The rules of the game
Despite pretenses of rigor, repeatability and representativity, I've always thought that scientific research is remarkably like Calvinball. Read the Official Rules here.
Mar 9, 2004 @ 08:32 » no comments » Research
Compound and hyphenated
I'm informed that I need to spell the compound adjectives "English-speaking" and "Dutch-developed" with a hyphen. Which makes me wonder... does "high profile" also needs a hyphen or is that a hyphenless compound adjective? Or, is this maybe a difference in spelling between British and American English?
Mar 10, 2004 @ 14:33 » 1 comment » General
Reload a newspaper
There are more people dead in Madrid every time you reload a newspaper
and instead of being struck by the terrible reality behind that sentence — which CNN already managed to sanitize into ever repeating snatches of "Breaking News" interspersed with hotel recommendations in every other place around the world but Madrid — I'm struck by the last three words, "reload a newspaper," and the realization of how weird this would have sounded 10 years ago and the realization that this is how things will be when printed newspapers have gone the way of the dodo in another 10 years time. And I'm reminded of the (Chinese?) curse, "May you live in interesting times!"
Mar 15, 2004 @ 11:19 » no comments » General
Google starting to turn evil?
Alex Halavais has had a nasty run in with Google when he applied for the Google Adwords service and was "disproved" for, amongst other, I believe unfounded, gripes, supposedly criticising Bush. This is what the Google employee who reviewed his application stated:
Additionally, you go on in your commentary to use language that advocates against President Bush. All of this sort of material would need to be removed before we would approve the ad to run on Google.
Google's founders claim "not to do evil" but maybe their company is getting too big for their mentality to filter through to all their employees. I certainly hope that this statement is not a reflection of the management's point of view, because that would mean we can't trust Google anymore. Not that it is ever safe to put too much trust in one company or organization... which is, I guess, why democracy is the lesser of evils to 'choose' from.
Update: well, for the moment Alex's Adwords ad is running on Google, pending further approval of "Adwords Policy Specialists." Remains the reminder of Google's power over what we can find on the internet, which is not necessarily a bad thing, because they seem to be doing a good job at letting us find what we want to find. Because it works so well most of the time it's easy to forget that finding stuff with a search engine is as much the work of politics and policy as it is of technology.
Mar 16, 2004 @ 08:17 » no comments » General
When in doubt
just throw some more theory at your problems.
Mar 17, 2004 @ 12:48 » 2 comments » Research
New series
Intel's new processor numbering scheme will drastically change the way geeks talk about their gear.
"So... what are you driving down the Infobahn these days?"
"Last year's Intel 5-series."
"Did you tune it?"
"No, just bog standard, but I sank some money into visuals and got me a matching alloy fanned Nvidia vidcard. You?"
"Cool... I'm just trying to survive the congestion of the urban jungle, so I got me the latest Intel 7-series. Small and efficient."
Mar 18, 2004 @ 10:08 » no comments » Tech
Collect a star
Seeing that star hover over Cory's head, I strangely feel the compulsion to jump on his head Mario-style and collect it. Nothing personal, I like Cory's writing, just... having a gold star hover over your head appears to be working for me like a red flag for a bull.
Mar 19, 2004 @ 07:43 » no comments » Blogosphere
I
I thought this was interesting. Below are all the song titles from my iTunes library starting with "I" where "I" is a personal pronoun. Sort of cut-n-paste poetry.
I'll Be Home
I'll Remember April
I'm a Woman
I'm gonna get you
I'm Gonna Love You Too
I'm In The Mood For Dancing
I'm Old Fashioned
I'm On My Way
I'm So Stupid
I'm Specialized In You
I'm Thinking About Your Body
I've Got To See You Again
I've Grown Accustomed To Her..
I've Seen That Face Before
I Am The Walrus
I Belong To You
I Came, But...
I Can Love You
i can't feel my hand any more, it's allright, sleep still
I Can't Stand Up For Falling..
I Could Have Lied
I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man
I Deserve It
I Don't Fit
I Don't Know
I Don't Know Why
I Don't Want to Do Anything
I Fall In Love Too Easily
I Feel Fine
I feel fine
I Feel It (I Feel It Mix)
I get a kick out of you
I Get Around
I Go To Work
I Got It Goin' On
I Gotta Gal
I Had My Chance
I Heard It Through The Grape..
I Hope
I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself
I Just Wanna Get Along
I Knew It Would Come To This
I Know But I Don't Know
I Know Where Its At (original mix)
I Know You - Part Two
I love the life I live
I Love You
I Loves You, Porgy
I mean I guess
I Need A Man
I Need You Tonight
I Remember A Time When Once You Used To Love Me
I See Red
I shot my manager
I Should Know
I Think That I Would Die
I Thought About You
I Wanna Be Loved
I Want To Be The Boy To Warm Your Mother's Heart
I Want to Hold Your Hand
I Want You
I Was Made That Way
I Was Wrong
I Will Talk And Hollywood Will Listen
I Wonder U
I Would Die 4 U
Mar 21, 2004 @ 20:26 » no comments » General
MT3 comment management system: moderating, white listing, plus...
Okay, this is a quick post after reading the Typekey faq that was just posted. I think that Typekey addresses some issues, but here I want to comment on the comment management system that is briefly discussed in the faq (also posted to the MT Support Forum).
It's good to see there is an option for moderating in MT3, but it would be so much better IMHO if the following was implemented (separate/in addition to Typekey):
* a local whitelist. I would love to be able to add specific username/e-mail address combinations to a whitelist so that when people post using these credentials they bypass the moderation process.
Friends and frequent commenters can be added, newcomers will have to wait for approval. This gives the weblog author a lot of freedom with dealing with commenters (put someone on the whitelist after 1, 2, or 15 good comments). Of course, a spammer could bypass this system by using the credentials of an already whitelisted person, but! if you like me never make a commenters e-mail address visible on your weblog, then it in effect functions as a password.
Total pro for this scheme would be that the commenter never has to do anything to make this work and the weblog author has all the freedom who and when to include in the whitelist.
I think it would be very easy to implement, but I'm no programmer, so I wouldn't really know...
If the above is implemented, the following should also be implemented:
* MT should show a generic message in place of a not-yet-approved comment. If you comment on a post and your comment is held back by the moderation system, then in its place there should be a message that says something to the effect of "Here be a comment when it gets approved."
That way the commenter is given feedback that his comment went through and other commenters to the site will be aware that there are not-yet-approved comments in the 'thread' they are commenting to that will be revealed later and hence might change the ongoing discussion retro-actively.
These two additions would, I think, make the the commenting system much more robust and keep it both very simple to use, both for the commenter and the weblog author.
Mar 23, 2004 @ 08:53 » 5 comments » MovableType
Linkdump
Since a couple of days I've been toying with a quick linkdump style blog. I think I like it. It makes random surfing feel much less pointless, because I'm sharing the best bits. Nice ey, legitimizing otherwise pretty pointless behavior by claiming there's a point to it? Right now it's pretty basic and the location and look are temporary, but let me know what you think.
Mar 25, 2004 @ 14:59 » 1 comment » Sitestuff
Company weblog
Even if you're only remotely interested in weblogging you should check out Mena's Corner. Not only is the first post an interesting peek behind the curtains of a start-up company (SixApart of MovableType fame), but also a very courageous step for Ben & Mena and the company (back) towards communicating with the users of its products. Being in the weblog business is a strange place to be, I recon, with so many, so very articulate people using your software. I hope they can keep this line of communication open, because in these days with meta-national corporations with outsourced call-centers it's simply good to know that there are real people, with real concerns, and real everyday lives at work on such a personal (and personable!) piece of technology as weblog software. This "thing" that SixApart makes, is what lets many people express themselves on the web and that is part of the explanation why some people react so strongly.
Mar 30, 2004 @ 10:03 » no comments » Blogosphere
I feel better now
I just noticed that someone has found my weblog by searching Google for "i love frank already." Aww... I feel much better now :-)
Mar 30, 2004 @ 11:26 » 1 comment » Sitestuff
« February 2004 • April 2004 »