What's different?
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<copyright>All content written by Tim Bray Copyright Tim Bray, some rights reserved, see /ongoing/misc/Copyright</copyright>
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<title>ongoing</title>
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<description>Ongoing fragmented essay by Tim Bray.</description>
<lastBuildDate>Wed, 30 Nov 2005 15:52:43 PST</lastBuildDate>
<item><title>On “Beyond Java”</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/30/On-Beyond-Java</link>
<dc:subject>Technology/Java</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Java</dc:subject>
<description><p>I just got around to reading Bruce Tate&#x2019;s <a href='http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/beyondjava/'>Beyond Java</a>. I think that the senior people in the Java groups at Sun, and all the other Java powers, should read and think about it (and for that matter the CLR people over at Microsoft). The premise of the book is really nothing new: There are a lot of problems out there for which smart, senior people are reporting that there are languages and/or frameworks that produce solutions quicker and better than Java. <cite>Beyond Java</cite> assembles a lot of this testimony, claims that we&#x2019;re at an inflection point, and goes on to speculate about what comes next. It argues interestingly by looking back at the history of Java&#x2019;s explosive rise from nowhere to world domination; but at the end of the day I&#x2019;m not sure the historical analogies are useful. In other gripes, the book&#x2019;s structure is a little messy, and the kayaking anecdotes that introduce each chapter could have been dropped without loss of value. I also disagree with Tate&#x2019;s argument that Swing and SWT are useless, part of the problem not the solution. I hear loud complaints about <em>every</em> GUI-builder; somewhat fewer about those in OS X; anyhow, as far as I know none of the beyond-Java alternatives are rich-user-interface champs. <i>[Thanks to Sam Ruby for pointing out that I&#x2019;d misread Tate&#x2019;s argument on this, first time around.]</i> Still, it&#x2019;s a solid piece of work; see also <a href='http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2005/11/01/Beyond-Java'>Sam Ruby&#x2019;s take</a> and the discussion <a href='http://forums.java.net/jive/forum.jspa?forumID=63'>over at java.net</a>. The book got me thinking about two great big important complicated issues: the future of the JVM, and the right way to build Web applications; but each of those deserves its own essay.</p></description>
<pubDate>Wed, 30 Nov 2005 15:52:41 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Office Politics and Profits</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/30/Office-Profits</link>
<dc:subject>Business/Microsoft</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Business</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Microsoft</dc:subject>
<description><p>In recent weeks I&#x2019;ve been spending quite a bit of time talking to journalists and analysts about the issues around office-document XML file formats in general, and the Massachusetts dust-up in particular. There&#x2019;s one exchange that pops up in almost every one of these conversations, and it goes something like this. <i>Journo</i>: &#x201c;Now, you guys are taking all these idealistic high-minded positions, but you know and I know that what we have here is a battle for market share.&#x201d; <i>Tim</i>: &#x201c;That&#x2019;s part of it, but we think that our interests, and the customers&#x2019;, are both best-served when there&#x2019;s no file-format lock-in and there&#x2019;s a wide-open competitive market.&#x201d; Now it&#x2019;s not <em>entirely</em> about business, because governments have policy objectives, for example transparency and freedom of information, that aren&#x2019;t directly business-related. But indeed, there is a dollars-and-cents business dimension. And to help broaden the knowledge of those dollars and cents, I went and checked Microsoft&#x2019;s <a href='http://www.microsoft.com/msft/default.mspx'>Investor Relations</a> page to look up the Office-related numbers. In the fiscal year that ended July 1st, they reported profit of $7.915B on $11.013B in revenue. The trend continues: in the most recent quarter (ending last September), it was $1.934B on $2.675B. Just FYI.</p></description>
<pubDate>Wed, 30 Nov 2005 14:02:53 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Ultra Sysadmin</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/29/Ultra-Wrangling</link>
<dc:subject>Technology/Sun</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Sun</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology/Software</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Software</dc:subject>
<description><p>I&#x2019;ve got this <a href='/ongoing/When/200x/2005/10/18/New-Computer'>Ultra 20</a> which among other things has a huge disk with room for lots of operating systems. I want to fool around a bit with Linux and Solaris Classic and GNU/Solaris, run some Bonnie numbers and also shake down my own stuff on all these different boxes. I expected pain, and I&#x2019;ve already had some. This post will be my diary of the things that go wrong, and right...</p><p><img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/29/-tn/IMG_4247.png'/> </p></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:40:15 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>How They Learn</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/29/How-They-Learn</link>
<dc:subject>The World/Family</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>The World</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Family</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Education</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Education</dc:subject>
<description><p>It&#x2019;s amazing, contrary to all the clich&#xe9;s, how slowly little kids learn. My little guy, now in first grade, has been learning to read for a year now and still struggles with some obvious-seeming words; oh, those English vowels. But slow is OK, because time is what he has, no end of it; and when you&#x2019;re my age that time rushes by, fast and unceasing like a spring flood. This evening, reading the first chapters of the first Harry Potter at bedtime, he seemed to want a turn so I pointed him at a paragraph and he hurried through it, the tale&#x2019;s urgency carrying him over words he couldn&#x2019;t make out. I remember being the same age doing the same thing, wondering what some word meant, but not enough to stop, or even slow down much.</p></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Nov 2005 21:07:34 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>HBR1</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/29/HBR1</link>
<dc:subject>Arts/Music</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Arts</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Music</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology/Internet</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Internet</dc:subject>
<description><p>I couple of years back I wrote about the advantages of using iTunes or XMMS to soak up <a href='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/11/02/InternetBrainGoo'>Ambient Internet Brain Goo</a>. These last couple of days I&#x2019;ve been learning how to partition the disks and install multiple operating systems, some of &#x2019;em pretty bleeding-edge, on my Ultra 20, which involves quite a bit of waiting and irritation. I owe my continued sanity to <a href='http://www.hbr1.com/'>HBR1</a>; as far as I&#x2019;m concerned they&#x2019;ve got the best brain goo going.</p></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Nov 2005 14:40:20 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>NetBeans Tip</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/29/Faster-NetBeans</link>
<dc:subject>Technology/Mac OS X</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Mac OS X</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology/Coding/Java</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Coding</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Java</dc:subject>
<description><p>I tried out Joshua Marinacci&#x2019;s recent <a href='http://weblogs.java.net/blog/joshy/archive/2005/11/netbeans_on_mac.html'>Netbeans on Mac Tip</a> (different GC setting) and it worked like a charm. I suspect that this ought to be the default setting for NetBeans on most systems. I talked to a NetBeans insider in Prague and he mumbled about hard-to-reproduce weirdness with this setting on previous NetBeans &#x26; Java releases, but I haven&#x2019;t seen a single hiccup. It turns out that on the AMD64 systems, lots of people are running more or less everything Java in <code>-server</code> mode. Hmmm.</p></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Nov 2005 12:07:48 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Liberals Fall</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/28/Canadian-Election</link>
<dc:subject>The World/Politics</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>The World</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Politics</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>The World/Places/Canada</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Places</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Canada</dc:subject>
<description><p>As I (very safely) <a href='/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/08/Canadian-Politics'>predicted</a> a couple of weeks ago, the Canadian government <a href='http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/11/28/noconfidencevote051128.html'>fell today</a> and we&#x2019;re looking at a January election. You have to feel sorry for the candidates who, most places in the country, will be slogging through the snow and sub-zero temperatures; but not that sorry, it&#x2019;s long past time we had this little catharsis. As I was scanning the coverage today I ran across the blog of <a href='http://www.montesolberg.com/blog.htm'>Monte Solberg</a>, an Alberta Tory of whom I&#x2019;d never heard, but who gives the political narrative in an unforced, flowing, insider&#x2019;s voice; he&#x2019;s a natural. I was a little intrigued that it&#x2019;s not obvious at all from his web-site which party he represents. On the other hand, it&#x2019;s tough to see a guy this unaffected and natural being real comfy associating with a plastic on-message droid like Stephen Harper.</p></description>
<pubDate>Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:19:53 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Catcalls</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/28/ODF-and-Atom</link>
<dc:subject>The World/Life Online/People</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>The World</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Life Online</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>People</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology/XML</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>XML</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Business/Microsoft</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Business</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Microsoft</dc:subject>
<description><p>It seems like my little <a href='/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/27/Office-XML'>thought experiment</a> has touched a nerve. <a href='http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2005/11/28/tim-bray-wants-microsoft-to-make-office-support-odf/'>Scoble</a>, <a href='http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=8412f5f2-64b2-4bb7-835f-8bf044fc8c32'>Dare Obasanjo</a>, and <a href='http://randyh.wordpress.com/2005/11/28/more-on-competing-xml-formats-for-office-documents/'>Randy Holloway</a> all push back, amazingly enough all making the same argument: how can I be against duplication in office-document XML format while at the same time being mixed up in the <a href='http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/atompub-charter.html'>Atom Project</a>? The argument is fallacious, but at least Robert and Randy made it in grown-up, polite terms, leaving the childish name-calling to Dare. Now, as for RSS and Atom: When I came on the scene in 2003, RSS was already hopelessly fragmented, and there was exactly zero chance of any of the large-egoed thin-skinned proponents of the various versions deciding to make nice with each other. Atom is precisely an attempt to reduce the number of vocabularies that implementors feel they have to support. Turning to the office-document space: right now the world has <a href='http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/12572/OpenDocument-v1.0-os.pdf'>exactly one</a> finished, delivered, standardized, totally-unencumbered, multiply-implemented XML-based office document format. You are the guys who want to introduce another, incompatible one. And I think that&#x2019;s OK; but restrict your invention to the specialized Microsoft stuff that ODF can&#x2019;t do, and don&#x2019;t re-invent the basics. Why is this controversial?</p></description>
<pubDate>Mon, 28 Nov 2005 20:14:42 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Seems Like Forever</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/28/Technorati</link>
<dc:subject>Technology/Web</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Web</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology/Syndication</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Syndication</dc:subject>
<description><p>But it&#x2019;s only <a href='http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000402.html'>Technorati&#x2019;s third birthday</a>. I don&#x2019;t remember when I first stumbled across them, but I actually paid real money for a feed of pointers to my brand-new blog. Nobody who hasn&#x2019;t been behind the firewall at Technorati or one of their competitors can grasp how pathologically hard it&#x2019;s been to keep a service like that up and running in the face of the continuing insane growth of the blogosphere; they&#x2019;ve had some tough times but it&#x2019;s been a long time since they weren&#x2019;t there when I needed them. Today, Nicholas Carr <a href='http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/11/hypermediation.php'>tries to explain the big picture</a> that Technorati and their sector fit into. I don&#x2019;t know, I think anyone who claims to understand what&#x2019;s going on is being awfully damn brave. Interestingly, I&#x2019;ve heard Dave Sifry make a compelling big-picture pitch several times that&#x2019;s as convincing as anything I&#x2019;ve read, and as far as I know he&#x2019;s never actually written it down. Dave? <i>[Disclosure: I <a href='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/08/03/SoTB#p-2'>may have a conflict of interest</a> with respect to Technorati.]</i></p></description>
<pubDate>Mon, 28 Nov 2005 16:55:43 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>The Saga Continues</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/28/Mass-Again</link>
<dc:subject>The World/Politics</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>The World</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Politics</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology/XML</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>XML</dc:subject>
<description><p>The Massachusetts Office XML File Formats saga, that is. The latest news is that the Microsoft announcements last week are <a href='http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051128-5637.html'>playing well</a> in Boston. Commonwealth secretary Thomas Trimarco stated &#x201c;we are optimistic that Office Open XML will meet our new standards&#x201d;, and <a href='/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/27/Office-XML'>I&#x2019;m optimistic too</a>. Obviously the key word is &#x201c;will&#x201d;, since we haven&#x2019;t seen what&#x2019;s getting submitted to ECMA and nobody&#x2019;s seen what will come out of ECMA. Our own chief standards geek Carl Cargill wrote Mr. Trimarco a letter, which you can read over at <a href='http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/piper/20051128'>Piper Cole&#x2019;s weblog.</a></p></description>
<pubDate>Mon, 28 Nov 2005 13:58:58 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Thought Experiments</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/27/Office-XML</link>
<dc:subject>Technology/XML</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>XML</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Business/Microsoft</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Business</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Microsoft</dc:subject>
<description><p>I see that Microsoft has posted a <a href='http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/covenant.mspx'>litigation covenant</a> on the OfficeXML formats (also read <a href='http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/11/22/495876.aspx'>Brian Jones&#x2019; exegesis</a>). In response, there&#x2019;s a bunch of legal poking and prodding <a href='http://consortiuminfo.org/newsblog/blog.php?ID=1762'>here</a> and <a href='http://www.mwdadvisors.com/blog/2005/11/microsoft-takes-file-formats-to-ecma.html'>here</a>; I don&#x2019;t understand the legal arguments, and I don&#x2019;t think they&#x2019;re the interesting part of the story anyhow. So, let&#x2019;s do two thought experiments. First, what if Microsoft really is doing the right thing? Second, how can we avoid having two incompatible file formats? <i>[Update: There&#x2019;s been a lot of reaction to this piece, and I addressed some of those points <a href='/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/28/ODF-and-Atom'>here</a>.]</i>...</p></description>
<pubDate>Sun, 27 Nov 2005 12:00:00 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Statistics</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/12/12/BMS</link>
<dc:subject>Technology/Publishing</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Publishing</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology/Web</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Web</dc:subject>
<description><p>Almost every Sunday I grab the week&#x2019;s <span class="o">ongoing</span> logfiles and update my numbers. I find it interesting and maybe others will too, so this entry is now the charts&#x2019; permanent home. I&#x2019;ll update it most weeks, probably. <i>[Updated: 2005/11/27, and I added the RSS/Atom feed graph. I&#x2019;m going to hang on a week before tossing in the Google Analytics numbers, because they&#x2019;re showing severe Thanksgiving-related distortion, also visible in the latter two graphs here.]</i>...</p><p><img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/12/12/-tn/Browser-Market-Share.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/12/12/-tn/Browsers-via-search.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/12/12/-tn/Search-Engines.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/12/12/-tn/Feeds.png'/> </p></description>
<pubDate>Sun, 27 Nov 2005 11:35:27 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Fair is Fair</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/26/Fair-is-Fair</link>
<dc:subject>Technology/Web</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Web</dc:subject>
<description><p>And borked is borked. A few days back, I <a href='/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/21/Microsoft-XML-News'>flamed away</a> at the <a href='http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fmsdn.microsoft.com%2Fxml%2Frss%2Fsse%2F'>egregiously-broken</a> markup over at MSDN. Alex Barnett over at MSDN <a href='http://blogs.msdn.com/alexbarn/archive/2005/11/26/497187.aspx'>points out</a> that our own <a href='http://developers.sun.com/'>Sun Developer Network</a> site <a href='http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fdevelopers.sun.com'>isn&#x2019;t valid either</a>. Not as bad as MSDN (I noticed the problem there because it misdisplays on Safari) but still borked. It&#x2019;s pathetic, just pathetic, when two of the leading developers&#x2019; resources on the Web can&#x2019;t get their shit together and emit valid web content. Guys, go buy <a href='http://www.zeldman.com/dwws/'>Zeldman</a> and <a href='http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321303474/mezzoblue-20/102-1939359-8959344'>Shea</a> and, like I said before, get a clue. <i>[Update: Make that &#x201c;borked is borked is borked&#x201d;; per James Snell, <a href='http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/dw_blog_comments.jspa?blog=351&amp;entry=100822&amp;ca=drs-bl'>IBM too</a>. Let&#x2019;s those of us working for the companies behind those sites all do some more public shouting and private pleading, and maybe we can make &#x2019;em do the right thing.]</i></p></description>
<pubDate>Sun, 27 Nov 2005 11:04:36 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>OSI</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/25/OSI</link>
<dc:subject>Technology/Open Source</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Open Source</dc:subject>
<description><p>That stands for &#x201c;Open Source Innovation&#x201d;, and Dana Blankenhorn <a href='http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=505&amp;part=rss&amp;tag=feed&amp;subj=zdblog'>suggests there isn&#x2019;t any</a>. Uh... Apache. Emacs. Vi. Perl. Python. Ruby. PHP. Those were the result of twenty seconds thinking. I don&#x2019;t think software innovation historically has correlated negatively or positively with open-source-ness. In the future though, I think pretty well all software innovation will be either open-source or inside a big server, because the business model for shipping closed-source software as a product is just too twisted and weird.</p></description>
<pubDate>Fri, 25 Nov 2005 21:22:29 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Vancouver Blogs</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/25/Vancouver-Blogs</link>
<dc:subject>The World/Places/Vancouver</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>The World</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Places</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Vancouver</dc:subject>
<description><p>This notion of regional blogging is starting to get traction; right here in Vancouver, which is a pretty wired place, we now have three different pretenders to the &#x201c;Vancouver City Blog&#x201d; throne: <a href='http://www.urbanvancouver.com/'>Urban Vancouver</a>, <a href='http://www.thevancouverite.com/'>The Vancouverite</a>, and <a href='http://vancouver.metblogs.com/'>Metroblogging Vancouver</a>, the latter part of the Metroblogging empire. I&#x2019;ve subscribed because, you know, I live here; maybe this will make me a bit hipper and cooler, because they&#x2019;re always talking about events that I&#x2019;m not clued-in enough to know about; if we start going to a few, that would be a good sign. A good thing happened already: one of the above linked to <a href='http://staticphotography.com/'>static photography</a>, a very nice and thoughtful local photoblog, check it out.</p></description>
<pubDate>Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:10:17 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>FSS: Fireworks, ’57-’61</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/25/FSS</link>
<dc:subject>Arts/Photos</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Arts</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Photos</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>The World/Places/Oregon</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>The World</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Places</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Oregon</dc:subject>
<description><p>Friday Slide Scan #14 is four of Dad&#x2019;s fireworks pictures, all over forty years old...</p><p><img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/25/-tn/A6001.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/25/-tn/A6006.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/25/-tn/A6009.png'/> <img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/25/-tn/A6012.png'/> </p></description>
<pubDate>Fri, 25 Nov 2005 00:28:32 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Roller Redux</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/24/Roller-Redux</link>
<dc:subject>Technology/Java</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Java</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Business/Blogging</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Business</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Blogging</dc:subject>
<description><p>Which is to say, <a href='http://rollerweblogger.org/page/roller?entry=roller_2_0_ships'>Roller 2.0 has shipped</a>. Lots of new stuff, and anything that can hold up under the <a href='http://blogs.sun.com/'>blogs.sun.com</a> load is pretty well battle-tested. I wonder if there are any other freely-downloadable blogging engines (WordPress maybe?) getting as much full-time dedicated attention.</p></description>
<pubDate>Thu, 24 Nov 2005 21:23:16 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Giving Thanks</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/24/Thanksgiving</link>
<dc:subject>The World/Places/America</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>The World</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Places</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>America</dc:subject>
<description><p>This is the day where those of us around the world who are in the US-centric high tech business, but not Americans, give thanks for the fact that our phones are silent and for the certainty that no major high-tech announcements or initiatives will occur. Facetiousness aside, this is, as <a href='http://bayosphere.com/blog/dan_gillmor/20051124/happy_thanksgiving'>Dan Gillmor says</a>, America&#x2019;s best holiday. There&#x2019;s a lot to be said for a major civic celebration that has nothing to do with theologically-significant births or deaths that happened millennia ago in the Middle East. Here&#x2019;s a charming, <a href='http://clairegiordano.org/blog/?p=8'>very personal, small-scale</a> narrative about remembering&#x2014;and, implicitly, giving thanks.</p></description>
<pubDate>Thu, 24 Nov 2005 10:37:46 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Drawing Drama</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/23/Dramatic-Drawing</link>
<dc:subject>Arts</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Arts</dc:subject>
<description><p><a href='http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/'>David Weinberger</a> pointed out <a href='http://fcmx.net/vec/get.swf?i=003702'>this</a> (warning, very slightly not-work-safe) and I found it compelling, hypnotic; I have no idea what the site, <a href='http://www.fcmx.net/'>fcmx.net</a>, is about, but the the page called &#x201c;Flash Cards II&#x201d; in English, <a href='http://www.fcmx.net/vec/'>&#x412;&#x438;&#x440;&#x442;&#x443;&#x430;&#x43b;&#x44c;&#x43d;&#x44b;&#x435; &#x43e;&#x442;&#x43a;&#x440;&#x44b;&#x442;&#x43a;&#x438; II - &#x412;&#x441;&#x44f; &#x43a;&#x43e;&#x43b;&#x43b;&#x435;&#x43a;&#x446;&#x438;&#x44f;</a> in Russian, has lots and lots more of these, and I&#x2019;m not even sure David picked the best; they are elegant, erotic, witty, dramatic; well worth a visit. You probably want to turn the speed up to 8&#xd7; or 16&#xd7; for most of these or you&#x2019;ll end up watching them all day. I suppose this has long been prefigured in the work of sidewalk caricaturists and the like, but still, I think it&#x2019;s a new thing in the world.</p></description>
<pubDate>Wed, 23 Nov 2005 07:44:55 PST</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Feed Rates</title>
<link>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/22/Feed-Rates</link>
<dc:subject>Technology/Syndication</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Syndication</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Technology/Web</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Web</dc:subject>
<description><p>I was glancing at my server logfiles, and was impressed, as always, by the huge number of feed-readers out there. So I made a graph of how often the <span class="o">ongoing</span> feeds have been fetched so far this year, and the popularity of RSS vs. Atom 1.0...</p><p><img align='top' src='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/11/22/-tn/Feed-fetches.png'/> </p></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 22 Nov 2005 12:39:20 PST</pubDate></item>
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