ReBlogging² BOOKMARK: Some quick links:

A critique of Mozilla's marketing and website design:

Let's look at the Download Now! box on the same Firefox page. Hmmm. Download now or get a CD thru the mail. Thru the mail obviously means money so is the download for free? It doesn't say free anywhere... Why should I pay for a revelatory Google thing computer experience... I don't even know what it does.

A program to find out what an RFID tag is saying:

RFDump is a tool to detect RFID-Tags and show their meta information: Tag ID, Tag Type, manufacturer etc.

An article about the future of AI:

Will machines make humans smarter or just more dependent on our calculators, car navigators, and kitchen conveniences? Dr. Ken Ford of the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition reclassifies several key problems in developing smarter machines into a category called "Amplified Intelligence."

  ¶ 2:54 PM 1 Comments

  Desktopronaut INFO SCIENCE: I hope you all are familiar with Celestia. It's a great way to explore space on your PC. The amazing part about Celestia is that you're not just limited to our exploring our solar system, but you can actually travel to over 100,000 other stars systems too. Here's a sample of how photo-realistic its real-time rendering actually is:



How is this news? It's not! Haha! Celestia has been around for a while. What is news however is their great new sister site, The Celestia Motherlode. This site is a (long overdue) central repository for a number of cool plug-ins that enhance or completely change Celestia. Not only can you download improved textures for your planets, new asteroids to put in orbit, and new clouds for Jupiter, but you can also throw in fictional fun stuff too, like, say, the DEATH STAR. w_(O_O)_t!

  ¶ 1:17 PM 1 Comments

  Arab-American Relations Crisis DATA: Egypt's Al-Ahram:

Two recent opinion polls held in several major Arab countries proved that the main reason for rising anti-Americanism was opposition to its foreign policy, particularly towards Palestine and Iraq, and not its values or civilisation as repeatedly claimed by US President George W Bush.

I have a feeling that won't stop him from saying they hate freedom.

The article gives these statistics for the percentage of those holding a favorable view of the U.S.:
4% Saudi Arabia
11% Morocco
14% United Arab Emirates
15% Jordan  ¶ 10:29 AM 0 Comments

  Peekaboo INFO ACCESS: Nasa has put a number of digitized Apollo 11 photographs online.

  ¶ 3:33 PM 0 Comments

  Internet Enforcement Analyst INFO SCIENCE: The MPAA is hiring an "Internet Enforcement Analyst." Sane individuals need not apply.

Full-time Internet Enforcement Analyst needed immediately for the Motion Picture Association’s (MPA) Worldwide Internet Enforcement department in Encino, California. As part of the Worldwide Anti-Piracy team, the Internet Enforcement Analyst works on the front lines of the MPA’s online anti-piracy efforts, enforcing the copyrights of the MPA’s member companies.

Responsibilities include:
· Intensive Internet use, research, and online piracy site evaluation.
· Technical and developmental oversight of automated search engine.
· Worldwide coordination of online piracy investigations.
· Conducting training in Internet functions and piracy-related issues.
· Gathering and preparing evidence for submission to law enforcement and litigation counsel for possible legal action.
· Developing and maintaining cooperative relationships with ISPs, universities, corporations, and other organizations to further anti-piracy efforts.
· Researching and evaluating new technologies, Internet protocols, and methodologies used to conduct and to combat Internet piracy.
· Conduct limited investigation into Internet piracy sites.

Interested parties should email melissa_valenzuela@mpaa.org. Melissa can be faxed at 818-461-1560. You can call Melissa at by dialing "1-800-NOCOPYS", "*" to pick a mailbox, "#" to list the names, and dial "8" and "#" to list names starting with "V".   ¶ 3:07 PM 1 Comments

  See What You Share on P2P INFO TECHNOLOGY: P2P Weblog points us to See What You Share, a site all about things people share on Peer 2 Peer networks, oftentimes, it seems, inadvertently.

Amazingly, there are a large number of photos available from soldiers in Iraq and even what appear to be U.S. Army documents all shared online. Doh!

  ¶ 2:59 PM 0 Comments

  "This Exemplifies The Contemporary Media Continuum" INFO SCIENCE: John Shirley, guest blogger at BoingBoing, posted this insightful piece about dense text vis-à-vis the modern media.

This blog might be too dense-looking to be successful. If I want it to be successful I have to break it up and make it like a bag of candy. Ideally the individual wrappers should be edible. As it is, it can be forbidding looking. The internet is about being like one of those birds that skims over the surface, dips its beak, comes up with a nourishing fish, flies away. The bird doesn't want to dive in. This exemplifies the contemporary media continuum. Thus those little news blips that go scrolling by, one sentence for this, one for that, beneath footage of something else entirely, on CNN and elsewhere. We can't absorb all that's on offer so we just skim the surface--and this is universally regarded as John Kerry's biggest campaign problem: he's not a skimmer, he's a diver. He dives in and explores, thinks about things. No good for present day culture. There are even those who refer to "ADD culture", Attention Deficit Disorder culture. In the crushing gravitational pull of that media gas-giant, can Kerry stand up and be noticed? Bush on the other hand... Wait a minute...stop!

The above text is still too dense for a blog.

He's right on too. I'm always cherry-picking the things I read online. The first thing I look for is anything graphical. The first things I read are bold text, quotes, bullets, etc. I almost always read quotes carefully in news articles, but quickly skip past names and titles. If I'm looking for something specific online, I usually use Google's Cached page because of the handy highlighting. If that is unavailable, I use Firefox's built in find feature by hitting "/". I don't see this so much as a problem as just being efficient with your time online.  ¶ 1:47 PM 1 Comments

  2010: QRIO Kills Owner Over DRM Violation INFO SCIENCE: Gizmodo -- usually my second favorite gadget site -- published a puzzlingly st00pid article about the future of eBooks, 500 Books In Your Gadget Bag. Here's a sample of the article's idiocy, "If publishers stop wanting DRM, it's the end of popular creative arts. Not as we know them, but period."

Excuse me? You're saying that art -- often considered as old as humanity itself -- is going to disappear from the face of the Earth unless Sony (aka: The Great Protector of ART!) nukes your new Librie non-book after your right-to-read license expires? Give me a fawking break, you nut job.



Thank God, before I started pulling someone's hair since I can't make a coherent argument, author Cory Doctorow came to the rescue to point out the flaws in Sanford May's article. (In a related note, I love Mr. Doctorow. Have I mentioned that recently? Hmmm, yes I have.)

But the author goes further and asserts that without DRM, there will be no market for entertainment product ever again ("If publishers stop wanting DRM, it's the end of popular creative arts. Not as we know them, but period.") despite the fact that the software industry got bigger when it abandoned DRM, and despite the fact that no new medium has ever succeeded by appealing to the virtues of the medium before it (there're very few ideas more goofy than the idea that people will start buying ebooks just as soon as they have fewer features and more restrictions, provided that the ebooks can be played back on special-purpose devices with sharp screens). He cites Sony as proof of this ("Sony may be nuts, but they're not that nuts."), despite the fact that Sony was forced out of the walkman market by its failure to deliver the DRM-free devices that its customers demanded. Yes, Sony is that nuts.

He doesn't even touch on the marketplace experience of every published writer who's tried giving away DRM-free ebooks -- me, Lessig, Jim Munroe, the Baen authors, Orson Scott Card -- universally, the experience is that we sell more books.

[...]

Really, it's as though he sat down and called an ebook startup's PR guy, then reasoned out all of his conclusions a priori, without reference to any of the activity in the field.

I know what you're thinking! How can a reasonably well known author like Cory not appreciate Sony: The Great Protector of ART's interest in DRM?!? I'm shocked, SHOCKED! Well, maybe, just maybe, Sony doesn't have anyone's best interest in mind except for their own bottom line.

(Read the original Gizmodo article and Cory's BoingBoing response)  ¶ 11:46 AM 0 Comments

  Game Boy Flash-Memory Cartridge INFO TECHNOLOGY: I've been thinking about it for a while, but I've finally decided to buy a flash-memory cartridge and link cable for the awesome retro Game Boy Advance my awesome retro boyfriend bought me.



In short, these little devices allow you to put your own software on your Game Boy Advance. The setup is pretty simple. You need a cable to connect your Game Boy Advance to your computer, and a flash-memory cartridge. (I think that's what the above graphic is trying to say. Software + Link Cable + Flash Memory Card = Japanese Lady Happy Time.) They can be used to play ill-gotten games, but Game Boy games are pretty reasonably priced, so that's not my intent. (Make no mistake however, I am still a dirty, dirty pirate.) I just want to play around with modding and old game boy games that aren't easy to procure nowadays.

What surprised me about all this is that you can now get flash-memory cartridges up to 1 Gig! That will hold a whole lot of early Game Boy games. In fact, it should hold them all.

(Image via GBA Roms)  ¶ 2:26 PM 0 Comments

  Visualizing Populations INFO VISUALIZATION: I found this visualization in the Times showing the difference between the topology of large cities in the States and China.



The point is well taken: China has a whole lot of new big cities.

However, I wonder if the representation of the U.S. is skewed due to the erratic nature of city, county, and state boundaries here. Yes, there are only 9 cities with a population of 1 million or more, but if you look at urban areas without regard to arbitrary political boundaries, the census reports 37 U.S. "cities" with populations larger then a million. That's four times the number represented in this graph. It can make a huge difference when you look at the whole picture. For example, New York's urban population doubles from around 8 million to just under 18 million (or 21 million according to this source) when you look at natural rather then political boundaries.

This visualization also gives the impression that there are 10 or so New York sized cities in China. That's a little too amazing to sound true. Here again if we look at cities without regard to political boundaries, the three largest urban areas are in North America:

1 New York (NY) 21,199,000
2 Mexico City 20,267,000
3 Los Angeles (CA) 16,373,000

In fact China doesn't even come into play until rank 17.

16 Istanbul 8,506,000
17 Shanghai 8,214,000
18 Washington (DC) 7,608,000

So, interesting as it is, the graph is a bit skewed in its representation. It would be very interesting to see this sort of display using a city's natural boundaries.  ¶ 10:53 AM 1 Comments

  Overshadowed.com VISUAL COMMUNICATION: Just ran across some amazing photos at Overshadowed.



Neat.  ¶ 4:41 PM 0 Comments

  Online Game Exchange Rates INFO TECHNOLOGY: Could Play Vault be the beginning of a currency exchange market for massive multiplayer online games?

How it works
Once you find a Partner game you like, PlayVault fetches your old game currency so our Partner game can provide you with the proper amount of currency on your new game.

What's different
1) Our Partner games set the rates you will receive currency at, add it to the game, and deliver it to you
2) It's free. We support the service with referral fees from Partner games
3) There’s no buying, selling, auctioning, markets or anything like that - We are strictly a migration platform

The Catch
To retrieve your currency you have to sign up to a Partner game using the links on our pages. The PlayVault service is free.

Supposedly, this is being supported by game providers to reduce the barriers of entry to new games from old games.

(The logic being: If you have 800 hours logged on Game A, it can be hard to give it up and start over on Game B. However, if you could transfer your Level 2000 ÜberMage's cash to a new game, you're more likely to try something new.)

However, this is in no way a free market; the exchange rates are imposed by the gaming services themselves.

(Via Terra Nova)  ¶ 1:17 PM 0 Comments

  From Bad Form to Good Form INFO SCIENCE: Lift has posted guidelines for creating a good form. It's a good list of tips for those that can't hire a professional.

Published research and statistics state that a forms [sic] completion time and error rate can be greatly reduced by good design, editorial and consideration of usability. This therefore results in enhancing a customer’s experience of an organisations [sic] brand, encouraging retention and building on reputation.

Yes, there are worse evils in the world then unruly forms. But if you're going to bother your users with a lengthy form, do your best to make it usable.  ¶ 12:55 PM 0 Comments

  New York Times' Interactive Election Guide INFO VISUALIZATION: If there's an organization that knows how to use Flash effectively, it's the New York Times. They've recently posted an interactive Election Guide using Flash, and I must say it's a wonderful tool with extensive information that's easy and interesting to explore.





I especially like the combination of the electoral college map with the geographical map. It's a system that's not easy to understand (*cough* *cough* and should be abolished) and this visualization does a goob job of showing how those votes are mapped to the states.  ¶ 10:03 AM 0 Comments

  KITT Kills INTERFACES: A dedicated Finn named Juha Terho has recreated KITT's dashboard from Knight Rider.



He did an awesome job! However, I'm afriad that if I had a car with this interface, I would kill a few dozen people in the average week. We may be in the 80s' future, but thank god we have better interfaces to our cars.

On a side note to my new favorite Finn...

© 2002, 2004 Juha Terho – Redistribution prohibited without express prior consent from the author

Can you recreate someone else's artwork that is protected by copyright and then claim copyright yourself? I'm afriad not. If I redraw a picture of Mickey Mouse, I would get sued if I tried to claim ownership of that image. (In other words, I couldn't sell my drawing of Mickey to a company that will use it sell porn to kids.) But good try nonetheless.

UPDATE: While we're on talking cars, I ran across this article on talking cars in the BBC. Short and interesting read.

Roberto Sicconi, IBM: "There are speech recognition systems deployed in cars today. They have a certain amount of limitations. Most of them require the user to learn and use a set of commands, and not say anything else. This is one of the complaints we are getting from our early customers. They would like to be able to say things freely without having to look into a manual first. So we are developing a system that allows for free entry for commands and requests, requests for help or services that are available in the car. The system has the ability to respond freely back to the users, so that we establish a real two-way communication with the driver."

UPDATE: Juha Terho wrote me to clarify that his copyright is legit and can be held up in court. Since he's a law student (and a very polite individual), I can't help but agree with him. :-) This is good news because too often copyright law is used to stifle creative works built from other material covered by copyright (for example, music made using samples from other songs). So I'm glad to hear that Juha has creative control over his artwork. I've also updated the link to his artwork to this permanent link.  ¶ 12:11 PM 0 Comments

  "Plog™": Worse Than "Moblog" INFO TECHNOLOGY: I tend to like Amazon, however this Plog™ (don't forget the trademark!) business is more than a little silly.

The Plog™ Service is a personalized blog.

Your Amazon.com Plog is a diary of events that will enhance your shopping experience, helping you discover products that have just been released, track changes to your orders, and many other things. Just like a blog, your Plog is sorted in reverse chronological order. When we think we have something interesting or important to tell you, we'll post it to your Plog.

So, how is this more like a blog then a computer telling me to buy something (formerly known as: recommendations)? Oh yeah, it isn't. Looks like Amazon isn't doing anything new, but just decided to try to get a little mileage off of the blog phenomenon.

It's also pretty sly of them to find a non-word that sounds just like a real word and protect it as a trademark. This is why we never see new products called "Mustang" or "Greyhound" or "General Electric" anymore. No company can own those words. Instead we have "Cingular" and "Celebrex" and "Google" (a mis-spelling of googol) and now, "Plog." These are words a company can own and control. So, forget about that blog you wanted to start called plog, the word has been removed from the public's lexicon.  ¶ 11:23 AM 0 Comments

  The History of Programming Languages INFO VISUALIZATION: Here's a cool visualization I hadn't seen before. The History of Programming Languages by O'Reilly.



The presentation is interesting, however I wouldn't have put the greyed-out images of the animals behind the timeline. They tend to conflict with the greyed-out arrows that show a language's heredity. However, I do like to connection the images (not-so-subtly) imply between the ideas of evolution and programming language development.

The poster is available online in PDF format. You can also find full-size copies at Team O'Reilly Bookstores and upcoming O'Reilly conferences, such as the Open Source Convention in Portland this July. Finally, while supplies last, U.S. residents can get a copy of the "History of Programming Languages" poster when purchasing two books through oreilly.com. (View the full book list.) Use discount code OPC79 in the shopping cart. The poster will be shipped separately from your book order.

  ¶ 10:39 AM 0 Comments

  Best. Ad. Ever. INFO SCIENCE: The following billboard has been showing up a few places. (Seattle and Silicon Valley, from what I've read. I must say, that billboard along a highway is pretty goddamn dangerous.)



Pretty cryptic, no? Well, I'm not going to spoil it for you (unless you want me to) but I'll just say that solving it leads to another question. This puzzle is even more cryptic and I personally would never have the patience to solve it. If you would like the answer explained by someone mathier then me, click here. (If you would like me to never use a fake word like "mathier" again, please email me.)

But if you want to bypass all these profundities, cut to the chase and read the final message.

It's interesting; I used Google to solve a puzzle by Google, without actually doing any of the hard work myself. This is the future people!

  ¶ 9:50 AM 1 Comments

  Math Primers DATA: While cleaning out old files I ran across some various old cheat-sheets and primers for some of my college math classes, mostly pre-calc stuff. They can come in handy when you want to model something like, oh... I dunno, the temperature of your house or the forthcoming economic collapse.



Definition of a Derivative

Exponential Modeling

Limits and Continuity

Linear Motion

Natural Logs and e

Parametric Equations

Sinusoidal Functions

They may be owned by one of my old TA's or some book, so don't go telling on me. ;)  ¶ 4:44 PM 0 Comments

  Old Personal Web Site Design INFO SCIENCE: This was an initial design for a personal webpage a few years back. I never ended up using it, but if anyone wants to snap up any of the graphics for other projects, be my guest. (Click for full view.)





I never really liked this layout style (with categories listed along the top a la Amazon), even though I've used it before and probably will again. It's a very limiting practice and most sites are better simply listing the categories in the body of the page, like Google's Directory Page. This setup gives you room to expand and also give you room to use bread crumbs (tips and examples of the content) for each category. (And bread crumbs are always a good idea.) Alternatively, you can list categories along the left column, like The New York Times, however, this can be a bit cramped and your descriptions must be terse.

The other big problem with this sort of site design is the big bounding boxes. What was I thinking? Nobody should still be using these. It's just clutter for the sake of clutter. It's also a cop-out; just make your webpage work at any resolution. Whenever I use grids now, be it html or a spreadsheet, I use either a very light grey or a medium yellow. Just enough to guide the eyes between sets of related information and for grouping groups without making the grid the focal point instead of the content or data.  ¶ 11:56 AM 0 Comments

  Doing the Numbers DATA: Salon is carrying an article that takes a deep statistical look at the poll numbers for the upcoming presidential election. Here David Gopoian makes a persuasive case that Kerry could be set to win the election, provided he understands which voters he can and must win over.

Most interesting for me was this part about candidataes and education level. Interestingly, Kerry has more support then Bush among people with a high-school degree or less and those with a college degree or more. Who does that leave for Bush? College drop-outs of course.

Finally, the data related to levels of education provide some interesting patterns that illustrate how the use of partisan benchmarks can shed different light on the obvious. These ABC News-Washington Post poll data show that Kerry may be en route to assembling a top-to-bottom coalition. Pluralities of both high school graduates and college graduates support Kerry. By contrast, the middle educational category, those with some college but not a college degree, supports Bush.



[...]

Beyond that, this chart demonstrates that nothing is as it would be in a typical year. Kerry leads among the least-educated voters, as a Democrat should, but is running nine points below expectations. He should be trailing among the middle group, but not by a staggering 14 percent -- which is 10 points below expectations. And neither candidate is following the script for college graduates. The Republican should be leading by 10 points there. Instead, Bush trails Kerry by four points and fares nine points worse than expectations. Kerry is running five points better than expected.

Nevertheless, these data reinforce much of the conventional wisdom. Bush's disdain for complexity and nuance is costing him the support of voters with a broader understanding of the world. Kerry's patrician manner has not yet won over voters wary of his background and style. They await nonverbal cues and verbal pledges that he cares about them.

So, the author is saying that polls reflect what we all already know: Kerry seems kinda snooty and Bush is an idiot. (I feel the need to yell: STOP THE PRESS!) I sure hope Kerry can communicate to the less-educated and the less-well-off that it's in their best interest to vote for him.  ¶ 10:46 AM 0 Comments

  We Back: New Host ASSEMBLEME: We've moved!

Sorry about the last 12 hours of downtime and the annoying problems with redirection and frames prior to that. Everything should work now. This should be home for the foreseeable future. Thanks for your patience!  ¶ 11:03 PM 0 Comments

  404 In Style OFF TOPIC: This has to be the best 404 message ever.



Be sure to read the page title for extra enjoyment.  ¶ 4:30 PM 0 Comments

  I, Robot III INFO SCIENCE: More A.I. musings by way of I, Robot impetus. (Worst sentence ever? Perhaps, but I'm going to stick with it.) Both via Ray Kurzweil's site.

The first, Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics unsafe?

"AI could improve unexpectedly fast once it is created," warns Eliezer Yudkowsky, Director of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. "Computer chips already run at ten million times the serial speed of human neurons and are still getting faster… An AI can absorb hundreds or thousands of times as much computing power, where humans are limited to what they're born with. [And] an AI is a recursively self-improving pattern.

"Just as evolution creates order and structure enormously faster than accidental emergence, we may find that recursive self-improvement creates order enormously faster than evolution. If so, we may have only one chance to get this right."

Asimov's laws are not sufficient, said Michael Anissimov, writing in an article on the 3 Laws Unsafe site. "It's not so straightforward to convert a set of statements into a mind that follows or believes in those statements. Two, semantic ambiguity means that without personally understanding the reasons for the laws and the original intent, a robot might misinterpret their meaning, leading to problems. Third, Asimov's Laws ignore the possibility that a robot will acquire the ability to reprogram itself -- an inevitable eventuality if intelligent robots are created."

The second, Robots (Probably) Won't Turn Against Humanity, Experts Say in Their Defense. (Could I love that title any more? I'd have to say no.)

"The message is that they are dangerous and they will potentially have the ability to harm biological humans," said a New York University professor of computer science, Demetri Terzopoulos.



While Sony's robot dog, AIBO, has yet to cause harm to anyone, software developers like those at aibopet.com are selling downloadable programs to change AIBO's personalities, help him make different sounds, and even imitate movie characters like the villainous robots from Battlestar Galactica. If little robotic dogs can be hacked, some wonder if the human-sized robots can truly escape interference.

  ¶ 3:08 PM 0 Comments

  I, Robot II INFO SCIENCE: New Scientist's Will Knight writes about I, Robot and Asimov Three (and later four) Laws:

Even if researchers are ever able to build robots with enough intelligence to comprehend Asimov's laws, they are unlikely to be implemented. Although they attracted some interest in the early stages of artificial intelligence research, the rules were quickly abandoned as too prescriptive and simplistic.

"Asimov's laws are about as relevant to robotics as leeches are to modern medicine," says Steve Grand, who founded the UK company Cyberlife Research and is working on developing artificial intelligence through learning. "They stem from an innocent bygone age, when people seriously thought that intelligence was something that could be 'programmed in' as a series of logical propositions."

(Read the full article here.)  ¶ 2:33 PM 0 Comments

  Researchers: Excel Screwed My Data. INFO SCIENCE: I don't know why the hell these people are using Excel to store genetic information, isn't there something better out there? (If not, then what are all those BioInformatics graduates doing with their time?) In any matter, they are using Excel, and Excel is doing what it's programmed to do: mess with your shizzle in annoying ways.

Excel is widely used in genetic research to process microarray data. A microarray chip detects amounts of protein produced from thousands of different genes, enabling researchers to see which particular gene is being expressed in a sample of diseased tissue, for example.

The errors are introduced because some genetic identifiers look very like dates to Excel. If the spreadsheet is not properly set up, it will convert an identifier, such as SEPT2 to a date: 2-Sep. The conversion, the researchers say, is irreversible: once the error has been introduced, the original data is gone.

In a paper published on BioMedCentral, Zeeberg et al explain that they noticed that some identifiers were being converted to non gene names.

The problem here is obvious (to anyone that doesn't work at Microsoft anyway). Excel should only reformat the cell's data if it suspects it's a date, not actually change the underlying data. This has always annoyed me about Excel. "1-1" can mean a number of things: 1 for 1, 1:1, 1-1=0; but to excel it's always "Jan-1-[this year]." If you go back and try to format the date back to being a number or text, you'll find it has been trashed and replaced with something like 37987 (which is the number of days from 1/1/1900 to 1/1/2004).

Someday -- hopefully by then end of the century -- we'll all have competent office software.  ¶ 10:22 AM 0 Comments

  ISP Smackdown! INFO SCIENCE: In a forgettable article in today's New York Times, reporter Saul Hansell talks about how MSN has managed to increase revenue despite adverse... zzz... Oh sorry, I was drifting off there from a complete lack of interest.



What was interesting though is how AOL and MSN are both still loosing market share. Even more interesting is that these big-four ISP's have been collectively loosing market share since their peak in '02. Where do you think the other 55% of internet connections come from? Is there really still that big of a market for mom-and-pop shops? I suspect work VPN is a big chunk of people, but not that big.  ¶ 9:34 AM 0 Comments

  Good Ol' Lisa INFORMATION VISUALIZATION:



I don't buy this meme (I've known some pretty dumb sad people in my life) but I like this graph anyway.  ¶ 1:05 PM 0 Comments

  !W!__'<((O_O))>'__!T! DATA: Via the Urban Dictionary comes the best defenition for w00t ('wewt', 'woot', 'w_(@_@)_t', etc.) I've ever heard:

w00t:It's a state of mind where everything is cool. Wootness differs from chonkey in the sense that it is more 'style-related' : how you do things from day-to-day and how they end up based on the approach you took to do those things you do. When all things are going well in your own life, that's when you know that the wootness flows through you like water - it's a part of you - it's natural to you...When everything goes your way - or for the most part goes your way - that's when you know you have the power of woot within you...All of us do, it can come from time to time - or disappear for a long time, or simply stay w/ us our whole lives - we just have to believe in it...

w@@t visualized for me might look something like this.  ¶ 12:47 PM 0 Comments

  Domo Arigato, Mr. Asimov INFO TECHNOLOGY: I just read Chris Suellentrop’s Slate article about how I, Robot misses the point of Asimov’s book of the same name. I gotta say, Isaac Asimov purists are giving I, Robot way too much flak. I saw the movie on Saturday and was very impressed. Yes, the robots flip out at some point and start killing people. But wouldn’t it be a boring movie if it was just peaches and cream, kittens and rainbows? “Hey kids, look at the future, it’s perfect!” Zzzzzz…



I personally love the way the movie portrayed a logical conflict in Asimov's three rules. (I won’t get into it and spoil it for you.) And to those that argue that the movie is one long robot hate-fest: I didn’t come away with that feeling at all. In fact, I felt the movie was decidedly pro-technology.

Where this movie really gets it right is in its vision of the future. It’s very middle-of-the-road; not a complete dystopia (Matrix, Metropolis, Brazil, 1984, The Terminators, Blade Runner, Minority Report, AI, Gattaca, The Running Man, ad infinitum) but not a pure utopia (to which no sci-fi movies apply) either.

And then there’s Will Smith. This guy has to be the most likable guy in cinema today. He’s the perfect American in everyway. When is this guy going to run for Governor? I’d take him over that Austrian from that other, far inferior, robot movie any day.

Speaking of Robots, have you ever wondered what this line in Styx’s Mr. Roboto song meant?

Mata ah-oo hima de.
Himitsu wo shiri tai.

Find the answer here.

(Read the article at Slate / Buy your own NS-5 / Read the Lyrics to Styx's BEST SONG EVA)
  ¶ 11:47 AM 0 Comments

  Talking Points INFO SCIENCE: My best-bud Andy has posted a great clip from The Daily Show where John takes on the entire notion of so-called "Talking Points."



Bottom line: "Talking points: they're true because they're said a lot."

Wonkette also has a posting about the story with a full transcript.  ¶ 10:54 AM 0 Comments

  MPAA: Kittens Killed By Movie Pirates INFO TECHNOLOGY: Is anyone else sick of how -- in lieu of balanced reporting -- most news organizations simply reprint press releases from the RIAA and MPAA regarding peer-to-peer issues? Here's a nice sample of recent hysterics.

MPAA: Movie downloading is new piracy plague
A Quarter Of Internet Users Are Pirates
Movie piracy on Internet called an epidemic
Net piracy hurts Hollywood
Movie piracy on the rise
Broadband eases piracy
Internet piracy hijacks sales
Alarm at internet movie piracy
Download speeds raise fears of movie piracy
Downloading movies ? That’s you and one quarter of surfers …
One - in - four broadband users have illegally downloaded a movie
Illegal Movie Downloads Are Growing , Hollywood Says

I think you'd agree looking at these words that a real reporter would come up with a little less biased wording: Piracy, Plague, Pirates, Epidemic, Hurts Hollywood, Hijacks, Alarm, Illegally.

(via The P2P Weblog)
  ¶ 4:29 PM 0 Comments

  Visualize Your Midi Files (Yeah, I Don't Have Any Either) INFO VISUALIZATION: Here's a great way to visualize music. "The Shape of Song" takes a midi file and connects similar note structures with each other using an arch. In their words:

The diagrams in The Shape of Song display musical form as a sequence of translucent arches. Each arch connects two repeated, identical passages of a composition. By using repeated passages as signposts, the diagram illustrates the deep structure of the composition.

It works very well and can actually inform you a bit about the song's underlying structure. Highly repetetive pieces will have a large amount of uniformly connected arches; simple songs will have very thick and wide arches; complex and erratic songs will have more chaotic patterns. Pictured above? "Women" by Def Leppard.

(Via Waxy.org)  ¶ 3:15 PM 0 Comments

  P2P Smack Down! INFO TECHNOLOGY: Wow, Bit Torrent is now the most popular peer-to-peer protocol!



This is great news for everyone, except Kazaa and the RIAA. And well, who cares about those two. Also surprising is seeing good old Donkey up there solidly in second place. Good job eMule! (As much as I may love Bit Torrent, the lack of a search function will keep it from ever being the one-stop-shopping p2p client.)

If you're still not on the Torrent Train, get a copy of Azureus and visit SurpNova.org or subscribe your RSS reader to the SuprNova.org XML Feeds.

Don't forget to tip Bit Torrent creator Bram Cohen or the Azureus dev team.

(via p2pnet.net)  ¶ 2:40 PM 0 Comments

  Tall Buildings INTERFACES: The Museum of Modern Art has on display a "focused study of twenty-five tall buildings" that were designed in the last decade. The online presentation is a flash site with a fairly clean interface and it's packed full of great, interesting and well presented info.





Check out the online exhibit or read the New York Times' article.
  ¶ 9:49 AM 0 Comments

  Making Something Out of Nothing (Or at Least Very Little) VISUAL COMMUNICATION: Here's an ink-blot-styled test for ya. What do you make out of this collection of dots?



Probably not much. However, if the dots were to be animated in a certain way, it'd take you a fraction of a second to recognize it as a walking person. (Check out this "walking dots" demonstration to see the dots in motion.) It's not something you have to consciously think about to recognize, your brain does this all subconsciously and automatically for you. I've seen these demonstrations before, but this is the first "walking dots" demonstration I've seen that allows you to play with different variables -- including gender, weight, tenseness/looseness, and mood -- to see how they effect the walking dots' stagger. The algorithm is wonderful but does seem to break down when you move too many variables to extremes. For example, I tried a happy, nervous, heavy male and the dots seemed to just freak out on me.

All of this reminds me of a great book I read called Visual Intelligence by Donald Hoffman.



This book shows us how our minds work on our behalf to construct images, and in many cases the image presented to "us" by our visual cortex (and other brain "organs") is as much a guess as it is the real or correct representation. It's a very illuminating book and it's full of illustrations. If you think what "you" see is the same as what your eyes do, then read this book, because it's certainly not true.
  ¶ 2:49 PM 0 Comments

  Fallout INTERFACES: I ran across this screenshot of Fallout Tactics today on Moby Games.



This interface is so rich, I just love it. Yeah, it wouldn't be good for anything other then a game, and it does break all the rules about being simple to understand and uncluttered. But something about it just makes me want to play with buttons and options and see what chaos ensues. (Besides, games are allowed to play with the rules more since they are more about enjoyment then ease.)

The Fallout series was always great about giving their games' interfaces a tactile feel that correlated perfectly with the game's post-apocalyptic plot. RIP Fallout.  ¶ 2:33 PM 0 Comments

  A Tip From a Fellow Take-Outer INFO ACCESS: When did Amazon start providing restaurant menus on their website? I don't know, but I like it. And it's not just Applebee's either, I've found all my local mom-and-pop restaurants too, such as tonight's dinner provided by the Noodle Studio.

Currently available for these cities:

* Boston
* Chicago
* New York
* San Francisco
* Seattle
* Washington, D.C.

If you're wondering how this fits into Amazon's portfolio, then you're in for a real suprise when you see their Presidential Candidates page.



No, you can't buy a president. (Well, one can buy a president of course, but you can't. Not at Amazon's discount prices anyway.) You can however donate to a political campaign. Nice to see Kerry/Edwards has raised about five times as much as Cheeny/Bush. Is Amazon more popular among lefties?
  ¶ 7:16 PM 0 Comments

  Trader Mike INFO VISUALIZATION: Trader Mike is a great blog about the [endlessly entertaining culture that tries to predict the] stock market. My favorite thing about this blog is his chaotic charts and graphs:



There are a number of problems with this representation -- the most striking to me is the clutter and that awful gradient background with the volume histogram barely distinguishable from the background. You run into the same problem with those pesky EMA lines.

(EMA, it turns out stands for Exponential Moving Average; basically a statistic that hopes to be the derivative of the line created by any particular stock price over time -- never mind that that is impossible since the future data doesn't exist yet. One thing I remember from Calculus is that the end of a line (in this case, the current stock price) has no derivative, because it has no slope. So, in actuality the EMA is just another moving average, and moving averages by nature lag behind the actual data.)

In any matter, what I find more telling about this visualization is that Mike's little, short comments are always worth much more illuminating then all of the other data represented by the visualization. This is why, in my opinion, you'll be a more informed investor by reading the Economist then you will be by going blind staring at these kind of graphs all day everyday. It's the idea that stock prices aren't determined by their stock history, but rather by the psychology of investors, the company itself, earning reports, the economy, the weather, the government, exchange rates, geography, employees, and six billion other factors known as world consumers. (Imagine what it might look like if you could find a way to gather and present all of that data clearly and in an informative way. m(@_@)m )  ¶ 9:25 AM 0 Comments

  FYI: Clear Channel Has No Political Agenda VISUAL COMMUNICATION: Nothing pisses off Clear Channel like free speech. Yeah, that's the company that had numerous stations ban the Dixie Chicks for speaking their mind. And then there were those Pro-War-Rallies (wtf is wrong with people?) called "Rally for America" funded directly by Clear Channel. What's the new big thought-crime that clear channel is out to squelch? This billboard, meant to be displayed in Times Square in New York during the RNC:



So what does Clear Channel have to say for itself?

"We have no political agenda," [president and chief executive of Clear Channel, Paul Meyer] said.

Hmmmm, sure, buddy. Here's the New York Times article about the snafu. Ok, I'll try and lay off politics for a bit.  ¶ 10:06 AM 0 Comments

  Republican National Convention Map INFO VISUALIZATION: Here's a hand little map from the New York Times showing where not to go in Manhattan during the RNC.



It's good to see Mayor Bloomberg is trying to make the Republican Party more centrist by supporting gay rights and pro-choice groups.  ¶ 10:48 AM 0 Comments

  Bootlegging Tips for SuprNova INFO TECHNOLOGY: Are you tired of surfing on SuprNova and wondering which version of Spiderman 2 you should download? Here's a handy reference for the various terms used so you can get the best version:

Telesync: a copy which was shot in an empty cinema or from the projection booth with a professional camera, directly connected to the sound source.

Screener: a copy made from either VHS tape or from DVD-Video disc that are sent to movie critics and censors before the movie is available to public through video rental chains. Normally refers to a very good quality bootlegged copy.

Cam: a specific method how movie pirates create illegal bootleg copies of original movies. Cam method is basically just a guy who uses either regular or professional camcorder to shoot the movie either from TV or actually inside a movie theatre (in some Cam copies of movies you can actually see audience as well :-). These bootleg copies are normally then encoded into VCD, SVCD or DivX format and distributed illegally over the Internet.

Telecine: a method to make an illegal bootleg copy of an original movie. Telecine method can be done in various ways, but normally it includes process where the movie is taken directly from the reel to digital format and then encoded into VCD, SVCD or DivX format. Other bootleg methods include Telesync, Screener, Cam and DVD-Rip.  ¶ 5:57 PM 0 Comments

  Remotes Remotes Remotes INTERFACES: An Engadget post points us to an article about the inventor of the remote control being "confused" by modern day remotes.



The article is so short it's hardly worth reading. (Think: local broadcast news quality.) But I think the salient point here isn't that remotes are all that awful, there are just too damn many of them. My Tivo remote is pure quality; I never have to think more than a micro-second about what I need to push to get the Tivo to do what I want. However, I'm always flipping back and forth between the Tivo, the stereo, the LCD Television, the wireless mouse and the wireless keyboard. I also have a remote for my ATI video card and a remote that came with my Dell desktop; neither of which I use.

I know what you're thinking: universal remotes. Ok, now slap yourself and forget about it. Having one human interface to every household device is an awful idea. I don't want to use a mouse to turn off the kitchen lights and I don't want to use a television remote to surf the web.

What really needs to happen here is a smarter integration between devices. When I plug my TV/Monitor into the stereo, it should know that the stereo is there and it should turn the stereo on when I turn the TV/Monitor on and play its line-in (unless it's already doing something else or I've told it not to). When I activate my computer, my TV/Monitor should know that I want to use it now and should switch from analog in to DVI accordingly. When I turn off the TV/Monitor, it should send out a signal to the stereo saying, "if you're just playing your line-in, you don't have to anymore so turn off." This sort of system wouldn't put every appliance in your house on one remote, but that's a good thing. Instead, it would eliminate the need to have more then one remote just to do one thing, like watching television.
  ¶ 1:06 PM 0 Comments

  Politics and Misinformation: The Looming Republican War OFF TOPIC: This is way, way off topic for this blog, but I couldn't help but post it. It's a musing by Andrew Sullivan about "The Looming Republican War." I've always had a soft-spot for Libertarians, but have always hated the Christian Right, so I can't help but think it would be amazingly good for this country if the two right-wing camps parted ways. (I also tend to think there is a widening split between old-fashioned protectionist liberals and progressives (like myself), but the split isn't as blatant as that on the right.)

No direct links on his blog, so you'll have to find the original post here.

THE LOOMING REPUBLICAN WAR: The current tussle in the Congress over the budget is just a precursor to what I think will be outright Republican civil war after this election. If Bush wins, it will cripple his ability to get anything done. If he loses, the recriminations will get vicious. The fiscal conservatives will be fighting the "deficits-don't-matter" crowd. The realists will be out to topple the neocons. The Santorum-Ashcroft axis will continue to wage war on any Republicans not interested in legislating either the Old Testament or the dictates of the Vatican. (The FMA battle now looks more and more like an attempt by Santorum to identify Republican social moderates so he can use primary hardliners to challenge them in the future.) The battle lines are deep and sharp - and the future of American conservatism is at stake. Bush has proven himself unable to unite a party that includes Tom DeLay as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain and Bill Frist. Whether the coming civil war is about who lost the election, or who will exploit the victory, it's going to be nasty and enduring. No single party can be both for individual liberty and for theologically-based social policy; both for fiscal balance and drunken-sailor spending; both for interventionism abroad and against moralism in foreign policy. The incoherence is just too deep, the tensions too strained. And with the war on terror itself a point of contention among conservatives, geo-politics will not be able to keep the coalition in one piece.

  ¶ 10:41 AM 0 Comments

  I'm Back and Less-Caffeinated ASSEMBLEME: Well, I'm back from a long, blogless weekend, and I'm ready to cut back my daily caffeine intake a bit. Here's a list of the caffeine content of various common drinks. I had no idea that my two 12 ounce coffees per day had the equivalent of ten to fifteen cans of Coke! No wonder I get so groggy in the afternoon.
  ¶ 10:40 AM 0 Comments

  Preview of Tiger INTERFACES: Apple has a Tiger Preview available on their website. It has more of the amazing (yet simple) features that has me salivating like it's Panther all over again. This company is simply amazing.



Above is a view of the so-called Dashboard, which holds little miniature helper programs that run continuously. Basically, it's like what Microsoft is trying to do with that big ugly second start bar with a huge ugly clock on it that comes with Longhorn, except unlike Microsoft's crap, it's the coolest thing since Panther's Exposé.

Meanwhile in Redmond... How many people work at Microsoft? Like, 10 thousand? And how much money do the have? Like, all of it? They really need to pull their heads out of their asses and focus on doing a few things well, rather then doing everything shitty. Here is apple, adding features to OS that aren't projected to be in Windows until 2008! Gah, what's wrong with that company? All the money in the word apparently can't buy you a good product.
  ¶ 11:34 AM 0 Comments

  EFF: Patent Buster Extraordinaire INFO TECHNOLOGY: The EFF has released the 10 patents it wants to either have thrown out or dramatically modified. Wired News has a report on the EFF's efforts, and it's an interesting list. You can also read the EFF's Patent Busting Project's home page. From video game emulation to online testing to Acacia's infamous "digital media transmission" patent, these are all potentially stifling patents and deserve to be busted.

However, it seems that two of Amazon's patents are missing from the list. Amazon has patented their (brilliant, amazing, feat-defying) "One click purchasing" and their "Affiliate Program," and both are completely obvious and deserve to be busted as well. Maybe Amazon is a little too well financed for the EFF to bother with at this point. Hopefully those will come around in the next batch.

Meanwhile, we'll just have to enjoy this quote from XCorvis on Slashdot: "Someone should patent the method for profiting from vague patents... then sue everyone profiting from vague patents."
  ¶ 11:04 AM 0 Comments