Web Advantage: “Rumor has it that Yahoo is about to break into the Blog market and perhaps dominate, taking advantage of Google’s Blogger being overrun with blogs without a sound customer service program or feeling of community.” Hmm, this doesn’t sound like a rumor, but an anonymous snipe from a Google competitor.
Microdoc picks up on the same problem of lack of diversity within networks, outlined in my last post. Microdoc: Email, Google, Microsoft and the Lack of Diversity If this threat is real – and I believe it is, I also think that it can be modeled so that notional danger thresholds can be set for when the code in any one market varies by less than a certain percentage. The danger threshold would fluctuate over time according to two variables: the density (degree of connectedness – of machines connected to the Internet , not links within the Internet – which being one directional would reduce this factor by a half) and trends in viral activity (i.e. the amount of malicious code). In order to provide provable evidence and monitor results an industry independent organization could provide empirical evidence and suggest anti-trust measures to protect against the specific dangers of the…
Is the lack of variety in computer software not merely a threat to the marketplace, resulting in poor innovation and high prices, but actually dangerous, as more and more of our everyday life depends on healthy functioning systems that are based upon the same underlying code with the same weaknesses? The computer industry is regulated by standard anti-trust measures to prevent monopolies
The Moonie owned Washington Times reports: British asylum problem ‘out of control’ The source of this is a poll carried out by Britain’s most popular newspaper, the Sun (same owner as Fox), which has been using misleading information to whip up paranoia about immigrants. Subsequent to a propaganda campaign against asylum seekers, the Sun conducted a poll which showed that a majority of readers thought that immigration was the most important political issue, four times more than those who thought that the
The Enola Gay has been reassembled and put on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, under the curatorship of Dr. Strangelove Dik Daso. Whatever the justification, killing 140,000 civilians with an atomic bomb, 42 times the number that died during 911, is nothing to be celebrated. Surely an exhibit based on this event is an opportunity to demonstrate the gravity of the situation that lead to it, along with a pertinent reminder of the seriousness of weapons of mass destruction? “The current text for the Enola Gay exhibit does not include casualty figures from Hiroshima or show any photographs of the devastation the bomb caused. Daso told Reuters that death toll estimates varied widely and the exhibition space did not lend itself to a complicated display including details of the human cost.” Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
If you fill in a form to create a weblog post that has a permalink then you are creating something that is RDF-like by nature. Subject = the Post itself, which is pointed to by a permalink. Predicate = the label of any field that you have to fill in. Object = whatever you type in the field. The RDF/XML syntax can be hard – but the model is not, and no matter what the disputes surrounding its use are, weblog posts are an almost perfect application of some of the most important ideas behind RDF. An RDF statement is like a form field and its label (e.g. name: david) that are a property and value of something unique, like a person. Conveniently, if there is a URL that is that something, or is the identifier for that something then the properties pertain to that URL. When people post weblog…
Most people are familiar with searching a database and most people are also familiar with searching a search engine, but because the latter was not always the case before the web, these two products are usually so different at their core that combining the two either makes searches slow or highly structured searches impossible. Metadata is difficult to infer, but if it is inserted at the point of publishing, as weblog style tools potentially allow, then to search the web like a database will require a product like Cerisent’s. There are other similar products from people like Software AG, but Cerisent’s is the only one where the core is written at a low enough level to scale to the requirements of a hybrid database/search engine.
The Hutton inquiry in the UK is proving to be as much a test of journalism as it is of government. Perhaps the weblog model has something to offer here? Polly Toynbee, in the Guardian, points out the hypocrisy of the outcry over inaccurate journalism: “which of us would escape a walloping if asked to open our notebook scribbles to the searchlight of prosecution interrogation, every word examined for absolute clarity and veracity?” Now that an army of bloggers – writers of journals, so de facto – journalists, have no sub editor, editor or proprietor to answer to (let alone check that they are keeping short-hand notes in spiral bound notepads), are we going to drown in a sea of spurious allegations and downright lies? I would argue that we are less likely to than when respectable news came from those nice gentlemen at The Times. There are two ways…
So that you don’t have to read through the UK broadsheets, here’s a summary of what I’ve learned about the political scandal over Iraq that is dominating the UK press: In September 2002 the UK Government issues Iraq dossier which contains material know known to be false (if a statement which says that Iraq could be ready for a Chemical attack in 45 minutes was known to be false prior to publication and was inserted into document on the instruction of the Prime Minister, the consensus in the UK press is that Tony Blair may have to resign). UK Government Iraq dossier issued in February is found to be plagiarized student material and generally full of crap. No WMD’s found in Iraq to date, UK press starts to question original government evidence. Government concedes an inquiry. Government spin doctors decide to feign outrage at press allegations over original dossier –…
Ebay is a site that is full of links to trademarked names – things for sale like ‘Nikes’. It is threatening to sue Google advertisers who use the name Ebay in phrases like ‘Ebay power seller’. One advertiser puts it in perspective: “How do you say that you repair Volkswagens without saying Volkswagen?”. Ebay doesn’t have an API, is hostile to third party add-on software and has bought third party products like Paypal that encroached on its value-add and commissions. If Ebay, which has a virtual monopoly on classifieds is so hostile to decentralization, perhaps Ebay is vulnerable to the syndication model? Google ads a threat to eBay trademark? | CNET News.com
A new Report warns of political interference in science to justify conservative views on abortion, genetic research, energy and the environment. Distortion of science requires ongoing effort, is a hallmark of inflexible political ideology and should ring alarm bells in a democratic society because there is empirical evidence that it is very dangerous. The mistake made by Stalinists of associating similarity with equality created an ideological preference to scientific findings which proved that traits were acquired and not inherited. In order to tackle massive food shortages, Lysencho, who’s rejection of genetics in favor of acquired traits fitted Soviet ideology, was recruited to provide a solution. The result of this single example, amongst many similar, is that several hundred thousand people died. The separation of church and state is an idea founded on the realization that and inflexible belief system does not gel with sound politics. According to opinion polls, it…
“If you believe in human-readability of your markup and in the power of XML, and your website isn’t valid XHTML, you’re contradicting yourself.” Refined RSS feeds (kottke.org) I’d damn well better shut up then. Although I do have a super lovely Typepad (machine) created XHTML blog in the works. I still think that RSS can be both human readable and match its potential, its not to do with namespaces or the RDF model, but the fact that the RDF syntax shoehorns into XML in a way that there are double statements that read like legalese.