Category: General

A Hurrah for Steve Gillmor

My last chat with Steve Gillmor left me a little sad because, it seemed to me, he was fighting the world, trying to drag it to where he thinks it should go. I find myself all to often in that position so I felt sympathy. What is worse, his profession didn't jive with his ambition.

But it looks like he is, or at least attempting to, escape from that frame of mind. So hurrah for Steve. In my view, Steve's best role is to be the bouncing surface for the technical world because I think his intellect, wisdom, and opinions can make anything interesting.

Renesis: Upcoming Flash Killer Wannabe

EvolGrafiX, a small SVG tool developer, is working hard to ship Renesis, an apparent Flash killer, by end of this year. Where Flash plugin renders SWF, a proprietary format, Renesis will render SVG (100% of 1.2 mobile profile and 94% of 1.2 standard profile) version of the same graphics faster and at higher quality than Flash can. For scripting language, Renesis will use C# instead of as well as JavaScript (technically EcmaScript) which Flash uses. They will be using a handrolled C# interpreter so .NET won't be a requirement.

I've been using the Anti-grain Geometry engine (AGG), the open source 2D graphics engine Renesis uses, and have tracked Maxim Shemanarev, Renesis lead developer who also wrote AGG, for the past couple of years. As ambitious as the Renesis project seems, I think they will get the job done.

As to killing Flash, I doubt that will happen, even with all the interest in SVG. Rather, I think SVG and Renesis will find their own market in areas where Flash is weak.

Father’s Day Gift

What did I get for Father's Day? Moleskines: a pocket addressbook and a fullsize notebook. Along with the pocket notebook I had, it's almost a family. I'll have to get a mama moleskine (fullsize diary) though so the papa moleskine (fullsize notebook) won't feel lonely. And perhaps a fully figured sketchbook from Volant on the side…

Unofficial Donation Boxes for Musicians

I wish there were money boxes for musicians for people who download music illegally for convenience sake. I know it's kind of crazy but at least the money will go directly to the musicians. That is if they claim the unofficial donation boxes. If Paypal is interested, we can open an unofficial donation box for every musician that every lived for people to pour money into and assign a trust to help the musicians claim the boxes. Officially, they are just donations unrelated to anything so music publishers will have some difficulty getting their unfair share.

As frownable as the idea is, I think it's possibly a practical way to cut the sagging sack and connect the emerging dots, if you know what I mean.

Scoble’s New Job Title: *

That asterisk is a wildcard, not a star. The way I see it, he has done amazing things for Microsoft inside and out. How he does it is just as amazing. He is to Microsoft what the Schrodinger's cat is to Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: his observations of Microsoft and the view of world beyond it changes the company itself, from the ground up!

So I think he should be freed from his Longhorn/TabletPC chains and let loose with simply the asterisk as his job title, meaning his role is to simply do what he has been doing for the company: the wildcard. He is smart enough to know when to swing and when to duck so I doubt he'll get into anything he can't get out of as long as the company knows he is just doing his job. I know he is not perfect but imperfect is part of his magic formula, whatever that is. Meow.

Visual Basic 6

It's interesting that Microsoft AntiSpyware (in beta currently) is written in Visual Basic 6. Polished consumer-oriented GUI like that is difficult to code in C++ because of all the detailing work that has to be done. Since .NET still hasn't reached primetime as a client platform, VB6 makes a lot of sense.

Update:

By primetime, I didn't mean that .NET platform is less capable than VB6. The problem with building client software on .NET currently is that a) it's still moving at a speed some might find unstable, b) .NET Framework footprint is quite a bit bigger than VB6 runtime and is not yet available widely enough, and c) Visual Studio .NET series remains half-cooked.

Delegated Authentication

Delegated authentication differs from federated authentication model in that the authentication authority delegates authentication yet again. It's a double-sided star system where the authentication authorities sits in the middle acting as a directory of sort.

Delegated authentication model is not appropriate for weak authentication uses. So I doubt we'll see banks pushing customers to some federated authentication authority whenever they click on the sign-in button. Where it makes sense is protecting high-value transactions with strong and/or multi-party multi-factor authentication.

As cryptic as what I wrote above may sound, the net effect is that a) consumers will be able to buy their favorite secure token at Fry's and use it to protect their bank account without worrying about whether the bank supports the device or not, b) banks of all sizes will be able to support a wide range of authentication methods cheaply, and c) strong authentication vendors will be able to market their products and services directly to consumers.

The biggest hurdle for delegated authentication is that the cost of fraud risk have already become part of the balance sheet. Risk exposure is aggregated and taxed horizontally so that finanical risk is shared as part of operating cost. The net result is that individual customers face minimal financial risk which leaves them little incentives to be interested in strong authentication unless they are required to use them by their banks.

Instant Outlining and Wiki

While there are similarities between Instant Outlining (IO) and Wikis, there are subtle differences. Instant Outlining is more about people and relationships where Wikis are more about documents and collaboration. Instant Outlining is more about now and decentralization where Wikis are more about history and centralization.

I think the two can be combined to get the full benefits of both: a beast with multiple heads of Instant Outlines and the body of a Wiki with full versioning support. Ross, I think you need to ask Uncle Fluffy to tell you a story.

Smoke Day

I smoked today. Actually, I smoked just now with only 31 minutes left in the day. Not really a cigarrete even, more a mini-cigar that was sitting in a forgotten corner of the house until now. So horrible yet so comfortable. I've been on nicotine candy for the past three months and haven't been able to get off it. That's not really quitting, more like pausing. And I've been in an irritating state of mind for the past three months. Damn. I feel like a loser. The worst part of smoking these days is the guilt. I don't know if I am back to smoking or not yet. I am taking it one day at a time at this point. For now, allow me this pleasure of hating myself for this self-inflicted wound.