Every title has its stories. The most important story is often the one that follows it, but for this one I also want to give the hi-story. (Sorry for the bad pun.)
This title started off as a comment on facebook. It was formatted for that medium (it had only a single capital letter, and it had a smiley trailing it). I meant it as a funny comment relating to the fact that someone had made a note about having (better) internet access, but it also got me thinking. And that thinking is what this blogpost stems from. As such, it's going to be the more serious discussion of the title.
So.. the internet generation. It's the generation I believe I am a part of. It's the generation that grew up with the internet. Well, that's not entirely true. There may be many more generations (it depends a bit on how long the internet is going to live (which is looking like a very long time right now) and what direction the internet is going to take from where it is now), but I still believe that we are the internet generation. That's because we are the first generation that grew up with the internet.
Defining a generation is never an exact science and even the question "how old can you be while still having grown up with the internet" can lead to many different answers. Nevertheless, there is clearly one thing that defines a generation: the differences between it and the generation that went before it. That's why I say the first generation that grew up with the internet is the internet generation.
(And perhaps it should be interpreted as "the people who grew up with the internet while their parents did not".)
Of course there is more to it than just that. We are also the first to massively adopt things like wikipedia, despite the early claims of it not being very factual. We are also a generation of which the larger part is on facebook. (Well, in the West anyway, but I suppose we were talking about the West anyway.) We are also the first generation to have gotten used to having the internet in our pocket through our smartphones. And we are also the generation that hates not to have the internet at our finger tops (or even just a little less at our fingertops than usual).
There is a number of properties we can ascribe to our generation (again, compared to the previous generations, future generations may well follow in our footsteps in a number of those). One of the most interesting of those properties - in my eyes anyway - would be how we handle information. We are very good scanning and picking out the useful bits of information, as we do whenever we arrive on a website. We are also very good at separating what we are looking for from distractions (well, some anyway) as we read completely around advertisement (the ones that aren't annoying anyway) and barely even notice they are there. And like no other, we can look at a summary like the ones on Google and decide if this is what we are looking for or not.
Another property would be how we handle multitasking. I don't exactly know how much better humans are at "actual multitasking" (doing different things at exactly the same time), but wouldn't be surprised if we aren't able to do that or do it much. However, there is still the fact where fact that we can do different things at the same time by actually just switching between them quickly, which I think we as a generation are pretty good at (and which computers are way better at, even). However, I that's not where we make the big difference in my opinion. The real difference is how we can switch between things consciously almost effortlessly. Tabbed browsing is a good example of this, and not being able to do multiple things at the same thing easily makes us feel restricted.
(And to make a circle out of my whole story again, that's also one of the things the post I responded to on Facebook was about).
If you got this far, I hope you enjoyed my rambling!
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Open Source: LZMA
A while back I wrote a single post about the era I believe we are at the doorstep of. At the time, it was more of a crazy theory of which I wasn't sure I believed it myself. It was more of a feeling than anything. Recently I have come to believe it more and more. For those who have missed the installment in question, let me summarize it. I feel that we're on the edge of a new era. Technological progress is slowing down (with computers being one of the notable example). Instead, we now have to go find out what we do with the technology we do have. The new advances will be mostly social, in the way we use our technology. A major battle that will be fought at the beginning of this era is the one for freedom of information and it will shape the entire era.
Now that that is behind us, let me get to talking about the subject of the day: Open Source. This is usually mentioned in the context of software, as that's where it originated and still is the place where it is the biggest by far. However, one could argue it applies to just about anything copyright governs. It is about the freedom to duplicate, spread and modify the content you receive. The thing that relates this to the fight I described above is that very copyright. It is heavily involved in this battle, though mostly as a weapon or a subject, it isn't the wrong-doer itself. Open Source is in fact voluntarily giving up copyright.
Today I saw what I consider on of the biggest victories for Open Source I have ever seen. It is not all that long ago that open source was a thing for nerds who ran this mystic thing known as Linux. This has been changing, and one of the most telling signs may be that current poster boy for linux is barely any harder to use than Windows. (Not everyone may like Ubuntu, especially not all the nerds. Still, it is hard to deny it is currently the poster boy.) However, that is just one aspect of the whole story. I think one of the earlier big victories was FireFox, the browser that dethroned Internet Explorer, who was sitting back while it thought it had won the browser war already.
Since that victory, we have also seem what I would personally dub "semi-Open Source", which was a number of companies (most notably Google) who release their software under an Open Source license because their business strategy wasn't based on selling their software. The most notable example might be yet another example, Google's Chrome. It is clear that one of the major driving forces behind releasing this under an open source was that they wanted to be able to incorporate improvements made by the community into their own product and they do wait before releasing new features under an open source license to make sure they don't lose their "competitive edge". However, it still continued to promote open source. On top of that, it also showed that open source and profit-based companies aren't necessarily incompatible.
From there, I want to talk about the latest victory I have seen lately: LZMA.
I don't blame you if you just scratched your head and wondered what that abbreviation meant. However, the meaning isn't the important thing. The important thing is what it is the name of: the successor to rar. Besides zip - because of its integration in Windows - rar has been the leader in compressed archives. The open source communities have always used alternatives to it, but never did those other options make the cross over to Windows users.
LZMA has already become somewhat of a new standard in the open source world, where an important reason is just that its compression rates are really good. Of course, there it also met the hard requirement of being open source itself. Slowly, I have seen it seep into the more nerdy communities of Windows users as well. However, today I saw mention of it by a "software cracker". Oh, don't get me wrong, that's still a nerdy bunch, but they are making software for the uninitiated in the arts of computerfare (well, the technical part anyway, these people are good at playing games). And yes, he was merely talking about the next version of something and he was still going to hide lzma archives behind an "auto-extractor" so the end user would not even get to see it was there, but I still think that slowly but surely lzma is moving into a a really good position in the non-open source world. From that position, I think it will be able to take over this hill from rar and become king of it.
Imagine downloading a file from the internet that is compressed. Without spending a second thought, you open the lzma file it came in. Without even realizing, you just use open source in your normal usage. If getting that deep under the skin of the non-open source user isn't a major victory for open source, I don't know anymore.
Now that that is behind us, let me get to talking about the subject of the day: Open Source. This is usually mentioned in the context of software, as that's where it originated and still is the place where it is the biggest by far. However, one could argue it applies to just about anything copyright governs. It is about the freedom to duplicate, spread and modify the content you receive. The thing that relates this to the fight I described above is that very copyright. It is heavily involved in this battle, though mostly as a weapon or a subject, it isn't the wrong-doer itself. Open Source is in fact voluntarily giving up copyright.
Today I saw what I consider on of the biggest victories for Open Source I have ever seen. It is not all that long ago that open source was a thing for nerds who ran this mystic thing known as Linux. This has been changing, and one of the most telling signs may be that current poster boy for linux is barely any harder to use than Windows. (Not everyone may like Ubuntu, especially not all the nerds. Still, it is hard to deny it is currently the poster boy.) However, that is just one aspect of the whole story. I think one of the earlier big victories was FireFox, the browser that dethroned Internet Explorer, who was sitting back while it thought it had won the browser war already.
Since that victory, we have also seem what I would personally dub "semi-Open Source", which was a number of companies (most notably Google) who release their software under an Open Source license because their business strategy wasn't based on selling their software. The most notable example might be yet another example, Google's Chrome. It is clear that one of the major driving forces behind releasing this under an open source was that they wanted to be able to incorporate improvements made by the community into their own product and they do wait before releasing new features under an open source license to make sure they don't lose their "competitive edge". However, it still continued to promote open source. On top of that, it also showed that open source and profit-based companies aren't necessarily incompatible.
From there, I want to talk about the latest victory I have seen lately: LZMA.
I don't blame you if you just scratched your head and wondered what that abbreviation meant. However, the meaning isn't the important thing. The important thing is what it is the name of: the successor to rar. Besides zip - because of its integration in Windows - rar has been the leader in compressed archives. The open source communities have always used alternatives to it, but never did those other options make the cross over to Windows users.
LZMA has already become somewhat of a new standard in the open source world, where an important reason is just that its compression rates are really good. Of course, there it also met the hard requirement of being open source itself. Slowly, I have seen it seep into the more nerdy communities of Windows users as well. However, today I saw mention of it by a "software cracker". Oh, don't get me wrong, that's still a nerdy bunch, but they are making software for the uninitiated in the arts of computerfare (well, the technical part anyway, these people are good at playing games). And yes, he was merely talking about the next version of something and he was still going to hide lzma archives behind an "auto-extractor" so the end user would not even get to see it was there, but I still think that slowly but surely lzma is moving into a a really good position in the non-open source world. From that position, I think it will be able to take over this hill from rar and become king of it.
Imagine downloading a file from the internet that is compressed. Without spending a second thought, you open the lzma file it came in. Without even realizing, you just use open source in your normal usage. If getting that deep under the skin of the non-open source user isn't a major victory for open source, I don't know anymore.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Opaqueness
Seeing my newfound consistency on my blog, I felt I had to continue that trend and write again today. Following The Rule of Three*, I also knew that I would have to write about the website project one more time. I won't make it such a long read again, though.
I had a little trouble coming up what to write about this time that involved the website project, but then something I had thought about yesterday after writing my post came to mind again and I knew I had my topic. You see, after I had written yesterday I wondered why I had decided not to post the name of or link to the website just yet and whether I had made the right choice in doing so. What better topic is there than for me to explain my reasoning.
A bit back when I was on my most active period on twitter so far (which means that I wrote maybe a dozen tweets over a two month period but moreover that I actually followed some people in the actual sense of the word rather than the technical one twitter has made it out to be) I read a tweet about transparency. I think it may even have been a link to an article. The article explained how a startup should be as transparent as possible, to its employees as well as to the world. This would mean that it was going to be obvious when falling apart (to the employees as well as to business partners) which would mean that there was a lot more hat one could do about it than when it only became known much later. On top of that, the fact that the transparency would allow business partners to see that things weren't falling apart, which would give them confidence in your startup.
I am not starting a startup, so the story wasn't quite the same for me. However, I did try to take that lesson to heart as I saw the truth that was in it. So, from then on I tried to be more open about my own projects. And yet, what I am doing here is the exact opposite.
The key in here is in the fact that what people want to see through such transparency is progress. The one fact that shows things aren't falling apart is the fact that you are making progress. And in the website project, I am not making any project. I mean, I didn't return to the project all the way, I just made the front page with the plan to shelve the project when I was done. On top of that, I have long ago decided that I am going to build this website on top of another piece of software I am developing. As such, returning to this project would mean working on that software, and that would mean that the website for the website project would not show any progress even if there was some.
As such, I decided not to give you guys the name of the project just yet. Or at least, that's my rationale for it, I made the choice before I made up the reason why I did, but that's just human nature. Let me also say that I have no doubt that there will be a day when the website is showing a lot of progress, then I will want as much exposure as possible. I will make the promise that when that time comes, this will be the first place where I publicly post the address and name of the site. Of course, I am keeping the option open to publish those details earlier here, so it may also just be that by that time I already have published the name and url here.
See you around, guys!
*Let me apologize to anyone who I got trapped on tvtropes. The site just is too awesome not to link to, though..
I had a little trouble coming up what to write about this time that involved the website project, but then something I had thought about yesterday after writing my post came to mind again and I knew I had my topic. You see, after I had written yesterday I wondered why I had decided not to post the name of or link to the website just yet and whether I had made the right choice in doing so. What better topic is there than for me to explain my reasoning.
A bit back when I was on my most active period on twitter so far (which means that I wrote maybe a dozen tweets over a two month period but moreover that I actually followed some people in the actual sense of the word rather than the technical one twitter has made it out to be) I read a tweet about transparency. I think it may even have been a link to an article. The article explained how a startup should be as transparent as possible, to its employees as well as to the world. This would mean that it was going to be obvious when falling apart (to the employees as well as to business partners) which would mean that there was a lot more hat one could do about it than when it only became known much later. On top of that, the fact that the transparency would allow business partners to see that things weren't falling apart, which would give them confidence in your startup.
I am not starting a startup, so the story wasn't quite the same for me. However, I did try to take that lesson to heart as I saw the truth that was in it. So, from then on I tried to be more open about my own projects. And yet, what I am doing here is the exact opposite.
The key in here is in the fact that what people want to see through such transparency is progress. The one fact that shows things aren't falling apart is the fact that you are making progress. And in the website project, I am not making any project. I mean, I didn't return to the project all the way, I just made the front page with the plan to shelve the project when I was done. On top of that, I have long ago decided that I am going to build this website on top of another piece of software I am developing. As such, returning to this project would mean working on that software, and that would mean that the website for the website project would not show any progress even if there was some.
As such, I decided not to give you guys the name of the project just yet. Or at least, that's my rationale for it, I made the choice before I made up the reason why I did, but that's just human nature. Let me also say that I have no doubt that there will be a day when the website is showing a lot of progress, then I will want as much exposure as possible. I will make the promise that when that time comes, this will be the first place where I publicly post the address and name of the site. Of course, I am keeping the option open to publish those details earlier here, so it may also just be that by that time I already have published the name and url here.
See you around, guys!
*Let me apologize to anyone who I got trapped on tvtropes. The site just is too awesome not to link to, though..
Friday, April 27, 2012
The Website Project
After writing my post yesterday, I added tags. After adding tags, I checked the tags I had added. One of those tags was "website project". The thing with it was, that I talked about not knowing the name because I didn't have a domain in one post and then the next post with the tag I briefly mention having had the domain for the project for some time now. I felt this needed some explanation, so this is how this post got to be.
First off, let me confirm that using the same tag was because this is about the very same project. So, the two stories are actually contradicting. However, upon closer inspection one can see how this was possible. The thing is, the two posts were made with almost two years between them. So, I'm not really here to resolve some contradicting posts, I am here to fill in some of the gaps.
So, to get the story complete I need to start quite a bit before I made that first post. You see, I have walked around with the idea for this project for quite some time now. I think the first idea for the website was somewhere in 2008 or 2009.
Over the years the ideas have fleshed themselves out a lot, but the principals are the same and they are still the thing that make the website. One of the things I did early on was - obviously - to think about a name for the project. However, I wanted a name that could be represented by a domain name, clearly it had to be one that didn't have an owner yet. While in my early concepts the original focus of the website was much stronger (right now, it's more like the first component I will be building with a clear intention to build more components from the start) I already knew that I wanted to at least be able to go beyond that original focus, so I needed a name and a matching domain that was able to do the same. It took me a while, but in the end I came up with a name that I liked. Its .net domain wasn't owned by anyone yet, so that was a possibility as well.
Nevertheless, I didn't act on buying the domain, but instead just shelved the project to be retrieved on a later date. This was clearly a mistake, considering we are now going to flash forward to 2010, when I wrote that post and we already know the gist of what problem I had at that point. Obviously, by that time someone had bought the domain. At first, I tried to come up with a new name. Unfortunately, I was unable to come up with anything that I liked anywhere near as much as the name I had previously.
Then, I looked into buying domains for the original name. I also inquired about the .com equivalent of the domain, but that was owned by a stupid company while focusing on selling domains, didn't have any price categories mentioned and didn't respond to my email. When I then made an international call about this, I finally got to hear an opening bid. That was all I wanted to know, and I told them that if that was the opening bid, I didn't much care for haggling, as they clearly weren't going to go quite as low as I could afford. Nevertheless, the company sent my emails for years whenever they had a 20% discount, despite the fact that I needed more like a 99% discount to be interested and they should have known this. I replied a couple of times about how preposterous them sending me such emails was, but they kept sending me those email. I should add that I haven't seen any of the kind lately, so probably they finally have stopped, but this took way too long.
I decided I really wanted either the .net or the .com domain and didn't really want any alternatives. This meant that with the .com out of the picture, I just had the .net to look into. The thing was that it was used only for advertisement purposes and it didn't look to be doing too well as such. I also found a listing on a site that could be use to discuss selling domain names and estimated that it was going to cost me about $100 to get the domain. It was an acceptable price for this domain and that if I was serious about this project, I would just have to pay up. However, in the end I ended up shelving the project again instead of inquiring about the price of the domain. I am glad I never contacted him, as that could have changed things from the way they turned out.
We flash forward again to last summer. I was starting up Project CoreBot and as such, I needed to buy a domain for it. Out of sheer interest I looked up the status of the .net for the web project. It turned out this was a good thing, considering it no longer had an owner. Not wanting to repeat the sequence of events from before and realizing how little it would cost me this time, I just bought the domain this time. I didn't have much time for the project as I was working on Project CoreBot, but I didn't care. I just wanted to have the domain in my possession so nothing could go wrong again and then I would make a simple front page for the website some time. I never ended up making that front page.
Until now, that is. It all started with a random moment when I grabbed a permanent marker and starting doodling with it. What I ended up with was the naming (/"logo") scheme I talked about last time. This was without my first doodles even being about the project. These events are what basically unshelved the project for me. I then started working on finally making that front page, but as I mentioned last time, I wanted to do so with a bit of a look into the future. I am not planning to do much more work on the project at the moment, but for now, I have made some big steps and I still believe that this website is going to exist one day. What's more, I think when it is going to, I think it's going to be a popular website at that. It most definitely has the potential.
First off, let me confirm that using the same tag was because this is about the very same project. So, the two stories are actually contradicting. However, upon closer inspection one can see how this was possible. The thing is, the two posts were made with almost two years between them. So, I'm not really here to resolve some contradicting posts, I am here to fill in some of the gaps.
So, to get the story complete I need to start quite a bit before I made that first post. You see, I have walked around with the idea for this project for quite some time now. I think the first idea for the website was somewhere in 2008 or 2009.
Over the years the ideas have fleshed themselves out a lot, but the principals are the same and they are still the thing that make the website. One of the things I did early on was - obviously - to think about a name for the project. However, I wanted a name that could be represented by a domain name, clearly it had to be one that didn't have an owner yet. While in my early concepts the original focus of the website was much stronger (right now, it's more like the first component I will be building with a clear intention to build more components from the start) I already knew that I wanted to at least be able to go beyond that original focus, so I needed a name and a matching domain that was able to do the same. It took me a while, but in the end I came up with a name that I liked. Its .net domain wasn't owned by anyone yet, so that was a possibility as well.
Nevertheless, I didn't act on buying the domain, but instead just shelved the project to be retrieved on a later date. This was clearly a mistake, considering we are now going to flash forward to 2010, when I wrote that post and we already know the gist of what problem I had at that point. Obviously, by that time someone had bought the domain. At first, I tried to come up with a new name. Unfortunately, I was unable to come up with anything that I liked anywhere near as much as the name I had previously.
Then, I looked into buying domains for the original name. I also inquired about the .com equivalent of the domain, but that was owned by a stupid company while focusing on selling domains, didn't have any price categories mentioned and didn't respond to my email. When I then made an international call about this, I finally got to hear an opening bid. That was all I wanted to know, and I told them that if that was the opening bid, I didn't much care for haggling, as they clearly weren't going to go quite as low as I could afford. Nevertheless, the company sent my emails for years whenever they had a 20% discount, despite the fact that I needed more like a 99% discount to be interested and they should have known this. I replied a couple of times about how preposterous them sending me such emails was, but they kept sending me those email. I should add that I haven't seen any of the kind lately, so probably they finally have stopped, but this took way too long.
I decided I really wanted either the .net or the .com domain and didn't really want any alternatives. This meant that with the .com out of the picture, I just had the .net to look into. The thing was that it was used only for advertisement purposes and it didn't look to be doing too well as such. I also found a listing on a site that could be use to discuss selling domain names and estimated that it was going to cost me about $100 to get the domain. It was an acceptable price for this domain and that if I was serious about this project, I would just have to pay up. However, in the end I ended up shelving the project again instead of inquiring about the price of the domain. I am glad I never contacted him, as that could have changed things from the way they turned out.
We flash forward again to last summer. I was starting up Project CoreBot and as such, I needed to buy a domain for it. Out of sheer interest I looked up the status of the .net for the web project. It turned out this was a good thing, considering it no longer had an owner. Not wanting to repeat the sequence of events from before and realizing how little it would cost me this time, I just bought the domain this time. I didn't have much time for the project as I was working on Project CoreBot, but I didn't care. I just wanted to have the domain in my possession so nothing could go wrong again and then I would make a simple front page for the website some time. I never ended up making that front page.
Until now, that is. It all started with a random moment when I grabbed a permanent marker and starting doodling with it. What I ended up with was the naming (/"logo") scheme I talked about last time. This was without my first doodles even being about the project. These events are what basically unshelved the project for me. I then started working on finally making that front page, but as I mentioned last time, I wanted to do so with a bit of a look into the future. I am not planning to do much more work on the project at the moment, but for now, I have made some big steps and I still believe that this website is going to exist one day. What's more, I think when it is going to, I think it's going to be a popular website at that. It most definitely has the potential.
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