In-Fill Blogging: Ethical? Annoying? Who Cares?

I assume there are statistics out there that will back me up when I say most blogs drop off faster than most new Year resolutions. They start ambitiously, sustained by initial enthusiasm, then the posts start to falter. Periods of revival occur from time to time.

One reason I think/know this? I have started a lot of blogs that have fallen off the wagon, so to speak. This very blog right here...

Farewell Eudora, Hello Penelope: Your faihtful users await your email excellence

If I had more free time, like a lot more, I would consider having a farewell party for Eudora. Which Eudora? Not Eudora Welty, the Pulitzer prize winning author? No, Eudora the email program that was named after Welty thanks to her widely anthologized short story: Why I Live at the P.O.

I have used Eudora (a dialog from which can be seen above) as my main email client for about 15 years. I have faithfully paid for upgrade after upgrade, all the way to version 7. My Eudora email archives tell the story of my life for those 15 years. The version that I have used for the last few years has a superb search feature that lets me access just about any aspect of that past in a matter of seconds.

But alas, Eudora is no more. Or rather, there will be no new versions. From 1991 to 1996 the program was supported and improved by Qualcomm, the folks who make cell phones (nod if you find that as puzzling as I do). Along the way a sponsored version was developed and the latest version of that can still be found. But the paid version is no longer sold.

Thankfully, Qualcomm made the laudable decision not to simply ditch the code and strand loyal users. The company donated the code to the Mozilla Foundation. You can found out the latest at Penelope on MozillaWiki. That's right, the new name for Eudora is Penelope. And although Penelope is not quite ready yet, she is getting there.

Hence this posting. After all, the decision to hand the code to Mozilla was last year. The official end of Eudora paid edition was May of this year. But the fact that Eudora is evolving is still news to a lot of Eudora users. I mean, I am a heavy user and I only found out by accident when I went to the web site looking for a better understanding of the Junk Mail filter (yes, it has a pretty good junk mail filter as well as a great search feature).

I think there could be millions of people out there happily using some version of Eudora not realizing what has happened. So, fellow Eudorans, go the link above and bookmark it. Soon it will be time to test and perfect a successor.
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Electric Vans v. Internet Shopping

An interesting story in the London Sunday Times speculates about the effect of Internet shopping and resulting shopping delivery requirements.

I'm not sure I agree with the thesis that Internet shopping is pushing up carbon emissions, there are so many offsetting factors to consider. But I was impressed with the Smith Edison electric vans featured in the story. With a 3500 pound payload, 150 mile range, and 50 m.p.h. top speed, these vehicles could handle a large percentage of the local delivery duties in most countries.

Islamic Terrorism: The view from Scotland

The closer you are to acts of terror the more you tend to think about them. That can produce some useful insights. I happened to be in London in October 1992, standing a few hundred yards from where an IRA bomb went off in the Sussex Arms pub, with deadly consequences. That made me think very seriously about terrorism. For example, I like to point out to my fellow Americans that Britain never defeated the IRA, it was forced to craft a political solution.

Fast forward to July, 2007. My wife and I are in Scotland for a few days of rest and relaxation, just as the Scottish parliament opens and a Scot, Gordon Brown, takes over as prime minister of Great Britain from the very English Tony Blair. Then a Muslim man, who is not from England or Scotland, drives a Jeep full of explosive materials into Glasgow airport. Here are some observations:

1. The airport was re-opened less than 24 hours after the attack, a very British response to terrorists: Don't let them change your way of life.

2. Within 2 days of the attack some Scottish Nationalist politicians were publicly speculating as to whether Scotland would be safer if it seceded from the rest of Britain (the SNP has historically opposed the war).

3. In Gordon Brown's first speech to parliament he suggested a change to the British constitution that would shift power to declare war [or not] to parliament. Such a change could have prevented Blair from going to war in Iraq [given that 80% of the British population were opposed to that war].

No wonder Bush looked so sad to see Blair go. It is clear that a lot of people in the UK think the terrorist acts committed by Muslims in the UK are a result of the UK's support of the Iraq war. In other words, they see a connection between acts of terrorism and the acts of other players on the global stage.

Of course, Bush might be consoled by the fact that Tony Blair's wife is no longer "the wife of the Prime Minister." Cherie Blair has frequently been at odds with the official Bush/Blaire doctrine, for example:

The prime minister's wife, Cherie Blair, was last night forced to apologise after she acknowledged that Palestinian suicide bombers may be driven by a lack of hope about their future. On a personal appearance with Queen Rania of Jordon, Mrs Blair told reporters: "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress." Guardian, June 19, 2002

and

Cherie Blair has criticised the policies of the US President George W Bush, attacking his stance on terrorist prisoners and gay rights. Scotsman, October 31, 2004

Google Bug Mis-categorizes Users: The joys of bear-beiting

You wouldn't know it from where you sit, but I am writing this post in German. I can demonstrate what I mean with an image:

I am actually writing this post in Scotland and I don't sprechen Sie Deutsch. So why are the Blogger menu items in German? The answer is a bug in Google's slightly too clever system for presenting users with geo-appropriate versions of itself and its applications. I first noticed this when visiting England earlier this year. One of my browsers has google.com set as the home page but clicking the Home button in that browser took me to google.co.uk. You might not think that is a problem, but when you search for something like a Sony Viao via google.co.uk you get offered the best deals on Vaios in the UK, which is not what you want if you live in the US and plan to buy your Vaio there (for one thing laptops generally more expensive in the UK, and for another, their keyboards are significantly different from US models).

However, getting the UK version of Google is a relatively minor inconvenience compared to getting the German version, which is what has been happening on my trip to Scotland. And it is not just Google search that is in German. All the Google apps, including Blogger, are in German and so far I have not found a way to 'make' Google sprechen Sie Englisch. What I have found is one explanation for this problem: Google uses the location of the ISP by which you are connecting to the Internet to determine what country you are in. Google then uses the language of that country in its menus. (What Google does in multi-lingual countries like Belgium and Canada I don't know.)

But how does this ISP-language link explain German Google appearing in Scotland? A quick traceroute showed that the ISP used by the hotel at which I am staying is based in Germany. They have a UK company but apparently the main servers are registered in Germany. Apparently the coders at Google had not considered that possibility.

The whole thing is a great example of the huge difference between physical categories and digital categories. Categorizing physical things is challenging. Read David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous and you realize how tough (for example, I had no idea there were two kinds of indexing specialists known as lumpers and splitters).

Weinberger ably demonstrates that one of the wonders of the web is the way it can break down categories. Search for a book at Amazon or anything on Google and the results will display its many facets. Search for "cycle" and you will see what I mean. Cycles of all kinds pop up: life, the sea, pedal bicycles, motorcycles, and so on. And your media choices include data, images, news, blog posts, etc. However, when you connect to the web you do so from a physical location. Google determines and categorizes that location for you, but not always accurately.

This whole Scottish-German experience has been quite educational. I think I might have found a new way to teach foreign languages. When you use a foreign version of a program that you know well, like Blogger in this case, you quickly recognize and translate foreign words, such as bearbeiten, which means edit. Actually, I'm rather partial to bearbeiten. Sounds much more exciting. Honey, I'll be there in a minute, I just have to do some quick bear biting.
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Army Gets Big Boost in Safer Vehicles: Too much, too late

The US Army is placing rush orders for up to seven times more specially designed armored vehicles to help protect troops in Iraq in a move that could cost more than $20 billion. The vehicles are MRAPs, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles.

The decision to order up to 17,770 MRAPs for the Army comes as Defense Secretary Robert Gates has made the vehicle the Pentagon's top priority. "The MRAP's V-shaped hull and raised chassis are up to four times safer against the top threat to U.S. troops in Iraq — improvised explosive devices, or IEDs."

How could any true patriot argue dispute the virtue of the Army getting a big boost in safer vehicles? Well, consider:

1. By the time the vehicles are built and deployed in Iraq, America might not be in Iraq.

2. The MRAPs will only escalate the conflict (they are already vulnerable to newer devices being deployed against them).

3. You cannot defeat terrorists by upping the weaponry.

4. You cannot solve a problem today by spending today. The time to provide these vehicles was 2003 when we sent in the troops. Or 2005 when they were urgently requested.

Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that our armed forces should get the best possible equipment to do their dangerous jobs as safely as possible. But it is a bit late for that in Iraq. The whole invasion was a blunder and surely the best course of action now is to retreat and conserve resources, physical and fiscal.
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Charge Bush With Contempt? Go Leahy

Senator Leahy, not exactly a political hot-head, said on Sunday that he may seek a charge of contempt against President Bush. The contempt charge could come into play if the White House continues to withhold documents pertaining to the firing of US attorneys. Read on in the article and you see that contempt could also be in the cards with respect to the domestic eavesdropping program run by the National Security Agency.

Pulling Back the Curtain on Cheney: Not a pretty sight

Fine Concord Monitor article pulls back the curtain on Cheney. Pulls together a lot of emerging themes, like John Ashcroft actually being a good guy relative to Cheney. Documents what has to be the most "un-open" administration in US history. To follow a thread from my previous post about emails, this administration seems to have flaunted the law like no other:

"Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC email accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved and the large quantity of missing emails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive." -- Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for the US Congress

Is Everything Miscellaneous? It often feels that way

Do you have a hard time fitting your life into categories? Is it hard to separate work from play, office from home, partying from networking, the obviously relevant from the maybe someday relevant? If so, fear not, apparently you are not alone. For a start, there's me. I'm with you. For several years now it has been getting harder for me to categorize things. At first I thought it was a lack of mental discipline, or laziness, or maybe even the onset of old age.

(Quick, before I forget, an aside about old age and forgetfulness: I recently told my mother that I was concerned because, since I turned fifty, I seem to be forgetting more things. My mother, who is nearly eighty, replied: "Don't be silly, I used to forget loads of things when I was only twenty.)

But this category problem, this blurring of the lines, turns out to be a trend, a sign of the times, as described and discussed is the book Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger, one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto and a Harvard professor with a doctorate in philosophy (but a cheerful way of writing very accessible prose nonetheless). Here's some of the blurb from the book:

Human beings are information omnivores: we are constantly collecting, labeling, and organizing data. But today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place--the physical world demanded it--but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Simply put, everything is suddenly miscellaneous.

And everything includes us. Or at least me. Think about it like this: Try answering the following three questions with a single word:

1. Where are you from?
2. What do you do?
3. Where do you work?

Some people can, but many cannot. My Dad could: Coventry/Engineer/Dunlop. I cannot. As regards question one: I was born and raised in England, but that included a spell in Canada and I have now lived in America for longer than I lived in England. I live in Florida now but also spend quite a bit of time in New York. I lived for more than five years in Scotland (which is different from England) and another five years in San Francisco (which is different from everywhere).

Question two: What I do is information security consulting, and privacy consulting, and film producing, and real estate development, but mainly what I do is write.

Question three: Where I do this stuff is all over. Mainly my office at home but sometimes at a client's office and basically anywhere there is power and bandwidth, which includes planes and trains and automobiles, which are not anywhere but somewhere between two wheres.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying my life is cooler than my Dad's. And I'm exaggerating a little to make my case. My Dad led a very interesting life, having served as an engineer in the Royal Navy during and after World War Two. He worked in Canada and 'the States' for several years before settling in at Dunlop in Coventry (but always as an engineer). And he was exploring new options (in engineering) when his life was tragically cut short at 50. However, I think you get my point. And his father could easily have supplied one word answers, as could my maternal grandfather.

But wait a minute, is this 'personal miscellanitude' merely or solely a result of things going digital? What about increased educational opportunities, fewer borders, greater social and physical mobility, cheap air fares? These have all played a part, as have changes in the workplace ethos, like big companies undermining job security and some of them screwing employees out of pensions (my mother still gets a widow's pension check every month from Dunlop but I know a number of people my age who have already lost pensions).

What I think is happening is that forces at play in the physical world are complementing the effect of digitalization. Infinite varieties of order, individualization of world view, these are possible in the digital world and they are reflected in the real world. If this sounds vaguely familiar from philosophy classes, think Hegel and his use of the term 'reflection.' The digital world initially reflects the physical but evolves according to its own internal reason. And the physical world takes on aspects of the digital, at least in our perception of the physical. It is at least worth considering that we are "being digital" when we feel like previously unrelated things in fact go well together or previously related things have no compelling reason to stay that way.
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About Brad Pitt and You: Search engine trick barks up wrong tree

Pursuing my obsession with search engines [and myself] led me to enter my name into dogpile, self-described as "all the best search engines piled into one." In other words a so-called meta-search engine that pulls results from other search engines. What I found was quite interesting and applies to everyone, so you might want to try it. Go to dogpile.com and search for your exact name plus any other person, like Brad Pitt, or a place, or a thing. As an example, I put this in the search box:

"Fred Whassaname" gold

The first result from that search is a sponsored one. The second result from that search or any other search that follows the name/gold pattern, is a page at About.com that is headed "Gold Jewelry - How to Buy Gold Jewelry." The URL of this result is:
holidays.about.com/od/fashion/a/gold_jewelry.htm.

When you go to this page via the above search you will not find any mention of Fred in the text of the page, but if you search the source code of the page you will see an interesting trick at the bottom, an html IMG SCR tag that points to page at the New York Times, a page with the name in it:

http://up.nytimes.com/?d=1/&g=T&h=76NFF02820kA
012J&hs=76NFF02820kA012J&t=2&r=http%3a%2f%2fww
w%2edogpile%2ecom%2finfo%2edogpl%2fsearch%2fweb%2f
%25252522Fred%25252BWhassaname%25252522%25252Bgold
%2f1%2f%2d%2f1%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f1%2f%2d%2f%2d%2
f%2d%2f1%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d
%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2
f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%
2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d
%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2
f%2d%2f417%2ftop%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f%2d%2f1&u=http%
3A%2F%2Fholidays%2eabout%2ecom%2fod%2ffashion%2fa%
2fgold%5fjewelry%2ehtm

In other words, the New York Times, which owns About.com, makes up pages on the fly, just to meet your search criteria. Making things up is not what one would expect from the New York Times, not after it got rid of those plagiarizing journalists. And one consequence of this nasty little search hack is that you can enter your name together with that of your favorite movie star and get a bunch of hits that appear to link you with that person. But it also means you can get a bunch of hits off:

"Fred Whassaname" felon

This raises the possibility that someone could conclude, if they just go by the number of hits, that poor Fred is a felon. There's no basis for this and somehow it just feels wrong.
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