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A code of ethics from Brian McConnell concerning employee rights
September 04 2008
My colleague Brian McConnell has a story about employer abuse guaranteed to make you scared and angry. But finding something constructive and beneficial in an incident that was personally devastating, he offers a Code of Ethics concerning workplace privacy that seems to me simple, fair, and both technically and legally capable of being implemented. A call for… read moreNobody likes to be tracked--whether by NSA or DoubleClick
September 03 2008
Ecommerce professionals gush over targeted ads, claiming they'll make life easier on consumers and will supercharge advertising campaigns. But shouldn't someone ask the consumers how they feel about giving up personal information? Forrester Research has. read moreFences in the ether: Brazil's proposed Internet laws
September 03 2008
The subject of this article sounds like a mock-cartoon version of repressive censorship laws. But the proposals are real. They have been widely discussed in the Brazilian blogosphere and to some extent in the Brazilian press and TV, but they've received hardly any attention in the United States. read moreNobody likes to be tracked--whether by NSA or DoubleClick
September 01 2008
Ecommerce professionals gush over targeted ads, claiming they'll make life easier on consumers and will supercharge advertising campaigns. But shouldn't someone ask the consumers how they feel about giving up personal information? Forrester Research has. read moreFences in the ether: Brazil's proposed Internet laws
August 29 2008
The subject of this article sounds like a mock-cartoon version of repressive censorship laws. But the proposals are real. They have been widely discussed in the Brazilian blogosphere and to some extent in the Brazilian press and TV, but they've received hardly any attention in the United States. read moreValidators: Asking for donations to pay for the news
August 29 2008
The New York times has a short article on community-funded journalism, in which the public pays a journalist in advance to cover a topic. I'm blogging this because, in the first place, it suggests a way technical information could be developed, and in the second place I anticipated the idea a year… read moreValidators: Asking for donations to pay for the news
August 24 2008
The New York times has a short article on community-funded journalism, in which the public pays a journalist in advance to cover a topic. I'm blogging this because, in the first place, it suggests a way many types of information could be developed, and in the second place I anticipated the idea a year… read moreProposed API for tools to help educate computer users online
August 17 2008
For several years I have recommended improvements to the tools that software projects use to answer technical questions and provide documentation, such as wikis and mailing lists. My latest contribution is a draft of an API that could be implemented in tools such as IDEs and content management systems. read moreHow copyright got to its current state (Patry blog ending)
August 17 2008
William Patry, one of the most respected online commentators on copyright, has shut down his weblog. It so happens that copyright is a major subject covered in a book recently released by O'Reilly, Van Lindberg's Intellectual Property and Open Source A Practical Guide to Protecting Code. This blog continues with a brief statement by… read moreProposed API for tools to help educate computer users online
August 11 2008
For several years I have recommended improvements to the tools that software projects use to answer technical questions and provide documentation, such as wikis and mailing lists. My latest contribution is a draft of an API that could be implemented in tools such as IDEs and content management systems. read moreHow copyright got to its current state (Paltry blog ending)
August 07 2008
William Patry, one of the most respected online commentators on copyright, has shut down his weblog. It so happens that copyright is a major subject covered in a book recently released by O'Reilly, Van Lindberg's Intellectual Property and Open Source A Practical Guide to Protecting Code. This blog continues with a brief statement by… read moreOpen Source convention wrap-up (2008)
July 25 2008
The computer industry is certainly not recession-proof, but the Open Source convention that's just wrapping up had more attendees than last year (we were up to about 2000), and discussions about starting businesses based on open source seemed to take place everywhere. And I don't mean just free software: open source… read moreMySQL forks: could Drizzle be the next of the new generation of relational database?
July 22 2008
I had a brief talk with leading MySQL develop Brian Aker today about one of the biggest turns in MySQL history: this morning's Drizzle announcement. Brian presented Drizzle as an irrevocable fork of MySQL. To me it represents four deliberate steps in one. Drizzle also calls to mind a lot… read moreThe behavior gap: three persistent problems for Internet technologies
July 16 2008
Behind the competing technologies for Internet application development--which impinge directly on the plans of Internet providers and dot-com businesses--lie some basic problems with Internet standards and protocols. Each technical problem is also a metaphor for difficulties in the way people interact, both online and off-line: we don't know how to handle many-to-many connections, we don't… read moreKnowing what's on your phone--and on those of your employees
July 14 2008
Jonathan Zdziarski, while helping to develop an open toolkit for the iPhone, uncovered a fascinating trove of information that the iPhone offers to anyone who knows how to get at it. He now provides never-before-published guidelines to getting information off of an iPhone and on the computers to which it has synched, in iPhone Forensics, currently… read moreAlso find Andy on:
