Category Archives: good code

“What you don’t understand, Lessig, is that your bullshit ‘open’ or ‘free’ types will never — NEVER — be able to compete with corporate organization. Squabbles-about-egos-pretending-to-be-about-the-merits can never be quashed. There is no one to say ‘enough, let’s move on.’ So every great idea that your type creates, we’ll just wait, watch, and then take. Always.” paraphrased from a conversation with someone from within one of the (how many are there?) largest proprietary code companies

Aaron has been trying to prove this skeptic wrong. See his plea and proposal here. I know from email early on that Dave too has the desire that progress be made. Let this be the proof that the skeptic is wrong. Continue reading →

I wrote this piece for CIO Insight, arguing that companies ought to let customers spy on their customer service agents. But I wonder: When you get a recording while on hold that says, “Calls may be monitored to assure quality assurance,” doesn’t the passive voice already authorize you, the customer, to tape as well? Continue reading →

Lawrence Solum and Minn Chung have a comprehensive and powerful view of layers in network architecture, nicely linking that architecture to policy implications, in particular, how governments regulate. Continue reading →

Evan Hunt has a long-ish post about ways to understand environmentalism, both for tangible and intangible resources. As he writes, protecting the commons is about making sure that in the future “you won’t have to be rich to breathe fresh air” — or work for a major studio to be free to build upon our past with film. I love work that pulls together different fields into a common frame. This does it nicely. Continue reading →

There’s an important story about the Korean election that is not well understood by many, including me. I have read all sorts of accounts, but none really seems to capture it. David Moynihan tells an interesting part of the story in a comment to my post on “girrrl revolutions.” That suggested the idea of a community-telling.

So here’s the question: There was a surprising effect produced by the youth in the last Korean election — surprising because the pollsters missed it — and that surprise was in part facilitated by technology. But what’s the real story?

Advanced warning: I intend to be an editor of this community-telling, so off topic and unhelpful posts will be removed. Continue reading →

Andy Orlowski has an interesting dump on blogs in the Register. But he also makes an interesting mistake.

I’m not sure how one could ever say what the impact of “blogs” is universally. Yet by asking the question like that, you miss important differences in different countries. Joi’s “Emergent Democracy” stuff might seem odd from the perspective of England or the United States (because we of course have such healthy democracies, and soon we’ll have three media companies to tell us so); but within the structures of Japan, this channel becomes very significant. Likewise with the equivalent effect (though not through blogs) that has yet to be understood in the Korean election.

The link to teenage girls is even more mysterious, and yet to be understood. The other extraordinarily significant movement in Japan — dojinshi comics — is also said to have been sparked by teenage girls. That movement now gathers over 400,000 people twice a year to trade in those comics. And Sifry’s estimated number of blogs: 400,000.

Just a coincidence? Who are we to say? Continue reading →

I got a surprising number of replies to my post about online banks. Bank of America has the most loyal customers by far, with 2.5x the number of positive responses over the next highest rank. Second place was tied between USAA and Citibank. Wells Fargo, HSBC, American Express and eTrade also got strong recommendations.

PC Banker got a particularly strong recommendation from someone I know who apparently has a very interesting passion researching such questions. And First Internet Bank of Indiana got a similarly strong set of recommendations.

There were also a surprising number of missives about the value of local credit unions (indeed, adding them together, credit unions were also tied in second place). I am a member of the Stanford Federal Credit Union, but it has discontinued its online access with Quicken.

The most surprising response, however, came from Citibank itself. On the day I posted the question, a very kind manager at Citibank called to tell me he had been reading my webpage (!). Within a day, all problems with my account at Citibank had been corrected, and my account is live. I didn’t quite know how to respond to this, but I count this as extra effort by Citibank, and so I’ll give them a try. More when there’s something useful to report.

Meanwhile, on the power of blogs… Continue reading →

Stanford is hosting this year’s iLaw program — a program begun by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. It is the third American edition of the course (we’ve given it twice overseas as well — once in Singapore, and this March in Brazil), and it is getting, imho, quite good. The class is always a mix of lawyers, government officials, technologists, and others, always from across the world.

If you’re interested, check it out here. Continue reading →

The W3C has taken an extremely important step. The step was taken in the context of patent policy. The substance of the step is important enough: W3C has taken the position that it will not recommend a standard that depends upon a patent that is not offered on a Royalty-Free basis. Some wanted a stronger position — no patents at all. But the W3C position will at least assure that Web standards will not be blocked by patents.

But the more important decision is the procedure taken in releasing this decision: W3C has released its public version of the decision with the reasoning behind the direcor’s action attached. Danny Weitzner reports this is a first. I don’t know of any example to contradict that claim. Let it be the first of many from this important organization that continues the work of the web’s founder. Continue reading →

Jerry Lawson has a great piece for lawyers about weblogs, or bLAWgs as I’ve seen them referred to. Continue reading →