Category Archives: good code

What a great idea, bounties. Even found a virus maker. Imagine what they could do when applied to unsolicited packets of data that come with their own calling card (ie, spam). Continue reading →

Jim Garrison writes to report the launch of a project that uses my three favorite things (THINGS): free software, Creative Commons licenses, and RDF. Gnomoradio.org will “create an online network where artists can promote and share their music freely and willingly.” As its announcement explains, it is built on gpl’d software, and gives artists the ability to generate “an Internet address (a URL) that will point to information about the song, a machine-readable license, a method of verifying the downloaded song, a link to the artist’s web site, and information about purchasing any available recordings of the song.” More discussion.

Let free compete with controlled, and let’s see who wins. Continue reading →

Using machines to coordinate sharing content — that’s what this site is doing. And what they are doing is totally legal. Yet if the machines actually copied the content they shared, what they are doing would be a felony (according to some in the content industry). Does this trigger make sense? Continue reading →

I’ve been experimenting with Apple’s mail client, “Mail” (note to product development: generic names make it very hard to search on product specific information), and have been frustrated that an obvious function is not in Mail (or any other client I’ve seen).

The obvious function is the ability to define a hot key that will move a message to a specified folder. I had built (and had built) tools in Entourage to enable me to hit, say, ctrl+f, and the highlighted message(s) would be moved to the friends folder. I know you mice-on-the-brain sorts like to do that with the (insanely inefficient) drag function, but I like keys.

Anyway, I asked coder Jonathan Nathan whether he could help me out on this, and he put together a couple cool little Applescripts that get close. (He’s GPL’d them here).

The hard coded version lets you code in the name of a folder. The variable gives you a list of folders to toggle through. Both require a keyboard utility to invoke the script. And both face a similar problem: Sometimes the utility will “forget” which message is highlighted so it forgets which message to highlight next.

Both problems come from the relatively immature stage of development that “Mail” is in. Interestingly, in MS Entourage you could invoke a script from the keyboard without a utility, and it had no problem remembering where it was on list of messages. (It’s also relatively easy to find information about “Entourage” on the web.)

Thanks to Jonathan Nathan for his free (as in beer and as in speech) code. Any ideas to tweak it would be appreciated. Continue reading →

Dave Winer has remixed the “code is law” meme. Nicely, unsurprisingly. Continue reading →

Chairman Powell will receive another letter that he will rather not have received. This one is from Congressman Kind and Boucher, calling on the Chairman to preserve neutrality on the Internet. It’s not quite 700,000 letters (yet, at least), but this campaign does have the support of a large number of interests, including a few large companies (Microsoft, Amazon, and Disney, if it would only have the courage to stand up to the cable companies).

Tim Wu and I filed an Ex Parte with the FCC on this. Stay tuned for more. Continue reading →

So a bunch of people in San Francisco (with Brewster Kahle, who’s behind all great ideas behind it) are building a free wireless network for the city, called sflan. My wife’s and my house is to be sflan16, and last weekend the team came to the house to install the antenna.

Our house has just undergone major renovations (a 9 month project which is 6 months late; the other 9 month project is humming along just fine with eta 2 weeks), and we included in those renovations a conduit from the roof to a server room in the basement.

But when we tried to run the Ethernet cable from the roof to the basement, we discovered that the conduit makes 3 90-degree turns and one 45-degree turn, and it was not at all clear how one pushes a cable through such a maze.

So of course we turned first to the internet. I typed in a totally natural language question into Google (which I find these days is increasingly the best method): something like “how do you thread a cable through a long conduit with 90 degree angles.” The first post that came up was a thread from some list titled Threading fiber through a long conduit. This thread reported no good luck, but it had the kernel of an idea: a vacuum cleaner.

So we took a bit of foam, tied it to the end of a roll of kite string, and connected a small Shop-Vac at the other end of the conduit (which is at least 50 feet long). Bingo. The key, it seems, is to have a big but light obstruction, and google at hand. Continue reading →

So the legislative fight against spam is going no where. There will probably be a bill, but it has been designed simply to make sure that large traditional companies are still free to send unsolicited commercial email. Senator McCain has added a nice innovation that will make it easier to hold people responsible for UCE. But the concerted effort to avoid labeling will mean in the end, the legislation does not work.

Which has led me to a bit of code which I had intended to resist: challenge-response. My mail now goes through Mailblocks.com (which annoyingly has a pop-up to warn people away from any browser except Microsoft’s, and which even more annoyingly is enforcing patent protection against other challenge response systems) but so far, it has worked.

“Worked.” “Worked” means I don’t have literally hundreds of emails in my inbox each morning that are junk. “Worked” means I don’t therefore have to delete 95% of the emails in my inbox because they are junk. “Worked” means I therefore don’t erase emails which were not junk but which one inevitably will when so much is junk.

But “worked” also means that the first time you (humans out there, not bots) send me email, you’ve got to go through a web-based ritual to authenticate that you’re human. Of all the mandated authentication our society requires these days, this seems about the most harmless. Indeed, it might even help. Continue reading →

A great petition of artists is speaking back at the RIAA. Congratulations. Continue reading →

I’ve had so many exchanges in email and offline about the role the Internet is playing in this election, and I continue to be struck by the will of many to believe that it matters not at all.

But let’s remember this: We’re about to see an amazing shift in passion and attention in this Democratic Primary. To those who insist the Internet matters not at all, what explains this?

The issue is not how many people you have on your mailing list; the issue is how many are writing and persuading and building a community around your candidacy. One candidate has done that bettter than anyone else. Congratulations, Governor. Whether or not this is how campaigns should be run, it is exactly how elections should be won. Continue reading →