Categories
Voting

Tragedy and voting

Another big story in our area this weekend was the cold blooded shooting of a popular police officer, Michael King, in University City. A senseless killing, because he was in his marked car and the man who shot him just walked up and shot him, for no known reason. Incredibly sad, and difficult for the community because the officer was white, the alleged shooter is black, and this has led to some strongly racist comments associated with the story.

U City is only a couple of miles from where I live. As has happened with other official funerals there will be a police procession after the services, escorting the coffin to the cemetery. When these processions happen, the street where I live is closed off, which is fair and right. However, and I’m not sure anyone was thinking of this when they planned the funeral for tomorrow, that street is also the only way to get our local community’s polling place, the Cure of Ars Church.

This is one of the more popular polling places, especially in the middle of the day because of the number of retired people in the area. To close the street, and access to this polling place right in the middle of what is expected to be a record voter turn out…Well, this is not going to be a good thing.

I called the county election officials and they’re aware of the conflict. They’re not sure what to do, just yet. I believe though that by law, access to the polling place has to be kept open. I have a huge sympathy for the Officer’s family, but I have to wonder at the funeral home not being aware that this was going to cause a conflict, and recommend the funeral be held on Wednesday.

Categories
Photography Weather

Autumn

Autumn has finally arrived in our year of odd weather. We’re ten degrees above normal, but should return to 60s by Thursday. We’re in the 4th wettest year on record, and if we get our normal rainfall for the rest of the year, we’ll end up the wettest year on record.

Color path

We’re also a toss up in the election, and I’ve fielded over 20 calls today from various organizations. Can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone campaigning in our state. I think Obama and his wife are in the state tonight, Biden was here yesterday, Palin Monday, I hear a rumor about Rudy Giuliani, though I don’t think McCain’s been here. That’s because Palin is more popular here than he is.

color lake

All over by Wednesday, when we can sink back into our normal obscurity. In the meantime, all our visitors have been seeing the state at its best. I wonder if they’ve even noticed?

more color

Categories
Diversity

Men do big ideas, women write stories

3quarksdaily points to a Guardian story where the author, Alison Flood, wonders if there’s a gender divide between writing books on big ideas, and writing stories:

Julia Cheiffetz, blogging at publishing website HarperStudio, dubs the genre “big think” books – making serious non-fiction subjects accessible and popular. “The point is, all of them promise access to a club whose sole activity is the exchange of ideas; all of them promise, however covertly, to make us feel smarter. And all of them are written by men,” she writes, also singling out The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman, The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki and Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.

“It is hard to know whether women are better at telling stories than propagating ideas (I’m thinking of Susan Orlean, Mary Roach, Karen Abbott), or whether the intellectual audacity required to sell our hypotheses about the world simply isn’t in our genetic makeup.”

The real story to this post, though, is happening in comments. Commenters have proposed explanations for the seeming disparity ranging from women are not encouraged to speak out, to publishers being less likely to accept a “big think” book proposal from a woman. Additionally, commenters have also pointed out “big think” books in the bestseller lists by women, that the Guardian article author “seems” to have missed in her cataloging of big books.

From what I can see in weblogging, I would say that the commenters to the story have the right idea: not encouraged, not seen. Sadly, also as demonstrated in weblogging, pointing out the problems doesn’t bring about any change, either.

Then there’s my recent look at Seth Godin’s Tribes. I know that a fairer review would come from reading the book, rather than just the Kindle sample, but from looking at a video Godin gave in reference to his book, I also know my opinion of the book wouldn’t change. These books may typically be written by men, but I don’t think that’s necessarily an insult to women, or a flattery to men.

A positive side effect to the story is that I now have several new books to try out, starting with Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine. I also found Bookninja.

Categories
Stuff

Halloween costumes for techs

Not sure what to wear this coming Friday? Here are my suggestions for Halloween party costumes, based on stories flying around the technology weblogs this week:

  • Dress all in black, with a long white, butcher paper strip wrapped around you with with a URL in big bold letters. When asked, tell people you’re a namespace.
  • In the same all black clothes, this time take shiny pieces of aluminum foil and fashion into angle brackets (< >). Tape or otherwise attach sets of them, angle part pointing outwards, on both sides of your head, torso, and other body parts (use discretion). When asked, tell people you’re dressed as well-formed XHTML. This is a particularly scary costume in Redmond, Washington.
  • Show up late, demanding attention. Be loud, obnoxious, and disdainful of everyone around you. When asked your costume, say you’re dressed as…wait, this one is going to get me into trouble, isn’t it?
  • Stay home, and when people asked why you didn’t show up at the party, tell them you were dressed as Twitter.
  • Dress up as the semantic web: carry several Stick-it notepads with you and slap metadata notes on everything and everyone. Do not expect to get invited back to the same party, next year.
  • Glue cotton balls all over your body and go as a cloud. To differentiate yourself from an atmospheric cloud, carry a large ball and chain.
  • Dress in an expensive suit. When asked, tell people you’re the RIAA. When playing Musical Chairs, take all the chairs. And then sue the host.
  • Take two large pieces of cardboard, spray paint a dull aluminum color and put a white Apple logo in the center of one of the pieces. Add a bright orange sale sticker, printed with “$800.00”, to the top of the piece with the Apple logo. Strap the two cardboard pieces together and wear like a sandwich board. When asked, tell people you’re a fat, cheap Macbook Pro.
  • Ladies, forget Sexy Kitty, or Naughty Maid. Try Sexy Coder, instead. Wear a skintight, white body leotard with your favorite source code printed in tiny, black letters all over it…except introduce one bug into the code. Tell people to find the bug.
  • To dress up like Vista…no, no. There are some costumes that are just too scary.

And yours?

Categories
Internet

Roku users: second class citizens

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

update

Roku has come out with a note on the Roku user forum about Netflix and HD quality:

  • Roku will be delivering Netflix in HD by the end of the year
  • Roku will be using Advanced Profile encodes which will deliver HD at substantially lower bit-rates than what Xbox is offering
  • The number of titles is up to Netflix but the library will be the same as or larger than the Xbox library
  • The UI will be updated to run in 720p and more covers will be visible on the screen at a time
  • And the release will include another major new feature that you’ll have to wait a bit longer to learn about

Though I was happy to hear that Netflix is finally rolling out HD content, I was astonished to read Netflix’s decision to roll it out for the brand new XBox, rather than the existing Roku users. Evidently, Netflix considers the early Netflix box users to be second class citizens, and would rather put its focus on the newer, shinier customer—the XBox user.

I had been recommending Roku boxes as a Christmas gift idea, but I can’t recommend the box any longer. Roku promised extra content, outside of Netflix, earlier thia summer, and has not delivered, yet. Roku also promised an SDK earlier this summer, and has not delivered it yet, either. Lastly, the company had promised that as soon as Netflix started streaming HD content, Roku would stream the HD content. As we can see, another promise undelivered, though this one does not seem to be Roku’s fault.

Considering that Netflix is an investor in Roku, one has to wonder what the heck is going on between these companies. In the meantime, promises are going undelivered. Until we’re given assurances that all of the earlier promises will be met, and that Netflix is still as committed to Roku users, as it is to every other box user, I can’t recommend the Roku.

Now, CNET is saying that everyone will get HD quality, but that the requirements are 8-10GB download speeds! (I’m assuming the author meant 8-10Mbps, not GB, but who knows…)

Netflix is calling this a “soft launch” since it is only rolling out such a small number of videos for HD streaming. The move mostly serves to stake a claim in the HD streaming market as opposed to being a full offering. Contrary to what others are reporting, HD streaming will be available on all streaming devices when it premieres with the New Xbox Experience. That means that the Roku, LG, and Samsung boxes will all be able to stream these HD movies, in addition to the Xbox 360. The PC and Mac based versions of Netflix, will not, however, be able to stream HD immediately. In addition, streaming in HD will require a large amount of bandwidth. Netflix estimates the requirement being in the 8-10 Gbps range.

Considering that 8-10Mbps exceeds the download speeds for a majority of broadband users, in addition to exceeding requirements for every other HD streaming server online, I have to wonder if this isn’t an error.

This whole thing has been badly managed. Press release by rumor rarely works well.