Update: It turns out that us seeing this letter was the result of a "Privacy Leak", in which an email by Laurie Garrett (a writer for Newsday) that was intended to be kept between friends gets forwarded on to increasingly wider circles, until it becomes a matter of public discourse. James Grimmelmann writes a engthy account of the story behind this fascinating story on Yale's LawMeme. Very interesting to see weblogs and in particular Metafilter making big news. I am keeping the story up because I think it offers a valuable look behind the scenes of world politics, and because by now it is public knowlege. Stay tuned for more.
from Topica and Metafilter.
===============================
Hi Guys.
OK, hard to believe, but true. Yours truely has been hobnobbing with the
ruling class.
I spent a week in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum. I was
awarded a special pass which allowed me full access to not only the
entire official meeting, but also private dinners with the likes the
head of the Saudi Secret Police, presidents of various insundry
countries, your Fortune 500 CEOS and the leaders of the most important
NGOs in the world. This was not typical press access. It was full-on,
unfettered, class A hobnobbing.
from Topica
With apologies for the group email... I thought this was interesting enough
to pass along. These are the notes from a friend of a friend who writes for
Newsday.
Adam Davis
Director, EPRIsolutions Environment Division
=====
Hi Guys.
OK, hard to believe, but true. Yours truely has been hobnobbing with the
ruling class.
I spent a week in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum. I was
awarded a special pass which allowed me full access to not only the
entire official meeting, but also private dinners with the likes the
head of the Saudi Secret Police, presidents of various insundry
countries, your Fortune 500 CEOS and the leaders of the most important
NGOs in the world. This was not typical press access. It was full-on,
unfettered, class A hobnobbing.
Davos, I discovered, is a breathtakingly beautiful spot, unlike anything
I'd ever experienced. Nestled high in the Swiss Alps, it's a three hours
train ride from Zurich that finds you climbing steadily through
snow-laden mountains that bring to mind Heidi and Audrey Hepburn (as in
the opening scenes of "Charade"). The EXTREMELY powerful arrive by
helicopter. The moderately powerful take the first class train. The NGOs
and we mere mortals reach heaven via coach train or a conference bus.
Once in Europe's bit of heaven conferees are scattered in hotels that
range from B&B to ultra luxury 5-stars, all of which are located along
one of only three streets that bisect the idyllic village of some 13,000
permanent residents.
Local Davos folks are fanatic about skiing, and the slopes are literally
a 5-15 minute bus ride away, depending on which astounding downhill you
care to try. I don't know how, so rather than come home in a full body
cast I merely watched.
This sweet little chalet village was during the WEF packed with about
3000 delegates and press, some 1000 Swiss police, another 400 Swiss
soldiers, numerous tanks and armored personnel carriers, gigantic rolls
of coiled barbed wire that gracefully cascaded down snow-covered
hillsides, missile launchers and assorted other tools of the national
security trade. The security precautions did not, of course, stop there.
Every single person who planned to enter the conference site had special
electronic badges which, upon being swiped across a reading pad,
produced a computer screen filled color portrait of the attendee, along
with his/her vital statistics. These were swiped and scrutinized by
soldiers and police every few minutes -- any time one passed through a
door, basically. The whole system was connected to handheld wireless
communication devices made by HP, which were issued to all VIPs. I got
one. Very cool, except when they crashed. Which, of course, they did
frequently. These devices supplied every imagineable piece of
information one could want about the conference, your fellow delegates,
Davos, the world news, etc. And they were emailing devices --- all
emails being monitored, of course, by Swiss cops.
Antiglobalization folks didn't stand a chance. Nor did Al Qaeda. After
all, if someone managed to take out Davos during WEF week the world
would basically lose a fair chunk of its ruling and governing class
POOF, just like that. So security was the name of the game. Metal
detectors, X-ray machines, shivering soldiers standing in blizzards,
etc.
Overall, here is what I learned about the state of our world:
- I was in a dinner with heads of Saudi and German FBI, plus the
foreign minister of Afghanistan. They all said that at its peak Al Qaeda
had 70,000 members. Only 10% of them were trained in terrorism -- the
rest were military recruits. Of that 7000, they say all but about 200
are dead or in jail.
- But Al Qaeda, they say, is like a brand which has been heavily
franchised. And nobody knows how many unofficial franchises have been
spawned since 9/11.
- The global economy is in very very very very bad shape. Last year
when WEF met here in New York all I heard was, "Yeah, it's bad, but
recovery is right around the corner". This year "recovery" was a word
never uttered. Fear was palpable -- fear of enormous fiscal hysteria.
The watchwords were "deflation", "long term stagnation" and "collapse of
the dollar". All of this is without war.
- If the U.S. unilaterally goes to war, and it is anything short of a
quick surgical strike (lasting less than 30 days), the economists were
all predicting extreme economic gloom: falling dollar value, rising spot
market oil prices, the Fed pushing interest rates down towards zero with
resulting increase in national debt, severe trouble in all countries
whose currency is guaranteed agains the dollar (which is just about
everybody except the EU), a near cessation of all development and
humanitarian programs for poor countries. Very few economists or
ministers of finance predicted the world getting out of that economic
funk for minimally five-10 years, once the downward spiral ensues.
- Not surprisingly, the business community was in no mood to hear about
a war in Iraq. Except for diehard American Republicans, a few Brit
Tories and some Middle East folks the WEF was in a foul, angry
anti-American mood. Last year the WEF was a lovefest for America. This
year the mood was so ugly that it reminded me of what it felt like to be
an American overseas in the Reagan years. The rich -- whether they are
French or Chinese or just about anybody -- are livid about the Iraq
crisis primarily because they believe it will sink their financial
fortunes.
- Plenty are also infuriated because they disagree on policy grounds. I
learned a great deal. It goes FAR beyond the sorts of questions one
hears raised by demonstrators and in UN debates. For example:
- If Al Qaeda is down to merely 200 terrorists cadres and a
handful of wannabe franchises, what's all the fuss?
- The Middle East situation has never been worse. All hope for a
settlement between Israel and Palestine seems to have evaporated. The
energy should be focused on placing painful financial pressure on all
sides in that fight, forcing them to the negotiating table. Otherwise,
the ME may well explode. The war in Iraq is at best a distraction from
that core issue, at worst may aggravate it. Jordan's Queen Rania spoke
of the "desperate search for hope".
- Serious Islamic leaders (e.g. the King of Jordan, the Prime
Minster of Malaysia, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia) believe that the Islamic
world must recapture the glory days of 12-13th C Islam. That means
finding tolerance and building great education institutions and places
of learning. The King was passionate on the subject. It also means
freedom of movement and speech within and among the Islamic nations.
And, most importantly to the WEF, it means flourishing free trade and
support for entrepeneurs with minimal state regulation. (However, there
were also several Middle East respresentatives who argued precisely the
opposite. They believe bringing down Saddam Hussein and then pushing the
Israel/Palestine issue could actually result in a Golden Age for Arab
Islam.)
- US unilateralism is seen as arrogant, bullyish. If the U.S.
cannot behave in partnership with its allies -- especially the Europeans
-- it risks not only political alliance but BUSINESS, as well. Company
leaders argued that they would rather not have to deal with US
government attitudes about all sorts of multilateral treaties (climate
change, intellectual property, rights of children, etc.) -- it's easier
to just do business in countries whose governments agree with yours. And
it's cheaper, in the long run, because the regulatory envornments match.
War against Iraq is seen as just another example of the unilateralism.
- For a minority of the participants there was another layer of
AntiAmericanism that focused on moralisms and religion. I often heard
delegates complain that the US "opposes the rights of children", because
we block all treaties and UN efforts that would support sex education
and condom access for children and teens. They spoke of sex education as
a "right". Similarly, there was a decidedly mixed feeling about
Ashcroft, who addressed the conference. I attended a small lunch with
Ashcroft, and observed Ralph Reed and other prominent Christian
fundamentalists working the room and bowing their heads before eating.
The rest of the world's elite finds this American Christian behavior at
least as uncomfortable as it does Moslem or Hindu fundamentalist
behavior. They find it awkward every time a US representative refers to
"faith-based" programs. It's different from how it makes non-Christian
Americans feel -- these folks experience it as downright embarrassing.
- When Colin Powell gave the speech of his life, trying to win
over the nonAmerican delegates, the sharpest attack on his comments came
not from Amnesty International or some Islamic representative -- it came
from the head of the largest bank in the Netherlands!
I learned that the only economy about which there is much enthusiasm is
China, which was responsible for 77% of the global GDP growth in 2002.
But the honcho of the Bank of China, Zhu Min, said that fantastic growth
could slow to a crawl if China cannot solve its rural/urban problem.
Currently 400 million Chinese are urbanites, and their average income is
16 times that of the 900 million rural residents. Zhu argued China must
urbanize nearly a billion people in ten years!
I learned that the US economy is the primary drag on the global economy,
and only a handful of nations have sufficient internal growth to thrive
when the US is stagnating.
The WEF was overwhelmed by talk of security, with fears of terrorism,
computer and copyright theft, assassination and global instability
dominating almost every discussion.
I learned from American security and military speakers that, "We need
to attack Iraq not to punish it for what it might have, but
preemptively, as part of a global war. Iraq is just one piece of a
campaign that will last years, taking out states, cleansing the planet."
The mood was very grim. Almost no parties, little fun. If it hadn't been
for the South Africans -- party animals every one of them -- I'd never
have danced. Thankfully, the South Africans staged a helluva party, with
Jimmy Dludlu's band rocking until 3am and Stellenbosch wines pouring
freely, glass after glass after glass....
These WEF folks are freaked out. They see very bad economics ahead, war,
and more terrorism. About 10% of the sessions were about terrorism, and
it's heavy stuff. One session costed out what another 9/11-type attack
would do to global markets, predicting a far, far worse impact due to
the "second hit" effect -- a second hit that would prove all the world's
post-9/11 security efforts had failed. Another costed out in detail what
this, or that, war scenario
Would do to spot oil prices. Russian speakers argued that "failed
nations" were spawning terrorists --- code for saying, "we hate
Chechnya". Entire sessions were devoted to arguing which poses the
greater asymmetric threat: nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
Finally, who are these guys? I actually enjoyed a lot of my
conversations, and found many of the leaders and rich quite charming and
remarkably candid. Some dressed elegantly, no matter how bitter cold and
snowy it was, but most seemed quite happy in ski clothes or casual
attire. Women wearing pants was perfectly acceptable, and the elite is
sufficiently
Multicultural that even the suit and tie lacks a sense of dominance.
Watching Bill Clinton address the conference while sitting in the hotel
room of the President of Mozambique -- we were viewing it on closed
circuit TV -- I got juicy blow-by=blow analysis of US foreign policy
from a remarkably candid head of state. A day spent with Bill Gates
turned out to be fascinating and fun. I found the CEO of Heinekin
hilarious, and George Soros proved quite earnest about confronting AIDS.
Vicente Fox -- who I had breakfast with -- proved sexy and smart like a
--- well, a fox. David Stern (Chair of the NBA) ran up and gave me a
hug.
The world isn't run by a clever cabal. It's run by about 5,000
bickering, sometimes charming, usually arrogant, mostly male people who
are accustomed to living in either phenomenal wealth, or great personal
power. A few have both. Many of them turn out to be remarkably naive --
especially about science and technology. All of them are financially
wise, though their ranks have thinned due to unwise tech-stock
investing. They pay close heed to politics, though most would be happy
if the global political system behaved far more rationally -- better for
the bottom line. They work very hard, attending sessions from dawn to
nearly midnight, but expect the standards of intelligence and analysis
to be the best available in the entire world. They are impatient. They
have a hard time reconciling long term issues (global wearming, AIDS
pandemic, resource scarcity) with their daily bottomline foci. They are
comfortable working across languages, cultures and gender, though white
caucasian males still outnumber all other categories. They adore hi-tech
gadgets and are glued to their cell phones.
Welcome to Earth: meet the leaders.
Ciao,
Laurie
A hillarious and fascinating story of recording a record for a major label:
On Monday July 27, I begin a new project. I will be recording an album of a band for a very famous Producer. The band is relatively unknown other than within the Record Industry which, for the most part, is currently filled with bitter losers of the biggest bidding war in the history of the music business.
I first discovered IRC in 1989, on unix systems at East Carolina University, but I didn't become a daily user until 1991 or so, on various hacked university computer systems. Later on, I got in big trouble for those hacks. Today its part of my job to fool with unix, and I am a daily IRC user. Here's an interesting article about the early days of IRC.
History of IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
Author: Daniel Stenberg Version: 0.8 - September 24, 2002
I've done my very best to gather information from as many sources as possible to verify facts, stories and dates. If you have additional information, have found errors in my text or just feel like commenting anything, email me! I find collecting historical facts about internet events really hard.
Feel free to link to this page or host it elsewhere. Please keep me credited as author.
The Beginning
IRC was born during summer 1988 when Jarkko "WiZ" Oikarinen wrote the first IRC client and server at the University of Oulu, Finland (where he was working at the Department of Information Processing Science).
Jarkko intended to extend the BBS software he administrated at tolsun.oulu.fi, to allow news the usenet style, real time discussions and similar BBS features. The first part he implemented was the chat part, which he did with borrowed parts written by his friends Jyrki Kuoppala and Jukka Pihl. It was initially tested on a single machine, and according to the words from Jarkko himself "The birthday of IRC was in August 1988". The first IRC server was named tolsun.oulu.fi.
Jarkko got some friends at the Helsinki and Tampere Universities to start running IRC servers when his number of users increased. Other universities soon followed. Markku Järvinen helped improving the client. At this time Jarkko realized that the rest of the BBS features probably wouldn't fit in his program!
Jarkko got in touch with guys at the University of Denver and Oregon State University. They had got an IRC network running (they had got the program from one of Jarkko's friends, Vijay Subramaniam -- the first non-finnish person to use IRC) and wanted to connect to the finnish network. IRC then grew larger and got used on the entire Finnish national network - Funet - and then connected to Nordunet, the Scandinavian branch of the Internet. In November 1988, IRC had spread across the Internet.
In the middle of 1989, there were some 40 servers worldwide.
ircII was released 1989 by Michael Sandrof.
In July 1990, IRC averaged at 12 users on 38 servers.
In 1990, a new network was set up in order to develop a new version (2.6) of the ircd. The network named ChNet (about 25 servers and no users) existed a few months before disagreements among the programmers caused it to dissolve.
EFnet
In August 1990 the first major disagreement took place in the IRC world. The "A-net" (Anarchy net) included as server named eris.berkeley.edu. It was all open, required no passwords and had no limit on the number of connects. As Greg "wumpus" Lindahl explains: "it had a wildcard server line, so people were hooking up servers and nick-colliding everyone".
The "Eris Free network", EFnet, made the eris machine the first to be Q-lined (Q for quarantine) from IRC (wumpus' words again: "Eris refused to remove that line, so I formed EFnet. It wasn't much of a fight; I got all the hubs to join, and almost everyone else got carried along."). A-net was formed with the eris servers, EFnet was formed with the non-eris servers. History showed most servers and users went with EFnet. The name EFnet lived only shortly, as soon as ANet had died, the name EFnet became void too. There was one and only IRC left again.
TubNet was the next network to splinter off. It was created by a crowd of people in #hottub that grew tired of all the netsplits. It got 5 servers and around 100 users. It died again in September the same year.
One often-talked-about event in the history of IRC is the gulf war. In early 1991, live reports were available and more than 300 concurrent users were experienced for the first time.
Undernet
Another fork effort, the first that really made a big and lasting difference, was initiated by 'Wildthang' in USA October 1992 (it forked off the EFnet ircd version 2.8.10). It was meant to be just a test network to develop bots on but it quickly grew to a network "for friends and their friends". In Europe and Canada a separate new network was being worked on (by '_dl' and 'WIZZARD') and in December the french servers connected to the canadian ones, and in the end of the month, the .fr-.ca network was connected to the US one and the network that later came to be called "The Undernet" was born.
The "undernetters" wanted to take ircd further in an attempt to make it less bandwidth consumptive and to try to sort out the channel chaos (netsplits and takeovers) that EFnet started to suffer from. For the latter purpose, the Undernet implemented timestamps, new routing and offered the CService -- a program that allowed users to register channels and then attempted to protect them from troublemakers. (More or less a global defense bot.) The very first server list presented, from Febrary 15th 1993, includes servers from USA, Canada, France, Kroatia and Japan. On August 15th, the new user count record was set to 57 users.
RFC
In May 1993, the Request For Comments 1459, for the IRC protocol is out for the public. It has since been subject to many violations and extensions. More about that on other places.
Dalnet
During the summer (some sources mention July) 1994, the Undernet is itself forked. This time, the new Network is called Dalnet (named after its founder: dalvenjah), and they formed the new network for better user service and even more user and channel protections. One of the more significant changes in Dalnet already from the beginning is their use of longer nicknames (the original ircd limit being 9 letters). Dalnet ircd modifications were made by Alexei "Lefler" Kosut.
Dalnet was thus based on the undernet ircd server, although the dalnet pioneers were EFnet abandoners. According to James Ng the initial dalnet people were "ops in #StarTrek sick from the constant splits/lags/takeovers/etc".
Dalnet quickly offered global WallOps (IRCop messages that can be seen by users who are +w (/mode NickName +w)), longer nicknames, Q:Lined nicknames (nicknames that cannot be used i.e. ChanServ, IRCop, NickServ, etc.), global K:Lines (ban of one person or an entire domain from a server or the entire network), IRCop only communications: GlobOps, +H mode showing that an IRCop is a "helpop" etc.
Much of Dalnet's new functions were written in early 1995 by Brian "Morpher" Smith and allow users to own nicknames, channels, send memos and more.
oz.org
Undernet split (again) in March 1996 when the sole Australian server delinked from Undernet because of difficulties with the connection across the TransPacific Australian/United States network link. The first few months of oz.org's existance were primarily a trial delink from the Undernet because of the inability to maintain a link during peak usage hours. One of the two designers (chaos and seks) of the orginal Undernet X and W chanserv was Australian, and the same code was used for Oz.org's Z (the name of the chanserv). In June 2001, ozorg boasted peak usages of 4,000 simultaneous users.
IRCnet
In July 1996, after months of flame wars and discussions on the mailing list, there was yet another split due to disagreement in how the development of the ircd should evolve. Most notably, the "european" (most of those servers were in europe) side that later named itself IRCnet argued for nick and channel delays, where the EFnet side argued for timestamps. Most (not all) of the IRCnet servers were in Europe, while most of the EFnet server were in the US. This event is also known as "The Great Split" in many IRC societies. EFnet has since (as of August 1998) grown and passed the number of users it had then. In the autumn year 2000, EFnet has some 50,000 users and IRCnet 70,000.
Open Projects Network
Yet another IRC network that opened its doors in 1998, and had about 100 users and less than 20 channels that year. In late 2001 it had grown to nearly 4,000 users and over 1,300 channels. The OPN uses the Dancer IRCD server, after having been using ircu the intial few years.
Other Networks
Of course, while internet is booming so does IRC. There exists hundreds of independent IRC networks today (like amiganet, linuxnet, galaxynet, bestnet, NewNet, AnotherNet, ChatNet, UpperNet, ZAnet, X-Net, GammaNet, SuperChat, IceNet, RedBrasil, GR-Net, AlphaStar, SorceryNet etc), but luckily there is "only" four of the main ones (this was the reality back in 1998) that keep develop their own version of the ircd server software.
Of course, as of 2002, lots of other networks have popped up and now numerous of them are developing their own customized versions of the IRC protocol.
Future
IETF-IRCUP was an initiative started in January 1998, to gather all the flavours of IRC servers to document a new RFC and possibly set a new standard for all networks to commit to. That project died.
CTCP/2 was an attempt, started in 1997 by Bjorn Reese, to develop and standardize the Client To Client Protocol that was never in the RFC. Clients have been known to extend and modify the original CTCP protocol without allowing non-compliant clients to filter the new codes. CTCP/2 was meant to define how codes and perhaps more important new codes should be introduced in order to let old clients remain functional. It was also meant to address the IPv6 problems the DCC intiating sequence has. The CTCP/2 project has died as well.
We'll just have to wait and see what the future of IRC has to show...
The weekend before last I took part in a march against the War. Turns out, millions of other people around the world did too!
A number of my friends have become interested in Landmark Forum, a Personal Growth program. I had heard about it over the years, and kindof lumped it in with Est and Dianetics (Scientology).
As it turns out, it IS Est, the controversial program from the 70's. After a 1984 60 Minutes expose, they reworked the program and changed the name. Its also Scientology. The director of the program had been a Scientologist and borrowed heavily from their introductory program.
I am wary of any program that is as insistant in their marketing, and as expensive as these.
The Internet has some interesting things to say about it.
Once upon a time, I spent a lot of my money on records. These days, I don't have space for a phonograph, and I find that even CDs are kindof a hassle when compared with mp3 and ogg vorbis technology.
So I am getting rid of a bunch of my records, on ebay and Swappingtons
Here's a list if you are interested:
Punk / Indie Rock Stuff:
Lush, Spooky, Double 10" Import
The Bevis Frond, Tryptych, Sealed
Yo La Tengo, I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, Double
Rapeman, Two Nuns And A Pack Mule
Helios Creed, The Last Laugh
The Flaming Lips, Oh My Gawd, Its The Flaming Lips
Ed Hall, Love Poke Here
The Residents, Duck Stab
Bad Religion, Generator
Agent 86, Just Say No
U2, The Unforgettable Fire
U2, Boy
Severed Heads, Demo
The Cure, The Head On The Door
The Reverend Horton Heat, Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em, 10" Colored Vinyl
Pain Teens, Born In Blood
Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense
The Flaming Lips, The Flaming Lips
Dinosaur Jr., Just Like Heaven, 12" Single with Engraved Vinyl
Butthole Surfers, The Hurdy Gurdy Man
Dead Kennedys, Holiday In Cambodia
Electronica
Kruder & Dorfmeister, The K&D Sessions, 4 records
VA, Sushi 4004, The Return of Spectacular Japanese Clubpop, Double
UNKLE, Psyence Fiction, Double
Bill Laswell, Dub Chamber 3
Future Homosapiens, (Moonrock), Double
VA, Galactic Disco: The Final Countdown 1996-1997, Double
Jimpster/Kosma, Special Double Artist Double Ten Inch Set
VA, Ethnotechno, Double
Extremadura, Pulses, Double
Rupununi Safari, Steaming Jungle, featuring the Mad Professor
VA, Headz, 4-record set from Mo Wax
VA, LTJ Bukem Presents Earth Volume Three, Five-Record Box Set Import
12" Singles - (Mostly Dub and House)
Guidance Records:
Alton Miller
Free Energy
Callisto, The Paridigm EP
Glenn Undeground, Secrets of CVO EP, 2 copies
Venus Attack Project
Charly Brown
The Aquanauts, Chicago-Milano Connection EP
The Aquanauts
DJ D, Guiding Light
Universal Egg:
Trancemasters, Trancepeak EP
Speedbird 707
Power Steppers
Power Steppers, white label
Marineville
Dub Clash 96, 2 records
Tassilli Players
Misc:
Jungle Neck, white label
DJ Sneak, Platforms vol 2
Galactic Soul Movement
If I wasn't already going to Austin on this day, I would be going to this:
Samadhi Yoga is the yoga studio where I have been practicing for about a year and a half now. I started out just going once a week to Doug's thursday night classes, then moved up to twice a week, and now I am attempting to move to four times a week. I've been going to a Level II class with Ellen for the past two weeks, and the challenge has been really rewarding. I am still sore, two days later!
Peter Bagge, author of the amazing Hate comix, has a new piece in Reason Magazine. Their site is way overloaded right now so I have a local copy.
Spivey, Rob, and LCBO are talking about a "Beer Diet" that serves to reduce the impact of fine ales upon the waistline, wallet, and liver.
One may have beer on Wednesday, Friday, and one weekend night, either Saturday or Sunday.
Personally, since I have been taking it very easy with the booze, I am not as tempted by this rationing, but it does seem a sensible approach.
I've decided to give up on Tivo Life. As wonderful as it is, and as revolutionary it is to the pursuit of watching television, there is still Nothing On. Perhaps if I had extended cable with all the Good Channels, like Sundance and IFC, and even HBO, I would have better stuff to watch. In any case, I found myself vegetating in front of the teevee a little too much.
So I am hoping to trade the tivo to Amir in exchange for a couple of his Thangkas.
Check them out at my Gallery on Madhouse.org
So in an effort to make this weblog a bit more interesting, I am going to attempt to post something interesting here every day. Kindof an exercise in mindfullness. Another thrust you may see is the inclusion of a bit more personal material. This isn't going to become a Livejournal blog, but it is going to be a little bit more about me.
----
Spivey and I have been talking about connecting my KEXP playlist logger to Audioscrobbler, and using their database to log what gets played. It might be interesting to compare their stationwide preferences with what other people like....
I made plans to go down to Austin to visit some of my dear friends down there, and realized that the SXSW Interactive conference is going on the same days I will be in town. So I am going to try to make some of the seminars. There are a number of Filepilers who will be in attendance, and it seems like it would be cool to meet and have a beer.
Apple has some great developer resources on their website: http://developer.apple.com/internet/macosx/intro.html
