embracing apparent contradictions, diversity and change
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It’s the first Friday, so time for our favorite Seattle psytrance monthly, HOTwired at Noc Noc — nwtekno thread here. Osiris Indriya and Amanita are spinning, of course, along with Shadowvex and Philly G. Be there or be square!
It’s been a few months (and several activism campaigns) since the last time we made it to HOTWired … can’t wait!
And next week, in SF: Geomagnetic presents Psymbolic 3. How cool is that?
also posted on Pam’s House Blend.
for a good time, compare and contrast
how Soapblox (there) and WordPress (here)
display the URLs in the quotes 🙂
As a “grand old man” of the software engineering field of defect detection, I sometimes take it personally when I run into bugs or usability problems. My IM friends are never surprised when I switch from a conversation on another topic to a rant about how it doesn’t need to be that way and running commentary about my search for a workaround while lamenting that so few companies — or open-source projects — bother to go for the rather-obvious competitive advantage of making software that works reliably and well. It usually ends in comments in something like
jon: doesn’t look like there’s any way to get around it. i hate software
friend: lol. looks like you picked the wrong profession then
Ha ha.
Originally sent to the Senator Obama – Please, No Telecom Immunity and Get FISA Right mailing list.
I certainly don’t mean to trivialize the situation. There’s a huge amount at stake and the anger, frustration, and disappointment so many of us (including me) feel comes through in every post. Realistically, the odds are still against us.
Still. We have a chance. We’re in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and in a conversation with Barack and his aides. Like the vast majority of us who have weighed in so far, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the content of his response, and I wish it had come out earlier in the day, but even so … we’re managing to get our voice heard. We’re not out of it yet.
We could turn the tide; and even if not, at the very least we’ve succeeded in getting our message out. There are a lot of people in this country who care about civil liberties, and we are getting very tired of telecom donations being put ahead of the rule of law.
It’s the Fourth of July, and we’re fighting for our civil liberties. How cool is that?
jon
To celebrate Independence Day, the Get FISA Right wiki is currently featuring fireworks. I heart wikis.
Part 1 of a series
Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2008 ended with me presenting Dear Potus 08 and circulating the letter to the presidential candidates for signatures, and then a closing plenary by Clay Shirky (notes below). It was exhiliarating as always, and I’m now simultaneously exhausting, revved up, and suffering from jet lag. So I figured I’d blog about it.
Kelly Herrold has her weekly Poetry Friday post up on Big A little A , with tons of good links and more in the comments. My brother Gregory K’s posted (with permission of course) an original J. Patrick Lewis poem, A Sixth Grader Sees the Future … for those who don’t know the kids poetry world, this is a Big Deal.
Here’s a haiku I wrote about a month ago, and had previously posted in the Original Poetry thread at Seducersworld.
cool windy spring sun.
thoughts of you: two walks, two states.
cool calming spring clouds.
Flying down to SF last Monday for RSA, I opened up my Macbook and got … nuthin’. Once I landed and plugged it in, and the little green light on the power supply connector didn’t even come on, I realized I was in trouble. So I headed down to the Mac store, conveniently right by the Muni stop, and made an appointment at the “Genius Bar” for that evening.
One of the geniuses in residence verified that his power supply connector light didn’t come on either, checked a couple of things, and asked if he could go in the back to run some tests. Sure, no problem. He came back within 10 minutes and said that seemed like there was some liquid in the display — he had verified that the machine booted, so it wasn’t hopeless. After signing the usual disclaimer in case of data loss (and wondering when was the last time I had backed things up — I’m still on Tiger, so haven’t yet experienced the joys of Time Machine) and authorizing a charge if need be (I hadn’t bought AppleCare), I left my Mac to be shipped off for repairs.
Thursday afternoon, I got a call: my Mac was at the store, I could come pick it up whenever. I Muni’ed back down the store, showed my photo ID, and there was my machine. I booted up to verify, and everything was hunky-dory; Firefox even offered to restore my last session state. Color me impressed.
“This was a really good experience,” I said to the helpful Genius.
“Always glad to hear it! And you’re still under the one-year limited warranty, so there’s no charge.”
Hey, I may be a geek, but I really hate dealing with hardware — or any other kind of machine configuration. Being able to find a place in whatever city I’m visiting on a business trip, talk to somebody knowledgable and competent, and have the right thing happen without me having to put out a lot of effort … that means a lot to me.
I found myself thinking about the arguments that cropped up from time to time on the Litebulb DL at Microsoft, as techie guys went on at great length about how Apple’s emphasis on the retail experience was a sign of weakness and used market share numbers to “prove” how real people (as opposed to the ones in Apple ads) didn’t really care about things like this. The other people at the store, or at the Genius Bar getting Mac, iPhone, and iPod help, seemed pretty real to me.
Sure, I beat Apple up about their security. That’s not the only consideration. I find the usability, responsibility, and attention to design of the Mac experience much more pleasant than Windows; it feels to me like I’m more productive (although when I’ve actually tracked my time, it’s roughly comparable). Throw in stellar support experiences like the one I had …
I hate to say it, but I think I’m now officially a Mac fan.
[And yes, I have now made a current backup. Thanks for reminding me.]
i woke up this morning thinking about Muses and realized that i should apologize for the focus of my writing over the last several months.
Fourteen years ago today was my last day at Digital Equipment Corporation before leaving to work on the technology today became PREfix and the company I started with a few friends that became Intrinsa, so it seems especially appropriate to post about this today …
I’m delighted to announce that I’m starting a part-time strategy consulting gig working with San Francisco-based software engineering startup Coverity. My initial focus will be exploring possibilities in the security space, and I’ll be using techniques like community-driven strategy and design, asset-based thinking, and social network analysis. So it’s a very natural followup to each of my last three professional incarnations: static analysis architect, computer security researcher, and grassroots strategist.
MLB.com says, “It’s March, time for madness and brackets and… baseball movies!” Fans can choose “the best baseball flick ever” from 64 possibilities in four categories — Comedy, Drama, Old School and Left Field.
My brother’s movie, Little Big League, is in “Left Field”, up against The Hank Greenberg Story in the first round, and then either Ken Burns’ Baseball or The Bronx Is Burning in round 2. Tough bracket; pity he didn’t draw Sandlot 2. Still, Little Big League has a lot of fans; what kid doesn’t dream of inheriting a baseball team? So it’ll probably come down to demographics: will the youth vote turn out?
Voting closes March 27 … that’s today! What are you waiting for?
Update, March 28: Field of Dreams beat Major League in the championship; The Natural and Pride of the Yankees rounded out the final four. Alas we can’t find the results for individual brackets, so no idea if Little Big League made it to the Sweet Sixteen or even Elite Eight before its Cinderalla story came to an end …
Comments Off on Best baseball movie ever? Don’t delay, vote today!
It’s amusingly difficult for me to write professional biographies, especially for print publications. Not only do I have a hard time reducing my career to the paragraph you’re usually allowed, at some level it feels like it forces me to reify my identity. Nonetheless, it has to be done; right now, I’m on the hook for bios both for the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy program committee and an upcoming book chapter on computer science as a social science.
So here’s a stab at it … feedback, please!
Update, 3/27: revised substantially after great feedback. Original version in the comments. Thanks all! Additional minor edits on 3/29.
Jon Pincus’ current professional projects include Tales from the Net (a book on social networks co-authored with Deborah Pierce), starting a strategy consulting practice, and blogging at Liminal States and elsewhere. Previous work includes leading the Ad Astra project as General Manger for Strategy Development in Microsoft’s Online Services Group; creating the static analysis tools PREfix and PREfast (now available in Visual Studio) at his startup Intrinsa and then at Microsoft Research; security planning with the Windows Security Push and XPSP2 task forces; and the National Academies/CSTB panel “Sufficient Evidence?” His primary research interests relate to recasting the field of computer science as a social science. In addition to the applications of this lens to security discussed here, other social science approaches embodied in Ad Astra and the earlier Project Fabulous include asset-based thinking, narratology, cognitive diversity, intersectionality, philosophy of technoscience, oppression theory, and hot pink beanbag chairs.
(Note: that’s the version for the computer security paper; the other one will have slight differences in the last sentence.)
My brother, aka Gregory K of Gottabook (best known for his Fibs) also does Oddaptations, which he describes as “Cliff’s Notes/Spark notes of picture books… but with some attitude (and rhyme) thrown in.” Here’s the start of his latest, which I’d describe as something of a Seussian mashup:
HORTON HEARS A WHO
by Dr. Seuss
Oddaptation by Gregory K.Every Who down in Who-ville liked Horton a lot,
But a sour kangaroo and some monkeys did NOT!
They all hated Horton, who claimed there were houses
And Whos on some dust that was too small for mouses.…
More on Gottabook, including the ending one reviewer described as “genius”.
Go, bro!
jon
A lot of people say “they’re no different on the issues”. I disagree. There are major differences on four issues I care about a lot: civil liberties, the war, immigration, and LGBT rights.
There are some other important differences as well, but come on … isn’t this enough?
Of course it’s not just the issues. The Clinton campaign’s repeated racist speech is appalling, as is the voter-suppression lawsuit in Nevada and her decision to break the agreement with her opponents and campaign in Florida are classic Rovian — and Clintonian — maneuvers; I’m tired of politics like that. Obama’s ability to galvanize involvement from younger and first-time voters has a chance to rewrite the political map, starting with the 2008 election and building on it. His strategic and out-of-the-box thinking during the campaign (the use of social networks; his head speechwriter is a 24-year-old; actively going on Spanish-language radio after the Kennedy endorsement; going on The Billerico Project) has really impressed me. I think his ability to work across partisan divides, trans-partisan as well bi-partisanship, will help him be very effective at making progress on his platform.
Oh, and I like and respect his wife a lot better than I like her husband.
Ever since my first election, I’ve looked forward to being able to vote for a candidate who’s not a straight white male who’s got a real chance at becoming the President of the United States of America. And in November, I’ll have a chance to. How cool is that? But that’s not enough.
If Obama’s the Democratic nominee, I’ll also have a chance to vote for somebody who I think can really change the world.
jon
PS: A few of the many other posts I read that had an influence on me: Matt McGinty’s letter to friends and family in the Facebook Obama discussion group, danah boyd, on the new/old media distinction; Jack Turner’s The Clintons , Black Folk, and America: A reckoning on Jack and Jill Politics; Michael Chabon’s The Phobocracy; Meteor Blades and DHinMi on Kos; the New York Times civil rights editorial; the many great analyses in the Women of Color and anti-racist blogospheres of Gloria Steinem’s “oppression olympics” piece in the New York Times; and endorsements from Oprah, Caroline Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, and Maria Shriver.