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!

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

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.

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!

I LOVE this post: Wired editor bans PR flacks. I love everything…the action (banning dorks that spam him with PR crap), the transparency (the fact that he’s publishing the list), and the consequences (you can’t get off the list. Use a new address if necessary). All around awesome. Go, Chris!

Holy frack…if this thing is for real, it’s pretty amazing: magicJack. It’s a $39.99 VOIP USB widget…plug it into USB port, plug phone into other end, and a year of free calling ensues. Next year, $19.99 for another year of phone service (includes US & Canada LD). Saw it on Mark’s twitterstream…VOIP just keeps getting cheaper. If this thing works worth a damn, it’s yet another nail in the phoneCo coffin…

WELL worth reading: When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide

A great rant. I’d only heard of Oink in the most off-hand of ways…but I’m not surprised such a service existed, and I’m not surprised how it was portrayed when the hammer came down. I really think his call to action is a great idea: I’ve been avoiding the purchase of RIAA music for a couple of years now (thanks to my man Dave Slusher for the inspiration) but I did slip recently (bought the new NIN album, Year Zero…Trent is free now, after this record’s release, but I was weak.) As demonbaby and Dave both mention, RIAA Radar is a wonderful resource for determining the status of an album…I’m going to be poking my recent Amie Street purchases in there (so far, so good, it looks like! Unsurprising, but I’m still glad.)

Here’s to watching the tar pit struggles of the dying brontosaurs continue. See ya, labels! I look forward to dancing on your grave. (Metaphorically speaking, of course! *grin*)

Damn…Jonathan Schwartz (CEO of Sun) has severely thrown down vs. Network Appliance in his blog. Recap: Sun’s ZFS file system is…ummm…impacting Network Appliance’s business. ZFS is under a free software license…woot! It’s apparently starting to make a real impact (unsurprising…the feature set is amazing); and now it’s supported in OS X (Leopard) too. Network Appliance is not happy.

So last month, Net App sues Sun, trying to either remove ZFS from the market, or limit it’s usability via license restriction. Jonathan’s response? Not gonna happen. We can’t un-release free software in the first place, and besides…we don’t like this sorta thing. So we’re indemnifying our customers, and countersuing with many, many defensive patents. This was probably not what NA had in mind. Should be interesting to watch.

Aside: there are licensing issues with linking ZFS (CDDL license) into the Linux kernel (GPL) and distributing the result, so ZFS hasn’t been ported to Linux distros. But a) it’s been ported to FreeBSD, and b) there’s a badass ZFS on FUSE solution that’s just crazy enough to work (with the filesystem in userspace, linking isn’t a issue). So there’s at least two ways to run it on a Free Software system. I’d heard some about ZFS about a year back, but I hadn’t kept up. This thing is badASS…my next NAS device will be running this for sure.

I’ve used this site before, but lost the url…I tracked it down again today when getting ready to donate some money and decided to blog it this time, for future reference. Charity Navigator is a really nice, useful site for examining how charities spend the money they recieve. It has a detailed and thorough explanation of the rating process, tips for making the most of your donation, and tons and tons of ratings. Great stuff…really useful! (Oh, and a well-designed, speedy site as well.)

And for a double bonus today, I discovered that the president of Charity Navigator has his own blog, giving an insider’s perspective to the inspiring, intriguing, and sometimes idiotic inner workings of the world of non-profits and charities. Looks good…subscribed!! (man, I need to get into Google Reader and do some paring!)