July 31, 2003
Why is it Purple?
Someone in the group I'm working with asked why PurpleNumbers are purple. My answer ended up being a big context provider, so I'm dumping it here. This is likely full of errors as the story as I've heard it is incomplete and I was unable to check some things because the network path to California was busted while I was writing. Saved here for later revisions. (0001EX)
UPDATE: Eugene has filled in some of the gaps in this and corrected some misconceptions I had. (0001HQ)
It's purple mostly by chance (0001EY)
Back in the late 60s and early 70s Doug Engelbart's lab at the Stanford Research Institute was working hard on allowing people to work together to be more effective at solving problems. One of the first things they discovered was that people don't work together as well as they could and the tools and process for doing so were not well developed. (0001EZ)
So, they set about working on those tools and processes. Some of the things they developed include: mice, personal workstations, hypertext, windowing GUIs, chorded keyboards, video conferencing, remote terminal manipulation and something called NLS. (0001F0)
NLS was a do-it-all editing environment for communication and coding. It had a graph based document storage model that allowed structural/sectional and nodal identifiers to be placed on content of the documents, based on various rules depending on the type of content. Nodal identifiers stayed with the content, regardless of how it was edited. Structural identifiers were hierarchical from the start of the document, indicating nested sections and lists. As such they could change as the document was edited and published. (0001F1)
The editor was customized to be aware of these things so that the identifiers could be made visible or invisible as necessary. (0001F2)
When editing documents it was possible to use copy from other versions or other documents in several different ways: (0001F3)
- copying, like cut and past (0001F4)
- copy by referencing an identifier (0001F5)
- transclude by referencing an identifier (0001F6)
I don't know if they called it transclusion or not. That term comes from Ted Nelson and his Xanadu project. While Xanadu has some similar goals and concepts to NLS (later called Augment) it has a much different attitude toward hierarchy. NLS is all about hierarchy, Nelson doesn't like rules. (0001F7)
What it means, though, is that you have the content by reference. If it is changed in the original source, the change shows up immediately in the place where it is transcluded. (0001F8)
In both Augment and Xanadu you can jump around in and amongst documents in the now familiar hypertext way. In those environments, though, the links were bidirectional. If you followed a link to its destination, you could tell at the destination that there was an incoming link, and you could follow it back home. In both systems, links were highly granular: in NLS you can jump to any identifier, in Xanadu you can jump to anything. (0001F9)
Fast forward a few decades to the Berners-Lee web. Hypertext the HTTP/HTML way comes into being and catches on like wildfire, in part because it is simple to implement. That simplicity left out some fun features: (0001FA)
Fast forward a few years later still: Doug Engelbart has never received the proper credit for the things he developed. Nowadays he spends his time sitting in a fairly pleasant windowed office just down the hall from the cafeteria at the Logitech building in Silicon Valley. He participates in a group called the Bootstrap Alliance ( http://www.bootstrap.org/ ) which still struggles valiantly on attempting to fulfill Doug's vision of coming up with ways to help society solve what he calls complex urgent problems. (0001FE)
Part and parcel of that vision is, amongst many other things, granular addressability of content; as much content as possible. To help display the value of granular addressability, the content on the Bootstrap site is marked up with identifiers very similar to those in Augment. These NIDs, as they came to be called, were published in purple. (0001FF)
A next step was to add purple numbering to mail archives, still considered one of the primary places for productive conversation. This allowed granular referencing. EugeneEricKim added a filter module to Mhonarc to make that happen. He then later created some code for processing well formed XML to add identifiers to arbitrary tags within. (0001FG)
Still later he and I modified UseModWiki to create PurpleWiki, allowing the same granular referencing into wiki content. MattLiggett created the first iteration of the IRC logger, processing the output to HTML with purple numbers. (0001FH)
Around Christmas of 2002 I started mooning over how to add transclusion to the already beneficial granular addressability. I had long been grumpy about the fact that the identifiers used with PurpleNumbers were only unique to the page on which they were presented. This struck me as a horrible violation of identifier ethics. (0001FI)
I realized that if we started creating identifiers from a central source, all the tools that used that source would be able to transclude content from one another. (0001FJ)
So that's what I did. TransClusion is now possible in a rudimentary form by screen scraping from web pages. (0001FK)
The latest version of PurpleWiki is generic enough that its purple number tools can be used with a variety of applications. The new style of purple numbers have been implemented in: (0001FL)
- PurpleWiki (of course) (0001FM)
- Zwiki (0001FN)
- Blog plugins (0001FO)
- MovableType (0001FP)
- Bloxsom (0001FQ)
- Mailman pipermail archiving software (0001FR)
- A new version of my Arts tool (0001FS)
and coming soon: (0001FT)
As it turns out, if you are on a white background and the CSS is set up correctly, the fuzzy lavender purple looks pretty good, noticeable but not too intrusive. (0001FW)
People Are Not Tools
I've had occassion to write some long email messages today that have some bits I thought should go here. The following is in response to some discussion on security policy documents. (0001EL)
I think formalized, overwrought security policies are the product of a fearful environment where through action and inaction what's important has been obscured by lack of foresight and good planning. People write security policies in an effort to make a stand against the lack of foresight. As the policies rarely get actively read and are time consuming to enforce they are rarely successful in their bid to counter lacks elsewhere. (0001EN)
Like many of my attitudes I think that successful security comes from removing doubt and removing choice. Being able to remove doubt and remove choice comes from having foresight, then identifying goals and sticking to them (wheels within wheels). (0001EO)
Computers are tools which, when they have well defined tasks, are easy to maintain. Easy maintenance leads to better security. A tool which is poorly described leads to stopgaps, confusion, too many choices, and plenty of doubt: all holes for error. (0001EQ)
People are not tools, primarily because that's gross but also because it is diversity of choice that makes people human. An effective human is one that is able to make good, informed choices from among several, with little doubt. People make good choices by being informed. Information flows through communication and experimentation. (0001ES)
Abuse of tools comes about when the tools provide handles for experimentation to people who have not been provided with enough information (through implicit or explicit means) to make good decisions about appropriate use of the tools. (0001EU)
Security, then, comes down to three things: providing focused and well-defined services, controlling exposure of handles and keeping users informed. (0001EV)
Later in the mail message I noted that my attitude doesn't really apply in situations where the data being protected actually matters. I think those situations are more rare than it may initially seem. (0001EW)
July 30, 2003
Let he without sin
Yahoo! News - Bush Shuns Calls to Legalize Gay Marriage (0001E7)
Oh please. Here's a few choice words from the prez: (0001E8)
I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and I believe we ought to codify that one way or the other and we have lawyers looking at the best way to do that. (0001E9)
I am mindful that we're all sinners and I caution those who may try to take a speck out of the neighbor's eye when they got a log in their own...I think it is important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts. (0001EA)
On the other hand, that does not mean that someone like me needs to compromise on the issue of marriage. (0001EB)
"Someone like me?" Who the hell is that? Something that only reacts in fear is not a person. (0001EC)
I was talking with some folk the other day about Bush's ability to call on religion to justify his actions. Evoking Jesus or God is a classic use of the deferment of responsibility principle: calling on a higher or external power to be the motivator of action so that later when things go wrong it is possible to say, "It wasn't me, it's Jesus!" or "It's not me, it's the Enron corporate culture that encouraged outrageous avarice." (0001ED)
I suspect with a little work we could codify this principle. Maybe somebody already has? (0001EE)
July 22, 2003
Serendipitous Epiphytal Being
Traditionally, when reading a book, if I encounter a word for which I don't have a full grasp of its connotative spectrum I take a best guess and move on. (0001DF)
I'm in the midst of reading Edward Wilson's The Future of Life. At times Wilson writes with such grace that I've been driven to the dictionary (OED) when I've stumbled. I don't want to be a bad dance partner. (0001DG)
- Disguised briefly with the voice of an optimistic economist, Wilson speaks of humanity's evolution to a more "irenic international culture". (0001DH)
- Further in, the end of the battle between market and natural economies is a "Cadmean victory" unless changes are made. (0001DI)
- "Epiphytes" in chunks of Amazonian forests separated by clear cutting and burning suffer from the drying effects of winds once buffered by the trees. They themselves help manage moisture, locally. (0001DJ)
I looked these up as they happened. (0001DK)
My first reaction to this was, "yeah, right, whatever": any pretensions the international economic community has toward peace create an unstable veneer maintained in the pursuit of profit, easily broken. Humans fight because it is good for breeding (Wilson goes on to suggest this, in a later chapter). (0001DN)
- Cadmean victory (0001DO)
- a prryhic victory (won at too great a cost to be of use to the victor). (0001DP)
My negativity blossomed at this stage. I thought of god-fearing politicians, burning away the present day in pursuit of greatness with nary a concern for the future, secure in their knowledge of the second coming and the termination of this time ("EschatonsRUs?"). (0001DQ)
And then this. The meaning of epiphyte was unknown to me. I read the definition and felt warm and fuzzy again: the network of connotations, moving with the metaphors of these three words had come into harmony. (0001DT)
To avoid the Cadmean victory and reach a greater good, to be irenic in our doings and our beings we can remember that we all can be epiphytes: growing on one another, present but not parasitic. Epiphytes the whole way down, but also the whole way up. I'm on you and you're on me. Somewhere in the cycle we connect with one another and we connect with everything else. (0001DU)
I've trackbacked this posting to Eric quoting me because this everybody's an epiphyte world view is the source of statements such as the one he quotes: (0001DV)
Transcluding is a good tool in the process of presenting thesis and antithesis, but at some point we want to crystallize out the synthesis. (0001DW)
Knowledge is the result of a collaborative dialectic dance. Sometimes we collaborate directly with others, sometimes we do it apparently alone, but always we do it in a network of many things: each thing presenting its own thesis, our many reactions a multitude of antitheses. (0001DX)
Just as we go to parks to see the epiphytes and other wonders of nature to be informed and enlivened, so too we go to people and their artifacts. And we protect, preserve and make accessible. (0001DY)
MEGO
Some moons ago, colleagues somewhere in the support organization of the university I was working for started using the term MEGO: My Eyes Glaze(d) Over. A term used when describing the effect of tedious documentation or perhaps a meeting trapped in a whirlpool of repetition. (0001D3)
I and my trusty blog habit have been abed with a near terminal case of MEGO. In an effort to address the sludge I've slashed my RSS subscriptions down to something a bit more manageable. Will this help? I don't know. The hope is that the veil will soon lift and once more I'll feel engaged, non-drowsy and ready to subscribe. (0001D4)
Elsewhere in the news: (0001D5)
- It's satisfying to pull grape vines out of trees and bushes, but it can make you kinda dirty. (0001D6)
- My mother declares the-maybe-a-cherry-tree tree a decorative crabapple of some kind. (0001D7)
- The other crabapple tree is sick. (0001D8)
- Cataract Falls, in Indiana, has a distinctly un-Indiana feel to it. Simply because they are big (for Indiana). (0001D9)
- I think the executive branch of the of the US Government should resign, or better yet maybe they would consider sepaku? (0001DA)
July 14, 2003
RSS 2.0 Comments Feed Template
Can somebody (the LazyWeb? mayhaps?) point me to a nice clean template for creating an RSS 2.0 Feed of (all of) my comments? I've found several but they are all a bit different and I'm feeling lazy. (0001D2)
July 13, 2003
The Thunder and The Berries
I've recently returned from a brief climbing trip to the red river gorge. (0001D0)
Enjoy some pictures and commentary if you feel so inclined. (0001D1)
July 04, 2003
July 03, 2003
RSS 2.0 Full Feed
I've added an additional RSS feed. This one is RSS 2.0 and provides full content in HTML parsed to link the PurpleNumbers back to the archive page. It also correctly links the parsed WikiWords back to the attached wiki. (00019W)
I'm not sure where I fall on the debate between full and partial feeds, but I thought I would provide this to see what happens. (00019X)
PurplePlugin Testing
Apparently it's been some days since I've made a posting about PurpleNumbers, PurpleWiki and the PurplePlugin. None show up on the front page. Shock. Horror. (00019U)
This is a test of a bug fix. PurpleWiki 0.2 (soon to be renamed to 0.9) is stable and works marvelously. (00019V)
