Saturday, April 07, 2007
This and That - Musings on Web Browsing
Robot Competition
FIRST runs a series of regional and national robot competitions where students work in teams to design and build a robot of their own. The How Stuff Works Site has an article on How FIRST Works.
Craplets
Using Even New PCs Is Ruined by a Tangle Of Trial Programs, discusses "craplets", programs placed on new PC that bloat boot up times and hard disk space. These constitute hidden costs since manufacturers are paid to bundle these trial programs at our expense of time and resources.
Bizarre Observations of Repressive Societies
In the article How to Look 10 Pounds Thinner in Photos, some no-brainer tips are given such as partially turning sideways, pulling the head slightly forward, shoulders back, stomach in. What amused me was the "Secret No. 5" - Look away from the camera, then turn towards it, breaking into a smile just before the camera clicks. Your smile will appear fresh, not frozen." This reminds me of the Lois Lane photo through Jimmy Olsen's camera from the original 1970s Superman movie. It goes on to suggest to practice behind closed, locked doors. This is to avoid looking foolish, like a "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover Girl wannabe". Practicing in front of a mirror is nothing new to me. It was one of the first "secrets" of show-biz that I learned, right after "don't ever refuse someone buying you a drink". Smiling on stage over a 6 hour period each night would make the the muscles ache. You had to make sure the smile looked natural.
Spam
Greylisting is a method of defending electronic mail users against e-mail spam. A mail transfer agent which uses greylisting will "temporarily reject" any email from a sender it does not recognize. If the mail is legitimate, the originating server will try again to send it later, at which time the destination will accept it. If the mail is from a spammer, it will probably not be retried. In Greylisting: The worst thing to happen to email since spam, the article contends that spam filtering is highly sophisticated and extremely accurate. Greylisting does nothing to detect spam and little to discourage it. Spammers catch on fast. That's why we are inundated with images instead of text. Instead, email is no longer instant. In some cases, it's not even close.
Libertarian Wannabes
Lew Rockwell discusses Libertine Conservatives. He debunks the myth that "libertarians are nothing more than Republicans who want to party and smoke pot".
Having come into the computer industry in the 80's when "no one was ever fired for buing IBM". It is nice to see the circle of life repeat itself. In Microsoft is Dead, the analogy to IBM is made, with Google now the slayer of Microsoft. Gmail was the killer app that introduced a robust AJAX implementation and changed everything. From now on, applications will live on the web. Microsoft planted the seeds of its own destruction with XMLHttpRequest. Broadband internet and the iPod further accellerated the demise. The resurgence of Apple with new technologies is paralleled with IBM resurgence with "a credible strategy for becoming the next great software company".
Another Death Watch?
The New York Times has an op-ed about all of the missteps of the music label companies lap dog, RIAA. This has led to such things as:
How to be a Successful Liar
Here is another simplistic posting about how to detect a liar. So the "negative expertise" part of me translates this to:
* don't touch your nose or ears
* don't have overactive eyes (i.e. maintain eye contact, but not overtly)
* don't keep you palms down
* don't slouch, i.e don't fake confidence
* don't appear to be making thing up through eye movement
The last one is the comment I found interesting enough to post about. "Humans eyes generally move up and to left if their brain is doing visual or audio construction. They will generally move to the upper right when doing recall. Just remember: Liars go Left, the Righteous go Right."
FIRST runs a series of regional and national robot competitions where students work in teams to design and build a robot of their own. The How Stuff Works Site has an article on How FIRST Works.
Craplets
Using Even New PCs Is Ruined by a Tangle Of Trial Programs, discusses "craplets", programs placed on new PC that bloat boot up times and hard disk space. These constitute hidden costs since manufacturers are paid to bundle these trial programs at our expense of time and resources.
Bizarre Observations of Repressive Societies
- Don't kiss in Bombay. More than 100 couples were rounded up and fined by police this week in Bombay for kissing in public.
- Don't grow in North Korea - the average young northern male is 5.9cm (2.32in) shorter than his southern contemporary. The difference for women is 4.1cm (roughly 1.62in).
- According to Google, Muslim regions search for "SEX" online more than any other region.
As once commenter suggests, perhaps the longer a country is connected, the more intelligent the search queries get. It is just a path of education Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Iran and the likes must take. Eventually they will know how to narrow down their search results by entering something like "whip grandmother leather" in Google instead of just "sex".
In the article How to Look 10 Pounds Thinner in Photos, some no-brainer tips are given such as partially turning sideways, pulling the head slightly forward, shoulders back, stomach in. What amused me was the "Secret No. 5" - Look away from the camera, then turn towards it, breaking into a smile just before the camera clicks. Your smile will appear fresh, not frozen." This reminds me of the Lois Lane photo through Jimmy Olsen's camera from the original 1970s Superman movie. It goes on to suggest to practice behind closed, locked doors. This is to avoid looking foolish, like a "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover Girl wannabe". Practicing in front of a mirror is nothing new to me. It was one of the first "secrets" of show-biz that I learned, right after "don't ever refuse someone buying you a drink". Smiling on stage over a 6 hour period each night would make the the muscles ache. You had to make sure the smile looked natural.
Spam
Greylisting is a method of defending electronic mail users against e-mail spam. A mail transfer agent which uses greylisting will "temporarily reject" any email from a sender it does not recognize. If the mail is legitimate, the originating server will try again to send it later, at which time the destination will accept it. If the mail is from a spammer, it will probably not be retried. In Greylisting: The worst thing to happen to email since spam, the article contends that spam filtering is highly sophisticated and extremely accurate. Greylisting does nothing to detect spam and little to discourage it. Spammers catch on fast. That's why we are inundated with images instead of text. Instead, email is no longer instant. In some cases, it's not even close.
Libertarian Wannabes
Lew Rockwell discusses Libertine Conservatives. He debunks the myth that "libertarians are nothing more than Republicans who want to party and smoke pot".
- After 9/11, conservatives seem increasingly willing to embrace a more socially liberal culture. They justify it as defending the freedom of homosexuals, women, racial minorities and so on against the 'Islamo-fascists.' "Libertine conservatives are more dedicated to being hip, more willing to say bad words and back a 'socially liberal' man like Giuliani, than the supposedly curmudgeonly churchgoers who used to dominate the American right".
- Libertarians rant about taxation, the war on drugs as a threat to everyone’s liberty, and the welfare state. They consider public schools institutions of wickedness and tyranny. They believe that every individual has a right not to be aggressed against and not to be forced to pay for war. But mostly, they believe in private property, freedom of association, peace, free trade and individual liberty as a recipe for a just world.
Having come into the computer industry in the 80's when "no one was ever fired for buing IBM". It is nice to see the circle of life repeat itself. In Microsoft is Dead, the analogy to IBM is made, with Google now the slayer of Microsoft. Gmail was the killer app that introduced a robust AJAX implementation and changed everything. From now on, applications will live on the web. Microsoft planted the seeds of its own destruction with XMLHttpRequest. Broadband internet and the iPod further accellerated the demise. The resurgence of Apple with new technologies is paralleled with IBM resurgence with "a credible strategy for becoming the next great software company".
Another Death Watch?
The New York Times has an op-ed about all of the missteps of the music label companies lap dog, RIAA. This has led to such things as:
- Trying to kill the single to force more album sales and killing music stores in the process
- Next generation online music libraries
- Independents that avoid music labels like the plague
- Attacking Artists Participating in Its Own Campaign
How to be a Successful Liar
Here is another simplistic posting about how to detect a liar. So the "negative expertise" part of me translates this to:
* don't touch your nose or ears
* don't have overactive eyes (i.e. maintain eye contact, but not overtly)
* don't keep you palms down
* don't slouch, i.e don't fake confidence
* don't appear to be making thing up through eye movement
The last one is the comment I found interesting enough to post about. "Humans eyes generally move up and to left if their brain is doing visual or audio construction. They will generally move to the upper right when doing recall. Just remember: Liars go Left, the Righteous go Right."
Labels: photography, politics, robotics, society, technology. psychology
# posted by xltd @ 4/07/2007 10:43:00 AM 
Post a Comment