July 13, 2008

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On the shore, with flowers

July 13, 2008 in Past, problems | 6 comments

Still waiting for Riverbend to show up again.

It’s an old question, not asked recently.

Here’s one. Another. Another. Odd how a blogger with such a high profile, once awol, seems forgotten by all but a few. But not by all.

Credits where drew

July 13, 2008 in Blogging, Ideas | 1 comment

I find myself among the “top ideators” on this list here. Flattered, but why no links? I can see a lot of names and sites on that page I’d like to follow.

Hey, what’s a hierarchy without links to subvert them?

What changed, exactly?

July 13, 2008 in News | 8 comments

Here’s the FISA bill that Barack Obama voted for after saying he wouldn’t. It’s hugely complicated.

Here’s a Volokh post that says coverage of it has been misleading.

What isn’t misleading is that he voted for a bill that he said earlier that he would oppose. (TPM has a timeline.) In his last statement he said that the bill had changed.

How, exactly? What was the tipping point, and why?

Did he do it to get votes? Surely he should have known that it would cost him the grace and support of his base. And slow his money river as well.

Did he do it on principle? Obviously two principles were involved. The civil liberties one he espoused last January and the security one that drove his vote six months later. One is a left principle, the other a right. The right one won. No pun intended.

Obama’s campaign is about getting past partisanship, at least in part. But this vote hardly did that. Instead it pissed off his most fervent partisans.

I’m also not sure the bill made the country safer, either. But I dunno. As I said, it’s a complicated bill. Maybe one or more of the rest of ya’ll can figger it out.

Meanwhile, it hurt him, bad. That helps McCain.

Mars needs code

July 13, 2008 in Future, Ideas, problems, VRM | Comments closed

Missing Code Challenge is my latest at Linux Journal. One excerpt:

  We each need to be independent variables, not dependent ones. What makes me trustworthy to a service like Blogger shouldn’t be code that lives entirely on Blogger’s side, while all I’ve got is one among a zillion ID/password combinations, most of which I don’t remember. I need to be trusted when I show up. Automatically.

  Maybe the means for making this happen will live out in the cloud somewhere. Or in many places. (I can see a lot of potential business here, actually.) But none of it will work unless it starts with the individual. Each of us operating in the digital world needs tools for engagement that belong to us, are operated by us, and give us autonomy, capability and control.