May 2008
35 posts
Revenge of the Freeloaders: Study Finds Culture... →
“In countries with democratic market economies, peer pressure goaded people to cooperate. Among authoritarian societies or those dominated more by ties of kinship, freeloaders instead lashed out at…
Bletchley Park faces bleak future →
“…despite an impressive contribution to the war effort, the Bletchley Park site, now a museum, faces a bleak future unless it can secure funding to keep its doors open and its numerous exhibits from rotting away.” (via Bruce Schneier)
[29-Sept-2009] Followup: Bletchley Park gets a 4 million pound grant
Big Chains Benefit From City Tax Incentives but... →
“Several Burger King and McDonaldâs restaurants in Upper Manhattan receive the breaks, as does the giant Toys âRâ Us store in Times Square…”
“I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order...”
– Barack Obama, on one of his goals for his first 100 days in office (if elected), Bush’s laws will be scrutinized if I become president, Obama says
Mischief on subways will cost lots more →
“Smoking, littering, vandalism, taking up two seats - you name it - NYC Transit wants the fines to go up since they haven’t risen in two decades.”
Subway-Delay Stat Plan on Fast Track →
NYC Transit “is planning to use a system similar to the one that the NYPD employs for statistical analysis of criminal offenses, known as CompStat, to investigate why an increasing number of trains…
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Monitizing Twitter Downtime
Twitter has had some downtime lately. It has also (relatedly) grown quite popular. This lead not one, not two, but at least three separate people (Louis Gray, Brian Alvey, and John Gruber) to suggest, independently and humorously, that Twitter would make a ton of money selling advertising on their “Something is technically wrong” page.
[Bonus: Twittering About Architecture gives...
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“The cable industry has never felt the pricing pressures the music industry is...”
– Matt Richtel, Cable Prices Keep Rising; Customers Keep Paying
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Movable Type Rebuild Issue
I expressed some annoyance with the Movable Type documentation yesterday. In this entry, I want to elaborate on my problems and the solutions/work-arounds to them.
I am writing a plugin for the Movable Type blogging (and content management) system. The plugin should alter a blog entry after the author writes and saves it. First, let me say that the latest Movable Type codebase (version 4.1)...
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Twitter as a Common Carrier? →
In responce to criticism from a user with claims of harassment, Twitter’s Biz Stone says, “Twitter is a communication utility, not a mediator of content.”
This leads me to wonder if the Twitter folks (or their lawyers) are thinking about their service as a Common Carrier. A common carrier would not be able to pick and choose which messages are sent through it. (WP: “[a...
“Cory Doctorow’s a lot like blog comments in general, in that extracting...”
– Giles Bowkett, describing what he calls “the Cory Doctorw problem,” part of a larger discussion of comments and online journalism (and also citing “the Tim Bray problem”) in Summon Monsters? Open The Door? Heal? Or Die?
“My passion for trying to get to the heart of things, to be clear and direct,...”
– Scott Berkun, The problem(s) with consultants
The Cultural Cognition Project - The Second... →
Study looking at people along Hierarchist-Egalitarian and Individualist-Communitarian axes. A person’s position there is much more likely to correlate to her worldview on some issues (e.g. global…
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Our Data, Ourselves →
“We need a comprehensive data privacy law.” Bruce Schneier makes a simple, understandable argument for such a low in this short essay.
$1 Billion Later, Subway Elevators Still Fail →
The New York Times analyizes breakdows and maintence of elevators and escalators in the subway system.
“Managers often rush balky elevators and escalators back into service without identifying the underlying causes of mechanical problems, leading to more breakdowns.
“Many problems occur because of basic design flaws or mistakes made during the construction of the machines, when...
“It is easier to move a problem around (for example, by moving the problem to a...”
– The Twelve Networking Truths (RFC 1925)
“In three other areas hurt by vanishing industry, Buffalo-Niagara Falls and...”
– Sam Roberts, As Deaths Outpace Births, Cities Adjust [I suspect my hometown of Rochester can’t be too far behind Buffalo in this respect]
The Rebound Effect nicely illustrated →
“…if new devices are more energy efficient, will users simply use them more, or leave them on for longer?”
“The corporate world rewards based on perceived productivity rather than...”
– Dan Benjamin, Offices and The Creativity Zone (I would say “usually rewards,” because there are some great companies out there, but they are few and far between.)
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Tripping Over Tourists in New York City
The warm NYC weather has brought out enough clueless pedestrians to tick off both Buzz Andersen and Jason Kottke. In the past could of days, both Andersen and Kottke have contemplated making “how to walk in New York City” guides. (Hints: allow others to pass, do not stop suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk).
Despite the fact that they want to use different mediums (Andersen wants...
“Campuses create a sense of permanent community that are designed for nostalgia.”
– Jay Ackroyd, in Tax-Free Hedge Fund, discussing another blog post, Is Harvard Just a Tax-Free Hedge-Fund? (by a Colgate alum, if I am not mistaken)
8 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every...
via Brady Forrest
Space scientist says texting is four times more... →
“The bottom line is texting is at least 4 times more expensive than transmitting data from Hubble, and is likely to be substantially more than that.”
“Fear, in other words, is a tax, and al-Qaeda and its ilk have done better at...”
– Josef Joffe, Here’s How America Looks to the World (which also contains this gem of a quote: “Real terrorists don’t write letters; they just kill you.”), (via Schneier)
“Farming has the potential to go through the greatest upheaval since the Green...”
– Dan Barber, chef at Blue Hill, in Change We Can Stomach
“Almost every wrong prediction about this election cycle has come from those...”
– Frank Rich, Party Like It’s 2008
Air safety, passenger rights bill hits dead end in... →
Sigh. “Under the measure, airlines would be required to come up with a plan to provide adequate food, water and restroom facilities in the event of a significant delay….”
“It appears that every time a national security letter recipient has challenged...”
– Melissa Goodman, ACLU Staff Attorney, FBI Withdraws Unconstitutional National Security Letter After ACLU and EFF Challenge
CCTV boom 'failing to cut crime' →
“Huge investment in closed-circuit TV technology has failed to cut UK crime, a senior police officer has warned.”
“Our biggest global competitor, China, spends 9 percent of its gross domestic...”
– Elliot Sander, MTA Executive Director and CEO, State of the MTA Address (via Gotham Gazette)
“We are top officials of the United States Senate Government who are interested...”
– Nigerian scam-style letter criticizing McCain’s and Clinton’s proposals for a gax tax holiday — GasTaxScam.com
The crazy fan speculation I engaged in last week proved wrong: Ron Moore’s commentary for the first Battlestar Galactica episode of the season has been posted. There is still no explanation of why it is out of order, or for the general delay in posting the commentary.
Perhaps tasks related to the end of the series (which is in production now) are piling up and Moore is finiding it...
“[The Wall Street Journal] has a good decade of international branding left in it...”
– Douglas Rushkoff, Murdoch and the WSJ
Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor →
“So trying to extract 110% performance from today when it means having only 70% performane available tomorrow is a bad deal.”