Listics

Sara Paretsky’s heroine encounters the goons of George W. Bush’s outlaw regime in her new novel “Blacklist.” Ever wonder how many different people from how many different agencies are empowered to break into your house and/or eavesdrop on your private conversations in these days when guilt by suspicion is the law of the land? VI runs into a bunch of them.

Anybody out there waffling about whether or not to sign up for David Isenberg’s WTF 2024? I’ve been looking through the list of participants and I’m intimidated. I’m glad that I’ve signed up… my recent assignments have been ridiculously computernoid and I need to get back into the telecom scene.

A meme I haven’t been able to get my mind around is the thing about dumbing down the network and putting the intelligence on the periphery. The model is seductive, but it requires infinite bandwidth and new ways to manage accounting. I think. There’s a lot to be learned from the experts at WTF.

There are many professional meetings this spring, from PyCon to PingCon with the big gouda in Cambridge. David Isenberg’s WTF2004 from April 2 to 4 at a retreat center outside of Chapaqua , New York. Berkman Fellow Wendy Seltzer is going to be there putting the IP in IP.

Steve MacLaughlin has published a review of The Book of Probes at Boxes and Arrows. And if you like Boxes and Arrows, then you might also get off on Elegant Hack. (This latter suggestion is offered just to show off the power of Mozilla, my new default browser. For a very long time I have resisted the impulse to get lizardly or go operatic… early versions just munged up my Wintel boxes over the last few years. But today I grabbed the gecko by the tail, downloaded Mozilla, and made it my default browser. Sorry I waited this long!)

What is required for a MindJazz session?
System requirements (minimum): Two human minds that are live, awake, and aware of self and the other. Essential: Trust and respect, the freedom to “go big” and a focus on “easy, effortless, and enjoyable.”
(”The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” –Plutarch)