A Good Imagination and a Pile of Junk

Blogging Bubbles. Flemming Funch adapts my Ecosystem of Networks to highlight the creative role of the individual, how individuals are empowered when they are connected and how memes percolate from one to many:

So, here the point is that it starts with ME and the choices I make and what happens to them. So, if we’re talking about blogs, there is first whatever I have the thought of writing about. I make some choices about what to write about. Let’s say we consider each of those thoughts or choices a little bubble, and that those little bubbles naturally rise up in the information ocean.

Public opinion maps to the political network, networking and group-forming maps to the social network, teamwork & acting together maps to the creative network — and me being creative is participating in all three.  The arrows flow in all directions, not just up.  Just as thoughts feed results feed connections feed patterns — patterns feed connections feed results feed thoughts.

The Intelligent Swarm.

Rafe Needleman likes small companies developing new ideas. (Remember “Cypak mounts CPUs on paper” a week ago?)

This time, he discovered Dust Inc. based in Berkeley. He says that “Dust Inc.’s tiny sensors could one day remotely monitor traffic, temperature, and troop movements.” Here are some excerpts of his article.

Dust Inc. designs small computers it calls motes, and uses them as platforms to collect data with a variety of sensors. Currently, a single mote is a little bigger than a 9-volt battery, but the computers are getting smaller as Dust continues to design custom hardware for its clients, which range from startups like Sensicast to established sensor companies like Honeywell.

The motes have radios in them to communicate their sensor readings. This is where things get really interesting. The low-power radios attached to these low-power computers don’t have enough range to continuously broadcast back to a central base station. Instead, they wake up once in a while, at predetermined times, and blast their data to a nearby mote, which then collects and retransmits that data to another nearby mote, and so on, until finally the data reaches a central collection node or recording computer.

This is what’s known as a self-organizing sensor network, and it’s a powerful idea. One obvious application is military: Air-drop a bunch of vibration sensors into the Iraqi desert and they can report vehicle and personnel movement. A similar technique could be used to gather data on seismic activity or monitor highway traffic.

Here is Needleman’s conclusion.

Mesh networking isn’t a brand-new idea. And likewise, small computers and sensors are hardly innovative. But combining small sensors, low-power computers, and mesh radios in the manner I’ve just described makes for a new technological platform that already has important uses and applications.

Source: Rafe Needleman, Business 2.0, February 13, 2003

Your Mind Read. The Flash Mind Reader is all the rage today. It seems totally impossible for it to do what it does. I did it a bunch of times and couldn’t figure it out. …But it is ultimately fairly logical. You just need to question some assumptions you took for granted. [Ming the Mechanic]

People who have trouble with this need to report directly to their numerical literacy spanking center for a severe beating. Hell, all you have to do is look at the table.

No Total Information Awareness. Howard Rheingold mentions that it seems that the U.S. Congress has succeeded in shutting down the Total Information Awareness program.

Virtually without dissent, the House conferees accepted a bipartisan Senate provision written by Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, and Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, stipulating that the program cannot be used against American citizens. The conferees also agreed to end research on the program in effect shutting it down in 90 days unless the Pentagon submits a detailed report on the program’s cost, goals, impact on civil liberties and prospects for success against terrorists. What this means, in effect, is that if the program continues at all, it will be as a low-intensity research project under close Congressional supervision.

Good news. [Ming the Mechanic]

New beta 0.4.5 now supports EXIF. The new beta 0.4.5 now supports EXIF header in JPG files. Several data items are pulled out of the EXIF header and put in the description.

One change: the picture now must have both a title and a description … read more [Python Desktop Server Weblog]

Google’s Privacy Problems. Google Watch: Google as Big Brother, a list of his top ten Google Privacy Problems. My thoughts: The cookie is a serious issue. Google assigns everyone who visits a cookie that uniquely identifies them to Google for all time. There’s very few legitimate reasons to do this, and they certainly don’t outweigh the harm done. (Google could easily assign a cookie that only contained your preferences and not a personal identifier.) Logging is also an issue. Actions by the current US government make it clear they don’t care about privacy, and it’s very likely that they’ve convinced Google to hand over full logs of who is searching for what. I think the bit about hiring spooks is silly, just working at the NSA doesn’t ruin you forever. The toolbar asks in bright bold red letters if you really want Google to phone home about every site you visit. Obviously you should answer no if you like your privacy. Google could probably improve things by letting you press a button to look up the PageRank for a page, rather than always doing it automatically. I like the cache copy. Putting stuff on the Internet makes it public; get used to it. I think most people agree the sites penalized by Google deserve it. If you think your site was penalized unfairly, let me know, and I’ll spread the word. On the other hand, I think Google should publish their block list and algorithms. Conclusion: Google needs to stop sending the cookie and promise to only store aggregate data, with no connection between users and search terms. This issue was publically raised almost a year ago; that Google still hasn’t dealt with it is inexcusable…. [Google Weblog]

The Intelligent Swarm. This is what’s known as a self-organizing sensor network, and it’s a powerful idea. One obvious application is military: Air-drop a bunch of vibration sensors into the Iraqi desert and they can report vehicle and personnel movement. A similar technique could be used to gather data on seismic activity or monitor highway traffic. In a different vein, a network of heat and light sensor motes in a building would be much less expensive to install than the wired versions. And if a shipping company put motes on all its high-value containers (as well as a few data-collecting nodes in trucks, planes, or ships), it could know where all its boxes were at all times, or at least where a box was until right before it dropped off the network by going out of range of another box. (Dust is in talks with Qualcomm (QCOM), which makes the popular Omnitracs truck fleet management system.)

Naturally, these remote eyes and ears raise a heap of privacy issues. Consider this: What if all cars had motes and somebody wanted to know where yours was? Or all computers? Or watches? Dust CEO Kris Pister says he’s in the process of puzzling out solutions. [Smart Mobs]

Flirted with the girl at Popeyes. I kinda didn’t realize I was doing it.

Got home and found an extra biscuit and extra bbq sauce in my bag.

No wonder she winked.

I’m sick now :-(

The weapons you are looking for are currently
unavailable. The country might be experiencing technical
difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons
inspectors mandate.

Please try the following:

• Click the Regime change button, or try again later.
• If you are George Bush and typed the country’s name
  in the address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly.
  (IRAQ).

http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/.

(Follow the link, it’s worth it).

NTK

(this issue)

[whalley.org]

As of today I aggregate 87 sites. That means I go through every
single one, article by article; deleting, cross-posting, clicking
through, all that nice webby stuff.

There’s a reason for every single entry on that list. I do prune it
regularly (read: pretty much constantly)

But now, I await 44 past the hour (when my aggregator checks for
updates) with no uncertain timidity. Working away on some perl code on
another machine, I’ll see the clock hit 47 and I’ll hit refresh on my
hope page, bracing myself for the strike.

43 new articles. Oh for the love of christ (which is funnier if you
know me. Hey what can I say, the Christians are great for explitives
and interjections.)

I enjoy them all. I really do. But I need to be able to separate
Cowgirl from Ming.tv. Their articles really look strange interleaved
together, especially when you throw things like the AP feeds into the
mix.

So yes, categorized feeds. Doesn’t have to be automatic. Actually
I’d rather it not automatically decide where feeds go. I know too well
what would happen if I started relying on some of these freaks to do
their own keyword assignments. So let me have 10 aggregators, each with
their own subscriptions. That way I could just sit and read product
announcements, or sex articles, new media art, meta-blogging, whatever.
Lumping them all together gives me a barrage of topics I just might not
be in the mood for at any given time, because I’m almost CERTAINLY not
in the mood for everything at once. (It does happen though, you’d
probably rather be around Bruce Banner when Mr. McGee makes him angry
when it happens though.) So yes, there’s that.  If I had proper
categorization, I would happily jack that subscription number up to the
150s-175s.

And ya know what else occurred to me? I was looking through comments
on Pascale’s site (sorry, too lazy to put anchors in everything right
now) and I clicked through someone’s comment to their website, and I
realized that aside from InstaPundit (who only posts 6 word teasers to
his feed and no anchors through to the actual posts, leaving remarkably
little to actually cross-blog but forcing me to hit the site) I don’t
think I’ve hit 5 websites today. This in NO way reflects the amount of
time I live in the browser. I’m usually staring at one for an aggregate
8-10 hours a day, easy. And while I know it points to a problem, I
feel gipped. I never get to actually see any of the sites I subscribe
to. Of course, most of them aren’t really worth looking at, once you
pull the content away (not that I’m in any position to start a
bitchrant about other people’s cookie-cutter blog styles, I understand.
)  But some are actually designed fairly well, have neat little
badges to click through, and lots of other shiney baubles of web design
for me to “view-source” on and cut & paste into my own templates
(because clearly what I need it more gotsey goo-gahs on my homepage to
further alienate any already masochistic dial-up users who read UCCU.)

If you started reading expecting a point, this is the point… where
you’re gonna be sorely disappointed.  It’s 2:35 in the morning and
I’m suffering from caffeine withdrawl, joblessness panic, holiday
solitude, and an overwhelming case of plain ole’ fatigue.

I’d better go to bed before I’m tempted to just wait for one more
aggregation loop.

And the other thing I want?  An html composer with a
spell-check.

Good night everybody. Have a great Valentine’s day. Make it count.
Make ‘em all count.
That especially goes for:

• P & AF
• Dan & Liz
• Laura & Luke
• and of course, Bean & Mo and their immanent new addition.

- Not as Mad as he likes to pretend sometimes William Flint.

Whups, too late… lemme just check quick, you never know.