How not to survey
I stumbled on an ad for a restaurant survey. Tell Zagat what you think of local restaurants (or some such) and get a chance to win a tablet blah blah. Well, the odds I’d win the tablet we’re pretty low but I like sharing what I know and think, and I’ve got friends and family who are restaurant people. But, when I hit the survey, the short list of restaurants didn’t even include the three that immediately came to mind. Zagat is a name I’ve heard before. I already know about the national chains and have an opinion but I want a way to find the unique local stuff. My impression was that Zagat is a place you’d go, say when you’re traveling, to find great local places. So I thought “no problem,” I’ll just find the suggest link. Nope. No such thing to be found. I’ve spent some time around publishing and marketing and realized that Zagat probably sells (one way or another) appearances on their list. Want to get seen and reviewed? You probably have to pay. Which immediately drops their value in my eyes to close to zero. A survey implies something very different: they’re actually looking to harness the knowledge that’s out there. And that’s a wise approach. It’s called the wisdom of the crowd and it’s been shown to be as smart or smarter than the experts. Wikipedia, according to studies, is just as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica, for instance. To make that work, you … Continue reading How not to survey
Is putting “0 to 60 in 2.3 seconds for a grand” in a title pandering?
I wrote this for my other blog and then realized it made at least as much sense over here. So I steal from myself. Some weekend reads. And, yes “0 to 60…” is in here. Like a good pandering news show, that bit is all the way at the end. Science vs. PR: “How a piece of journeyman work is turned into patently junk science… One of the major reasons that science is held in low repute among portions of the citizenry is that it has too often allowed itself to become entangled with public relations.” http://www.american.com/archive/2012/may/science-vs-pr Web Design Manifesto 2012: “THANK YOU for the screen shot. I was actually already aware that the type on my site is big. I designed it that way…” http://www.zeldman.com/2012/05/18/web-design-manifesto-2012/ Enough: Or, why we should all be laughing hysterically in the magazine aisle: “…I remember an author saying once that he raised his children to be wary of consumerism by teaching them to laugh at commercials. Like, the whole family would sit around the TV together and bust out laughing when someone from LG asked, “Is it a washer? Or something better?” (It’s just a washer.) I’ve decided I like this idea, particularly as a woman, who most advertisers seem to take for a complete idiot.” http://rachelheldevans.com/enough Old & New Project: Great, provocative images (just read the text before you assume). http://oldandnewproject.com/portfolio/balaams-donkey/ and http://oldandnewproject.com/study/domesticating-christs-cry/ Everyone’s A Curator, Everyone’s A Content Creator: “It used to be that we were all just consumers — or … Continue reading Is putting “0 to 60 in 2.3 seconds for a grand” in a title pandering?
Two weeks in the Netherlands: Pictures
I’ve create a flickr stream of images from our trip. Enjoy: http://www.flickr.com//photos/79815305@N07/sets/72157629717047826/show/ Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook
Policy: Military Spending
The political debate in this country is, essentially, one where neither side listens to the other. Which is very strange. The challenges are still the same and two heads are usually better than one in solving a problem. At it’s core, that’s why I started the blog PolicyThunk. Instead of approaching what we need to do from our standard partisan answers, what if we actually took a policy approach and started by understanding what’s so and then said what’s possible. And, if oh by the way, we can throw in the gravy of “here’s why it makes sense for the two extremes of debate” that’s great. One of my yardsticks of whether I have something to say policy-wise is whether I can see how to see common ground with someone on the other end of the spectrum. One example: military spending. My Dad and I find ourselves in strange agreement: military spending can and should be cut. Funny thing is, the majority of Americans think that it should be cut by at least 83B dollars. That’s according to a new survey (and true both generally and within every standard category: Democrats, Republicans, each age group, etc., etc.) We’ve agreed that the answer is to subtract a lot of money. But, like mice finding out the meaning of life is 42, now we need the question. In this case, what does the military need to look like for it to cost $85 Billion less? In some sense, we already know what … Continue reading Policy: Military Spending
Mergers and Acqusitions
PolicyThunk.com and 4til7.com have merged. Here, you’ll (now) find poetry, fiction, art and thinking across a wide range of subjects. Many of the parts of the site outside of the Blog haven’t been updated in a while but new material is coming soon. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook
Two weeks in the Netherlands
We Americans live in something of an isolated country. For most of us, the next country over (usually Mexico or Canada) is days away by car. What we know of the Netherlands (or Holland) and the people who live there is, shall we say, limited to wooden shoes, windmills and tulips. I didn’t even know what those windmills were used for. I think I had some idea they had something to do with draining dikes and maybe some of them did. Most of the old ones are gone. We did visit a windmill. It was actually used to grind wheat into flour. Well, still is. It’s not too far from where we stayed in Brielle and operated by volunteers. It was originally built around the 15th century but it’s been burned down and been rebuilt a number of times. Now the flour is sold in small bags to tourists. Ingrid is bringing back a couple of small packages of bread mix she bought there. And, interestingly, there’s one big difference between it and the picture we have of windmills: it’s a variety that’s mounted on a post. A very fat post. They can rotate the windmill so it faces into the wind. On other Dutch windmills, they only rotated the top of the windmill. Then there are wooden shoes. Do they actually wear those funny shoes? Supposedly, yes, but I have yet to see a pair on someone’s feet. Although, a few days ago my daughter bought a pair of … Continue reading Two weeks in the Netherlands
Travel Details
Ah, the joys of traveling outside the U.S. We’re leaving on Sunday to travel to the Netherlands for my wife’s parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. Over the last month, I’ve said that to a long string of people working for the government in one way or another. Except for one, none of those conversations ever needed to happen. When you apply for a passport, you learn that you can then track the status of your passport online. When I read “track the status,” I think of the type of system that FedEX and USPS provide for tracking overnight packages: constant updates. Ah, if it were only so. Instead, the system perpetually tells you that your passport “is currently being processed.” I received my passport two days ago. The system still shows that my passport “is currently being processed.” I guess there’s some chance that Sunday, I may learn that the passport I’m holding doesn’t really exist. But, I get ahead of myself. Two weeks ago, I called to check on the status and was told the same thing. I keep checking the passport tracking system and was told the same thing. Last Friday, I checked again. My passport was “currently being processed.” And then an hour later, the mail guy delivered a letter. It wasn’t being processed. They didn’t have some paperwork they needed. The letter had been sent a week before. It was about this time, I started comparing the passport tracking system with others. My wife’s unoccupied parked vehicle … Continue reading Travel Details
How to get SOPA’d and more
Get SOPA’d The opposition to SOPA via the internet was so wide spread that politicians have added SOPA to the pool of English language nouns, like Google, that are used as verbs. To “get SOPA’d” is to back legislation that ignites a major Internet backlash. In spite of all that conversations about SOPA-style legislation continues according to Christopher Dodd, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, one of the major backers of the original SOPA legislation. Brief update on ArsTechnica. STUXNET: It’s not just for Iran anymore The STUXNET virus used to attack Iranian nuclear facilities succeeded, in part, because modern industrial facilities are run moment-to-moment largely by computers, controllers, have no real security: it’s as if you all you needed to login to someone’s back account was their username (no password). Oh… and there are standard hard-coded accounts. In other words, with a little knowledge, if you’re on the network in the facility you can connect to the controllers and reprogram them. It was a known problem before STUXNET became international news. Security Researchers have been pushing the manufacturers (GE, Rockwell Automation, Schneider Modicon, Koyo/Direct LOGIC, etc.) of the PLC controllers to add proper security to them with no luck. Earlier this year, they started releasing the specifics of how to attack these systems and those specifics have now been rolled into a standard security testing tool (called Metasploit). Metasploit is a well known, easy to use tool and, unfortunately, there’s nothing to stop people for using … Continue reading How to get SOPA’d and more
Crazy Busy and Getting ‘er Done
We’ve been crazy busy. Meetings about potential business with the state, jumping through hoops and keeping deadlines. And, we’re still moving our Core Technology forward. Some of it has been the tedious: standardizing the way different ECT applications are structured. Some has been more fun. We’ve begun the process of adapting our XC prototypes to our main code base. One part of that was adding the ability to publish a group of nootcards (Dutch for notecards) as a slideshow. In this case, the intention is not to replace a dedicated program like PowerPoint but to make it easy to turn existing work (on nootcards) into a finished presentation with transitions that set it apart from from PowerPoint and its ilk. Share with:
More space in your DropBox for free
Updated: The basic approach below is now true for everyone using DropBox. You can also get more space various other ways (see dropbox.com/getspace) I’ve got a handful of cloud tools that I use all the time. One is DropBox. While it’s nice to use to share files with others, it does something that nothing else really does: it lets me get at the same documents on everything I have. I’ve got access to all the PDFs, simple note files and other odds and ends that programs on my laptop and apps on my phone and tablet can work with. On the laptop, it’s a simple folder. A lot of apps on mobile devices now support DropBox. It’s a very simple example of working anywhere with any device. Which device is on is gone. Best of all, they’ve give you 2.2G of space for free. Well, best of all until you realize how useful it is. I’ve just reach that magic almost-full mark but I’ve discovered they’ve got a way to get more space for free. They’re beta-testing the ability to upload pictures (just plug-in your camera/phone/whatever and it offers to load them into your dropbox. Nifty. And they’re paying you to test it by giving you free space. How to Do it First, Download the test version of DropBox. This is a beta version so it wouldn’t hurt to make a copy of your DropBox folders somewhere before you install the test version. You’ll need to upload at least 500MB … Continue reading More space in your DropBox for free