If you've been around for a while you may remember a certain magazine called Mondo 2000 from the 90's. It was a time when using the prefix cyber- wasn't done in irony and computers were still weird and edgy and nobody actually knew what the hell they were doing. Psychedelic explorers like Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna were still alive (though Leary died in '96 and McKenna four years later), raves required you to go on quests to find map points so you could get your wristband to get in, and we all knew - we just knew - that the Net …
A while back I wrote an article about web applications that can live wherever you can store a file and not necessarily on a web server out of your control. I probably should have posted a link to Google Group dedicated to unhosted applications, but that's neither here nor there. To recap briefly, what I discussed in the previous article are called unhosted communications applications, like social networking or instant messaging software. This begs a crucial question: Assuming that you're running an unhosted application in your web browser, how do you tell other people how to connect to you with …
Last weekend the Project Byzantium development team assembled once again at HacDC, this time to close out tickets because we're getting ready for the second alpha release of Byzantium Linux as well as the launch of the official website. I think we're making pretty good progress - about half of the tickets in the bug tracker are closed (i.e., have been fixed) and we're lining up the next set of features. Some weeks back a group of hackers associated with the Zero State took over a pub in the UK and put Byzantium Linux through its most difficult test yet …
While I try to figure out what to write about, here are two press releases which will probably be of interest.
First of all, 2600 Magazine has has announced that pre-registration for The Next HOPE has opened. Held every two years at the Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan, the Hackers On Planet Earth conference draws hackers, crackers, cypherpunks, makers feds, and as many other sorts of people as you care to mention to present, attend presentations, get in trouble, and bounce ideas off of one another. The cost to attend HOPE is $75us in advance (paid through Yahoo's online store …
The board of directors of Saloncon announced a couple of days ago that there will not be a Saloncon in 2009. The board is not in a position to spend the money necessary to get it off the ground this year, unfortunately. Also, given the rising rate of unemployment this year (7.2% and climbing, as of December of 2008) and the generally sad state of the economy there is a high probability that many fewer people would be able to attend this year. They are working on throwing a charity event at Teaberrys instead but it isn't known if …
Information Society's going on tour in 2008. Kurt, Paul, and James got back together after the release of Synthesizer and they're hitting the road. Word on the street has it that they'll be playing songs from all of their albums, and I do mean all of them. If rumour's to be believed, they might even play a song or two from their very early albums from the mid-1980's, like Creatures of Influence.
Geekgasm. Pure geekgasm.
Lyssa and I have already bought tickets to the Philadelphia show on 5 January 2008. Interestingly, the schedule at Dancing Ferret (great job signing InSoc …
There's a new Gibson novel coming out soon, called Spook Country. The corrected proofs were handed in last week, so the exact publication date is anyone's guess at this moment.
