DISQUS

I should have guessed you were a fellow Atarian! I wonder if we were on any of the same BBSes. I'm working on a web-hosted simulation of 1980s Atari BBSing right now.

If I find myself worrying about what OS is running, I've probably already failed. It's a very easy mistake! What I think an OS is for and what a commercial vendor thinks an OS is for are very different things. I want to OSes to be like you say they are; freely replaceable, just a small matter of preference. But OS vendors work very hard to ensure that is not the case. You have to shave with Microsoft razor blades and drive on Apple roads, if there is any way they can manage it.

Everything I do is also on the web, but I look at the web from the other side of the screen. From my point of view, Microsoft makes designer consumer products for the purpose of generating constant cash flow. There's an OS in their product somewhere, but it's like the OS that might be embedded in your photocopier; you're not really allowed to use it. I am not terribly familiar with OSX and I am inclined to think that it is not as bad, but Apple has been extremely "innovative" in the area of user lock-in. I assume I'm just ignorant of how the OS helps achieve that goal.

I work hard to isolate myself and my code from the host operating system. I consider it none of my business, and I appreciate it when it keeps out of mine. But it takes a great deal of careful discipline to achieve. So I agree with you philosophically, and perhaps there is a convincing user-level illusion that all OSes are the same... but try and change the OS that hosts your web applications and databases, and see if it's a simple matter.

I don't know if journalism is in decline or if I am just getting more perceptive. It would be giving myself way too much credit to assume it is entirely the latter. I don't think it's fair to blame blogging. There is simply no commercial application for good journalism. Journalism is about educating your audience, which is completely contrary to how commercial media thrives. The larger the media company, the more journalism is likely to conflict with its best interest. If journalism is going to survive, it is going to have to somehow slip its commercial chains. Blogging is one way it could do that.

I understand that in the past, we took pains to avoid the sorts of conflicts that are occurring today. We didn't allow such consolidated ownership of media, media outlets wanted to be seen to be operating their news departments at arms length, etc. Why did all that change?

I absolutely disagree. I think when dealing with media files like video, audio and especially photos, Flash only serves to make them more inaccessible, and make working with them more restricted. In fact, that is usually *why* it is used; as a form of poor-mans access control to the media.

The only place I would use Flash (if I were permitted to put my users first) would be for the interactive visualization of large sets of data. And even for this, SVG and JS or server-side code can now do anything Flash does, but openly.

But then, being beautiful does not even make my top ten. I am more concerned with things like interoperability with other software (ESPECIALLY for web sites) and the most efficient and accessible UIs (which are almost always ugly and almost never Flash).

We had streaming video for, like, a decade before Flash became everyone's everything. It is still possible to just point your favourite non-sucky media player at a YouTube URL and watch the video. Flash per se isn't really adding anything here.

I've always thought that broadcasting a work over a public resource like the radio bands should be considered an implicit statement that one has released the work from control and constraint. You can't shout something from the mountaintop, and then insist people keep it a secret. If I can observe something from my home, and I didn't ask to, then by crikey, I consider the observation to be entierly mine to do with as I choose. How is it that copyright can make that sort of pragmatic position sound so crazy? It even sounds crazy to me.

I enjoyed reading them. I would often be shocked, SHOCKED to find actual understanding and maybe even insight in tech coverage, when most your peers might as well have been opining on the weather a year from now. One of your colleagues in particular never failed to wind me up. Professional trolls!! (Err, no offense once again...)

"But for whatever reason, he would rather use his skills to try and defend silly arguments that appear to be contrary just for the sake of being contrary. He’s like a troll that writes really well."

Could not the same be said of almost every newspaper editorial, ever? You get a deadline and six inches of empty space to fill. But yeah, he does seem to spend a lot of effort on it.