You are looking at posts in the category chain-gang.
Posted on September 6th, 2006 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) is one graft-happy congressman. Of course as any Tammany lad could tell you, graft is only natural… Stevens is the only actively blocking a recent bill supporting strong transparency of the use of government funds — as I understand it, the bill mandates that any project or organization that receives funds would have an entry on a website that specified the purpose and dates of the funds.
Stevens placed an anonymous hold on the bill ‘for [indefinite] consideration‘, in accordance with Senate procedures, but a call to other Senators to deny they had been responsible for the block quickly winnowed the field of potential blockers.
The idea that not having this level of basic transparency is an option — something to debate seriously — is almost as embarrassing as the idea that some of the pork handed out around the US (including the $200M+ bridge Sen. Stevens snagged last year, and the Big Dig many times over) is allowed to continue — over active opposition by members of these bodies pointing out the waste involved. A system built on social censure and acquiescense as much as formal rules is only as good as its second-bravest member.
As for Stevens? Well, my father liked to say of such people, “By the time a man is forty, he is responsible for his face. This man does not have a good face.”
Posted on August 24th, 2006 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
Ross Mayfield pointed out to me just after Wikimania that the Enterprise 2.0 article had been deleted. He pointed me to an old deletion debate, which drew only a handful of negative comments and a deletion for being a neologism. I didn’t pay enough attention at the time, or I would have caught the mistake right away… I checked the last content of the page, performed a history and page undeletion into his user-space, and returned to vacation.
Wikipedia isn’t a good place to define neologisms. Plainly against the rules — Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and not the first place a controversial analysis or interpretation should be published. And “Enterprise 2.0″ feels, to anyone who lives outside of the west coast and doesn’t deal with enterprise software all day, like a term whose lifespan can be measured in technology cycles if not in months. If I go write a paper entitled “Moving Towards Education 2.0“, everyone will know what I mean [and I may get a citable publication out of it], even though most of them won’t have seen the phrase before. But it’s “… 2.0″ that will be remembered as a generic term in 20 years; noone will still be saying “Education 2.0″ except as part of VC-themed parlor games.
Which is a long way of saying that I didn’t feel bad about leaving the E-2.0 saga without more than a cursory investigation. On the other hand, Wikipedia is a place to document the history of terms and ideas, and in the back of my mind, this felt like a good example to prove the rule of the progress of the “… 2.0″ meme. Tonight, I discovered a wealth of bloggers who had jumped onto the article’s deletion as a) an affront to Web 2.0dom, b) an attack on some theoretically-coherent enterprise community by some theoretically-coherent Wikipedia community, c) indicative of a larger Wikipedia disease which Someone Should Stop, and/or d) worth cursing and fuming about.
Interesting. Note to self : “anyone can edit” and “hundreds of thousands of people are Wikipedians ” are ideas that haven’t percolated very far, yet; though many people have heard them.
As a result, I went back to look at the deletion debate. And realized the latest deletion had been a mistake. So, I undeleted the article and listed it for a new deletion discussion. You can see that discussion here.
I’m going to post a set of instructions for all of you bloggers, on How To Criticize Wikipedia — so that you can do it productively if you want to. Wikipedia is one of those rare communities where eloquence, discussion, and an idea about how things can be better can lead to an immediate improvement in process and content.
Sidenotes for the process fiends among you :
Next up : constructive criticism
Posted on June 7th, 2006 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
God bless Phil S. and his department’s sense of humor. Where do these paranoid tendencies come from? I hear they can sweep entire organizations and countries in a trice. Hmmmmm.
Posted on April 5th, 2006 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
Check out the Global Voices/Reuters teamup
tonight — starting right now — as seven mainstream media panelists
are joined by five Mid-east GV bloggers to discuss whether the “:real” Iraqi story is being told by the media. There will be streaming audio and a live online chat available for the two-hour special discussion.
Reuters calls it the “Reuters Iraq Newsmaker debate“. I’m guessing the MSM will be taken down a few notches, but I would love to hear what Reuters’ Iraq bureau chief Alistair MacDonald and Guardian photojournalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad have to say.
Posted on April 5th, 2006 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
Come wikify your night with a [local group] of entrepreneurs and wikiphiles. The second Boston Wiki Wednesday gathering is happening tonight, properly the first week of the month this time.
Where : at Smile Thai in Harvard Square (12-14 Eliot St).
When : at 7pm
Who : anyone who has ever contemplated deleting an entire wiki page.
Call to RSVP, or for more information. 529 4266 (617).
Posted on February 13th, 2006 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
One cannot put too high a price on not sucking.
Posted on January 25th, 2006 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
Writeboard : those 37signals lads have a sense of humor, oh but they do.
Writely : It really is that good. What do we (as a society, as inventors, as knowledge stewards) do with great tools like this? When the marginal cost of creation and distribution is around a penny, it’s an awfully tough decision…
Posted on January 2nd, 2006 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
Inside a game, life and value and equivalence are quite different than
they are outside. If one could turn one’s perceptions
inside out, and somehow look out of a local game, the value warping
would be visible as a certain colorful rainbow effect…
Consider a classroom, or a staged event, or a casino. Or
something complex, such as a social group. Value can be locked up
in any number of things… People act differently about what they
want when they have access to a pantry of free food, or when they have
to pay for it on the spot; when they are freerolling, or when they’ve
paid some small amount for something; when they are being Instructed,
and when they are learning with an extra understanding of free choice.
Perhaps the most obvious examples are people who process large
quantiitiies of goods, money,
and people. Captains, freight
shippers, stocktraders, gamblers, train conductors,
pilots… Inside one such game, I possess a year of
tournament fees. Inside another, partial ‘ownership’ of several
spectacular dwellings and constructs, and a local title. In a
third, original-authorship of a widely-referenced and updated dataset;
in a fourth, position in a world-famous clan. Attempting to
translate any one of these into any other, or to compare their values -
hundreds or thousands of hours, dollars, connections – across the
prismatic boundaries of their games… would be difficult and
inaccurate at best; impossible or dangerous at worst.
Posted on December 16th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
An online complaint forum about all things Wikipedia, called the Wikipedia Review, has recently gone live.
It has a thriving community, and is about real experiences more than
rants or insults, which makes it fascinating to read. I’ve
learned interesting things from one or two honest contributors there;
though there is a lot of ranting that must be waded through.
There’s something refreshing about seeing a variety of complaints in
one place, somewhat organized. And in most complaints, a kernel
of truth. Now if only that forum would morph into what its name
suggests, and become an ambivalent review of all parts of the spectrum of WP experiences…
Posted on December 6th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
Snapshot, less than a week out:
Posted on November 25th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
Both hcs and I have had disk troubles a little more often than one
might like over the past few years. I’m on my fourth drive now in
3 years. Is this oiverheating? Shared karma? that
beantown vibe? I don’t overclock, play 52-part pickup, or do
other extravagant things, on bluesky or metamorph. I do regularly
give thanks for my Lacie backup drive, and have even purchased
commercial Win-partition rescue software, which was useful on more than
one occasion. I’ve looked around to see if this is a common
Thinkpad problem, but it doesn’t seem to be. At any rate, I live
my computerized life lightly, expecting to leave it at any
time… For a moment I even considered shifting to ‘online
storage’ systems before regaining my presence of mind.
Then today I realized that the drive in my desktop machine has been the
same for six years. Six. With a noisy, balky fan that’s
been replaced at least once. Funny, that… and I’d better make
extra sure to have spares for that baby on hand.
Posted on November 19th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
Through their fine reporting on the media bazaar.
I have many posts to make and images to upload myself; for the moment
you will have to be content with theirs.
Today I scoured the city for internet cafes (les publinets).
I found two, of varying quality and elegance; charging $1-2/hr.
both suffered from a “lack of resource” over the course of two hours –
the satellite connections through which their landline providers
connect to the internet were down. Apparently this happens
often… I had heard rumors of it, but most telling was the acceptance
of others in the cafe who simply hung around waiting for the connection
to return.
I ended up finding access at a 4-star hotel with its own private
connection to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, I don’t have
a room here, and have to leave the comfort of their lobby presently…
Posted on November 8th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
Rory O’Connor, of Hole in the Wall fame, posts today on pbs.org about the wiki footage he shot at Wikimania,
his take on wiki media, and ideas for a wikmientary mashing together
his 13 hours of raw footage (soon to be compressed and posted to
0 comments.
Posted on October 7th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
Lots of great advice and suggestions, for getting around housing
crunches, language barriers, and Cambridge/US/North-America founder
effects. Also for coping with iCampus, ePublishing, press
accreditation, and design. Special thanks to eGeorge, Beauty’s,
and Ilya’s extra dose of enthusiasm.
IRC sadly failed us, largely because we had a single functioning
machine doing double-duty as shared whiteboard-display and IRC
monitoring, and we lost our connection before we left. (Sorry, dk & tea)
Posted on September 22nd, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
Posted on September 16th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
Boston is host to the New England KM Cluster;
the next gathering is two weeks from now in Waltham. The lineup
this time around is heavy with Berkman regulars, including both
Weinberger (as mentioned the other day) and Bill Ives.
For those of you missing the good old days : Cesar Brea will be there too… And .LRN, the prodigal child of OpenACS, always on the lookout for more pseudopods to grow, is represented there by Al Essa, covering “The Future of IT and Knowledge Networks“.
See the full speaker list
online… not listed : yours truly, who will be causing trouble from
the safety of the audience. Thanks to organizer John Maloney for
tipping me off to the event. What I still want to know : where
are all the great KM systems of 1998? Maybe I’ll find out…
Posted on September 2nd, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: chain-gang.
If you are near a refugee center, or a church or home, (I’m talking to
you, Houston) that has taken in Hurricane Katrina refugees, please help
locate and identify them. At proper shelters, please check with
the shelter to coordinate with others tracking the refugees in other
ways. For details on how to help with just a camera and a pencil,
see the latest post from Andy Carvin (permalink)
about locating and identifying Katrina refugees. I have reformatted and edited it
slightly here.
