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katlalog
020428 14:02 Society
Our caring society: Suicidal Woman Blocks Traffic, Angry Drivers Tell Her to Jump. She does. The comments aren't encouraging either.
020426 14:04 Browsers
Hey, the mainstream press is noticing Mozilla. Or is it just Time = Time/Warner = AOL = Netscape = Mozilla. AOL is pushing Mozilla. If that redresses the balance, it's fine with me.
The aritcle whinges a bit about Microsoft...
When Microsoft won the browser wars, by hook or by crook...
...but at least they're honest...
...a new browser called Mozilla. It's fast, it's flexible, and it has the backing of AOL (which owns Netscape, not to mention Time)...
Another gem from the trying-hard-to-sound-unbiased article: Open source is a "highly unorthodox process"
.
Get Mozilla before AOL adds all its stuff.
020426 13:55 Marketing
Comedian Calls Telemarketers at Dawn. I totally agree with this guy. Unsolicited calls at home are trespassing.
...Mabe told a caller trying to sell him a burial plot that the man had perfect timing, because he was considering killing himself. The telemarketer asked him for credit card information, Mabe said.
020425 11:17 Globalization
Squeezing the poor. This needs repeating regularly:
In the 1960s "only" three dollars flowed North for every dollar flowing South; by the late 1990s, after 30 years of unprecedented growth and increasing globalization, the ratio had grown to seven to one.
In 1970 the richest 10 per cent of the world's citizens earned 19 times as much as the poorest 10 per cent. By 1997, this ratio had increased to 27:1 and the wealthiest 1 per cent of the world's people commanded the same income as the poorest 57 per cent.
020424 22:09 Society
Don' be angry at the government for taking money off you in form of taxes, be angry with them for giving it to poor people. (HTML needs a <sarcasm> tag!)
But most of the taxes we now pay are not for the basic services that government's traditionally render. Nowadays, government is simply an income transfer machine: robbing Peter, who is generally productive, to pay Paul, who is generally unproductive.
020424 21:26 Anthropology
These anthropologists. They make one smashed skull into a war.
They would have needed social skills and organised networks to take part in armed conflict.
020424 21:00 Politics
Oh good, i thought we were shifting to the right. From this month's Harper's Index:
Percentage of first-year U.S. college students in 1981 and 2001, respectively, with "middle-of-the-road" politics : 57, 50
Percentage with "liberal" or "far-left" politics in those years : 21, 30
Does that make 20% far-right, though?
020423 22:53 weblogs
Want lots of bloggers to link to you? Just write an article about blogs. And don't forget to put in words like 'libertarian' and 'Blogorrhea'. And don't miss the chance to invent your own word like:
...blogosphere, a rapidly expanding universe...
There's one interesting quote:
Sullivan, who draws 75,000 unique visitors a week, says that blogs "allow you to get your fix of political opinion, arguments and gossip very quickly. It's sort of the fast food of political opinion magazines."
In light of a recent article that claimed that these days we're too scared and politically correct to argue, is this where we voice and discuss our opinions now?
020421 17:52 Media
The NYTimes has an article that argues that our hopes for more tolerance and understanding through the magic powers of modern media and communications have not been realized:
In some ways, global satellite TV and Internet access have actually made the world a less understanding, less tolerant place. What the media provide is superficial familiarity -- images without context, indignation without remedy.
...completely missing the point that it's not the medium but who owns and controls it that influences the content of our 'education'.
They also seem to have just discovered that pumping pictures of american commercialism and such abundant lifestyles into other parts of the world has created envy and hatred rather than an unquestioning embracing of capitalism. Oh, and Rambo wasn't a good idea either.
See also this article on how TV news fail to inform people about the background of conflicts.
020418 15:49 Internet
The problem with popularity link ranking: Winners don't take all: Characterizing the competition for links on the web. (via slashdot)
Earlier research has shown that the distribution of links to web sites approximates a "power law" (Science, 286; Nature, 401), where a small number of sites receive the majority of links, and most sites receive very few links. The distribution has been attributed to a process called "preferential attachment", wherein new links on the web are more likely to go to sites that already have many links.
020417 13:52 Media
Ignorance and misinformation: Media fails to inform young people about what's going on in the Occupied Territories, or why. I don't blame the media alone, but they certainly don't help. (via Kuro5hin)
It was apparent that many people did not understand that the Palestinians were subject to a military occupation and did not know who was "occupying" the occupied territories.
020417 11:42 Browsers + Evil Empires
The browser war is not over yet. Looks like AOL is testing Mozilla/Netscape on Compuserve first before switching the main branch of their business over from IE.
Although AOL said in a statement Tuesday that the upgrade was sparked by consumer feedback, some analysts wonder if there are more political reasons behind the move.
Fine with me. In our current economic system success of a products has usually little to do with quality but all to do with the power of big companies. Netscape has been a pawn in the battle between the two evil empires for a long time now. I really don't care if its comeback is based on the same dirty methods that got IE to where it is now.
020413 01:49 Society
Rich and charitable British earl sets out to prove that 'the poor' still exist, although politicians like to deny it.
When the Cadogan family sold the land to the borough of Chelsea in 1929, it ensured there was a legally binding covenant to the effect that the land should always be used for the benefit of the poor.
However, Danu, which bought the site in 2000, argues that the term working class is no longer capable of any "meaningful definition" and that therefore there is no legal obstacle to its development.
020412 23:43 Intellectual property
It can only happen in Minnesota. Mr. Olson from St. Paul, MN owns a patent on swinging on a swing.
...a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other.
Read the whole thing. It's hilarious:
Lastly, it should be noted that because pulling alternately on one chain and then the other resembles in some measure the movements one would use to swing from vines in a dense jungle forest, the swinging method of the present invention may be referred to by the present inventor and his sister as "Tarzan" swinging. The user may even choose to produce a Tarzan-type yell while swinging in the manner described, which more accurately replicates swinging on vines in a dense jungle forest. Actual jungle forestry is not required.
020412 22:44 Censorship
The European Parliament votes overwhelmingly against Internet content filtering.
020412 12:05 Spam
I get the strangest spam sometimes (background: one of the websites i maintain is that of a dance school):
"please send me pictures of pretty girls wearing tapshoes dancing tap".
020410 22:27 Environment
Now that we have finally admitted that global warming exists, it's all happening rather quickly. Inuits have to cope with the effects of global warming:
In recent years, thousands of seabirds have washed up dead and deformed seal pups have become a common sight. Whales appear sick and undernourished. The walrus is becoming scarce, as are tundra rabbits.
020407 21:23 Politics
It's a relief to know that there are not just bad news coming out of the States. Michael Moore reports from his successful book tour:
...every venue that had invited me was too small, I would tell the crowds to come back in a couple hours and I'd do it all over again. If too many came back the second time, I would ask that crowd inside, "Would you mind watching a video of mine while I spend a half-hour with the crowd outside?" and no one objected.
020405 01:02 Geeks
Now there's a nice feel-good geeks-save-the-day story (via boingboing):
What a difference a day makes. On Tuesday morning at 8:00AM, April 3rd, Top Shelf was effectively put out of business, and on Tuesday evening by 8:00PM, April 3rd, Top Shelf was remarkably back in business. There are not words suitable to express how honored and thankful we are that within 12 hours this amazing comics community took it upon itself to bring us back to life. And in this case, it might also be said that the power of the internet was fully realized.
020401 23:51 Scifi
Let's hope this is not an April Fools Joke [WilWheaton.net]:
In four weeks, I will be joining the cast of Enterprise in a recurring role! The details are still being worked out, but basically what they plan to do is have Wesley use his Time Traveler abilities to move through space and time to the NX-01.
Update 020403: Wil's apology.
020401 23:31 Web development
Writing for the web: Don't patronize your users.
Users don't read. Users don't scroll. Users need small words, small sentences, bullet lists, anchor links, pats on the head, and milk and cookies before bedtime. [...]
If no one reads online, and they don't scroll, and they don't click, what exactly do they do?
020401 19:00 Internet
Now, this is bad news, and that is bad news. I'll wait a bit before I get worked up about it, considering today's date. Mergers and 'selling out' seem to be the theme for this year's 1st of April.