Blog

Now, in addition to the pile of books upstairs waiting to be read, I have a (smaller) stack of books next to the computer waiting to be blogged. Time to knock the pile down by one volume, with number 18 in the Aubrey-Maturin series, The Yellow Admiral.

As it’s been a few weeks, I will only call out two elements of the story, very little of which takes place at sea.

The first is the remarkable description — without dropping into a lecture — of the battle over enclosures. This practice of combining smaller parcels of land, and removing the commons (yes, see “tragedy of the…”) from, well, common usage was both a political and financial tool for the powerful, concentrating wealth and power — usually in that order — and pushing more and more of the populace from agricultural work to industrial efforts. Enclosures helped changed the face of England in the 19th century. I’ve studied English history, but never found that the boring, yet vital, details of this shift in land-ownership and usage stuck with me. But O’Brian helped enormously, and makes Aubrey an opponent, successful in this single instance in stemming the tide of concentration. Aubrey is, while ashore, a landed MP, though quite cash poor in the period this book covers, so his vote still matters more than his pocketbook. Maybe the dialogue wouldn’t have filled in all the gaps if I hadn’t somewhere remembered pieces of the historical puzzle — but I bet I would have learned the import of the facts much faster if I’d had started with fiction like this back in the day when knowing these things actually mattered, or seemed to. Ahhhh… college.

The second part of the story I recall most vividly is that Jack Aubrey’s mother-in-law finds an old stack of love letters from his dalliance in Canada early in his marriage. Sophie kicks him out of the house, and it’s only late in the book that tempers and the marriage are returned to an even keel. Combination of a shrewish, curious mother-in-law with documented evidence of infidelity makes Jack a dull (as in thick) boy. Whoops.

I’ve been here before. Probably on both sides, if I’m honest with myself. However, building web sites and applications does not require reading that far into the future. Fortunately!

Several years ago (well, at least pre-kids), I remember coming across some work from Bernie DeKoven on technography, which I remember as methods for documenting on the fly to improve meetings through technology. I printed out a sparse page or so that was a useful summary, at the time, but I can no longer find that on the web (was hosted by UserLand Software). The printout is at work somewhere, sitting on a shelf, not quite forgotten. Looks like DeKoven is recognized as a pioneer in this area, and he offers consulting on technography and other skills at Coworking.com.

More recently, I subscribed to the feed from DeepFun.com, in part because it was from DeKoven. I rarely clickthrough on the feed, honestly, and I keep considering the unsubscribe, but yesterday he posted this about Cyclecide, which I saw for the first time in Fort Collins just weeks ago… even though they are based in here in San Francisco.

DeKoven, like everyone, has at least two sides. The web is giving us the opportunity to share more of what interests us, and people are doing just that. Just remember that everything you do online is possibly public.

I watched the boy do his birthday walk today at pre-school, four times around the “sun,” through the months of the year. I’m glad I made the last-minute decision to attend, especially after I talked to someone a bit further along the parent life-cycle later in the day. I can’t and won’t be there for everything. But today I made the right choice.

Slashdot has an interview with Neal Stephenson. As someone who has the hard copy of The System of the World waiting on the bedside table, I’m an avowed fan, so I’m reading the entire thing.

Early on, I see this: “… Susannah Clarke’s wonderful book “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.” ” Not two weeks ago, my mother recommended the same book. So, when I polish off the half-dozen or so books currently waiting for me, I’ve got another one to add to the never-shrinking list.

I know quite well that mass photo storage isn’t easy or cheap, even as storage costs continue to decrease. Still, I was surprised that Ofoto decided to take the step of telling inactive customers that they were going to delete their photos if they didn’t order something. I received a series of reminder emails warning me of the policy. I checked the site, saw that I had copies of everything there and said… whatever.

From the email:

If you’d like more information about our storage policy, please visit our Help department:
http://smile.ofoto.com/659468.50917.0.9394

Annoyingly, that URL just dumps you at the general Help index page, rather than details about their storage policy. Basically, any order, of anything, resets the clock for a year.

Even knowing the costs, I remain startled that annoying a possible customer is worth the savings in storage. Yes, I haven’t bought a print in a year (or more). Deleting my data (with plenty of warning, to their credit) isn’t likely to get me to buy more prints. Business is about choices, and they made theirs. I’ll make mine: go elsewhere.

Since I’m not a del.ico.us user, my interesting links lie around, gathering dust in the e-mail inbox or in Safari. Taking a broom to the in-box, I find the following:

• Hugh Macloed of GapingVoid on Mount Everest (read the entire post… it’s not long)
  

  9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.
  You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow-line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

  I often agree, but this kind of creative focus also requires a tremendous selfishness. I enjoyed the entire list of How to be creative posts, not just #9.

• Michael Tchong on Time Compression. Just some pithy stats to underline the reality of the world today, and the view that time is worth more than money.
• Selling answers to the NYTimes crossword puzzle, faster than the Times! [via paidContent]
• I beat Walt Mossberg to the punch with my radioShark review. I don’t claim I was as comprehensive, but the lack of a program guide was a common concern.
• Seth Godin in Fast Company: “There is no corporate privacy, and it’s a good thing” – Transparency wins, in part by forcing an organization to compete all the time. Not everyone is willing to do that, so if you are, you win — because customers win.

I’ll save the Safari bookmarks bar for another time.

DigitalDream.com == spammer

I guess this is a sign that a marketplace for services is arriving, but when I get “signs” by being smacked in the face, I’m not very happy about it. This morning, I received unsolicited email from [email protected] offering to help me solve “the problem with feeds — RSS bandwidth usage.” Yes, someone is jumping on a new opportunity… may even be a real one. I know some folks who think so, but I don’t want to tar any good companies by mentioning them in this post. Nor will I link to those who did the spamming. I’m hoping that by publicly calling them out, the negative effect will override the ‘positive’ effect of just mentioning their name and services.

The spammers at DigitalDream.com provide News Interceptor, a Windows newsreader that sits in your taskbar. OK, join the crowd. And is it spyware? That may not be a fair question, but if you spam like this, you’re calling into question your ethics in other areas.

Now, calling themselves D2Soft Technologies, they are offering RSScache.com. The spammers at Digital Dream (yes, I’m repeating myself) call this service “the bandwidth saver solution for your RSS feeds.”

In some instances, feed crawling has caused concern (too many possible links, so none), and I guess enough angst for someone to say “I can help scratch that itch.” I guess the business model is to sell the software, since they offer an enterprise installation. But with a business that includes spamming, are you really going to install something on your server from these guys? I’m know somewhere in the Slashcode is the Apache module that controls outrageous crawlers — that’s battle-tested code.

Here’s the domain registry info for RSSCache.com and DigitalDream.com, both for proof that they are connected (email wasn’t spoofed) and to help other share their thoughts with the spammers.

Domain Name: RSSCACHE.COM
Digital Dream (VVTIXPTLUD)
CP 206, Succursale Ahuntsic
Montreal, Qc H3L 3N9
CA

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Digital Dream (20605077O) [email protected]
(same address as above)
1-514-335-2132 fax: 1-514-335-2134

Record expires on 26-Sep-2006.
Record created on 26-Sep-2004.
Bulk whois optout: Y [ed., nice of him/her to opt out of spam]

Domain servers in listed order:
NS.PIXELWEB.NET 207.183.36.4
NS2.PIXELWEB.NET 207.183.36.8

Domain Name: DIGITALDREAM.COM

Same info as above, except for:
Berube, Benjamin (BB2467) [email protected] [ed. adds his handle]

Record expires on 13-Sep-2005.

Record created on 14-Sep-1996.
Bulk whois optout: Y

Here’s the spam, in its entirety (well, with my email address and details removed):

From: [email protected]
Subject: RSS bandwidth usage problem with your site?
Date: October 14, 2004 9:14:05 PM PDT
To: REMOVED
Return-Path: [email protected]
Delivered-To: REMOVED
Received: (qmail 55443 invoked by uid 13075); 15 Oct 2004 04:44:08 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO blade.d2soft.com) ([209.5.105.122]) (envelope-sender [email protected]) by REMOVED; 15 Oct 2004 04:44:08 -0000
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=”—-=_NextPart_000_003C_01C4B24B.E1F38220″
X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook, Build 11.0.5510
Thread-Index: AcSybWjhmM8IOwC5S86JsXh1vlRvsA==
X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1441

Hello,

We have seen that you offer a RSS feed on your site “clock — watching time, the only true currency”.æ You are probably already aware of the problem with feeds: bandwidth over usage.æ You might even be reconsidering your feed because of your bandwidth cost.æ RSScache.com is the solution to save more than 90% on your bandwidth usage.

You can start using RSScache.com in less than 10 seconds.æ It’s free and requires no installation at all.æ You just need to add “my.rsscache.com” in your feed URL, like this:

my.rsscache.com/REMOVED (since I don’t want to be associated with these folks in search engine snippets)

Simply replace your current link on your Web site with this link.æ Check out our site for information on our new technology and how it works (www.rsscache.com).

Best regards,

D2Soft Technologies Team
www.rsscache.com

I see that at least three others have noticed this spam:

• Neil Turner, whose feed I read
• Adam Kalsey, found via Neil’s post
• Chris Pirillo at Lockergnome, also found via Neil

Glad to see I’m not the only one to rush to publicly shame them for this effort.

Update: Had to edit the post because Radio made the links active automatically. Edited to avoid that.

So I unbuckled the seat belt a little earlier than I should have this evening, as we were rolling into the garage. Behind me came a similar click… the boy had followed my example. I told him that I made a mistake, and that he needed to wait until we were fully stopped. His response?

You shouldn’t do it because then I’ll do it. You made me do it.

Hmmmm.

Do as I say, not as I do. It’s tough to be caught as a hypocrite by someone under the age of four!

I visited Fort Collins, Colorado for the first time ever this past weekend. (Thanks, Sam & Mike!) I’m still musing over the combination of parks and sprawl. In a short 20 minute drive across town, we passed several city parks on our way to this new park, Fossil Creek. Great facility, and it was busy on a sunny Sunday around lunchtime. The surrounding sprawl — lots of new houses and developments around the city, not just in this area — isn’t offensive. The houses are nice, if not unique. American commercial development isn’t really a surprise to anyone anymore: we have the space, in most places, so we fill it. Yet it’s striking for just how repetitive different developments can be. In many cases, these tracts are the same generation. Time heals most wounds, and what’s really telling between older and newer developments is how the thickness of the trees gives away the depth of the community’s roots. I saw saplings and old growth, but rarely in the same place.

Overall, I was impressed. Fort Collins has a history, a large university, a location tucked up against the foothills, and a pattern of development that encourages (or requires) numerous bicycle lanes and parks of various shapes and sizes. The downtown has some life and diversity. While I didn’t get a chance to see much of the university, I like the human energy that gathers around big educational institutions. It’s not always well directed, but there are guaranteed to be some interesting people and diversions which become part of the community at large. I’ll be curious to learn more over time, as I’m likely to visit again.

On a separate (related?) note, I travelled e-470 twice during the trip from and to the airport. The road has its own website because, well, the road is a private toll road. I guess these are more and more common around the country (or so I’ve read), but this was my first experience. Friday night, 10pm… empty. No one else willing to pay the ~$4 toll, I guess. Is this really the way of the future? From the FAQ:

Will E-470 reduce the tolls or offer discount tolls?
Our per mile toll costs are in line with other brand new start up toll roads constructed in the last decade.æ Our construction costs and debt payments are much higher since we are paying much higher costs for materials and labor today, compared to the older toll roads built in the 1950’s and 1960’s.æ E-470 currently has $1.2 billion in debt, over $3 billion with interest.ææ Traffic and revenue analysis have shown that reducing the tolls or granting discounts at this time, will not guarantee the increase in drivers that E-470 would need, to collect the revenue necessary to pay our bonds.æ Having opened the newest section of our road in January 2003, we can now go about watching the growth of traffic and attempt to estimate at what point the new segment is achieving its forecasted traffic levels.æ At the point we reach these levels, we will analyze alternative pricing models, including toll elasticity to demand analysis, hoping to offer some alternatives to our daily customers.æ We won’t begin these studies until 2004.
When will the bonds be paid and toll removed?
The bonds are scheduled to be paid off in approximately 2035 and after E-470 has established a perpetual maintenance fund to take care of E-470.æ At that time, the tolls will end and the road will be turned over to the Colorado Department of Transportation.

“Toll elasticity to demand analysis”??? So much for Eisenhower’s legacy, the true military gift to our nation… highways to connect us all. (Current version = the internet.) Now, instead of public investment for the greater good, for later privatization (perhaps), we’re starting with privatization and then transferring ownership to the public at a later date. I hope the private organizations which are created for these purposes don’t gain the power of Robert Moses’s Triborough Bridge Authority in New York City, even if that organization has been subsumed by the MTA. (You have read The Power Broker, haven’t you? You must!) Only time will tell, but I sure felt like I was in different world, between the parks, the sprawl, and the toll road.