Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

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Help Stamp Out Telephone Surveys
 
Global Social Identity
 
Friday Slap Your Head Day
 
Looking for "Ahah!" -- When Did You Get Programming?
 
California To Be Repaved
 
Instant Upgrades: A "That Changes Everything!" Moment
 
Open is Different than Stolen: The Importance of Social Trust in Honoring IP
 
What Was Y2K All About?
 
Wells Fargo Click-Through Thuggery
 
Stupid Is as Stupid Does: Me and NewsGator

Listening to ... UX

Listening to ... UX

I learned that UX is apparently 'softie speak for User Experience.  I figured I would try having this captured from Microsoft Media Player, just to be different.  How'd I do?

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Oh, there it is, down at the bottom. Well it is this video from Channel 9.  The "Now Playing:" insert is not a lot to write home about, and not much incentive to install the Media Player funpack on a graphics-limited laptop. I do recommend the videos that have been accumulating on Channel 9, though.

I see that the Post-to-Blogger Plugin for NewsGator does weird things like fabricate lots of HTML markup that is probably not what I want for accessibility of my site.  I'm leaving it unretouched just as a reminder to myself that something else is called for. The Plugin is passing through the default note format settings from Outlook, rather than avoiding markup and letting Blogger figure it out.  This is a common coherence problem, exascerbated by my not being able to see how it will appear in the blog when I am writing the post over in Outlook. And I don't want to set Post defaults in Outlook to optimize for Blogger when I have other uses for Posts.  The cool solution is to use a custom Outlook form in the NewsGator folders.  On that thought, I desist.  It looks like NewsGator plays nice in the Outlook object model, but I don't know if it goes so far as to use a different default form if I impressed one on the folder.  Desist, desist.

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posted by orcmid at 5/15/2004 10:05:43 PM

Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter

Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter ...

  I have no idea who sang that song, but I can hear it in my head as I type
this e-mail to the Orcmid's Lair Blog.  It has me remember Johny Ray singing
"Cry" and the original version of "Give me a kiss to build a dream on" that
was used in The Joker Is Wild, one of my dad's favorite films.

This is my second use of alternative posting methods for Orcmid's Lair.
Just a little break to fiddle about.  (Wild mental leap from Sinatra to The
Who.)

---

Well, because of the "//nopub" bug, I don't have to fear the posts from NewsGator and the ones via e-mail actually appearing in the blog until I review them in the Blogger Posting page and have them published. They look like they are published already, because the aren't marked as drafts, but that is all illusion.  OK, enough for burning down the house.  (All these musical allusions are because I was asked, while configuring the Blogger posting plug-in, whether I wanted to add an automatic "Listening to ..." line based on whatever Media Player 9 is playing at the time.  That is a rather limited case of listening, for me, since I have many more audio options here as I type.  And I usually am not listening to any music while I am at work on the computer -- I don't like to wear headphones and I don't want to disturb others in the household. And I'll probably do it anyhow (headphones + Media Player update) just to see Listening to ... work.

posted by orcmid at 5/15/2004 07:41:57 PM

The Trials of Posting #1

The Trials of Posting #1

I am very accustomed to posting using Blog It! (where I always post drafts) and using the Blogger Edit page where I promote drafts to published and sometimes make new creations.

This moment, I am using a Blogger posting plug-in in NewsGator.  I'm evaluating the prospects for this kind of posting.  It seems too much like sending myself an e-mail.  I don't have the context and sense of authoring that I have in other cases.  With Blog It! (the Java scriplet that fits into a My Links URL) I have the page that I am "clipping" and filing in my blog.  With the editor, I have the body of material I am working on, I have its preview, and I have the context of my existing current posts as well as any pages that I refer to while composing.

Here, I'm simply in Outlook and, as I said, I feel like I'm writing e-mail to myself.

It's time to see what this looks like and whether the operability of the plug-in has survived the great Blogger Reloaded upgrade.

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Well, that was interesting.  From now on I will ask to post drafts and see if that avoids sending crude draft out on my feed.  There are also some style matters to deal with, and formatting to anticipate.  This was a successful experiment, but it is a risk-ladden arrangement. Next! Confirming that I can e-mail to my Blogger blog.

posted by orcmid at 5/15/2004 07:25:20 PM

Uh, so what is Affordance for a wiki?

Uh, so what is Affordance for a wiki?

CommunityWiki: WhatIsAffordance.  There is a page on WikiAffordance that was on the edge of going the route of WikiPostModernism.  Here, Lion Kimbro has made a new topic that looks a little more at what is meant by Affordance and also provides good linking.

posted by orcmid at 5/15/2004 02:45:17 PM

Following a Conversation: Turn-Based vs. Interrupted Threads

Following a Conversation: Turn-Based vs. Interrupted Threads

CommunityWiki: TurnBasedVsInterruptedThreadMode.  Here is a great discussion on how turn-taking or other threading of discussion takes place using Wiki pages.  I am very interested about this, for myself, because I want to look at the Wiki-Blog-whatnot convergence through common small things, and also see the different ways I can operate nfoWiki as a form of creation of a reference work.  The wikipedia experience figures in here, for me.  Great material and also some great links.  (How one groks the connectivity structure -- site map -- of a wiki is another matter, and also how one might regulate the graph ... hmmm.)

posted by orcmid at 5/15/2004 02:43:04 PM

If You Build It, Why Will They Come?

If You Build It, Why Will They Come?

CommunityWiki: IfYouBuildItTheyWillCome.  There is some question about what has a wiki attract participants.  One could say the same thing about what has people read and comment on one web log and not another.

I notice that I am not so disturbed to see different blogs that cover the same material.  There is association with different voices and participants in whatever the communal conversation is.  I don't even worry about redundancy, and working through feeds it is easy to discard repetitive simple references to the same thing by different bloggers.

At the same time, the appearance of wikis with overlapping subject matter is frustrating, because a wiki is not something that one gets to follow.  Wikis work differently than logs/journals and hyperdocuments.  Notification of changes and new pages has to work differently too.  I don't know how a feed could work better, but just using the summary line about a change to a wiki page is not enough as a syndication item.

posted by orcmid at 5/14/2004 07:37:39 PM

CommunityWiki: WikiAffordances

Wiki Affordances

CommunityWiki: WikiAffordances.  Here's interesting reference to work by Gibson and also Don Norman on affordances of objects/artifacts.  Some subtle affordances of this particular wiki, and some comparative discussions add to the discussion, which is just getting started.

For me, this marker holds the questions: what are the affordances I have in mind for nfoWiki? and what is a way to specify them as -ility requirements?

posted by orcmid at 5/14/2004 07:29:28 PM

Federating Wikis and Overlays

Federating Wikis and Overlays

CommunityWiki: SubsetWiki.  This is an interesting discussion about federation of wikis and how that works when there are different authentications, authorizations, and whatnot of various communities that have different uses for particular layers/overlays/subsets.  I think it gets weirder because the subsets are graphs, and the same node (or different flavors of the same node) might appear in multiple graphs.  So, if the nodes have the same wikiLabels, and different visible content, it gets very tricky.  I am not at all sure of the conceptual model that will work for people.

posted by orcmid at 5/14/2004 07:23:51 PM

Blogger Reloaded: Game Expired!

Blogger Reloaded: Game Expired!

Blogger: 404 - Page not found.  I just spent a lot of work on a created post, using the Blogger interface.  I had links, I had previewed, reviewed, and done everything but spell-checked this handy note about an user experience.  When I clicked "Publish," I landed on a terrifying "your session has expired" window.  Gulp!  But it looks like all I have to do is log-on and it will take me back where I was (whew).  So I do that, and my reward is a nicely-formatted "404 - Page not found". That tears it. A solid half-hour's work completely down the drain.  Now I am really resolved about Blogger Reloaded and its metaphor shear.

I won't be able to recreate that great note while I am feeling so outraged and abused.  I need to go scream, roll-around on the floor, say awful things about every employee of Google, calm down, forgive them, and then create a blogging experience that works.

---

Well, I was able to work my way out of it and restart the publishing of my thought-lost-forever Hamiltonian prose.  So I am calmer.  This is indeed just one more demonstration of how the web interface doth not a desktop usability experience make.  The metaphor shear, when it bites you, is sudden and painful.  I would not doubt that the .NET guys are all over this one, especially with click-once installs and smart applications.  (I think this could set a high bar for the Java model that may be unreachable because of Java Nationalism and clinging to the incoherent illusion that there is only one platform and it is Java, not once and everywhere at all.)  Meanwhile, I will need to check it out and see if my remedy could use Mono as an appropriate toolcraft.

Geek note: How'd I get out of the twisty little maze of lost pages and save my precious blog-entry creation?  Glad you asked.  From the 404 message, I used the Back Arrow. That showed me the logon invitation again.  Another Back Arrow got me to a "this page has expired" presentation from Internet Explorer.  Great!!  I carefully clicked "Refresh" and realized that I hadn't crossed my fingers and put on one green sock.  Just the same, I got the request for permission to repost because that was the only way to accomplish the refresh.  I clicked the appropriate response and 'lo! I was at the publish page that tells me my page is being published and it might take a while if I have a large blog.  It showed 0% progress a few times, long enough for me to become anxious wondering if it would be stuck there as happens when Blogger is really busy.  Then it flashed-up 100% and by golly my page was there, even with a correct permalink.  This is a wonderful demonstration of coherence (Not!) so naturally we might want to do some soul-searching about just what that user-experience is that is being designed here.  This reminds me of something that Jerry Brearton would remind me of when we were compatriots in San Jose: If you want to know what your intentions are, look at your results.  Free advice to the folk at Google, assuming they care enough to build something that lasts beyond the Silicon Valley model where the IPO is the end and not the means.

PS: Speaking of metaphor sheer, while looking at the preview of these deathless words, I clicked the "Back" arrow instead of the "close preview" link.  In this case, IE or somebody saved my butt by putting up a dialog box asking me if I really wanted to abandon the entries I had made.  It's just that I won't have that protection when I use Start | Run ... or a shortcut to ask for a web page.  (If this babbling makes no sense, ignore it.  I am talking about a metaphor shear in having a web page unsuccessfully pretend to be a desktop application, that's all.)

PPS: Is it just me or are there really two copies of my thought-to-be-lost post on the recent-entries page even though there is only one authoritative copy here?  No, here's another authoritative copy.  I am not going to explain why the time stamps are so far apart, but it does tell me how long I actually spent on that note, and also how it is later than I think and I better accomplish something else today.  It looks like one could defeat the Blogger name-inventing procedure for creating unique human-readable names for authoritative-post URLs.  I won't try that.  Something to deal with in any Blog authoring tool that invents human-readable long names though.  I think accession numbers of some sort could be blended-in for better results.

posted by orcmid at 5/14/2004 12:17:46 PM

Blogger Reloaded: Whose Blog Is It?

This note is inspired by the high barrier that anderbill had to overcome to be able to comment on one of my posts. [Editorial disclosure: I was left so honored by what Bill said to me in an e-mail that I invited him to post it.  I am even more honored that he went through the pain of doing that.]

It may be that Bill's experience is a breakdown in the user interface for first-time commenters, I can't be sure yet.  This blog entry is where I will check that out.  Meanwhile, I do suspect that we are seeing a case of agenda shear (my term for it, coined just now), something that I have been attentive to since reading great examples in Bruce Schneier's Beyond Fear.  The agenda shear that I sense here is also related to who thinks they own my blog (whether or not justified by it being provided as a free service).  The scrutiny is further merited by virtue of the recent bravado around Blogger Reloaded being the result of an user-experience-centric design effort.  Looked at another (more-cynical) way, it could simply be encouraging sign-ups without concern for churn and retention.  I can easily imagine the meeting around a conference table when it was said that authoring and comment simplicity can be handled later, first we need the registrations.

That's enough for this note, but I do want to suggest the dimensions of the analysis:
1. Whether it is possible to (find out how to) comment easily, in which case I will feel like the guy who spent $5,000 to cure his halitosis only to learn no one liked him anyhow, or if the unspoken Blogger agenda is to induce people to register for Blogger sites, and make that effortless at all other costs.
2. Whether I can keep blogger from possessing my blog forever. I am nearing my 2,600th post, and it seems that I can't stop them from archiving all of it on their server even when I want it frozen.  My concern is that a misadventure could lead to my entire blog being corrupted on the server where I host it, since Blogger has write-access to the entire orcmid/blog directory.

I am struggling to not edit blog items (partly because my feed sends complete entries, in response to complaints about summarized feeds) and because it is apparently considered bad manners (a topic to be explored further elsewhere).  So this is one that I will expand, if at all, by self-commenting and more attention to cross-linking.

See Also:

Reprise: Standing in the User's World
12 Laws of Customer Loyalty
Standing in the User's World ... And Not
Great Blogger Redesign
Blog Me Context
The Search for Appropriate Tools

posted by orcmid at 5/14/2004 12:07:18 PM

Blogger Reloaded: Whose Blog Is It?

Blogger Reloaded: Whose Blog Is It?

This note is inspired by the high barrier that anderbill had to overcome to be able to comment on one of my posts. [Editorial disclosure: I was left so honored by what Bill said to me in an e-mail that I invited him to post it.  I am even more honored that he went through the pain of doing that.]

It may be that Bill's experience is a breakdown in the user interface for first-time commenters, I can't be sure yet.  This blog entry is where I will check that out.  Meanwhile, I do suspect that we are seeing a case of agenda shear (my term for it, coined just now), something that I have been attentive to since reading great examples in Bruce Schneier's Beyond Fear.  The agenda shear that I sense here is also related to who thinks they own my blog (whether or not justified by it being provided as a free service).  The scrutiny is further merited by virtue of the recent bravado around Blogger Reloaded being the result of an user-experience-centric design effort.  Looked at another (more-cynical) way, it could simply be encouraging sign-ups without concern for churn and retention.  I can easily imagine the meeting around a conference table when it was said that authoring and comment simplicity can be handled later, first we need the registrations.

That's enough for this note, but I do want to suggest the dimensions of the analysis:
1. Whether it is possible to (find out how to) comment easily, in which case I will feel like the guy who spent $5,000 to cure his halitosis only to learn no one liked him anyhow, or if the unspoken Blogger agenda is to induce people to register for Blogger sites, and make that effortless at all other costs.
2. Whether I can keep blogger from possessing my blog forever. I am nearing my 2,600th post, and it seems that I can't stop them from archiving all of it on their server even when I want it frozen.  My concern is that a misadventure could lead to my entire blog being corrupted on the server where I host it, since Blogger has write-access to the entire orcmid/blog directory.

I am struggling to not edit blog items (partly because my feed sends complete entries, in response to complaints about summarized feeds) and because it is apparently considered bad manners (a topic to be explored further elsewhere).  So this is one that I will expand, if at all, by self-commenting and more attention to cross-linking.

See Also:

Reprise: Standing in the User's World
12 Laws of Customer Loyalty
Standing in the User's World ... And Not
Great Blogger Redesign
Blog Me Context
The Search for Appropriate Tools

posted by orcmid at 5/14/2004 10:42:56 AM

Don Park: Linking Blogs and Wikis

Linking Blogs and Wikis

Don Park's Daily Habit - Friday, August 29, 2003.  Exactly. A great cascading, mingling torrent.

posted by orcmid at 5/13/2004 11:08:10 PM

$14 Steadycam

$14 Steadycam

$14 Steadycam.  Via Knowing.NET, a demonstration of simple mechanical/dynamic solutions to complex dynamic problems acted out in the real world.  The article is detailed and illustrated in perfect how-to fashion, and then trial results are provided.  If you use a video camera, this is an experiment that you can confirm and then calibrate in terms of the results you obtain.

I blogged this for what it shows about physical activities and products as well as simple engineering.  There are some software installation, configuration, and usage cases that might be so simple.  What are they? Is this an activity that it is worth having an AI do?  How do we do that?

posted by orcmid at 5/13/2004 08:11:07 PM

Blogger: Metaphor Shear It!

Blogger: Metaphor Shear It!

Well, well.  It is time to organize all of my notes about what works in blog applications, what doesn't work, and how to re-express blog and wiki as common little things loosely connected.  It is all here, it seems to me.

I will do that by creating some project pages here in Orcmid's Lair as a sidecar to the blog but not cluttering these entries.  It would be nice if I could use similar tools to post and notate there as well.  This becomes what I call a bootspiralling exercise - building tools in such a way that by the time I tear down the scaffolding it looks like it was always that way -- and can be replicated easily the next time.

How'd I get to this point?

I just realized that the Blog It! scriplet doesn't work, and it doesn't work to use the browser as an editing and maintenance shell.  Once too often, while composing or editing a note, I have reached over and clicked a web shortcut or followed a link in another open web page. I immediately lost my work because the new page took over my Blogger-editing browser window.  There is either no way back (because the Blog It! page customizes the browser and removes all of those controls) or I can go back but all of my work is gone. (Some forms pages will restore content when backed into, but Blogger's don't.)

So I have to manage my attention in an odd and laborious way, because Blog It! and my Blogger page look like desktop applications but they aren't; they are web pages and it is easy to navigate out of them without thinking.  The same thing happens with MSN Radio Plus, which runs in a little browser window, and I can't bring up my browser without losing the radio.  But Media Player doesn't do that, and I can run media player collapsed on my task bar, out of the way.  Because of this limitation, I end up listening to MSN Radio Plus on a nearby computer or simply surrendering to running RealPlayer10 on my task bar while I browse and do other things. 

For the same metaphor shear, the same solution: - use a desktop application that doesn't compete for browser attention and persists in the midst of all other activities, including those involving other instances of itself.

After that I can repurpose the components that support that to assist in other activities, such as local editing of my once and future nfoWiki and integration with other text-create-edit-post-document applications.  I want a simple, clear conceptual model that provides what I think it should, and does better at WYSIWYG while doing it.  The desktop is the answer. Son-of-a-gun.

That's what I have in mind.  After figuring out what the essentials are and choosing an experimental approach, I will be left with the usual killer development question: How far can I get with this in the six weeks that now remain until my next on-line M.Sc class starts?

posted by orcmid at 5/13/2004 03:44:35 PM

Jeffersonian Karma

Jeffersonian Karma

And the Various Journeys Continue . . .: Two Quotes . . ..  I am this morning exploring the introduction of Thomas Brinson that Melanie McBride sowed over the blogosphere, like faerie dust twinkling in the morning dew.

I am moved by and grateful for this Jeffersonian passage:

"Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever."

After eight full days of serenity and rich conversation on Kaua'i recently, it struck me that life is a self-correcting process.  It doesn't need me to fix it.  Life wins, and human excesses are self-remedying as well as self-fulfilling.  Justice is at hand, always.  Having relieved myself of a world that can't do it without me, I am left with the unending question: Who am I and what is my life for? Right now.

posted by orcmid at 5/13/2004 08:02:36 AM

Sometimes You Just Get Lucky

Sometimes You Just Get Lucky

ongoing • 3 Views of Mount Fuji.  Thanks Tim.  Hide Hasagawa took Vicki and I to Kamakura when I put together a free-lance gig and took Vicki for her first visit to Japan in 2002.  It was memorable, especially her personal pilgrimage to Soji Hamada's site in Moshiko.  I know she'll gasp when she looks through your photos.

posted by orcmid at 5/12/2004 11:38:27 PM

Politics By Any Other Name

Politics By Any Other Name ...

XML.com: Politics By Any Other Name [May. 12, 2004].  Superb!  Finally, someone who deals straight-out about how everything around cooperative activity (including claims that such-and-such is "political") is political.  In the world where we are economical and social actors, politics is the name of the game.  It is indeed the art of the possible, when engaged in its highest form.

This Kendall Grant Cark article is about technical arrangements, committees, "standards" as a way to legitimize or impugn whatever it is that isn't "standard" for you, and so on.  Although it is about the development of specifications for XML technologies and applications, the sense in which politics is the glue for the success of the arrangements can be discerned without recognizing the alphabet soup, or the technical subject matter.

This article also shows that there are a large number of observant people who can add the perspective of direct experience.  This completely reflects my standards-organization and standards-development work spread over 40 years.  (Ouch, I just did the math.)  I would add that, in the United States, we always had, in ANSI, a non-governmental organization, and standards compliance has always been voluntary.  The creation of mandatory compliance came from other bodies who adopted ANSI (and other) standards by reference in their regulations.

Kendall also points out the Achilles heel of the standards bodies that depend on the sale of the specifications for revenue.  This makes ISO irrelevant, especially in information technology where practitioners rarely see an honest-to-god specification.  ANSI's model is slightly more ductile. ANSI does sell specifications in electronic form, and they tend to be more affordable.

I think the IETF approach is a benchmark for accessibility, open-ness of the process, and transparency to consideration of public interest, and their definition of what makes a standard a standard (and also what makes a good specification of a proposed standard) are superb.  And it does not take long to discern that the process is also a political one.

posted by orcmid at 5/12/2004 07:07:47 PM

Time-Honored Practices of Typographic Excellence. Oh, Sure.

Time-Honored Practices of Typographic Excellence.  Oh, Sure.

XML.com: SVG and Typography: Characters [May. 12, 2004].  The idea of "time-honored" translated to typography in conjunction with SVG caught my eye.  Well, I'm not so sure.  For one thing, there doesn't seem to be much about typography here, it is about bad practices for conveying textual information.  I can't believe, simply can't believe that this article deprecates the use of character entities in favor of numeric character references, and then thinks that using the bloody numbers is going to somehow work around a character-set-encoding problem.  So, the obvious question is, if SVG is used within XHTML, how does this story play out (and how could Adobe have let such a weird implementation pitfall pass through their hands into an SVG viewer).  So, even recent time-honored principles, those that accompany the PostScript specification, are not time-honored in SVG "typography."

Ick.

posted by orcmid at 5/12/2004 06:28:15 PM

XML.com: Document-Centric Interface Contracts?

Document-Centric Interface Contracts?  What??

XML.com: Document-Centric .NET [May. 12, 2004]  I wanted to pass over this feed topic, but "document-centric" caught me.  Taking a look, I was caught by Eric Gropp's opening comment:

The principle "program to an interface, not an implementation" helps control the complexity and enhance the flexibility of systems. XML interfaces are a natural extension of this principle that bring a number of new benefits in terms of flexibility, reusability, simplified code, and readiness for enterprise environments.

The first lesson for me is that I must review my own breathless prose for meaningless sweeping claims.

Here the puzzle for me is how XML interfaces extend that principle, especially considering the nuts-and-bolts level that we immediately dive into.  OK, I do that too.  Still, I think there are too many things jumbled in here, and there is lots of implementation of something-or-other.

So, have we traded getting lost in one set of bits and inessentials (implementations) for the same trap in new cloths?  Why is it that this simple example doesn't come across as simply-understandable as a demonstration of the power of interface agreements?  It may be a tacit-knowledge trap where I lack the tacit knowledge of the intended audience. If so, that needs to be understood better, at least.  To be filed in my mysteries-of-toolcraft folder.

posted by orcmid at 5/12/2004 06:15:59 PM

Informational Properties of Infosets: Abstracted Over, Under, or Easy Side Up?

Informational Properties of Infosets: Abstracted Over, Under, or Easy Side Up?

Mark Nottingham: Informational Properties of Infosets.  Mark begins a discussion of the XML Infoset and engages in the interesting question of how much the model influences what people are able to express and how they express it.  The beginning thoughts of an inquiry that Mark wants to carry forward, this essay provides useful illustrations of the different ways that Web applications are specified above the Infoset as a way of being abstracted out of the XML representation, sort-of.  There's a particular tension, especially with coordinated use of different specifications, and Mark wants to come to grips with that.

posted by orcmid at 5/12/2004 05:58:33 PM

Peter Coffee: Top-to-Bottom Protocol May Pave Way to Security, How?

Top-to-Bottom Protocol May Pave Way to Security, How?

Top-to-Bottom Protocol May Pave Way to Security.  Well, here's something that I also find intriguing, the lead statement that "Web services at every level could shorten lists of analogous problems requiring separate solutions."

I can buy that.  I am not so sure that security is the outcome, but this would seem to be why SOA and component-oriented integration is thought to be so promising.

And Coffee stresses something else: transparency and disclosure of what systems "do and how they do it, and the means by which I can tell them not to do those things that I don't like." Peter favors the Web Services model, around interface contracts if you like, as a common language for coordinated operation and some consistent visibility that might afford uniform configuration and control.  That's my impression, and I can see how it responds to one of my favorite questions: "Who's computer is it?"

I don't think that employing this sort of framework and plumbing guarantees the result that Peter envisions, but it certainly could sort out as people narrow in on component-approaches that serve his concerns for transparency and sovereignty.

The article is also inspired by John Shewchuk's view of communications infrastructure, and that is worth exploring deeper.  This answers the security tie-in: Shewchuk discusses the Indigo technologies for secure, reliable, transacted messaging ("based on" the Web services architecture).  That's the security that is the focus here.  We need to drag in Michael Howard's new pet question: "Against What Threats?"

posted by orcmid at 5/12/2004 05:30:24 PM

Peter Coffee: Richer Platforms Demand Developer Discipline, How?

Richer Platforms Demand Developer Discipline, How?

Richer Platforms Demand Developer Discipline.  Well, I love the lead: "When it comes to designing the next-generation computing experience, developers must strive to keep things simple."  I managed to cite this earlier, but I am now having to struggle with exactly how this is envisioned.  I think it comes down to "don't make me set the clock on the VCR."  Isn't there more to it?  I want more substance behind this pitch.

posted by orcmid at 5/12/2004 05:15:50 PM

In the Ease-of-Use Wars, Visual Basic is the Benchmark

In the Ease of Use Wars, Visual Basic is the Benchmark

Rational Extends WebSphere Tool Lines.  Well, I am looking through a number of articles that talk about how enterprise development is being made simpler, and that Java-focused application development tools are being extended for ease-of-use.  Ahem, and the benchmark is (tearing open the envelope): Microsoft Visual Studio and Visual Basic.

OK, so now there's a calibration on what may be meant by keeping things simple.  I need to think about this.  Maybe tomorrow.

posted by orcmid at 5/12/2004 05:09:45 PM

I want Mono for KISSing

I want Mono for KISSing

Heh, heh, try that on your precise, unambiguous Semantic Web, pard

Mono Development Platform Moves into Beta.  Picking up on an older item as I add a news feed to my subscriptions, I am reminded that I am fascinated about Mono.  I don't have any sensibility about Novell now supporting the effort as part of its Ximian acquisition, but I can see that there is serious momentum.  I don't even have too much concern about C# 2.0 being developed at Microsoft while Mono is targeted against the current ECMA Specifications for the CLR and C# and other standards-based goodies.

What is it that intrigues me?  I think it is the ability to travel, and travel light.  While Visual Studio, Eclipse, Sun One, and other GUI-based, graphically-oriented development platforms are climbing into the bloatsphere, there is a chance to maintain some simplicity without having to buy into someone else's idea of hiding complexity.  I think it is something Peter Coffee is saying about developer discipline.  Not only must developers strive to keep things simple in providing a computing experience, the developer's platform or framework should reflect the same perspective.

I still don't know that I've captured my visceral affinity for Mono.  I may also find that it is misplaced.  This may be the real concern: I think the way we build up components in current Object-Oriented Technologies (C++, Java, C#, etc.) is too messy.  I think that the intensification of design- and coding-time layering to somehow hiding the mess is a heavyweight solution that leaves way too much swept under the rug.  I am not certain this trip is necessary.  Granted that this has to do with my comfort level around managing (that is, isolating and limiting) complexity, I want to get to a lightweight place where I can see how the framework works and also see how to master the overall delivery process without overlays that obscure the integrity of the delivery of a confirmed configurable element (e.g., an installable program or a reusable component).

I get to work this out in the coming months with some toolcraft projects I have in mind.  Meanwhile, you can calibrate my perspective by my telling you that when I finally dug into Java this time last year, I used just the J2SE SDK, with 4NT and jEdit as my "development platform." And I am still puzzling out how to work the package metaphor from initial experimental trials all the way to delivered code with JavaDocs.  I will happily work through the same with Mono.

posted by orcmid at 5/12/2004 05:01:43 PM

WinFS and Where the Metadata Comes From

WinFS and Where the Metadata Comes From

Channel9: Sam Druker on WinFS and MetaData Sources.  If we go to attributed file systems in a big way, bluring the distinction between store and database, where will the metadata elements come from?  This video interview provides some useful practical observation about that in terms of the WinFS effort at Microsoft.  The capturing of contextual information and already-available metadata is key.  There is also some early discussion of how one might want to locate and situate items based on important views.  I also found the discussion of transfer formats for moving an item from one WinFS instance to another rather interesting, and a number of questions come easily to mind on that score, with "Namespace?" high up on that list.

Geek Tip of the Day: These videos are designed for embedded-in-the-page viewing using Microsoft Media Player.  For those who can't or don't want to do that, but can handle the file streams, subscribe to or open the RSS feed from the page, and pick the URL out of the feed.  Of course, if you're a geek, you already knew that, dintcha?

posted by orcmid at 5/12/2004 04:31:18 PM

Yahoo! News - Software Makes It Easy to Begin Blogging

Blogger Makes It Easier to Begin, Then ... ?

Yahoo! News - Software Makes It Easy to Begin Blogging.  This is an interesting appraisal of Blogger and TypePad.  I have to say that its appraisal of Blogger is close to my own, especially with the geekiness of HTML and related techie mysteries that have to be mastered, such as dealing with the markup that is inserted into edit windows for what are ordinarily WYSIWYG functions.  I don't mind that, but I think it will be daunting to the new clientele that Blogger is entreating to cross its redesigned sign-up facade.  This fits the writer's observation that Blogger is a nice way to get started, although it doesn't satisfy the hunger for more.

posted by orcmid at 5/12/2004 03:52:32 PM

Lee Iverson: HCI and CS Progress

On HCI and CS Progress

Lee Iverson: HCI and CS Progress.  Lee starts with questions raised in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and notices that there doesn't seem to be much forward progress in Computer Science (CS) either.  It seems to me that the question is around having an applicable body of knowledge, with scientifically-confirmed foundation, that can be used in the engineering of practical processes and artifacts.  Lee laments what he sees as a scarcity of theory development and refinement.  That may be so.

I think the greatest problem is that CS is not recognized (within CS) as an empirical science, and this leads to a strong disconnect with the needs for software engineering and the creation of engineered artifacts, including computer programs.

So I can align with the inquiry that Lee proposes: What new kinds of theories are needed?  What is the connection to software engineering practice?  What would an experimental computer scientist be doing?  An experimental software-engineering researcher?  I'd say that one barrier to progress is the presumption that the proper theoretical framework for software engineering is to be found in formal mathematics.

posted by orcmid at 5/12/2004 01:05:38 PM

Orcmid: Standing in the User's World ... And Not

Reprise: Standing in the Users World ... And Not

Orcmid: Standing in the User's World ... And Not.  Rather than feeding out updates of the same May 10 lament, I will bracket that monolog with this close-out entry.

So, Blogger Reloaded is challenging, especially with the sudden change in document-organization model, and I have managed to wrestle it into submission.  The posts prior to 2004-05-02 are the same they always were and I am not going to touch them with Blogger any more.  Ever.  Starting with May 2, the posts are following the new organization.

I am still learning how to organize entries so that they and their comments fit together into some sort of cohesive body of material.  The chasm from 3-by-5 card blogclippings to organized writing and presentation has not been crossed; now there's room to experiment and see how to add more sanity.

I organized my normalization of the Blog on the web site rather than in the blog. That worked better than to use the blog as a place to think things through, and I will continue to use that approach.  For starters, I used a simple job jar and diary technique that I have come to love.  And I have enough scaffolding to keep this material surrounded.  I'm even maintaining my template files in FrontPage and, as for all of my web site material, I'm using VSS integration with IIS and FrontPage extensions for configuration management.  That's not always evident because the files posted from Blogger don't show their checked-in identity, although they are all checked-in on a regular basis.

I'm satisfied for now.

posted by orcmid at 5/11/2004 09:53:49 PM

Brutal Conduct: It's Not About Keeping Score

Brutal Conduct: It's Not About Keeping Score

Jon Udell: The whole picture.  In a blog entry today, InfoWorld's John Udell uses a statement of Senator James Inhope arguing for parity in the depiction of abuses and brutality.  For every picture of an unacceptable action by coalition forces and civilians, Inhope wants to see a (balancing?) depiction of Iraqi brutality.

Jon wants to address the notion of authorized dissemination, balanced or otherwise, so what I am about to say is not counter to anything Jon has espoused.  It is what I want to address in Senator Inhope's statement.

In concern for our conduct in Iraq, it is important to avoid distraction by some sort of tit-for-tat, our deeds are no worse than theirs sort of justification.  Those folks who despise what they call moral relativism and situation ethics should listen up: This is not about some score sheet by which we can claim fewer faults.

We are on the hook to be accountable for how we treat others independent of the actions of those who oppose us, our ideas, and our presence.  We are accountable for the most precious reason of all: It is about who we say we are and what we stand for in the world.  Others may not see us that way, or subscribe to our approach and principles.  But we have said that we stand for something else.  We do say that.  It is now up to us to deliver, not when it is easy, now when it is terribly difficult and threatening.  We are not perfect, and how we deal with our mistakes and errors and serious failures is the genuine test of the truth of our convictions and our claims to principled conduct and integrity. 

The only question is, are we being true to ourselves? If not, what actions will we take to restore it?

posted by orcmid at 5/11/2004 07:25:09 PM

12 Laws of Customer Loyalty

12 Laws of Customer Loyalty

12 Laws of Customer Loyalty.  This Jill Griffin article was spotted by Fast Company, with some additional commentary of interest.  These laws are pretty straightforward, even though I have a slight ick response to "customer loyalty."  But I don't see anything here that I couldn't restate without the ick to satisfy my own preference for being loyal to ones customers.  The laws would not change so much, but the stand for the customer is more clear.  Then customer loyalty (I want a better expression) would become a measure of how well one is serving the customer.

I think I should look up loyalty in the dictionary, too.  Maybe what I want to see is Relationship Excellence or something.  No, I'm reaching.  But I really like the ick test and the way the ick factor conversation gives us permission to directly declare where something lands off-kilter with us.  More research, later.

posted by orcmid at 5/11/2004 12:20:55 PM

Fast Company: The Brand Called PhD

The Brand Called PhD

Fast Company Now.  I looked at the very old (1997?) article on The Brand Called You.  It feels icky.  On the other hand, I am making a senior-years course-correction in my life's work and moving toward scholarship and teaching.  So I will look at this some more and ponder whether there is useful advice in making my own voice stand out clearly and recognizably.  Then there will be the small matter of becoming presentable in academic circles, a place that seems rather foreign to me.

I still don't like the branding idea (ick), and I have this great identifier that already serves as a brand if I focus around it.  Meanwhile, the current Peters article is behind a subscription service and I am not so curious that I am willing to take that leap.  I'll stick with the old one.

posted by orcmid at 5/11/2004 12:10:07 PM

Channel9: transparency one post at a time

Yup ... we gots bugs ... we gots things to do better. [updated 2004-05-11-18:38]  Channel 9 is an interesting and sometimes overwhelming experiment.  And I would say it is working.  When I saw this original post, I asked how to turn in bug reports (not seeing that a deep message provided the answer already).  I recorded some initial findings about my experience as part of my question, and then I used the designated place for further feedback.  That was a month ago, and I had since gone on to other things.  I wasn't expecting a response, I just wanted to toss some concerns into the Microsoft MSDN Channel 9 space.

Thanks to the wonders of site feeds, I learned that there was a response to one of my kvetchings over on Channel 9.  I thought that they were telling me what already didn't work, but I tried again and Charlie's advice was bang on.  What a relief.

There is this semi-permeable membrane now available, and osmosis is happening.  It is a grand experiment, and it provides different levels of contact and attention at a minion-to-minion level.

It is also good that many of the folks here are experienced evangelists, because people spit on them.  And it doesn't seem to deter their commitment to keeping the kimono open and to continue establishing bridges to developer and user communities by remaining level-headed and focused on what they see as important.  Whether or not the products are for you, and whether or not you are uncomfortable (or outright hostile) over Microsoft business models and practices, it is nice to see people who are committed to producing great software and who demonstrate great respect for the work that is done in the industry at large.  I had been concerned for some time that the fortress mentality that Microsoft seemed driven to would have them be increasingly isolated, hardened and defensive. I see that the willingness of 'softies to stand up in public has not been diminished.

With my struggles over Blogger since yesterday, and my efforts in the past to let Blogger know they had an authentication bug and security breach, there is an amazing contrast against the move toward transparency that Channel9 represents.  (And I still don't like the butterscotch scheme and some of the incoherence of Channel9, but I don't have to like it.)

posted by orcmid at 5/11/2004 11:03:33 AM

Praxis101Wiki

Praxis101Wiki.  Wowza, anderbill has a wiki up and running (and I have suppressed the link, because it is a private deal).  It is an UseMod Wiki, for now, serving as a laboratory for anderbill and orcmid co-authoring on topics that are dear to our hearts.

I am starting out by making myself an user and then learning how to use the editor password.  I make several attempts at avoiding CamelCase and then gave up, using OrcmidArrives as my first-created page.  This is getting exciting.

posted by orcmid at 5/10/2004 02:20:03 PM

reusability.org

reusability.org.  Ah, here is a very interesting if a mildly icky site on aspects of the teacher bandwidth (ick) problem.  A redeeming virtue is that resort to non-teacher-centric approaches is considered.  There is more here for exploration and discussion.  After a little work I find that this site is created by David Wiley (and that took something!).  There's other tacit knowledge assumed in the site content too, and it stands out because it is not my tacit knowledge from the world of computer geekdom.  This is educator geek-speak.

posted by orcmid at 5/10/2004 01:34:37 PM

autounfocus: IMS/SSP Comes So Close...

autounfocus: IMS/SSP Comes So Close....  Here's discussion of how SCORM does not provide a back door for introduction of annotation, commentary, and other interactions from, between and among learners and delivery agents.  There is more to find out about this.

posted by orcmid at 5/10/2004 01:25:02 PM

Collaborative Learning Environments

Collaborative Learning Environments.  This is interesting on two counts.  SCORM (described in the article) is a way to preserve content across eLearning systems.  There is now an interest in making it more collaborative by providing for learner annotations and interactions.

posted by orcmid at 5/10/2004 01:21:31 PM

Stopdesign | The New Blogger

Computing Milieux

Cooperative, Collaborative, and Social Software

Standing in the Users World ... And Not

There are titles here again because posts go to their own files, and headings and such are sometimes worthwhile.  This particular running monolog continues unfettered ...

Stopdesign | The New Blogger.  I found out about "The New Blogger" by selecting Blog This! yesterday and having an unexpected experience.  I am having that experience now, too.  I can't post any longer, I must save as Draft or Publish.  And if I go to the Edit Posts via the button that is provided when I do save this draft, I will see something completely unrecognizable and a bit unpleasant.  So it is interesting to read here how much effort was invested and what is thought to be cool.  I want to know how this team arrived at what constituted an improvement, and for whom?

[later 2004-05-10-15:31 -0700] This is starting to piss me off.  I discover that the prohibition of <br> and apparent failure to break paragraphs in comment previews is a preview bug: the double-space does cause a paragraph break, but a <br> and an indented paragraph would give more cohesion to the comment.  There's a bigger surprise.  Blogger now saves independent pages for each blog entry as well as providing the lair.asp recent-blogs page and the archive pages that have always been produced.  The new individual pages are inside of a subdirectory structure that I was given no choice about.  In addition, that breaks the relative links that I have in my template to (1) the atom feed icon, (2) other intra-site icons and targets (such as the Hard Hat Area), and (3) to the archive index.  The archive pages, built off of the archive index, have their permalinks to the independent pages, and comments have their own permalinks to fragments of those independent pages.  Now I have to figure out how to get some coherence in this structure.  I wonder if there is no way to get there from here!  Grumble, grumble, grumble.

[later still 2004-05-10-22:44]  I am just wrapping up the manual refreshing of every post in the current blog page (back to 2004-05-03) so that the permalinks are correct in the Atom feed and on the page itself.  I don't know about all recent archive pages yet.  I will probably have to refresh all other posts for the archive having 2004-05-03 in it also.

[still later 2004-05-10-22:49]  I even refreshed the posts that were properly permalinked in the new folder structure, because the page template had to be corrected and reapplied to properly make links to images, buttons, and other parts of the site regardless of the level of folder nesting at which the template is used.  I am not going to make any more repairs tonight, because I am fatigued and may make too many mistakes. Instead, I will backup my work to my development image of Orcmid's lair and see what else to do in the morning.

[day later 2004-05-11-10:16 -0700]  Jeffrey Veen posted an article on how Working with Blogger is Fun, and I left some rude words last night and this morning while waiting for Blogger to quiet down and let me in to edit more material.  There are interesting problems when interaction design does not account for the entire user experience, not just the part directly-attributable to the facade.  (For one thing, it reveals that the facade is just that.)  There are also matters of conceptual models, failure modes, and what happens when the user stumbles into an incoherency crevice.  The breakdown here is that interaction design was applied to achieve an user experience, and that seemed to have dealt with the psychodynamics of rounded corners on logos, but not the experience of actually driving the car in traffic.  Jeff is probably not the guy to talk to about this, though I think his perspective (and Alan Cooper's) would be valuable for discussion.  Nevertheless, people are linking to Jeff's blog as if it is that of the designer and the architect.  He should not be too surprised that his possibly-premature self-congratulation and exuberance over work on the Blogger redesign may have his team be tarred by the same brush as those anonymous technical guys who seem to have missed key aspects about risk management, disruptive wholesale change, and annoying oversights in the plumbing.  Jeff has a case study on the Blogger project and it will be interesting for a little forensic analysis here.  One thing that sticks in my craw is the clear imperative of being standards based and then offering an apologia around how the current template pages do not produce valid HTML.  This makes no sense at all, especially the intimation that we are going to endure on-going development and change in vivo.  I can't wait to see what was done about accessibility standards.

[mid-day later: 2004-05-10-12:47 -0700]  I see that I somehow missed reposts on some of the items back through 2004-05-03 and that I will need to touch them up to repair bogus permalinks.  That is not too difficult.  I also see that I can completely restore site integrity if I go back to 2004-05-02 and repost those entries in the new post format, with comments enabled.  Then I can lock down everything prior to 2004-05-02, make sure it is backed up on my development site, and never ever do anything that leads to republishing of any of those entries.  Those are history, baby.

One nice thing about the blogger redesign did show up.  There was a bootstrap effort, even if it seems to be fragile or have failed, depending on how badly the mess is if you are burned by it.  The original archive structure and index approach is preserved, including the fragment-identifiers of indexed articles.  That is, if I have handed out links and made trackback pings using old permalinks of previously-archived entries, those links still work.  The old permalink reaches an entry on the weekly-archive page, and the permalink on its time-stamp then goes to the (new) single-page post that is now the ultimate authoritative entry.  Although this transitional model is a little weird, it does keep previously-referenced archive material reachable, even if it has been updated to the new post format for the purpose of enabling comments or simply cleaning up a permalink-klobber mess left by Blogger. (I guess I shouldn't call them archive pages any longer, since the weekly "archives" I have Blogger maintain are no longer authoritative, but it escapes me what the appropriate concept might be in the new model.)

It just dawned on my how to have the lockdown work though. I can change the name given to the weekly archive pages, so that new ones won't ... uh, never mind, I have to figure out how to preserve the index before I try anything like that, though I have an idea.  Enough for now.  I take a break and then complete cleaning up the broken permalinks.  Then I'll worry about locking down everything prior to 2004-05-02, and I'll come at it top-downward rather than the bottom-upward way I almost tripped myself up with.

Note to myself: The individual post format needs its own template, in contrast with the page of multiple latest-posts and the weekly archives (or whatever granularity those pages are created with).

Second note to myself: If the daily-weekly-monthly or whatever chronological archive pages are still producable, then it is not true that a calendar of where there are entries can't be produced to facilitate navigation when editing posts, especially when having to reach back a ways and clean up posts, as I will when going back to 2004-05-02.  What may be more important is that producing a calendar on the page may not be all that difficult.  I am congratulating myself that I had the foresight to use *.asp filenames for all of my Blogger pages and I can introduce server-side solutions for this at some point.

posted by orcmid at 5/10/2004 01:17:15 PM

ONLamp.com: Misleading Assembly Language Benefits

ONLamp.com: Why Learning Assembly Language is Still a Good Idea [May. 06, 2004].  Scrolling through this article, I also want to take exception to some simplistic claims.  The sticking point for me is the unsupported claim, "Clearly, professional software engineers should strive to achieve this level of greatness is all their code. But the real question is, 'What makes code great?'" 

This gets into the business of exceeding expectations and also focusing on efficiency of execution without consideration of context and priorities.  This might be what programmers think Software Engineers should strive for, but I want to suggest that the focus of Software Engineering is far broader and always suited to the context.  The perspective here is oversimplified and decontextualized.  That is a mistake.

posted by orcmid at 5/10/2004 12:28:43 PM

ONLamp.com: Value of Assembly Language

ONLamp.com: Why Learning Assembly Language is Still a Good Idea [May. 06, 2004].  Someplace, somewhere, there is a need to understand the processing of computer code at the computer level, usually expressed in assembly language as a way to make the code more-easily comprehensible.  This is an important area of specialty.  It also provides another way to develop a conceptual model in operating at different levels, since one can appreciate expressions in higher-level language and models of program operation based on a grounding in the machine-language level.  This is not a perfect fit.  It is still a good idea.  There are some sensibilities that scale from experience at the assembly language level, and this article is a review of assembly language as a source of understanding about what makes great code.  As I said, the relationship is indirect, so one must not take this too literally.

I wonder if Donald Knuth will have us learn about MMIX in the early volumes of The Art of Computer Programming or will assembly language disappear completely until there is treatment of compiling and operating-system construction (to whatever extent that is addressed) in later volumes.  I would prefer that the use of computer storage structures, register sets, and machine language be preserved so there is some kindly treatment that remains available and also aids in seeing how abstractions are built atop abstractions, with bigger abstractions to devour them.

posted by orcmid at 5/10/2004 12:22:17 PM

Jon Udell: KISSing XBRL

Jon Udell: Give Me a KISS to Build a Dream on.  Here's a nice exchange that reveals the difficulty with finding the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) sweet spot in the interchange of business information and financial data.  What I find important in the follow-up discussion on XBRL scale and adoption is the identification of the grey area that the developers are dealing with.  We will see if the result is as simple as possible (but no simpler) or too complicated to be used in a straightforward way.  This tension translates to many other areas (e.g., social software, designs of blog and wiki systems, etc.) once interoperability of some kind enters into the picture.  An important aspect of interoperability has to do with reuse of user skills and conceptual models, so it will be interesting to see what we can learn about that in this relatively-specialized situation.

posted by orcmid at 5/10/2004 12:15:50 PM

Jon Udell: How Much Is That Data Model in the Window?

Jon Udell: How Much Is That Data Model in the Window?.  This is a nice addition to the discussion of XML providing a data model or not.  The audio interview with John Shewchuk is interesting, as is Jon's wresting with the assertion that there isn't any primary data model.  I would add that this isn't just because we haven't found it yet.  There is not likely to be anything that we would call a primary data model.

posted by orcmid at 5/10/2004 12:02:05 PM

Blogger Knowledge Disruption

Blogger Knowledge: Great Blogger Relaunch.  Well, I was taken by surprise. I used Blog This! my usual way of starting a blog entry, and noticed that I couldn't post any longer.  I can save as draft or I can publish.  (Since I made a draft last week, and then couldn't find it, this is a little worrisome.)  Then the edit posts page that came up was nothing I had ever seen before.  So, blogger works differently now, and I didn't know there was a change.  I need to go find out what has been accomplished, and whether comments can work when I post my blog to a separate site using the ftp feature.  That would be nice.

[later: I finally worked may way into Blogger to see how to do things.  The new preferences reported that my template could not be updated for comments.  I braved some trial-and-error work and seem to have comments enabled on my page, which is pretty cool.  Of course, I would prefer to have comments enabled selectively by post.  More than that, I really miss the previous Blog editor layout.  I don't like the current one at all.  I know it is partly the disruption of making a change and having my tacit knowledge interrupted.  I will become accustomed to this, but I don't have the sense of context that I had in the multipanel approach that was used before.  This is something for me to see how to deal with as I practice a little more. Ahah, what I wanted to control was under the "More Post Options..." OK, more to do. All right, there is still something off about the loss of context, for not that much gain in real estate and expressability.  And I have to publish one at a time to stay sane.  I feel harried by the new model too.]

posted by orcmid at 5/09/2004 10:23:16 PM

Matthew Thomas » When semantic coders go bad

Matthew Thomas » When semantic coders go bad. [2004-05-11-14:02 -0700 cleanup]  This follow-on about markup and presentation versus semantics consists of a solid demonstration about presentation, the intention for a presentation choice, and how semantics may have nothing to do with the preceding.  Two important catches here: (1) what the actual practices are, and the browser behaviors are, by which people gain the presentations they intend; (2) the silliness of assuming that there is a way to prevent people from carrying any semantics they like in whatever presentation and quasi-semantic markup they contrive to accomplish their purpose.  In other words, there is no way to mechanically enforce precise, unambiguous semantics in a markup practice.

[added 2004-05-11-14:11 -0700] I think there is some sort of information systems law that must apply here.  Try these: There is no way to limit the evocation of higher-level abstractions and interpretations in the use of lower-level formal coding schemes.  The text is material to the message.  The text is not the message. There is no "the message" there.  Syntax has no power over semantics.  There.

posted by orcmid at 5/09/2004 09:34:04 PM