Grok Headline matches for Page 2 - Don't hand out the rings just yet
China Rings in New Year, Rings Out Hemorrhoid Ads (Reuters)
China Rings in New Year, Rings Out Hemorrhoid Ads (Reuters)12/31/2003 10:48 AM Reuters - China is ringing in the New Year by
banning television advertising for sanitary towels, hemorrhoid
ointments and other items deemed unappetizing during meal
times, the China Daily said on Wednesday.
Hand Job brings you exclusive hardcore pictures and videos of Hand Job content on the internet
Get Ready for Some Hand-to-Hand Combat (washingtonpost.com)
Get Ready for Some Hand-to-Hand Combat (washingtonpost.com)05/07/2004 10:46 AM washingtonpost.com - Cue up the "dueling handhelds" theme: The video
game wars are starting anew, with competitors Nintendo and Sony in a
fierce fight for victory on the handheld gaming battlefield.
Game Makers' Hand-to-Hand Combat
Game Makers' Hand-to-Hand Combat05/06/2004 05:51 AM Nintendo is in danger of getting slapped silly by Sony twice in a
decade. As Sony preps a new whiz-bang handheld video-game machine,
Nintendo will answer with the upcoming DS. If the DS flops, Nintendo
is in big trouble. By Daniel Terdiman.
Does the left hand talk to the right hand?
Does the left hand talk to the right hand?03/12/2003 03:54 AM The NYT is reporting that AOL is providing software to customers to
block pop-ups. The sheer number of ironies in this article is
simply delicious, and renders further comment unnecessary:
1) "AOL pioneered the often annoying but effective pop-up
format"
2) "10 percent of its users had chosen not to receive
pop-ups from AOL's own service, an option that has been harder to find
than the new blocking software." Hard to find? Almost impossible.
3) "the number of sites that will accept pop-ups is
increasing, including ever more sites owned by AOL Time Warner like
Mapquest and CNN.com."
Hand-to-hand combat over Bolton
Hand-to-hand combat over Bolton04/11/2005 02:34 PM John Kerry advertises in Rhode Island in an effort to swing Lincoln
Chafee against Bush's U.N. nominee.
kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/local/9077613.htm track this
site | 8 links
MLB rings you up
MLB rings you up04/01/2005 03:40 AM Usatoday.com - Thu Mar 31, 08:47 pm GMT
Rings!
Rings!07/09/2004 01:26 PM If you haven’t been following the Cassini-Huygens
Saturn mission, in particular the
pictures, you’re missing a heck of a show. I grabbed a couple,
just for a teaser...
« Tommi and Adele in an engagement photo I took for them back in
June on Suomenlinna. They got married over the weekend in LA.
Congratulations to them both! :) »
If ever there was proof that there is no such thing as a kind and
benevolent creator, teeth would be the prime example. Anyone who
scoffs at this hasn't ever had an abcessed tooth or possibly finds
pleasure in such horrific pain. I once had a tooth go south on me late
one night when I was working in the herbarium looking up different
specimens and chowing down a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream with
nuts and chocolate. My tooth hit a nut and I hit the ceiling. I spent
the rest of the night in some tragicomic attempts, like trying to
bathe the tooth in Anbesol by standing on my head only to nearly
swallow it and suffocate, to quell the excrutiating pain until morning
arrived when I could call my dentist. In the morning, I looked like a
chipmunk who stuffed a large golfball into my cheek when I went into
work. I got a quick appointment with the endodontist, a.k.a. Dr. Root
Canal, and I don't think I've ever before been so happy to see a
needle and a drill in the vicinity of my oral cavity in my life.
Over the past week or so I've had similar twinges of pain in another
tooth that have been giving me chronic headaches. Of course, being a
stranger in a strange land it makes me even less enthused than usual
to go visit doctors of any kind, especially the kind that have
implements of torture. I haven't been to see a doctor of any kind in 3
or more years and I suppose it is from growing up in a medical
household where you had to be coughing up a lung to miss school much
less get real medical attention. The cobblers children have no shoes
as the old saying goes, but not having the first clue about how to get
an appointment or where to go is a real deterrent, not that I went
much when I did know who to call. So, Jarkko made a surprise dental
appointment this morning that gave me 90 minutes to get there which is
likely the only kind I wouldn't wuss out on going to because I didn't
have enough time to rationalise an excuse and, after a good poking
about and an x-ray, it turned out to be nothing. I'm not sure which is
worse; going to the dentist and finding out that you're about to buy
him a new Jaguar with the goldmine of cavities he found in your mouth
or going to the dentist only to be told that your pain is a mystery. I
was happy to skip on out of there in a short time but teeth have a way
of getting their revenge come hell or high water. Damn teeth.
Nothing like having the flu off-and-on all week and, when feeling a
bit better, enjoying a pint or two after work with a few colleagues
from work only to have the flu return. At least Jarkko has it now so
we can be achy and miserable together when Otava takes us out for a
walk/drag.
The 'let's see if they'll eat it' experiment last week was a
pineapple upside-down cake since pineapple is a frequent addition to
food here and it seems to be very popular in desserts, perhaps a bit
too much so. Pineapple<
/a>, like banana and
other tropical fruits, was an expensive exotic food that didn't make
its way into the average home until the advent of canning and
refrigerated shipping/storage in the early part of the 20th century.
One curious factoid about pineapple is that the original native word
is 'anana' which explains the taxonomic name as well as the Finnish
'ananas'. [Which makes you wonder if 'banana' was ok then why did the
fools change anana to pineapple.]
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON PINEAPPLE
Pineapple is one of the world's favorite tropical fruits. First
called "anana", a Caribbean word for "excellent fruit", the name
"pineapple" came from European explorers who thought the fruit looked
like a pinecone with flesh like an apple.
Christopher Columbus was the first person to introduce pineapples to
Europe. In 1493 he was exploring the Caribbean islands and found
pineapples growing on the island of Guadalupe. He brought some of
these pineapples back for Queen Isabella of Spain who loved the sweet
tropical fruit. So did other Europeans. In fact, Europeans loved the
taste of pineapple so much they tried to grow them in Europe, but the
tropical plants did not fare well in Europe's cool climate.
THE HISTORY OF CANNED PINEAPPLE
Canned pineapple was first made in the 1901 but wasn't widely
available until engineer Henry Ginaca invented a machine in 1911 that
could remove the outer shell, inner core and both ends of 100
pineapples in less than a minute! If you've ever tried to peel a
pineapple, you'll know how amazing this is. This machine, known as the
"Ginaca machine" is
still used in pineapple canneries today.
James Dole began marketing canned pineapple by placing ads with
recipes in women's magazines in 1907, possibly the first of its kind,
a technique that remains popular even now. In 1925 the company ran ads
requesting new recipes using their pineapple. A recipe for upside-down
cake was in the book of winners but apparently there were 2,500 or so
upside-down cake recipes submitted which would give the impression
that the cake was not unknown to homemakers at the time.
The pineapple upside-down cake has its roots in skillet cakes which
were, and possibly still are, very popular in the Southern US. The
availability of canned pineapple made an exotic fruit into a suburban
novelty. The most recognizable form of the upside-down cake has
pineapple rings dotted with toxic red maraschino cherries which evoke
a 1950s modern suburban dream, but the cake has been around for much
longer. Both pineapple and the strange red cherries were popular in
the 1920s and, in spite of not being able to find a citation for who
put them together on a cake, it's likely safe to assume they collided
on the cake around that time. The cake has remained an icon of
American cooking kitsch, though somewhat shunned and relegated to a 1970s Betty
Crockers' Men's Favorites recipe card.
I looked at quite a few different recipes, including one Dole
upside-down cake recipe, and most of them are quite similar.
Cook's Illustrated featured a recipe in the September 2004 issue which
I tried first, but found the batter too thick to spread evenly in the
pan and it didn't have the right texture when it was done. I was
rather surprised as I'm so rarely disappointed by CI's recipes but I
won't make that recipe again. This didn't keep Jarkko from eating a
few too many pieces of it though. :)
I found another recipe that Cook's Illustrated had in one of the
first cookbooks they printed a few years ago as a master recipe for a
fruit upside-down cake. This cake, given the fluffy egg whites and the
cornmeal, has a much nicer crumb and overall texture as well as a
fluid enough batter to spread easily over the caramel and fruit. The
basic idea is to make the caramel, place the fruit in it, pour the
batter on top and bake. The other CI recipe called for using fresh
pineapple and reducing it by cooking it in with the caramel and
draining it before placing it into the pan. I thought this made the
fruit come out a bit rubbery and difficult to slice though it does
make for a pretty top after baking. Also, it's good to make the
caramel first and allow it to set with the fruit a bit before pouring
the cake batter over it to avoid the fruit shifting around too much.
Unless, of course, you have the Nordicware pineapple
upside-down cake pan. It is very delicious when served with a bit
of vanilla ice cream and a glass of milk. :)
Pineapple Upside-Down Cake
Serves: 8-12
Time: 25 min prep + 1hr bake time
Source: CI
maraschino or candied cherries / dried cranberries (optional)
1 cup or 2,5 dl light brown sugar, packed
3 tablespoons or 42g butter
Cake
1.5 cups or 3,5 dl all-purpose flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons or 113g unsalted butter, softened
1 cup or 2,5dl plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
4 large eggs, separated, room temperature
1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
2/3 cup or 1,5dl milk
For the topping: Butter bottom and sides of round 9x3 (23cm x 8cm)
cake pan. Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a medium sauce pan over
medium heat; add brown sugar and cook, stirring occasionally, until
mixture is foamy and pale, 3 to 4 minutes. Pour mixture into prepared
cake pan; swirl pan to distribute evenly. Arrange fruit
slices over topping; set aside.
For the cake: Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat
oven to 350F/176C degrees. Whisk flour, baking powder, cornmeal and
salt together in medium bowl; set aside. Cream butter in large bowl
with electric mixer at medium speed. Gradually add 1 cup sugar;
continue beating until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in
yolks and vanilla (scraping sides of bowl with rubber spatula if
necessary); reduce speed to low and add dry mixture and milk,
alternately in three or four batches, beginning and ending with dry
ingredients, until batter is just smooth.
Beat egg whites in large bowl at low speed until frothy. Increase
speed to medium-high; beat to soft peaks. Gradually add 2 tablespoons
sugar; continue to beat to stiff peaks. Fold one-quarter of beaten
whites into batter with large rubber spatula to lighten. Fold in
remaining whites until no white streaks remain. Gently pour batter
into pan and spread evenly on top of fruit, being careful not to
disperse fruit. Bake until top is golden and toothpick inserted into
cake center (not fruit, which remains gooey) comes out clean, 60 to 65
minutes.
Rest cake on rack for 2 minutes. Slide a paring knife around the
edge of the cake to loosen it from the pan. Place a serving platter
over the pan and hold tightly. Invert the cake onto the platter.
Carefully remove the cake pan. If any fruit sticks to pan bottom,
remove and position on top of cake.
The Lord of the Rings12/18/2003 01:06 AM The Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship of the Ring .. §¨§¨ „‚‡ ‡§ ..
totally shitty web sites .. Assista o trailler .. John Rhys-Davies ..
o novo trailer
Saturn's Rings Up Close07/02/2004 10:51 PM “As Cassini passed directly through a gap in Saturn’s
rings, it got the closest view any spacecraft has ever had of the
Ringed Planet. This image was taken after the spacecraft had passed
the ring plane, and was seeing it lit by the Sun. Cassini was only
195,000 kilometres (121,000 miles) above the rings when this picture
was taken. One interesting feature is the wavy edge of the inner ring;
this is caused by interactions with Saturn’s moon Pan, which
orbits in the middle of this gap.”
The Lord Of The Rings Movie - Available Now!07/27/2004 07:36 AM Warner Bros. present: The Lord of the RingsStarring:Humphrey Bogartand
Marlene Dietrich .. an amusing link to an old-school version of Lord
of the Rings .. Here's where you can find the movie .. the Howard
Hawks movie version .. Humphrey Bogart
version
flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/movie.htm track this
site | 3 links
iTunes: Lord of the Rings CD-Rs
iTunes: Lord of the Rings CD-Rs12/16/2003 12:26 PM
As reported by the LA Times, Apple and Time Warner have started
offering specially designed Lord of the Rings CD-Rs.
These limited edition blank CD...
You
know, with just a little tweaking (like taking off their branding and
making the cases something other than plastic), Pretec could be onto
something with these jewelry versions of their i-Disk Tiny flash
drives. Not the necklaces, so much—they look too much like dog
tags—but the ear rings could work, if the other side was copper
or something instead of pink plastic. Try it one more time, Pretec, or
send us a bucketful of i-Disks and we'll hand them out to all the
boutique jewelry makers in New York. (Thanks, James!)
Other News: Spammer Rings02/19/2004 11:22 AM AOL and Earthlink sue spammer rings, and court documents detail some
of the spammers' conversation.
Sprint Rings Up UMG, WMG (Reuters)
Sprint Rings Up UMG, WMG (Reuters)01/18/2004 10:21 AM Reuters - Universal Music Group and Warner
Music Group are the latest players in Sprint PCS Vision's
blossoming Music Tones business.
AOL Rings Up New Shopping Service (Reuters)09/20/2004 01:30 AM Reuters - America Online, the world's largest
Internet service provider on Monday launched an overhauled
online shopping center it hopes will help it keep pace with
competitive offerings by Yahoo Inc., Google Inc.
and Shopping.com, executives said.
Rings stolen from dying pensioner
Rings stolen from dying pensioner04/05/2005 07:05 AM A 98-year-old woman had rings stolen from her fingers as she lay dying
in a Manchester hospital, police say.
Cassini returns images of rings
Cassini returns images of rings07/01/2004 08:37 AM The international mission to Saturn - Cassini-Huygens - has returned
the first close-up images of Saturn's rings.
Producer sues for Rings profits
Producer sues for Rings profits08/20/2004 04:23 AM Hollywood producer Saul Zaentz sues the producers of The Lord of the
Rings for $20m in royalties.
Passion 'beats Rings DVD record'
Passion 'beats Rings DVD record'09/09/2004 05:36 AM The Passion of the Christ breaks The Lord of the Rings' record for DVD
and VHS sales in the US, a report says.
Red Sox Set to Receive World Series Rings (AP)
Red Sox Set to Receive World Series Rings (AP)04/11/2005 01:46 PM AP - The Boston Red Sox made their fans wait 86 years for another
World Series title and only gave them five months to celebrate. Grok Description matches for Page 2 - Don't hand out the rings just yet GrokA matches for Page 2 - Don't hand out the rings just yet
Lord Hutton retires as Law Lord
Lord Hutton retires as Law Lord01/10/2004 10:13 PM
Lord Hutton who led the inquiry into the death of weapons expert David
Kelly retires on Sunday.
The Lord Giveth, and the Lord Smites Yer Ass
The Lord Giveth, and the Lord Smites Yer Ass09/12/2004 07:40 PM Back in 1974, I worked briefly at KTBN, the station that later became
the Trinity Broadcasting Network. I was a...
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...
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.
But like I said - it's all happening. I just wish Dave Winer were
part of the conversation - too.
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...
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......
Conversation with Joe Trippi
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...
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 ...
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?
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.
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.
Joe Trippi: Down from the Mountain(IT Conversation)
itconversations.com/transcript.php?id=80 track this
site | 3 links
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...
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.
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 marianne pearl
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.)...
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.
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.
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.
You
know, with just a little tweaking (like taking off their branding and
making the cases something other than plastic), Pretec could be onto
something with these jewelry versions of their i-Disk Tiny flash
drives. Not the necklaces, so much—they look too much like dog
tags—but the ear rings could work, if the other side was copper
or something instead of pink plastic. Try it one more time, Pretec, or
send us a bucketful of i-Disks and we'll hand them out to all the
boutique jewelry makers in New York. (Thanks, James!)
