Dave Winer:

You know what would be really cool. An office in Silicon Valley that was open 24 by 7, with pizza and coffee, for open source projects. A patent-free zone. A place to work on open formats and protocols. The missing social pulse of the tech industry. I wonder if it would work, or if it would just attract homeless people. Thinking out loud.

Well, we could

I figure this is one that IT folks should be able to help me out with.

For some reason, for hours or days at at a roll, it takes a long time, often up to 10 or 15 seconds or more, for pages to come up in a browser. This isn't a platform issue: the same thing happens on Linux, Mac and Windows machines, and on a variety of browsers, and a variety of sites.

It isn't a cable connect issue: our Cox Business cable service tests out at 1.6Mb down and 400Kb up.

Parenthetical note... I hate asymmetrical business service, but that's what they provide for $100/month. Home service, which we also have, tests at 3.2Mb down and 350Kb up, for a third of the business price, but they also block ports 80 and 25 and provide no IP addresses, which we do get with the business service. That's also way down from the 7Mb down and 3Mb up that we got originally with Cox, before they slowed down the service, reportedly to make room for more digital TV signals. The same problem happens on both services.

I thought it might be a Wi-Fi issue, but when I hooked one of my laptops directly to the cable modem yesterday, it was no faster.

From Jim Thompson comes pointage to The Shakespeare Programming Language. Sez Jim,

A friend of mine who watches these things tells me that Microsoft in the past would have shut down sales of pirated Windows copies on eBay — but isn't any more, essentially allowing the eBay marketplace to discover the "true" value of the OS.

I don't know if MS Microsoft Win Windows 2000 Pro New Full Retail Media is pirated or not (I'll assume not); but that's beside the pricing point, which is its buy-it-now price of $52.49.

Here's an OEM Full Version for $108.95.

So, three somewhat overlapping questions...

I'm not one for Microsoft bashing. In fact, the current cover story in Linux Journal (the one that features my very face) is focused on the remarkable leadership of Kim Cameron and Microsoft in next-generation identity services.

But sooner or later conversation comes around to viruses and other ills that are visited almost exclusively on the operating systems that are run almost exclusively on corporate desktops. Namely, Microsoft's.

That's what Mike Warot worries about in Windows Apocalypse Now, which he worries may be too verbose.

I don't think he is. Not if what he worries about is a possible victory of evil over good. Evil being the bad guys who seem determined to destroy personal computing (or to make it annoying beyond human endurance), and good being the IT professionals who labor constantly to protect users and their employers from what the bad guys are doing.

Here's how Mike puts it:

There is a problem here, widely known as the day zero problem. For practical purposes, there are an essentially infinite number of vulnerabilities in the computer systems we use. A growing number of tools are availble to automate the process of mining for a new flaw to exploit.

In Computerworld: Sarbanes-Oxley Trumps IM at Some Firms: Concerns about security, archiving prompt companies to unplug instant messaging systems. A sample:

Steve Ross, a director at Deloitte & Touche LLP in New York and a past president of the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, said he knows of two Deloitte clients that have disabled their IM systems because of Sarbanes-Oxley concerns. Ross declined to identify the companies, saying only that one is a services company in the southern U.S. and the other is a large New York-based insurer.

it should be no surprise that Apple's Intel Strategy reportedly includes use-managing DRM BS. There is much to be admired and appreciated about Apple; but its paranoia about What Users Might Do and its coziness with Hollywood both come at a price: your freedom.

Phil Windley: Announcing the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW2005). Some details:

Martin in mediatope offers a cumulative Web 2.0 definition, which he says is Mainly based on the proto-definition work of richard mcmanus' read/write web, still the most important resource for Web 2.0".

At ONLamp, Andy Oram says, The Commons Doesn't Have a Business Plan. He explains,

Once somebody can figure out how to turn a social trend into a moneymaking operation, he or she can raise capital, get a product on the shelves, and collect revenue. A business plan certainly isn't child's play, but at least there's a process in place.

The short answer to that is, The Commons doesn't need a business plan, because it's not a business. It's a place. More importantly, it's the free marketplace where business and culture both happen.

But that's not as obvious at it ought to be. And it won't be, unless we get some clarity about the very different ways we understand and speak about the Net, the Web, and everything that happens on both, especially commerce and culture. Until then too many of us will be talking past each other.

So, since Web 2.0 is a hot concept, let's lock our new understanding to that meme. For that, I propose a goal: Make Web 2.0 the best possible commons for supporting free markets and free culture.

Here's a stab at it.

As I explained in a series of talks

John C. Dvorak is one of the most interesting, informative and entertaining journalists in the history of the computer business. He is also something of a troll. Most often his targets are objects of cultish adoration: mice and GUIs in the 80s, Macs of all vintages, and — most recently — Creative Commons. In Creative Commons Humbug, John begins,

Will someone explain to me the benefits of a trendy system developed by Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford? Dubbed Creative Commons, this system is some sort of secondary copyright license that, as far as I can tell, does absolutely nothing but threaten the already tenuous "fair use" provisos of existing copyright law. This is one of the dumbest initiatives ever put forth by the tech community. I mean seriously dumb. Eye-rolling dumb on the same scale as believing the Emperor is wearing fabulous new clothes.

If you are unfamiliar with this thing, be sure to go to the Web site and see if you can figure it out. Creative Commons actually seems to be a dangerous system with almost zero benefits to the public, copyright holders, or those of us who would like a return to a shorter-length copyright law.

I have sent notes to this operation and never received a reply, in case you're wondering. Meanwhile, according to its Web site, the Creative Commons organization has money from the Hewlett Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. For what?

Needless to say, John got some answers.