Off the air for a few days

4:53:48 PM    trackback []  

More Early Hypertext Reminiscing

The same search also pulled up some historical notes on HTML, which reminded me of other projects of the time that might have influenced the WWW. (We'll have to ask TBL to find out for sure.) Anyway, back in October 1988, a year after HyperCard's release, Jan Walker of DEC and John Leggett of Texas A&M; organized something called the Dexter Hypertext workshop (named after the inn where the group first met). I attended on behalf of Apple and HyperCard, and most of the functioning systems of the time or before were also represented by team members. There wasn't a really firm agenda, other than to compare experiences on architecture, usage, wins and losses for mutual benefit. (These tales obviously belongs to a more innocent, less IP conscious time.)

Two things eventually came out of the series of four Dexter workshops. One was the widely cited 'Dexter' formal data model of hypertext, driven by Mayer Schwartz of Tektronix and Frank Halasz of Xerox PARC, with input from the rest. Another was a practical experiment in exchanging content among hypertext systems, which as I recall was instigated during a bull session while driving to the Houston airport after a meeting. The practical result was that I hired Jeremy Bornstein of Brown University, who had already worked on the early HyperCard-based Perseus project, as a summer intern with a charter to see what could happen. Jeremy collaborated with Victor Riley at Brown to design and test an SGML-like text markup, based on the Dexter formalism, that could move content among several systems (it was never used as a native format). This was demonstrated at the Hypertext '89 conference (written up in an ancient Jakob Neilsen trip report) and eventually published in the proceedings of a NIST hypertext standardization workshop.

While the Dexter Hypertext Interchange was SGML-influenced, there was another project going on separately that was specifically SGML-based. HyTime started as an effort to express music in SGML. It was driven by Charles Goldfarb, inventor of SGML, and Steve Newcomb, then at Florida State. At some point I became aware of this effort, and invited Goldfarb over from IBM to present to my Apple group. As I recall, a two-hour conversation between myself and Goldfarb in the Apple City Center parking ramp afterwards led to my concordance of Dexter and Hytime which is cited in the HyTime history. Hytime was very elegant, but also quite baroque, and too much overhead for wide adoption at the time.

Both of these efforts were pretty well known at the time. (The cited NIST initiative died after one meeting, when the industry representatives decided a standard was premature and bailed out. We were right.) Both Dexter models and SGML based representation were well discussed at the ECHT90 European Hypertext Conference, attended by both TBL and Robert Cailliau. In March 1991, Victor Riley posted information on Hytime to a list where it was picked up by the CERN team It's clear that by some time in 1991 SGML related features to the evolving HTML were in play at CERN, and by 1992 HTML could be expressed in an SGML DTD. Unlike Goldfarb, TBL and team were willing to cut loose from the overhead of a full and formal SGML system in favor of simplicity, and the rest is history. We got markup that could be banged out in a line mode text editor, and put off the reckoning with formalism until the advent of XML.

(NB: Most of this from memory and Googling around. It does remind me that somewhere in the attic is a collection of old conference notes and incriminating historically significant photos. If anyone cares about this stuff, I can dig some of it out. Send e-mail.)
4:44:33 PM    trackback []  

Bravo for Gordon Moore

Good for him. The primary and secondary education systems are real travesties of the Valley. The high real estate costs that jack up the costs of living and doing business are made all the worse by the insult of an educational system that caters more to teacher's unions, administrators and politician's careers than to students, parents, and taxpayers. Many feel they have to buy over their financial weight and real needs to get their children into a decent district, or budget for private schools on top of their tax burdens. Meanwhile, districts like Los Altos and Sequoia (where I have the misfortune to live) do everything they can to footdrag and obfuscate even the nominal level of competition represented by legally mandated charter school startups. If you thought the creative, intellectual haven of the Valley must be immune to feather bedding and log rolling, think again. And don't even consider discussing vouchers.

In competition is accountability, and that's what the fight's really about - an ongoing effort to evade accountability, all the while whining about budgets and salaries. The tune has gotten very old. Cheers to Mr. Moore for calling it like it is, and putting his money there as well.
2:00:48 PM    trackback []  

A Eulogy for HyperCard

HyperCard was Bill Atkinson's brainchild. Though influenced by a number of others, most notably Ted Kaehler, Dan Winkler, and Chris Espinosa, it was Bill's vision, tenacity and willingness to go to the mat with John Sculley and even the board of Apple that got it out the door, over the resistance of Jean-Louis Gassée and others who saw it as 'competing with our developers'. It was launched with a typical Apple PR blitz at Boston Macworld in 1987, and was also a centerpiece of the fall 1988 launch of Apple's first CD-ROM drive and its push towards mulltimedia. (The latter was my show; my role was producing large scale database and multimedia pieces with HyperCard to show off the CD-ROM and multimedia strategy, and get some developer momentum going.)

HyperCard always had a marketing problem of not being clearly about any one thing. Since it was initially packaged with every Mac shipped, it's likely the majority of buyers used it as a quicky Rolodex, if anything. But HyperCard's biggest win was a very low entry threshold for those who wanted to build their own 'stacks' - combinations of user interface, code, and persistent data. There were plenty of examples to suggest ideas, and all the code was open for tweaking. This did enable a burst of creativity by users, many of them educators and artists with no training in programming or database.

The proliferation of ideas created its own confusion. What was this thing? Programming and user interface design tool? Lightweight database and hypertext document management system? Multimedia authoring environment? Apple never answered that question. Probably the answer was 'yes, all of the above', and HyperCard could have been forked into several related products, each tailored to a specific market. But instead the forces against internal software projects won out, and HyperCard was shunted off to Apple's Claris spinoff, where it lost in the battle for attention with Filemaker and Apple/ClarisWorks. Several improved versions came out, but the code was never even completely ungraded to handle color displays, killing off interest from the multimedia and UI markets. Hard core supporters, particularly from the educational community, kept it alive when Apple reabsorbed Claris, but only on sufferance.

From a software architecture point of view, HyperCard had a number of interesting ideas which might bear reexamination. At a time when persistent object stores were still novel, HyperCard was built around one. It's not going too far to say that its user interface was simply a reification of the object database. HyperCard's programming model was object-like, but didn't fall neatly into either the class/instance or delegation styles. Individual visible cards in a stack were created as instances of prototypic backgrounds and could be pre-populated with text fields and action buttons. Default message passing was an odd hybrid of visual containment and fixed object hierarchy. These features, plus a very texty scripting language, seem to have made for a very approachable tool for the nonprofessional coder or database creator. (To my knowledge there was never a study of programming usage and usability of HyperCard. A real gap.)

HyperCard also had its share of problems, particularly as a programming environment. Almost uniquely, every data element in HyperCard was a string. (Anyone else remember SNOBOL?). If you wanted another data structure, you built it out of strings, or expanded the programming language by adding in new compiled code primitive 'XCMDs'. The binding of code to individual cards and objects within them made it easy to create an unmanageable project with code snips splattered all through the stack, and many of the neophytes fell into this trap. Ditto the lightweight database had very weak identity and abstraction capability, another trap for the budding multimedia author. The tight binding of interface and data store also created weaknesses only obvious in retrospect: There was no cut line at all between client and server, and creating one was probably impossible in the original code base. HyperCard implemented everything in script code, even links. It was about as far from RESTian as you can get. If HyperCard had in some way mutated into an alternative to the Web, we'd be living in an even worse malcode Hell than we've got now.

So, adieu, HyperCard. I had a heck of a lot of fun with you (and the gang that birthed you), and I know others did as well. Your passing will leave a gap, particularly for the educators who still have no clear (and cheap) alternative. I hope some of the lessons you taught are passed on to new projects that allow just plain folks to try out coding and authoring.
11:32:53 AM    trackback []  

Shirky on the Fallacy of Relationship Ontologies

Memo to readers: Do not bother sending me 'semantic web' plans that reprise the delusions of big symbolic AI, having only swapped the LISP costume for new XML clothes. On the other hand, if you want to spend your own time and money hacking FOAF, I'm all for it. Train wrecks can be highly instructive. Just try making some fresh new mistakes, rather than repeating the old ones.
1:42:45 PM    trackback []  

Who needs the History Channel?

• If you've watched the Gunny on Mail Call, check out this real life Army Drill Sergeant. No video of things blowing up, but a lot of information useful to those considering a military career, and also interesting to those of us of the superannuated persuasion. And any Army DI who can post an even-handed discussion of the 'elite' status of the Marines has gotta be an honest man, right? (Hat tip: Blackfive)
• A year ago the Iraq invasion was underway. You can get reprocessed embeds' video on the cable, or check out how it looked from the other side. One Iraqi blogger is posting his journal entries of the time - here and read forward. Or take a way-back trip with the writings of Salam Pax, the original Iraqi blogger.
• Speaking of Salam, he points to a new blog from a Brit sound and lighting tech temporarily in Baghdad to refurb some media facilities. Dunno about this one. Her first coup in Iraq was to fire an AK-47 into the air, never mind where the slugs might land. Then in the next post dumps on the weapons discipline of US troops. Hope she's better at her day job.
• I enjoyed the Iraq Now blog of Jason Van Steenwyk while he was over there. It combined a real picture of life in the Sunni triangle with some well-informed skewering of the media for the inadequacy and inaccuracy of their coverage of same. (He's a financial reporter in real life.) Now Jason's back in the States (thank you). You may have noticed I have a taste for thrashing the media when they blow a story where I know the reality, so I'm very glad to report that he continues to take them to the woodshed, on affairs both military and financial. That's earned him a permanent place on the blogroll.

11:14:42 AM    trackback []  

Ill-timed IPOs?

As evidence I'll offer that today's VentureWire brought the news of no less than four S-1 filings: Accent Optical, Seven, Brightmail and Shopping.com. Seven is likely the weakest, with just under $7m in trailing revenues, losing almost $13m in the same period. What's likely going on here is that they are perceived as being in a hot sector - mobile - never mind the level of competition and actual financials. As we should have learned a few years ago, that's a sign of froth. Some of these and other still quiet S-1 filings are now likely to be wrong footed by the markets. Just as well.

Disclosure: We have an investment in a Brightmail competitor.
10:26:29 AM    trackback []  

Patent busters take note

UNIVERSITIES FACE PATENT ISSUES FOR ONLINE TESTING An undisclosed number of colleges and universities have received letters from a company called Test Central saying that it holds a patent on online testing and that the schools are in violation of that patent. Ellen K. Waterman of Regis University, one of the institutions threatened by the company, called the letter extremely broad, potentially covering any type of testing online. An official from Test Central rejected that characterization but said he believes "that other people are profiting at our expense." Test Central's patent, for which it applied in February 1999, was granted in early 2003. According to Rita S. Heimes, a visiting assistant professor of law at Suffolk University Law School, a patent can be effectively challenged by showing prior use of the patented technology. Many institutions engaged in online testing prior to 1999, but, said Heimes, because the cost of fighting the patent in court could be extremely expensive, many institutions will simply opt to pay licensing fees. Chronicle of Higher Education, 26 March 2004 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v50/i29/29a03101.htm

From Edupage
2:52:16 PM    trackback []  

Mark Pilgrim on the warpath

Hat tip to Scott
10:59:07 AM    trackback []  

Rover leaves the nest

9:33:51 AM    trackback []  

Ole Eichhorn is back

9:31:28 AM    trackback []  

Improved Technorati launches

9:28:40 AM    trackback []  

It's been worth it

2:10:40 PM    trackback []  

I've been dreading this day

Thanks to Smash.
9:46:02 PM    trackback []  

Dubious Distinction: The New York Times

Maybe the Times' management should have had a chat with some of the flacks who pitch them every day before they embarked on this course. After Jayson Blair, et. al., their credibility is already low. This little flap is allowing mockery of their inaccuracy to turn into a legitimate big vs. little media story. And the next wanna-be Times mocker knows just where to stick in the needle to get a reaction that might turn into a national story.

This blog hereby presents its Dubious Distinction award for business idiocy to the management and legal staff of the former Newspaper of Record.

Update: The NYT has backed down. Glenn Reynolds linked the item twenty minutes after this post went up. The award stands, though. I'll retract it when and if the Times actually bothers to run its own corrections.
5:26:39 PM    trackback []  

Wi-Fi is an amenity

3:54:27 PM    trackback []  

Metadata Risks

3:21:30 PM    trackback []  

Jeff Jarvis' suggestions for making RSS audit friendly

10:50:57 AM    trackback []  

The Grand Challenge Was

I'm willing to bet that some of the entries in the next round will be loaded down with corporate logos, a la NASCAR. The drivers will be a little short on personality, however.

9:54:45 AM    trackback []  

Thirty Months Ago, and Today

We swore not to forgive, never to forget. Neither is the worst danger. It's rather the attempt to make it politically and socially incorrect to talk about what happened, or who did it.

Thirty months ago, the World Trade towers were brought down, and 3000 people slaughtered. By Muslims. By Arabs. Most of whom were Saudis. All of whom abused our open society to commit an act of war.

These are facts. To attempt to put discussion of them beyond the pale is an act of gross indecency on the tombs of the lost. If we are to have justice in their name, we must be able to debate how to erase the terrorists, without butchering the peoples from which they come. The simpering snicker wondering how one can be so gauche as to mention it prepares the day for another 9/11. Then vengeance, and nothing but smoke blown down the wind.
8:35:54 PM    trackback []  

Meanwhile, back on Mars

If you haven't kept up on the Mars Rovers, give JPL a visit. The Spirit Rover - the one that had to be reflashed - has just peeked over the edge of a good sized crater (that's the image). Today at lunch I sat next to a JPL technical manager on the autonomous navigation software - visiting DARPATEch to show off other robotics work - who told me that in the extended mission period (Sol 90+), geologists hope to have Spirit make a run to the 'East Hills' (the far right background in the image), several miles away. At a top speed of 5cm per second, it will be quite a trek.
4:36:35 PM    trackback []  

The Big DARPA Story: J-UCAS

Digesting both trials and lessons, DoD (apparently Rummy himself) directed that DARPA take on the task of integrating and procuring a real weapons system for unmanned combat aircraft for both Air Force and Navy. It is highly unusual to have this done in DARPA, rather than service organization, and shows that this capability is being fast-tracked with a vengeance. So does the timeline: Air trials of two prototype, but mission capable, new aircraft by 2006, and trials of a full system by '08.

The mission has also changed. The original UCAV concept was a relatively short range penetrator to take our air defenses that were too nasty for manned aircraft. Experiences in both Afghanistan and Iraq showed the need for long range, very long persistence aircraft that could support ground troops and/or look for targets of opportunity. That's now the first mission, and it creates new problems: greater communications burden for backhaul, and greater need for autonomy to minimize needs for that backhaul, and mitigate the risks of its failure.

That's caused the arrival of a major new component in the UCAV picture, something that is being called the 'Common Operating System', a fully distributed, partially autonomous software entity to run the vehicles in a mixed human/machine combat environment. It's going to be built in an open consortium model that is still a bit fuzzy and will be a totally new architecture involving 'publish/subscribe' in its data architecture. (I think I just heard that the UCAV control will be RESTian for those who know what that means).

Two years to airframes and four years to a system is a horrendous schedule, but I wouldn't want to bet against it, considering what the team that's been assembled has done in the past. War does have a way of focusing minds.
4:24:48 PM    trackback []  

The Atrocity in Spain

3:56:18 PM    trackback []  

Dealing with Corporate Criticism from Bloggers

5:48:57 PM    trackback []  

Grand Challenge update

Update: Grand Challenge status and pix now linked at the main website. You will want a broadband connection.
5:35:13 PM    trackback []  

Lessons Learned

If you want a definition by example of logistics, read this. 1,900 rail cars to move a division. A light division. That's logistics. The tail is the people who do the moving, rather than getting in the fight (supposedly). Nasiriyah showed some of the problems with that notion, and convoys continue to run the gantlet of IEDs in Iraq. And why aren't there more surveillance flights overhead to escort them? Just add up the logistical costs of supporting those sorties, and you get the answer.

Unmanned vehicles are supposed to help, and in many ways they are. But each has its own little tail. A Predator drone, for instance, takes a control and maintenance crew of ten or more, and its own little batch of shipping containers. Cheaper than keeping AF jets aloft, but no panacea.

This lesson is working its way back into DARPA projects. Some of them are now destined to come to the battlefield all the way from CONUS - that's the Lower 48 for those not into milspeak - do their business and return. Logistics on board, so to speak. That could be a long haul for just a little action, so the focus is on persistence. That is, how long can the system stay around on call, for surveillance, weapons release, communications relay, or what have you. Turns out the machines now have more endurance than the human pilots. Bots may not be terribly bright as yet, but they do have sitzfleisch.

Another related tidbit: The first application for autonomous ground vehicles that might emerge from the DARPA Grand Challenge will mostly likely be supply transport. Replace the Jessica Lynches with bots. Now I start to see how Rummy thinks he can get more trigger pullers without increasing the army's size. In the end, the most significant combat bot may end up being a truck driver.
9:36:55 PM    trackback []  

It is BALLOON!

8:33:33 PM    trackback []  

Am I the only one morbidly amused...

7:35:22 PM    trackback []  

Conference cultures

Meanwhile, here's a participant/observer's take on the differences and commonalities between this conference and last month's O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference in San Diego:

Cultural Contrasts

	ETech	DARPATech
Kickoff event	O'Reilly Radar	Presentation of the Colors
Talk archetype	Product pitch	Military briefing
Common accessory	Laptop	Necktie
Underlying driver	Networks	Networks
Subtle similarity	Open Source	Asymmetric Warfare
Motivating model	Opportunity	Threat
Amusing juxtaposition	Hackers / Golfers	Uniformed military / Disneyland tourists
Security	Open Wi-Fi	Car searches
Communications pattern	Ad-hoc, peer-to-peer	Star: Program managers with contractors
Badge theme	First names	National flags
Acronyms	RSS / FOAF	OEF / OIF

12:50:56 PM    trackback []