Month: July 2003

Aaron has put out something called Aaron’s Censorware, which is a simplistic approach to the problem of libraries providing a way to filter content.

From what I understand, most librarians are against the filtering software, but risk not receiving federal funding if they don’t install filtering software. Last week while listing to a radio program on the subject, some of the problems mentioned were the fact that the big software filtering companies are closed, and aren’t exactly sharing their list of ‘unapproved’ sites, which are of coursed based on their biases. Librarians are often free-speech supporters, and just handng over the decision of what is and is not appropriate to a privately held company that would reveal much isn’t very appealing. (Not to mention the fact that libraries would have to fork over money to one of these companies to get the filtering software.) The perfect solution would appear to be a collaborative project, an open-source filtering package for libraries. The libraries could contribute to a master list sites they feel should be filtered, and each library would be free to pick and choose from the list. In addition concerned citizens with expertise in open-source, and a keen interest in freedom and libraries could work with librarians to install and configure the software.

So really, how crazy does this idea sound?

Ready for some Necho fun?

You can patch nntp//rss with a jar from <isolani /> and have an aggregator that reads echo feeds. I found as many samples as I could from Sam’s Necho 0.1 entry, and created this Necho subscription file, exported from nntp//rss.

And yes, I did create my own Necho feed, fully alpha and quite experimental right now, but it seems to work… and once someone creates a Necho validator, we’ll attempt to validate it. (Yes, we’re well aware the format could drastically change in the next 5 minutes, but if anything, the people working on this stuff are showing that it is not impossible to move forward, and it’s fully possible to move forward without lots of useless wheel spinning and hand wringing…)

Sony, Matsushita, NEC, Samsung, Sharp, Toshiba and IBM are among some of the companies that are involved in the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum. The CELF plans to collaborate on the development of Linux for digital consumer electronics. This could include cell phones, PDAs, set-top boxes, Internet radios, residential gateways, automotive telematics, even Karaoke machines and other audio/visual devices.

I’d certainly prefer to see Linux used rather than a propreitary Microsoft OS in these devices. One would think this would also allow consumer electronic devices to be manufactured cheaper, as there won’t be licensing fees set by Microsoft. One thing businesses have learned is if you can avoid paying Microsoft licensing fees, do it.

Adrian Holovaty mentions how targeted ads can be way off the mark, couple this with the new Google AdSense and there’s no telling what you might get. Overture’s new offering is called Content Match, and according to Search Engine Watch they’ll be using that old fashioned method of human review to attempt to prevent those inappropriate ads from appearing.

Updates to the Where Are They Now page have taken place. Of note are mentions of Shana, and the passing of Lone Wolf…