."

songful

I got the new U2 CD The Best of 1990-2000 Special Edition on Monday (the release day!) and it's excellent. The new mixes of several of the songs from POP are excellent, specially Gone. There's also a new song in it, previously unreleased from the soundtrack of the upcoming Gangs of New York, The Hands that Built America:

Oh, my love,
it's a long way we've come
From the freckled hills
to the steel and glass canyons
From the stony fields
to hanging steel from sky
From digging in our pockets
for a reason
not to say goodbye

These are the hands
that built America

Last saw your face
in a watercolor sky
As sea birds argue,
a long goodbye
I took your kiss
on the spray of the new land star
You gotta live with your dreams,
don't make them so hard

And these are the hands that built America
America

Of all the promises,
is this one we could keep
Of all of the dreams,
is this one still out of reach

Halle, holy

It's early fall,
there's a cloud on the New York skyline
Innocence dragged
across a yellow line

These are the hands that built America
These are the hands that built America
America

As someone who has left his native country, right now this song feels really close to me. After a few 'emigrations', after years of jumping from country to country and city to city... suddenly you stop belonging anywhere. And the song captures that too, in a way: the reminiscence of old places, the promise of the new, the ache, the future...

banning IP packets

The government of Panama has decreed the blocking of 46 UPD ports (commonly used by VoiceIP apps) by all ISPs. How stupid can politicians get? Isn't there anyone giving them advice that can tell them that it takes a New York Second to circumvent a block (e.g., through TCP). Are they going to block all internet access to protect some dying monopoly?

This comment also explains why this ban is not only stupid, but impossible to implement without breaking what the Internet is.

the power of referers

Dave made a comment on my previous post "the slashdot of weblogs". He said:

I found out about it by reading my referers, I was being pointed to by Warmbrain. When I went there he was talking about your software. I thought it sounded like Chandler, except while they're happily in vapor, you said you didn't like being in vapor. Then somone (I think Mark Bernstein) cross-posted to the Chandler design list. So that's how word flowed. I am honored to be a hub in the network, but the only way that happens is if I discover and pass on juicy links like this one quickly.

I like that phrase "happily in vapor" :-)

Referers are a truly interesting concept, and I think the only thing missing with them (on weblogs) is a better way to categorize them and "manage them" in a sense (although I hate that term, since it implies that the user has to do more work... Nevertheless it would be a truly cool feature for Radio (and not easily done with other weblog software like MovableType, since it's server-based and the stats have to be done with a separate package): a "referrer handler" page that lets you keep track of your referers, properly recognizes several different referers as being from the same posting, lets you do sorting...

... and then (moment of madness alert!) Radio could export functions to access it through XML-RPC (or expose it as this) and allow itself and other tools to take those values and massage them.. creating a full-circle loop: posting to referer back to posting. Essentially what it does for RSS feeds, but for referers.

Phew! So many possibilities with things as simple (yet powerful) as weblog tools and XML-RPC. Who needs .Net?

the wolf guarding the sheep

From an article in Salon by Andrew Leonard:

The system is currently broken. Corporations run amok, and instead of tightening up the rules, the powers that be are continuing, criminally, with business as usual.

this year's MS Halloween Memo

[Via BoingBoing] Eric Raymond analyzes Microsoft's 'Halloween Memo' for this year. (And here's News.com coverage of the memo).

a day of 24...

... I woke up wednesday at 7 am and now it's thursday 7 am... the sun is coming up bringing colors to the sky... and the first pre-alpha release of spaces is ready!

Soon members of the mailing list will begin to download it. The actual alpha release on the public website should be up tomorrow or so.

the slashdot of weblogs

Dave just quoted my "I don't like vaporware of any kind" from the dynamicobjects homepage and immediately the hit count on the site shot up, and comments appear (maybe coincidentally? doubtful) on other places (like Rue's blog). These network effects are just amazing (in this case, the effect of a hub in the network, such as Scripting News, similar to what slashdot does for most news in general), particularly for a "creature" as decentralized and "fading" (yet persistent) as weblogs are, where the links between entries are tenuous and quickly receding as new daily entries take their place.

And by the way, thanks for the link Dave!

reading RSS in your email client

Dylan's comment on Radio's new feature: RSS feeds in your email, and spaces, that will provide this feature fully integrated into the standard email message flow. Essentially RSS messages become messages like those received from a mail server. Then, you will be able to create messages and have them be posted to your weblog app using the weblog's XML-RPC interface.