confused of calcutta

In the past, we used location of consumer as part of the proof of identity, and location of producer as part of the process of delivery. What happens if these are no longer held to be true, if Generation M decides that these constraints no longer make sense? What happens if we have to stop [...]

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Most people I speak to tend to agree that identity, authentication and permissioning are key issues to resolve in the context of how we live and how we conduct business in the 21st century. Much has been written about these issues, much remains to be written and debated. And done.
But in the meantime……..
I thought I’d [...]

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Have you been following what’s been happening at WWW 2006 in Edinburgh recently? One of my favourite cities, wish I could have been there.
It’s worth checking the site out. Some interesting papers and discussions. Incidentally, there’s a footnote to each paper:
Copyright is held by the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2). Distribution of these [...]

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I’ve been gently restoring the blog back to the way it used to be. And, while waiting for things to happen, I took a random walk. I read the news today, oh boy. And while I avoided finding out how many holes it took to fill the Albert Hall, I chanced across Bill Thompson’s reference [...]

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Well, it looks like normal service has been restored, to all practical intents and purposes. The community has been fantastic, coming up with rich and varied suggestions as to how I could salvage the blog. A number of you scraped Google caches and sent the salvage on, particularly Chris and Doc. One, Myrto, had a [...]

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A few days ago I mentioned that my copy of Richard Gabriel’s Patterns of Software had briefly passed through my hands en route the next reader. One of the things that characterises a good book is the urge it places on the reader, the urge to delve into it again en passant, as it were, [...]

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If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

One of my favourite quotes.
Before my blog went walkabout, I had been working on the next “recap” of Four Pillars, and taking somewhat more time than I [...]

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I’ve been delighted with the comments, advice and mail I’ve received since “losing” the blog.
A real feeling of community. Thanks everyone.

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….are greatly exaggerated.
I “lost” my blog yesterday. Some of you may have noticed. The hosting company had problems with one of their servers, and somehow both primary as well as backup disks died on them. Whatever backup means in that context.
I don’t like blame cultures, nor am I intrinsically litigious. These things happen and I [...]

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I had asked earlier “If pearls begin with nacre then what do snowballs begin with?” in a Searlsian snowball sense. There have been a number of suggestions, ranging from flutter to nub to kernel.
I like Kernel. Thanks Sean. Let’s see what happens. If Kernel is to be the kernel then we will have a snowball…….

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