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Forrest Duncan's Radio Weblog
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26 December 2002
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Matt Pope spots an interesting article...
The New York Times reports that DARPA is using Groove for the TIA program:
The early version of the Total Information Awareness system employs a commercial software collaboration program called Groove... Groove makes it possible for analysts at many different government agencies to share intelligence data instantly, and it links specialized programs that are designed to look for patterns of suspicious behavior.
[Matt Pope's Radio Weblog]
This sounds like an alpha version of something from Minority Report and whether that is good or not is a moot point.
Like many, I am very excited about the prospects of how we will be able to build software in the future using 'Web Services' (although I do wish we had another name for them). However, whilst the story that Matt refers to is not 'Web Services' specifically, much of what is being delivered as the output of the Total Information Awareness system could be delivered using the webservices model.
And your point caller?...
My point is that there will be many hackers out there who put together some great code that will be the foundations of web services. These people whilst extremely generous with their ability and time, may NOT want to see these 'products' used in a military situation.
I have been following the Creative Commons initiative with great interest, because I believe that it is one of the most significant developments in recent Internet history. It feels to me that it is one of the first new initiatives that has been developed by experts for the common good. In fact, I feel as if it will help get back to a culture of 'Information wants to be free', which was somewhat lost during the crazy last few years when 'non-experts' thought the Internet was their perpetual bag of gold. Now that these bozos have largely been eliminated, this could get fun again.
So, caller, your point is?
Well, I have also been following the debate about whether the Creative Commons licences could or should be used for software - this strikes me that a small addition to the Creative Commons licence, 'No Military Use', just like the current 'No Commercial Use' would be a good starting point. Still keeps the licence simple.
As an aside to this, whilst I agree with RMS's view that there is a proliferation of software licences already. I disagree however with the inferred suggestion that the CC licence would merely add to this proliferation. (Any error in this understanding of the positions being taken is mine btw).
There are lots of licences, sure, but quantity rarely beats quality. I understand and respect Lawrence Lessig's contention about why creative product other than software is getting the early attention, but I do hope that in time, the creators will see that they have created a wonderful thing, that IMHO could become the defacto standard for MUCH of the software world, especially in a web services future, even if not it all.
11:21:04 AM 
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Hmmm, I am getting bored with the gaming already. I can only kill so many people, dwarves, orcs, programmers, monsters etc.. Even with some 'fantastic' weapons at my disposal, it just gets too 'samey'.
Shame, because I DO recognise that many hours of hard work went into all of these.
So, what do I want? Something like a story is vital. Warcraft III did well on this, but the fighting seemed pretty arbitrary to me. Unreal was just mayhem. Americas Army was good fun doing the training, but I couldn't get to fight properly on-line. (Probably my fault). Battlefield 1942 just quickly bored me.
In saying this, I am sure that I could start some more holy wars between fans of the respective games, but this is my last intention. I am an out and out amateur remember, so my comments can safely be ignored by anyone who takes this stuff seriously.
Will I play more? Probably. But for the last three nights I have been having a dream about a new Groove application. The funny thing is, that it has been roughly the same dream each night - and that's weird. The model hasn't been worked out properly (as far as I can remember) so I intend to see if I can sketch this out in some sort of framework. A more interesting challenge to me than fragging away...
Obviously, I cannot say more at this stage. Not because it is a secret, but because they are only dreams! Even writing this far probably qualifies me for the loony bin for most people. What I can say is that I think it all reveolves around 'trust'. We are hitting trust issues all the time these days. Peer to peer is such a powerful paradigm that the current trust models just do not do it for me.
Back to pen and paper!
10:42:28 AM
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25 December 2002
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Great to have a couple of days off. This has been an extremely busy year for us and next year doesn't show any sign of slowing either.
What has been fun the last couple of days though is playing games. It has been a long while since I played any computer games properly. Probably the original Quake was the last one I played.
Over the last couple of days I have downloaded and started to play Warcraft III, Battlefield 1942, Unreal Tournament 2003 and am currently downloading America's Army. These are big games (thank god for my broadband connection). That was a bit of a surprise. The quality of the graphics and sound were pretty inspiring too. I will put up a report of how I get on over the next few days.
12:13:25 PM
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Seasons Greet to anyone foolish enough to find themselves in here!
12:04:18 PM
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21 December 2002
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18 December 2002
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There is nothing much more I could possibly add to the message from Sam below. Just click the links and learn how collaboration can bring magical moments. Just do it.
Getting Creative.
Read this. Want more? Watch this. See the connection? Make the connection. [Sam Ruby]
4:01:25 PM
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17 December 2002
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Heheheehehehe.
Interesting to note that Radio is reporting I am getting hits to this site from Google. Nothing unusual about that I guess, but I do find it funny that some of these are coming from the search term 'Lesbian sex'. I used this term a few days ago (oops, did it again!). I can just imagine all these folks looking for their pr0n and coming across this!! Hehehehe.
7:53:27 AM
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Some interesting News
O'reilly.net : Applications, User Interfaces, and Servers in the Soup
Soon there will be another option: users will start up a third-party application that supports Groove-style collaboration by making the appropriate calls to Groove SOAP interfaces. The folks at Groove Networks like to call this the "powered by Groove" model, and look forward to making the use of Groove workspaces as simple as "saving to a G drive" (that is, the workspace will be available like any other storage on the system). [Jeroen Bekkers' Groove Weblog]
I have been asking John Guidice about this capability recently in the Groove developers forums and was pleased when he confirmed that this was due. Not being able to save files directly into spaces is certainly one of the frustrations about Groove that eventually 'gets on yer tits'. Whilst chatting to SB Chatterjee yesterday, he referred me to an article that discusses Tenix. I hadn't heard of this (and I thought that I knew them all). It certainly looks like they have done office integration well. No doubt Groove will have at least the same functionality soon with regard to Office. Of course, in many ways (and this is not intended to diss Tenix in any way) Groove has many functions already that Tenix doesn't have - synchronisation for one - but saving directly into a space is one feature I cannot wait to see.
7:45:39 AM
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15 December 2002
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http://www.synesthesia.co.uk/blog/archives/world/000099.php
It would be good if refugee doctors while retraining could help with translations at surgeries. They could talk to a group of people, saving time before they go to see a Doctor:
Guardian April 2002 Dr McAvoy in Sheffield has 3 translators, but has had to close his doors due to overdemand.
"The standard time for a planned consultation is 10minutes. With an interpretor present it takes 20. But his patients between them speak 37 languages - so if it is Turkish, Russian, Kurdish or Farsi, then they do the translation on the phone using a service provided by the Primary Care Trust, passing the receiver between them. It can easily take one and a half hours. "
The NHS can be a frustrating place to work, but when people face problems such as these, it is little wonder that so many can put up with it all.
It is obvious to me now that what the NHS lacks is time. For sure, they are short of money, people, buildings etc, but where these shortages really show up is in lack of time available for the front line staff to do what they really want to do.
Technology can and should play a major role in delivering this time back, but then we hit another brick wall. Because of the lack of spending in IT in the NHS over the last decade, parts of the infrastructure are really beyond useful use. For us as Groove developers it has been frustrating when faced with Windows 3.11 machine still being used. Ironically, GWS may make it easier for us, but really....
3:00:56 PM
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14 December 2002
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More new stuff from Google. Froogle. Not sure about this...
2:01:32 PM
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13 December 2002
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Joel is such an intelligent guy. I love what he writes. This latest piece so hits the spot, its spooky...
December 11, 2002. Lord Palmerston: "The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten all about it." Programming has gotten too hard.
[Joel on Software]
9:59:02 PM
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Want, want, want ...
Making Your Own Music, Even if You Can't Play a Note. If you like music and want to make your own even if you can't play an instrument, get Mad - a MadPlayer, that is. The new MadPlayer by MadWaves is an addictive, pocket-size recording studio, MP3 player and FM radio that packs a library of 600 musical instruments and sounds into a device slightly larger than a Game Boy video game player. It can instantly create and spin out original songs in a variety of musical styles including rhythm and blues, hip-hop, New Age, techno and reggae. By J.d. Biersdorfer. [New York Times: Technology]
Boy, I wish we had had these available when we were creating Madasafish.
9:36:40 PM
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11 December 2002
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Google continues to be one of my favourite companies. Their labs have some really great toys.
5:47:44 PM
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Seems like an opportunity wasted to me to convert these users into subscribers rather than treating them as criminals ..
Denmark Bills Users for Downloads. A Danish anti-piracy group has begun charging individuals for illegal copies of music, film and software. Could this be the shape of things to come in the United States? By Peter Rojas. [Wired News]
2:23:15 PM
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I have been asked to supply a bit more information about the MMAPPs project that I mentioned earlier that we are involved in. MMAPPS stands for Market Management of Peer-to-Peer Services. I am under NDA for some of the details, but as the aims of the project can be seen on the original (but out of date) website I will try not to give any secrets away.
This is an EU part-funded project and HP were originally leading the project. After the merger with Compaq however, they withdrew and so we have been asked to join, along with the University of Lancaster. The new project leader is now BT Laboratories. Other participants include Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich ; Research Centre of the Athens University of Economics and Business ; Darmstadt University of Technology and Telekom Austria .
Our job in Mysterian is to ensure that the project has a market and application focus and there are some interesting scenarios being considered. Our experience as Groove developers has given us some good experience with real-world usage.
One of the issues being analysed is the basic economic theory behind p2p. The guys from Athens have done some good work in boiling what is happening down to some equations that can be used to model how we might be able to balance out the use of network resources and content amongst the members of the network.
The assumption so far is that most of the development will be done with JXTA but this is still to be finally decided. There are some very neat features about JXTA, but there are some holes in there too for what we want to do. They guys who are deep into that part of the project are understandably a bit cautious as to whether they really want to get in and change core JXTA code. We shall see what the final decision is.
10:07:50 AM
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This is a scary story from NY Times.
Internet Filters Block Many Useful Sites, Study Finds. Teenagers who look to the Internet for health information as part of their "wired generation" birthright are blocked from many useful sites by antipornography filters. By John Schwartz. [New York Times: Technology]
I wish I had an answer to this problem.
Last night, I was looking on Google for some information about a medical condition that a close realtive has. This involved looking for the word 'girl' (amongst others) in the search. The pages of references to lesbian sex sites was overwhelming. Thankfully, I was looking on my own and didn't have my kids with me at the time.
9:24:24 AM
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10 December 2002
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from Jeroen:
disconnected. Grrrr, still no broadband in the new house so i guess weblog updates wil be a bit irregular the coming period. [Jeroen Bekkers' Groove Weblog]
Hang on in there Jeroen!!
4:37:05 PM
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Good piece from Neil about what Mysterian is up to...
What we've done - we've built (IMHO) a really nice Groove tool called Radiology Manager. It allows a hospital at site A to use radiological expertise at site B. Its simple but effective. Here's what the key form looks like:
[Neil Finlayson's Radio Weblog]
3:04:54 PM
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The BBC ran a story recently about a particle that was so dense that it passed right through the earth in 1993. This reminded of the story on John Walker's website about the Oh-my-God particle.
Incidentally, for anyone in the software business, John's history of AutoCad makes great reading. I guess that in some ways, John was one of the world's first bloggers
1:30:27 PM
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Hurrah. Our new look web site has gone up. You can find it at Mysterian
Why is it that we can build websites if asked for others, yet when it comes to our own it seems to take forever? Am I alone in this thought? Cobbler's children I suppose.
1:21:30 PM
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I have an admission to make. Much as I think Groove is one of the best new applications out there, I do not like their '10 x better than e-mail' advertising tag. Why don't I like it? Because it is made up.
Who did the tests to say 10x? Why not 100x, 1000x 2x? For me, it can be all of these - depending on what I am trying to do. To say 10x better than e-mail puts Groove squarely up against e-mail. Whilst it certainly has a function against e-mail, I think that this misses a big part of their story.
Here's what I think. I think that Groove is doomed to success.
I think it is doomed to success because it represents a step forward in communication and anything that represents a step forward in communications is doomed to success. History tells us this. There are plenty of examples of new technologies that have had this status. Printing press, radio, books, telephone, fax, e-mail. Even telex is still used in certain circumstances. None of them completely replace what has gone before them and yet all represented a new way for humans to communicate easily and inexpensively. Because of this 'easily and less expensively' factor, they were all doomed to success.
To test this, we can even hold up new communications technologies that haven't taken off as some predicted. Video conferencing. Not easy, not inexpensive. Until these issues taken care of, video conferencing will continue to struggle for the mainstream.
So, should we all buy shares in Groove (if we could)? Well, I would personally, because I think that they are a well run company with an early lead. But, whilst I firmly believe that what Groove represents is doomed to success, history also tells us that it is noit always the inventor that reaps the rewards. So, Groove still have challenges ahead to win, but we can be sure that what they represent will succeed.
1:19:49 PM
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09 December 2002
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Had a great meeting last week with all the contributors to the MMAPPs European project that we are involved in. Some very bright people. More to follow in due course, but interesting views and hurdles we will need to clear if we are to succeed in bringing market rules to peer-to-peer.
7:43:44 PM
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Finally getting down to blogging ... been a long time coming
7:40:43 PM
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We continue to get a great response from our Radiology Manager Groove tool when we show it as a beta to selected folks. What can be frustrating though is that some of the practices in the NHS - especially when it comes to Internet access are just sooo stoopid.
7:40:00 PM
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©
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.
Forrest Duncan Weblog
2002-12-26
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Last update: 27/12/2002; 12:17:03.
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