Next step in the anti-comment-spam arms race

/ Media Technology

Comments are working after being down for a day, now that I’ve finished installing MT-Keystrokes, the latest weapon in the anti-comment-spam arms race. It’s a plug-in that uses Javascript to detect whether a person has typed something on the form prior to submission — it’ll be pretty simple for spammers to code around, but it may give me a month respite in the mean time. (Note that this also means you’ll need Javascript enabled to post comments… shouldn’t be a problem for the one or two of you who comment every month, and hopefully it’ll be slightly more of a problem for the hundred or so spambots that try to post and clog my filter box.)

Movable Type has so much effort going into trying to block spam — I wish they’d put even half that effort into making a half-decent interface for just deleting comments in bulk…

Next step in the anti-comment-spam arms race Read More »

The map is not the territory

/ Media Technology

It’s interesting how the Google satellite pictures differ ever so slightly from the Google map.

In particular, notice how the NW-to-SE roads are skewed about 5 degrees clockwise from true while the NE-to-SW roads are skewed about 5 degrees counterclockwise from true. (Click on the image for higher-resolution.)

On second thought, it could be that the map is correct and the satellite images are skewed to locally fit the Google perspective. Maybe the map is the territory after all!

The map is not the territory Read More »

I can see my house from here!

/ Media Technology

Google just upped the ante again with Google Satellite. Satellite images curtsey of Digital Globe and EarthSat.

As a side-note, the Google Maps URL includes GPS coordinates, so given a street address you can get both GPS coords and satellite map quickly and easily. You can also just erase the part from q=Blah+blah& part of the URL to get a nice clean satelite image, or just add &t=k to an existing Google Maps URL to turn it into a satellite image. (I really hope that doesn’t become an issue for some well-meaning panic-stricken patriot who thinks terrorists couldn’t get that info quickly and easily in dozens of other ways — I always missed that GPS feature when it was taken out of earlier mapping software.)

Update 7:40pm: Note that you need to click on “Link to this page” in the upper right-hand corner to get the full URL to show up in the address bar.

I can see my house from here! Read More »

Culture of acceptance

/ Culture

I did my level best to completely ignore the Teri Schiavo case, but a coworker and I were talking about how easy it is to sympathize with her parents, to understand their desire to keep her alive regardless of her state. And I do sympathize with that desire. I also suspect, though, that hanging on like they have these past 15 years has been destructive for their lives, and hope that now they may finally be able to grieve and move on in their lives.

Our culture has a long tradition of fighting to keep what we have, and institutions to help us fight. We have churches to bind us to our culture’s morality, political organizations to insure our rights aren’t trampled, medical research to hang on to youth and health for just a few years more. These are all good things. But I think we need more focus on institutions to help us accept when things change, death being the ultimate change that we all face. It’s not easy to let go of a an addiction, a loved one who’s gone or a belief that has outlived its usefulness. Sometimes we need help and support just to let go.

Culture of acceptance Read More »

This I Believe

/ Culture

This is wonderful. In 1951, Edward R. Murrow asked Americans, both famous and everyday, to express their beliefs in 500 words. Every week an essay would be played on national radio, read in the author’s own voice. Now NPR, Atlantic Public Media and This I Believe, Inc. are recreating ‘This I Believe‘ both on the radio and online.

From Jay Allison’s introduction, read today on All Things Considered:

In a media climate of Hyper-reality Television and Conflict Radio, of aggressive pundits, of innuendo, harangue, and attack – we’re trying to create not more noise, but a quiet place. A place to listen. As it was fifty years ago, This I Believe will be noted not for its clamor, but for its calm. We are eager for your contribution.

Essays from the original series, including ones from Helen Keller, Jackie Robinson and Harry Truman, can be found at ThisIBelieve.com (redirects to the NPR.org site). There you can also submit your own essays and join the discussion.

This I Believe Read More »

One-point Journalist Test (EFF 4/1 press release)

/ Media

There’ve been a lot of good 4/1 posts today, but I especially like EFF’s press release on the Ninth Circuit’s new “one-point journalist test” in the Apple “do bloggers count as journalists when it comes to shield laws” case:

“Historically, the relevant question is whether the author had the intent to use the material – sought, gathered or received – to disseminate information to the public and whether such intent existed at the inception of the newsgathering process,” wrote Judge Stephen S. Trott in the opinion. “But in an era when anyone with a computer and Internet connection can publish to the world, the key distinguishing factor is whether the author was wearing pants.”

The Court looked to the example of blogger/journalist Jeff Gannon, explaining, “When Mr. Gannon was lobbing softball questions to the President on behalf of Talon News, he was acting just like any other member of the White House press corps — and, critically, he was wearing pants. In Mr. Gannon’s other Internet publishing endeavors, however, he did not wear pants, and his activities therefore fall outside the boundaries of journalism.”

One-point Journalist Test (EFF 4/1 press release) Read More »

ALA takes another step to personalizing information

/ Uncategorized

Seth Finkelstein points to the forced stepping down of Michael Gorman (president-elect of the American Library Association) as the latest blog take-down. He’s right of course, but blog take-downs are so yesterday’s news — the real news (at least from a world-wide perspective) is what he’s going to do next:

Gorman will take residency in the London Library and work on the next edition of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, “now more necessary than ever,” Gorman wrote, and contribute original cataloging. “I’m increasingly suspicious of the value of cooperative cataloging. What is really gained?”

It’s nice to see libraries are finally giving up on this whole one-size-fits-all approach to information sciences. Hopefully this will eventually lead to complete personalization, where there’s no need for librarians at all because everyone is his own librarian, each with his own personalized mental map of the universe and search engines and filters tuned to that model. You could have personalized literature, history, or even physics instantly translated to match your own language, education, IQ and cultural upbringing — just like we use the blogsphere to translate the daily news today.

ALA takes another step to personalizing information Read More »

Dovetailing tools together

/ Media Technology

OK, this amused me enough I had to share. My fraternity brother Nivi just lost his voice, so he went and purchased a nice-sounding text-to-speech voice for his Mac at Cepstral and piped its output into Skype with Soundflower. Voilà — instant TTS phone.

I remember David Ross once told a story about how the Model T Ford (nicknamed the “Tin Lizzy”) was adapted to all sorts of things unexpected things, from winching wagons to pumping water. The key was the car’s simplicity: it was just a motor on wheels, and it didn’t take an expert to that motor for something besides driving. It’s a lesson that keeps repeating itself: tools made up of simple, powerful components with straightforward interfaces for linking the pieces together find their own new uses.

Dovetailing tools together Read More »

Understanding people different from yourself…

/ Politics

Understanding people different from yourself. That’s supposed to be on the “Blue State” side of the big stereotype slate that’s written in somebody’s guidebook, isn’t it? (You know, the one that says if I’m in favor of gun control then I have to be anti-Israel, and vice versa?)

Heather Hurlburt at Democracy Arsenal has a nice short post on 10 steps Democrats can take to get back on the map WRT national security. Kevin Drum at Political Animal quotes one particular example:

Step 6. Every progressive takes a personal vow to learn something about our military, how it works, what its ethos is, and how it affects our society at all levels — as well as what it does well and less well in the wider world.

Sounds like good advice. Also reminds me of a great piece that NPR’s On The Media did last month about how journalists, in general, just don’t understand gun issues or gun owners, and how they really need to start.

Understanding people different from yourself… Read More »