Clarity’s blog

Yesterday had an excellent conversation with a friend of mine, Damjan Kumar, who is BTW an excellent top notch Java Server Side engineer/designer (heh, Damjan, what are you going to say when you end up on first page of google search for top notch java engineer? ). The conversation really made me see how for me one of the best tools to learn is to converse. I guess you could say I thrive on conversation. We talked a lot about management practices at our old company, and a lot about blogs. It was very interesting to try to explain idea of blogs and their power to someone and I was very surprised to find that i found myself being pretty clear what I find so powerful about them. At least I was yesterday… One of the interesting comments he made was that blogs seem to be just “text and links”. And of course, in some ways it’s true. Yet somehow a few subtle additions to it, like ease of use (basically just click on toolbar and you’re posting) - also easy setup and free software to do it, personal news aggregators (like AmphetaDesk, Aggie - a .NET application, and some more), a bit of web services plumbing (weblogs.com recently changed weblogs, Trackback, DayPop) and you have a very potent mix. Somehow weblogs enable you to harvest the power of human mind doing its best - sorting through information, gleaning interconnections, making new associations. It then turns out that Damjan is using an application called Correlate to do quite a bit of this on a desktop level. The application seem to let you build knowledge maps of your information - i definitely intend to check it out more. It also turns out that he is already reading a weblog - Joel on Software without knowing it as such - just as a source of good content - which is at the end what is important.
Also, an interesting insight that came out of this conversation for me was that no matter where I’m working, or what I am doing, I will always end up being interested in how people work together, how to enable people coming together so that some greater and bigger than just the sum of parts can manifest, and how to bring out the best in people. And if I can’t manifest those values, or see them squashed, I suffer. Simply because I know we as people can do so much more, our interactions can be so much more meaningful and enjoyable as they mostly are, be it in personal life or in work life - perhaps even more so in the work life.

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Now, this is a trully excellet sci-fi story: Salon.com Technology | “0wnz0red”. It talks about Microsoft’s “Trusted computing” scheme (aka Palladium) and hacking our own bodies…

Read and enjoy!

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Hackers Rub MP3s in RIAA’s Face

Looking to snag a free copy of your favorite tune? For a few hours Wednesday morning, you might have been able to download a copy directly from the Recording Industry Association of America’s website.

The association, a vocal opponent of music file trading, became an unwitting repository of music files when its site was altered by unknown attackers.

Heh, cool!

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Jon’s Radio

What mainly fascinates me about this moment in history is the role of the blog. We’ve turned a corner, I think, in terms of pluralism. Authentic voices on all sides of all debates are heard directly. The world is profoundly more transparent. Given the irreducible and growing complexity of everything, this is a necessary and wonderful thing. I feel lucky to be a part of it!

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CBC News: British scientists criticized for exposing mice to rave life

No comment.

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I’ve heard a lot about Tara Sue lately. A 26 year old candidate for Congress in North Carolina, young, idealistic, very refreshing for a politician. You just have to like her… She is also I think a first to have her own weblog and also quite a lot of support from the weblog community. Definitely want to keep watching how this will unfold.

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Excellent article about relative font size at Day 26: Using relative font sizes - Dive Into Accessibility. Have to try it here. Although it does sound like a lot of hacking for such a simple thing…

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It’s quite amazing what Americans come up with. But the more I think about it, more interested I become. Maybe Slovenia needs its own Geek Squad?

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Yahoo! News - Bus company owner builds collection of ancient manuscripts that would be any museum’s envy

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From The GPL, open source freedoms and the Cold War

For rational people, I can sum up exactly why the GPL is not and in its current form will never be useful for the NSA or any similar enterprise: : “Open� is the exact opposite of “secure.�

The paradoxical notion is that allowing anyone and everyone to see secret data creates greater security. The NSA releasing SE-Linux under the General Public License did not increase cyber-security worldwide.

An article filled with nothing. Saying I will prove it to you and then absolutely no rational arguments, no examples, just a lot of name calling. How can you expect anyone to respect and trust this kind of writing? How is “open” opposite of “secure”?
In the world of cryptography it is well know that the more open the algorithm the safer it is. Why? Because its security is built into its structure and not dependent on being secret. That just never works. Bah!

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just remembered The Hunger Site : Give Food for Free to Hungry People in the World. Go there and click!!

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via tonypierce.com busblog:

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Via The Prandial Post

Simon Hoegsberg spent a year standing in a certain spot on the Edgeware Road in London photographing people who entered the frame.

Check it out here. Excellent!!!

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kuro5hin.org || Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Rejects FBI Guidelines

A special court that oversees sensitive law enforcement surveillance forced Attorney General John Ashcroft to change his guidelines for FBI terrorism searches and wiretaps, according to documents released Thursday.

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Risky Stash of Uranium Secured (washingtonpost.com)

U.S., Russia Remove Weapons-Grade Nuclear Material From Yugoslavia

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