Tidbits from David Weinberger at ROFLcon

Submitted by batsonjay
on Fri, 04/25/2008 - 21:54

No major insights here; just tidbits from David Weinberger's speech:

  • Fame arises from scarcity of suppliers
  • Perfection is now seen as less-credible (vs. more credible, in years past.) (NB: IMHO (jb), this isn't a universal truth....)
  • "We" make memes famous (via recommendations)
  • But now, if fame is coming from "we," we don't know what to do with fame that arises from lots of people creating fame?

Note: I'm making no endorsement of these points.... Merely capturing some things. ;-)

How do we un-page Drupal?

Submitted by batsonjay
on Fri, 04/25/2008 - 21:51

Today, most Drupal sites still provide content using a page-oriented metaphor. But web pages are more usable by users when they are driven by dynamic update without page change (e.g. driven by AIR, Ajax, etc.) Yet, building pages with this style of interaction is difficult.

Part of the problem is it still requires programmers to build this type of page with code. Witness this analysis about Javascript 1.0 vs. Javascript 2.0 (vs. AIR, etc.) Will any of the typical "content creator" role-type people putting content on a site even have a clue about what Hank wrote?

So the question is: What truly

Gates from (not "to") Another Generation

Submitted by batsonjay
on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 22:07

It's amazing to me to see what Bill Gates continues to say (he believes) about open source. He talks about open source, but it isn't open source as you and I would know (/love) it.

All I can conclude is either:

  • He has lived his whole career with one business model, and he's just stuck in that model and can't understand the massive, amazing, staggering leverage that comes from having a really huge community work on the same software project.

The hard men come out to play

Submitted by batsonjay
on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 05:24

Or crash.

Imagine you're a fit cyclist, and you're on one of the speediest rides you've been on. Your eyes are glued to the wheel in front of you as the peleton you're riding with aggressively ups the pace 20% more than you're used to, and stays there for over 100 miles and many hours of max-effort.

boonen_flanders.jpgThe road you're on has long cobbled sections, rough and uneven with frequent potholes. You're in a bunch that swerves from side of the road to the other side, looking for a better strip of smooth, non-cobbled track.

Tags: 
cycling

"So, have you written any modules yet?"

Submitted by batsonjay
on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 04:39

This is something I overheard a couple of times while sitting in the hallway between Drupalcon sessions doing email. Despite the danger of extrapolating based on too-few data points, I think it's fair to say that writing some kind of custom module (from scratch) is a "rite of passage" for an aspiring Drupal developer.

Yet the question is: what does "Yes" mean? It certainly means you got something done. But how good was it? Did it follow good Drupal coding practice? Did it do something novel, or implement something old in a new way? Was that way better?

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