I'm excited to see that the review of the JPEG patent by Forgent has resulted in a rejection of the broadest claims, and some concerns that Forgent may have had knowledge of the prior art that it did not disclose.
The software patent process in the United States has swung far to far to the proprietary side, where indefensible patents are being approved by the PTO. The Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) has been organized to challenge the most offensive of these patents with examples of prior art. I think that rocks.
tags: pubpat patents jpeg forgent software patents
Pigdog Journal RSS Feed
I'm happy to say that today I brought the Pigdog Journal RSS feed into the 21st century. I created the Pigdog Journal RSS feed waaaaaaay back in the day, for the My Netscape Network. It was one of the first non-partner RSS feeds, which meant that lots of people signed up for it because it was less crushingly dull than the Weather Channel and Netscape Developer Info.
I diligently upgraded from the pre-version-number version through RSS 0.90 and RSS 0.91, but when My Netscape folded (the first time around) and the awful and stupid RSS format wars started happening, I decided to sit it out. That was back in the year 2000, which means that we've had this ancient pre-millenial RSS version running on Pigdog Journal, chugging along and not doing anything. (In case you're interested, there's also an Active Desktop Channel being created every 10 minutes, too. And a Netscape Sidebar. I really created a lot of feeds for that site.)
Anyways, after I found out that Frank Jones and Dan Sneddon and I were all starting blogs at about the same second, I thought it'd be a good idea to have an RSS aggregator. I put it at http://piglog.org/ software developed for Planet Debian.
I wanted to include the Pigdog Journal feed, but it was just too creaky and ancient to use. It didn't have per-article dates, or authors, or categories, for crying out loud! So I left it out, but then I felt bad, so I went back and hacked in RSS 1.0 functionality. I picked RSS 1.0 since all our docs say "RDF channel" and "Add RDF feed here" and I figured that if I changed it to be something besides RDF it'd be a lot more work. Which I didn't want.
It turned out to be really easy. The publication system on Pigdog Journal, SPOC (System for Publishing Online Content) is based on eperl, Ralf S. Engelschall's great hack to intersperse perl and plain text. I was able to fiddle with the RDF channel template and get us going with RSS 1.0 in about an hour.
I think Pigdog's feed may be one of the oldest continuously-published RSS feeds on the Web, which is a kind of disturbing thought. I may at some point get an RSS 2.0 feed and/or an Atom feed working for the site, but realistically, why bother? Right now, it's the poor schmucks who write RSS aggregators and readers who have to deal with that alphabet soup of ridiculously similar formats; content creators simply don't have to.
tags: rss pigdog journal eperl perl feed spoc blog piglog planet pigdog
RSS
While working on the Pigdog Journal feed, I had to noodle around looking for RSS info. I think RSS is an excellent example of how intelligent, passionate people can fuck up something really powerful for no good reason. Some great reading material:
Possibly the most interesting question is, how did RSS survive this catastrophe of clashing egos? I think the main answer is that people really wanted and needed it, and they were willing to overlook the horror of 4-5 competing standards claiming to be the inheritor of RSS and just suck it up and make it work. I think there's a threshold of need where people are going to deal with forked, conflicted standards just because they have to.
I think a lot of other standards have had similar problems, and I think they've come and gone because people just didn't need the resulting products badly enough to deal with the uncertainty and pain.
tags: rss standards history forks
Pigdog again
I just noticed that an article I wrote about REXX is listed in the Open Directory REXX topic. That's kind of weird. More funny is this quote from the IBM REXX page I linked to:
"IBM REXX makes programming easier and simpler. It is the product of choice for the experienced professional and for the beginning programmer."
Oh, yes. Definitely, REXX is beloved by young and old alike.
tags: rexx pigdog journal open directory
Oceanic Air
OK, I think the Oceanic Air Web site is pretty good. I just saw the URL on a banner in the "Destination: Lost" Season 2 opener.
tags: lost oceanic airlines
Moderate Inclusiveness
So, Nicholas Carr, who previously declared the death of Wikipedia, now asks to bury it. I think Wikipedia-bashing is an interesting growth industry, and it's nice to see someone making a name for themselves in it.
I think Carr's big beef is something I once called Moderate Inclusiveness, as opposed to Radical Inclusiveness. RI requires welcoming all, even if they disrupt the party; MI just says that it's open membership if you're willing to work 1) towards a goal and 2) with other people. Our Wikitravel:Terms of use is moderately inclusive.
I think that RI is an unworkable situation, since there will always be difficult people who want to destroy the project, or curious people (like Carr) who want to point out the paradoxes inherent in the system. However, I do think that MI can work; it doesn't have the same internal paradoxes. I think MI is much more realistic, and it's what "open" projects on the Internet mostly mean when they talk of inclusiveness. It would be interesting to pursue some study of this more pervasive social model, rather than battling the Radical Inclusiveness chimera.
I'm also reminded of A. S. Byatt's novel Babel Tower, which explored the relationship of freedom and group dynamics in a utopian context. I think that small-L libertarians -- people concerned with freedom and freedom-oriented group dynamics -- have to deal with this kind of conflict quite a bit. It's not a solved problem, though.
I do like that Dave Winer sides with Carr; he calls Jimmy Wales the worst of the hypesters. Winer is the type of guy that Moderate Inclusiveness leaves out; he may share some goals, but he refuses to work with others. I've found Jimmy an incredibly personable fellow, with a real dedication to the ideals of the Wikimedia Foundation.
tags: dave winer nicholas carr wikipedia wiki moderate inclusiveness radical inclusiveness community wiki
Vinho verde
When Maj and I lived in Lisbon, we were really impressed by the amazing number of cheeses and wines we could get there. We were able to get nice bottles of wines for less than €5.
One kind of wine I like a lot is vinho verde, or "green wine", which is a raw, young effervescent Portuguese style of wine. It's really refreshing and sweet, usually white but also rosé, and great to drink on a summer evening when it's warm and light very late.
Today's that kind of day in Montreal, and I bought two bottles of vinho verde at the SAQ on Mont Royal. Good way to spend the evening.
tags: vinho verde portugal summer wine