Dave's Handsome Radio Blog!

Sat, 01 Jun 2002 00:55:43 GMT

F.B.I. Was Warned It Could Not Meet Terrorism Threat. A top secret report warned the director of the F.B.I. in the months before Sept. 11 that the bureau lacked enough resources to meet the threat of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. By James Risen and David Johnston. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Understanding Links in the Aggregator

Fri, 31 May 2002 22:42:59 GMT

I've got <link> fever today.

In addition to supporting the content-side of the feature implemented today for Radio and Manila, I'm now working on the aggregator, so that it is link-aware. This page details the changes, and a heads-up for developers who have built on the aggregator, your code may have to change to support redirected subscriptions. It also describes a set of tests you can do with Radio, to help verify that this works. I don't want to release it without some real-world testing.

http://frontier.userland.com/stories/storyReader$10232

If you have the time, please give it a test, and let me know how it goes.

It's an interesting bootstrap, not exactly sure how it began, or where it's going, but hey it's been an unusually productive day.

Fri, 31 May 2002 22:39:08 GMT

A new macro and howto shows Radio users how to add a link element to weblog and category home pages, pointing to their associated RSS feeds. The equivalent feature is also available for Manila.

Links in Heads

Fri, 31 May 2002 19:04:47 GMT

This weblog should now have a <link> element in its <head>. Testing. Works.

Next test -- see if it works for a category. It should point to the RSS for the category, not for the Home Page. This entry also appears in the Michegas category. Do a view source over there and verify that it has a correct <link> element. Testing. Works.

Next step -- release the new macro, do a final pass over the docs, announce.

Fri, 31 May 2002 13:59:53 GMT

Fri, 31 May 2002 13:04:45 GMT

Jon Udell: Personal RSS Aggregators.

Fri, 31 May 2002 13:00:47 GMT

Announcing: "The RadioPoint Tool turns the outliner into a presentation authoring program."

Fri, 31 May 2002 12:11:31 GMT

Thu, 30 May 2002 21:52:25 GMT

Thu, 30 May 2002 20:40:54 GMT

Ted Nelson: "Today's nightmarish new world is controlled by 'webmasters', tekkies unlikely to understand the niceties of text issues and preoccupied with the Web's exploding alphabet soup of embedded formats."

Thu, 30 May 2002 18:28:41 GMT

Jon Udell's last column for BYTE, Personal RSS Aggregators, is rising through the ranks on Daypop. This is good to see. Unlike weblogs, aggregators don't leave much of a visible trail to follow.

Wed, 29 May 2002 14:16:58 GMT

Thanks to Philip Bump for the excellent animated badge for the fantastic EFF cartoon about the CBDTPA.

Excellent!

Tue, 28 May 2002 18:48:45 GMT

Tue, 28 May 2002 18:47:20 GMT

Scripting News blogroll on DHRB

Tue, 28 May 2002 16:06:50 GMT

I followed the instructions on Jake's weblog for creating a blogroll here on DHRB. I'm using the same outline I use to edit the leftlinks on Scripting News. Let's see if it works. It worked, but appeared in the wrong place. Now I have to tweak up the template. Back in a bit.

OK. Now it appears in the correct place. I'm going to use some CSS styles too.

Feedback to Jake:

The default value of the processMacros boolean should be false. There's a small breakage issue on this, but the security issue is more important. People will incorporate outlines from other sources. Including a boolean was a good idea. But people should have to turn it on, to cause them to think about the source they are including.
Plan for an ehancement that, if you link to a file whose name ends with .opml, it's somehow included in the blogroll.
What happened to the white-on-orange XML button for the blogroll outline?

Links: Docs for the blogroll macro. CSS class list.

Mon, 27 May 2002 22:15:56 GMT

Alex Cox: But who are the real pirates?

Mon, 27 May 2002 17:33:49 GMT

This morning I did an initial pass on code to algorithmically generate a time-to-live element for a new RSS version of Scripting News. [Scripting News]

Mon, 27 May 2002 02:51:53 GMT

Washington Post on Radio: "The program, its templates and other elements work smoothly, and you can go from downloading the program to publishing your thoughts on the Web during a coffee break." Thanks! [Scripting News in RSS]

Mon, 27 May 2002 02:51:05 GMT

ICANN Director Andy Müller-Maguhn has forwarded his personal notes from this weekend's Board retreat to European Internet discussion lists. He promises to post more on his personal web site Tuesday evening when he returns home. [icann.Blog]

Sat, 25 May 2002 23:25:06 GMT

Sat, 25 May 2002 16:53:48 GMT

An Forrest Gump-like moment. I was waiting in line at the pharmacy this morning. A short 70ish woman was getting instructions on how to use an enhaler. She was confused, and after getting it to work (it took a few tries), she said she felt dizzy, and left. Another person in line asked if that was Shirley Temple Black. I thought "no way," but the clerk behind the counter said it was.

Sat, 25 May 2002 15:59:42 GMT

Fri, 24 May 2002 23:46:58 GMT

Fri, 24 May 2002 23:44:07 GMT

Tue, 21 May 2002 21:45:35 GMT

Tue, 21 May 2002 01:12:40 GMT

A new multi-author weblog by three lawyers, for lawyers.

Mon, 20 May 2002 15:21:51 GMT

Mon, 20 May 2002 12:48:07 GMT

Sun, 19 May 2002 20:13:03 GMT

Sun, 19 May 2002 19:27:15 GMT

Sun, 19 May 2002 15:50:16 GMT

Sun, 19 May 2002 12:50:57 GMT

Test post.

Sat, 18 May 2002 00:42:59 GMT

Judge Skeptical of a Microsoft Remedy. A judge appeared highly skeptical of a proposal by the states seeking tough antitrust penalties for Microsoft over how the restrictions should be enforced. By The New York Times. [New York Times: Business]

Fri, 17 May 2002 21:56:00 GMT

Fri, 17 May 2002 16:05:01 GMT

Illustration of triangulation, by Rob Fahrni.

Fri, 17 May 2002 16:04:51 GMT

Fri, 17 May 2002 10:25:30 GMT

Wed, 15 May 2002 15:53:07 GMT

The wireless works great at this show. I'minCory Doctorow's sessionnow. Spacebar isn't working very well. I just opened an outline so Ican take notes more quickly.

Wed, 15 May 2002 15:09:36 GMT

OK, I'm going to blog here from the conference. Sitting at a table with Evan Williams and Cory Doctorow. Evan is showing Cory how to do RSS for his Blogger site.

Sun, 12 May 2002 18:57:08 GMT

Sun, 12 May 2002 18:49:36 GMT

Sun, 12 May 2002 01:11:00 GMT

NY Times: "Sharman thinks that the creators of Kazaa Lite are cravenly hiding in Tokelau while Sharman itself operates in the open in Vanuatu."

Fri, 10 May 2002 18:27:49 GMT

Thu, 09 May 2002 16:19:00 GMT

Thu, 09 May 2002 00:14:24 GMT

I'm relaxing while I post this message. Soon I will be resting. This goes in the Rest & Relaxation category. Had to post it twice to see if it worked.

Wed, 08 May 2002 23:27:30 GMT

Wed, 08 May 2002 18:20:32 GMT

Wed, 08 May 2002 13:43:11 GMT

Test post. 1.

Wed, 08 May 2002 12:39:49 GMT

Tue, 07 May 2002 01:45:20 GMT

Jon Udell: "In the long run, the problem is not with Google, but with a world that hasn't yet caught up with the web. I'm certain that in 10 years, US Senators and Inspectors General will leave web footprints commensurate with their power and influence. I hope that future web will, however, continue to even the odds and level the playing field."

Mon, 06 May 2002 19:53:27 GMT

I'm working on the new underpinnings for Radio's Instant Outliner. It feels very right to have the pings float over instant messaging. I'm using Eric Soroos's new tool that implements AIM.

Sun, 05 May 2002 17:34:15 GMT

To Daniel Berlinger: "I think I can shed some light on your queries about centralization and decentralization."

Centralization in blogging tools

Sun, 05 May 2002 14:28:40 GMT

First, I'd like to thank Burning Bird for elevating the level of discussion about centralization in weblog tools. As I wrote on Scripting News this morning, we can cover the tools ourselves, as long as we do it scientifically, and with an appreciation for diversity. This is a product category that's just waking up. There's a dearth of real comparative data. It's not about good-vs-bad, it's time to learn and advance the art of weblogging software.

Anyway, I've been weblogging for quite a few years, and I've tried out a lot of the ideas Shelley talks about. I had a discussion group, I've not done comments. I'm watching other people run comment-based sites, and participating where the rules allow it. (Shelley posted a rule a few weeks ago that excludes me from participating in her comments, and of course that's her right, and I am respecting that by commenting here on my Radio weblog.)

I of course think community features are great. I love reading referers lists, for my sites, and others. It helps me ponder the flow of this thing we call the Web. I like knowing what are the most popular RSS feeds. The inter-relation of sites is a never-ending fascination for me. It's the stuff that Jon Udell is writing about. And Josh Allen, the WebMonkey reviewer who organized our little industry so well, is writing about that too.

The community is an important aspect to blogging, imho. We're trying out a new method of Internet-based discourse that's different from the ones that came before. In "blogspace" respect is possible. The weblog is the proxy for a person. We choose the level at which we want to invite others into the space. I like distance, always have -- it helps people be respectful, and that means we can learn new stuff. This discussion of centralization in weblog tools is a perfect example of that. Had we been doing this on a newsgroup or a mail list or discussion group, the Stop Energy would likely overwhelm the intelligent discussion.

So anyway, here's a question for Shelley. When I see your site update on Weblogs.Com, I usually go for a visit to see what the bird is burning about now. I think of that as a community feature. Do you think it's valuable? If not, why do you participate?

Getting bytesInUse back in synch with the content

Sun, 05 May 2002 13:47:49 GMT

This is a test. Back in a minute with some notes, if it worked. (Or not.)

Boy that took a lot longer than I thought it should. Here's what's going on.

After the baling-wire-workaround we had a bit of cleanup work to do. With the fix in place we couldn't keep track of bytes in use, because the static server was inaccessible to the community server. So the per-user bytesInUse attribute could be wrong. Now we have to fix them.

Looping over the folder to set bytesInUse used to be fast, a long time ago, before Radio 8 shipped. Now it take a few seconds. First I wrote a utility script, started running it, and realized that it would take a long time to complete. So I opted for a different approach, I did a getUserTable callback, so that when a user connected, either through an upstream or just a ping, the bytesInUse att would get fixed. But the slowness caused timeouts. Quickly backed out of that approach.

I went back to the utility script, and modified it so that it can be restarted. It'll probably take about 10 hours to run. It waits five seconds between users so it can't take up too much of the server's resources while it's running.

I'm going to keep my eye on it today, while I do other cleanup chores and start digging some new holes.

Sun, 05 May 2002 03:26:16 GMT

Ordering Groceries in Aisle 'www'. Despite recent notable failures, Internet grocery shopping is quietly making a comeback. This time, however, the online grocer is likely to have the name of the local supermarket. By Terry Pristin. [New York Times: Technology]

Sun, 05 May 2002 03:21:42 GMT

At Large in the Blogosphere. Blogs — online news commentaries written, usually, by ordinary citizens — are the antidote to the blow-dried anchor and the unsigned editorial. By Judith Shulevitz. [New York Times: Technology]

Outage cleared

Sat, 04 May 2002 20:06:23 GMT

The lights are back on, with one caveat. We're now running Apache on Windows to do our static serving. Midway through the transition it locked up and we had to restart the machine. Of course since we serve at the pleasure of Murphy, the machine failed to restart. Why? We had installed a new 120GB hard drive, and W2K got lost on its way to restart. Once we cured that, the system started, Apache did its job, and the static server has been fast and reliable since. (It's only been a bit over an hour.) So we will pray for more good luck, it's really gone quite well today, net-net, and we're thankful for the lessons we've learned so far, and look forward to learning many more. ";->"

Sat, 04 May 2002 15:43:41 GMT

Test post #2.

Sat, 04 May 2002 15:14:47 GMT

Test post.

Outage update, 8AM

Sat, 04 May 2002 11:58:57 GMT

We have a new static server, it's fully installed at Exodus, with a copy of the content taken overnight. As with the last restoring, if you updated between last night and the time the switch is flipped (probably around 11AM today), some updates will not be there. Rather than having ten hours of downtime, we opted for this approach. We'll provide instructions on updating UserLand-hosted Radio sites after we flip the switch.

The rest of the day today, Murphy-willing, will be spent looking for breakage, and fixing stuff, and undoing the baling-wire and scotch tape we put in place to work around the outage.

I posted a note last night on the Radio-Dev list explaining the strategy for those who are curious and technical.

Dave

Fri, 03 May 2002 21:36:23 GMT

WebMonkey: "Radio manages to create a dynamic environment for the exchange of information without asking too much of each individual user. They've made it simple for beginners to get involved in a kind of active network that would've required much more know-how a few years ago. If you're looking for more than just a tool, but an effortless way to get a site launched and incorporated into an online community, Radio may be your best bet."

Outage update, 3:16PM

Fri, 03 May 2002 19:24:29 GMT

At 1:10PM we turned off the static server because we were pretty sure it had been hacked, for two reasons:

1. We had received a notice from myNetWatchman with a list of attempts the machine had made to compromise other systems that had the monitoring software installed.

2. We had just finished installing a new sharepoint, and as we were preparing to reconfigure the content system to write through that point, Apache stopped responding, and we saw a flood of traffic coming out of the machine, consistent with what the email said the machine was doing.

At that point we shut it down, and I posted an outage report on Scripting News.

It appears to have been a false alarm for two reasons:

1. Lawrence had the presence of mind to read the email carefully, and noted that all the dates were before we had done the switch to the new server. So the email contained no new information. It was simply telling us that the old server had been hacked. We already knew that. ;->

2. Then we re-examined our assumption that the current static server had been hacked and decided it was worth a test to see, if we backed off the new share, if the machine would go back to its previous performance. It did.

While you can never assume that you're in the clear, and we serve at the pleasure of Murphy, it appears that the static server is working, and we're assume it it was our newbieness with Linux that caused the outage, because it's running OK without the share.

We had a Plan B, which we are now getting ready to execute. It will take a few hours, but we're really optimistic about it.

Dave

Fri, 03 May 2002 00:46:09 GMT

MS' MIT prof witness gets toasted over KDE, GNOME. Drenched in GUI stuff... [The Register]

Fri, 03 May 2002 00:35:24 GMT

IBM: Web services need Sun. In an about-face, Big Blue is paving the way for its rival to join a Web services standards organization, hoping to quell infighting that could put a damper on the emerging technology. [CNET News.com]

Fri, 03 May 2002 00:31:51 GMT

Exec exodus continues at Sun. A senior executive responsible for bringing Sun Microsystems closer to open-source technology has left, the latest in a series of high-profile departures for the company. [CNET News.com]

On a wish and a prayer

Thu, 02 May 2002 14:41:28 GMT

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls..

I was able to string some baling wire, with the help of lots of scotch tape, and now have a very temporary workaround to the outage.

It will be glitchy, for sure, but as you can see -- I am now able to post to my UserLand-hosted Radio weblog.

This buys us a little bit of time now to get the real outage cleared.

Pray to Murphy for our little community.

"cheesecake"