Friday, August 27, 2004
Systems as Ecosystems
ecotonoha: A message board visualized as a tree.Google News Map: global news as spectrum allotments
syanpsis: Network packets as bacteria growth.
The Value of Free Time
Outsource your job to earn more! - The Times of India"Says a programmer on Slashdot.org who outsourced his job: 'About a year ago I hired a developer in India to do my job. I pay him $12,000 out of the $67,000 I get. He's happy to have the work. I'm happy that I have to work only 90 minutes a day just supervising the code. My employer thinks I'm telecommuting. Now I'm considering getting a second job and doing the same thing.'"
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Dear George
"I urge you to publicly disavow all forms of voter suppression and to publicly condemn voter suppression activity by your staff and volunteers."
Vanishing Votes How?
Vanishing Votes"On October 29, 2002, George W. Bush signed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Hidden behind its apple-pie-and-motherhood name lies a nasty civil rights time bomb."
Jim Crow Who?
People For the American Way - A Report by PFAW Foundation and NAACP"The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter Intimidation and Suppression in America Today"
Voter Fraud, Who?
t r u t h o u t - Bob Herbert | Suppress the Black Vote in Florida?"The state police officers, armed and in plain clothes, have questioned dozens of voters in their homes. Some of those questioned have been volunteers in get-out-the-vote campaigns.
I asked Mr. Morales in a telephone conversation to tell me what criminal activity had taken place.
'I can't talk about that,' he said.
I asked if all the people interrogated were black.
'Well, mainly it was a black neighborhood we were looking at - yes,' he said."
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Olympic Achievement
The Iraqi "Unbelievable" Soccer Team is on its way to an Olympic medal and so much more.
Monday, August 23, 2004
File Under: Traveshamockery
Wired News - E-Vote Machines - A Secret TestingSo, like, when you vote you can be reasonably sure that, like, your vote is both anonymous and, like, counted and all, right? I mean, we have ways of testing that stuff right? I mean, there's some kind of public audit or something where we know what goes in vote-wise is what comes out election-wise, right?
These are not the questions of an idiot.
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Derth
Liberty Alliance Project - White PapersPropagandizing aside (the link between Liberty and Identity is a subject for humanities, not technology), watch this space for developments in Web Services frameworks. The Liberty Alliance is a colloborative working group established for the purpose of creating and marketing an industry standard for identity sharing user identities between disparate systems (in the form of web services). Its members include American Express, France Telecom, Sun, IBM and more. What's more, is that it is an open (more or less) standard that competes with the likes of MS Passport and other such proprietary methods which of course begin to benefit users less as their popularity grows.
Friday, August 20, 2004
More Nader than Nader
FactCheck.org - Annenberg Political Fact Check
Free to be P2P
CIO Today - File-Sharers Score Big Win in California Ruling
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Totally, 100% exhausted
We Americans tend to exaggerate. But I am wiped out. One day is not enough time to move your home. I don't care if it was only five miles.
File Under: Nerd
Reading ID3 tags with Perl's MP3 Tag module
Monday, August 16, 2004
Killing My Television
Tomorrow is my last day of easy TV. Steph and I are moving on Wednesday. As a result we've vowed to keep our expenses to a minimum. The effects of such a sound fiscal policy or loss of frivolous drains of the everyday variety. No more 18-paks of Miller Lite. No more trips to The Coffee Been and Tea Leaf on Saturday and Sunday morning. No more on-sale shoe shopping just because.That's right, we're turning over the old leaf (acting like the poor students we were) and taking this opportunity to kill our television as well. Thought not completely. We're keeping the DVD player and the TV. Just getting rid of the broadcast medium behind them. Keeping the internet. Keeping the electricity. Along with filtered water, we're going to be more conscientious about the media we digest. So from here on out, it's Netflix and the New York Times.
We're trashing Time Warner if only to recycle our energy for more productive matters; namely keeping in touch with old friends, reading books we do -- yes, really do -- want to read, and creating more content of our own. Steph goes back to school here in a few weeks. Me? I expect to be writing more. Photographing much more. And perhaps even sending a few more personal letters to the folks I love and deserve more from me.
I do have one parting request. If you know of any good movies for me to put on my Netflix account, please let me know. I pay in kind.
Thursday, August 05, 2004
File under: Naco, White Trash and Other Sure Signs of an Immanent Apocalypse
That's right, Naco. Apparently "Naco" is Mexican (yes, Mexican) for "Trashy." Only that's not quite precise. To Solomon, a friend of Steph's from Mexico City, Naco is how you would describe someone who cuts in line at the bank. According to NPR's Day to Day, Naco could mean that, yes. And it could translate into other not-so-nice qualities.Mexico there's a growing popularity for Naco. I'm Naco; you're Naco. At least, if you're cool, you're Naco. Not according to Solomon. But according to Mexican kids these days.
You won't catch Solomon wearing any "Nakissimo" t-shirts any time soon. You won't find me wearing any trucker hats either. Nevertheless, the appeal of trash-chic has me thinking. Is Naco-ism a good or bad thing?
I tried to argue the point--over foie gras, seared ahi, and caprese samplers--that trash-chic is a symbol of a culture on the verge of something significant, if not great. When a culture has popularized the base class it has come into its own. It has embraced itself through irony. It has gone low-key, perhaps. Or simply revelled in a kind of chafing of the norm usually only fit for artists, intellectuals and nerds. In short, a culture that loves it's crassest parts can't be all that bad, right?
While I pictured Johan's eccentric aunt Ellen--an artist and life-long, committed free spirit--Steph and Solomon quietly shook thier heads. The mental images they had must have been Aston Kucher and Lenny Kravitz, whose own over-the-top regalia knows has no sense of itself (or any world around it, for that matter). While I like to think of Trashy as an extension of Ecclecticism, they see it as the wanton sprawl of bad ideas. While imagine a primordial soup of knick-knacky wisdom, they see attack of the killer tomatoes, substituting shag carpet for man-sized tomatoes.
True enough. A culture on the brink is a culture so full of itself it can invent nothing new. Think Queen Elizabeth I. Think Caligula. Still, you will not find me donning anything more on my head than a Shiner Bock golf hat. Talk about the end of culture.
Bridge Technologies - In Praise of X
It's not the size of the gap conjoined; nor is it the depth of the chasm crossed; it's the value each side has for the other. To the traveller, the ultimate answer to the penultimate question is "yes." The question is, of course, "Was it worth the effort?"As a technophile, it's hard for me to imagine anything more fun than technology for technology's sake. For the end user, however, such thinking is no good. Software technology, as in other applied creative disciplines, requires that the software architect have a firm and loyal commitment to the age-old form vs. function debate. Bah. There is no debate. For software to be useful, it must be usable. For a technology to be adopted, it must be easy to understand and operate.
Indeed, the same is true for the technology available to software engineers. In order to provide the greatest possible use to the end user, the technologies on which software is built must themselves be easy to operate. They must be extensible. Not necessarily robust, but modifiable.
XML is such a technology. The "X" in "XML" stands for "Extensible". For software architects to fully appreciate the value of XML, we must look at it as a bridge technology. It's not about the size of the gap it helps us cross (footbridges, to be sure); nor is it about the depth of the chasm (a mere pond, in most cases); it's about the value of the archipelago now united in a network of previously isolated ecosystems. What can be wrong with encouraging pedestrian modes of travel?
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Willy Wonka's Wit and Wisdom
Quotes from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"
Willy Wonka's Wit and Wisdom - 2
I Want It Now, as sung by Veruca SaltI want the world
I want the whole world
I want to lock it all up in my pocket
It's my bar of chocolate
Give it to me
Now!
Lyrics from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Low, Low Prices [sic]
A UC Berkely report on the hidden costs of low wage jobs; in particular, the hidden costs of Wal-Mart jobs.Efficiency has its costs too.
Design that Matters (for real, this time)
Wired News: Designing Like They Give a Damn
