June 30, 2003
Don't Call Me
The FTC'’s do-not-call list website was flooded with people trying to get on the list. According to the Washington Post at one point 108 people per second were attempting to register. But as k2.com points out, removing names from the do-not-call list is a cinch:
Well, it turns out that anyone can just unregister a phone number also. It's trivial to obtain an anonymous e-mail address through Yahoo or HotMail. If I want you back on my list, I'll just unregister you and then call you. There's no protection. It would be trivial to write a program that registered every phone number and equally trivial to unregister them.
Other limitations of the law include any company reserves the right to call up to 18 months (!) after a transaction unless the customer opts out, and exempts political organizations, charities, surveys and insurance companies.
The best solution? Get a cell phone. With the adoption of my cell phone as my principle number, I have escaped telemarketers and discovered a pleasant bit of news: telemarketing to cell phones, because the owner pays for both incoming and outgoing calls, is illegal. And no more Saturday morning phone solicitations!
June 26, 2003
C Sharp Leads
Need to investigate the writings of Martin Fowler on extreme programming, agile programming and similar.
Seeking Project Management
At work we are in need of project management tools. Although the organization deals with knowledge and research, so each project is distinct, there are some common themes in all our project work: misalignment of resources, missed deadlines, and routine over- or under-booking of people's time. Three fingered suspects are a lack of coordination between projects, not using the historical project management data we have, and too much switching of staff among projects. (1) For example, staff providing support for a project — outreach, admin support — are booked in a vacuum by Project A, with no awareness the deadlines conflict with those of Projects B or C. Or a project slips behind schedule, pushing Project A's deadline into conflict with another project's. (2) Not applying knowledge from previous projects. Even new projects reuse old tasks such as releasing a report, creating a publicity campaign, doing a mailing, producing a website. We have a reasonable idea of the production timeline and the resources required for these tasks, but do not always schedule the needed resource appropriately (partly because projects are planned somewhat in isolation so knowledge isn't always shared.) (3) Finally, people switch among projects frequently, which has the net effect of delaying every project.
Several possible software tools we're scouting out for inspiration include Enact, Primavera, and MS Project. As Sean Stickle pointed out, bugzilla would be a good starting point. And this forum lists some others: Artemis, Plan View, Niku.
June 25, 2003
C Sharp Tutorials
I've been following the CSharp Station tutorials, while looking into various C # classes. From Microsoft, I have a goodly list of contenders in the metro area. One, ICI has a course the last week in July for $1995.
Judicial Math
A new study published in Proceedings, according to the New York Times demonstrates mathematically where the court falls between voting as one unit and as nine independent voices. The voting pattern of the Rehnquist court over the last nine years ‘shows that the court acts as if composed of 4.68 ideal justices,’ says Dr. Lawrence Sirovich,
the study's author.
June 23, 2003
A New Housemate
Ishkabibble
This is the new housemate, a 14 pound friendly and curious cat who is known to be fond of canines. Proposed name: Ishkabibble. He does have a slight heart murmur (fitting as do I), which awaits the verdict of a cardiologist as to whether he requires medication.
The name appeared in The Ecstatic —the character is a loan shark— and the sound seemed perfect for a cat. Turns out to suit the cat's personality too:
From the Word Detective
There are several layers to the story of "Ish Kabibble," so let's start at the top. "Ish kabibble" is slang, possibly German or Yiddish slang, meaning "I don't care" or "Who cares?"
Ish Kabibble was also the stage name of Merwyn Bogue (1907-94), a cornet player in Big Band leader Kay Kyser's orchestra. Kay Kyser was the host of the enormously popular 1930s radio program Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge, and Bogue, portraying the slightly addled Ish Kabibble, served as comic relief and a sort of sidekick to Kyser. ...
The inspiration for Bogue's character's name was quite possibly a humorous popular song by Sam Lewis published in 1913 entitled "Isch Gabibble" or "I Should Worry," the lyrics of which make the meaning of "Isch Gabibble" pretty clear: "I never care or worry, Isch Gabibble, Isch Gabibble, I never tear or hurry, Isch Gabibble, Isch Gabibble, ... When I owe people money, Isch Gabibble, Isch Gabibble, If they befriend or lend me that's their lookout, They shouldn't yell or shout, I should worry if they steal my wife, And let a pimple grow on my young life, Isch Gabibble , I should worry? No! Not me!"
Another incarnation of at least the "kabibble" element of "Ish kabibble" was in a popular comic strip, "Abie the Agent" by Harry Hershfield, which debuted in 1914 and chronicled the adventures of a character named Abie Kabibble.
It's probable that both the song and the comic strip were playing off "Ish kabibble," already popular slang for "Who cares?" in the early 1900s. But as to where the words "Ish kabibble" themselves originally came from, that, unfortunately, remains a mystery, although Yiddish slang seems the most likely source.
June 21, 2003
Lost and Sorta Found
Much webspace has been sucked up on the back and forth of what has or hasn't been lost in Iraq. Whether accusations should lead to apologies and so forth. Like the Jessica Lynch story, this one demonstrates how difficult it is to get a complete story of events as they happen; there are always missing pieces that eventually show up. Here is a detailed, nuanced article of what appears to have happened. In short, US forces knew the many objects had been stored for safekeeping, that some items were placed for convenient access to looters and that there was a gunbattle before US forces arrived. Much has been saved, but all around Iraq much has been lost. (Other links point out museum staff are accusing directors of abetting the looting.)
Looters removed took at least 6,000 objects from the Iraqi Museum of Antiquities, according to the Washington Post. Early investigators concluded most of the museum's objects were stolen because the museum was empty when they entered; only later did the removal of objects for safekeeping come to light.
June 19, 2003
Bookworm Heroine
From More Like This Weblog:
Read or Die Bibliophiles Save the World:
Just watched, at a friend's suggestion, the anime “Read or Die”. It starts with an electric samurai warrior demolishing the White House, who is then embarassed to learn that it wasn't The Library of Congress. Then we meet our heroine, a bibliophile and itinerant teacher, who fights off an attack by a steam-powered, giant-cricket-riding clone of the 19th Century naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre.
Trapping Email Harvesters
Boing-Boing points to Merlin Mann's directions for spammer-hunting. He cites as inspiration this comment from Mark Pilgrim's weblog on telling spambots where to go:
In each page I serve, I include a bogus email address, encoded with the date of access as well as the host IP address and embedded in a comment. [Apache's server-side includes are great!] This has allowed me to trace spam back to specific hosts and/or robots.Sounds fun. I'm going to try it, and here's how you can too.
Requirements:
- server running PHP
- a throwaway domain (ours will be "example.com") [see note 1]
- basic understanding of HTML, passing ability with basic PHP
Evolt.org also has some techniques for Apache users to keep away unwanted spiders and robots:
Setting the trap
The first step in our war against the Spiderts is to identify them. There are many techniques to find out who the bad bots are, from manually searching your access_logs to using a maintained list and picking which ones you want to exclude. At the end of the day it's getting the robots name—its User-Agent— that's important, not how you get it.
June 18, 2003
Unified Data Model
Phil Windley on Virtual Databases:
A virtual database, or federated database, provides a single, virtual interface to a collection of data sources. These data sources may live in multiple databases from multiple vendors and even be in multiple formats (relational vs hierarchical for example). To make this work, the organization deploying the virtual database creates a data model that contains the needed elements of each of the data sources being integrated and then creates a map from the existing data sources to the new data model. Using this model and map, the virtual database management system processes queries, updates, insertions, and deletions of the integrated data.
I think that data integration is the key to the integration puzzle, whether you're going to use Web services, EII, or EAI. I think we've actually never realized the chief benefit of databases. A database is commonly thought of my lay people as vast collections of valuable data. But we know better. For the most part, we use it as just a persistent portion of the program's variables.
And, yes, this is the year of integrating applications at work. Windley is pointing out a middle-weight virtual database, or Enterprise Information Integration, sitting between web services and full-scale Enterprise Application Integration.
As I understand it the virtual database holds the references to all the other databases and points applications to the right place for data they are accessing. It works as a model of the data available and a roadmap to the data, but does not contain data. The idea of a universal model pulling from all the various databases might well be a solution, although I'll have to map some of this out to see how it might fit our needs. Not yet sure.
June 17, 2003
Patterning
Laurent Bossavit's weblog caught my eye in a reference to software as communication. One of his more recent entries, Activating Attention discusses how what we think of as everyday “coincidences” are in fact instance of mental set at work.
So, a software developer, by having a certain framework, is more apt to find bugs, for example. I should look more at the biological underpinings, although patterning is probably the most likely cause, as humans are adept at finding patterns, even where none exist. That may explain why walking away from a problem for only a minute or two and then returning works well (a mental set refresh button?). Suddenly the solution is obvious.
Cogito Ergo ?
The concept of the human mind studying itself is incredibly intriguing. And in one of my various forays into learning more about neuroscience and brain development, a number of years ago I watched a local PBS forum. One scientist, in response to the nature vs. nuture question, responded that genes and the environment interact from the moment of conception, the two are always entwined. Matt Ridley has provided a fluent expression of how this works, and why knowing more about genes is freeing. Here's an excerpt:
WHEN genes came along, late in the second millennium of the Christian era, they found a place already prepared for them at the table of philosophy. They were the fates of ancient myth, the entrails of oracular prediction. They were destiny and predetermination, the enemies of choice. They were constraints on human freedom. They were the gods. The very phrase "genetic determinism" has come to be synonymous with inevitability.
This is a false picture. Now that we have lifted the lid on the human genome and peered inside at what genes actually do, a more liberating vision is emerging. Human nature is indeed a product of genes in every particular, but so is human nurture, because genes spend just as much of their time responding to our actions as they do causing them. Genes do not constrain human freedom, they enable it.
The New Scientist comments are good conversation bits bridging the gap between how we (non-scientists) generally perceive science and the current state of knowledge and debate among scientists. Arguably, we are not so much dizzied by the rate at which science is uncovering new understandings of the world, as many of us are held up by a lack of context for the work. So, a new discovery sticks out, tripping us up or we take it too seriously without looking more closely on how it fits into what is already known.
One of the pieces argues yes, we have free will, even if all our thoughts are chemical processes derived from genes. In fact that very construct may be essential to free will:
It is the very reliability of deterministic worlds that makes it possible for organisms to extract information from the world so that they can look ahead and avoid disasters that they see coming. In a truly random world everything really would be inevitable. It is just the opposite of what people often think a world of randomness would be a world where everything was inevitable and nothing was evitable.
Still I wish someone had pointed out that the whole is sometimes more than the sum of its parts. Which is why complex systems are so useful and difficult to understand.
June 15, 2003
Electronics & Etiquette
Once again another reminder of how new devices sometimes throw social habits out of kilter. I was invited to a good-bye picnic for friends, at the farm of some of their friends, whom I called after getting slightly lost. They didn't pick up, presumably because they were at the picnic, and their voicemail was not yet set up so I couldn't leave a message. Last evening, the phone rang. I answered, only to be asked what I had called the caller about. I was stymied, not recognizing the name. The caller was politely frustrated because someone from my phone had called and not left a message. Fortuitously, something clicked and I asked whether these were the picnic hosts — affirmative — Aha. Yes, I had called about directions, but could not leave a message. The underlying frustration of both of us was apparent: why did you call me? All because of caller identification.
June 13, 2003
Jean Kerr
I read Jean Kerr's Please Don't Eat the Daisies because it was another book on the shelf and probably because I'd already used up my weekly allotment of trips to the library. The best sign of her writing: she could make a young teenager chuckle over mothering and work. A funny tribute to her from another fan.
June 12, 2003
Linux and the Pregnant Cow
Two articles on the continuing battle of SCO v. IBM
Stephen Shankland writes that it may not make a difference whether SCO released Unix code, and SCO may have the advantage legally. Here's where the cow steps in. Rose was sold on the presumption she was a barren cow, but was later discovered to be pregnant. Had her fertility been known the sale would not have taken place; so the buyer and seller went to court. The ensuing case established the so-called doctrine of mutual mistake, under which a contract can be nullified if two parties—in this case SCO and a company using Linux—misapprehended the true nature of what was in the contract.
If so, SCO would have a claim, unless it knowingly released once-proprietary Unix code in its Caldera Linux.
A statement about the Unix trademark from the Open Source Group.
Trinity Hacks
Here's the hack Trinity used to shutdown the power grid in the Matrix Reloaded. Notice the root password becomes zion0101 from camworld
Alpha and Omega
From Ad Rem: Wonder if we'll learn about this technique in my archival methods class.... The New York Times reports that King James version of the New Testament has been written in gold on a chip small enought to fit on the tip of a pencil eraser.
The article notes the truly neat part: as the archive is the text, you don't need a PC to read it. Would this be a way of archiving items the world over? And artifacts like Hammarabi's laws, the Rosetta stone, cuneiform tablets, Mayan texts?
June 11, 2003
Integrating Systems
The longterm projects at work involve integrating various systems so they can pass data one to another. I found an interesting review of Sonic's standards-based integration software by Phil Windley.
June 10, 2003
Not Even 6 Degrees
of separation between us. A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds humans nearly became extinct in the recent past. Using 1,070 DNA sequences, the researchers looked at genetic variability among apes and chimps and humans. Different species had a range of variability, but among humans, the range was remarkably narrow.
We actually found that one single group of 55 chimpanzees in west Africa has twice the genetic variability of all humans,
Paul Gagneux says. In other words, chimps who live in the same little group on the Ivory Coast are genetically more different from each other than you are from any human anywhere on the planet.
The limited range of human genetic diversity, based on the Y chromosome, implies every human descended from perhaps as few as 2,000 humans as recently as 70,000 years ago. What caused humans to be nearly wiped out is unknown. (Or is it just 2,000 was the number from which we descended?)
June 09, 2003
Who's There?
A friend and I saw Hamlet the other night [at the Shakespeare Free-for-All]. It was a most enjoyable evening. We both were tickled by Hamlet's occasional limp, perhaps a tick left over from the actor's previous role as Richard III. Hamlet was excellent, Polonius very funny, indeed. My friend wondered about having Ophelia be manic as a madwoman, rather than depressed. It would still be stage madness, but a new interpretation would be pleasantly surprising at least.
Although I've read the play, and she had re-read just beforehand, we both appreciated the program notes for setting the play in a context. (I'll have to go back and find out who should be credited.) [Dr. Susan Willis, Professor of English, Auburn University.] Evidently, Elizabethans were fond of revenge plays (Thomas Kidd's The Spanish Tragedy, for example), and audiences expected the play to contain some standard elements: a character going mad, a ghost, lots of bodies, the death of the revenger at the close, car chase with explosion (check, check, check, check, whoops, wrong genre). Hamlet's distinctiveness lies in the characters questioning their bloody deeds, not in the doing of them. This version closed with Horatio' saying Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
Francis Bacon Of Revenge
June 08, 2003
Back to the Judicial Fray
More to shake up my thinking habits:
Randy Barnett's entry at the Volokh Conspiracy declares, We need is a genuine debate over what judges should and should not be doing on the bench ...
He argues, If it is improper ‘judicial activism’ to ignore the text, structure, and original meaning of the Constitution
then it is also improper to ignore the Ninth Amendment (unenumerated rights) and the privileges and immunity clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That and he provides some useful links to read.
And as a note, another book I want to read is How Democratic Is the American Constitution? by Robert Dahl. The book intends to look at the US Constitution critically: how well does it work as an instrument of democratic governance? From the reviews, it appears he argues that the US system contains a fair number of undemocratic elements. Also noted is that new democracies do not adopt the US model.
June 06, 2003
The Gaze
Scientific American reports that the amygdala — the portion of the brain that regulates emotion and identifies threats — responds differently to angry or fearful expressions based on direct or indirect eye contact. The researchers propose that a fearful expression and indirect eye contact signal a nearby threat to the observer while an angry person using direct eye contact signals he or she is the threat.
On a related note, Ad Rem reports on a study that dogs are excellent at interpreting human gazes to identify hidden food or a desired target.
June 04, 2003
Notes on Blogging
I ran across two pieces about blogging, focusing more on what blogs may offer rather than how they work. This one looks at the phenomenon of academics who blog. The other one, Blogs as Public Storage an article by Steven Johnson, sees possibilities in combing through the impressions and memories of many minds, of the value of reputation — this blogger I trust, I'll check out the recommended link. In both pieces, it seems like peer review plays a role in sorting through blogs of value and in identifying points of dispute, facts in need of context and so forth. Reputation and quality do matter, which is why, I believe, many of the debates among bloggers I've read have been far more informative and interesting, than the flames of a usenet or the predictability of an opinion-editorial.
Un-clutter
I too have wondered about magazines where no one received junk mail, it never rains so there are no sopping wet clothes to set down, the pets don't shed, and brownies straighten everything while the occupants sleep. I like the concept, it just doesn't seem real. And then I trip over this blog entry on clutter which posits publishing a magazine for clutter: it is inevitable, so having solutions are far better than pretending clutter isn't part of this American life.
My anti-clutter stance is two-fold: absentmindedness (the easier the keys are to see, the less likely am I to lose them) and aethetics (dirty laundry isn't much fun to look at). So far, some open containers for tossing mail, shoes and dog gear at the front door, and reasonably organized closets seem to do the trick for me. The detris of life has a place, and I can easily get away with piling CDs and books wherever.
June 03, 2003
Geekiness: the Dark Side
It turns out that the geekiness one-upmanship sometimes pushes the right folks away. This was a surprising yarn, to say the least. All I can add is my funny bone will be forever grateful to Terry Pratchett for writing about Famine working in the fashion industry and having the four horsemen of the Apocalypse ride motorcycles.
June 02, 2003
Degrees of Geek
Another goofy quiz: turns out I am a total geek, not to be confused with the geekier major, super or extreme categories. Seems on the mark. And, go figure I missed some items as well. That whole following directions issue plagues me from time to time.