free at last, free at last, the national do-not-call list is finally here. to register a number by phone, you must be calling from that phone number. to register a number by the web, you must provide an email address.
posted by Will Ross at 13:13

today i went to day one of the plaNetwork conference at the presidio in san francisco. the attendees were a mix of hard core global social change activists, technology visionaries (including both brittle partisans and gregarious alpha geeks) and a broad base of left-leaning non-profit idealists. this is a soft money crowd, short on business logic, where capitalism is mistrusted and conservatives are considered an appalling subspecies. obviously by themselves this group is not on a fast evolutionary track to wide social collaboration as long as so many partisans wallow in simple closed minded arrogance.

i attended the keynote by hazel henderson. it was great to see her in person.

next i listened to mitch kapor introduce his open source software foundation and their chandler project. after the talk i asked mitch if he thinks the sco-caldera linux kernal lawsuit can disable the gpl. he dismissed sco-caldera as scoundrels filing a desperate lawsuit to prop up their stock price in the face of their evaporating unix market share. besides, he said, even if sco-caldera wins their suit, it will take the linux community less than a day to replace the offending code.

i watched a panel of talking heads discuss blogging. after some initial fast moving discussion an audience member asked in desperation, "what is a blog?" a show of hands displayed the disconnect clearly; a quarter of the audience had never heard of a blog, while half of the audience already have blogs. not a lot of middle ground!
posted by Will Ross at 22:00