Posts for November 2007

The Chumby has landed...

Box o' Chumby!

More to come (the set behind this pic will increase in number; just click through), but I wanted to get one up ASAP.

November 30, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

H.R. 1955 -- your thoughts?

Holy crap...I hate it when I let this stuff slip through. I had heard a bit about HR 1955 - Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, but I hadn't read enough about it; and then it goes and passes the House 404 - 6. Yowch.

One can, in a sense, look at this as just an intent to study the problem...sure. On the other hand, one could have seen McCarthy's investigations, or the House Un-American Activities Committee, as the same. (To be fair, neither the Church Committee nor the 9/11 Comisison was so bad). Regardless, those National Commissions tend to end up pretty powerful. So what would it do, anyway?

I have to admit I find some disturbing assertions within the findings section of the bill. For example:

Ohhhkay. While true, the same statement can be made about satellite television, shortwave, newspapers, novels, and religious groups (note: in none of these cases do I mean ALL members/representatives of a group. Neither all shortwave transmissions, nor all churches, are bad. *grin*) But singling out the Internet here (none of my other suggestions get their own finding, dang it) suggests to me that there's a considerable chance that it's going to get special treatment. That is seldom a good thing.

This appears to be a done deal, based on the lopsided voting in the House. But the OpenCongress link has a great news and blog listing that will give you the opportunity to make up your mind for yourself about this. An informed decision is the most important thing, in my opinion. Feel free to disagree with me, as long as you have REASONS.

In addition, it's votes like this that shine a light on people who vote on principle. In a divided House of Representatives such as our own, I expect there were many odd bedfellows on this bill...from people who just liked the sound of the title, to those who have strong convictions that this is exactly the Sort Of Thing Our Government Should Be Doing. And it's an intrusive, classic big government solution...have a National Committe to look at the issue.

So who voted against it, and why? You'd have to either HATE big government, or really, really be worried about the consequences of this particular sort of investigation. Hmmm...only 6 voted 'Nay'...lessee...Kucinich? Kucinich??? Note: his office hasn't yet spoken on this, and maybe there was some weird, legislative technicality reason that he voted against it...but I'm guessing no. I'm guessing that this universal health care, pull the troops out in a day, hard-left Democrat voted AGAINST this commission because he thinks it's a bad idea. Heck, even Ron Paul was only a 'Not present' vote!

Kucinich has guts, I'll tell you that much. And, in fact...as soon as I can confirm (and I don't think it'll be hard) that he was actually against this thing, I'm tossing his campaign some cash. There's no way the guy will win, unfortunately, but at least I can give him that positive reinforcement.

And back to HR 1955...we need to watch carefully who is appointed to this Committee, and what they do. And while they may not like it...at least the good old Internet makes that pretty easy.

UPDATE: the associated Senate legislation appears to be S.1959

UPDATE: just in case you don't know me well enough to be aware of it, I am about as anti hate speech as you can get. I speak up when I hear it used, I find it shameful, and I am ALWAYS against the use of violence as a political tool. I'm by no means saying I'm pro-Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism; anyone who thinks that has a severe disappointment coming. I just happen to kind of respect that whole 1st Amendment thing. Good idea; let's have more of those!

November 29, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

Chumby watch

As of this afternoon, my chumby was in Louisville, KY; en route to me from China via Hong Kong, S. Korea, and Anchorage, Alaska. It's supposed to be here Friday.

I've gotten a tad excited, if you can't tell. *grin* I've had to answer the what IS it? question several times in the past few days, and I'm working through a good explanation myself...but it is, I think, A Big Deal. It's really among the first generation of non-computer always-on Internet tools that (hopefully, anyway) just work, yet are open, hackable, and extendable by the user. The cell phone could have been this device, (and the gPhone may yet be) but the telcos are for the most part unwilling to give the user freedom to hack on these devices to any great extent. I hope that devices like the chumby show regular users what the freedom to make a device truly your own is like...freedoms that those of us who are willing to compile a kernel once in awhile have had for some time, thanks to GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, etc.

Time will tell, but I have a good feeling about this one...

November 28, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

Visualization tool for Democratic debate

Jeff Clark's Transcript Analyzer visualization tool is pretty incredible. It allows you to highlight words used in the Oct. 30th Democratic presidential debate, see who said what when, and how the ebb and flow of topics progressed. It includes the ability to focus on any particular candidate, as well as a popup of the full text at any point. Really, really impressive. I love seeing data sliced and diced in this way, and to do it with such relevant information is especially useful. Thanks, Jeff!

November 26, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

Facebook? Not so much

Urrgh...Facebook Pages for businesses and brands, Facebook Beacon (or whatever that goofy ad-thing is called), plugins that want access to my entire account so that I can compare movie ratings with a friend. It's beyond enough. Not that I was ever a Facebook groupie or anything, but I see a shark jump coming. It's useful for finding high school friends, but that's about it.

UPDATE: LOL...I just caught up with last week's two Penny Arcades on the subject Huzzah!

November 25, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

Internet electricity

So… this internet thing, from New Music Strategies: One of the best essays I've read in awhile on the topic -- Let’s take it back to first principles: the internet is not a promotional tool for music. Nor is it a retail platform. It’s not even a method of distribution. It’s electricity. A well-written essay by someone who groks the spew is always a pleasure. Thanks, Andrew!

PS: My Christmas present will hopefully fit the Internet appliance bill quite nicely...

November 24, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

Chumby beats Kindle

I've not gotten around this week to commenting on Amazon's Kindle, mostly because it doesn't thrill me all that much. I'm chomping at the bit, OTOH, for the Chumby that Santa Claus has in a sack with my name on it. While my unconscious was working on a post explaining that, Mark Pilgrim went ahead and did it for me, and Cory stuck it on boingboing: Amazon Kindle: the Web makes Amazon go bad crazy. Cory's additional points at bb are spot on, but make sure you click through to Mark's orginal article; it's a great read as well.

November 22, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

Jermaine's gotta eat!

A Good Album is More than Just a Collection of Singles -- Did consumers complain? Maybe so. But at what point does any business care when a consumer complains about the money? Why do people not care how we - the people who make music - eat? If they just want the single, they gotta get the album. That was how life was. Today we should at least have that option. -- LOL. True...you have that option. Is the album available w/o DRM? Reasonably priced? No? Let me know how that works out for ya!

UPDATE: Oh, the more I read, the better this is! -- My book, Young, Rich and Dangerous: The Making of a Music Mogul, came out in hardcover last month, but Simon & Schuster doesn't let the book stores tear it up and sell it chapter by chapter. A record is no different. -- Yeah. OK. Whatever. Let me...oh, I already said that. *grin*

Thanks to Silicon Alley Insider for the link and their analysis. Good stuff!

November 21, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

RSS feed update for podcast

Well, I finally got around to making the actual hard-coded changes in my webpage templates, so that my podcast URL is showing up correctly everywhere: new RSS feed url for podcast. Note: the old one still works, and the new one has, in fact, always worked (they're both dynamically generated based on topic tags for the episodes), but I'm properly pimping the new one everywhere now. Enjoy...and I encourage you to change if you use the old one (both of you, Steve and Lee!); it was missing quite a few podcasts for some bizarre reason. Blip.tv is supposed to be fixing the issue soon...but it's been soon for awhile now, and it's so trivial a change, that I said the heck with it.

November 19, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

Eliezer on evolution

One of the most interesting set of essays I've read recently has been a series by Eliezer Yudkowsky at Overcoming Bias. He writes on evolution as a process involving non-zero statistical correlation between the gene and how often the organism reproduces, rather than a magic purposefullness fairy. And in a very useful way, he clarifies how individual organisms (in particular, conscious ones), fit into the picture (or don't). Plus, there's a Cthulhu mythos reference for good measure! How could I not like?

Read and enjoy.

November 17, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

A win for transparency and accountability

Yes! It's for real! I got an email from Chris Dodd's campaign, but I was holding my breath for external confirmation (I'm kinda a pessimist when it comes to these things): In Twist, Senate Judiciary Spying Bill Lacks Immunity for Telecoms. Still reading for gotchas, and this fight surely isn't over...but it appears to be an awesome win (for now).

November 15, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

Natural gas flares spotted from space

Wow...this is a really cool post on Jamais Cascio's blog about a project funded by the World Bank, using data from the National Geophysicial Data Center to measure natural gas flaring -- the release and burning of natural gas released during oil drilling. The project hopes to identify prominent flaring sites (as a precursor to working toward a reduction in flaring) by analyzing nightime satellite imagery! It's possible to tease the data out of imagery using knowledge of the phenomenon and data crunching techniques. Fascinating.

Jamais links to a longer post by Ethan Zuckerman, which describes the project in more detail. Both pages also have gorgeous data maps of the results. I love this stuff, both because of the beauty of the maps (I LOVE maps), and the powerful visualization.

Thanks for the link, Jamais!

November 12, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

StopTheSpying

Steve Borsch has a great post up on the wiretapping issue, and a link to an advocacy site that I wasn't aware of: StopTheSpying. Check it out, and make some calls! Thanks for the link, Steve/

Posting this made me realize that I haven't done all that much long-form political posting recently; I've thrown up some links, but with relatively little commentary. Don't know why, really...there's plenty of it in my head. I'm notoriously bad at multitasking, and I have been trying to spread myself a little thin recently...exocortex, machine rebuild (which includes dev env rebuild), couple new personal projects, etc. But this is another important issue...even beyond the Iraq War, I see the wiretapping situation and the Guantanamo detainments as probably the two clearest indicators to me of whether or not I can vote for someone. (Iraq gets messy because of the whole we're there, we can't pull out now excuse. Actually, we can...but I'll certainly agree that it's messy. Now. Now that WE CREATED THE MESS. *sigh*...)

Guantanamo and the wiretapping problem are pretty straightforward IMO, however. Torture...is wrong. Period. Stripping people of habeas corpus is...wrong. Period. And asking for retroactive immunity...is pretty much ADMITTING that what you did was wrong, isn't it? This isn't complicated. If they broke the law, it's because they thought they could get away with it...same as every other criminal out there. If they don't, they get punished...you don't retroactively just change the rules. For them. Retroactive immunity, habeas corpus abolishment, secret warrants, gag rules, torture....these are not the actions of a government based on the rule of law. I'll always oppose those who condone this behavior; I've opposed this from the day after 9/11, and I will tomorrow, next year, and as long as I'm around.

If you want to help, join the EFF, and/or the ACLU, both of which I'm proud to be a member of. And don't hesitate to speak out...and please, don't forget to vote!

November 11, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

xkcd is in my head!

This cuts way too close for comfort...LOL: xkcd #337.

November 11, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

I like people that are wrong sometimes...

I don't mind when people aren't perfect; I don't expect them to be. In fact, I LIKE people who are wrong sometimes (and will admit it)...it indicates a modicum of reflection, self-awareness, and willingness to consider new things. And when you frequently stand out on a limb and make bold assertions; well, you sometimes make mistakes. But it's even more heartening to see those type of folks stand up and admit it. So congrats to FactCheck.org!

A recent FactCheck.org post on the Oct. 30th Democratic presidential debate included analysis of Hillary Clinton's statements about the National Archives and her husband's request about some of his papers. Analysis, it turns out, that was wrong...based on erroneous data. And FactCheck fixed it, right on the same page as the original report, which means people can TELL they were wrong. Sonofagun! Again, congrats, FactCheck!

November 8, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

Inspiration

Say Hello to the Newest Member of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy -- Both funny and insightful.

November 5, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

My exocortex wiki lives!

FINALLY! Since the first time I read Charle Stross's Accelerando, I've been fascinated by the concept of the exocortex: an external information processing system that augments the brain's biological high-level cognitive processes. It's something that can be identified in it's infancy today by tools like PDAs, smartphones, and now even the cloud datastores like del.icio.us, 30boxes, and GoogleReader. But this is just the merest beginning; the ideas in books like Accelerando literally boggle the mind.

My first online pass at an exocortex (I've got other, handheld devices in the mix as well). It's...ok, it's a wiki. *grin* Big deal, right? Well, I hope that over time, I can use this site to really bootstrap some true external processing and information management; there are actually pretty robust and widespread tools that can munge wiki data. Wikis do have an advantage; for all their adhocness, the way that they are written to is very standard, and their markup language is well known and supported by toolkits. I think a wiki is actually a pretty good basis for an exocortex-like datastore. Let's see how it goes!

Note: Almost 100% of my exocortex is world-readable, and I'll probably set up some sort of comment facility. Worst case, just leave a comment here...feel free to chat with me about the concept or the data.

November 4, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

Miro and UC Berkeley webcasts

Wow...I've gotten a little wonky this week (my wife is out of town...I often descend to deep coding, policy analysis, or Team Fortress. LOL), and I'm finding all this great stuff! First I downloaded Miro, and I'm doing some political study, prepping for the primaries. Found several good feeds to peruse. At one point, I had some economics questions (I'm an semi-educated layman at best on the topic), and went link-spelunking. After a bit, I remembered a reference Jon Udell had made to one of the online resources for podcasts of college classes. Maybe I could listen to a course? That might help. I was thinking he had been talking about Harvard for some reason, but I tracked down a posting, and realized it was UC Berkeley.

Holy smokes, what a motherload!! I don't even know where to start. I think I'm going to grab the podcast IAS 180 Issues in Foreign Policy after 911 for starters, but I'm sure that will be nowhere near the last one. Awesome!

Thanks to Jon for pointing me in the right direction, UC Berkeley for such a generous resource, and Miro for a great app!

November 3, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)

Earlier posts -- Later posts