Here's a system I call "KeepYourSecrets.org". Recall a film noir detective telling the criminal mastermind that unless he drops a postcard in the mail in the next three days, all the details will go straight to the newspaper. You can upload any kind of file -- it's all treated like binary. You can set some parameters like a distribution list and a checkin frequency. The system uses an IRC-like network to split your file in n parts, of which some k parts are needed to re-create the original.

You can use a person's honor against him only if he values honor. Only the honest man is threatened by the pointed finger. The liar is unaffected by that kind of accusation. I think it is because there is no such thing as "dishonesty". There is only honesty or it's lack. Not a thing and it's opposite, but a thing and it's absence. One or zero, not one or minus-one. One who is lacking a thing cannot be threatened at the prospect of its loss.

I think I'd like to do some Smalltalk (or Squeak) development sometime. Just for myself. It would be good for me -- like an artist going to a retreat and setting aside all notions of practicality. I know I'll never work in Squeak professionally. That's why it would be like saying to yourself, "In this now, purity of expression is all that matters. Tomorrow, I will worry about making something I can sell.

This kind of thing makes me wish I were back at Caltech.

Bill Joy had some doubts to voice about Linux. Of course, like so many others he immediately jumps to the wrong conclusion. "The open-source business model hasn't worked very well," he says. Tough nuts. Here's the point that seems to get missed over and over again. There is no "open source business model". There never was, and I doubt there ever will be. It doesn't exist. It's a contradiction in terms.

So, this may seem a little off-topic, but it comes round in the end. Really, it does. I've been aggravated with the way members of the fourth estate have been treating the supposed "information" that various TLAs had before the September 11 attacks. (That used to be my birthday, by the way. I've since decided to change it.) We hear that four of five good bits of information scattered across the hundreds of FBI, CIA, NSA, NRO, IRS, DEA, INS, or IMF offices "clearly indicate" that terrorists were planning to fly planes into buildings.

Here's a good roundup of recent traffic regarding REST.

Here's my number one frustration with the state of the industry today. I am a professional. I regard my work as a craft to be studied and learned. Yet, in most domains, there is no benefit to developing a high level of skill. You end up surrounded by people who don't understand a word you say, can't work at that level, and don't really give a damn. They'll get the same rewards and go home happy at 5:00 every day.

Here's another way to think about the ethics of software, in terms of multipliers. Think back to the last major virus scare, or when Star Wars Episode II was released. Some "analyst"--who probably found his certificate in a box of Cracker Jack--publishing some ridiculous estimate of damages. BTW, I have to take a minute to disassemble this kind of analysis. Stick with me, it won't take long. If you take 1.

In case it didn't come through, I'm intrigued by REST, because it seems more fluid than the WS-* specifications. I can do an HTTP request in about 5 lines of socket code in any modern language, from any client device. The WS-splat crowd seem to be building YABS (yet another brittle standard). Riddle me this: what use is a service description in a standardized form if there is only one implementor of that service?