Circuit Rider
Version 4.6
By Jim Scheef

Uncle DACS needs you

Hello? Is anyone out there? I was serious last month when I said that we (the DACS board) need your feedback. Please send your concerns, ideas, suggestions, even outright criticism to me at jscheef@dacs.org. I really do want to hear whatever you have to say. You can even tell me how much you hate people asking you to send emails.

SIGs and More
Just a couple of days ago, as I write this, DACS held its first workshop in a very long time. Some time back Chris Novell and I exchanged emails about how one might backup one’s bookmarks (aka: Internet Favorites). In addition to a simple backup she wanted access to all of her bookmarks on all of the various computers she uses. I made the usual and obvious suggestions, but Chris kept digging and found the del.icio.us web site. del.icio.us met all of her needs and added so many significant advantages that she offered to put on a workshop at the DACS Resource Center.

I will admit that I was skeptical of some of her claims, but Chris did a great job of demonstrating the major features of del.icio.us and turned me into a believer. del.icio.us is a “social bookmarking” site where you can share your bookmarks and benefit from the sharing of others. This is different from the social networking on sites like facebook.com and MySpace.com in that you are finding web sites suggested by other users rather than linking to the people themselves. del.icio.us is about content, not people, and you are not required to share anything to use the site, nor are you required to network into other people’s bookmarks. You can keep all of your bookmarks private if you wish. In that case, del.icio.us becomes a cool way to make your bookmarks available to you from any computer you might ever use – even an airport kiosk – that can run a standard browser.

You’ll be hearing more from Chris about del.icio.us in the coming months which brings me back to the topic of SIGs and more. The workshop format – one or two meetings on a particular topic – could be a good medium for many other topics. There are many things of interest to you, our members, that are perhaps “too interactive” for a general meeting. Or they could be too long and detailed to cover in the limited time of a general meeting but aren’t appropriate for the on-going nature of a special interest group. del.icio.us fell right into this middle ground. All of us at the workshop had a slightly different take on the benefits of del.icio.us and the questions and discussion helped us all understand the site.

By the way, the dots in the del.icio.us name actually have meaning. del.icio.us is the web site’s URL, and it is a complete URL. The top-level domain is “us” for United States. The site name is “icio”. The first part “del” can either be a machine name or a sub-domain depending on how it’s used by its owner. They were clever enough to register delicious.com and point it to del.icio.us so even the dim-witted can still get there. One last thing about del.icio.us before I move on – there is no advertising on del.icio.us, so far. I add the qualifier because it would appear that the del.icio.us business model was to build a web site and then sell it to someone else. The someone in this case is Yahoo! (The exclamation mark is Yahoos!’s, not mine), so we’ll see how long it takes for them to add some ‘commercialization’.

Predictions
Predictions are a no-win game. It was two years ago when I reviewed my last set of year-end/new-year predictions. With the benefit of yet more time, let’s see if I’m doing any better! These “unpredictions” were ten things I wished I could predict in the January, 2004, DACS.doc.
1. SPAM will taper off into insignificance after a change in the email protocol that includes a means to positively identify the sender.
*** No, this still has not happened and have you noticed an increase in SPAM over the past year? Maybe public opinion will lead to better solutions.
2. The music and movie industries will start reasonably priced on line services where music and movies can be downloaded and viewed on a variety of devices.
*** Ok, change is imminent now that Microsoft has entered the game. I’m not sure what that means.
3. In a fit of intelligent thinking, Congress will repeal the USA Patriot Act and work to ensure our rights to privacy.
*** It sure would be nice if the changes in Congress led to regaining some of the civil liberties we have sacrificed over the last five years.
4. Congress will repeal the Digital Millennium Copyright Act restoring our rights to use the music and movies we have legally purchased.
*** Fair use anyone? 5. IBM will release OS/2 and its source code to the open source community. *** I (still) don’t understand why IBM has not done this. Perhaps Microsoft owns too much of the code.
6. Competition among high-speed Internet service providers will become so intense that speeds increase, availability becomes universal, and prices drop.
*** We need some fundamental changes at the FCC for this to happen. Right now the incumbents who own the wires still have way too much control. This is key to one part of what makes up net neutrality. In January, 2005, I thought we had progress on this prediction, but the FCC took it all away.
7. As part of the final verdict in the appeals trial of Norwegian programmer Jon Johansen, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), will be forced to apologize to Mr. Johansen and reimburse him for all legal costs.
*** Yes! The Norwegian courts vindicated Mr. Johansen. Unfortunately, they did not force the MPAA to grovel on the courtroom floor. (My comments from two years ago remain and ‘DVD Jon’ has new things up his sleeve).
8. The European Union will hold Microsoft accountable for its monopolistic practices where the U.S. judicial system failed.
*** Never underestimate Microsoft’s ability to dance! 9. Microsoft will realize that their customers are the users and not the music and movie industry.
10. Linux will become a viable alternative to Windows on the desktop.
*** Unfortunately, nothing has changed on either of these last two. Some additional concerns for the coming year:

• Privacy – Do you have any control? Not when the people to whom you willingly give your personal information just up and lose it on a laptop somewhere!

• RFID – How will this new technology affect our daily lives?

• “Trusted computing” – This will be part of Vista. Do you really want Microsoft to decide what runs on your computer? Once a much ballyhooed feature, it is now slipping onto our systems in stealth mode.

• DRM – When you buy a DVD, do you own it? When HD-DVD and Blue-Ray players become affordable, will you be able to watch the movies on the high definition TV you bought last year? Remember when the “Information Age” was a good thing? In the run up to the DACS elections, I forgot to wish you all (in no significant order) Happy Hanukkah, Cool Solstice, Merry Christmas, Joyous Kwanzaa, Happy New Year, a Wonderful Ramadan and apologies to anyone I missed!

Jim Scheef is past president of DACS