I’ll be out of touch until tomorrow sometime, as I’m heading to Frankfurt on my way to South Africa to speak at a conference.
Archive for August, 2003
On the Road
Sunday, August 31st, 2003Why Campaign Blogs Should Point at Other Candidates’ Sites, Too
Sunday, August 31st, 2003
Dave Winer has suggestions for political candidates on how to use weblogs. A key insight is that pointing at other candidates’ sites should be part of the process: “You don’t get anywhere by preaching only to the choir (but you have to do that too).”
Posted by: Kynn Bartlett on September 2, 2003 11:08 AM
Dave Winer, well-known guru on how to influence people and win friends by mixing politics and blogging…
–Kynn
Cluetrain Aboard Dean’s Campaign Plane
Tuesday, August 26th, 2003
It’s entertaining to watch as David Weinberger blogs away on the Dean campaign trail for a few days. Keeping in mind that he’s a strong supporter of Dean, you’ll learn a few things. I keep waiting for other campaigns to figure this out…
BTW, here’s a piece I wrote for Computerworld on what corporate information-technology folks can learn from the Dean style.
A Life Well Lived, and Loved
Tuesday, August 26th, 2003
Losing one’s mother or father is never easy. But Doc Searls, via his blog, has turned his loss into a peaen to a parent who was, from all of his eloquent words, a truly amazing person and had a life to match. Now he’s getting back to his own everyday affairs, and posted a lovely note this morning. Doc’s one of the good guys in this world, and it’s obvious that his mother is one reason why.
RSS of Political Candidates’ Appearances
Monday, August 25th, 2003
Dave Winer announced he’s created an RSS feed of presidential candidates’ New Hampshire appearances. Clever, and helpful.
Posted by: Janelle on August 25, 2003 06:58 PM
send me your column
Shooting Down SCO Site is Worse than Dumb
Monday, August 25th, 2003
AP: SCO Group’s Web site target of hacker attack. It’s the second time this year the Linden, Utah, company’s Web site has been the target of such an attack, in which hackers use multiple computers to overwhelm the site with traffic.
I’m as unhappy with SCO’s abuse of the legal system and its outrageous attack on Linux as anyone. But a denial-of-service attack on SCO’s website isn’t just foolish. It’s totally counterproductive, because it will make people sympathetic with a company that doesn’t deserve sympathy in most respects.
Whoever is doing this: Please cut it out. You’re only hurting your own cause.
UPDATE: There’s some dispute about whether SCO’s being DDOSed or not. See, for example, this Groklaw piece.
Posted by: Sanjeev on August 25, 2003 08:15 PM
People jumped the gun on this.
Several people who phoned SCO while the site were down were told “it was taken down for upgrades”
Several people who contacted SCO’s upstream were told there was NO DOS attack going on.
An, Lo and behold, when it came up there were many new pictures from SCO’s Vegas Bull Show, and new info on the Linux extortion racket.
SCO is also claiming they were attacked, it’ll be interesting to see if law enforcement authorities were. Considering their veracity to date I rather doubt the FBI was contacted.
Posted by: Raph Levien on August 26, 2003 01:42 AM
Bad journalism, or an actual attack?
The actual reports on what happened are rather conflicting. There’s been no official statement. In fact, it’s quite plausible that the press reports are based on the DoS attack launched in May.
For mind-numbing details, see groklaw. For insightful coverage and analysis, see Linux Weekly News.
http://radio.weblogs.com/0120124/
One thing to keep in mind when covering this case: while the broad strokes are quite clear, the actual facts in dispute can become very complex very fast. This murkiness is helped along quite a bit by the failure of the SCO people to make clear, verifiable claims in public. Of course, keeping things ambiguous is very much in their interest, given the game they’re playing.
This DoS attack is no exception. Sadly, such attacks are quite common (I’ve been hit myself). Any ISP worth its salt would be able to reconfigure and reroute within a matter of hours. If SCO really wanted their site on the air over the weekend, they would have, at routine expense, been able to do so.
Their site outage is a minor sideshow. Many important aspects of the case remain.
Posted by: aNonMooseCowherd on August 26, 2003 09:18 PM
The press seems to be reporting SCO’s claim as an established fact. Maybe investigative journalists should do a little digging and see if there’s any evidence that an attack ever occurred.
The article in the MN says SCO has “notified law enforcement authorities”, but doesn’t say whether the company has filed a formal crime report. If they have, and if it is later determined that no evidence of a crime exists, it will be interesting to see whether the company or any of its officers is charged with filing a false police report.
I’m Back…
Monday, August 25th, 2003Unwelcome but Predictable PR Pitches
Monday, August 18th, 2003
Phil Gomes explains why he reads reporters’ blogs, citing this Infoworld TechWatch note, which says: “In the next 48 hours I’m going to be inundated with pitches about disaster recovery and remote mirroring. Please make it stop.”
Amen.
Powell Slams Congressional Moves to Overturn FCC’s Media Rules
Monday, August 18th, 2003
I’m at the Progress & Freedom Foundation’s Aspen Summit, where Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell has just given the back of the hand to moves by U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota) and others to overturn the FCC’s recently passed media consolidation rules.
(Note: The Progress & Freedom Foundation takes a forcefully pro-market, anti-regulation approach to just about everything. That view pervades the panel line-ups at this conference.)
Powell sounded almost contemptuous of Dorgan, saying the proposal would not restore a status quo that would please the opponents of media consolidation. Rather, he said, it would create a situation they might find even worse.
First, he said, the commission restricted radio deregulation somewhat. Overturning that would give a free hand to further radio consolidation.
Second, a federal appeals court has repeatedly told the commission it can’t do much in the way to restrict consolidation in the first place. Does Dorgan want those rulings to be the law of the land?
A simple repeal “is not a sound policy result for the American people,” Powell said.
He did acknowledge that the rebellion against the media-control rules demonstrates deep public concern, and said policy makers need to wake up to this. But then he slapped the worriers, saying the public statements of doubt over his policies, show “how little the facts seem to matter anymore.”
Asked whether regulators need to step in to ensure “network neutrality” — an assurance not to discriminate against certain content online — Powell said it’s best to keep an eye on the situation but not regulate unless a visible problem crops up. (He seems to believe the architecture won’t itself discriminate, thereby making a fix nearly impossible or at least hugely disruptive; if he’s wrong we’re all in trouble.)
By the way, Powell won’t be quitting his post anytime soon, contrary to rumors. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
Did the federal appeals court rule that the FCC couldn’t restrict consolidation, or did it rule that the laws in effect at the time of the ruling did not support such regulation?
It may be that Dorgan et al would need to pass new legislation to effect a certain outcome, but to suggest that a US Senator is powerless over a federal appeals court on a ruling not grounded in fundamental constitutional interpretation seems wrong.
Posted by: Jonathan Abbey on August 18, 2003 02:21 PM
Interesting.
Posted by: Alex on December 24, 2003 05:26 AM
Yes, this is good page.
Posted by: Sunny on December 24, 2003 09:47 PM
What do they talk about?
Posted by: Robin on December 25, 2003 12:51 AM
I don’t know
Posted by: Sem on December 25, 2003 02:10 AM
eJournal Outage; Back Online
Thursday, August 14th, 2003
Apologies for the outage during the last day or so. We seem to be back up now. Let me know if you’re having any problems making comments.
Posted by: zordor on March 7, 2004 03:23 AM
nope.. no problems.
Posted by: Jim on August 31, 2003 11:32 AM
Sounds like an opportunity to bring a whole new layer to political slamming by recognizing some candidates and not others. I can see it now…