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Bonfire of the C-90s

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Over the years I have accumulated a large collection of cassette tapes. Typically, I’d own LPs (later, CDs) but I’d transfer them to cassette to listen to them in the car. You could fit two LPs on one C-90, so it was efficient, and everyone knows that music and driving go together like, say, cinnamon and sugar. (Convenience of this sort is, of course, on the wane as the world of “digital rights management” tries to lock down everything it can.)

This was my mode for many years; I still remember debating whether it was worth dubbing my multi-LP set of Laurie Anderson’s “United States” to listen to during the cross-country drive in 1986 as I moved my life from Boston to San Francisco. I knew I’d made the right choice somewhere on I-80 on the long, slow climb up from the plains on the Nebraska/Wyoming border. Anderson’s voice intoned its futuristic alienations and fragile hopes as I hung suspended between two coasts and two lives, and the wind began roaring down from the mountains, buffeting my old car back toward the past. (I also listened to a lot of Buddy Holly — alienation only gets you so far.)

I’ll keep those tapes, and a handful of others. But I’ve got hundreds more that just duplicate music I have in other, better formats. So what does one do with several hundred old cassette tapes? They were once reasonably high quality blanks; it seems criminal to toss them in landfill. I’d welcome any ideas.

Spolsky in Salon

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I’ve been an admirer of Joel Spolsky’s writing on software since I started reading it several years ago. Last month when I was in New York I sat down with Joel and had a good long talk about software development, partly for the purpose of my book research and partly because I knew he’d be entertaining and thoughtful. Today’s Salon features a write-up of the interview, pegged in part to the publication of a book collection of Spolsky’s essays.

IBM PC: RIP

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IBM is putting its PC business on the block, according to the front page of today’s New York Times.

I can still remember getting my hands on an early model IBM PC in the offices of the American Lawyer magazine in 1982 or so. A chunky gray box, it ran a version of Basic just similar enough to the one I’d learned as a teenager that I could write programs for it to process survey results. It used perhaps the world’s worst text editor, a hilariously clumsy thing called EDLIN. (Hey, it’s still there buried in the lizard brain of the Windows 2000 system I currently use —just open a command-line box and see for yourself! But only on a file that you can mangle without fear.)

There were many things about that computer that, like EDLIN, made no sense. But it had enough going for it that you could make it do useful things. And that helped me pay my bills at a time when freelance writing was not doing the trick.

The history of those early PC days is well known: IBM let Microsoft control the operating system and gave away the store. IBM’s choice of an open architecture allowed it to swamp Apple in the marketplace but let Compaq, Dell and other lower-cost vendors steal the hardware business out from under it.

Most of the choices that led IBM to this point today were made in those early-’80s years. But it’s still too bad to see IBM give up.

I’ve relied on IBM laptops for most of the last decade. The company’s hardware standards remain high: The lightweight “X” series, with the integrated pointer (I far prefer this to the more common trackpad) and a great keyboard, is still the best portable machine out there, in my opinion. (Before you Mac fanatics weigh in: Yes, I know, Macs are great, OSX is mostly wonderful, but Apple’s laptop hardware has had its share of trouble through the years.)

Across many years and several models, I’ve relied on IBM Thinkpads to keep my data safe, and I have never lost an ounce of my work to hard drive failure or other hardware problems. I know the manufacturing of these products long ago moved overseas, but it still seemed to make a difference that IBM had a tradition of people maintaining some quality standards. They did, after all, have a reputation to maintain. Let’s hope whoever buys the business thinks the same way.

Random links

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A little of my recent reading:

## A wonderful piece about SpaceWar, the ur-computer game, by Stewart Brand from Rolling Stone, 1972. (Yes, 1972.) Also about: that thing we would someday call the computer revolution. [Courtesy Metafilter.]

## Inspiring interview with Howard Rheingold from Business Week. I first met Howard around the time his “Virtual Communities” book came out, and he was starting a column at the S.F. Examiner, where I then worked. I interviewed him for the Examiner (you can read it here) back then, and what I said about him still, I think, applies: “His blend of enthusiasm tempered with inquisitive caution distinguishes him from both starry-eyed techno-hucksters and atavistic technophobes.” Here’s what’s on his mind today:

 

We had markets, then we had capitalism, and socialism was a reaction to industrial-era capitalism. There’s been an assumption that since communism failed, capitalism is triumphant, therefore humans have stopped evolving new systems for economic production.

But I think we’re seeing hints, with all of these examples, that the technology of the Internet, reputation systems, online communities, mobile devices — these are all like those technologies…that made capitalism possible. These may make some new economic system possible.

Take that, Francis Fukuyama!

## Having linked to Brand and Rheingold I must now complete the Whole Earth trifecta with a general bow in the direction of Kevin Kelly and his wonderful Cool Tools site, and in particular to the great compendium of documentaries, or “True Films,” that he and his contributors have compiled.

## Here’s a fun illustration of how hard it is to keep your brain’s parallel-processing working right when the verbal and visual cues are contradicting one another. Then click on the site’s comments button for an illustration of what it looks like when people’s brains aren’t working at all. [link courtesy Sam Ruby]

Phone a gauche

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So at long last we have upgraded our home phone system to a multiple-handset cordless thingie (5.8 gigahertz so it doesn’t interfere with the Wifi), and so far I’m generally pleased. Except for one annoyance.

But let me start at the beginning. I’m left-handed, so the button arrangement on my Motorola cell phone has always been a problem: the green “on” button that you have to hit to answer a call is on the right side of the phone, where a right-handed person’s thumb naturally falls; but my thumb just wants to push the red “hangup” button instead. I had to train myself when I first started using this phone to override my natural tendency — or, really, the interface design’s nudge — to hit that button and hang up on the call I was trying to answer.

Ah well — I got over it. Only now, I’m dealing with the nifty cell-phone-like handset of my new cordless phone, and, what do you know, it places its “hangup” button over on the right side of the handset — at the very spot I have forcibly trained my uncooperative left-handed thumb to hit to pick up the phone. (The “pick up the call” button is in the middle of the phone.)

All my life as a left-hander I’ve been willing to adapt. But we sinister types deserve a little consistency from the world!

Two good things

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J.D. Lasica and others have begun building Ourmedia, a/k/a Open-Media.org, “an open-source initiative devoted to creating, sharing and storing works of personal media” — “a place where people can share works of personal media and have them stored forever — for free.” It’s a work in progress right now, but the basic notion of an accessible and reliable (thanks to the Internet Archive) repository for “grassroots media” — “digital stories, photo albums, video diaries, documentary journalism, home-brew political ads, music videos, children’s tales, Flash animations, student films, parodies of Hollywood films” — makes wonderful sense. There’s a wiki here for people interested in contributing.

Rebecca McKinnon, a fellow at the Berkman Center who describes herself as “a recovering TV reporter-turned-blogger,” has sparked the formation of Bloggercorps. The nonpartisan group’s mission is “Matching bloggers with activists and non-profit groups who want to blog and need help getting started.” Here’s more info.

Doctorow at WIPO Geneva

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Cory Doctorow’s reports for the Electronic Frontier Foundation from the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) meeting in Geneva are fascinating for what they illuminate at this bizarre crossroads of global bureaucracy and globalized corporatocracy. But most peculiar of all is his tale of how “all of the handouts set out by the ‘public interest’ groups (e.g., us, civil society coalition, IP Justice, Union for the Public Domain) were repeatedly stolen and pitched into the trashcans in the bathrooms.”

Here’s an excerpt of the full saga:

  Let me try to convey to you the depth of the weirdness that arose when all the public-interest groups’ papers were stolen and trashed at WIPO. No one gets into the WIPO building without being accredited and checked over, so this was almost certainly someone who was working on the treaty — in other words, a political opponent (none of the documents promoting the Broadcast Treaty were touched).

As the Indian delegation put it, WIPO is an organization based on information. For someone who believes in an information-protection instrument like the Broadcast Treaty to sabotage the negotiation by hiding information from the delegates is bizarre. The people who run the table were shocked silly — this has apparently never happened before at WIPO.

The absurdity of online authentication

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So I needed to log into my cellphone account with Verizon to look something up. I don’t do this very often, so I don’t have the username/password combo at my fingertips. I have a set of passwords that I generally use, so I tried each of them, but Verizon’s unbearably slow Web site decided that my traditional username wasn’t the right one. Then I remembered vaguely that the site had some sort of rule that it had to have more characters than my standard login. I gave Verizon my Social Security number, my cell number and my zip code, and they told me what my username was. I tried my several passwords again. At last, I found the right one! Only now Verizon wouldn’t let me into my account; instead I received the following message:

“After several failed attempts to login to your account, your account has been locked. For security reasons, to unlock your account, please use the Forgot My Login Information link, validate your account information and reset your PIN.”

So in other words, first Verizon made the system difficult for me to log into — then they used the fact that I had to try several times to log in to lock me out. Now I’m stuck with a password that is not one of the ones I generally use and remember. Guys, it’s just a stupid cellphone account! It’s not my life’s savings.

To add further insult to the proceedings, the password-reset email Verizon sent was heavily formatted HTML, so it got flagged as spam…

Desktop Google’s Microsoft fixation

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Desktop Google is indexing my hard drive while I write this, and that’s exciting. The ability to search your personal document space as efficiently as Google allows you to search the Web is a computer-industry grail. I can’t report yet on how effectively Google does this (it’s hard to see how well they can do ranking of results without all those links to mine for relevancy and authority, but who knows?).

What I’m disappointed by is the heavy focus on Microsoft data types. Desktop Google will snarf up your Outlook mail. But if you’ve got ten years of Eudora archives, like me, you’re out of luck (for now, at least — I sent Google a feature request and they turned around a courteous reply within 12 hours, which is pretty impressive). Desktop Google is heavily integrated with Internet Explorer, but if you’ve discontinued using that browser for Firefox and Opera, like me, you’re again out of luck.

I’m willing to assume that Google set out to serve the widest number of customers by covering the most widely used Microsoft file formats. I’d do the same in their shoes. But let’s hope Google broadens its horizons and supports us non-conformists. Because as the viruses multiply and the crud accumulates on so many of Microsoft’s products, there will be more and more non-conformists out there choosing “non-standard” — and in many ways superior — software. Google-on-the-Web is platform independent; there’s no reason why an IPO-flush and talent-heavy Google can’t do cross-platform development, and serve Mac users, Opera users, Eudora users… the whole universe of users who have made careful, intelligent choices about protecting their data and diversifying their code base.

Random links and plugs

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## Mitch Kapor’s talk at Web 2.0 — a call to technologists to help propel a new populist reform movement — deserves much wider circulation beyond the conference hall: “We’re thinking a lot about the election just a few short weeks away. No matter who wins, I believe the kind of fundamental change we need to repair a damaged system will not come from the political establishment of either party. It must come from a popular reform movement, one which is heavily Internet-based, and comprised of a broad cross section of the American people.” Kapor has posted the full text
 over at Of By and For. Alternet has a good interview with Kapor as well.

## William Gibson is blogging again. He explains his return to the fray: “Because the United States currently has, as Jack Womack so succinctly puts it, a president who makes Richard Nixon look like Abraham Lincoln. And because, as the Spanish philospher Unamuno said, ‘At times, to be silent is to lie.’ ” [via Tim Jarrett]

## Real Live Preacher’s book is out! It’s been a great gift to read this Texan preacher-turned-blogger’s moving tales from the pulpit and beyond here on Salon blogs. Now new stories and some of the best of the Web stuff is collected between hard covers. Check it out. (You can buy it at the Preacher’s favorite San Antonio independent boookseller.)

## “Joshtoberfest” in the Bay Area: Josh Kornbluth’s got a new movie of his autobiographical monologue “Red Diaper Baby” opening at the Mill Valley Film Festival and then at two theaters. And his great and timely monologue, “Ben Franklin Unplugged,” returns for a new production at the Magic Theater in San Francisco. More details here. Josh — who I’m proud to count as a longtime friend — is certainly one of the funniest people alive, and he has held tight over the years to his artistic compass, his political bearings and his remarkable impromptu punning ability. “Red Diaper Baby” is where you will, for instance, find Josh’s priceless joke about Communist economics: “We’ve learned from history that it’s very important after feudalism to stop in capitalism before moving on to socialism — because that’s where you get your appliances.”

## Alex Cohen’s Underground Clips site is an interesting and increasingly valuable experiment in fair-use-based posting of politically relevant video clips.

## I’m experimenting with this new bullet-point style. I used to use one that was an image, and that seems like overkill. I want to maintain ASCII purity. I’ll probably keep, uh, iterating.