Hello world

Cablegate: the game

A silly little game where one tags names, organisations, places, events and topics in the 'cables' (the diplomatic communications leaked by wikileaks). It isn't clear whether any of the tags are actually used by anyone, though. Can't hurt to browse a little, though :).

Unhosted is another interesting project I read about earlier today. Apparently, they want to distribute hosting over the web, to protect against vendor lock-ins and government shutdowns. They have a manifesto and a work-in-progress protocol. While their goal is very noble, I am unsure how they will achieve a fully distributed system aimed at something that can change on the spot (web 2.0 apps). Actually, their focus lies on the application itself, not the data. So the 'program' Google Docs or last.fm's radio and recommendation system, but not the data behind it. The idea seems to be to move all the processing to the client; the server is then only used for serving the code (that is, the program) and storing the data.

An interesting thought, but unlike many open-source projects (eg, the linux kernel, Django, Python, Firefox and so on), this project is unlikely to succeed for the very reason that this concept would take away control of the user from the company that controls the program; after all, if this becomes reality, saving you google docs document on one of Microsoft's services should be trivial!

Wikileaks

Here in the Netherlands, the website joop.nl started a petition to call the prime minister Mark Rutten (of the VVD party) to save wikileaks. More specifically:

• The site will be welcome in the Netherlands and protected against take-down actions
• The arrest warrant against Assange will be ignored by our police
• We will offer political asylum to Julian Assange

At the moment almost 5500 people signed the petition. The question is, will it end in time? According to the petition website, it wont be until the 3rd of March (2011). I just hope it isn't too late by then. Assange may be an asshole (at least, according to some sources), pushing wikileaks a little too much to the sensational corner, but the work of the website is important nonetheless.

The joop.nl article mentions one interesting point that will make this hard(er) to refuse on the part of our government: quoting the coalition agreement, "The government encourages a free and open Internet" (translation by google translate). I figure this is enough incentive, but you never know.