randomwalks/dj

Originally from TeacherTalk, on February 12, 2006 03:01 PM

david posted a photo:

One bench down! One bench down!

Originally from david's Photos, on February 12, 2006 03:00 PM

(Via Joi Ito's Web)

Reporters Sans Frontieres claims that more dissidents may have been jailed in China, following disclosure of their identities by Yahoo in response to PRC requests. I echo Thomas Crampton's call for transparency: If it is the contention of US companies that they must comply with the laws of the nations where they do business, then the US ought to require that they disclose any activities that compromise the rights of citizens. Such transparency would enable market forces to pressure these companies. Without such disclosure, how would customers or stockholders know which companies to frequent, which to avoid?

Reporters Without Borders called on Yahoo ! to supply a list of all cyberdissidents it has provided data on, beginning with 81 people in China whose release the worldwide press freedom organization is currently campaigning for.

It said it had discovered that Yahoo ! customer and cyberdissident Li Zhi had been given his eight-year prison sentence in December 2003 based on electronic records provided by Yahoo. “How many more cases are we going to find ?” it asked.

“We were sure the case of Shi Tao, who was jailed for 10 years last April on the basis of Yahoo-supplied data, was not the only one. Now we know Yahoo works regularly and efficiently with the Chinese police.

“The firm says it simply responds to requests from the authorities for data without ever knowing what it will be used for. But this argument no longer holds water. Yahoo certainly knew it was helping to arrest political dissidents and journalists, not just ordinary criminals. The company must answer for what it is doing at the US congressional hearing set for February 15.”

Originally posted by Howard from Smart Mobs, on February 12, 2006 02:59 PM

Boats on ground

The same but silver

Moblogger descending staircase

People love those Campbell's Soup cans

Originally from hello, typepad, on February 12, 2006 01:31 PM

A friend just sent me a link to Teemu’s Blog to check out his two recent posts:

• Coding for Nokia 770 using Python - Part 1
• Coding for Nokia 770 using Python - Part 2

The examples cover Python for Maemo on the Nokia 770, and make it look extremely easy!

Teemu’s Blog also has some good information on other applications that have been ported to the 770, like TuxPaint, a VNC Viewer, Rhythmbox, Asterisk, and, of course, Monkey Island!

For more Nokia 770 apps, check out the ApplicationCatalog on the Maemo wiki.

Originally posted by erik from [eriksmartt.com/blog], on February 12, 2006 12:15 PM

Aaron's got a great post that's kind of about teaching yourself new programming tricks and identifying old ones. His example is about callbacks (a programming pattern) which he's being more careful about using these days. We're using them often over in our corner. (This corner in question holds Mihai and myself for sure.)

In regards to making asynch requests for information I still find the following pretty elegant:

Obj.prototype.Foo = function() {
// get necessary stuff ...
if (iDontHaveTheStuff) {
  var self = this;
  getStuff(function() {self.Foo();});
  return;
}


// do something with the stuff...
}

But I like Aaron's point about the tradeoff of spread-of-logic for cleaner and easier to understand interfaces. The kid is teh smart and I'm gonna think harder about how these patterns can be improved.

Speaking of teh smart ... if you're a Javascript junkie and you're not reading Continuing Intermittent Incoherency (by Alex Russell of Dojo fame), well, why not start? I think you really should - it's great. I highly recommend it for the fun times and debauchery.

Debauchery's relative. You know, term-wise.

Originally from massless, on February 12, 2006 12:11 PM

I love Flickr to the point of unhealthy obsession. In addition to being a fixture of my life, it is one of the .02% of "Web 2.0" stuff that is genuinely innovative.

Caterina and Stewart and Heather et al are all bright and lovely people. I recognize that working to maintain and grow the community under the aegis of Yahoo! is a challenge. I have a heard a bit from Heather firsthand about what she faces (most of which seems to be snapshots of people's ...ahem personal lives I have no wish to witness).

I've done a lot of work developing content strategy and community standards. The more broad your community, the more necessary the latter become. No pool of users could be more broad than Yahoo!'s. So, developing Yahoo-friendly guidelines for a site that began in the wild wooly fringes of the Web (Canada) is, yeah, hard.

When I clicked on the "hey, new link in the footer" message, I winced. The new Community Guidelines, while totally sensible in substance, are an exercise in tone gone wrong.

Tone and voice development are an aspect of Content Strategy. Getting the voice right makes your audience feel like they are interacting with people they can trust and want to continue interacting with.

Flickr is legendary for perhaps the most playful and friendly voice on the InterWeb, and it totally works for them. (We all forgave the site its many massages in days past.)

However, a key part of voice is knowing where to bump it up and when to tone it down. Typically, even on the most lighthearted website, TOS and related guidelines are the place to take the friendly down a notch.

When you have to bring the hammer, you can't be the friend. That's the time to be level and straightforward. It's disingenuous and a little insulting to do otherwise. (Think of a cop cheerfully saying "I'm going to have to jot out a little ticky-wicky for your speeding back there.")

Flickr is, in the truest sense, a community-driven site. It isn't something else with some community tacked on. The participation of very enthusiastic people is integral to Flickr's enormous success.

Some of that activity is, shall we say, more suited to the back pages of an alt-weekly, than the front page of a family newspaper. But it is only polite to recognize that a wide range of contributions —from kitten photo to raunchy escort ad to kitten photo photoshopped into raunchy feline escort ad— made Flickr what it is today.

So, I would prefer that they were at least a little apologetic about the necessity of making those at the fringes clean up their act and sit a bit straighter at the table. (In addition to the jerks who need to be straight up booted, a lot of creativity happens at the margins of communities.)

I would have prefered they were not so:

Plainly speaking, if you don't want to abide by our TOS and these Guidelines, don't let the door hit you on your way out!

but a little more:

We recognize that making our community more pleasant for all will make it less fun for some. We hope you understand that we have to do this and you will continue to hang out and join in.

..

Don't be creepy. Don't be that guy. You know the guy.

That, however, is spot on.

Originally from Off the Hoof, on February 12, 2006 12:08 PM

reBlogged from The Wit of the Staircase:

The Love Letter Always Reaches Its Destination: Jacques Derrida's Valentine

'The Postcard is a "collection" of various love-letters, supposedly burned in a fire, which has left pieces of text missing. Derrida has also included a few essays which he believes continue the analysis begun in the loveletters [envois]. The content of the loveletters covers a broad range of philosophical and personal questions - from philosophy of language - to the relation b/w Socrates and Plato - to personal encounters in (I suppose) Derrida's life as a philosopher.

But the overall effect of this - this "re-contextualization" or in other words, this casting of philosophical questions in a format not usually considered "serious" -> love letters... the profundity, the importance, the dissemination of the questions take on a wholly different feel and effect. The feel and effect, of course, is hard to describe, but it is a way of playing with "philosophical sensibilities" -- what is "real" philosophy? What is "serious" philosophy? And what is the meaning of such questions in the most private of all communications - love letters between two intimate lovers.

I know, this is merely one small aspect of Derrida's enterprise. But it is, I believe, the main purpose of The Postcard: to see how the meaning of philosophical questions regarding language, history, and the sequence of events, take on new meanings in the context of lost love letters-- the same way a Postcard which never reaches its destination takes on new meanings for the unintended third reader.'

--Jon Penney

Link: Amazon.com: The Post Card : From Socrates to Freud and Beyond.

The Olivetti "Valentine" typewriter, above, one of several vintage typewriters in The Wit Of The Staircase office. It's a bright red pop art riot that inspires me to write even though I always use an iBook.

Friday, February 10, 2006 in Philosophy | Permalink

Originally posted by joy garnett from NEWSgrist - where spin is art, on February 12, 2006 12:01 PM

Originally from the real janelle, on February 12, 2006 12:01 PM

ESPN.com | Cyclist Hamilton's two-year doping ban upheld

It's pretty anticlimactic, but Tyler Hamilton received word today that his 2-year suspension from racing has been upheld. Hamilton was the first rider implicated by a new blood-doping test, and he has fought the suspension and the test since his blood test results turned up positive in September 2004.

His original suspension date was in April 2005, but the CAS ruled that Hamilton voluntarily accepted a suspension when he withdrew from the Vuelta upon being notified of the positive blood test, so he can return to racing in late September of this year.

Still on the table is an appeal by the Russian cycling federation, which wants to see Hamilton stripped of his 2004 Olympic gold, and Viatcheslav Ekimov, currently the silver medalist, elevated to gold.

Some sources:
• The CAS summary
• The full CAS report (pdf)
• Tyler Hamilton's response
• Summary of the case by Hamilton's camp (Word file)
• Assael: Latest ruling shifts momentum for athletes: a good commentary by an ESPN writer
• VeloNews.com | CAS rejects Hamilton appeal

Originally from Tour de France 2006, on February 12, 2006 12:00 PM

Chris Palmieri on local context and direction map design: "The Tokyo street system is a tangle of unnamed capillaries branching off a handful of well-known avenues. In places, even these avenues are difficult to identify due to lack of signage. Directional maps must therefore make greater use of landmarks."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on February 12, 2006 11:58 AM