Ted's Handy FireFox Plugins INTERNET: I've been using Ted Mielczarek's FlashBlock program for some time and highly recommend it for getting rid of unsightly flash ads. Checking his Mozilla page today I found a few other gems that are also useful.

* Nuke Anything: This plug-in ads an option to your right-click menu to get rid of anything on a rendered webpage. You can select big chunks of text, images, tables, whatever, select 'remove,' and it's gone in a fraction of a second. To get everything back to normal just hit refresh.

* Plain Text Links: This little badboy lets you treat a url without an A tag as a hyperlink. Very hand when reading message boards and the like.

  ¶ 12:37 PM 0 Comments

  Where my peeps at? INFO VISUALIZATION: LandScan has one of the best population density maps I've seen.



It sure is easy to forget just how many Asians there are in the world. But what's up with Argentina? This map makes it look more barren then the Sahara Desert.

If you're interested, they also talk about their methods on the site:

In order to assess population density, the LandScan dataset is based on the ambient population of an area over a 24 hour period, meaning that a single population number is predicted for each grid cell irrespective of variants in the population due to time of day. In order to accomplish this task, the LandScan model takes the best available census data for each country or region and apportions that data into the grid cells based on "probability coefficients" (ORNL August 2002). These coefficients are developed based on a set of input variables, including roads, slope, land cover, and nighttime lights, among others.

  ¶ 12:27 PM 0 Comments

  Poverty in America INFO VISUALIZATION: You've probably heard that poverty in America is on the rise, as has been widely reported in the last few days. But if you want a bit more depth, check out the actual report over at the Census Bureau. The data is clear, the visualizations are crisp and the report is very user friendly overall.



I thought this graph was particularly interesting. They say Americans vote their wallets. I've never completely bought that argument, but if you do, look at the poverty level between '89 and '93 and again from '01 to present. Pretty similar eh? Where's Ross Perot when you need him?  ¶ 10:33 AM 0 Comments

  Leave My Context Menu Alone! INFO VISUALIZATION: Someone needs to make an extension for FireFox that ignores JavaScript that breaks the right-click menu (a.k.a. the context menu). Come now people, this doesn't keep anyone from saving images from your website. (As John Ashcroft might say, people still have P2P, or permission to pilfer.)

Just today I was checking out Santiago Calatrava's images of the Athens Olympic Stadium and the new WTC Transit Center when I ran into this annoying little piece of code.

document.oncontextmenu=new Function("return false")

What a complete bummer it is to see this clumsy little technique spread from crappy Geocities "art" sites to architechture firms and giants like Amazon.

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who wrote in. I was using an older version of FireFox that didn't have the extra context menu protection, but I downloaded the new version and it works great! W00t!  ¶ 2:39 PM 5 Comments

  Subway Map Fun INFO VISUALIZATION: Stories about a redesigned New York subway map have been floating around (notably Gothamist and Jason's Notes).



I actually like both for different reasons. The redesign (left) sacrifices having a consistent scale for the benefit of showing clearer curves as well as showing the multiple lines sharing a single tunnel. If I had to choose one for my own use, I would choose the redesign simply because it mimics my own conceptual understanding (model) of the trains.

Of course, you can take abstraction way too far with maps. Just check out the subway map from 1972:



But, that's just my opinion. Check out the current official subway map, a few small pictures of this redesign, a redesign by Michael Calcagno, or Dynamap (which is very cool but only includes Lower Manhattan).

My personal favorite? A redeisgn by Joseph Brennan. His map includes NJ connections (like Path) as well as other light rail connections around the city (like the JFK Airtrain) and really gives you a good understanding of the entire region.  ¶ 11:59 AM 0 Comments

  "Latte Liberals -- Activist Judges -- Partial Birth Abortions" COMMUNICATION: Here's a great read (via Boingboing) that talks about how liberals and progressives are failing to use language to properly frame the current political debate.

Why do conservatives like to use the phrase "liberal elite" as an epithet?

Linguistics professor George Lakoff: Conservatives have branded liberals, and the liberals let them get away with it: the "liberal elite," the "latte liberals," the "limousine liberals." The funny thing is that conservatives are the elite. The whole idea of conservative doctrine is that some people are better than others, that some people deserve more. To conservatives, if you're poor it's because you deserve it, you're not disciplined enough to get ahead. Conservative doctrine requires that there be an elite: the people who thrive in the free market have more money, and they should. Progressives say, "No, that's not fair. Maybe some should have more money, but no one should live in poverty. Everybody who works deserves to have a reasonable standard of living for their work." These are ideas that are progressive or liberal ideas, and progressives aren't getting them out there enough.

What progressives are promoting is not elite at all. Progressives ought to be talking about the conservative elite. They shouldn't be complaining about "tax cuts for the rich," they should be complaining about "tax cuts for the conservative elite," because that's who's getting them.

  ¶ 11:18 AM 0 Comments

  Personal Photo Collection ASSEMBLEME: I finally went through my photos folder and put up an album of some of my favorite pics.  ¶ 3:26 PM 0 Comments

  MMOGs Get Interesting INFO TECHNOLOGY: This has to be a first. The Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) Star Wars Galaxies, was the site of civil unrest, protest, and finally civil disobedience recently. Since the reports are only on message boards and in highly localized language, here's my synopsis:

A few players found an exploit that allowed them to forge game currency (called 'credits'). After making a lot of cash, the players started distributing it to other players that didn't know it was forged. After catching on to the whole affair, Sony (the company who manages the game) decided to make a rash decision and ban all players with forged credits, regardless of whether they knew they were forged or not. Of course, this pissed the community off, so a bunch of friends of the banned players gathered and formed a protest which consisted of large groups of people gathered in an area, spamming the console with all caps messages demanding justice from Sony.



So how does Sony respond? They threaten to shut the whole server off. After unsuccessfully trying to stop the madness by teleporting the protestors to other areas (or possibly purgatory areas, I'm not sure), they made good on their threat and cut off the entire server.

Find the message boards surrounding the incident here, here, here, here, and view a screen shot of a consol here.

In other MMOG news, check out Wired News' article about gamers outsourcing their gaming to poorer countries.

For example, entrepreneur Valery Markarov said he pays workers in Russia a base salary of about $100 per week to earn in-game money, which Markarov then sells to Internet Gaming Entertainment, or IGE, the major seller of virtual goods. Workers get paid more as they're more productive, though, and could make up to $500 a week, he said.

"It's very good money for them, especially for Russia," Markarov said.

(via Terra Nova)  ¶ 10:26 AM 0 Comments

  Money (The Proper Noun, not the Noun) INTERFACES: Of all of the bad interfaces Microsoft has ever made (yeah, including Microsoft Bob) Money has to be among the worst.

(By the way, Microsoft, you really need to come up with a new way of naming programs and projects. I'm so fucking sick of the literalness of programs called Word, Money, Explorer, Internet Explorer, Word, and Project. It's just not ok unless it's a tiny app, like Calculator. Why not add a little character to your programs' names like you did with Excel, and Visio (well, I know you didn't come up with Visio's name, but still, good job)?)

Wow, a double parenthetical digression. Yikes! I apologize, but it had to be said.

Back to Money's interface, look at this train wreck! Every time I open it to do simple stuff like balance my checkbook or check my investments -- stuff that should take a few simple clicks -- I'm greeted with this migraine inducing salmagundi. (10 point word, w00t!)



This is nothing short of gratuitous orgy of links and graph congestion. Who knew there was so much to be done! Here's a nice little outtake of some of my Money options (yes these really are on the money front-page):

* Calculate the value of kitchen remodeling. (Money, you know I rent! Tease!)

* See how much you can save (Save on what? How much I could put in savings? I've no clue...)

* Should you change your IRA to a Roth? (Good question, too bad I have a 401k, not an IRA. Again, you should know this, Money!)

* Estimate my home's value (I rent, Money, I rent.)

* Tax IQ Test (Yay! Tax test! How fun is that?)

* How do I improve my Lifetime Plan? (Um, I have a Lifetime plan?)

* Is it time to refinance? (God, I'm fucked, I don't own and I don't have a lifetime plan. Where am I going in life?!? I'm so depressed. I hate you, Money.)

Gah, what a mess. And yes, I could get rid a lot of these options, but I shouldn't have to. Does anyone know if Apple makes a money program? I would love to buy it if it makes finances as easy as it makes MP3 management.

Moral of the story: everyone needs an editor. Even UI designers.  ¶ 3:31 PM 2 Comments

  Best Buy Bashing INFO TECHNOLOGY: A post over at Engadget has turned into a bona fide Best Buy Hate-Fest. The comments are an entertaining and informative (if anecdotal) read.

* I get the feeling they systematically ignore a certain percentage of the rebates.

* They kicked me out of a Best Buy last fall for trying to purchase 3 telephones at the same time. They accused me of being a reseller.

* these guys are arseholes. i bought a laptop there last year, the guy said it had usb 2.0 and build in wireless. guess which of the two it had? if you guessed usb 2.0, or wireless, youre wrong!

* I bought both Apex and Morrowind at Best Buy, and had to return bpth. They were scratched to the point that they wouldnt play, and the map that comes with Morrowind had what looked like a coffee stain on it...

* i absolutely REFUSE to buy a computer from best buy. a) they are all teenagers who don't have a clue b) they just want your money c) things are better in threes.

* has anyone else noticed everyone has jacked up the prices of dvds?!!

* It was worse enough being asked 3 times if I wanted to buy a $50 warrenty for a $40 printer, but now I'm constantly hassled with "help" that I don't need and surveys that I don't want to take.

And here's the most interesting post (even if it's completely unverifiable):

As a former employee of the computer department of a Best Buy in Toronto I can say with certainty that their open box products are not of high quality. I would frequently catch my seniors and supervisors throwing products in boxes missing cables and manuals, discounting 5-10% off and still claiming that it was the exact same as a new product, only returned. Aside from that, if we were out of stock on a new item we would sell the open box item for the price of the new item.

As far as extended warranties, if you were sales staff and not constantly selling them you would get fired. Warranties are the huge profit that they make (aside from technical services). On their sales charts, they even have separate columns for percentage of service plan of the total sales. During meetings and throughout the day, low-level sales associates were constantly harangued about pushing more PSP to "boost the numbers".

  ¶ 10:15 AM 4 Comments

  Beck, Pharrell, Jay-Z; Trifecta-Perfecta DATA: Illegal music never sounded so tight. Check out this mash up of Beck and Pharrell.



It's a explosion of falsetto perfection.

Enjoying this song being illegal in violation of copyright law, I can't see how the current laws can be good in any reasonable person's view.

Check Reset Music for more great mash ups. Great summer music. Get it now before the corporate overlords deem this music too good to enjoyed with no consumer-raping involved.  ¶ 4:02 PM 1 Comments

  Swift Asshats for Four More Years of Insanity INFO VISUALIZATION: The New York Times has a graph showing connections between those vile tools, "The Swift Boat Veterans for ..." -- you know, I'm not going to repeat that name one more time -- those guys and the Bush family.



You can also read the corresponding article.  ¶ 1:09 PM 1 Comments

  Visualizing Disk Space INFO VISUALIZATION: Filelight is an interesting KDE program for visualizing the size of a given directory. Check out this example image:



The first ring around the "doughnut hole" is divided into color coded sections that represent the first subdirectories and their size relative to one another. So, in this example, the entire ring represents 31 megabytes. The next ring out represents the size of subsequent subdirectories and so on.

Overall I like this idea, I wish I could use this on my windows box to free up some space. It certainly beats what I do now -- search for all files over 100 Megabytes and delete anything I don't need anymore. This system of viewing the size of directories rather then files could be more useful for a lot of projects that have a deep file structure.

But the radial nature poses some problems. The biggest issue here is that smaller subdirectories appear much larger then parent directories -- which actually should be represented with larger shapes. This is just the nature of the program since each consecutive ring, although much larger in area, represents the same size. In this case, each complete ring is 31 Megabytes, even though the last ring is several times larger.

Also, I find it a bit counterintuitive that the size of files in any particular directory are not represented (or represented as white space) rather then an extension of their respective directory. This makes it more useful in a context where only the directory size is informative.

And the circular nature brings up the same problems as does the pie-chart. (Ahhh, the pie chart. So loved by MBAs; so hated by everyone else.) Speaking of pie-charts, here's one of my favorite Tufte quotes:

Pie charts make your viewers stupid; pie charts also say that you don't know anything about data. Use a table.

You can view a nice short discussion on "Ask Tufte" about pie-charts' failings here. Also, check out a thread that suggests the use of Nightingale Rose charts (which are interesting, but still less useful then a normalized histogram IMHO).  ¶ 10:45 AM 0 Comments

  That Other Network... DATA: I've been digging around online today to find if there's anything along I-90 between Seattle and New York City that might spruce up the drive. And, as usual, I'm finding a ton of other interesting information while I'm looking, but not finding the info I really need. (Like, say, I-90 is the longest interstate in America, or that Alaska as no interstates at all.) I never realized there were so many resources for information on the interstate system online.



First a little background: The interstate system will mark it's 50th year in 2006. Why was it built? Well, it was sold to the public as a national security precaution: interstates could be used to evacuate large cities in case of an impending nuclear attack. Of course, we all realize now that that's a joke (you think traffic is bad now, try getting somewhere with the threat of impending doom creeping up behind you and every other road-rager on the street).

As for that wacky numbering system, here's the naming conventions to remember:

* One or two digit even-numbered Interstates are always east-west routes. The numbers increase from the south (I-4) to the north (I-96).

* One or two digit odd-numbered Interstates are always north-south routes. The numbers increase from the West Coast (I-5) to the East Coast (I-95).

* Three digit Interstates with the first digit an even number are usually circular loops or "beltways" around cities (eg. I-405 breaks away from I-5 around Seattle, Portland, and LA)

* Three digit Interstates with the first digit an odd number are usually "spurs" that leave or go into a city center. (eg. I-395 in Washington D.C.)

Of course, there is an exception to the rules: I238. A two mile bit of interstate in California named after it's highway predecessor, not by the normal naming conventions. (No, there's not an Interstate 38.)

Anyway, for two nice (but poorley scanned) maps that show the major East/West and North/South routes in the States, check out Newbie Driver.




The best resource for all sorts of random Interstate information has to be The Interstate Guide.

But anyway, back to I-90: The fastest way to get from Safeco Stadium in Seattle...



...to Logan International Airport in Boston...



...on wheels (recently extended by the big-dig). 3,021 miles long. (London to Baghdad by air is only 2,543 miles long.)

The busiest parts of the I-90, by Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) are:

State - Location - AADT Comp. - Year
Washington - Seattle - 150,600 - 2002
New York - Buffalo - 143,300 - 2002
New York - Albany - 120,700 - 2002
Massachus. - Weston - 119,006 - 2000
Washington - Spokane - 107,000 - 2002
Massachus. - Boston - 104,507 - 2000

I-90 is busier in Spokane then Boston? Strange. Still, think 150,000 cars an average day is a lot? Check out I-5:

State - Location - AADT Comp. - Year
California - Lake Fores. - 356,000 - 2002
California - Santa Ana - 314,000 - 2002
California - LA - Paico. - 302,000 - 2002
Washington - Seattle - 294,000 - 2002
California - LA - 291,000 - 2002
California - San Diego - 262,000 - 2002

Here's a nice graph depicting the traffic level of I-5 all the way from Mexico to Canada:



Last, but not least, if you need a listing of the signs that exist at every I-90 exit in New York State, visit this d00d's website. I wish they had a website like this for the entire nation.

I'm amazed. What an insane amount of pavement. Now if our government would just put a little more attention to faster, safer technology, like bullet trains, we'd be set for the next couple hundred years... until we get that global vacuum bullet train thingy worked out.  ¶ 1:24 PM 0 Comments

  All Eyes On Google DATA: Check out the intraday at Yahoo.  ¶ 9:36 AM 0 Comments

  Data Parade INFO SCIENCE:Random happenings today:

*Check out the worst diagram ever.



*The rich get richer; poor stay just as poor. Surprise of surprises!



*How to create a model of a city.



*Study on car alarms in the city. Verdict: get rid of them.



*Crazy Yale economist predicts Bush victory, says that war, civil-rights, and anything but the economy doesn't matter in presidential elections. (My vote: he's a nut.)  ¶ 3:22 PM 0 Comments

  Labor Day Data DATA: Some interesting data about labor and Labor Day have been posted over at the Census Bureau.

Early, Lonely and Long: the Journey to Work
25.4 million: Number of commuters who leave for work between midnight and 6:29 a.m. These early birds represent 20 percent of all workers and were, by the time of day they left home, the fastest-growing group of commuters between 1990 and 2000.

  ¶ 10:20 AM 0 Comments

  Internet == internet INFO SCIENCE: So Wired News is no longer capitalizing the word internet. Good, it never made sense anyway.

I looked up the word at dictionary.com out of curiosity.

Internet
(Note: capital "I"). The Internet is the largest internet (with a small "i") in the world.

internet
(Note: not capitalised) Any set of networks interconnected with routers.

Now that's just awful. The largest internet is the Internet. All other internets are just internets and not the Internet. Blech, no thanks; I'll take on Wired's editorial policy as my own. (Who has heard anyone refer to a small, local network be referred to as an internet anyway?)

(My own suspicion is that internet wouldn't be capitalized by very many people if Microsoft's Word didn't capitalize it for you without asking.)  ¶ 9:24 AM 0 Comments

  Fun With Forums INFO SCIENCE: Funny quote I ran across on the NYTimes forum. (Sorry, no direct link available.)

Of course I believe in free will. I have no choice!

  ¶ 4:41 PM

  Delicious Library INTERFACES: The interface for Delicious Library 3.0 looks awesome. I can't attest to usability, but if it's as usable as it is pretty, I'm sold.

  ¶ 4:20 PM 0 Comments

  MMO Data INFO VISUALIZATION: Here's some analysis and a chart of massive multiplayer online games' growth over the last few years.



Not the most legible graph, but it's nice to see the numbers complied by a disinterested third party.

Wonder how much World of Warcraft will shake things up?  ¶ 2:48 PM 0 Comments

  Tivo, P2P, and the FCC INFO SCIENCE: Salon's piece titled "Must-download TV" is a great article about at Tivo, P2P, and the FCC's broadcast flag.

Indeed, the most troubling thing about the FCC's broadcast flag rule is that it seems designed to stamp out the idea that we're free to do what we want with TV. As many critics of media firms have pointed out, there's something deeply unsettling about the fact that TiVo, a firm that completely remade the way we watch TV, needed the government's permission to release a new technology. You don't have to be a techno-libertarian to find this state of affairs troubling. Sure, this time the FCC allowed TiVo to innovate -- but the decision could easily have gone the other way. In the future, what other technologies might the government deem too dangerous to be invented?

  ¶ 10:33 AM 0 Comments

  "Good morning. You have 457 voice-mail messages." INFO TECHNOLOGY: Collision Detection has an interesting post about voicemail spam coming to a VOIP mailbox near you.

Consider software from Frederick, Mass.-based Qovia, which seeks out the IP addresses assigned to phones, then sends each a 30-second recording. Its pace -- 1,000 synthetic calls every five seconds -- is a quantum leap from the automated "Demon Box" dialers that telemarketers use now.

  ¶ 1:07 PM 0 Comments

  Amazon: noRightClick(e) INFO SCIENCE: Amazon adds this little bit of code to disable your right click context menu when you're using their "look inside the book" feature. Click here to see for yourself.

function noRightClick(e) {
if (document.layers || document.getElementById && !document.all) {
if (e.which == 2 || e.which == 3) {
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
return false;
}
} else if (document.all && !document.getElementById) {
if (event.button == 2)
return false;
}
}
function noContextMenu () {
return false;
}
document.onmousedown = noRightClick;
document.oncontextmenu = noContextMenu;

What annoying bastards. In Firefox, just go to Options -> Web Features -> Disable JavaScript to get your right click back for saving images and the like.  ¶ 9:57 PM 1 Comments

  Overpriced College Text Books, Meet Bit Torrent DATA: The book the UW uses to teach Calculus showed up on Suprnova the other day. Here's the link. (Wish we had Bit Torrent around when I was a freshman in college. We had to pay all $140.00 for the god damn tome! Spoiled kids!)



It wasn't my favorite Calculus book though. I liked the text used by the Seattle Community Colleges better: Calculus, Concepts and Contexts. It's by the same author (James Stewart) but to me seemed more approachable. However, it's not as comprehensive for the upper level stuff.



The best Calculus book ever though is "Calculus Made Easy."



And no, it ain't some newfangled dummies book. In fact, it goes all the way back to its first addition edition in 1946^*. It has taught generations how to first understand the concepts of Calculus before moving into the sordid details; something standard text books rarely do.

^* See commentor below.  ¶ 9:26 PM 12 Comments

  David Lanham VISUAL COMMUNICATION: Check out David Lanham's wonderful icon sets and backgrounds (not to mention his artwork and sketches).



I also like this short statement of his on good design. (Source)

As long as it gets the point across that its trying to make, I consider it good. Personally, I am more attracted to clean layouts and subtle color use with certain elements that pop by use of color, shape, etc.

  ¶ 11:40 AM 0 Comments

  NPR RSS Feeds DATA: Julia Set points us to NPR's RSS feeds.

All Things Considered

Morning Edition

Day to Day

Tavis Smiley

Motley Fool

Weekend Edition Sunday

Weekend Edition Saturday

Talk of the Nation

Fresh Air

On an unrelated note, this is my 100th entry! wewt! I was devising something special for this post, but it's going to be delayed since I'm not feeling 100% today.  ¶ 11:17 AM 2 Comments

  George's Blog INFO SCIENCE: The Onion, how I love thee. Check out the current headliner about W's Blog.

WASHINGTON, DC—In the interest of national security, President Bush has been asked to stop posting entries on his three-month-old personal web log, acting CIA director John E. McLaughlin said Monday.

  ¶ 11:12 AM 0 Comments

  Massive Multiplayer Online Money Making Machine DATA:Terra Nova reports on a report forecasting the market for online games to be almost 10 billion in five years:

A research firm called DFC Intelligence has released an industry report covering the online gaming market. The Table of Contents is posted on the DFC site.

Unfortunately I don't happen to have a spare $2,995 to access it but this Media Post article reveals a few interesting tidbits:

- DFC predicts the online gaming market will generate $9.8 billion in 2009
- Industry growth will be driven by greater adoption of broadband
- Women and kids will play a big role in future industry growth

These forecasts tend to be worth the paper they aren't written on, but it's still interesting to hear where the industry could go.  ¶ 1:42 PM 0 Comments

  Politics and Fear INFO VISUALIZATION: An interesting visualization of Bush's approval ratings vis-a-vis terror alerts is posted over on JuliusBlog (which has no relation to this Julius).



The post makes a few claims about this visualization:

* Whenever his ratings dip, there's a new terror alert.

* Every terror alert is followed by a slight uptick of Bush approval ratings.

* Whenever there are many unfavorable headlines, there's another alert or announcement (distraction effect).

* As we approach the 2004 elections, the number and frequency of terror alerts keeps growing, to the point that they collapse in the graphic. At the same time, Bush ratings are lower than ever.

Hmmm, most of this isn't proven by the chart at all (I could, for example, come to the opposite conclusion that Bush's ratings fall drastically because of the terror alerts, and not because of his inept leadership). Still, it's an interesting visualization. What would be interesting would be to run a correlation coefficient between the median approval rating and terror alert level. Then you might find some interesting data showing the two to be or not to be related. My guess is that you would find a near-zero coefficient which is basically random, or little relation.

However, I'm not saying Bush (by which I mean Karl and Dick) doesn't use these alerts to his advantage. More informative then a chart is simply the language these fools use when issuing the alerts.

Ridge said, while issuing the terror warning, "We must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror." Later he answered criticism of his remarks by saying, "We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security." Well, gee, that first statement did seem mildly political, no? Oh well, I'm asking too many questions. Hail the Great Leader!

(Via BoingBoing)  ¶ 11:43 AM 0 Comments

  Subway Facts DATA: Here are some nice New York City Subway facts to fill your Thursday afternoon with sunshine.

Some random facts from the New York City Transit Riders Council (reported on by the shrill right-wing nut-jobs at the NYPost, a beacon of trusted journalism.):

* An updated subway map was not posted at 38 percent of stations.

* Platforms and stairs were in good condition at only 66 percent of stations.

* Exposed or hanging wires were a problem at 54 percent of the stations.

Hanging wires? Yikes. One of the five worst stations is the stop at 205^th street in the Bronx, pictured below. (I can almost smell the urine just looking at it.)



Here are some light and fun PDF charts that rank each subway line on a number of factors, from cleanliness to reliability.

Overall Ranking

Detailed Results

Rank by Performance Indicator

Overall, I like the simple representation of these charts. However, I'd prefer a simple percentage to the confusing $0.00 to $2.00 scale. Yes, I get it, it's the price of a subway ride. Cute, yes. But helpful? Not really.

You have to be impressed with the D Line, traveling close to a half-million cumulative miles between breakdowns. Let's think about that. The D Line trains go 448,404 miles between breakdowns, what else could be about that long? Hmmm, the radius of the Sun is 432,164 miles. Impressive, no?

(Via Gothamist 1 and 2)  ¶ 1:33 PM 0 Comments

  Melas Chasma INFO VISUALIZATION: The European Space Agency has some new generated images of Mars that are quite nice.

This image of the southern part of Valles Marineris, called Melas Chasma, was obtained by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board the ESA Mars Express spacecraft.

Read the story, or just check out the full image.

In other ESA news:

Agency staff are planning future research into the possibility of inducing a hibernation-like state in humans. "We are not sure whether it is possible," says Marco Biggiogera, an expert on hibernation mechanisms at the University of Pavia, Italy, who is advising ESA. "But it's not crazy."

Read the full article.  ¶ 11:49 AM 0 Comments

  Vote, or Don't Vote; But Don't Lie About It INFO SCIENCE: Here's a great way of using information to 'encourage' people to do the right thing. An experiment is being performed in Michigan where a researcher is sending out information about who did and didn't vote to everyone in a neighborhood.

The report card will be mailed to approximately 3700 people in 2400 households, located in 188 city blocks scattered across Michigan.

The researcher is interested to find out if people will be more likely to vote if they know that all of their neighbors will know that they didn't vote once the election is over.

[R]oughly 10 percent of the eligible voters tell survey workers that they actually voted when they did not. It may be that reminding this group to vote is useless because they have developed a cynical strategy to accommodate get out the vote campaigns. They know when election is. They know where their precinct is located. They agree that voting is very important. They promise to vote. And afterwards they tell anyone who asks that they did vote. Since no one checks, they have found the path of least resistance.

The idea is to shame these liars into actually voting. I'm all for it.  ¶ 11:12 AM 0 Comments

  Karate Mall Gunna Get Karate Chopped INFO SCIENCE: Doh! Looks like Karate Mall isn't the best place to buy your karate gear from.

Why? Because your credit card number (and lots more information) shows up online after you order.  ¶ 10:49 AM 3 Comments

  Bill Gates Drumming Up Boredom from Coast to Coast INFO SCIENCE: You know, I'm just now finishing up my degree at the UW (a campus with no less then three buildings named after a Gates relative -- and don't forget Allen Hall; complete with Microsoft Atrium), and having read this article...

Gates went on a tour of major universities in the spring to try to drum up interest in computer science. During his speech yesterday, he told the university faculty that it shouldn't be hard to convince people to choose computer science over "Wall Street or something where it's just numbers, (and) you're not really changing anything."

I have to say, Bill Gates may be rich, but inspiring he aint. Seriously, if Sergey Brin and Larry Page came to my campus, geeks would crawl out of the woodwork to see them speak. When Ray Kurzweil talks, geeks come and geeks declare a major in a technology field. The same goes for Steve Jobs, Bill Joy and Linus Torvalds. These are the rock stars of Computer Science.

You want to know who comes out to see Bill Gates? The business majors. (Which makes his statement about Wall Street workers "not changing anything" a bit rude, considering they are his biggest fans. And besides, business people can be just as creative and influential as software engineers. If we learned anything from Enron, it's that even people you don't want to be creative can be, accountants for example. But I digress.) A few geeks may come out to see him, but really, Gates has come to personify all that is cold and boring in the technology fields. He represents a company that was once possibly as exciting as Google, but is now as boring and old as General Electric.

Furthermore, Gates has exactly zero Elvis quality, something all of the above folks have plenty of. Not to mention this is a guy with very little vision. (Arthur C. Clarke foresaw the Internet in the 1960's, Bill Gates missed its importance until the late 1990's.)

So, I wouldn't exactly expect to see the kids beating down the door trying to get into Computer Science programs after Bill comes to town. If he really wanted to drum up some interest with the smart kids, he'd pay for Torvalds to visit every major university in the nation. Or, more realistically, at least try to link Microsoft to something more exciting then Business Software. Last but not least, he could prove with his own company that if kids pay $40,000 to get an education, they won't have to move to India to work on Longhorn (to be released in 2009, so you still have time to get that degree and work on it). Ok, I can write no more, I'm starting to drift off myself thinking of that boring boring face of his.  ¶ 2:24 PM 0 Comments

  Fry's Sales INFO ACCESS: You can get Fry's Electronics Ads online now. Someone really is a trooper. They aren't just scanned but actually typed up, data-entry style.

(Via Hack The Planet)  ¶ 1:51 PM 0 Comments

  Tivo At Mercy of MPAA; Pirates At Mercy of No One INFO TECHNOLOGY: Wes Felter comments:

TiVo filed with the FCC to have their TiVoGuard DRM system approved so that it can touch broadcast-flagged content. My first impression of the system is that it must have cost a fortune to design and implement. But the MPAA isn't even satisfied; they demand even more control and complexity even though it won't make a dent in unauthorized copying. How many tens of millions of dollars will be wasted by the broadcast flag?

While the MPAA is giving well-meaning Tivo a hard time, Bit Torrent grows as the new channel for video distribution. Looks like the MPAA hasn't learned a thing from the RIAA's "Win a battle; Lose the war" strategy.  ¶ 1:42 PM 0 Comments

  Play Time Icon Set INTERFACES: There are some great icons of game systems (including the fabulous GameCube and those other systems I care nothing about) at MaxThemes. The artist is Max Rudberg.



Icons are available for Windows and Mac, but Mac users can also find some other cool icons and system tweaks for their system at MaxThemes. Also, note that the mac versions won't have those jagged lines; those are unique for us old-skool (a.k.a. lame) .ico users.

(Via Iconfactory)  ¶ 11:05 AM 0 Comments

  P2P Threatens Economic National Security (Huh?) INFO SCIENCE: Just when you thought the most evil administration (and unlike the administration, I don't use the word evil very often) couldn't get anymore fucking eviler, John Ashcroft's Intellectual Property goon says that downloading music is a threat to national security.

Business Week: You've said that the theft of intellectual property is a national security problem. Why?

Butt Hat: First of all, we talk about it being an issue of economic national security. Our economy is so based on intellectual property ideas that, unless we can protect them, we're really looking at a situation where it's going to hurt our ability to survive as a country.

Secondly, so much of what we do now involves computers, whether it be with software or other types of communication lines. Often, intellectual property is a key component to the things we do to protect ourselves as a country. (Me: does that make any sense to anybody?)

Um, yeah. Good thing these guys don't have anything better to do with their time, like, perhaps real threats to national security, like Homo Matt Drudge.

(via BoingBoing)  ¶ 9:29 AM 0 Comments

  Trucker Hats Be Gone VISUAL COMMUNICATION: You have to appreciate this poster, snapped up by jameswagner.com in Hollywood.



  ¶ 9:12 AM 0 Comments