tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog

Reading Marc Ambinder's recap of President Obama's "question time" at a GOP event today, it reminded me of one of my favorite West Wing scenes:



I've refrained from discussing politics on this blog for a long time, which surprises many who followed me through the 2004 and 2006 election, and to a lesser extent the 2008 election. I haven't felt I had much to add to the debate, candidly.

I want an honest debate. I realize that's somewhat naive, given the money at stake. But I want an engaged President, one who's intellectually honest but also not afraid of his own convictions. It sounds like that's what we got today, and I believe that the country needs more of it.

I have not seen the video of his 90 minutes sitting down with the GOP, but a commenter on Marc's post points out that C-Span has it here. I'll post a YouTube embed once it's up.

Update:The White House has the video of the event up:

Several years ago, I put my CV online as a wiki. It started as a way to just catalog the speeches I'd given, articles I'd written, etc., if for no other reason to have it all in one place. As I noted at the time, one of the most popular pages on my blog was the "About Me" page (still is) - not surprisingly, people wonder who the hell you are when they land on your blog from a Google search, and they like being able to get a better sense of your background before deciding if they want to read your posts.

But putting that info online has had another benefit: upcoming conferences want my bio, or a headshot, or a sense of where else you've spoken to convince the conference committee that you really are the guy they want to invite. Now I just have to give them a URL. In at least one case, I got cold-called by someone who was looking for a presenter on a topic I'd spoken about before, which ended up being a very fun presentation (well outside my usual focus) and one that they appreciated. Turns out that putting relevant content on the web can be useful for people looking for that kind of thing. Who knew?!

But last year I'd grown tired of the wiki app I was using (PmWiki) and wanted the CV in something more robust. I decided to give Google Sites a whirl - other than a few internal pages at Google, I hadn't used it much and it seemed a good opportunity to try it out. The CV was previously at http://www.rklau.com/cv/; the version managed by Sites is now at http://cv.rklau.com/ (and the old URL just redirects to the new one).

Advantages of having this managed by Google Sites:

• No software updating. I'm sure by last year was several versions behind. That's usually a bad idea - security vulnerabilities can lead to easy defacing of content, and your resume is the last place you want defaced content - but I just never made it a high enough priority to stay current. I was lucky - as near as I can tell, I never got hacked - but it was luck.
• Better editing interface. The WYSIWYG interface on Sites makes it much easier to add content without having to remember whether this wiki uses three apostrophes for a larger font size or the plus sign, and whether URLs are [URL|title] or [[title|URL]] or some other variation.
• CNAME support. Like Blogger, Sites supports hosting your content at a URL of your choosing. So I was able to set up http://cv.rklau.com/ and have the site immediately served from my domain.
• One less password. I had a separate username and password (managed by PmWiki, not the most secure approach in the world) to prevent anyone other than me from modifying the content. That's fine, until I lose the password, and then get locked out of my own CV! Having Sites manage the content means it's managed by an account I use much more frequently (my Google account), and can rely on Sites' much more robust notion of permissions.

Just finished posting on Blogger Buzz about a fairly significant product decision: we're shutting down FTP publishing at Blogger.

For the vast majority of Blogger users (99.5% of them, to be exact), this is a non-issue. But for the .5% who continue to use FTP, this is going to be a non-trivial issue. Once it became obvious that we were doing this, we wanted to announce as soon as we knew what our path forward would be. As someone who started blogging on Blogger in 2001 using FTP, I personally recognize the significance of turning off one of Blogger's first features.

We will have a migration tool that will convert existing FTP users who want to migrate to Blogger's Custom Domain option (I host my blog on Blogger's servers, at my own domain: http://tins.rklau.com/), and expect that this will address the vast majority of cases users see. The tool's not ready yet, but we wanted to announce as soon as possible to give users the ability to start planning their migration or at least evaluate their options.

I know people will have questions, and we're hoping to address them as openly as possible - what this means for them, what their options are, etc. Hit me here, or leave a comment over on the dedicated blog we set up today.

We've been hinting at these for a while, and we were this close to getting Pages out before the holidays... but at long last they're here. To say that most Blogger users wanted stand-alone pages on their blogs would be an understatement.

I created a couple pages tonight - in addition to the obvious About Me (a good idea for anyone stumbling on your blog from a search, helps them know a bit about you) and Contact Me (more on that in a minute), I created an "Ask me anything" page.

A number of people have asked about my Nexus One - did I like it, should they get one, any tips... figured it was a good time to jot down some thoughts. Big, honkin' disclosure: I received this phone for free, and I work for Google.

Bit of background: as is now well known, Google gave all employees a Nexus One ahead of the holidays. The phone's existence was confidential at the time, so we were asked to not blog or tweet about it. Officially, the phone was announced on January 5, and has been available for sale through the Google website from that day forward.

The phone runs Android 2.1, the latest version of the Android OS (there may be a few of you who don't know - Android is Google's mobile operating system). This is an update to the Android OS which other phones will get soon, but is currently running only on the Nexus One. The phone I'd been using for the past six months was an iPhone 3GS, and my first reaction to the Nexus One was: holy crap this thing is fast. I took my SIM out of my iPhone the day I got the Nexus One, and haven't taken it out since. (That means I only get to use AT&T's EDGE network, not the speedier 3G network... to get 3G data speeds, I will need to switch to T-Mobile, which I will be doing soon.)

It occurred to me over the winter break that I have cobbled together a rather ridiculous mess. I have a total of 14 devices connected (mostly via ethernet, some via wifi) to our home network, and I'm betting that the use of hand-me-down equipment is creating packet bottlenecks that I could easily eliminate. I just don't know how to diagnose the bottlenecks (if they exist) and how to benchmark whether the current setup is sub-par.

Here's the current state of affairs:

• Room 1: I have a Netgear 4 port switch (I believe it's model FS105), into which my Sonos 90, PS3 and TiVo Series 3 are all plugged in. The Netgear is plugged into the CAT5 jack in the wall, using the existing home wiring to connect to my D-Link (DIR-625) router in the upstairs bedroom closet.
• Room 2: A Sonos 120 is wirelessly connected to the D-Link upstairs.
• Room 3: an Epson printer and two Windows desktop PCs are plugged into an older Linksys wireless router (where I've disabled the wireless antenna and am using it solely for the ethernet hub capability). A TiVo (series 2) is connected via 802.11g to the D-Link in the bedroom. The Wii is also connected via wifi to the D-Link in the bedroom.
• Room 4: TiVo HD is connected via ethernet into the wall jack, which is connected to the D-Link router in the bedroom closet. In the closet, the other Sonos 120 is connected via Ethernet to the D-Link router. The D-Link is connected to the Comcast cable modem.
• Both my wife's laptop and mine connect primarily via wifi to the network (she's on WinXP, I'm on a MacBook Pro).

I'm using WPA to secure the wireless. One of the wired connections actually terminates in the Sonos in the bedroom closet, don't recall which. (The Sonos has an additional ethernet ports to serve as a hub, specs on their site say "2-port switch (10/100Mbps, auto MDI/MDIX) allows Ethernet devices to connect through SonosNet".)

So... how badly am I slowing things down? What's the best resource for doing this right?

I'm long overdue in getting a review of FreedomTM online. Dan sent me a review copy last month, and I read it cover-to-cover. To answer the most critical question: yes, it was worth the wait. If you liked Daemon (and who didn't?!) then you'll absolutely enjoy FreedomTM.

I'll spare you the spoilers - there are some good twists, including a big one I didn't see coming - and will leave a discussion of the primary plot developments for another post. I'm more interested in talking about some of the themes Dan Suarez presents in FreedomTM that have stuck with me since reading it.

Dan looks at the growing homogeneity of the world we live in - our government, our network, our culture - and sees opportunities for a single point of failure that renders those very systems vulnerable to attack and exploitation.

In FreedomTM, a "darknet" develops - which facilitates locally-organized, resilient groups that are able to leverage the Daemon's layers of information in addition to their sustainably built communities (farms, businesses, even small militias to defend themselves). These groups lessen their dependence on the government for protection, for food, for commerce... to the extent that the "darknet" becomes more important for the day-to-day commercial interactions (through "network credits", reputation monitoring of individual participants) and even social interactions (whuffie-like reputations, landmarks which are only visible to darknet members, etc.).

John Robb has written extensively about resilient communities (most recently here, and also about darknets here), and anyone who's read any of John's writings will find his thoughts incorporated in a number of places in FreedomTM. On a semi-related front, just yesterday, I read Brad Feld's review of another book, The Lights in the Tunnel, and it's about the potentially radical impact that automation will have on society (50% unemployment?). While The Lights in the Tunnel is non-fiction, it sounds like it's interpreting many of the same themes that informed Suarez's thinking in FreedomTM and Robb's writings on resilient communities - and the conclusions one comes to are unsettling (to say the least). This is what sets FreedomTM apart from many other technothrillers: Dan's got a point to make, and he uses his fiction to show us a possible outcome of the path we're on. You'll find yourself thinking about these issues long after you finish FreedomTM, which I consider the height of praise for the work.

None of this is to suggest that FreedomTM is a dry or academic read. It's most certainly not. The action is fast and furious, the tech is pitch-perfect (as it was in Daemon), and not nearly as futuristic as you might hope. (See TheDaemon.com, esp. the "technology feed" on the right, for more evidence of fantastic-seeming tech from Daemon and FreedomTM that are actually being used today.) As Publishers Weekly noted, "The two books combined form the cyberthriller against which all others will be measured." I particularly liked where FreedomTM ended, with more optimism for our future than you might have suspected Dan had after reading Daemon. :)

If you haven't read Daemon, the paperback was just released last week, and FreedomTM is out in hardback on Thursday.

If I have any quibbles, it's that there's more to the story than what's in the book. I don't doubt that this is the book Dan wanted to write (he said so, and I believe him!) but there are details that I'd love to know more about. Ultimately, the main character of this story is the Daemon: it occupies almost every page. The people - Ross, Sebeck, Phillips, Loki - are supporting characters, and often drop from the narrative as we pick up where others left off. I wouldn't have minded more of their individual narratives, but that's a minor nit.

A few other reviews of FreedomTM that should help you make your mind up:

• Matt Cutts
• Counterterrorism blog
• Publishers Weekly
• Techland (interview with Dan)
• John Robb