That said, my work is very influenced by Ken McAllister's approach to
computer games, which he outlines in his book, Game Work: Language, Power,
and Computer Game Culture. You might be familiar with this book, but if not,
it takes a very rigorous, Marxist approach to understanding what he calls the
computer game complex--the various, interdependent socio-economic forces that
produce computer games.
My approach is also indebted to Roger Callois's notions of paidic (sp?) and
ludic modes of play, especially in the way that these notions seem to connect
with Derrida's notion of freeplay and the way he interrogates linguistic
structures and systems (if you think about it, a computer game is one large
linguistic system). All of these threads come together nicely (too nicely?)
in Baudrillard's work on simulation and hyperreality, which I think is
especially pertinent to computer games.
I think that we do disagree about the direction game studies should take, but
like you said, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. As Ryan pointed
out in a previous thread, this sort of conversation has the potential to
generate new knowledge and approaches to the topic of computer games and of
all the things that are (always already!)implicated in computer games and in
the larger questions of reading and writing and learning.
Sincerely,
Kevin Moberly
Tuesday, August 30
Sunday, August 28
Saturday, August 13
Thursday, August 11
Tuesday, August 9
jwz: "Yes, it's that time of year again: the primary impact that Burning Man and methamphetamines have had on the computer industry is the SIGGRAPH Fashion Show. This year we learn that, In The Future, your clothing will look like an office building's HVAC system pooped on your head."
Sunday, August 7
Civicspace for Schools | CivicSpace: "IMHO, it would be a much better use of resources and more practical to develop a module for integrating Moodle with Drupal/CivicSpace. The perfect learning environment for me would be a nicely integrated combination (through special modules of connectors) of original implementations of: - Drupal/Civicspace, for virtual communities and content management features. - MediaWiki, for collaborative knowledge bases and reference content. - Moodle for e-learning environment and educational support. -----Original Message----- From: Nick Lewis"
CivicSpace Hosting Providers | CivicSpace: "Well,
Just to help out, I run a Drupal based site on BlueHost.
The Drupal installation was a snap with Fantastico, they give you plenty of databases and a ton of space for a pretty low montly fee (7 bucks a month I think)."
Just to help out, I run a Drupal based site on BlueHost.
The Drupal installation was a snap with Fantastico, they give you plenty of databases and a ton of space for a pretty low montly fee (7 bucks a month I think)."
Using Moodle: Glossaries Search: "Fantastico is an automatic installer for open source scripts such as Moodle. When you use it, Fantastico will install Moodle in less than five minutes, including setting up the Cron.
Fantastico is a service or feature provided by web hosting companies. You cannot get it yourself. If you cannot use a Moodle partner (the best solution!) for hosting your Moodle site, then look for a hosting service that has Fantastico--usually a feature included in the cPanel. A cPanel is the adminstration interface that you use to set up your site.
To find a hosting service with Fantastico, you can do a Google search, or look on a variety of sites that rate the hosting services. If you see a good hosting service, then check the feature list. If it does not include Fantastico, I recommend trying another hosting service.
Note that Fantastico takes up to six weeks to add new releases of Moodle. But upgrading is surprisingly easy."
Fantastico is a service or feature provided by web hosting companies. You cannot get it yourself. If you cannot use a Moodle partner (the best solution!) for hosting your Moodle site, then look for a hosting service that has Fantastico--usually a feature included in the cPanel. A cPanel is the adminstration interface that you use to set up your site.
To find a hosting service with Fantastico, you can do a Google search, or look on a variety of sites that rate the hosting services. If you see a good hosting service, then check the feature list. If it does not include Fantastico, I recommend trying another hosting service.
Note that Fantastico takes up to six weeks to add new releases of Moodle. But upgrading is surprisingly easy."
drupal vs. moodle set up | EdTechTalk.com: "I don't think there's any doubt that the way you want to go is with moodle. I think drupal has some very fine qualities, but it is not as easy to install as moodle. If you are using something like fantastico, or you are having someone else install your platform, moodle is particularly more useful, as the learning curve is pretty easy, kinda like a stroll up a set of steps to your favorite bar rather than the hike up the mountain to the beautiful view
dave
Wednesday, August 3
Memo Assignment
English 4310
I am writing this memo for the company I work for, which is a general contractor. The reason for this memo is that a sheetrock subcontractor is trying to collect their total bill on a $400,000 home that we are working on. The company is called Ross Sheetrock and they have so called completed their work. For this reason they are trying to collect the remaining balance of $8,000 for the total job. The reason for the memo is to let them know that we are very unpleased with the final sanding job they did and the delay they have put on the finish work, which we are doing.
Dear Jorge,
We regret to inform you of the poor job that we found as we tried to begin finish work last Wednesday. We found that very little sanding had been done as well as absolutely no clean-up had been performed. As a result we were forced to start cleaning up so that we could begin our finish work. That afternoon three individuals came to sand and clean-up but only were there for a total of three hours and did hardly anything. The following day one of them returned with his girlfriend present and began to spot sand a few spots to whom we expressed our dissatisfaction in the sanding that had been performed. He was not very happy with our expressing this and became irritated. He did have his girlfriend leave and continued to sand some areas but he didn’t stay very long. On Friday one of your supervisors came to talk with us and to see what had happened with the sanding and to find out why we got upset with the sanding crew. He was in total agreement of the poor job that was done and assured us that the sanding would be redone. He then showed the sanding crew, who showed backup later that morning, what they needed to do. The sanding crew stayed for a few hours and left. We would like a thorough inspection done on the sanding job at this time before any money is paid. We were very pleased with the hanging and texturing of the walls however, for a job of this size and price the teenage workers used for sanding were very unprofessional with the ending portion of the job. We look forward to an inspection so that we can get this problem resolved and behind us.
Sincerely,
Fait Construction
English 4310
I am writing this memo for the company I work for, which is a general contractor. The reason for this memo is that a sheetrock subcontractor is trying to collect their total bill on a $400,000 home that we are working on. The company is called Ross Sheetrock and they have so called completed their work. For this reason they are trying to collect the remaining balance of $8,000 for the total job. The reason for the memo is to let them know that we are very unpleased with the final sanding job they did and the delay they have put on the finish work, which we are doing.
Dear Jorge,
We regret to inform you of the poor job that we found as we tried to begin finish work last Wednesday. We found that very little sanding had been done as well as absolutely no clean-up had been performed. As a result we were forced to start cleaning up so that we could begin our finish work. That afternoon three individuals came to sand and clean-up but only were there for a total of three hours and did hardly anything. The following day one of them returned with his girlfriend present and began to spot sand a few spots to whom we expressed our dissatisfaction in the sanding that had been performed. He was not very happy with our expressing this and became irritated. He did have his girlfriend leave and continued to sand some areas but he didn’t stay very long. On Friday one of your supervisors came to talk with us and to see what had happened with the sanding and to find out why we got upset with the sanding crew. He was in total agreement of the poor job that was done and assured us that the sanding would be redone. He then showed the sanding crew, who showed backup later that morning, what they needed to do. The sanding crew stayed for a few hours and left. We would like a thorough inspection done on the sanding job at this time before any money is paid. We were very pleased with the hanging and texturing of the walls however, for a job of this size and price the teenage workers used for sanding were very unprofessional with the ending portion of the job. We look forward to an inspection so that we can get this problem resolved and behind us.
Sincerely,
Fait Construction
Monday, August 1
Sunday, July 31
Thursday, July 28
Sunday, July 24
Hi, sorry about the delay in posting Friday's assignment, I went out of town for the weekend. Here is what I need you to do:
1. Read the chapter I handed out in class on Wednesday on revising for readability.
2. Go through your existing drafts and find 10 sentences that need revising
3. Post them to the discussion area under "revising for readability"
4. Identify by name recurring problems that you see in your writing, based on the included sentences
5. revise the affected sentences.
Thanks!
1. Read the chapter I handed out in class on Wednesday on revising for readability.
2. Go through your existing drafts and find 10 sentences that need revising
3. Post them to the discussion area under "revising for readability"
4. Identify by name recurring problems that you see in your writing, based on the included sentences
5. revise the affected sentences.
Thanks!
Saturday, July 16
Ask E.T.: Rhetorical ploys in evidence presentations: "Rhetorical ploys in evidence presentations
Here is the beginning of a collection of rhetorical ploys in evidence presentations, verbal moves that replace real evidence.
FAUX CONSERVATISM This takes the form of 'Our results are conservative; we made conservative assumptions about the model.' The claim is that possible biases in assumptions work against the view advanced by the researcher. This is in fact an implicit error statement. Such claims are sometimes a rhetorical tactic that substitutes verbal fudge factors for quantitative assessments of error. See for example the Boeing/Columbia slide with the headline: Review of test data indicates conservatism for tile penetration
IGNORING SELF-CONTRADICTION See the Boeing slide. See also Richard Feynman's example in his Challenger report at page 137 of 'What do you care what other people think?':"
Here is the beginning of a collection of rhetorical ploys in evidence presentations, verbal moves that replace real evidence.
FAUX CONSERVATISM This takes the form of 'Our results are conservative; we made conservative assumptions about the model.' The claim is that possible biases in assumptions work against the view advanced by the researcher. This is in fact an implicit error statement. Such claims are sometimes a rhetorical tactic that substitutes verbal fudge factors for quantitative assessments of error. See for example the Boeing/Columbia slide with the headline: Review of test data indicates conservatism for tile penetration
IGNORING SELF-CONTRADICTION See the Boeing slide. See also Richard Feynman's example in his Challenger report at page 137 of 'What do you care what other people think?':"
Friday, July 15
For this Friday's online class I'd like you to do peer review. Your response should be at least 150 words, and detailed.
1. Post your current draft AS AN ATTACHMENT with the subject:
DRAFT: [your last name]
2. Respond to any draft that hasn't gotten a response yet, but only after you have posted your own draft. In the response message, (R)eply to the original with the subject:
RESPONSE: [your last name]
Hopefully this will be less confusing than the last time we tried this!
1. Post your current draft AS AN ATTACHMENT with the subject:
DRAFT: [your last name]
2. Respond to any draft that hasn't gotten a response yet, but only after you have posted your own draft. In the response message, (R)eply to the original with the subject:
RESPONSE: [your last name]
Hopefully this will be less confusing than the last time we tried this!
Monday, July 11
Attack of the Weasel Words - Newsweek Entertainment - MSNBC.com: "What are the “weasel words” you dislike most?
'Implemented.' You'll see implemented everywhere. In this language, you “implement” rather than speak or do. And then there is enhanced. Everything is being enhanced. That word is being used in place of other more precise and descriptive words. You can enhance your marriage or your job. You can even implement your enhancements. And 'input' is another good one. Companies talk about “input into our people.” This reflects technology and accounting [ideas]. It all has to do with input and outcomes."
'Implemented.' You'll see implemented everywhere. In this language, you “implement” rather than speak or do. And then there is enhanced. Everything is being enhanced. That word is being used in place of other more precise and descriptive words. You can enhance your marriage or your job. You can even implement your enhancements. And 'input' is another good one. Companies talk about “input into our people.” This reflects technology and accounting [ideas]. It all has to do with input and outcomes."
Friday, July 8
For today's online class (Friday, July 8th) I'd like you to do two thing:
1. Discuss the recent readings on usability, and usability in general, on the discussion board. Post at least a paragraph discussing the readings, and respond with at least a paragraph to someone else's posting. Some questions you might consider answering:
a. Can Neilsen's web criteria be effectively applied to paper documentation?
b. Does "usability" really matter, or is it just an annoying piece of jargon?
c. How on earth could this possibly apply to your jobs in the real world, if you don't become a technical writer?
You can probably come up with better questions on your own.
Ok, the second thing I need from you is to take that article on applying Neilsen's criteria to paper docs, and, using that checklist, design a simple usability form that your test subjects can use to evaluate the documentation you are bringing to class on Monday. Post your form to the discussion area for other class member's to get ideas from. It's ok if you plagiarize each other like crazy in this assignment, and you can post multiple drafts if you take an idea from someone and improve your original. try to keep it to one page, if possible.
1. Discuss the recent readings on usability, and usability in general, on the discussion board. Post at least a paragraph discussing the readings, and respond with at least a paragraph to someone else's posting. Some questions you might consider answering:
a. Can Neilsen's web criteria be effectively applied to paper documentation?
b. Does "usability" really matter, or is it just an annoying piece of jargon?
c. How on earth could this possibly apply to your jobs in the real world, if you don't become a technical writer?
You can probably come up with better questions on your own.
Ok, the second thing I need from you is to take that article on applying Neilsen's criteria to paper docs, and, using that checklist, design a simple usability form that your test subjects can use to evaluate the documentation you are bringing to class on Monday. Post your form to the discussion area for other class member's to get ideas from. It's ok if you plagiarize each other like crazy in this assignment, and you can post multiple drafts if you take an idea from someone and improve your original. try to keep it to one page, if possible.
Wednesday, July 6
Heuristic Inspections for Documentation: "We all are familiar with Jakob Nielsen's heuristics for evaluating the usability of interfaces. When I was conducting a study on documentation usability, I started wondering if there existed a similar set of heuristics for evaluating the usability of documentation. The natural place to pose such a question was the STC Usability SIG mailing list. The response was that there was no heuristics set available although someone had tried to open the discussion in the mailing list some time ago. An answer, which led to the list of heuristics presented below, was something along the line 'Well, now that you asked, why don't you put the heuristics together' and so I did.
Friday, July 1
Dear students,
I have lots of students right now, and I get tons of email. It would be really helpful if, when sending me a message, you put your course in the subject heading, like this:
Subject: [1010] Question about final paper
Of course, if you're in 2020 or 4310, you would put [2020] or [4310] respectively.
I'm filtering my email now, so if you *don't* follow that example I'll probably lose your note, or not get to it for several days.
Thanks!
I have lots of students right now, and I get tons of email. It would be really helpful if, when sending me a message, you put your course in the subject heading, like this:
Subject: [1010] Question about final paper
Of course, if you're in 2020 or 4310, you would put [2020] or [4310] respectively.
I'm filtering my email now, so if you *don't* follow that example I'll probably lose your note, or not get to it for several days.
Thanks!
About section page template: "The Usability Toolkit is a collection of forms, checklists and other useful documents for conducting usability tests and user interviews."
Heuristic Inspections for Documentation: "We all are familiar with Jakob Nielsen's heuristics for evaluating the usability of interfaces. When I was conducting a study on documentation usability, I started wondering if there existed a similar set of heuristics for evaluating the usability of documentation. The natural place to pose such a question was the STC Usability SIG mailing list. The response was that there was no heuristics set available although someone had tried to open the discussion in the mailing list some time ago. An answer, which led to the list of heuristics presented below, was something along the line 'Well, now that you asked, why don't you put the heuristics together' and so I did.
"
"
Improving User Documentation and Customer Care: "Improving User Documentation and Customer Care
by Cem Kaner, Ph.D., J.D. & David Pels, B.A.
In recent years, the Customer Care Survey of Service and Support Practices in the Software Industry has consistently reported that only about half of software publishers put their documentation through a formal test. We thought that these numbers were low, so we checked them at the Software Testing, Analysis & Review (STAR) conference (Orlando, May 16, 1996).
During a plenary session, Kaner asked attendees (software testers) whether their groups tested their companies’ user manuals. Confirming the Customer Care data, at least half the room stood up to signify that their companies did not. This means that reputable companies are not testing their manuals – companies who don’t care about quality don’t spend money to send testers to STAR."
by Cem Kaner, Ph.D., J.D. & David Pels, B.A.
In recent years, the Customer Care Survey of Service and Support Practices in the Software Industry has consistently reported that only about half of software publishers put their documentation through a formal test. We thought that these numbers were low, so we checked them at the Software Testing, Analysis & Review (STAR) conference (Orlando, May 16, 1996).
During a plenary session, Kaner asked attendees (software testers) whether their groups tested their companies’ user manuals. Confirming the Customer Care data, at least half the room stood up to signify that their companies did not. This means that reputable companies are not testing their manuals – companies who don’t care about quality don’t spend money to send testers to STAR."
Wednesday, June 29
Monday, June 27
Exchange: "cKDCgSNTgH"
this is the course id that we will be using in the http://www.prenhall.com/exchange space.
this is the course id that we will be using in the http://www.prenhall.com/exchange space.
Sunday, June 26
Beginners Guides: USB Memory Drive Projects - PCStats.com: "The USB memory key appears
well on its way to replacing the floppy drive completely; as flash memory prices
have dropped, these devices have become cheap enough that anyone can afford
them. This, coupled with the easy support of such drives in Windows XP, has made
them an extremely attractive device for anyone that needs to move files from
place to place. USB memory drives are not just geek toys anymore!
As you will see here though,
there's a lot more you can do with your USB memory key than just transfer files.
These flexible miniature storage devices can put a whole range of portable
applications, and even operating systems in your pocket.
"
well on its way to replacing the floppy drive completely; as flash memory prices
have dropped, these devices have become cheap enough that anyone can afford
them. This, coupled with the easy support of such drives in Windows XP, has made
them an extremely attractive device for anyone that needs to move files from
place to place. USB memory drives are not just geek toys anymore!
As you will see here though,
there's a lot more you can do with your USB memory key than just transfer files.
These flexible miniature storage devices can put a whole range of portable
applications, and even operating systems in your pocket.
"
Friday, June 24
Class: I'm kinda sick right now and behind on the grading. My lungs are trying to meet their yearly phlegm production quota in 24 hours. I will get caught up soon, hang in there. And send me your favorite cold remedies.
For this Friday I want you to go to http://www.prenhall.com/exchange and try logging in with the second set of codes I gave you. That will be your assignment in lieu of reading.
For this Friday I want you to go to http://www.prenhall.com/exchange and try logging in with the second set of codes I gave you. That will be your assignment in lieu of reading.
Thursday, June 23
Tuesday, June 21
Predictions Database: "How will the internet change our lives between 2004 and 2014? A survey of 1,286 network-technology stakeholders, conducted by Elon University and the Pew Internet & American Life Project in the fall of 2004, harvested thousands of projections of what's to come in the next decade. Participants included people from Internet2, Microsoft, Oracle, RAND, AOL, IBM, the FBI, the FCC; Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley, Harvard, and many other top universities; the Mayo Clinic, SBC, AT&T, Gartner, Jupitermedia and hundreds of other government and corporate entities. Participating respondents included people from France, Australia, Japan, Canada, Nigeria and many other nations. Nearly half of the respondents began using the Internet prior to 1993, including about 6 percent who began using it in 1982 or earlier, and 38 percent who began using it sometime between 1983 and 1992, adding up to a total of 44 percent of respondents who have been net-savvy for well over a decade. Internet 'stars' who completed the survey include Vint Cerf, Esther Dyson, Bob Metcalfe, Dan Gillmor, Howard Rheingold, Simson Garfinkel and David Weinberger (see the biographies link below for more information on some of the respondents). Most of the respondents classified themselves as research scientists, entrepreneurs/business leaders, authors/journalists or technology developers/administrators"
Investing - Gates and Ozzie: How to Escape E-Mail Hell - FORTUNE - Page 2: "ill, you have been nailed in court through e-mail that was found in legal discovery. Has that changed the way you use it?Gates: No. I live the examined life. Basically every e-mail that I've ever sent has been looked at by something like 30 or 40 lawyers to see if there's any way it can be misconstrued. I don't put any notes at the bottom where I say, 'Note to lawyer: When I say 'Beat the competition,' I mean in the nice friendly way we always do.' [laughter] So look, the idea that everything you're doing can be examined%u2014there's nothing really wrong with that. Voicemail is like that too. People just should get used to the idea that there's going to be some visibility for things. I don't think we're all going to just go down to the local pay phone or something."
Monday, June 20
Friday, June 17
Hi,
I haven't yet heard back from Prentice Hall about the peer feedback glitch, so here's what I need you to do:
1. go to the "discussions" link in webct
2. click on "peer feedback"
3. click on "instructions draft" and read my instructions there.
Basically, I need you to post a message to the peer response topic, attach your current draft as a document, and then respond to the next draft in the message thread, i.e. whoever has posted after you.
Let's give it a shot, and email me if you have any questions.
craniac@gmail.com
I haven't yet heard back from Prentice Hall about the peer feedback glitch, so here's what I need you to do:
1. go to the "discussions" link in webct
2. click on "peer feedback"
3. click on "instructions draft" and read my instructions there.
Basically, I need you to post a message to the peer response topic, attach your current draft as a document, and then respond to the next draft in the message thread, i.e. whoever has posted after you.
Let's give it a shot, and email me if you have any questions.
craniac@gmail.com
Thursday, June 16
Main Page - wikiHow
an entire website dedicated to "how to" writing, i.e. technical writing. It includes such topics as "How to Start a Rock Band."
an entire website dedicated to "how to" writing, i.e. technical writing. It includes such topics as "How to Start a Rock Band."
Wednesday, June 15
Monday, June 13
density of information.
I'd like to take the entries for all of my different weblogs, auto-categorize them by blog, and then combine them all into one giant wordpress blog. Of course, I'd lose my awesome google ranking, which is dropping now anyway because I have not posted anything to Markzilla for a while, because I am not sure I really want people to know what I'm thinking.
Thursday, June 9
Research Network Forum, Thomas Rickert: "Ideology is typically understood in a variety of poststructuralist/postmodernist formulations that nevertheless have a good deal in common. Key markers are the reliance on Foucault to theorize the productive aspects of power and on Althusser to understand how subjects are interpellated into ideological discourses. These theorists are utilized extensively in cultural studies-based approaches to ideology. James Berlin and Michael Vivion, for example, describe the practice of cultural studies as being a giant project of ideology critique. They write that 'both composing and interpreting texts become overt acts of discourse analysis and negotiation' (x), and cultural studies becomes a process in which English teachers are engaged in a cultural politics in which the power of students as citizens in the democratic public sphere is at stake. the aim to make them subjects rather than objects of historical change. Both teachers and students then will engage in critique, in a critical examination of the economic, social, and political conditions within which the signifying practices of culture take place. (xii) Unfortunately, this kind of pedagogical program has not proven to be all that liberating or empowering. As has been noted by several theorists, such as Laura Finke and Tim Dean, making students good critics of advertising or patriarchal institutions seems to have little overall effect on disrupting or circumventing their persuasive power. For example, we still eat our fast food, worry about how fat we might be getting, and give in to impulse buying.
One way to rethink this critical impasse, I suggest, is consider again what we might mean by the notion of ideology and how we might go about critiquing it, or even consider if the poststructuralist notion of 'critique' is still viable."
One way to rethink this critical impasse, I suggest, is consider again what we might mean by the notion of ideology and how we might go about critiquing it, or even consider if the poststructuralist notion of 'critique' is still viable."
Wednesday, June 8
Writing Instructions
Tools for technical writers
-->read these for Friday's discussion.
Tools for technical writers
-->read these for Friday's discussion.
Please post your response in the "discussions" area in webct, under the "reading responses" link. Thanks!
Monday, June 6
IGDA - Articles - Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work: 6 Lessons: "Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work: 6 Lessons"
Wednesday, April 27
PCD 4/11/03 Turner: "In 1993, just as the Internet was emerging into public consciousness, journalist Howard Rheingold brought a new phrase to public discussions of computer-mediated communication: 'virtual community.' Within months, the phrase had been taken up by researchers, programmers, and corporate CEO's. For a time, virtual communities seemed poised to become one of the defining social formations - and business plans -- of the Internet age.
Yet, the notion of 'virtual communities' substantially predates the public emergence of computer networking. This presentation traces the origins of the concept in the Whole Earth network of publications and people. Drawing on archival research and extensive interviews, the presentation will show how the notion of virtual community first emerged as a day-to-day 'contact language' on the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (the WELL). It will then show how both the communities who used the early WELL system and the system itself represented networks and networking habits of mind first developed around the Whole Earth Catalog some twenty years earlier.
By tracing the migration of countercultural ideas and practices into the digital realm, I hope to raise questions about the role culture plays in shaping our perceptions of emerging digital technologies.
"
Yet, the notion of 'virtual communities' substantially predates the public emergence of computer networking. This presentation traces the origins of the concept in the Whole Earth network of publications and people. Drawing on archival research and extensive interviews, the presentation will show how the notion of virtual community first emerged as a day-to-day 'contact language' on the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (the WELL). It will then show how both the communities who used the early WELL system and the system itself represented networks and networking habits of mind first developed around the Whole Earth Catalog some twenty years earlier.
By tracing the migration of countercultural ideas and practices into the digital realm, I hope to raise questions about the role culture plays in shaping our perceptions of emerging digital technologies.
"
ACM Queue - Comments Are More Important Than Code - The thorough use of internal documentation is one of the most-overlooked ways of improving software quality and speeding implementation.: "The thorough use of internal documentation is one of the most-overlooked ways of improving software quality and speeding implementation.
Reliable and Maintainable Code"
Reliable and Maintainable Code"
Monday, April 25
Turn on, tune in, log on / The PC and the Internet sprang from pot-smoking, acid-dropping California dreamers: "The implication throughout is that drugs were somehow one of the necessary conditions for the development of innovative PC technologies. Yet nowhere is that implication turned into a clear assertion -- the closest thing is a comment by highly inventive programmer (and occasional LSD user) Dan Ingalls: 'Well, where do you think these ideas came from?!' But Ingalls was joking, and elsewhere there is little evidence that drug use actually improved the ability of researchers to come up with ideas. Engelbart himself took LSD as part of Stolaroff's program and found its results disappointing. The only product he invented while under its influence was a 'tinkle toy,' a floating waterwheel for toilet training that spins when urinated on.
"
"
Wednesday, April 13
Collin vs. Blog: "Behind": "My third answer is that part of the gap between haves and have-nots is unquestionably economic, but there is also a part of it that is simply volitional. No, I am not blaming the people who can't afford access for not having access. But I would echo John's claim that there are plenty of places with resources where there is no desire for, interest in, or curiosity about these things. The cost of a computer with an internet connection is not an insignificant one, I know, but the cost of a lot of the things I named is minimal. The sound program I used to podcast my CCCC paper? Free. Blogger? Free. Bloglines? Free. It costs nothing but a little time to learn that John Holbo is one of the bigwigs at the single most popular academic blog out there. Learning about Grokster? Please. Heck, even Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture is available at no cost in pdf format. I know not everyone out there is a Mac person, but iMovie can help you put together a slide show, set to music, with voice overs, and save the whole caboodle as a QT movie, and it's a pretty simple program (and came pre-installed).
Every single one of those 'behinds' I mentioned, and plenty that I didn't, can be managed with relative ease by someone with an internet connection and a copy of iLife (an $80 software suite from Apple) or an assortment of shareware apps. But more important is the fact that these and other technologies are shifting the way that large segments of our population are thinking about culture, about property, about politics, about journalism, and yes, about writing. It costs us nothing but a little time and attention to get access to these ideas, and to work with them when and where we can. When a whole species of public writing receives more column inches in Time and Newsweek than it does in the pages of our journals, then yes, I do think we are behind. When our incoming students are held to higher standards of technological literacy than we ourselves are, then yes, I think we're behind. When the best we can do to explain online research is to point students to the help pages at Google, we're behind. "
Every single one of those 'behinds' I mentioned, and plenty that I didn't, can be managed with relative ease by someone with an internet connection and a copy of iLife (an $80 software suite from Apple) or an assortment of shareware apps. But more important is the fact that these and other technologies are shifting the way that large segments of our population are thinking about culture, about property, about politics, about journalism, and yes, about writing. It costs us nothing but a little time and attention to get access to these ideas, and to work with them when and where we can. When a whole species of public writing receives more column inches in Time and Newsweek than it does in the pages of our journals, then yes, I do think we are behind. When our incoming students are held to higher standards of technological literacy than we ourselves are, then yes, I think we're behind. When the best we can do to explain online research is to point students to the help pages at Google, we're behind. "
Monday, April 4
XSLT Tutorial: "In our XSLT tutorial you will learn what XSLT is.
You will learn how to use XSLT to transform XML documents into other XML formats, like XHTML."
You will learn how to use XSLT to transform XML documents into other XML formats, like XHTML."
Future Ivanhoe Visuals: "What follows is a selection of visualizations of a test game played by the Ivanhoe development group. I modeled the game as a topic map, used XSLT to transform the data into a 'dot' file, and then used Graphviz to generate some visualizations. Different 'variables' were used in different graphs, as indicated in the parenthetical comments. Note: If using Internet Explorer to view these graphs, be aware that your browser will automatically shrink the images to fit your browser window. If you can't read labels or the graph is just generally fuzzy, resize the image to its original dimensions."
Sunday, March 27
CalDAV - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The CalDAV specification was first published in 2003 by Lisa Dusseault as an Internet-Draft submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and it quickly gained support from several calendaring software vendors. In January 2005 the first interoperability event was organized by the CalConnect consortium. CalDAV does not have an IETF Working Group but the authors still plan to submit it as an IETF standard. CalDAV is designed for implementation by any collaborative software, client or server, that needs to maintain, access or share collections of events. It is being developed as an open standard to foster interoperability between software from different implementors.
The architecture of CalDAV is to model events, which may be meetings or appointments or blocked-off-time, as HTTP resources. Each event is expressed in the standard iCalendar format. Thus, any Web browser can download a standard representation of an event. Events are organized into WebDAV collections to allow browsing and synchronization. In addition to HTTP (RFC2616) and WebDAV (RFC2518) functionality, a CalDAV server must support WebDAV access control (RFC3744), must parse iCalendar files (RFC2445) and support a number of calendaring-specific operations such as doing free-busy time reports and expansion of recurring events. With this functionality, a user may synchronize his or her own calendar to a CalDAV server, and share it among multiple devices or with other users. The protocol also supports non-personal calendars, such as calendars for sites or organizations.
Up-to-date CalDAV information can be found at the CalDAV home page."
The architecture of CalDAV is to model events, which may be meetings or appointments or blocked-off-time, as HTTP resources. Each event is expressed in the standard iCalendar format. Thus, any Web browser can download a standard representation of an event. Events are organized into WebDAV collections to allow browsing and synchronization. In addition to HTTP (RFC2616) and WebDAV (RFC2518) functionality, a CalDAV server must support WebDAV access control (RFC3744), must parse iCalendar files (RFC2445) and support a number of calendaring-specific operations such as doing free-busy time reports and expansion of recurring events. With this functionality, a user may synchronize his or her own calendar to a CalDAV server, and share it among multiple devices or with other users. The protocol also supports non-personal calendars, such as calendars for sites or organizations.
Up-to-date CalDAV information can be found at the CalDAV home page."
Mitch Kapor's Weblog: "Novell's Open Source Collaboration Server
Novell is contributing its NetMail server code base to create a new open source collaboration server, Hula. Hula will support CalDAV, and is currently tested to be robust and scalable for up to 200,000 accounts with 50,000 concurrent connections on a single Linux server. Having this kind of server resource available enriches the Chandler ecosystem, will provide an additional alternative backend, and make it easier to implement a distribution of Chandler and other CalDAV clients that will be able to interoperate and share information without relying on proprietary servers.
At a recent roundtable and interop meeting of the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium several vendors demonstrated initial interoperability between some CalDAV servers and clients. Novell is a founding member of the consortium and a supporter of the CalDAV initiative. "
Novell is contributing its NetMail server code base to create a new open source collaboration server, Hula. Hula will support CalDAV, and is currently tested to be robust and scalable for up to 200,000 accounts with 50,000 concurrent connections on a single Linux server. Having this kind of server resource available enriches the Chandler ecosystem, will provide an additional alternative backend, and make it easier to implement a distribution of Chandler and other CalDAV clients that will be able to interoperate and share information without relying on proprietary servers.
At a recent roundtable and interop meeting of the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium several vendors demonstrated initial interoperability between some CalDAV servers and clients. Novell is a founding member of the consortium and a supporter of the CalDAV initiative. "
Mitch Kapor's Weblog: "Caveat altert: In a transitional era like the one we are in now, it is notable that it's harder to convert a code base developed in a proprietary context to be open source than it is to start from scratch for the same reason renovating a house completely is harder than new construction. Trust me if you haven't been through this. I have. This is one of the reasons it took seven years from the day Netscape announced it was going to open source the Mozilla browser to get to Firefox 1.0."
Mitch Kapor's Weblog: "Snippets from Emerging Technologies - Tuesday A.M.
Networks of amateurs (in astronomy, publishing) are displacing the professionals -- Leabeater, quoted by Rael Dornfest
Too much important knowledge is locked up on paper where it's not searchable and hard to get to. -- Jeff Bezos, also by Rael.
Pay attention to design patterns for innovation -- Tim O'Reilly. Examples:
* Build with 'Small Pieces, Loosely Joined': (borrowing the David Weinberger book title)
* Design for participation, e.g., have users add value to your data (Amazon user book reviews)
* Make participation the default: Aggregate user data as a side effect. (Flickr's default for sharing is public)
* Data is the next 'Intel Inside': owning a unique, hard-to-replicate data source as a competitive advantage"
Networks of amateurs (in astronomy, publishing) are displacing the professionals -- Leabeater, quoted by Rael Dornfest
Too much important knowledge is locked up on paper where it's not searchable and hard to get to. -- Jeff Bezos, also by Rael.
Pay attention to design patterns for innovation -- Tim O'Reilly. Examples:
* Build with 'Small Pieces, Loosely Joined': (borrowing the David Weinberger book title)
* Design for participation, e.g., have users add value to your data (Amazon user book reviews)
* Make participation the default: Aggregate user data as a side effect. (Flickr's default for sharing is public)
* Data is the next 'Intel Inside': owning a unique, hard-to-replicate data source as a competitive advantage"
Saturday, March 26
((((( SUPER SIZE ME ))))) A FILM OF EPIC PORTIONS: "'Just one meal that is high fat and unhealthy can hurt your arteries. One day, one meal will hurt, and it's measurable,' Llamas said."
Thursday, March 17
Notes and Recommendations for 15 December 1998: "David Noble's latest article about distance education provoked as much hate mail as you might expect. You're not interested in the personal abuse and all-around cheap shots in several of these messages. More interesting is the underlying form of their arguments. Although nobody openly says this, the conflict here is between two tacit views of the relation between technology and power. Noble comes from a tradition that regards technology as an instrument of power and its plans. Power, he believes, wants to replace people with machines, regardless of whether it is efficient or decent to do so, simply because the machines make us easier to control. The history of this perspective stretches across centuries, and Noble regards distance education as simply the next chapter in that history. Noble's opponents, on the other hand, assume that technology is the natural enemy of power. They believe that technology has its own inner logic, that this logic is unstoppable, and that its inevitable effect is to destroy hidebound institutions and to overthrow their oppressive masters. They apply these assumptions not only to the university system, but to governments and hierarchies of all sorts, and they get upset if anybody challenges the virtues of technology. These two views cannot both be correct, and you will be unsurprised to hear that I believe that the truth lies in the middle. That's not because I'm a centrist, as someone suggested. A centrist is someone whose views are defined in relation to the views of others -- Slobodan Milosevic is a centrist in the terms of Serbian politics. Rather, I have repeatedly noticed that opposite-extreme ideas are, in practice, evil twins that feed on one another. To be sure, each of the extreme views is useful as a counter to the other, and each side directs our attention to factors that the other side defines away. What's valuable in the perspective of Noble's critics, for example, is an insistence on the unanticipated consequences of new technologies. And what's valuable in Noble's perspective is its insistence that the proper unit of analysis is machinery plus institutions. The machinery and the institutions, that is, evolve together. "
Saturday, March 12
Wonderland: Burn The House Down
Brenda Laurel:
I want to talk about the spectacle. The meanings created by images that hold us in webs. My thesis is that we are contributing to the damage that the spectacle does to human beings by suggesting the interactivity of a joystick is real agency. We entrain people to understand that imitation has personal power. The spectacle trains us to be consumers. We are urged to keep the economy healthy, pay our bills. Did you ever notice there’s not place for the earth on the bottom line? We cancelled the Voyager mission for less than the cost of a video game! The dream of space appropriated by George W Bush? How can we stand for this?
Games keep essential social myths in place. So we have tropes in our business. Criminals are cool. The commercial game business is a non-consensual relationship between middle aged men and young boys. It’s worse than the catholic church. These are guys who have really big tyres on their trucks … and we all know why! [laughter] So the fantasies of these guys position these boys as tiny little clones: so they force you to take your genius to create this .. this .. we can’t have that fellas. Oh by the way there was a crowd in the ladies bathroom today. w00t!
GTA. I talked to 22 little boys in LA, all of them wanted to see that game. With only one exception, the thing that they wanted to see was to be able to drive by their house. They weren’t interested in stealing cars. Or the criminals. Or the back-story. They weren’t interested in that, they wanted the simulation of driving by the house.
We model male ethos in the games we design: soldier, super athlete, criminal. Anyone who was born with internet and computers are prosocial. Skaters are mainstream. We have two models of alpha maleness: skaters and ballers [I have no idea what this is referring to - A]. … we need heroes, but what kind of heroes are we making? Where’s Malcolm X, or Chavez? There hasn’t been a game about geopolitics that was worth a shit since Hidden Agenda! We should be giving people rehearsals for citizenship and change. I have to tell you, Microsoft is the walking dead. DRM is a wet dream. It’s not gonna work! Cat’s out the bag! When this happens, you have to let the cards fly in the air and fall where they may. GIVE IT UP ABOUT DRM. GIVE IT UP ABOUT OWNERSHIP. Cleave to open source! A NEW ECONOMY IS COMING. As we become further connected we will find new economies emerging. We are the wellspring of popular culture. We have a responsibility.
Brenda Laurel:
I want to talk about the spectacle. The meanings created by images that hold us in webs. My thesis is that we are contributing to the damage that the spectacle does to human beings by suggesting the interactivity of a joystick is real agency. We entrain people to understand that imitation has personal power. The spectacle trains us to be consumers. We are urged to keep the economy healthy, pay our bills. Did you ever notice there’s not place for the earth on the bottom line? We cancelled the Voyager mission for less than the cost of a video game! The dream of space appropriated by George W Bush? How can we stand for this?
Games keep essential social myths in place. So we have tropes in our business. Criminals are cool. The commercial game business is a non-consensual relationship between middle aged men and young boys. It’s worse than the catholic church. These are guys who have really big tyres on their trucks … and we all know why! [laughter] So the fantasies of these guys position these boys as tiny little clones: so they force you to take your genius to create this .. this .. we can’t have that fellas. Oh by the way there was a crowd in the ladies bathroom today. w00t!
GTA. I talked to 22 little boys in LA, all of them wanted to see that game. With only one exception, the thing that they wanted to see was to be able to drive by their house. They weren’t interested in stealing cars. Or the criminals. Or the back-story. They weren’t interested in that, they wanted the simulation of driving by the house.
We model male ethos in the games we design: soldier, super athlete, criminal. Anyone who was born with internet and computers are prosocial. Skaters are mainstream. We have two models of alpha maleness: skaters and ballers [I have no idea what this is referring to - A]. … we need heroes, but what kind of heroes are we making? Where’s Malcolm X, or Chavez? There hasn’t been a game about geopolitics that was worth a shit since Hidden Agenda! We should be giving people rehearsals for citizenship and change. I have to tell you, Microsoft is the walking dead. DRM is a wet dream. It’s not gonna work! Cat’s out the bag! When this happens, you have to let the cards fly in the air and fall where they may. GIVE IT UP ABOUT DRM. GIVE IT UP ABOUT OWNERSHIP. Cleave to open source! A NEW ECONOMY IS COMING. As we become further connected we will find new economies emerging. We are the wellspring of popular culture. We have a responsibility.
Monday, March 7
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2005: "Session
Military E-Tech
JC Herz, Author and Defense Researcher/Consultant
Date: Thursday, March 17
Time: 9:15am - 9:30am
Location: California Ballroom
TrackBackTrackBack
The United States Defense Department has a technology fetish and seemingly limitless amounts of money. How are emerging technologies (social software, untethered devices, web services, and computer games) being combined with the conventional superpower technology (satellites, sensors, aircraft carriers) to take military transformation from rhetoric to reality? What are soldiers doing that's straight out of science fiction--and what's mostly hype? How do web services disrupt the business model of the military industrial complex?
What's happening to the culture of the armed forces as 20-something soldiers, used to blogging and digital cameras, confront a hierarchy that's barely comfortable typing? What does the recent spate of military blogs (and the occasional crackdown) tell us?
And lastly, how can small teams of programmers hack hardware and software for Navy Seals, Green Berets, and Delta Force operators--without getting crushed or exploited by Beltway Bandits? An insider shares all that can be revealed, subject to classification."
Military E-Tech
JC Herz, Author and Defense Researcher/Consultant
Date: Thursday, March 17
Time: 9:15am - 9:30am
Location: California Ballroom
TrackBackTrackBack
The United States Defense Department has a technology fetish and seemingly limitless amounts of money. How are emerging technologies (social software, untethered devices, web services, and computer games) being combined with the conventional superpower technology (satellites, sensors, aircraft carriers) to take military transformation from rhetoric to reality? What are soldiers doing that's straight out of science fiction--and what's mostly hype? How do web services disrupt the business model of the military industrial complex?
What's happening to the culture of the armed forces as 20-something soldiers, used to blogging and digital cameras, confront a hierarchy that's barely comfortable typing? What does the recent spate of military blogs (and the occasional crackdown) tell us?
And lastly, how can small teams of programmers hack hardware and software for Navy Seals, Green Berets, and Delta Force operators--without getting crushed or exploited by Beltway Bandits? An insider shares all that can be revealed, subject to classification."
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2005: "Tangible Computing
Chris Heathcote, Manager, User Experience, Nokia
Matt D. Jones, Concept Development Manager, Nokia
Date: Tuesday, March 15
Time: 1:45pm - 2:30pm
Location: California Ballroom C
TrackBackTrackBack
For over twenty years, computers have mainly been a rectangular window onto a digital world, controlled by keyboard and mouse. As we accelerate towards ubiquitous computing, the computer is all around us, and we need new ways of controlling all our intelligent devices, connecting them together to perform new tasks, and visualizing their complex interactions. Tangible computing proposes one method, moving back to a tight coupling of interaction and action, similar to that of the craftsman and their tools.
We are at a point where several pieces of tangible technology now exist at consumer prices, with enough processing power to facilitate new interaction paradigms. Eyetoy, smart whiteboards, and Tablet PCs enable direct manipulation of computer objects on screen. Cellphones are becoming equipped with accelerometers, compasses, and image processing.
In this session, Heathcote and Jones look at the next five years of tangible computing, showing prototypes, research, and Near Field Communications from Nokia. They will also consider the wider problems of tangible computing and explain some new ways of interacting, such as direct combination, haptics, and tilt/shake UIs."
Chris Heathcote, Manager, User Experience, Nokia
Matt D. Jones, Concept Development Manager, Nokia
Date: Tuesday, March 15
Time: 1:45pm - 2:30pm
Location: California Ballroom C
TrackBackTrackBack
For over twenty years, computers have mainly been a rectangular window onto a digital world, controlled by keyboard and mouse. As we accelerate towards ubiquitous computing, the computer is all around us, and we need new ways of controlling all our intelligent devices, connecting them together to perform new tasks, and visualizing their complex interactions. Tangible computing proposes one method, moving back to a tight coupling of interaction and action, similar to that of the craftsman and their tools.
We are at a point where several pieces of tangible technology now exist at consumer prices, with enough processing power to facilitate new interaction paradigms. Eyetoy, smart whiteboards, and Tablet PCs enable direct manipulation of computer objects on screen. Cellphones are becoming equipped with accelerometers, compasses, and image processing.
In this session, Heathcote and Jones look at the next five years of tangible computing, showing prototypes, research, and Near Field Communications from Nokia. They will also consider the wider problems of tangible computing and explain some new ways of interacting, such as direct combination, haptics, and tilt/shake UIs."
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2005: "Session
Life Hacks Live
Danny O'Brien, editor, Need To Know
Merlin Mann
Date: Thursday, March 17
Time: 11:45am - 12:30pm
Location: California Ballroom B
TrackBackTrackBack
Based on the research into the secret habits of 'overprolific alpha geeks,' last year's popular Life Hacks talk predicted a new software field: the spread of the time and info management 'power tools' hackers have learnt to build for themselves to a wider audience, who are increasingly struggling to handle the information overload that geeks have fought with for years.
Join Danny O'Brien and the smash hit blog '43 Folder''s Merlin Mann to see just how those predictions have come true on the Mac, Linux, and Windows platforms.
We'll take a whistle-stop tour through an amazing year in this exploding field: tracking apps that merge the geek's command-line power with GUI ease-of-use; the expansion of RSS and wiki techniques into frontline organizing apps; the spread of search and script automation onto the desktop; how plain text files are the new rock and roll.
But there's more: with live cameo appearances of alpha geeks (and their desktops), Mann and O'Brien will demo live some more of the secret tricks that have yet to reach a wider audience, and the applications and gadgets that even the super-organized are only now getting to play with. And, once again, the duo will pinpoint the market opportunities that exist for the toolmaker who wants to reach a growing new audience for their software."
Life Hacks Live
Danny O'Brien, editor, Need To Know
Merlin Mann
Date: Thursday, March 17
Time: 11:45am - 12:30pm
Location: California Ballroom B
TrackBackTrackBack
Based on the research into the secret habits of 'overprolific alpha geeks,' last year's popular Life Hacks talk predicted a new software field: the spread of the time and info management 'power tools' hackers have learnt to build for themselves to a wider audience, who are increasingly struggling to handle the information overload that geeks have fought with for years.
Join Danny O'Brien and the smash hit blog '43 Folder''s Merlin Mann to see just how those predictions have come true on the Mac, Linux, and Windows platforms.
We'll take a whistle-stop tour through an amazing year in this exploding field: tracking apps that merge the geek's command-line power with GUI ease-of-use; the expansion of RSS and wiki techniques into frontline organizing apps; the spread of search and script automation onto the desktop; how plain text files are the new rock and roll.
But there's more: with live cameo appearances of alpha geeks (and their desktops), Mann and O'Brien will demo live some more of the secret tricks that have yet to reach a wider audience, and the applications and gadgets that even the super-organized are only now getting to play with. And, once again, the duo will pinpoint the market opportunities that exist for the toolmaker who wants to reach a growing new audience for their software."
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2005: "How Sex Laws Incite Technological Change
Annalee Newitz, Policy Analyst, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Tuesday, March 15
Time: 2:35pm - 3:20pm
Location: California Ballroom B
TrackBackTrackBack
Why is sex-related technology always ahead of the curve? Why are internet pornographers early adopters? In a nutshell: sex laws. These ever-changing laws, which affect everything from online anonymity to content availability, fuel innovation in the so-called 'adult' industry by creating conditions where content delivery models must always outpace legal and social limitations.
Come find out more about how sex laws have enlarged the demand for technologies that provide anonymous, instant, mobile gratification while also stoking content-providers' desires for soft/hardware that can control access and quickly identify users by age and geographical location. Ultimately, geeks in other industries can learn from porn's misadventures because the laws that affect porn sites today will affect other cutting-edge players tomorrow."
Annalee Newitz, Policy Analyst, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Tuesday, March 15
Time: 2:35pm - 3:20pm
Location: California Ballroom B
TrackBackTrackBack
Why is sex-related technology always ahead of the curve? Why are internet pornographers early adopters? In a nutshell: sex laws. These ever-changing laws, which affect everything from online anonymity to content availability, fuel innovation in the so-called 'adult' industry by creating conditions where content delivery models must always outpace legal and social limitations.
Come find out more about how sex laws have enlarged the demand for technologies that provide anonymous, instant, mobile gratification while also stoking content-providers' desires for soft/hardware that can control access and quickly identify users by age and geographical location. Ultimately, geeks in other industries can learn from porn's misadventures because the laws that affect porn sites today will affect other cutting-edge players tomorrow."
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2005: "Folksonomy, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mess
Clay Shirky, Decentralization Writer/Consultant, shirky.com
Stewart Butterfield, President, Ludicorp
Joshua Schachter, del.icio.us
Jimmy Wales, President, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Date: Wednesday, March 16
Time: 10:00am - 10:30am
Location: California Ballroom B & C
TrackBackTrackBack
As Louis Armstrong said, 'Folk music is music by folks.' Similarly, folksonomy is organization by folks. The term, coined by Thomas Vander Wal, described the shared classification of a large body of material, often using simple tags in a flat namespace.
Folksonomy assumes you can get value from such shared classification without binding guidelines for how the material is classified, or professional standards for limiting who the classifiers are. Anyone who has ever taken Intro to Library Science can see why folksonomies are unworkable, which makes it all the more curious that they are working in places like del.icio.us, Flickr, and Wikipedia.
Come hear the founders of those three systems talk about the theory and practice of unconstrained classification as practiced on their sites, and their speculations about future direction and value to developers in adopting folksonomic strategies for large, distributed systems."
Clay Shirky, Decentralization Writer/Consultant, shirky.com
Stewart Butterfield, President, Ludicorp
Joshua Schachter, del.icio.us
Jimmy Wales, President, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Date: Wednesday, March 16
Time: 10:00am - 10:30am
Location: California Ballroom B & C
TrackBackTrackBack
As Louis Armstrong said, 'Folk music is music by folks.' Similarly, folksonomy is organization by folks. The term, coined by Thomas Vander Wal, described the shared classification of a large body of material, often using simple tags in a flat namespace.
Folksonomy assumes you can get value from such shared classification without binding guidelines for how the material is classified, or professional standards for limiting who the classifiers are. Anyone who has ever taken Intro to Library Science can see why folksonomies are unworkable, which makes it all the more curious that they are working in places like del.icio.us, Flickr, and Wikipedia.
Come hear the founders of those three systems talk about the theory and practice of unconstrained classification as practiced on their sites, and their speculations about future direction and value to developers in adopting folksonomic strategies for large, distributed systems."
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2005: "All Complex Ecosystems Have Parasites
Cory Doctorow, European Affairs Coordinator, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Wednesday, March 16
Time: 9:15am - 9:30am
Location: California Ballroom B & C
TrackBackTrackBack
From the copyfight to e-voting, from spamfighting to trusted computing, from Whuffie to digital identity, there is a pervasive thread running through those who would 'fix' the Internet: that it is BROKEN. The Internet isn't broken: successful models for adapting to the Internet treat its 'flaws' (unlimited copying, anonymity, unreliability) as features, not bugs. In this session, Doctorow runs down the state of the union in thinking across business, regulators, treaty organizations, lawmakers, lobbyists, technologists, and science fiction writers who are working to envision a 'better' Internet, and, you know, make fun of them."
Cory Doctorow, European Affairs Coordinator, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Wednesday, March 16
Time: 9:15am - 9:30am
Location: California Ballroom B & C
TrackBackTrackBack
From the copyfight to e-voting, from spamfighting to trusted computing, from Whuffie to digital identity, there is a pervasive thread running through those who would 'fix' the Internet: that it is BROKEN. The Internet isn't broken: successful models for adapting to the Internet treat its 'flaws' (unlimited copying, anonymity, unreliability) as features, not bugs. In this session, Doctorow runs down the state of the union in thinking across business, regulators, treaty organizations, lawmakers, lobbyists, technologists, and science fiction writers who are working to envision a 'better' Internet, and, you know, make fun of them."
Thursday, March 3
keys1: "The survival of Qwerty is surprising to economists only in the presence of a demonstrably superior rival. David uses Qwerty's survival to demonstrate the nature of path dependency, the importance of history for economists. and the inevitable oversimplification of reality imposed by theory. Several theorists use his historical evidence to claim empirical relevance for their versions of market failure. But on what foundation does all this depend? All we get from David is an undocumented assertion and some advertising copy."
Wednesday, February 9
Tuesday, January 18
Monday, January 17
How I Learned To Pitch - A Seattle Mariners coach teaches me to throw a change-up, and much more. By Eric Liu: "Over the last two and a half years, I traveled across the country in search of life-changing teachers and mentors from all different walks. I met race-car drivers, Indian potters, ballet dancers, rappers, research scientists, law professors, Montessori teachers, aerobatic pilots, master carpenters, and many others. The book that emerged from those travels is called Guiding Lights. "
Saturday, January 15
Friday, January 14
Thursday, December 23
The Graphing Calculator Story: " view the events as an experiment in subverting power structures. I had none of the traditional power over others that is inherent to the structure of corporations and bureaucracies. I had neither budget nor headcount. I answered to no one, and no one had to do anything I asked. Dozens of people collaborated spontaneously, motivated by loyalty, friendship, or the love of craftsmanship. We were hackers, creating something for the sheer joy of making it work."
Friday, December 17
All my neighbors have trampolines
When I first moved to the desert subdivisions of Utah, I noticed that
almost everyone who had children had a trampoline in their yard. Some of
them were used more than others.
So today I bought a used trampoline for $75 from a coworker. So much for
agency.
almost everyone who had children had a trampoline in their yard. Some of
them were used more than others.
So today I bought a used trampoline for $75 from a coworker. So much for
agency.
Thursday, December 9
rodcorp: How we work: Neil Gaiman, author: "'One reason I like writing by hand is it slows me down a little, but it also forces me to keep going: I'm never going to spend half a day noodling with a sentence to try and get it just right, if I'm using a pen. I'll do all that when I start typing.
"
"
rodcorp: How we work: James Ellroy, author
On what to write: "Don’t follow that bullshit of 'Write what you know.' Write what you like to read. Write what you want to read but no one else is writing."
On what to write: "Don’t follow that bullshit of 'Write what you know.' Write what you like to read. Write what you want to read but no one else is writing."
Wednesday, December 8
I need the following from everyone today or when your final project is due, 12/10/04 at noon in the box outside my office.
Please write a brief memo detailing the following:
- a description of your role(s) in your group project
- a description of how you did or did not fulfill that role
- an estimate of your total contribution to the project, expressed as a percentage
- A description of how you revised or changed your writing based on feedback from the class, the book, or any other source
- Tell me what you would do differently in terms of group work or the project as a whole
- What was the most useful thing you learned about technical communication?
Please write a brief memo detailing the following:
- a description of your role(s) in your group project
- a description of how you did or did not fulfill that role
- an estimate of your total contribution to the project, expressed as a percentage
- A description of how you revised or changed your writing based on feedback from the class, the book, or any other source
- Tell me what you would do differently in terms of group work or the project as a whole
- What was the most useful thing you learned about technical communication?
Your portfolio is due Friday, December 10th at noon. Please place it in the box outside my office (LA 109h).
It should be in a folder or *narrow* three ring binder. You should include your best three drafts of our assignment, and a letter of introduction. The letter of introduction should not exceed two pages (unless you absolutely *have* to write more) and address the following:
1. What is your favorite paper, and why?
2. How did you initially write your papers?
3. How did you revise them, and why?
4. Anything else I should know about your writing in this class.
Thanks!
It should be in a folder or *narrow* three ring binder. You should include your best three drafts of our assignment, and a letter of introduction. The letter of introduction should not exceed two pages (unless you absolutely *have* to write more) and address the following:
1. What is your favorite paper, and why?
2. How did you initially write your papers?
3. How did you revise them, and why?
4. Anything else I should know about your writing in this class.
Thanks!
KAYA
Speaking of images, KAYA is a completely computer-generated person. It's quite creepy--check it out. Now, instead of airbrushing real people, which we have discussed before, "they" can generate completely artificial people that seem completely real. Almost. What do you think of that?
Speaking of images, KAYA is a completely computer-generated person. It's quite creepy--check it out. Now, instead of airbrushing real people, which we have discussed before, "they" can generate completely artificial people that seem completely real. Almost. What do you think of that?
Ask MetaFilter | Community Weblog: "'I'm filled with existential dread at the fact that your gramdmother withered so horribly with Alzheimer's that she could no longer recognize her own child, and am sorry for the howling abyss of grief you're going through, compounded by your impending divorce' may have been more factually honest in my case a few years ago, but I don't think you can truly fault anyone for the fact that they don't exactly make greeting cards with that sentiment."
Tuesday, December 7
From the New York Times of December 7th:
December 7, 2004
What Corporate America Can't Build: A Sentence
By SAM DILLON
LOOMINGTON, Ill. - R. Craig Hogan, a former university professor who heads an online school for business writing here, received an anguished e-mail message recently from a prospective student.
"i need help," said the message, which was devoid of punctuation. "i am writing a essay on writing i work for this company and my boss want me to help improve the workers writing skills can yall help me with some information thank you".
Hundreds of inquiries from managers and executives seeking to improve their own or their workers' writing pop into Dr. Hogan's computer in-basket each month, he says, describing a number that has surged as e-mail has replaced the phone for much workplace communication. Millions of employees must write more frequently on the job than previously. And many are making a hash of it.
"E-mail is a party to which English teachers have not been invited," Dr. Hogan said. "It has companies tearing their hair out."
A recent survey of 120 American corporations reached a similar conclusion. The study, by the National Commission on Writing, a panel established by the College Board, concluded that a third of employees in the nation's blue-chip companies wrote poorly and that businesses were spending as much as $3.1 billion annually on remedial training.
The problem shows up not only in e-mail but also in reports and other texts, the commission said.
"It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy," said Susan Traiman, a director at the Business Roundtable, an association of leading chief executives whose corporations were surveyed in the study. "But they need people who can write clearly, and many employees and applicants fall short of that standard."
Millions of inscrutable e-mail messages are clogging corporate computers by setting off requests for clarification, and many of the requests, in turn, are also chaotically written, resulting in whole cycles of confusion.
Here is one from a systems analyst to her supervisor at a high-tech corporation based in Palo Alto, Calif.: "I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information ... However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'."
The incoherence of that message persuaded the analyst's employers that she needed remedial training.
"The more electronic and global we get, the less important the spoken word has become, and in e-mail clarity is critical," said Sean Phillips, recruitment director at another Silicon Valley corporation, Applera, a supplier of equipment for life science research, where most employees have advanced degrees. "Considering how highly educated our people are, many can't write clearly in their day-to-day work."
Some $2.9 billion of the $3.1 billion the National Commission on Writing estimates that corporations spend each year on remedial training goes to help current employees, with the rest spent on new hires. The corporations surveyed were in the mining, construction, manufacturing, transportation, finance, insurance, real estate and service industries, but not in wholesale, retail, agriculture, forestry or fishing, the commission said. Nor did the estimate include spending by government agencies to improve the writing of public servants.
An entire educational industry has developed to offer remedial writing instruction to adults, with hundreds of public and private universities, for-profit schools and freelance teachers offering evening classes as well as workshops, video and online courses in business and technical writing.
Kathy Keenan, a onetime legal proofreader who teaches business writing at the University of California Extension, Santa Cruz, said she sought to dissuade students from sending business messages in the crude shorthand they learned to tap out on their pagers as teenagers.
"hI KATHY i am sending u the assignmnet again," one student wrote to her recently. "i had sent you the assignment earlier but i didnt get a respond. If u get this assgnment could u please respond . thanking u for ur cooperation."
Most of her students are midcareer professionals in high-tech industries, Ms. Keenan said.
The Sharonview Federal Credit Union in Charlotte, N.C., asked about 15 employees to take a remedial writing course. Angela Tate, a mortgage processor, said the course eventually bolstered her confidence in composing e-mail, which has replaced much work she previously did by phone, but it was a daunting experience, since she had been out of school for years. "It was a challenge all the way through," Ms. Tate said.
Even C.E.O.'s need writing help, said Roger S. Peterson, a freelance writer in Rocklin, Calif., who frequently coaches executives. "Many of these guys write in inflated language that desperately needs a laxative," Mr. Peterson said, and not a few are defensive. "They're in denial, and who's going to argue with the boss?"
But some realize their shortcomings and pay Mr. Peterson to help them improve. Don Morrison, a onetime auditor at Deloitte & Touche who has built a successful consulting business, is among them.
"I was too wordy," Mr. Morrison said. "I liked long, convoluted passages rather than simple four-word sentences. And I had a predilection for underlining words and throwing in multiple exclamation points. Finally Roger threatened to rip the exclamation key off my keyboard."
Exclamation points were an issue when Linda Landis Andrews, who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, led a workshop in May for midcareer executives at an automotive corporation based in the Midwest. Their exasperated supervisor had insisted that the men improve their writing.
"I get a memo from them and cannot figure out what they're trying to say," the supervisor wrote Ms. Andrews.
When at her request the executives produced letters they had written to a supplier who had failed to deliver parts on time, she was horrified to see that tone-deaf writing had turned a minor business snarl into a corporate confrontation moving toward litigation.
"They had allowed a hostile tone to creep into the letters," she said. "They didn't seem to understand that those letters were just toxic."
"People think that throwing multiple exclamation points into a business letter will make their point forcefully," Ms. Andrews said. "I tell them they're allowed two exclamation points in their whole life."
Not everyone agrees. Kaitlin Duck Sherwood of San Francisco, author of a popular how-to manual on effective e-mail, argued in an interview that exclamation points could help convey intonation, thereby avoiding confusion in some e-mail.
"If you want to indicate stronger emphasis, use all capital letters and toss in some extra exclamation points," Ms. Sherwood advises in her guide, available at www.webfoot.com, where she offers a vivid example:
">Should I boost the power on the thrombo?
"NO!!!! If you turn it up to eleven, you'll overheat the motors, and IT MIGHT EXPLODE!!"
Dr. Hogan, who founded his online Business Writing Center a decade ago after years of teaching composition at Illinois State University here, says that the use of multiple exclamation points and other nonstandard punctuation like the :-) symbol, are fine for personal e-mail but that companies have erred by allowing experimental writing devices to flood into business writing.
He scrolled through his computer, calling up examples of incoherent correspondence sent to him by prospective students.
"E-mails - that are received from Jim and I are not either getting open or not being responded to," the purchasing manager at a construction company in Virginia wrote in one memorandum that Dr. Hogan called to his screen. "I wanted to let everyone know that when Jim and I are sending out e-mails (example- who is to be picking up parcels) I am wanting for who ever the e-mail goes to to respond back to the e-mail. Its important that Jim and I knows that the person, intended, had read the e-mail. This gives an acknowledgment that the task is being completed. I am asking for a simple little 2 sec. Note that says "ok", "I got it", or Alright."
The construction company's human resources director forwarded the memorandum to Dr. Hogan while enrolling the purchasing manager in a writing course.
"E-mail has just erupted like a weed, and instead of considering what to say when they write, people now just let thoughts drool out onto the screen," Dr. Hogan said. "It has companies at their wits' end."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top
December 7, 2004
What Corporate America Can't Build: A Sentence
By SAM DILLON
LOOMINGTON, Ill. - R. Craig Hogan, a former university professor who heads an online school for business writing here, received an anguished e-mail message recently from a prospective student.
"i need help," said the message, which was devoid of punctuation. "i am writing a essay on writing i work for this company and my boss want me to help improve the workers writing skills can yall help me with some information thank you".
Hundreds of inquiries from managers and executives seeking to improve their own or their workers' writing pop into Dr. Hogan's computer in-basket each month, he says, describing a number that has surged as e-mail has replaced the phone for much workplace communication. Millions of employees must write more frequently on the job than previously. And many are making a hash of it.
"E-mail is a party to which English teachers have not been invited," Dr. Hogan said. "It has companies tearing their hair out."
A recent survey of 120 American corporations reached a similar conclusion. The study, by the National Commission on Writing, a panel established by the College Board, concluded that a third of employees in the nation's blue-chip companies wrote poorly and that businesses were spending as much as $3.1 billion annually on remedial training.
The problem shows up not only in e-mail but also in reports and other texts, the commission said.
"It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy," said Susan Traiman, a director at the Business Roundtable, an association of leading chief executives whose corporations were surveyed in the study. "But they need people who can write clearly, and many employees and applicants fall short of that standard."
Millions of inscrutable e-mail messages are clogging corporate computers by setting off requests for clarification, and many of the requests, in turn, are also chaotically written, resulting in whole cycles of confusion.
Here is one from a systems analyst to her supervisor at a high-tech corporation based in Palo Alto, Calif.: "I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information ... However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'."
The incoherence of that message persuaded the analyst's employers that she needed remedial training.
"The more electronic and global we get, the less important the spoken word has become, and in e-mail clarity is critical," said Sean Phillips, recruitment director at another Silicon Valley corporation, Applera, a supplier of equipment for life science research, where most employees have advanced degrees. "Considering how highly educated our people are, many can't write clearly in their day-to-day work."
Some $2.9 billion of the $3.1 billion the National Commission on Writing estimates that corporations spend each year on remedial training goes to help current employees, with the rest spent on new hires. The corporations surveyed were in the mining, construction, manufacturing, transportation, finance, insurance, real estate and service industries, but not in wholesale, retail, agriculture, forestry or fishing, the commission said. Nor did the estimate include spending by government agencies to improve the writing of public servants.
An entire educational industry has developed to offer remedial writing instruction to adults, with hundreds of public and private universities, for-profit schools and freelance teachers offering evening classes as well as workshops, video and online courses in business and technical writing.
Kathy Keenan, a onetime legal proofreader who teaches business writing at the University of California Extension, Santa Cruz, said she sought to dissuade students from sending business messages in the crude shorthand they learned to tap out on their pagers as teenagers.
"hI KATHY i am sending u the assignmnet again," one student wrote to her recently. "i had sent you the assignment earlier but i didnt get a respond. If u get this assgnment could u please respond . thanking u for ur cooperation."
Most of her students are midcareer professionals in high-tech industries, Ms. Keenan said.
The Sharonview Federal Credit Union in Charlotte, N.C., asked about 15 employees to take a remedial writing course. Angela Tate, a mortgage processor, said the course eventually bolstered her confidence in composing e-mail, which has replaced much work she previously did by phone, but it was a daunting experience, since she had been out of school for years. "It was a challenge all the way through," Ms. Tate said.
Even C.E.O.'s need writing help, said Roger S. Peterson, a freelance writer in Rocklin, Calif., who frequently coaches executives. "Many of these guys write in inflated language that desperately needs a laxative," Mr. Peterson said, and not a few are defensive. "They're in denial, and who's going to argue with the boss?"
But some realize their shortcomings and pay Mr. Peterson to help them improve. Don Morrison, a onetime auditor at Deloitte & Touche who has built a successful consulting business, is among them.
"I was too wordy," Mr. Morrison said. "I liked long, convoluted passages rather than simple four-word sentences. And I had a predilection for underlining words and throwing in multiple exclamation points. Finally Roger threatened to rip the exclamation key off my keyboard."
Exclamation points were an issue when Linda Landis Andrews, who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, led a workshop in May for midcareer executives at an automotive corporation based in the Midwest. Their exasperated supervisor had insisted that the men improve their writing.
"I get a memo from them and cannot figure out what they're trying to say," the supervisor wrote Ms. Andrews.
When at her request the executives produced letters they had written to a supplier who had failed to deliver parts on time, she was horrified to see that tone-deaf writing had turned a minor business snarl into a corporate confrontation moving toward litigation.
"They had allowed a hostile tone to creep into the letters," she said. "They didn't seem to understand that those letters were just toxic."
"People think that throwing multiple exclamation points into a business letter will make their point forcefully," Ms. Andrews said. "I tell them they're allowed two exclamation points in their whole life."
Not everyone agrees. Kaitlin Duck Sherwood of San Francisco, author of a popular how-to manual on effective e-mail, argued in an interview that exclamation points could help convey intonation, thereby avoiding confusion in some e-mail.
"If you want to indicate stronger emphasis, use all capital letters and toss in some extra exclamation points," Ms. Sherwood advises in her guide, available at www.webfoot.com, where she offers a vivid example:
">Should I boost the power on the thrombo?
"NO!!!! If you turn it up to eleven, you'll overheat the motors, and IT MIGHT EXPLODE!!"
Dr. Hogan, who founded his online Business Writing Center a decade ago after years of teaching composition at Illinois State University here, says that the use of multiple exclamation points and other nonstandard punctuation like the :-) symbol, are fine for personal e-mail but that companies have erred by allowing experimental writing devices to flood into business writing.
He scrolled through his computer, calling up examples of incoherent correspondence sent to him by prospective students.
"E-mails - that are received from Jim and I are not either getting open or not being responded to," the purchasing manager at a construction company in Virginia wrote in one memorandum that Dr. Hogan called to his screen. "I wanted to let everyone know that when Jim and I are sending out e-mails (example- who is to be picking up parcels) I am wanting for who ever the e-mail goes to to respond back to the e-mail. Its important that Jim and I knows that the person, intended, had read the e-mail. This gives an acknowledgment that the task is being completed. I am asking for a simple little 2 sec. Note that says "ok", "I got it", or Alright."
The construction company's human resources director forwarded the memorandum to Dr. Hogan while enrolling the purchasing manager in a writing course.
"E-mail has just erupted like a weed, and instead of considering what to say when they write, people now just let thoughts drool out onto the screen," Dr. Hogan said. "It has companies at their wits' end."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top
Monday, December 6
The Age of the Essay: "No Defense
The other big difference between a real essay and the things they make you write in school is that a real essay doesn't take a position and then defend it. That principle, like the idea that we ought to be writing about literature, turns out to be another intellectual hangover of long forgotten origins."
The other big difference between a real essay and the things they make you write in school is that a real essay doesn't take a position and then defend it. That principle, like the idea that we ought to be writing about literature, turns out to be another intellectual hangover of long forgotten origins."
Download :: Portable Firefox 1.0 (USB Drive-Friendly) :: Mozilla Stuff :: JohnHaller.com
Nice if you want to use firefox in a lab setting.
Nice if you want to use firefox in a lab setting.
The Age of the Essay: "One of the keys to coolness is to avoid situations where inexperience may make you look foolish. If you want to find surprises you should do the opposite. Study lots of different things, because some of the most interesting surprises are unexpected connections between different fields. For example, jam, bacon, pickles, and cheese, which are among the most pleasing of foods, were all originally intended as methods of preservation. And so were books and paintings."
Sunday, December 5
The Age of the Essay: "September 2004
Remember the essays you had to write in high school? Topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion. The conclusion being, say, that Ahab in Moby Dick was a Christ-like figure.
Oy. So I'm going to try to give the other side of the story: what an essay really is, and how you write one. Or at least, how I write one.
"
Remember the essays you had to write in high school? Topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion. The conclusion being, say, that Ahab in Moby Dick was a Christ-like figure.
Oy. So I'm going to try to give the other side of the story: what an essay really is, and how you write one. Or at least, how I write one.
"
Saturday, December 4
Microsoft Word Tips and Tutorials: "Microsoft Word Tips and Tutorials
Tech support, tips, and tutorials for Microsoft Word software especially instructions for doing fancy or complex layouts and desktop publishing with Word."
Tech support, tips, and tutorials for Microsoft Word software especially instructions for doing fancy or complex layouts and desktop publishing with Word."
Friday, December 3
Thursday, December 2
Wednesday, December 1
Barking in Dogs: "I took ten adult dogs of six different breeds and recorded barking in three different test situations-a disturbance situation where a stranger rang the doorbell, an isolation situation where the dog was locked outside isolated from its owner, and a play situation where either two dogs or human and dog played together. "
Monday, November 29
English 1010
Image analysis
The majority of advertisements have most things in common, for example very seldom will you find an ad where ugly people are representing the product being sold. The four companies that I have selected to look at are the epitome of misrepresentation. From what I already know about the three and the types of people that purchase their products the four companies that are being looked at are Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy and Eddie Bauer.
Gap- The advertisement that I decided on is an image of a woman dressed in winter clothing and wearing a rather large hat with two men, one in front and one in back. The man in back is black and the man upfront is white. The woman is sitting in the middle and it appears as though the she is in a wind tunnel, her hair is blowing and she has to hold her hat on. The men on the other hand seem to be rather unaffected by the wind storm that is blowing through. The woman also has her mouth open and seems to be falling backwards. The man in back is the only person looking into the camera while like I said the woman is falling backward so she is looking at the ceiling and I get the impression that the gentleman in front is in deep thought about something. The color in this image is very dull and mostly white and grey.
What I perceived from this image is that the woman in the middle is in her own little world and she does not seem to notice what is going on around her even though there are two very attractive men sitting around her she is in charge of the situation and she has some sort of strange power over these two men. I am guessing that the two men in the picture are probably gay but that is my opinion. Gap targets a huge variety of people, I would be willing to say that over 70 percent of Americans own or have bought something from Gap. This image tells me that yes it is possible to be good attractive no matter what color or sexual preference you may be. I do know that this clothing is some what affordable and fits all sizes, which is why they get such a wide variety of costumers.
Old Navy- Image, this is a picture of a young girl wearing winter clothing she has her hair done in two long pony tails like Pippy Long Stocking. She is jumping in the air with her legs kicked back behind her and her arms are thrown straight out from her body. It looks as if this young lady is extremely happy to be doing what she is doing, smiling the way she is. The colors in this image are remarkable. Very bright, brilliant and vivid she has a dazzling white smile and her boots are even pink.
One might get the impression that these cloths not only provide you with protection from the elements but freedom from the world. They seem show that one can wear their personality on the outside and show off to everyone that I am a cheerful person. I also get the impression that these cloths might make me young again that these cloths will some how turn back the hands of time and I will be a child again. Old navy is very bold in their advertising and clothing, everything is so brightly colored that I would be embarrassed to walk down the street in one of their sweaters for fear that someone might mistake me for some kind of exotic bird. The product targeting for old navy is more for the average middle class mother who thinks she is buying her children something nice but in reality she is buying them a free ticket to get beat up at school.
Banana Republic- Picture this, a young Asian woman of about 25 years who seems to be strutting down the street. She is wearing high heeled black leather boots that go up to about her knee. A long white coat flows behind her as she strides her glossy dark hair is streams off her head. Her clothing is casual yet professional, the coloration is especially noticeable. the look on her face shows that she can be sexy and still in charge.
When I see this picture it reminds me of all those girls in high school who knew they were good looking and would use it to their advantage. When I hear the name Banana Republic for some reason I think BYU I do not know why this is maybe it is because BYU is all about competition everyone has to be better than everyone else. The type of ads this company puts out are defiantly directed toward people who are looking for the more casual yet sophisticated look. There is one catch though this clothing is pretty pricy.
Eddie Bauer- The weather is cold and you need a coat to wear that will keep you all warm and cozy. The image on the front cover of the Eddie Bauer catalog is of a woman standing outside in the cold buttoning up her down coat and holding a pair of gloves in her hand. She is staring directly into the camera with her big blue eyes. Her coat is a faded whit color that contrasts with the surrounding snow.
What this image says to me is that not only that this coat will keep me warm but it also offers a sense of protection and security. The woman in the picture is not young she is a middle aged woman still very beautiful but more mature than the other models. I can see why people would want to buy clothing from this company; it is a more stylish grown up look. Eddie Bauer is more than just a line of clothing it is an entire image, the type of people that are targeted in the majority of their ads are upper middle class middle aged people. The clothing itself is not flashy it does not stand out as something different, the fact that you are wearing the name Eddie Bauer offers all the comfort you will need. When you have on a pear of Eddie Bauer jeans you can walk down the street feeling much better about yourself. Style is all in the name.
Image analysis
The majority of advertisements have most things in common, for example very seldom will you find an ad where ugly people are representing the product being sold. The four companies that I have selected to look at are the epitome of misrepresentation. From what I already know about the three and the types of people that purchase their products the four companies that are being looked at are Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy and Eddie Bauer.
Gap- The advertisement that I decided on is an image of a woman dressed in winter clothing and wearing a rather large hat with two men, one in front and one in back. The man in back is black and the man upfront is white. The woman is sitting in the middle and it appears as though the she is in a wind tunnel, her hair is blowing and she has to hold her hat on. The men on the other hand seem to be rather unaffected by the wind storm that is blowing through. The woman also has her mouth open and seems to be falling backwards. The man in back is the only person looking into the camera while like I said the woman is falling backward so she is looking at the ceiling and I get the impression that the gentleman in front is in deep thought about something. The color in this image is very dull and mostly white and grey.
What I perceived from this image is that the woman in the middle is in her own little world and she does not seem to notice what is going on around her even though there are two very attractive men sitting around her she is in charge of the situation and she has some sort of strange power over these two men. I am guessing that the two men in the picture are probably gay but that is my opinion. Gap targets a huge variety of people, I would be willing to say that over 70 percent of Americans own or have bought something from Gap. This image tells me that yes it is possible to be good attractive no matter what color or sexual preference you may be. I do know that this clothing is some what affordable and fits all sizes, which is why they get such a wide variety of costumers.
Old Navy- Image, this is a picture of a young girl wearing winter clothing she has her hair done in two long pony tails like Pippy Long Stocking. She is jumping in the air with her legs kicked back behind her and her arms are thrown straight out from her body. It looks as if this young lady is extremely happy to be doing what she is doing, smiling the way she is. The colors in this image are remarkable. Very bright, brilliant and vivid she has a dazzling white smile and her boots are even pink.
One might get the impression that these cloths not only provide you with protection from the elements but freedom from the world. They seem show that one can wear their personality on the outside and show off to everyone that I am a cheerful person. I also get the impression that these cloths might make me young again that these cloths will some how turn back the hands of time and I will be a child again. Old navy is very bold in their advertising and clothing, everything is so brightly colored that I would be embarrassed to walk down the street in one of their sweaters for fear that someone might mistake me for some kind of exotic bird. The product targeting for old navy is more for the average middle class mother who thinks she is buying her children something nice but in reality she is buying them a free ticket to get beat up at school.
Banana Republic- Picture this, a young Asian woman of about 25 years who seems to be strutting down the street. She is wearing high heeled black leather boots that go up to about her knee. A long white coat flows behind her as she strides her glossy dark hair is streams off her head. Her clothing is casual yet professional, the coloration is especially noticeable. the look on her face shows that she can be sexy and still in charge.
When I see this picture it reminds me of all those girls in high school who knew they were good looking and would use it to their advantage. When I hear the name Banana Republic for some reason I think BYU I do not know why this is maybe it is because BYU is all about competition everyone has to be better than everyone else. The type of ads this company puts out are defiantly directed toward people who are looking for the more casual yet sophisticated look. There is one catch though this clothing is pretty pricy.
Eddie Bauer- The weather is cold and you need a coat to wear that will keep you all warm and cozy. The image on the front cover of the Eddie Bauer catalog is of a woman standing outside in the cold buttoning up her down coat and holding a pair of gloves in her hand. She is staring directly into the camera with her big blue eyes. Her coat is a faded whit color that contrasts with the surrounding snow.
What this image says to me is that not only that this coat will keep me warm but it also offers a sense of protection and security. The woman in the picture is not young she is a middle aged woman still very beautiful but more mature than the other models. I can see why people would want to buy clothing from this company; it is a more stylish grown up look. Eddie Bauer is more than just a line of clothing it is an entire image, the type of people that are targeted in the majority of their ads are upper middle class middle aged people. The clothing itself is not flashy it does not stand out as something different, the fact that you are wearing the name Eddie Bauer offers all the comfort you will need. When you have on a pear of Eddie Bauer jeans you can walk down the street feeling much better about yourself. Style is all in the name.
Sunday, November 28
Coping with a life full of pain / Plaintiff uses medical marijuana every 2 hours, but doesn't get high: "Partially paralyzed, in constant pain from multiple disorders and desperate for help after trying nearly three dozen doctor-prescribed medications, the 30-year-old woman, a product of a conservative upbringing that made her recoil from illegal drugs, decided pot 'might be my last shot.''
It worked. Raich regained her appetite, felt less pain, got out of her wheelchair 18 months later and embarked on a career of advocacy for herself and other patients that has led her to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Monday, the court will hear the case of Ashcroft vs. Raich, a clash of federal and state powers that could determine the future of medical marijuana in the United States. "
It worked. Raich regained her appetite, felt less pain, got out of her wheelchair 18 months later and embarked on a career of advocacy for herself and other patients that has led her to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Monday, the court will hear the case of Ashcroft vs. Raich, a clash of federal and state powers that could determine the future of medical marijuana in the United States. "
Monday, November 22
Thursday, November 18
This is really a great article on plagiarism and art. Please read it for class on Monday.
The New Yorker
Not long after I learned about “Frozen,” I went to see a friend of mine who works in the music industry. We sat in his living room on the Upper East Side, facing each other in easy chairs, as he worked his way through a mountain of CDs. He played “Angel,” by the reggae singer Shaggy, and then “The Joker,” by the Steve Miller Band, and told me to listen very carefully to the similarity in bass lines. He played Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and then Muddy Waters’s “You Need Love,” to show the extent to which Led Zeppelin had mined the blues for inspiration. He played “Twice My Age,” by Shabba Ranks and Krystal, and then the saccharine seventies pop standard “Seasons in the Sun,” until I could hear the echoes of the second song in the first. He played “Last Christmas,” by Wham!, followed by Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” to explain why Manilow might have been startled when he first heard that song, and then “Joanna,” by Kool and the Gang, because, in a different way, “Last Christmas” was an homage to Kool and the Gang as well. “That sound you hear in Nirvana,” my friend said at one point, “that soft and then loud, kind of exploding thing, a lot of that was inspired by the Pixies. Yet Kurt Cobain”—Nirvana’s lead singer and songwriter—“was such a genius that he managed to make it his own. And ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’?”—here he was referring to perhaps the best-known Nirvana song. “That’s Boston’s ‘More Than a Feeling.’” He began to hum the riff of the Boston hit, and said, “The first time I heard ‘Teen Spirit,’ I said, ‘That guitar lick is from “More Than a Feeling.”’ But it was different—it was urgent and brilliant and new.”
He played another CD. It was Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” a huge hit from the nineteen-seventies. The chorus has a distinctive, catchy hook—the kind of tune that millions of Americans probably hummed in the shower the year it came out. Then he put on “Taj Mahal,” by the Brazilian artist Jorge Ben Jor, which was recorded several years before the Rod Stewart song. In his twenties, my friend was a d.j. at various downtown clubs, and at some point he’d become interested in world music. “I caught it back then,” he said. A small, sly smile spread across his face. The opening bars of “Taj Mahal” were very South American, a world away from what we had just listened to. And then I heard it. It was so obvious and unambiguous that I laughed out loud; virtually note for note, it was the hook from “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” It was possible that Rod Stewart had independently come up with that riff, because resemblance is not proof of influence. It was also possible that he’d been in Brazil, listened to some local music, and liked what he heard."
The New Yorker
Not long after I learned about “Frozen,” I went to see a friend of mine who works in the music industry. We sat in his living room on the Upper East Side, facing each other in easy chairs, as he worked his way through a mountain of CDs. He played “Angel,” by the reggae singer Shaggy, and then “The Joker,” by the Steve Miller Band, and told me to listen very carefully to the similarity in bass lines. He played Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and then Muddy Waters’s “You Need Love,” to show the extent to which Led Zeppelin had mined the blues for inspiration. He played “Twice My Age,” by Shabba Ranks and Krystal, and then the saccharine seventies pop standard “Seasons in the Sun,” until I could hear the echoes of the second song in the first. He played “Last Christmas,” by Wham!, followed by Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” to explain why Manilow might have been startled when he first heard that song, and then “Joanna,” by Kool and the Gang, because, in a different way, “Last Christmas” was an homage to Kool and the Gang as well. “That sound you hear in Nirvana,” my friend said at one point, “that soft and then loud, kind of exploding thing, a lot of that was inspired by the Pixies. Yet Kurt Cobain”—Nirvana’s lead singer and songwriter—“was such a genius that he managed to make it his own. And ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’?”—here he was referring to perhaps the best-known Nirvana song. “That’s Boston’s ‘More Than a Feeling.’” He began to hum the riff of the Boston hit, and said, “The first time I heard ‘Teen Spirit,’ I said, ‘That guitar lick is from “More Than a Feeling.”’ But it was different—it was urgent and brilliant and new.”
He played another CD. It was Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” a huge hit from the nineteen-seventies. The chorus has a distinctive, catchy hook—the kind of tune that millions of Americans probably hummed in the shower the year it came out. Then he put on “Taj Mahal,” by the Brazilian artist Jorge Ben Jor, which was recorded several years before the Rod Stewart song. In his twenties, my friend was a d.j. at various downtown clubs, and at some point he’d become interested in world music. “I caught it back then,” he said. A small, sly smile spread across his face. The opening bars of “Taj Mahal” were very South American, a world away from what we had just listened to. And then I heard it. It was so obvious and unambiguous that I laughed out loud; virtually note for note, it was the hook from “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” It was possible that Rod Stewart had independently come up with that riff, because resemblance is not proof of influence. It was also possible that he’d been in Brazil, listened to some local music, and liked what he heard."
Wednesday, November 17
Design as Communication: "Later, as I thought back about that morning shower, I realized I had been communicating with the designers. 'Grab here,' the bar was telling me. 'Put the soap on me,' the wire rack soap dish screamed. 'Here are your towels,' said the horizontal bars at the rear wall, at the end of the tub, conveniently stocked with towels. 'Thank you, yes, and no, not for the soap,' I was replying. I even spoke some of these comments aloud. To whom was I speaking?"
Tuesday, November 16
Monday, November 15
Friday, November 12
Thursday, November 11
Harvard Gazette: Freedom squelches terrorist violence: "A John F. Kennedy School of Government researcher has cast doubt on the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty, finding instead that terrorist violence is related to a nation's level of political freedom.
Associate Professor of Public Policy Alberto Abadie examined data on terrorism and variables such as wealth, political freedom, geography, and ethnic fractionalization for nations that have been targets of terrorist attacks.
Abadie, whose work was published in the Kennedy School's Faculty Research Working Paper Series, included both acts of international and domestic terrorism in his analysis.
Though after the 9/11 attacks most of the work in this area has focused on international terrorism, Abadie said terrorism originating within the country where the attacks occur actually makes up the bulk of terrorist acts each year. According to statistics from the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base for 2003, which Abadie cites in his analysis, there were 1,536 reports of domestic terrorism worldwide, compared with just 240 incidents of international terrorism."
Associate Professor of Public Policy Alberto Abadie examined data on terrorism and variables such as wealth, political freedom, geography, and ethnic fractionalization for nations that have been targets of terrorist attacks.
Abadie, whose work was published in the Kennedy School's Faculty Research Working Paper Series, included both acts of international and domestic terrorism in his analysis.
Though after the 9/11 attacks most of the work in this area has focused on international terrorism, Abadie said terrorism originating within the country where the attacks occur actually makes up the bulk of terrorist acts each year. According to statistics from the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base for 2003, which Abadie cites in his analysis, there were 1,536 reports of domestic terrorism worldwide, compared with just 240 incidents of international terrorism."
frontline: the persuaders: neuromarketing | PBS: "Getting an update on research is one thing; for decades, marketers have relied on behavioral studies for guidance. But some companies are taking the practice several steps further, commissioning their own fMRI studies � la Montague's test. In a study of men's reactions to cars, Daimler-Chrysler has found that sportier models activate the brain's reward centers -- the same areas that light up in response to alcohol and drugs -- as well as activating the area in the brain that recognizes faces, which may explain people's tendency to anthropomorphize their cars. Steven Quartz, a scientist at Stanford University, is currently conducting similar research on movie trailers. And in the age of poll-taking and smear campaigns, political advertising is also getting in on the game. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have found that Republicans and Democrats react differently to campaign ads showing images of the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks. Those ads cause the part of the brain associated with fear to light up more vividly in Democrats than in Republicans."
Wednesday, November 10
onfocus.com | the persuaders: "Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commerical interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly."
Tuesday, November 9
gladwell dot com: Tipping Point - Why do we love tall men?: "On a conscious level, I'm sure that all of us don't think that we treat tall people any differently from short people. But there's plenty of evidence to suggest that height--particularly in men--does trigger a certain set of very positive, unconscious associations. I polled about half of the companies on the Fortune 500 list--the largest corporations in the United States--asking each company questions about its CEOs. The heads of big companies are, as I'm sure comes as no surprise to anyone, overwhelmingly white men, which undoubtedly reflects some kind of implicit bias. But they are also virtually all tall: In my sample, I found that on average CEOs were just a shade under six feet. Given that the average American male is 5'9 that means that CEOs, as a group, have about three inches on the rest of their sex."
gladwell dot com: Tipping Point - The Mysteries of Mind-Reading: "Much of our understanding of mind-reading from two remarkable scientists, a teacher and his pupil: Silvan Tomkins and Paul Ekman. Tomkins was the teacher. He was born in Philadelphia, at the turn of the last century, the son of a dentist from Russia. He was short, and thick around the middle, with a wild mane of white hair and huge black plastic-rimmed glasses. He taught psychology at Princeton and Rutgers, and was the author of 'Affect, Imagery, Consciousness,' a four-volume work so dense that its readers were evenly divided between those who understood it and thought it was brilliant and those who did not understand it and thought it was brilliant."
gladwell dot com: Blink: "Where did you get the idea for 'Blink'?
Believe it or not, it's because I decided, a few years ago, to grow my hair long. If you look at the author photo on my last book, 'The Tipping Point,' you'll see that it used to be cut very short and conservatively. But, on a whim, I let it grow wild, as it had been when I was teenager. Immediately, in very small but significant ways, my life changed. I started getting speeding tickets all the time--and I had never gotten any before. I started getting pulled out of airport security lines for special attention. And one day, while walking along 14th Street in downtown Manhattan, a police van pulled up on the sidewalk, and three officers jumped out. "
Believe it or not, it's because I decided, a few years ago, to grow my hair long. If you look at the author photo on my last book, 'The Tipping Point,' you'll see that it used to be cut very short and conservatively. But, on a whim, I let it grow wild, as it had been when I was teenager. Immediately, in very small but significant ways, my life changed. I started getting speeding tickets all the time--and I had never gotten any before. I started getting pulled out of airport security lines for special attention. And one day, while walking along 14th Street in downtown Manhattan, a police van pulled up on the sidewalk, and three officers jumped out. "
Sunday, November 7
Google Job Opportunities: Technical Writing: "Associate Technical Writer
Position available in Mountain View, CA.
Bring your editing/writing and organizational skills to Google and help us revolutionize search technology! Working in Software Engineering, you will edit Google's internal documentation efforts and assist with documentation processes and organization. "
Position available in Mountain View, CA.
Bring your editing/writing and organizational skills to Google and help us revolutionize search technology! Working in Software Engineering, you will edit Google's internal documentation efforts and assist with documentation processes and organization. "
Friday, November 5
English 1010
Visual Assignment
Rough draft due: Friday, Nov. 11
Final draft due: Wednesday Nov. 16
Purpose: the purpose of this assignment is to look at images critically, and to practice writing about abstract concepts.
Overview: Your primary task is to compare related images, describing them in detail, and then providing us with a conclusion that creates a synthesis of your observations.
Here are some possible applications:
- Compare images used by different parties of a particular campaign
- Analyze album covers for a specific band, over time
- Analyze the use of images in advertising. Specifically:
How are ads targeted towards different audiences?
How do the advertisements in a particular magazine reflect their target demographic?
How is the same product presented in different magazines?
You may also analyze a website, using the same methods. For example, you could look at a website for a corporation and try to determine who their imagined audience is, based on the images used on their site.
Another possibility: Look at ads for a particular product, then create your own advertisement that breaks with conventions.
Page 226 has a checklist for analyzing images. You may also find the discussion of marketing segments on page 228 useful.
Please put all of your notes, images and drafts on your weblog as you work on this paper.
Visual Assignment
Rough draft due: Friday, Nov. 11
Final draft due: Wednesday Nov. 16
Purpose: the purpose of this assignment is to look at images critically, and to practice writing about abstract concepts.
Overview: Your primary task is to compare related images, describing them in detail, and then providing us with a conclusion that creates a synthesis of your observations.
Here are some possible applications:
- Compare images used by different parties of a particular campaign
- Analyze album covers for a specific band, over time
- Analyze the use of images in advertising. Specifically:
How are ads targeted towards different audiences?
How do the advertisements in a particular magazine reflect their target demographic?
How is the same product presented in different magazines?
You may also analyze a website, using the same methods. For example, you could look at a website for a corporation and try to determine who their imagined audience is, based on the images used on their site.
Another possibility: Look at ads for a particular product, then create your own advertisement that breaks with conventions.
Page 226 has a checklist for analyzing images. You may also find the discussion of marketing segments on page 228 useful.
Please put all of your notes, images and drafts on your weblog as you work on this paper.
news @ nature.com - Electric currents boost brain powerbreaking science news headlines: "Connecting a battery across the front of the head can boost verbal skills, says a team from the US National Institutes of Health.
A current of two thousandths of an ampere (a fraction of that needed to power a digital watch) applied for 20 minutes is enough to produce a significant improvement, according to data presented this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, held in San Diego. And apart from an itchy sensation around the scalp electrode, subjects in the trials reported no side-effects.
Meenakshi Iyer of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, ran the current through 103 initially nervous volunteers. 'I had to explain it in detail to the first one or two subjects,' she says. But once she had convinced them that the current was harmless, Iyer says, recruitment was not a problem.
"
frontline: coming soon: the persuaders | PBS: "FRONTLINE takes an in-depth look at the multibillion-dollar 'persuasion industries' of advertising and public relations and how marketers have developed new ways of integrating their messages deeper into the fabric of our lives. Through sophisticated market research methods to better understand consumers and by turning to the little-understood techniques of public relations to make sure their messages come from sources we trust, marketers are crafting messages that resonate with an increasingly cynical public. In this documentary essay, correspondent Douglas Rushkoff (correspondent for FRONTLINE's 'The Merchants of Cool') also explores how the culture of marketing has come to shape the way Americans understand the world and themselves and how the techniques of the persuasion industries have migrated to politics, shaping the way our leaders formulate policy, influence public opinion, make decisions, and stay in power."
Thursday, November 4
Tuesday, November 2
plasticbag.org | weblog | Five years of plasticbag.org: The Visualisations: "You may well ask what it was that caused my post-length to go up and my post frequency to drop so dramatically? Well it turns out, looking at my archives, that this happens at precisely the same time as I switched to using Movable Type instead of Blogger - which just goes to show how much the tool helps dictate the form of your writing online."
Monday, November 1
How to think about prescription drugs. | Metafilter: "Malcolm Gladwell's latest piece in The New Yorker
The emphasis of the prescription-drug debate is all wrong. We've been focussed on the drug manufacturers. But decisions about prevalence, therapeutic mix, and intensity aren't made by the producers of drugs. They’re made by the consumers of drugs.
"
The emphasis of the prescription-drug debate is all wrong. We've been focussed on the drug manufacturers. But decisions about prevalence, therapeutic mix, and intensity aren't made by the producers of drugs. They’re made by the consumers of drugs.
"
Thursday, October 28
Stuck? Change Context, by Michael Knowles: "I know writers who panic when they become stuck. But I know a secret they don't know: There's no such thing as writer's block. There's only digging the same hole, or choosing to dig new ones. You CAN choose a different path. Successful writers do just that. How? By understanding what stuckness really is, and being ready to honor it."
List Your Way Out Of Stuckness: "You're stuck. You can't go forward. You refuse to go forward. You're procrastinating like crazy.
Here's a list method you can use to avoid stuckness of the kind described above"
Here's a list method you can use to avoid stuckness of the kind described above"
Wednesday, October 27
Monday, October 25
foe romeo: A creative generation: "Even more interestingly, the study found that 17% of young people have sent pictures or stories to a website and 'online creativity can be encouraged through the very experience of using the internet.' That is, the more time kids spend online, the more likely they are to produce their own content. And interaction breeds interaction. Does that mean we can safely assume that as internet usage increases its media timeshare, more and more people will become creative producers as well as consumers?
"
"
Accelerate Your Macintosh! News Story - Tweaked Canon Digital Rebel/300D Firmware Unlocks some 10D Features: "Tweaked Canon Digital Rebel/300D Firmware Unlocks some 10D Features"
We're only in class Monday and Wednesday!
On Monday we are going to talk about sentence tone and style. I can sense your eager anticipation of this discussion.
For Wednesday, you [++ MUST ++] read Chapter 10, analyzing images. Be prepared for surprise quiz as well!!!
(But wait, if he tells us about it, it's not a surprise...)
On Monday we are going to talk about sentence tone and style. I can sense your eager anticipation of this discussion.
For Wednesday, you [++ MUST ++] read Chapter 10, analyzing images. Be prepared for surprise quiz as well!!!
(But wait, if he tells us about it, it's not a surprise...)
Friday, October 22
Tuesday, October 19
Salt Lake Tribune - Business: " Hazelbaker said the Escalade EXT has a standard anti-theft ignition immobilizer, which prevents the vehicle from being started without the right key, but it may not be as effective as newer systems. General Motors Corp. spokeswoman Kelly Wysocki confirmed that the Pass-lock system, which is on all current Escalades as well as 2005 models, is aging and said
Advertisement
GM is considering a change soon."
Advertisement
GM is considering a change soon."
Monday, October 18
TechComm - Main.Schedule4310
I've put our weekly schedule and topics on the wiki. There are still some details left to fill in, but it should give you an idea of where we're headed.
I've put our weekly schedule and topics on the wiki. There are still some details left to fill in, but it should give you an idea of where we're headed.
Sunday, October 17
I am stressed right now as I try to finish chapter four of my dissertation before a looming deadline. It is a snarled mess, but there is some good stuff in there. As I try not to think of it this weekend, I find myself obsessing over weird things.
- tuning my crosman air pistol obsessively
- planning on building a full fairing for my recumbent, to replace my car
- installing all sorts of weird little scripts and consolidation a lot of my data
- learning radical, invasive new productivity methods that I don't have time to learn right now
- withdrawing from real contact with spouse and family
- Guilt, guilt, guilt!
- renting too many movies
- drinking milk again (the equivalent of taking up smoking for me)
Wednesday, October 13
IrfanView - one of the most popular viewers worldwide
This program will let you easily resize and crop images.
This program will let you easily resize and crop images.
Ambiguous: "Unfortunately, if a person who already has a human flu virus swimming around in them gets the bird flu as well, they could easily swap a few genes and start doing something Ebola will almost certainly never do; hang around on kitchen counters and doorknobs and in hugs and kisses. Then we have a problem . The SARS experience taught us that our current medical system is less protection than we thought it was, in fact it doesn't matter if you are going to Asia or staying home, we're all pretty much screwed at that point. To put more perspective on this potential danger the flu we're looking at could, with a few lucky mutations , start acting more like the 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed 20 million people and sickened 1 billion. According to my handy dandy 8th grade percentage figuring technique, that's over 60 million dead and 4 billion sickened within the space of about 10 months. Stats like that don't fit comfortably in the mind, especially in the modern world, where able bodied people are needed to baby sit electrical grids and nuclear weapon that didn't exist in 1918. But surely our modern medical can protect us better than the bloodletting barbers of the 1918? Well, maybe. I'd have a lot more confidence in it if we hadn't just canceled half of our nation's flu shots. "
Boing Boing: Bird Flu risk extremely low
Mankato, MN Home Page
The beautiful city of Mankato.
ACC: shuttle tile risk analysis
Mankato, MN Home Page
The beautiful city of Mankato.
ACC: shuttle tile risk analysis
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