The Wall Street Journal Online published a good piece earlier this week by Carl Bialik capturing a small but significant (and, to me, personally important) moment of Net history. Ten years ago this coming November, I had my first real experience of Web publishing as part of the team that created the San Francisco Free Press, a short-lived by valuable experiment in publishing an online newspaper during a strike against the S.F. Chronicle and the Examiner (where I then worked). Carl quotes me a couple of times, noting that, for me, the choice between (a) marching a picket line in circles while chanting slogans and (b) working on editing and posting files to the Web was a no-brainer. Like just about everyone else quoted in the Journal article, I told Bialik that the Free Press experience changed my life. Afterwards, the return to the Examiner newsroom — the strike only lasted two weeks — was an immense anti-climax, and there was no question in my mind that I’d be moving my career on to the Web as fast as I could manage.
“Metadata for the warfighter”
Yes, that was the actual title of a session at the Defense Department conference on software development I attended last month in Utah. It’s taken me some time, but here’s a column outlining some of what I found there — including how “XML and Web services are crucial for protecting America.”
Notes from under the Wasatch
I’m here in Salt Lake City, learning about how the U.S. military — and its contractors — do software.
My network access is sporadic so I’m a little behind the curve.
But I note a handful of things:
Mitch Kapor’s reflections on the Internet-driven Korean election.
“More than 70% of people would reveal their computer password in exchange for a bar of chocolate, a survey has found.” (Via Slashdot)
At dinner last night I discovered that there is good beer in Utah.
Travel plans
Public Knowledge has a fundraiser planned for next Wednesday, April 21. More details here. The group is celebrating those technology companies who have taken a stand against the Broadcast Flag, publicizing the FCC’s upcoming proceedings that will set rules for software-defined radio, and generally throwing a party.
I’d be there myself but will be traveling next week — I’m off Monday to the Systems and Software Technology Conference, a conclave about military software development, to learn more about that part of the programming universe.
Double life
It is now about two weeks since I have begun splitting my time between work here at Salon and work on my book, and I’m still trying to regain my balance! I have shelves of books to read, and mountains of notes to organize, and piles of research to do. There seem to be several people out there who are able to keep up a prodigious blogging output while also working on a book project. So far I don’t seem to be among them.
Bruno Wassertheil, 1935-2004
I first met Bruno Wassertheil nearly 15 years ago, shortly after I started dating the woman I’d later marry. Dayna had frequently referred to her mother’s companion by his first name, but it was only right before I met Bruno that she told me his last name. The moment she did, I could hear the former CBS Radio News correspondent’s plummy voice in my ear, as I’d heard it so many times through the years on my mom’s kitchen radio, which she kept tuned to CBS News every evening as she prepared dinner while I was growing up. I’d heard Bruno’s reporting from Israel through most of the ’70s, but in all that time I never knew how to spell his name.
When we did meet, it was inevitable that we’d end up arguing over politics: Bruno, who’d lived for decades in Israel and raised a family there, held views on Middle East issues that were often at odds with mine. Our disagreements didn’t keep us from becoming friends; if anything, they brought us closer. I learned in that first argument with him something that held through all the subsequent years of dinner-table debates: Bruno’s views were always rooted in a careful and respectful assessment of facts. He always knew what he was talking about, and he listened carefully to those who saw things differently. The same trait that made him such a good mealtime conversationalist was what had made him such a sterling news correspondent.
Bruno Wassertheil died last week. It happened very quickly — his cancer was first diagnosed in December — and I’m still a little in shock. The S.F. Chronicle wrote up a good obituary that you can find here. I’d add to its report that he was a brilliant Scrabble player; a wonderful step-grandpa to my children; a true pro as a journalist; and in everything a gentleman. I will miss him.
Back from the road
I’m back from travels, trying to catch up with the backlog of — everything. As the song goes on the album I’m currently infatuated with, the Mountain Goats’ “We Shall All Be Healed”: “The arteries are clogging in the mainframes / There’s too much information in the pipes.”
In the meantime, I note with pleasure that Slate now has an RSS feed, a previous lack that I complained about a month ago. More information in more pipes!
COPA column
My column about Tuesday’s Supreme Court argument in the COPA case is now
up, here.
Coping with COPA
Just in time for the reheating of the culture wars, as the social-issues Right tries to scare ma-and-pa America and media megacorporations run for cover, the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) is rearing its head again.
For those of you who don’t remember COPA, here’s the short version: After the original Internet censorship bill, the Communications Decency Act, was struck down as unconstitutional, Congress passed COPA as a dubious successor. It was attached to a big omnibus spending bill that Bill Clinton signed in fall 1998. The ACLU and a group of online-publisher plaintiffs — including, proudly, Salon (here’s our original editorial on the matter) — immediately challenged the law and obtained an injunction against its enforcement. Since then the case has wended a slow path through the Federal judiciary: first, an appeals court upheld the injunction; then the U.S. Supreme Court kicked it back down to the appeals court; then the appeals court, a year ago, offered a more definitive set of reasons why the law is a very bad way to keep kids away from inappropriate material on the Net.
A more sensible administration would have accepted this ruling and gone home. But we’re cursed with John Ashcroft as an attorney general, so the Justice Department is appealing that ruling to the Supreme Court yet again. (The ACLU site offers tons of information.)
The case will be argued on Tuesday, March 2, and I’ll be there for the argument and for a press conference afterwards. The Court isn’t exactly WiFi enabled — in fact, electronic devices are prohibited — so I’ll have to write something up after the fact.
Mario is a rope over an abyss
Many years ago, in 1991, I wrote about Nintendo’s Mario as an existential hero in an extended essay for the San Francisco Examiner, peppered with Nietzschean epigrams and marked with my own infatuation with these videogames’ worlds.
Now someone has produced a trilogy of short Flash films giving this concept animated life. These shorts rely on the crude pixelated sprites of the early Mario games, and derive their emotional charge mostly from heavy dollops of movie music. The spirit here may be more Ninja than Nietzsche, but I loved ’em.
Part one: The death of Luigi! Part two: Assault on the Mushroom Princess’s castle! Part three: Mario returns! Somehow, all this would sound better in Italian (“Il Ritorno di Mario!”).(Links courtesy Metafilter)