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Friday, April 12, 2002
Speaking of class 
Proof I'm no geek
At least they spelled my name right.
IE5W exclusivity is evil
| | If you don't have IE5 for Windows, you'll hate this page as much as I do. |
| | [Later...] An explanation for those of you on de facto standard (IE5W) browsers: those of us on de facto nonstandard browsers (combinations of Linux, MacOS, OS X and all browsers other than IE5.x for Windows) see this when we go to http://www.oddpost.com: |
| | Oddpost requires Internet Explorer 5.0 (or above) for Windows. |
| | If you already have an Oddpost account, you can still access your mail from this computer by following the link below. You¹ll be presented with three input fields. In the first, enter "oddpost.com." In the second, enter your Oddpost username (e.g., "john" -- not "john@oddpost.com"). In the third, enter your Oddpost password. Lastly, next to "Mail protocol" select "IMAP4."That¹s it! |
| | Click here to check your mail now. |
| | That's it. Nothing more, other than some cryptic graphics. |
| | Now, Oddpost may be a great company. I have no idea. Their site communicates nothing to me other than their unintention to commuicate meaningfully with anybody other than IE5 browser users. |
| | [Later still...] I see from looking at the source that Oddpost is a product (or service, whatever) of WebSideStory. "COPYRIGHT 1997-2001 WEBSIDESTORY, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. U.S.PATENT PENDING." it says. Is this a "small company with limited resources," as I'm hearing it is here? |
| | Again, it would be easier for me to support what the Oddpost guys are doing if it were some evidence on platforms other than IE5W. |
| | And I regret the "evil" in the headline. I was being hyperbolic. Ironic. Something like that. But changing it now would 404 a lot of context, so fuggit. Let's move on. |
Jab on
What they said
Bad reviews for the sock puppet show
Shell's game
| | In the latest Darwin, David Weinberger explains at least one way Shell Oil traffics in clues. Such as a post on a Shell Forum by a guy who claims Shell killed his father: |
| | "I am Fortune Adogbeji Fashe, currently a permanent resident in the U.S. Last year I got a message from home about the death of my father, Chief James Fashe. He was on retirement in Evwreni in Delta State, where you have one of your flow stations. He was killed and his house razed, I learnt as a result of Shell's activities in the community. I have read Shell's cheap denial and lame excuses for the atrocities the[y] carry out in Nigeria. But I did not expect it would come to this. I just want to know, what is Shell's side of the story on this, and what is Shell doing about it?" |
| | Amazingly, Shell didn't squash the post. Leaving it there was actually good PR. |
Translation: fuck off
| | Kinda has a chilling effect on DMCA enforcement moves, seems to me. |
Didn't somebody patent the noose?
IdealVirus
Join loosely
| | Right in the middle of when I have less time than ever to elaborate on "Hello, I'm busy," I'm in the midst of Making Politics. Witness a Newsforge piece that ran on Monday, got Slashdotted (mostly positivley) on Tuesday and again yesterday. |
| | Somewhere in there, Brian Krebs of Newsbytes put a story out too. To help with that, I managed to talk with him for several minutes from the airport in Salt Lake City before a fire alarm went off, blew our connection and I was away on a plane. That's all I've had a chance to say about this thing, other than what went out on The Linux Show on Tuesday evening. |
| | And I'm not going to have a chance to write about this thing in a Serious Way until next Monday (the day after the day after tomorrow) when I should have something up on the Linux Journal site. |
| | Meanwhile, let's think about what we want a GeekPAC to be and to do. This mother is brand new and wide open. |
| | So far it has largely spun itself as a Linux/Open Source/Free Software thing, but I don't think it will have serious meaning unless other constituencies are involved. Specifically, I'm looking for help from independent software developers, scientists, economists, civil (and economic) libertarians, legal scholars, artists, entertainers, broadcasters, writers, authors, journalists and others who are all, some or none of the above. You know: people who care about the Net and want to keep it free. Geeks are just one circle in the middle of a Venn diagram that should like a bunch of grapes. Or like the living instantiation of Dr. Weinberger's Small Pieces Loosely Joined. |
| | Ask not what the Web can do for you, ask what you can do for the Web, one of the Net's greatest advocates once wrote (though I always have trouble finding a page to point to, since Google, being imperfect after all, drops "very common" words even from within quoted searches). That's all GeekPAC is about. |
| | Seems to me the Net is no less of, by and for the people than any government. If we want to keep it that way, maybe it's time to show what happens when hyperlinks meet democracy. |
| | [Later...] An alert reader pointed out that I had a single quote at one end of the Google search mentioned above, and that double quotes does search the literal string. So the search should have been this one. Which still doesn't get me to Dave's original, which I quote here. And which I guess suggests that Google really is perfect. |
| | [Later still...] Dave's original quote, a retired Scripting News motto, is here. The proper noun is also Internet, not Web. Subtle but meaningful difference there. |
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