Re: Fw: [hackers] Re: Edge-to-Edge Principal / Reed's Law; revised2
On Fri, Aug 01, 2003 at 02:32:53PM -0500, zachary rosen wrote: On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, zachary rosen wrote: The only real difference between centralized and decentralized in terms of admin work required then becomes the mundane maintenance tasks: pruning and organization. If the nodes are empowered to maintain their own local repository then doing this work is offloaded from the potentially very large bottlneck of having it all maintained / pruned in a central site by one set of admins (DMT) to the many capable node admins. Am I missing something? Yeah. Anybody can prune the database. For maintenance operations that might be a little dangerous, like vetoing media, we can hand out moderator accounts on the central site to volunteers we trust. In fact, it would be easier to find volunteers to just moderate than volunteers to run an entire DeanSpace site. This is exactly the reason I am so opposed to this solution. It is a basic question: who do you trust more to vett / prune media on the system that comes from nodes? DMT - or the nodes themselves? It might be productive, at that juncture, to make explicit the assumptions you're carrying about what *sort* of vetting might be being done, by whom, and for what reasons. I suspect we have almost a *classic* case of the centralized/decentralized debate going here, and the two sides of this one aren't ever *going* to agree in my experience, so let's just yell Hitler! and Godwin!, and define our assumptions. :-) Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
Re: [hackers] Rebuilding the foundations of NNTP
On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 03:11:23PM -0700, Kurt Cagle wrote: While I think that the commentary on NNTP is essentially correct -- we are rebuilding the foundation of NNTP, I want to raise a couple of issues that may justify just WHY such a rebuilding is necessary. I started working with NNTP back in 1992 ... it was in fact my first experience with the Internet, prior in fact to HTTP/HTML. At the time, NNTP was small, largely free, was run by a coterie of competent amateurs for the love of the medium and was very much devoted to handling the issues associated with maintaining threading across the boundaries of the nascent Internet. Please note that you're conflating NNTP (a transport mechanism) and Usenet (a messaging network which is transported by, *among other things*, NNTP). In a decade, the threats that have been lingering at the edge of e-mail has pretty much devoured NNTP. NNTP is difficult to moderate, difficult to search, difficult to archive, difficult to set up. If you want NNTP access, you often have to pay extra from your ISP, and there is no guarantee that the newsgroups that YOU need are going to be available via the server. The bulk of material circulating on Usenet is porn span, sent not by legitimate users of the servers but by companies that seem to feel that extreme (and typically disgusting) acts of sexual display will drive people to their sites. The high volume and poor archiving formats also insure that newsgroups are short memory archives at best. Finally, the role of the web has changed enough that most people are simply not aware that Usenet exists, even in those cases where it is available. You're assuming that I meant that you should become part of Usenet, and I wasn't. I was merely observing that, for the category of message transport that appeared to be in question, it seemed that NNTP was a better mechanism than RSS. *Some* of the things you want to move around *would* be better served by RSS, but not forum traffic -- which I understood to be the issue on point; was I wrong? Contrast that to what's going on with the current Drupal modules and RSS syndication. I've written chapters in a couple of books on RSS, and consequently have had a lot of chance to think about what exactly this medium is. RSS is significant in that it provides a way to aggregate links and associate that aggregation with some form of editorial filtering and annotation. Why is that important? In great part because it is a function which currently is not done very well within the confines of web pages. Many web pages contain links and editorial content on those links, but in most cases such information is not terribly filterable, is reliant upon webmasters remaining on top of their link pages on a regular basis (something that very seldom occurs in practice) and such feeds cannot be merged together to provide a large stream of aggregation. In other words, the meta-content that Web Pages are able to offer are far less than what RSS can do. Stipulated. But off my point. A Drupal node can be thought of as a distributor of RSS feeds of varying types, which may or may not also be a transport mechanism for content itself. In most cases RSS is most efficient when the only payload information it does carry is abstracts of contents and linkages, perhaps with enough overhead in terms of production dates and authors to allow verification systems to work effectively. Precisely -- and it sounded to me like people were talking about syndicating *the user comments themselves* -- for which is it manifestly not suitable. RSS abstracts and categories can be archived and persisted, can be formatted any number of different ways with relatively little work and because of its XML base works well in web services environments. You don't need a specialized server to use it, which isn't true of NNTP, and you aren't dependent upon having to go through a community process to create a new newsgroup, minimizing the alt.* phenomenon. You don't need a specialized server to use RSS? I'm not sure I believe that's an accurate charaterization at either end, but certainly not at the receiving end... And if you're running *your own servers*, then the latter problem isn't an issue either. And if you were running your own top-level (dean.*), then it wouldn't be an issue anyway if you could get people to carry it -- but I wasn't really suggesting that. In this day and age of NNTP client retrieval, it's not as necessary to do that sort of thing as it was in the days when propagation was an issue. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows
Re: [hackers] Rebuilding the foundations of NNTP
On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 12:10:35PM -0500, zachary rosen wrote: Doing the aggregation / syndication stuff as NNTP doesn't make much sense to me. We are creating a web app, it should use web protocols. RSS is perfect for this kind of things. It forces us to create the network to be far simpler and open than if we did it with NNTP - and that is a very good thing. The issue was mailing lists vs. web boards; you will note that I *said* that weblogg-y stuff should be syndicated by RSS. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
Re: [hackers] Rebuilding the foundations of NNTP
On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 12:54:00PM -0500, zachary rosen wrote: The issue was mailing lists vs. web boards; you will note that I *said* that weblogg-y stuff should be syndicated by RSS. Doing the mailinglist as Usenet is a very interesting idea. The problem is, obviously, spam. But - being able to quickly browse / hop around all the different mailing lists would be a very useful thing. Well, if you run your own NNTP servers, it's likely to be *easier* to kill spam, I should think. I don't think we could use NNTP to do it though unless we used it to just mirror the mails. Could we make some central mail indexing service that signed up to all the mailinglists and aggregated / displayed them all in a reasonable fashion? Something of this sort is actualy being used right now to archive this mailing lists (see the links off the hack4dean mailinglist page). Bidirectional gating between newsgroups and mailing lists is *well* understood by now -- another advantage of Getting the Glue Right. As, for that matter, is indexing netnews traffic. And, indeed, if you're running the servers yourself, your indexing facility could provide news:// links that would permit users to avoid the impedance mismatch between the powerful Usenet-based toolsets and the usually-less-powerful (and almost always differing) web-front-end toolsets. And, to clarify again, my goal is to stamp out web-bulletin-boards as a tool for doing what is, essentially, netnews. They're usually not especially powerful, and they're *different* almost everywhere. They're inefficient to use, and worse inefficient to learn. You can't cache them locally, which means you're dependent on external sources for searching tools, and they're just not as evolved (task-wise) as even the Windows newsreaders, let alone the Unix ones. This is another of those split-constituency problems: I'd bet that the Dean-online audience will be close to 25% power-users, and such people tend to be opinion-leaders against their flock. If you can make life easier for them without making it appreciably more difficult for yourself, it's always A Good Thing. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
Re: [hackers] More on Deanster Participant Content
On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 10:13:16AM -0700, Joshua Koenig wrote: The notion for this sprung from the fact that there's a wealth of ideas and content being created by the devotees of the Official Campaign Blog. Originally, I had thought of hacking Movable Type so that there would be a way for users to concur with other users' comments; to mark them as an idea, a phrase, a story worth saving. This way at the end of the day, you can have someone from your team browse through the 25 most highlighted posts. As one of the people who likes to think he at least *occasionally* posts something there that fits in this category, I'd just like to say snap/ snap/ Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
Re: [hackers] RE: More on Deanster Participant Content
On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 02:41:44PM -0500, Jon Lebkowsky wrote: One other point about Deanster: you might get some flak from Friendster if you combine that concept with that name. The Friendster guys aren't necessarily Dean supporters. Zephyr, you might discuss with legal whether there's any exposure - obviously it's a great name but a legal hassle would make it counterproductive, I'm afraid. Do you really think so, Jon, inasmuch as they're *both* (fairly explicitly) derivative of Napster, which in itself didn't really mean anything? Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
Re: [hackers] Deanster run at DFA
On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 12:50:34PM -0700, Joshua Koenig wrote: Except that if you run the auth, then all sites have to be approved and vetted... or have I managed to completely misunderstand this whole thread, Zack? Well, it's debatable what it means. From my perspective it would just be independent sites -- could be any site online -- deciding they can trust DFA for login data. I'll go with whatever Howard's wonks want to do. It's not a critical piece. Apparently I *did* misunderstand Zack; I thought he was asserting that that was the case. Rough time with English this month, I guess... :-} Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
Re: [hackers] How about deancountry.com?
On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 01:37:22PM -0400, Zephyr Teachout wrote: Hey, no knocking country! We're not *wrong*... we're not *sorry*... and it's probably gonna happen again. :-) For names, I since we'll host the kits somewhere on DFA.com, the public name of the website service will be diff. than the name of the dev community (since my sense is that you all want to remain a loose collective doing vol work but not officially on campaign). I think that's a reasonable description of the rough concensus from last night's chat -- no doubt Zack or Josh will correct me if I'm shooting my mouth off. Here's the plan from our pov: (1) We host kit service (2) We host the deanster wannabe (talent db, as zack calls it) (3) You (dev com) host yourselves (but you're welcome to be hosted by us) (4) Groups that use the kits host themselves (and are not welcome to be hosted by us cuz then we'd have to be responsible for content, which nobody wants) The naming q could be: (a) about -you- (name of dev. Com) (b) suggestion to the campaign about kit hosting place (c) suggestion to the campaign about the suggestions to the dean community sites about how to brand Seems to me there's a conflation of a, b c -- inasmuch as they are b c, I like deanspace fwiw, but I'm not the message guru :) -- will share w/staff. Am I the conflated one, or do I have it right? Conflated? Probably not. Overly terse? Possibly. :-) And I thought *I* was Captain Jargon. There are, actually, 3 issues at hand: 1) the name of the domain/organization which hosts the development of the kit software -- currently hack4dean, though other names were proposed last night which kind of uncouple the raw development from the campaign, such as (mine :-): hack4democracy. A vocal component of the crowd frowns in hack's general direction, but I think that Americans For Dean would provide all involved who don't want to fight that battle (I explicitly do) sufficient insulation... In addition, this provides insulation against such silliness as someone deciding that donations of labor need to be figured as campaign contributions at The Going Rate -- since the software organization is explicitly not tied to the campaign, it's not even an issue. 2) the name of the organization which assists local groups -- and possibly also DFA itself -- in deploying that kit. Currently, this organization is Americans For Dean... 3) and the 'thing' it's building -- the interconnected web of Dean related sites -- has it's name up for poll as we speak; some suggestions are DeanSpace and DeanWeb. As Zack notes, consider it a brand... and remember that Tide isn't sold by Tide Corp, it comes from Proctor and Gamble. Does that clarify what (I think) the questions are? Not to mention the current approaches to answers... -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
Re: [hackers] How about deancountry.com?
On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 04:13:24PM -0500, zachary rosen wrote: No that is incorrect. The name being voted on is the network name. We will decide after this what the name of the Dev Community will be. DFA will have the final say on the name for the Community Kit. ... as they market it to their campaigners. No? Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
Re: [hackers] Code, Code, Code.
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 03:37:06PM -0400, Britt Blaser wrote: Why would we hinder our work by speculating on activities that our group as a whole will never pursue? My snap reaction to that is that it isn't all that useful to build a car until you have (or know you will have) roads to drive on. Given the target market, certainly *someone* has to be thinking about it, and according to the website, a4d was that someone. Could someone elaborate on the distinction between a4d and h4d, cause maybe I missed it... Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
Re: [hackers] Re: Legal Issues and dodo birds
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 02:43:07PM -0500, zachary rosen wrote: Astute observations CMR - I don't disagree with a word you said. If we are official, then we have sold out. That being said I remain almost completly unconcerned with the problems of such a close association. All through the process of deciding how official our organization would be come it was made clear that it would be a conscious choice, and to knowledge there was not one objection. Yes there are very real conflicts with this development community having such close ties with the official campaign, but in my opinion the problems are almost completly mitigated by the fact that this project is completly open source. Or maybe not. I think that, as I noted in my immediately previous email, delineating between a4d and h4d is probably something close to critical here. *I* tend to think a4d might get embroiled, but that h4d probably shouldn't, and that that split will make lots of people lots of happier. But what do *I* know; I just got here. :-) * Yes, HQ is very concerned about the name hack and in my opinion it is very probable we will change our name because of it. The fact that a _presidential campaign_ - the official campaign - is willing to embrace and endorse an open source development project is so outragously cool that name of the working group working on the tools isn't so important to me personally anymore. Besides, i would rather win this election than save the word hack. Speak for yourself. :-) * Correct, the fact that the development community is becoming somewhat official spells out conflict with the abilities for the communities using our software to voice their opinion. However, HQ has already stated and I truly believe that communities using our tools will remain unofficial, and thus unrestricted by the official campaign. There are very reall PR and legal reasons why this must be so, beyond perceivable conflicts between control over the campaign message. That doesn't seem to coincide with what I think I've heard Z say here in the last 24 hours. Now, I understand that Burlington probably doesn't *know* how to approach this; no one has ever tried, I don't think, to intersect something as free-wheeling as open-source with something as tightly-controlled as a presidential campaign. And yes, we can't afford to make as many mistakes here. And yes, we need strategic thinking. And yes, (alas) they're likely to have to come from the political side of the house. I think, as much as anything else, the job over here in hackland is going to be to get the questions down into single sentences without losing anything... At least, that's what I've done for clients for about 20 years, and it seems to work well. If I can help... Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
