Yes, I know I liked John
Gray's book,
found it liberating in fact, but I still believe people are good at
heart, and their instincts are right if they can re-learn to listen to
them. And remember Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of
thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it
is the
only thing that ever has."
So
your argument is that we're going to save the world either by some
massive act of collective altruism, even though such a thing is
unprecedented, or by some subversive act by some clever noble clique
of
do-gooders. You know, some people would say that Bush's neocon
born-again cabal fit Margaret Mead's 'small group of world-changers'
definition perfectly. If that's what she was referring to, small
groups
of nazis and megalomaniac idealists, we're in trouble. Or is your
'small group' going to put birth control in the water supply and
sabotage civilization until we have anarchy and chaos? -- which is
actually the neocons' dream situation, since if that were to happen
they'd just take over and feel self-justified in doing so, as they
would see you as terrorists.
We
overcame slavery, we gave women the vote, we invented written language
and a lot of other amazing things, including birth control
technologies, we've made democracy, an improbable way of running the
world, work, and we've found ways to strike a balance in the economy
between complete totalitarianism and complete laissez-faire. We're
learning what doesn't work,
we have unprecedented peer-to-peer grassroots communication and
organization, and we have more knowledge available to a larger
percentage of the population than ever before. And instead of just
writing dystopias, many people are actually proposing practical ways
to
bring about massive change.
The
last century featured more murders, more imprisonment, more torture,
more war deaths, and greater extremes in distribution of wealth and
power than any in our history. Every technology we've invented has a
dark side that has been more effectively exploited than its positive
applications. And as for communication, the digital divide is wider
than ever. You shouldn't judge the state of the world by the view from
your rosy little corner of it.
Stories
are all we are. When we have learned new stories, we have become very
different creatures very quickly, in a generation or two. It's our
ingenuity, our ability to change and respond to new and intuitively
better, healthier, happier ways to live, and learn from each other
peer-to-peer that makes me optimistic and hopeful, not new
technologies, which I admit are a double-edged sword.
Stories
also allow fanatics and maniacs to raise huge and bloodthirsty armies,
and allow cults, including most modern religions and political
parties,
to brainwash people to act against both their personal and collective
interest. Myths and other stories allow people to tolerate and live in
denial of atrocities going on all around them. Religious stories have
prompted most of history's most brutal and protracted wars. And we're
so adaptable that we learn to live a life of never-ending oppression,
subjugation and deprivation, and we delude ourselves that our pathetic
lives are good, healthy, deserved, getting better and the only way to
live.
But we
are also capable of forgetting, forgiving and moving on quickly, when
a
better story, a better way of living, is told to us. And in the last
decade a significant minority of the population is on a roll -- better
informed, more inventive, more attuned to and knowledgeable about
that's needed, what's happening and what's possible than ever before.
They're able to use networking technology to make creative, synthetic,
analogical and metaphorical leaps, collaboratively,
in ways that would have been almost unimaginable even a generation
ago.
We have already witnessed, in the 1960s, a huge shift in mainstream
thinking and worldviews occurring in an astonishingly short period of
time, and if we could do something like that again now we have much
more powerful tools and much greater knowledge to do it with, so it
might actually endure this time.
Pure
romanticism. The 1960s weren't nearly as rosy and liberated as you
remember them. Many guys jumped on the bandwagon in complete ignorance
and indifference to the peace and liberation movements -- they were
merely attracted by the promise of cheap dope and easy sex. Your faith
(and it's nothing more than faith, since there's no solid reasoning
behind it) that we could start a similar movement in this century and
this time it would endure and bring about ubiquitous change, is simply
the left-wing version of the right-wingers' Rapture. People don't
change, cultures don't change, and there's an unprecedented level of
investment in maintaining the status quo working against any little
movement that might threaten that. We are programmed by our DNA to
spend almost all of our time and energy living moment to moment and
distracted by the minutiae of constant and trivial decisions. And even
if this were not so, as Gray argues so articulately we have no 'free
will' or collective consciousness. Even as 'individual' creatures we
are merely collections of cells, molecules and organs, each doing what
they do, largely for mutual benefit, and almost entirely (99.9999%)
subconscious. So belief that we can somehow get our personal
act together, let alone one at the level of some higher social order,
and transform ourselves into what we are not, seems to me the height
of
folly, a form of leftist religious fanaticism.
There
you
go, relying on science again, that collection of unreliable and creaky
models of reality, to make your argument. The whole, at every level of
aggregation, is always greater than the sum of the parts. Gaia is much
more than just all individual life on Earth. We as individual and
wondrous creatures are more than a mere collection of our cells,
molecules and organs. And I'm not being spiritual here. Forget about
'consciousness' and these other academic and utterly meaningless
concepts. We as individuals, and our planet as an organism of a
different order, are mostly what happens between our composite parts.
We are sensation, reaction, communication, learning, understanding,
and
the stories that recall them. Most of what we are at both the creature
level and at the Gaia level are what is happening in the
intersections,
margins and edges around the component parts. That is where our true
sense of self and meaning resides, that is where our instincts draw
their wisdom, that is what our DNA remembers and tells us to do. Your
myopic science, looking at individual organisms in isolation, is no
more able to understand the great truths of life, and the nature of
our
existence, than a collector dissecting dead monarch butterflies is
able
to comprehend the astonishing transformation of that creature's life,
or how it could have 'learned' where and how to migrate when three
generations have transpired since the last generation, or how sun and
flowers and smells make a butterfly happy and inform its understanding
of the purpose of its life.
Let's
look at this argument. You're saying, I think, that almost all of what
we are is subconscious, and that an important part of what we are is
our relationships with 'others' outside ourselves. Yes? OK. So then
you're saying that what can/will save us is something in our collective unconsciousness or subconsciousness?
That deep down 'we' intuitively know what needs to be done, what is
happening, and what is possible, and will use that knowledge to
collectively do what is in our collective interest. Well, at least
that's better than relying on gods. But if we had this great
collective
unconsciouness or subconsciousness, wouldn't we have been able to
figure out, even before Einstein did, that almost all human
inventions,
notably in the media (since the invention of writing and the printing
press), in transportation (since the invention of the lever, the
inclined plane, the sledge and the wheel) and in the tapping of stored
energy (since the invention of controlled fire) would have more
negative consequences for our planet than positive ones, and hence
prevent them from emerging? No, don't give me that nonsense that the
global population is leveling off because we somehow 'know' it must,
since people have repeatedly told researchers the only reason they don't have one or
two more
kids each is that they can't financially afford it (for now). If we
('we' being either all humanity or all creatures on the planet) are
our
own collective guiding hand, that guiding hand has done a pretty lousy
job over the last 30,000 years. Just because we've lost touch with
nature and Gaia, you say? I think it's more likely that we're just an
exceptionally fierce and adaptable species which emerged by random
accident from the primeval soup and, like all fierce and adaptable
species in Earth's history, plagued (in the literal sense of the word,
not the moral one) the planet until a meteor came along, or a climate
change or new species evolved that preyed on excessive numbers of the
plague species, and restored equilibrium and the selected preference
of
known life for biodiversity. Disequilibrium is neither new or
unnatural
in the universe. And that, more than the crown of creation, more even
than the sum of our 'stories', is what we humans really are.
Glasses for Humanity09/25/2004 04:00 PM I had one of those what can I do today moments with the idea of
donating in-kind to Glasses for Humanity. 90% of eye glasses are
wasted -- and Robert Tolmach's foundation is one of the most
cost-effective forms of...
It's impossible to overstate the importance of this morning's
privately funded
space flight by Mike Melvill, who piloted SpaceShipOne into a
suborbital flight 100 kilometers high. Neil Armstrong took a giant
step in 1969, but this was just as important.
I have huge respect for NASA, the U.S. space agency. But NASA needs the help of private
explorers and industry, and of people like Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founded
who funded this mission. We need NASA for the giant endeavors, but we
need privately funded space flight for everything else.
Congratulations to all.
Humanity Stoops to a New Low07/30/2004 07:34 PM Lost Dog Held for $10K Ransom
An elderly man went out for a walk with his dog, on the way home, the
dog disappeared. A friend helped him make some Lost Dog posters and he
waited by the phone for some good samaritan to return his only
companion.
Instead, he got a call from someone demanding $10,000 or he'd never
see his dog again. He gathered up half of his savings and went to pay
the ransom. The dognapper brandished a knife, took the money and said
the dog was tied up to a post nearby. It wasn't.
He went home brokenhearted until he heard a car door slam outside and
his dog came running up to greet him. Now he wonders if the dognappers
were putting him on the whole time.
Renewing my basic faith in humanity06/01/2004 03:53 PM Though I'm not saying what I have faith in them to do. Still, Oingo
Boingo does say it best, don't they? Nasty Habits and Clowns of Death
(since, after all, boys will be boys...) Mmmm, clowns....
Humanity will survive information deluge - Sir Arthur C Clarke
southasia.oneworld.net/article/view/74591/1 track
this site | 4 links
End the Conversation
End the Conversation03/13/2003 10:26 AM Allen (12:06:43 AM): damn one day, i'll teach you to throw axes Allen
signed off at 12:06:48 AM. That's certainly...
How not to end an IM conversation
How not to end an IM conversation10/29/2003 01:17 AM Why is it that in IM conversations some people stick to you like flies
to the proverbial crap? New to...
Ubersite - Exploiting Peer-to-Peer Networking: I have lost all faith in humanity.
Conversation with Joe Trippi09/20/2004 07:26 PM Please join me in a conversation with Joe Trippi about his book, "The
Revolution Will not be Televised." We will stream it live at Of, By,
and For, this Friday the 24th at 2:00pm Pacific time. As you might
know, Trippi built the Dean for America campaign and started
rewriting...
Continuing the MT conversation
Continuing the MT conversation05/16/2004 07:12 PM Continuing the discussion about MT licenses, Movable Type clarified
and changed some of their terms. Having looked at some of...
I've been at a conference for
the last couple of days, and have spent a significant portion of that
time eavesdropping on conversations. Aside from the obvious
observations (that most people don't listen, and that men do most of
the talking and interrupting in mixed company conversations) what most astonished me
was the unintended lack of politeness and courtesy that seems to
characterize most conversations.
It's not that the participants are rude -- it's just that they seem to
lack mutually-understood and mutually-respected protocols to govern
conversation in a civilized manner. This, in a world in which we are
beleaguered by rules in almost everything else we do, seems remarkable
to me.
So I did a bit of research to see whether I could find some protocols,
some rules of behaviour, that work effectively regardless of the
number, gender or conversational style of the participants. The
longest-established protocol is also, it seems, the most
misunderstood.
This is the protocol of the Talking
Stick,
which has its roots in aboriginal American culture and in that of some
third-world cultures as well. The basic rules of the Talking Stick
protocol, from what I can ascertain, are as follows:
The person holding the Talking Stick is the only one who
can speak.Others must listen and not interrupt, even to ask clarifying
questions. The onus is on the speaker to be clear, brief, and
respectful.
Generally the person most respected by the group
(the
tribal elder, or the person selected by the elder to present the issue
to the group) talks first.
The Talking Stick is then passed
clockwise as each person
finishes, and makes one complete circle of the participants.
Participants with nothing to add simply pass the Stick along.
The person who spoke first asks then whether
additional
discussion is warranted, and if anyone thinks so, the Stick is again
passed around the circle.
There have been a number of 'improvements' suggested to this process,
such as allowing clarifying questions, allowing people to reach for
the
stick in any order, first-come, first-served, and summarization or
'voting' processes, but none of these enhancements has a distinguished
history and none in my opinion represents a significant improvement to
the basic protocol. Allowing the group to engage in two-person
iterative Q&A, or sidebar conversations, would seem to me to
abrogate the three duties of clarity, brevity and respectfulness, or
at
least render them less necessary. In some Talking Stick circles, if
you
take the stick you must begin your speech by briefly reiterating what
the previous speaker said, and only when that synopsis receives a nod
from the previous speaker can you begin saying your piece. In some
cases this might work brilliantly, but in others it could make the
conversation interminably long and repetitive.
It is not clear to what extent the Law of Two
Feet
applies in Talking Stick circles -- where if you find the discussion
valueless or frustrating you have the option to leave, without
repercussions, and perhaps start another conversation on the same or
another subject with those similarly inclined. The alternative would
be
to assume that if you chose to accept the invitation to join the
conversation in the first place, you owe the rest of the group the
courtesy of giving them your attention until it is finished. My
personal view is that this judgement (whether leaving a conversation
you find tedious is discourteous or not) is best left up to the
individual.
I have witnessed many 'moderated' conversations, where one person
decides who will speak next, or where people raise their hands to be
next to speak and a first-come, first-served honour system applies,
and
found them mostly frustrating. But anarchy, where the loudest voice
always prevails, seems to me even more so, and also unfair. Where the
participants are part of a hierarchy, and rank clearly determines
speaking priority, the result is too often not really conversation at
all, but rather an information reporting and instruction exercise.
I have witnessed, too, meetings that allow the listeners to use tacit
signals to prompt the speaker without interrupting them: Holding up a
green card means "I like what you're saying", a red card the opposite,
and a yellow card signals "I don't understand what you're saying".
They
tend not to work, I think, because the green encourages unnecessary
loquaciousness, the red is rarely used because it would be perceived
as
rude, and the yellow is rarely used because it might make the listener
appear stupid. Electronic equivalents (IMs that the speaker can read
on-screen while talking) present the same discouragements, and also
are
more of a distractions than most speakers can handle on the fly.
One of my favourite conversational formats is the interview/Q&A,
where one (or more) persons pose questions and the other(s) restrict
themselves to answering them. There is a certain inherent democracy in
such conversations -- each side gives up certain speaking rights in
return for receiving others. Unrehearsed, they require considerable
skill and agility to pull off eloquently. Rehearsed, they can be
extremely effective at transferring knowledge but they become less
conversations than performances.
So my sense, based more on observations of what doesn't work than what
does, would be that the use of a Talking Stick or similar icon might
be
very helpful, even in two-person conversations (to reduce propensity
to
interrupt). I'm ambivalent about whether passing the Stick clockwise
or
allowing anyone to grab it next providing they satisfactorily
summarize
the last speaker's message first, would work better -- and I suspect
it
would depend on the subject and the conversational style of the
participants. I do like the idea of using a subtle timer
to reinforce the importance of clarity and brevity, which seem so
absent in most modern conversations that the resulting incoherence is
often unintentionally hilarious to the eavesdropper. Beyond that, I'm
not partial to any 'improvements' to the basic four-rule Talking Stick
process described above.
What's worked for you? Have you tried using such techniques, and when
are they effective (and not)? Are there other techniques, newer or
older, that work better, and when are they appropriate? And what of
telephone and Skype conversations, or those anarchic multi-party IM
sessions? Could a 'virtual Talking Stick' be introduced to organize
such conversations? It should be easy enough for the technology to
handle, but has anyone actually tried imposing this kind of discipline
on non-face-to-face conversations? And perhaps most important, does
practice using these techniques tend to make more polite, respectful
and articulate conversations second nature? Or is there some reason
I'm
missing why interruption and 'louder voices prevail' protocols are so
prevalent in our conversations, seemingly by default?
Democracy is a conversation
Democracy is a conversation03/19/2003 10:24 PM From William Du Bois, from a mailing list I'm on: Bush's Utopian Plan
for Peace and mine differ at the core. Hal Pepinsky, one of the
founders of peacemaking criminology, talks about the dynamics of
democracy and violence. He defines democracy as responsiveness —
we take each other into account. We may not change our agenda but we
take what the Other has to say into account. Violence is the opposite
of democracy. It is asserting your own will and refusing to take the
other into account......
I spent some time on the phone with the folks at GoDaddy today and
they have a few ideas on what is going on with the server and are
going to try a few things on the box we will keep our fingers
crossed.
For about three years now - I'm been hemming and hawing and giving
people a hard time and (apparently) acting belligerent - about Open
Identities.
About the notion of open DNS-like indices of people. And what we
could do with them. You see I spent much of teh 90's desinging
systems that relied uypon a theoretical notion - that noadasys is
called social software and social networking. And at the core of that
- is digital identity.
So as the world has caught up with my ideas, it's becoming more and
more important that we DO IT RIGHT!
Now Tribe is calling that the
PeopleWeb, Microsoft has a [can't talk about it but will soon]
platform and Dick Hardt and his Sxip
Networks is rolling out.
kjartanmannes: so whats next for Mr Johnson? fuzzygroup: in what
context ? kjartanmannes: well, you've been slashdotted so what is
your new goal in life?
My sincere thanks to all the messages of encouragement, nice
feedback and other comments.
The long conversation
The long conversation05/27/2004 06:26 PM Guardian,UK-16 hours ago ... Google is perhaps the most obvious
clue-holder, with its corporate maxim "Don't be evil", its brand
new corporate weblog and its all-round fluffy, friendly ...
Previously on
this blog, I've called for a separation of hosting from
aggregation. I want to be able to maintain authoritative data on one
site and have other sites use it for their aggregation.
When I read Ted Leung's entry Microcontent
personality disorder and Steve Mallett's comments on it, my
immediate thought was that they could both have what they want if we
could separate where we host our data with where it is aggregated and
made "social".
Marc Canter (whose work around Digital Lifestyle Aggregators is
definitely worth following) resp
onds to Steve Mallett. Marc is spot on that people have their
information all over the place. But I still believe that if systems
are built to support a separation between hosting and aggregation,
they'll support both the distribution of primary data and the kind of
"self-hosting" that a certain segment like Steve and myself want.
Bottom line is all combinations of centralized/decentralized
hosting/aggregation should be possible.
It's not that hard to do. Sites that aggregate just need to provide
a mechanism where users can point to their data hosted somewhere else
rather than have to re-enter their data in multiple aggregators.
Aggregators then keep customers based on the value of their
aggregation, not the lock-in of being the hosts of people's valuable
data. People who want hosting for their pictures, blogs, etc can use
hosting services to do it. But their choice of hosting service should
not impact their participating in aggregation and the social aspects
of micro-content that follow.
Technorati has added an
astoundingly smart new feature, and BoingBoing is
showcasing it. As Cory explains:
"Other blogs
commenting on this post" at the bottom of our posts -- this is a link
to Technorati's index of all the blogs that have linked to each of
Boing Boing's posts. It's not quite a Discuss link, but if you have a
blog and you post a comment about one of our posts to it, Technorati
will find it and index it."
I'll talk more about
this later -- I'm busy with book stuff today -- but let's just say
that I can't wait to get this enabled on my blog.
Say 'Nazi' or 'Hitler' and End the Conversation
Say 'Nazi' or 'Hitler' and End the Conversation01/07/2004 03:16 PM Putting Hitler into Net conversations tends to kill them. Now there's
a mock award for the stupidest comparison of Hitler to some modern
event.
A Conversation With Master Replicas
A Conversation With Master Replicas04/13/2004 03:36 PM I recently visited Master Replicas headquarters in California, during
which I was able to sit down with Scott Vogel, President and CEO, and
ask him some questions that are on the minds of Master Replicas
collectors.
I think the MP3 blogs (which
are essentially annotated playlists) might well be taking the middle
ground in the P2P vs music industry wars - I hope that the record
industry will begin to see the value in what these grassroots
enthusiasts are doing to promote their music. On the other hand, a
large part of making these playlists under current laws involves
turning your back on the major labels and concentrating on the music
libre, the 'free music', the stuff that wants to be shared. Those
artists that make their tracks freely available online are the ones
that will benefit most from the collaborative filtering and
recommendation networks that are being set up. [Hublog]
Let's extend that remark: Any professional whose work is visible on
the Net will become part of the conversation that establishes
reputation and creates opportunity. The blog is an active
résumé that enables you to participate -- by proxy
-- in that conversation....
Here's the bottom line. What Alf calls "collaborative filtering and
recommendation networks" will rival -- and my guess is, largely
supplant -- conventional marketing and promotion. But if those
networks can't find you, they won't be able to help you." [Jon's
Radio]
Interesting when thought of in the context of libraries. It's
exactly why our services - especially our online catalogs - need to be
open and exposed. Exhibit A: LibraryLookup.
A Conversation with Wayne Rosing
A Conversation with Wayne Rosing10/28/2003 11:07 PM An iterview with one of my bosses, Google's VP of engineering. An
incredibly smart and experienced guy. (I'm not sucking up; he doesn't
read my blog. ;) Interesting if you want to learn more about Google's
engineering culture. One great quote:
I think the sum total of what I hope for the first decade of this
century is some variant on the memex. We're going to have the vast
majority of high-quality, permanent, high-value, human knowledge
available to everyone, from many places, in multiple forms.
And that's fundamentally going to change humanity in as big a way as
the printed word did—when it became inexpensive to replicate the
printed word.
Kailee’s on Runescape
this morning, exasperated at an offline friend’s actions online.
A few days ago, she told me about her Runescape boyfriend. Seems she
was talking to someone in the game, and he asked if he could be her
“bf.” She thought that meant “best friend,” so
she said sure. Only when he dumped her did she find out that
“bf” means “boyfriend.” She took it pretty
well, though, considering she didn’t know she was dating him to
begin with.
Today, however, she’s frustrated. She’s
on Runescape chatting with a friend who lives a few blocks away.
Apparently the friend has Kailee’s login and password (red
flag!) and has been logging in as Kailee now and then. At some point,
the friend was on as Kailee when the ex-bf came back and wanted to be
her bf again, so the friend said sure, not realizing Kailee
didn’t care. Now, though, the friend is upset that Kailee has a
bf and she doesn’t, even though Kailee doesn’t want a bf
and the friend is the one that said “sure” in the first
place. Even worse, she won’t interact with Kailee on Runescape
because she thinks Kailee is “on a date.”
I asked
Kailee if she knows the friend’s login and password, and her
response was, “One of them.” I don’t know why I
expected the answer to be “yes” or “no” in
this day and age, but I did. She went on to say that the friend
has several accounts, and it’s just too hard to remember them
all.
Some interesting life lessons going on here, but the
scariest part is how freely Millennials trade identities without a
care in the world. We’ve repeatedly told Brent not to give his
Runescape password to his friends, but they all know each
others’ accounts and log in as someone else. It must make for
interesting conversations when you don’t know what you might
have said before.
a conversation with marianne pearl05/02/2004 11:53 PM A conversation with Marianne Pearl is one of the more
moving interviews I have ever heard and was certainly a highlight of
the weekend. She is a beautifully calm person with seemingly the
right approach to an awfully violent world.
Frank conversation about torture
Frank conversation about torture05/10/2004 08:54 AM Over at Frank Paynter's there's been an interesting and useful
discussion of my attempt to find a way for the left and the right to
agree on a policy condemning torture. (As I've noted several times
now, I should have talked not about the right wing but about the Rush
wing.) Frank's first blog entry about it is here and his reply to my
reply is here. Be sure to read the comments where I am taken to task
rather severely by some exceptionally thoughtful people. (I reply
there also.)...
Meta conversation on metadata
Meta conversation on metadata11/01/2003 08:35 AM Jay "Misspells His Own Last Name" Fienberg has trenchant comments on
my article about metadata. A big part of our difference may have to do
with the loose (= wrong) way I define metadata. Part of it may have to
do with where we're looking at metadata issues. E.g., Jay thinks
there's no essential difference between arguments over FOAF and over
the format by which we express date data; I'm instead thinking about
the argument over what categories of info we need to exchange
information about our friends. The argument over how to express that
info is, I agree, important...
Joe Trippi: Down from the Mountain(IT Conversation)
itconversations.com/transcript.php?id=80 track this
site | 3 links
The Open Conversation (Ziff Davis)
The Open Conversation (Ziff Davis)06/28/2004 04:50 PM Ziff Davis - The Java debate calls attention to the open-source model. Grok Description matches for Is There Hope for Humanity?: A Conversation GrokA matches for Is There Hope for Humanity?: A Conversation
Zend: Weekly Summaries #193 and #194
Zend: Weekly Summaries #193 and #19407/29/2004 08:30 AM
Issue # 193 and Issue # 194 of the Zend weekly news is out. Written by
Steph Fox, with a sweet short version tucked at the end of each news
snippet, these issues of Zend's weekly newsletter are a must-read.
Read Issue #193, #194.
Published on an annual basis,
this report is the earliest Government publication to furnish
estimates covering nonfuel mineral industry data. Data sheets contain
information on the domestic industry structure, Government programs,
tariffs, and 5-year salient statistics for over 90 individual minerals
and materials. This has been added to Reference Resources
Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.
VoiceSignal Technologies Appoints Former Nokia Executive Richard J. Geruson As Chief Executive Officer
VoiceSignal Technologies Appoints Former Nokia Executive Richard J. Geruson As Chief Executive Officer07/09/2004 03:04 AM Voice Signal Technologies, the leading provider of embedded speech
recognition for mobile devices, recently named Richard J. Geruson, as
it's new Chief Executive Officer. Geruson, a 20+ year veteran in the
wireless and networking industries, was previously a Senior Vice
President for Nokia. [PRWEB Jul 9, 2004]
Zend: PHP Weekly & PEAR/PECL Summaries
Zend: PHP Weekly & PEAR/PECL Summaries05/03/2004 08:14 AM In the two summaries from Zend this week, there's a lot of disussion
going on, including details on new packages proposed and several new
functions to extend PHP's already powerful functionality.
Zend: PEAR/PECL and PHP Weekly Summaries
Zend: PEAR/PECL and PHP Weekly Summaries05/10/2004 07:21 AM New from Zend this week are the
latest PEAR/PECL Weekly News and this week's PHP Weekly Summary. Both
have several interesting items including 20 PEAR/PECL releases and
lots of discussion from the lists.
Clone Wars Season 2 Chapter Summaries
Clone Wars Season 2 Chapter Summaries01/24/2004 02:51 PM Interested in getting the lowdown on Season 2 of Star Wars: Clone
Wars? We've got the first three chapter summaries available.
Spoilers abound, so don't click through unless you want to know in
advance.
revisiting dunbar's number06/26/2004 08:42 PM always good to see a site where the ideas are as pretty as the
presentation
Revisiting The Unsubscribe Link
Revisiting The Unsubscribe Link06/01/2004 02:03 PM In just about every silly "profile of a spammer," you tend to hear
them say two things: (1) they don't send out porn spam and (2) they
really do remove those who unsubscribe from their spam. Of course,
most people are unlikely to believe either of those claims (for good
reason), but with the passage of CAN-SPAM (which requires a "working"
opt-out link) the debate keeps returning to whether or not you
actually should "opt-out" of spam - since it's well known that many
spammers only use that information to confirm that you're a "live
one," and make sure you get plenty more spam. Sooner or later,
someone had to test it out, and now an anti-spam company is claiming
that only 10 to 15% of opt-out spam links are invalid - which
sounds impossibly low. Of course, they don't break out just how much
additional spam you will get for the few untrustworthy opt-out links.
In fact, it's unclear how they really know if the opt-out works. You
may not get spam from the identical spammer, but they could just as
easily resell your live info to other spammers, and you have no way of
knowing it was because you "opted-out." Or, more likely, they'll just
start spamming you from one of the hundred other identities they have,
so they can claim that the you're no longer receiving spam from that
one entity, but you never opted out of the other 99.
Revisiting Barcode Replacement Satire05/11/2004 03:16 PM A little over a year ago there was a huge media frenzy over a site
that let
people view and print out barcodes. It was really just a database
of barcodes, but the site presented a satirical commercial showing how
you could use the site to "name your own price" and re-code any
product to a price you preferred. Of course, actually doing the
re-coding would be illegal. Running a database telling people how
seems perfectly legal... unless you're lawyers at a big company like
Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart and a number of other big companies forced
the site to shut down, and the folks have now set up the site as a
Wal-Mart spoof. John
submitted a story about the
whole mess one year later. It sounds like those involved didn't
expect the level of backlash they got - especially from the press who
labeled them as the thieves. Still, they've now got other plans up
their sleeves for satirical projects.
Congress Revisiting Spam Plans
Congress Revisiting Spam Plans05/25/2004 11:55 AM When the CAN SPAM law was first passed, anyone who thought through
what the law actually said realized that it wouldn't work, and some
people started asking what was
plan B? Instead of just patting
themselves on the back, we wanted to know exactly how they would
measure the success or failure of the bill, and what they would do in
the very likely event that it made the problem worse, not better. The
sponsors of the bill never really responded to that question, but just
talked about how wonderful it was that they were now banning spam.
Except, only five months into the law being in effect and the spam
problem is clearly worse, not better. For once, however, it appears
that even some folks in Congress realize this and are already
interested in revisiting the law. Some of this article is just
repeating the things that we posted last week about the FTC
exploring other options such as a bounty system encouraging people
to track down spammers, but the fact that more politicians are
realizing CAN SPAM isn't working is a good thing. Of course, we still
haven't heard from the Senators who were so proud of themselves for
coming up with the law in the first place.
Revisiting "Table Layouts, Revisited"
Revisiting "Table Layouts, Revisited"09/06/2002 08:42 PM A response/reaction to Zeldman's recent reflections on the experience
of table versus CSS layout.
Last year, these benchmark
;results became
hot points of contention between Java and .NET developers.What the
results
suggested was that Java regular expression engines are
significantly faster than .NET's
Regex.
I thought it might be fun to port one of the fastest Java regular
expression engines
to J# and see how it performs compared to .NET's Regex. I
chose the dk.brics.automaton
engine
because it seemed easiest to port. It was. When I
ran a straight-forward
C# port of regtest.java on
the J# version of dk.brics.automaton and compiled singleline Regex,
I got these results:
dk.brics.automaton
2303 milliseconds>
Regex
2894 milliseconds>
I also ran regtest.java on the original dk.brics.automaton and
Java's built-in regular
expression engine. Results were:
dk.brics.automaton
511 milliseconds>
java.util.regex
1061 milliseconds>
Based on these admittedly informal results, Regex performance is
probaly not caused
by bad design or implementation of regular expression but by
performance issues that
may exist within CLR and core classes. Since I lack the
enthusiasm to dig into
the innards except in pursuit of a critical bug, I'll leave it up
to the CLR team
to chase further.
IMHO, .NET performance is 'good enough' for server-side use at this
time so please
don't misinterpret this post as an attempt to pull .NET down in
favor of Java.
BTW, I won't be using my port of dk.brics.automaton in production
because it's seems
to miss some patterns that it should have found.
Revisiting the "hardware is free" vision of the future
Revisiting the "hardware is free" vision of the future06/01/2004 11:21 PM You may recall back at the end of March that we had a little diddy on
Bill Gates' proclamation that "hardware will be free" in the future.
Now Sun is saying that same thing, leaving us to wonder: what will we
ever do with all this free hardware?
Geruson to Rapidly Expand Worldwide Operations and Drive Growth. Voice Signal Technologies Appoints Former Nokia Executive Richard J. Geruson As Chief Executive Officer.
Sex tape of 'Survivor: All-Stars' Jenna Lewis surfaces on the Internet - Reality TV World - News, information, episode summaries, message boards, chat and games for unscripted television programs
realitytvworld.com/index/articles/story.php?s=2638 track
this site | 4 links
Innovations in Self-Help
Innovations in Self-Help04/09/2004 04:09 PM No, no, wait... even better than "Chicken Soup for Dummies"
is a self-help book aimed at the terminally unfunky, which...
more innovations
more innovations09/19/2004 06:08 AM Scientific American Sep 19 2004 10:17AM GMT
Innovations in Journalism
Innovations in Journalism02/16/2004 01:22 PM Making the bold leap from merely waiting for Leander Kahney to watch
Blogdex as this link rises, I'm actually going...
CES Innovations Awards winners
CES Innovations Awards winners12/24/2003 12:12 PM The Consumer Electronics Association has made their picks for the 2004
CES Innovation Awards. Among the winners are a few gadgets we've
featured on Gizmodo...
NY Times: White House Is Trumpeting Programs It Tried to Cut. Like many
of its predecessors, the Bush White House has used the machinery of
government to promote the re-election of the president by awarding
federal grants to strategically important states. But in a twist this
election season, many administration officials are taking credit for
spreading largess through programs that President Bush tried to
eliminate or to cut sharply.
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: executive summaries: revisiting the best of best:innovations in hotel practice
