Year: 2004

Categories
Connecting Technology

Googled to death

For someone interested in this sort of thing–I am interested in this sort of thing, aren’t I?–I never did make a statement about Google’s Gmail.

Gmail is a centralized email system with virtually unlimited space to hold your messages, and with the ability to use Google’s search algorithms to research your email. Bells and whistles aside, that’s all it is. I have a Yahoo email account I maintain for emergencies–where’s the beef?

There was some discussion about privacy concerns because after all, Google does hold your messages, your data, and does search your email to post targeted ads. I agree with Tim O’Reilly on this issue in his writing The Fuss about Gmail and Privacy: Nine Reasons Why It’s Bogus. Some folks think that Big Brother will force Google to allow him to peek into our private emails. However, for the terrorists among you, I would suggest that you consider not using a centralized email system to exchange words about your plans to take over the world.

What Tim says about privacy and email is spot on: we’ve had centralized email systems like Gmail before, and email itself is notoriously easily compromised. Never assume privacy with email and if you want to say something in private, I suggest lunch in a quiet bistro somewhere.

However, I do disagree with O’Reilly’s overjoy about the benefits of Gmail. He envisions this great global social software network that would allow our email systems to link us to appropriate people based on need and someday we’ll move all our data to the Core and access it with our data ports that also double as tie clips, cellphones, and nose rings.

Yeah, and when that happens to the general populace and not just the Network junkies, pigs will fly on pretty, pretty dragonfly wings.

Do you really want who you know and who you like and who you trust mapped into some universal algorithm so that your system can tell Person B who knows you who knows Person A and then Person B pushes you to connect them up with Person A, when maybe you don’t necessarily agree with Person B about what all this knowing really means.

Do you really want to be that wired?

Even if I and most people could get over our repugnance with this type of overall encompassing and non-directed and pervasive/invasive social software network, this type of overall, all inclusive centralized core of data is anathema to those of us who believe in decentralized systems.

O’Reilly writes:

Storage of my critical data on one of the largest, most reliable data storage banks in the world. As Rich Skrenta made so clear in his recent weblog posting, Google is the shape of the future. Forget Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law. Storage is getting cheaper faster than any other part of the technology infrastructure. I remember Bob Morris, head of IBM’s Storage Division and the Almaden Research Labs, telling me a couple of years ago, that before too long, storage would be cheap enough and small enough that someone who wanted to do so could film every moment of his life, and carry the record around in a pocket. Scary? Maybe. But the future is always scary to those who cling to the past. It is enormously exciting if you focus on the possibilities. Just think how much value Google and other online information providers have already brought to all of our lives – the ability to find facts, in moments, from a library larger than any of us could have imagined a decade ago.

Anybody who would store their critical data on a system in which they have no control, and one which is used by millions of people is, well, to put it kindly, caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment.

I guess I am old, and too set in my ways. Too many ghosts in the machine for my liking now, without opening the door to hordes more of them, just because somebody dangles a new pretty in front of my face, and I like the sparkle.

Besides, I am getting weary to death of Google. First it was Google buying Blogger, then Orkut, and then Gmail, and now its the IPO where we get to hear about how some very rich people are going to get even richer. It’s just a software company. It’s big machines with lots of data and some good developers and some interesting algorithms, some of which don’t always work as well as we would like. I agree with William Grosso: Anyone Else Bored by the 24 x 7 Google Watch?

(Well, that was good–I managed to fulfill my Google quota for an entire year with one posting. Good, economic writing, that.)

Categories
Burningbird Weblogging

WordPress 1.2 update

WordPress is heading into beta test on 1.2, and I’ve installed this with my Practical RDF weblog (though I don’t have the old MT entries ported yet).

This release made some very good changes to the interface, including providing options that allow you to set how long a post entry field is, and what to show on the weblog edit page–the page that lists published weblog posts. You can now turn off full content and just show titles, or titles and excerpts. Much cleaner, and much easier to work with.

Excellent bulk comment management has been integrated into 1.2–the best I’ve seen on a weblogging tool. I will be modifying it to search for comments based on timeframe, to be able to bulk delete the sometimes hundreds of comments left by a spam blitz.

In addition to the change to the bulk comment management form, I have other modifications planned. For instance, both comment preview and post preview in 1.2 are based on in-page innerHTML blocks, I believe, and I don’t care for this. At all. I’ve already made a simple hack to preview a draft post within the same look and feel as my individual published posts, and I absolutely love this. I will be carrying this over with me to 1.2.

I’ll also be providing a full comment preview, rather than the inline preview. What can I say? I don’t like inline previews.

In addition, I am modifying the comment option on each post to include ‘moderated’. With this, I can turn moderation on in a per post basis. I’ve been using this with my posts over 30 days old (this being managed with another plugin), and I really like it. Now I can catch comments from spammers before they go on the page, not to mention the Google Kiddies; however, thoughtful posts are now coming through, as you may have noticed in my “Recent Comments” list. This combined with the good comment management and the throttling to prevent crapfloods is probably all I’ll do to manage comments.

I want to modify NEXTPAGE behavior to use either page numbers or ‘next’ and ‘previous’ page links. I’d also like to be able to add a ‘full page’ link to those posts where I use it. Lots of people didn’t like NEXTPAGE, and if I use it again, I want to be able to provide a workaround for those readers.

To be realistic, though, I think that there is an expectation about weblog posts that precludes them being very large; no matter the subject or the writer. You can only assume you have your readers’ attention for a specific length of time. Either you can disregard this assumption, and their attention; or you adjust your writing accordingly, and perhaps save larger works for different venues. Something to think on.

Once these changes are made, I’ll provide the code to the developers and I hope they’ll add them into the main body of the code. We’ll see.

I’ve also been playing with some of the third-party plugins and hacks. One of the advantages to a PHP-based system is it seems more natural to look at integrating other existing open source PHP-based applications into the product. For instance, a couple of efforts are integrating WordPress in with several PHP-based photographic management packages, including Gallery. Another using existing PHP code to generate PDF files for a post, including the comments. Once this is vetted to 1.2, and seems safe from abuse, I’m tempted to add this to my posts.

I am pleased with WordPress and felt this move was a good one. I was, however, a bit unhappy about some discussion on the WordPress support forum last week. It seems that one WordPress weblog was shutdown because the ISP felt it was causing a problem, but then rather than focus on fixing the situation, it became a spiteful game of ‘he said/he said’. This led to one of my initial concerns I had about WordPress is that is does have a very loyal user base that doesn’t tend to brook disagreement.

(Personally, I’m no longer interested in anything even remotely resembling religious wars about technology. All of this stuff–all of it–is just code, with an occasional segue into specs. Personalizing the tech to such an extent that being critical of the code is equated with being critical of the people behind the tech is utter nonsense, and tiresome. Not to mention deadly dull. )

However, from what I can see of the developers behind WordPress, they’re not encouraging this fan following, and take criticism in the spirit to which it is intended–an effort to help make a better product. As more people start using WordPress, I think we’ll see a more detached viewpoint of the product.

Still, there was two incidents last week when ISPs had to shut down WordPress. It does sound like it may be 1.2, and since that’s still alpha, I’m not overly concerned. The code for WordPress is clean and easy to move around; if a problem occurs, I imagine a fix will be uploaded quickly. That’s the joy of open source.

Speaking of ISPs banning software, you might want to think carefully before installing The MT Plugin Manager, third-party software to make installing plugins for Movable Type more simple. It has been banned on Hosting Matters, my own ISP, and several others I know of. But it does look like the creator is returning to work on the product.

(And did you notice that WordPress automatically translates double dashes into the ‘em’ character? )

Categories
Diversity Weblogging

It’s about women, dear

I was so very pleased about the turnout for the Women’s march last Sunday. What impressive pictures there were! All those people, united in support of a woman’s right to control her own destiny.

I can’t really add much to the discussion on this March that hasn’t been ably said by Feministe, Body & Soul, and Ampersand. However, I was intrigued by the so-called guest-blog written by a former Clinton staff member, Bruce Reed, at Kevin Drum’s political magazine.

(When did the blogger Kevin Drum become the official pundit and magazine author Kevin Drum? You guys – you really crack me up, sometimes.)

In his rather brief post, Reed focused on the fact that there wasn’t much religious representation at the March:

After sharing the Mall with a million choice supporters yesterday, I don’t see how anyone could say that our side lacks religious fervor. People made pilgrimages from thousands of miles to stand up for their convictions, flocking to the capital of compassionate conservatism to demand more compassion from their leaders.

At the same time, I couldn’t help noticing that the one thing we seem to have no religious fervor for is religion.

His words have been met with a veritable avalanche of photo evidence of religious representation, as well as discussions about religion and political affiliation, accompanied by Democratic assurances of, “I’m Dem and I do so believe in God”.

This somewhat harkens back to my previous writing on the Political Christ, and a topic I think we’ll be seeing a lot of this year. However, for now, I was amused at Reed’s take on the March. Rather than focus on women’s issues in this Women’s march, let’s focus on religion and the Democratic party, instead.

Isn’t that just like a guy? If you can’t be an expert, change the topic.

Categories
Critters Photography

Sucking clay and beaver tracks

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I went for what was a three mile hike yesterday and ended up going six miles, primarily because I followed an animal track rather than the trail meant for humans. In the Spring here in Missouri when the marsh grasses are fresh and tall, and haven’t been beaten down by other hikers, you can mistake a natural path used by animals for one used by humans — until you reach that moment when you go, “Way a sec. This can’t be right.”

My moment yesterday was when I drew close to the river and realized that much of the trail was under water, and what was above was very wet clay. If you have not walked on wet clay before, you may think that walking on something like ice is difficult. However, ice just sits there, being hard and shiny and fairly dependable–you know if you step just right, your foot on the ice will go a certain way. Wet clay, on the other hand, is devious. It will seem to be hard and stable one moment, and just when you think you can walk at a normal pace, it liquifies beneath you in a brown goo that slides out from under your foot even if you’re not moving. Worse, it sucks at your shoe so that each step is accompanied by faintly obscene and definitely undignified sounds.

th-OP th-OP th-OP

Thankfully I had my walking stick with me and was able to use it to hold myself relatively upright, as well as test for shallow pockets of muck, as compared to ones that will eat you alive. It didn’t help that I wasn’t wearing my hiking boots, but was, instead wearing my relatively new, though bought at a lovely discount, white tennis shoes.

At one point, the trail, what there was of it, split in two directions but neither was marked. I picked the wrong one, which is how I ended up walking through hip high green on a narrow trail that never did stabilize. Being pigheaded, I was determined to follow it until I reached the regular trail, but the path ended up going into the river. Not, however, before coming face to face with a nicely sized beaver, who I can tell you, was more than a little miffed that I was tromping through his territory.

(Some would say that bears are the most ill tempered mammals, but no creature can get meaner than a beaver — just ask people whose dogs have been drowned by the critters.)

April Flowers

Beaver are hard to photograph and here I was, faced with a golden opportunity to get a nice picture. I reached — ever so gently — to get my camera from its case, but even with the care I took, the beaver took alarm at my actions and vanished into the tall grass; moments later I heard a splash as it headed into the river. All I was left with was the opportunity to capture his tracks. In all the lovely muck.

beaver tracks

I returned to where the trail split and this time headed in the right direction. Along the way I passed fields full of wild flowers–amazing flowers– and birds and dragonflies and other colorful insects. I used my walking stick to wave in front of my face when going through dense greenery, to break any webs across the trail — it’s not particularly pleasant to walk into a web on a trail and then end up with a harmless but intimidating spider crawling on your face. Even if you’re not frightened of spiders, and let me assure you, I am, the experience is not edifying.

During all of this, I met no other hikers, which was unusual. The day was beautiful and the area usually has people about, even during the week. Finally, I met up with an older woman and asked her if I was heading in the right direction to make it back to the main trail. She assured me I was and warned me not to head in the western direction, because much of the area was flooded and impassable. I told her I had just come from that direction.

“Oh, but you don’t look that…”, and then she looked at my feet and lower legs, my hands, and my face, “…muddy.”

When I got back to my car, I was exhausted, and dirty…but satisfied. It felt good.

Categories
Stuff

The Fifth sentence

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Okay, I’ll play, since Doug was kind enough to post a giggle earlier.

  1. Grab the nearest book
  2. Open the book to page 23
  3. Find the fifth sentence
  4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions

From Suicide and the Soul by James Hillman, page 23, the 5th sentence:

For experience is the soul’s one and only nourishment.

I would credit the origination of this particular meme, but methinks this has been lost in the sands of time.

(The closest book was really Salt & Pepper, a wonderful cookbook I picked up from the library–to enjoy the philosophy and photos, and to copy some recipes–but it didn’t translate to this exercise at all well, so I picked the second closest book.)