Links are the fabric of the web. And with the success of Google, links are guideposs of the web as well. But while links may hold the web together, content is what makes it meaningful. It is not productive to promote one at the expense of the other.

I can’t begin to enumerate the reasons to make content available on the web. But I can confidently say that people work better when their work is appreciated. And links, in context and with attribution, are how we show appreciation on the web.

RSS feeds are freely available. That doesn’t give you all rights to the content in those feeds. Please add context and attribution when incorporating items from RSS feeds in your weblog. Attribution via a title link to the author’s weblog is not enough - add enough context to identify it as another’s work.

16 Jan: Context and Attribution Redux

Over on Moore’s Lore, Dana Blankenhorn has worked up a full head of steam on Link Licenses. Unfortunately, I think that he’s wrong. It is true that links are the very fabric of the web and if you don’t want to be linked, then you shouldn’t post on the web. But all links are not equal and that’s where Dana’s argument breaks down.

Because when it comes to links on the web, context and attribution matter. If the context of the link implies that it is your creation, then you should provide attribution for the link. In this case, the tag was used to display a graphic from another site – implying that Dana had the right to use that graphic. I don’t agree with the language that the owner used in requesting Dana to stop. But I agree that it was his right to ask Dana to either license the graphic or stop.

Adding injury to insult, hotlinking images also transfers bandwidth expense from the linker to the source – Dana was using 75k of someone else’s bandwidth on each viewing. Of course, mod_rewrite can be used to substitute another graphic, but that shouldn’t be necessary in the first place.

Looks like the My Favorite Language thread has started up again. Just for the record, my favorite language is whatever language I’ve just bought in to. [via Scripting News]

Every programming language/environment is built around a core conceptual model. When you start out, you use it like a hammer - banging your code into submission. But if you’re any good, and the model is any good, and you stick with it; the time will come when you get it. And when you really get it, your thoughts switch from how the language is holding you back to what the model will let you do. And at that moment, when the thunderbolt has struck, that is my favorite language/environment.

Over the years, I’ve become a believer in Why fix what isn’t broken? – especially when it comes to my Operating System. Scoble speaks of thousands of new managed APIs that will be Longhorn only as an incentive. But how many of those APIs will any normal consumer care about? How much value will that subset provide? And most importantly, how much value will the consumer perceive?.

Between increasing OS hardware requirements and decreasing hardware costs, I suspect that most consumers run the OS originally installed on their computer. They’ve never really shopped for an OS, they don’t understand their relative values and they’re not receptive to direct appeals for an OS upgrade.

Historically, the developer community has been responsible for justifying OS upgrades – by requiring the hardware of a new computer and/or the software of a new OS. I think that Longhorn is going to pose an interesting question to the developers: move to Longhorn APIs and concede the common framework market, stay on a common framework and concede part of the Longhorn market, or actively develop in both markets.

It’s a momentum play. If you think the market will embrace Longhorn, then you can concede the rest of the market. But if Longhorn adoption drags out, then you need to hedge your bet. Given the current rate of XP adoption, I think that staying on a common framework is going to look very attractive.

I don’t get to see many Stanford games - Stanford doesn’t travel out east very often and east coast stations rarely carry the west coast games. So it was a real treat to get Arizona-Stanford as ABC’s national game. And an even bigger treat to see Stanford win 80-77, scoring 7 points in the last 43 seconds of the game. The winning margin came via a steal and a 35 foot buzzer beater.

This Stanford team is displaying a lot of heart. Last week they came back from 19 down against Oregon at Mac court. And this week they came back after Arizona had seemed to seize control of the game. Looking Good. Looking Real Good.

One of the great things about baseball is that you can talk baseball all year round. Over on the Transition Game, Nick is trying to make the case that speed matters more in the post season.

With the A’s losing two postseason series on egregious base running errors, it’s easy to focus on speed. And wrong - because the other team’s speed didn’t hurt the A’s, the A’s hurt themselves. It would be interesting to review the regular season to see how often A’s base runners were involved in close plays at 3rd or home. I suspect that it’s pretty rare and that the base running gaffs can be partially attributed to being in an unfamiliar situation.

Jennifer Azzi retires from the WNBA. Yes, I know that Women’s College Basketball existed before Stanford. But for this parochial minded SF Bay Area resident, the ascent of the Stanford Cardinal in the late 80’s made Women’s Basketball an event. And Jennifer Azzi was the straw that stirred the drink - sweet sixteen as a soph, elite eight as a junior and national champion as a senior.

Good luck with Azzi Training and thanks for the memories.

I attended a webcast on Program Execution in the 21st Century yesterday. And while it didn’t grab my full attention, it did provide a good overview of the CLR and its development paradigm – good enough to sign up for the next class. This morning, I realized that proper execution of the framework strategy will hurt Longhorn adoption.

The primary rule on computer purchasing has always been: “buy the computer that your applications need.” And as the new framework applications supplant the old, applications become framework dependent and OS independent. Of course, some applications will need to use new functionality only available in Longhorn. But the majority will be just fine on Windows XP. And I would expect it to stay that way – it is in the developer’s best interest to build on a framework common to both Longhorn and XP.

A month ago, Michael Gartenberg posted that driving Longhorn upgrades will not be easy for Microsoft. I’m thinking that it may be worse than he thinks.

Over the years, the Super Bowl has been afflicted with some real clunkers. But last night’s game ended the season in style. Each half started with tentative probes of the opposing defense and each half ended with a flurry of offensive scores.

I had my doubts about this Super Bowl. The off week between the Conference Championship and the Super Bowl can wreak havoc on the psyche of a first time participant. But the Panthers impressed me with their resiliency, teams often expend so much energy in catching up that they just can’t pull ahead. Not this team - they kept coming back and I think that they had another comeback left in them when the clock ran out.

Kudos to the Patriots, a worthy champion, and the Panthers, who will be back.

It is hard to appreciate the hold that the Broncos have on the Denver metro area unless you’ve experienced it. When I was growing up in the early 70’s, fall Sundays revolved around the Bronco’s kickoff time. I strayed from the fold while at college, but returned as John Elway made the team a perennial playoff team. Elway was the face of the Denver Broncos for a good 10-15 years.

Living in the SF Bay Area in the 80’s and 90’s, Elway’s abilities were constantly downplayed. Everyone knew that both Joe Montana and Steve Young were superior QB’s. Few would concede Eddie DeBartolo’s willingness to build the best team that money could buy or Bill Walsh’s role as coach and distributor of DeBartolo’s largess. But for my part, I doubt that either Montana or Young could have done better than Elway if they had come up with Dan Reeves and the Broncos.

Three Super Bowl debacles cast a pall on Elway’s career. But he hung in there and was rewarded with a big time running game and back-to-back Super Bowl victories to close out his career. It will be good to see him enter the Hall of Fame.