Desiring Machine

Well it seems Google is becoming a victim of their own success.

And that is the problem with becoming a cultural phenomenon. The law ceases to protect you. What is happening to Google is what Gilles Deleuze would call a deterritorialization or line of flight.

“Multiplicities are defined by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight or deterritorialization according to which they change in nature and connect with other multiplicities. The plane of consistency (grid) is the outside of all multiplicities. The line of flight marks: the reality of a finite number of dimensions that the multiplicity effectively fills; the impossibility of a supplementary dimension, unless the multiplicity is transformed by the line of flight; the possibility and necessity of flattening all of the multiplicities on a single plane of consistency or exteriority, regardless of their number of dimensions.”

~ Gilles Deleuze Thousand Plateaus

The semantic disruption of Google is possible because of its multiplicitous nature. Googling is a nomadic experience. A process by which one moves adrift through the chance encounters of reality and linguistic relationships that bind them together. The network that Google corporation glues together traces out the very grid that we live within. In a word Google has become ours because it has weaved together through its tapestry of search algorithms, technologies, and interstitial existences the very fabric of our being. When you become that co-aligned with the grid you no longer continue operating as a separate autonomous unit of being. Your identity is lost, you become nomad.

It is remarkable the rhetoric and logic of ownership, trademark, and corporatism. To presume that things are fundamentally discrete and can be owned, or even that language can be owned and controlled because it is part of a brand. Rarely is it mentioned that Google is the product of us. What is compelling about Google is that it weaves together the products of our being, whether they be blogs, news, video clips, webpages, text, audio, utterances and disclosures. That is the soup of life and tapestry of our weaved web. Google owns it no more than you or I own it. It is a territory that defies territorialization. And Google, being successful in providing the services that effectively allow us to traverse this web, finds that their brand has become something that they no longer really have any control over. And so goes the logic of control when confronted with the force of deterritorialization. Google is a line of flight that traces, it is no longer a stable place, entity, or idea.

Hey Google, I got your google right here!

You know when GOP Senate candinate Mike?â„¢ McGavick blew .17 on his DUI he didn’t have the benefit of technology to know that he was blackout drunk when he got behnd the wheel. Well now there is a better way for the on-the-go-had-too-many-hipster-cum-future-Senate-candidate to act responsibly as they booze it up.

Introducing the iBreath a breathalyzer for your iPod.

I can’t think of a better gift for that aspiring future Senator in your family. The product makes staying sober cool and hip again.

Perhaps someone should send one to the McGavick campaign HQ.

Interesting story about how an open source project adds “no military use” clause to the GPL. A lot of people seem to think this is a can of worms, futile, and misdirected step for an open source license. But I find it intriguing. And why not? If one spends a majority of his or her time and energy dedicated to a specific software project why shouldn’t they have a say in how it is used or misused. Of course there will always be those who point to the tricky problem of unintended consequences. However, this is a legitimate step as a conscientous objector, and follows a long venerable tradition.

Came across this audio of Senator Ted Stevens arguing against Net Neutrality. Wow! Just wow. It is unfortunate how ill informed the Senator is on how the internet works. But what is more amazing is that the telcos have this guy representing their interests in the senate. One would think that perhaps they would strive to have a more articulate defender of their interests.

A key quote from Senator Stevens:

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.

Either Stevens is lying or else this is a really, really, sad commentary on the state of IT network support in the capitol. Is Stevens really trying to tell us that he sent an email that took the entire weekend to deliver? What intern staffer is running Bit Torrent and a warez server saturating internet bandwith in the Senator’s office? There are certainly legitimate issues around QoS and bandwidth usage, but we are nowhere near this level of degradation of internet service.

The whole debate on Net Neutrality is really unfortunate. I don’t fault Stevens. To the average person the internet is really a feat of magic, that mysteriously just works. The number of people who understand how networks work on a level sufficient to have an informed opinion on the technical workings of the internet are really not that significant with respect to the general population. However, that is what expert staffers are for and a senator should avail him or herself of these resources, not just simply shill out uninformed BS that comes from special interest memos. The nation is not served well by representatives this out of touch. And if they are this ill informed about the internet then what about really important matters like nuclear weapons, arms proliferation, energy policy, scientific facts on global warming, and all the other critical issues that face our nation and our planet?

Myself, I am a bit conflicted about Net Neutrality legislation. I whole heartedly agree with the principle of net neutrality, the internet exists today because of this principle and standard. Interoperability survives and in some cases thrives because of the neutral nature of the network and the cooperative spirit of nodes on the internet. Everything I have read is that the telcos want to get into the content business, and tiered service pricing is a way to pinch those in the content business, not to mention their current voice service competition in the form of VOIP. The real danger is the overt and excessive commericialization of the internet. The internet is great because it is one of the most level playing fields we have. I especially don’t want to see the internet become simply another extension of cable TV where conglomerates are competing with each other to deliver us the latest bubble gum shlock phenomenon at high bit rates and (un?)intentionally edging out the small independent operation. The other reality is that we in the US are falling behind in our bandwidth potential. If not corrected soon this will become a real drag on our economic potential as a nation. So I don’t want to see legislation that props up failing business models.

On the other hand I fear this debate in the senate because of the law of unintented consequences. I want an intelligible debate by our representatives. I worry about the long term effect of bad legislation. The internet has a kind of nice anarchistic charm to it that is slowly dying. Just as I don’t want the internet to turn into TV, I also don’t want it to become beholden to onerous intrusion of every piss pot special interest out there. If neo nazis or earth liberation front groups, pedophiles or republicans, fascists or christians all want to make their way on the internet that is fine by me. We as a nation are strengthened by the proliferation of diverse opinions and the free expression of speech. And let fringe groups become marginalized by informed citizens. I don’t want the internet itself to become a battle ground where one group tries to silence another group all in the name of protecting the public whether is it through decency laws, or intrusive network controls and surveillance that is enabled by bad legislation. I am not opposed to regulation per se, but it has to be well informed, thoughtful legislation. And the internet cannot be turned in a political football. And specific regulation such as net neutrality will need to be careful in not creating too much of a precident for more onerous future regulation. And unfortunately with the likes of Stevens in the Senate I am not sure the American public is getting a fair shake on the net neutrality issue.

Check out this Wired article by Bruce Schneier The Scariest Terror Threat of All. A good read. I think Bruce understands the nature of terrorist threats pretty well. It is about time we had this discussion in this country. Also learned an interesting term, the flypaper theory of terrorism. Which seems like a dominant albeit ultimately weak justification for our involvement in Iraq.

I find mildly disturbing this news from Intel that they won’t work on any new instruction sets for their micro processors. The reasons why seem clear. Itanium just did not have any traction in the market place because it had no real mainstream software to run on it. Intel made a misstep by going all or nothing with Itanium where AMD took the more prudent approach of bolting on 64 bit instructions to the x86 instruction set. And Intel was burned badly. However, I find this whole episode disheartening and don’t like to hear that a major R&D based company like Intel is saying no to future developments in micro processor instruction sets. Are we really to believe that we are at the peak of civilization when it comes to micro processors, and that x86 is the pinnacle of human achievement? If so, this is a sad day for humanity and for all the competent and diligent engineers and researchers in Silcon Valley, Silicon Forest, and elsewhere who labor away at developing new and interesting processor designs.

This whole dilemma should mostly be laid at the feet of software developers. Yeah, I know I have heard all the arguments before, massive QA testing efforts, economies or scale, etc. all make building platform agnostic code all but impractical. But is this really the case? In a certain sense, yes. But only because the behemoths and the purveyors of mono culture have won in the market place. This is one of those areas where Microsoft either directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally have contributed to the stagnation of innovation. Other companies have not taken this path, but unfortunately they have not faired as well financially as MSFT. But this does not mean they are total failures either. The company I work for, Sun Microsystems, has made a pretty good business out of Java, a programming language which from the start was designed to be platform agnostic. With Java you can, in theory, write your code and software packages and they will run on any platform so long as there is a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) available for that platform. And building new virtual machines for new and different platforms is a lot more efficient than porting over all your applications to a new platform. As another example take Apple Computer, last year they announced their transition from Power PC (PPC) micro processors to Intel based x86 micro processors. One path Apple could have taken was to say all new software should be ported to intel and left PPC processors cold. But that would have alienated their existing user base and would not have been a smart business decision. Instead Apple did the hard work and developed a methodology and set of developer tools that allow software to be developed as Universal Binaries. For Apple this concept is not new. In a former life these were called Fat Binaries. They first appeared when Apple made a transition from the 68000 Motorola processor to the Power PC processor in the early 90’s. And Steve Jobs’ company NeXT had robust support for fat binaries that allowed software to be run on many platforms including Intel x86. And to further assist the transition Apple announced that they would ship with Rosetta, a software based emulation layer that would allow PPC code to run unchanged on x86 processors, albeit with a performance cost.

For those of you in the know this is all old news. But my point is that these efforts by companies like Apple and Sun should be encouraged. With some long range planning and a little forethought software can be developed to take advantage of advancements in the state of the art of hardware and processor innovation. There are many valid reasons for platform diversity. We take for granted that diversity is good for culture, society, politics, ecosystems, and many other facets of life. Why not for information technology? Different processors are good. They can help our critical information systems guard against malignant viruses and security threats that propagate through vectors bound by homogeneous systems. Different processors can be developed for specialized types of computing that lead to even greater efficiency and productivity. And furthermore innovative developments in processor technology can be achieved by exploring radically new designs which lead to significant advances in the state of the art whether it is greater raw processing power, singificantly lower energy requirements, or productivity enhancing achievements through parallel processing techniques. There is no intrinsic reason software can’t be made to easily take advantage of these new hardware possibilities. And companies like Sun and Apple will be well positioned when the future brings new and interesting platforms to the fore. But apparently Intel is not going to be the company that is willing to innovate in the micro processor field. This is truly a sad day.

It was pointed out that I should have my links open up pages in new browser windows. This would enhance the user experience of IE users who currently don’t have the benefits of tab browsing. One solution add the target=”_blank” to all my links. A seemingly simple solution. But after a little investigation I found out that the target attribute is invalid in XHTML 1.1 strict. A deal breaker, and something I did not know about the target attribute. Besides, I am not inclined to having to type out the target=_blank” everytime I want to post an entry with links. There has got to be a better way.

Well after a little searching I found a convenient WordPress plugin called Zap_NewWindow that makes your links that point to outside domains automatically open in a new window. I like it. A nice elegant solution that remains Web Standards compliant. Plus I don’t have to think about it when I post entries and links. Satisfies the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid).

As a side note the open link in new window is not something I have really thought about for a long time. Because I use Safari or Firefox everyday, both browsers that support tabs, I unconsciously and instinctually right click on all links to “Open Link In New Tab”. Now if we could just get websites to stop using braindead Javascript to force links to go through hoops and thus break my ability to right click and open in new tabs.

Let’s move away from this kind of junk:

Javascript Based Links
I’m talking to you New York Times.

I was interested to find out that there are OS X Dashboard widgets out there for posting to blogs. Should make my life easier. This post was created with WordPress Dash.