A Quarter Mile's Not Distant, But Surely Makes a Difference
Joe Marshall comments on ll1-discuss that redundancy always increases the error rate.#
Simple proof:
If you manually type a redundant declaration, you either type it correctly or you mistype it. If you type it correctly, this does not fix any bugs in the program (because it is redundant). If you type it incorrectly, you add a bug to the program.
Therefore, because redundant information can add bugs, but cannot remove them, the error rate can only increase.
New issue of The Onion is out.#
News in Brief...
Stuff On Floor Either Cat Food Or Cat Shit
LODI, NJ—The moist, brownish pile on the Gehrke living-room floor is either cat food or cat shit, sources reported Monday. "If I had to guess, I'd say it's cat food," said Lydia Gehrke, 44, staring at the mystery heap. "But the way Oscar's been digesting lately, cat shit is definitely a possibility, too." Though a long shot, Gehrke noted that it could also be cat vomit. "Whatever it is," she said, "it involves the cat."Mid-Level Managed Forced To Find Out Who Isn't Flushing The Toliet
Though he was given the task less than 48 hours ago, Tepfer is already feeling the pressure to root out the guilty party. Yesterday, he received a lengthy e-mail from senior sales representative Bob Raeder complaining that the situation is "causing huge problems" among his staff.
"Not only is it unpleasant," Raeder's e-mail read in part, "it is cutting into valuable work time, as members of my team are forced to wait in long lines for the first-floor restroom due to the recurring problem in the restroom they normally would use. It is my sincere hope that you can remedy this situation soon."
Thus far, Tepfer has received nearly 30 e-mails from coworkers expressing their feelings about the situation.
Andrew Sabi on Open Source Politics write about how he became a Clark supporter.#
I decided to read his book, Winning Modern Wars. After finishing it, I figured out what Clark is about, and why his candidacy is both baffling and compelling.
Clark clearly wrote the book himself. It's not the slick and scripted work of a ghostwriter. Put less politely, it contains errors ("populous" for "populace," "principle" for "principal"), and repeats itself in spots. It forgives Rumsfeld on a couple of points when a typical candidate would never make such concessions. It goes into more military detail than a non-expert like me finds consistently engaging or even comprehensible. The writing style is personal: mostly clear, usually forceful, often quirky, rooted in facts and details, sometimes bracing, occasionally bombastic. The book won't win any prizes, and doesn't have to. It's the work of a candidate, not a professional writer.
[...]
4. Clark clearly casts himself as the person making policy, not one of the people debating it.
When it comes to foreign policy, Clark is confident -- to the point, as universally noted, of arrogance. I say better this than Dubya or Dean, neither of whom combines his own arrogance with a tendency to know what he's talking about.
After reading the depth and intensity with which Clark has thought about foreign strategy, I realize why his position on the Iraq resolution looks like a waffle but isn't. For the last decade or more, he's clearly been thinking, "Where and how would I fight if I were in charge?" not "Which position would I take if someone asked my opinion?" So he doesn't care what resolution Congress should have passed (and, if he could be more honest than he can be, would probably point out that Congressional resolutions have never prevented a modern president from starting a war). He probably thinks that Congress should give presidents lots of discretion and that presidents should know how the hell to use it. And given that discretion, he wouldn't have fought in Iraq because there was no immediate threat.
Ryan Skadberg writes about why Clark lost his vote:#
Clark made this statement: "We want to be ahead of the software revolution. Let them do the software in India; we'll do other things in this country. "
Sorry, but I really am not ready to go back and learn a new trade. I have decided to pursue something I enjoy and I have no need or want to go back to school or anything to learn how to be something different.
Yes, we should be looking forward to new sources for jobs, but at the same time America has many software developers and other technical folks who do not want to have to switch professions. We need to get companies to want to employ people in America and not just sell off the business to the lowest bidder.
So, Ryan basically thinks that the government should protect IT workers just like it protects farmers and other trades. Hmm, we all know how great protectionism is.
Ryan, no one is ever going to be able to stop your from being a software developer. But just like freedom of speech doesn't guarantee you to be listened to, there should be no guarantee for companies to continue giving you a trumped up wage. If you were really better (in terms of productivity per dollar) than your Indian counterpart then there would be no reason to move your job. And, if your company did move your job without reason - do you really want to work for such a brain-dead company?
Prince Roy starts a discussion of Tibet on Living in China.#
It got me thinking about the Tibet issue. I am no Tibet expert and don't claim to be, so I'm turning to you folks in this forum. Chinese I meet often criticize the US for interference in China's internal affairs. As far as Tibet goes, they argue that Washington has no business telling the Chinese government how to handle Tibetans, especially given the US's own track record with the Native American tribes. I've always found it difficult to come up with a decent response. After all, the situation of most Native Americans is quite dismal to this day.
John in the comments:
I've never had this discussion/argument with a Chinese person, but perhaps just admitting that "yes, our treatment of Native Americans was abhorrent, and because of that we are sensitive when we see similar things happening elsewhere. That we made the mistake a century ago makes it no more acceptable for your country to make the mistake now."
I'd also attack the claims that it is an integral part of China, given that throughout most of China's "5000 year old civilization" Tibet ruled itself.
Kaye Trammell ponders the future of blogging.#
Will blogging be a household word 20 years from now? Will it evolve into something so commonplace? What change will we see in format & function?
Will our current way of posting seem sophomoric & trite in years to come? Will these posts we write today (so brilliant, so insightful) turn into the "reasons God didn't get tenure"-type messages everyone deplores?
Sometimes I read old posts from as little as a few weeks ago and want to punch myself in the face at what a bonehead I am. But, I think I'm a special (in the bad sense) case. It is my prophecy that blogs, like everything, will either completely die out, stay a slight fad (like sky-diving, it is done but not popular,) or eventually become the status quo and thus bad. Hmm, that statement seems a bit tautological, but trust me - it isn't.
Roland Tanglao responds to Weblogg-ed on the difference between using blogs and blogging.#
Like language has many levels of fluency so too does blogging. Reading blogs is one level. Writing blogs is another. And there are various kinds of writing. Such as mine which is primarily a paragraph or two per post and others who write multiple paragraphs per post. Both levels are valid and help improve your writing.
pb at onfocus writes about Moral Politics by George Lakoff.#
Liberals and conservatives are buying up books by Michael Moore or Ann Coulter that reinforce their beliefs. I've read the latest Al Franken book, and there's something cathartic about it. But these books don't explain why we have polarized political views in America, and Moral Politics has a very interesting "unified theory of American politics" that attempts to answer that question. I think understanding the competing metaphors and morals involved with politics will help people fight more effectively for what they believe.
He should check out the Christopher Lydon interview with Lakoff.
The Daily Kos writes a bit about our new site, The Blogging of the President: 2004.#
Check out one of the best new blogs on the scene: The Blogging of the President:2004, run by the top-notch team of Matt Stoller (of the Clark Sphere), press critic Jay Rosen, and radio personality Christopher Lydon. BOP aims to chronicle the effect of technology, and the blogosphere in particular, on the presidential race.
I'm not sure if I'm not listed because I'm not top-notch enough or because it's not obvious I have anything to do with it. Yep, I'm selfish.
Andrew Bayer comments as well,
Now, I'm still super-skeptical of the actual impact that blogs will have on the presidential election, or politics in general, but the new blog run by Matt Stoller, Jay Rosen, andChristopher Lydon, The Blogging Of The President: 2004, looks like it'll be worth watching. True, Lydon has drunk deep of the Dave Winer Whacky Blog Cultist Kool Aid, but he's still got his head on straight, while Rosen is saying more of note on the relationship between blogging and journalism than anyone else out there, and Stoller has been an interesting voice in the Clark movement on blogs, the 'net, etc... Like I said, it should be interesting, but take anything that sounds at all Winer-esque with a big ol' grain of salt..
Kevin Drum writes about republican invincibility.#
There's a lot of truth to this. If the Republican party is both the party of big business giveaways and the party of big government giveaways it's going to be nearly impossible to beat because there are no constituencies left who are unhappy enough to demand change. It's free beer for everyone!
It can't last forever, of course, and eventually some poor Democrat will get elected to slog through the cleanup, but in the meantime it's a pretty potent combination. In fact, it seems to me that this is a pretty good topic for an enterprising young political journalist to explore at length in a progressive magazine.
Jerome Doolittle writes about the Republican strategy in Florida with Jeb Bush and Kathy Harris.#
Jeb Bush is furious at the White House interference in his back yard. Not to mention the fact that Jeb has to be looking at '06 senate himself to get nominal foreign policy experience for his '08 presidential try. The '06 senate race is literally Jeb's only chance for foreign policy/national security exposure before his presidential run in '08, since the post-Bobby Kennedy nepotism law bars Jeb from a high-profile ambassadorship or appropriate cabinet slot such as State, Defense, or Homeland Security. Bottom line: the Jeb factor here is real and deep, and who knows how it will play out?
Since we know from the 2000 Florida election debacle that Kathy is a moron, it is quite likely that Kathy left to her own devices would not figure out that the White House "guarantee" of backing for senate '06 is sitting right on a trap door labelled "Senator and presidental candidate Jeb Bush." But let's presume that Kathy between caking on layers of that amazing makeup will understand the situation when some non-moron points it out to her. (Such as when she checks her "Bad Attitudes" bookmark first thing this morning.)
David Weinberger links to Michael Jackson's new site and why the authorized web is boring.#
The three links on the page lead to statements that say nothing more than that it's all lies. Maybe as the rumors get more specific, the rebuttals will become more worth reading. So far, though, the site is yet more evidence that the more authorized a site is, the less interesting it is, which you may take as a backhanded, unsupportable and unfair jibe at digital ID and the Semantic Web.
Azarok writes that Playboy wants Britney.#
Rumor has it Playboy is willing to spend upwards of SEVEN figures to get Britney to show all of her moneymaker. If they manage to negotiate any sort of deal that issue would produce the highest selling month ever until the Olsen Twins strike their own deal. Might not be the best career move for Britney as she'll have exhausted any original idea to snag media attention. After performing at the VMAs, dating MJ's wannabe successor and kissing Madonna really what's left?
Steven Cohen writes about reciprocation and citation as discussed by Dave Winer.#
Dave is talking about reciprocation in the weblog world (or what we call in librarianship, "proper citation"). With weblogs its all about giving credit where it is due. I've mentioned this before, but Dave's post brings up the situation again.
Probably half of the stuff that I find for publishing on LS is found without reading it from another weblog. It might have been from a search result or just something that I have found when browsing around. But for those resources that I get by reading weblogs, I always mention where I found it. The people behind Radio truly understand this as they have a built in feature in their weblog software that will automatically cite to the source (because it's connected to the aggregator), which is great.
A friend and I were talking about how she thinks it's silly that when people talk about ideas they sometimes are always referring to someone else's idea. She thought this implied that they had no unique thoughts of their own. My interpretation is that you are just citing the sources of where you got the core of the idea from - or you just referring to someone who said your opinion better. (Richard and I have talked about this as well.)
But I think there's something to her side as well, if you are just quoting verbatim without interpretation then is it really your opinion? I turn to Emerson:
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
So if we agree with a piece of writing is it really not our thought simply because we did not write it first? I'm not sure.
Merde in France writes that a new statue honoring Thomas Jefferson is being built in Paris.#
The Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë hasannounced that a statue of Thomas Jefferson will soon be erected in Paris. Delanoë admitted that there is 'alot of misunderstanding at the present time' between the United States and France. Yeah right, especially because of a misfit like himself who give top honors to a cop killer from Philadelphia.
Matt Croydon links to Through the Eyes of a Mac Browser.#
Wendy Koslow crushes the myth about women's colleges.#
Seen the commercials for Mona Lisa Smile?
It's just not true. Just because we went to a women's college does not, I repeat, does not mean we all had pillow fights! I don't remember having a single one! I mean, paint fight, yes. Tickling, well, there was probably some of that. And I do remember a few incidents with lingerie and campus police.
Michael Feldman links to the destruction of Moai statues on Easter Island.#
A view of "Moai" statues in Ahu Akivi, on Easter Island, 4,000 km (2486 miles) west of Santiago, in this photo taken October 31, 2003. Easter Island's mysterious "Moai", giant head statues carved out of volcanic rock, are in danger of being destroyed by years of tropical rains and wind as well as careless humans and farms animals. Experts have called on the international community to commit funds to preserve the monoliths, whose mystery draws tourists to the world's most remote inhabited island.
It's funny because the creation of those statues were one of things that originally destroyed the island.
Simon Willison discovers Berkeley DB.#
The Berkeley DB libraries are maintained by Sleepycat Software. Unfortunately, their site is completely saturated with marketing jargon. Our customers rely on Berkeley DB for fast, scalable, reliable and cost-effective data management for their mission-critical applications. Great - now what does it do exactly?
Some digging around turned up the real information: the Berkeley DB Tutorial and Reference Guide, which contains pretty much everything you could possible want to know about the technology. It turns out that at a basic level Berkeley DB is just a very high performance, reliable way of persisting dictionary style data structures - anything where a piece of data can be stored and looked up using a unique key. The key and the value can each be up to 4 gigabytes in length and can consist of anything that can be crammed in to a string of bytes, so what you do with it is completely up to you. The only operations available are "store this value under this key", "check if this key exists" and "retrieve the value for this key" so conceptually it's pretty simple - the complicated stuff all happens under the hood.
I really like BDB, and I'll note that one of the open source SQL databases use it under the covers, which one I'm too lazy to check, but I believe it's MySQL when you aren't using InnoDB (correct me if you care.)
Halley writes about invasive surgery on pieces of writing.#
I often see parts of things I've written on other people blogs -- people I don't know and who don't know me. I was just looking at a cut and paste edit of my Alpha Male 18 Lessons on a person's site. They cut out what they didn't like and kept what they did like. Total hatchet job actually.
I suppose as the author I could get all upset about that, but actually it's rather fascinating as you give your words away, it's every interesting to see what people do with them. When I was in school doing my masters' degree in writing (MFA) and we would critique a story, one of the toughest teachers made us do an exercise like that. We had to say where we lost interest, where we got interested and rip the thing apart in that way to show the writer where it worked for the audience and where it did not work.
Joi Ito writes about "The Memoirs of Joi Ito."#
Someone sent me a copy of "The Memoirs of Joi Ito". It came in from Canada without a return-address. (My assistant opened it.) It's a book based on The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes with all of the references to Sherlock Holmes replaced by "Joi Ito". It's fromwww.customizedclassics.com which lets you create customized books like this. You can also customize the dedication.
The Blog Herald posts the Top 10 Dangers of Living in the Blog Space.#
1. You think everyone cares about your opinions: They don't. They care about mine.
2. You stop having normal experiences: Every event you participate following your initial blog post will be constantly interrupted as you simultaneously live the adventure and write the corresponding blog post in your head.
4. You will become more news savvy: You'll start reading several news sources to inspire more posts. Unfortunately, you will focus on items that are weird, quirky, or bizarre, thereby eliminating your ability to discuss these items with non-bloggers in real-life (ie around the water cooler) without coming off like the freak you really are.
In the Rhythm Track comments, Rick Heller writes about crying wolf.#
A few years ago, at Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square, I was sipping my coffee while eavesdropping on a neighboring conversation between an older environmental activist and new students he was mentoring.
The veteran told his young charges that it was necessary to exaggerate, hype, and make people scared that they were going to die from poisoning of the evironment in order to get them to pay attention to environmental issues.
He was advising them to cry wolf.