Noise Between Stations

Category: Unfiled

Just discovered Gnutella (how did I miss this one?). At first glance it doesn’t seem much different than an FTP/WWW server/search engine for everyone, which Apple started shipping with the OS a while ago. A key difference is that this is anonymous; It seems you can’t reference a server by an IP address; your identity is only revealed when you download.

Wonderful quotes from the Gnutella support page:

“Gnutella Is Designed to Survive Nuclear War”

“…hungry lawyers are probably more destructive than nuclear weapons…Gnutella Can Withstand A Band of Hungry Lawyers “

“Gnutella is nothing but a protocol. It’s just freely-accessible information. There is no company to sue. No one entity is really responsible for Gnutella.”

I suppose that could bring up the ultimate Internet legal battle, trying to outlaw a protocol.

7/15/2000
A while ago I ran an experiment testing the acuracy of the 5-day forecast. While my sample was small, I found the forecast for the 5th day had only a 50% chance of nailing the basics (precipitation or not, significantly higher or lower than the average temperature).

After reading a great article by Howard Rheingold on “community computing” this month in Wired, I decided to help improve this situation. The Climate Dynamics project would, in the words of a researcher, “introduce as entirely new form of climate prediction: a fuzzy prediction, relecting the range of risks and probabilities, rather than a single ‘best guess’ forecast.”

I thought this was a better use (read: helping everyday people) of my idle CPU cycles and bandwidth than testing cryptography or looking for extraterrestrial life.

7/15/2000
I had to edit the below post once I learned some more about the IAM situation. The reality of the situation is just not as significant as the Standard article sounds.

7/14/2000
TheStandard.com: IAM Sues Razorfish for Poor Design. IAM, among other things, is looking for “a formal declaration that the five-day period in Razorfish’s contract is legally unconscionable.” What happens if the contract is declared “legally unconscionable”? Will a judge sentence the developers to 10 Sundays in church?

7/14/2000
In the New York Times this morning, a story about the Tour de France mentions a statue to Tom Simpson, a rider who in the 1960s cycled himself to death. Like the Vasa entry below, it struck me as another example of a European country praising a somewhat disturbing failure. I wonder if Amercans are just not honest enough about our failures to publically acknowledge them. Perhaps we need a big memorial to Richard Nixon outside the Capital in Washington D.C. as a constant reminder to our representatives.

7/14/2000
Regarding business plans, Lane at Deepleap (an actual startup) has some oh-so-helpful advice:

most of the people these days — and they’re pretty much all vcs [ venture capitalists ] — recommend you don’t bother with a full biz plan, and just do a 6-8 page executive summary, since it’s all they’re going to read, anyway.

Makes me wonder if I can get a million dollars in funding per page :)

7/14/2000
The Vasa, a state of the art warship from the 1620s that sank on it’s first voyage, is on display in Stockholm’s most visited museum. And it’s absolutely stunning to see in person; I spent several hours at the museum. Once in a while I’d be looking at some glass cases holding the original sailer’s clothes or the cannons and forget the ship was there in the building only to turn around and be absolutely blown away again seeing it.

More than one Swede I spoke to made self-depreciating jokes about how they took their most embarrassing disaster and turned it into a museum. But one, a friend from work who I respect for his connected left and right brain, remarked that the Vasa would be a great example for us to follow at work, to build a great visual case study of a project gone horribly wrong and place it near reception as if to say, “We’ve been around long enough to make mistakes and learn from them, and we’re not afraid to admit that.”

7/12/2000
Sarah just bought a red VW Beetle, just months after I bought my black one, ‘cept mine’s a fuel sippin’ diesel. We’re a Beetle couple.

More good vibes from the company: Volkswagen Mobility Access

7/12/2000
I’m curently working on a business plan. If you know of any particularly good examples please let me know.

7/6/2000
For some reason, last night I broke my not-after-8-o’clock rule and had a double espresso after dinner. I was up until 6 a.m.

7/6/2000
Stockholm is amazing, a very livable city. It has that combination of history, friendly natives, sophistication, earthiness, and right-size that I didn’t quite find in Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, or Germany. Unfortunately my perspective is skewed because I’m in one of the nicest sections of town during some of the nicest weather. I don’t think an affordable apt during the 5 hours of daylight of middle-winter would be quite the same experience.

7/5/2000
Leaving for a vacation/business trip to Stockholm, Sweden. As usual I’ve done little to no research and will be scrambling to find a travel book in the airport! Bummed that Sarah can’t come, especially as she’s partially of Swedish heritage. Also bummed I’ll be spending July 4th outside the US.

But I’m psyched to be able to get some vacation time that’s partially paid for by my employer. On other trips I’d jump from city to city but this time I plan to spend a few solid days in Stockholm and really soak up the atmosphere.

7/2/2000
To everyone in the US, happy Independence Day

6/30/2000
Just returned from my second-ever trip to the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area, the first being just a few weeks ago. Interesting how everyone, from the client to the cabbies, lament the suburban/corporate sprawl that obliterates the orchards and other open space.

I just saw the revival of Sam Shepard’s True West, originally written in the 60’s, and the theme was the same – the West has disappeared.

It’s not a theme here in the New York metropolitan area because all the land within commuting distance from Manhattan was developed a while ago.

6/30/2000
Celebrity sighting! I saw Joy Mountford in the San Francisco airport coming off the plane I was getting on. But by the time I realized who it was she had walked away. I heard a speech she and Brenda Laurel gave at NYU in 1993 and it got me all excited about human computer interaction, finding a field that combined creativity with technology with the aim being to make life better for people. Thanks Joy!

6/30/2000