You know, I do actually wear a huge amount of protective gear when I drive on my commute. There's the seatbelt, which is moderately obvious, but there's also the metal frame I'm encased in, the variety of carefully designed crumply bits of that frame, and the huge heavy weight I'm guiding around in front of me called an engine block. I'm certain there are probably hundreds of design decisions I'm not even vaguely aware of that contribute to my ability to survive an accident.
Now, none of those features alert me to the idea that driving is dangerous; indeed, these features can even be prominently advertised as selling points of the car, together with images of the car (and crash test dummies acting as passengers) being subjected to all sorts of impacts.
However, this wasn't always so - the automobile industry in the US fought against introducing safety measures (like seatbelts) into cars based on the received marketing wisdom behind Ford's awful 1956 model year. That year, Ford had offered a relatively cheap add-on package called "Lifeguard" that added a few safety features to certain models. (Not including seatbelts, for some reason) The received marketing wisdom was that the advertisements for Lifeguard - which naturally did impolite things like point out that car accidents can kill you - caused customers walking into Ford dealerships to sour on the whole "buying a car" concept.
Now, was the received marketing wisdom wrong? Possibly, but even so: why don't car ads with smashed cars get people to drive less, or to drive more carefully? Aren't they promoting a fear of driving? What's different, psychologically, about the smashed car in the Volvo ad and the campaigns used to promote helmet use?
My gut instinct says that it's something to do with shame, in that there's no shame in being in a car wreck, but there is shame heaped on those "unsafe" bicyclists without helmets. Is there a way to manipulate this shame for good, I wonder? Could some local news stations have a successful "ambush obnoxiously bad local driver with reporter and videotaped evidence" series?
Conversely, is there a way to promote helmet use that's effective without invoking shame on people for cycling at all?
I suppose I should point out that the city of Burlington, NJ will be having its annual Wood Street Fair this coming Saturday (the 12th). If you're in the vicinity of Philadelphia, especially on the New Jersey side, it's a very nice day trip.
It's mostly an excuse for all manner of craftspeople to set up booths and hock their wares. There's also the obligatory massively unhealthy food, some children forced by their parents to dress up in colonial-era outfits, and gigantic inflatable constructs that little children love climbing up and over and around.
(If you're anywhere where you can easily get to the NJ RiverLine, use that as your way to get there - the RiverLine stop is right across broad street from the fair, whereas if you drive all the way you're probably looking at 0.5-1 mile of walking from your car, once you manage to find parking at all)
Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. (*)
(*) Although I'm sure that somewhere in the multiverse there is probably someone more deserving, I just can't think of anyone at the moment.
Okay, we get it. This guy is a fraud who filed a frivilous SLAPP lawsuit that was dismissed with some rather forceful language by the judge.
At some point, doesn't it become a bit like kicking a corpse to keep posting harangues about it?
Granted, he apparently is still holding out to some marks that he'll win this lawsuit, which may make it more like kicking a zombie, Still, there's something about this latest post that just feels wrong. (While still being entertaining)
I can't quite put my finger on it, but it feels a bit like when we're telling war stories at work about unqualified candidates - it's okay to a point, but at some point it slips from mocking hillariously wrong answers to mocking the candidates themselves, and that's decidedly not ok. I won't claim that this situation is at all analogous, but I'm beginning to get a similarly uneasy feeling to the one I get when those conversations turn awry.
Because I haven't seen it mentioned, I'll note my favorite Wikipedia localization effort:
Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch
Not that I can read it (I mostly can't, though knowing German and English helps) but it just tickles me to see that it exists at all, given that every time I've actually heard that language it was being spoken by someone ideologically opposed to casual computer use.
On another note, which of the accents on South Park are difficult to understand for a UK English speaker? The one character on "King of the Hill" I could understand, because you're fighting both a deep Texan accent and mumbling at the same time, but I can't remember anything odd about South Park. (Then again, I'm a native speaker of American "North Midland" English, so most American accents shouldn't be too far off from my own speech)
"anyone know Google’s Terms of Service"
It's not as though they(*) don't have a nice website that lets you look that stuff up. From here:
4 Prohibited Uses; License Grant; Representations and Warranties. Customer shall not, and shall not authorize any party to: (a) generate automated, fraudulent or otherwise invalid impressions, inquiries, conversions, clicks or other actions; (b) use any automated means or form of scraping or data extraction to access, query or otherwise collect Google advertising related information from any Program website or property except as expressly permitted by Google; or (c) advertise anything illegal or engage in any illegal or fraudulent business practice. Customer represents and warrants that it holds and hereby grants Google and Partners all rights (including without limitation any copyright, trademark, patent, publicity or other rights) in Creative, Services and Targets needed for Google and Partner to operate Programs (including without limitation any rights needed to host, cache, route, transmit, store, copy, modify, distribute, perform, display, reformat, excerpt, analyze, and create algorithms from and derivative works of Creative or Targets) in connection with this Agreement ("Use"). Customer represents and warrants that (y) all Customer information is complete, correct and current; and (z) any Use hereunder and Customer's Creative, Targets, and Customer's Services will not violate or encourage violation of any applicable laws, regulations, code of conduct, or third party rights (including without limitation intellectual property rights). Violation of the foregoing may result in immediate termination of this Agreement or customer's account without notice and may subject Customer to legal penalties and consequences.
The relevant bit would seem to be "engage in any illegal or fraudulent business practice". If you've seen an adwords ad by this scammer, make a complaint on the adwords feedback form. Be sure to have the ad's link target (right-click on the ad's title and select "Copy Link Location" or "Copy shortcut" as appropriate to your browser) on hand.
(*) Okay, we, but as: 1) I'm not involved with ads policy enforcement at all, and 2) I'm not willing to be the contact to file the report myself, we'll pretend for a moment that I'm employed elsewhere.
Users not served by the above-mentioned times can run the following command on any unix system that's properly set to your timezone:
perl -le "print scalar(localtime(1247641200))"
(Actually, that'll also work on windows machines that have ActivePerl installed)
Not sure what timezone you unix machine thinks it's in? Run "date" and compare the result to a local clock.
Want to change your time zone? Run:
export TZ=Asia/Macao
Or whatever file you find in /usr/share/zoneinfo that fits your fancy. (some unix variants keep those files in /etc/zoneinfo instead)
Note that the above commands make no allowance for relativistic effects, so on the surface of the earth should not be considered any more accurate than 10^-12 seconds.
If you're in a reference frame offset from the earth's surface enough that relativistic effects are of concern, you're on your own.
My bad; 19 states (plus DC) had abortion legal under some circumstances prior to Roe. So we need 14 more.
Hey, wouldn't it be something if one of the "big sky" states of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, or the Dakotas followed next?
Despite their solid red state reputation, I see these as possibilities primarily because of the comparatively low proportion of Evangelicals among the population. Unlike with abortion, I don't think we're going to get an even vaguely progressive outcome in Georgia, Alabama or South Carolina with regard to gay marriage until it's impossed from on high.
To continue only slightly in the pileup against comment #9, by my count 15 states (plus DC) allowed abortion in at least some circumstances at the time Roe v. Wade was decided.
So how long do you think it'll take to get ten more states on board? (come on Trenton, we can still make the first 5! Vermont's new marriage law doesn't take effect until September)
Of course, we have now a very different supreme court than we did when either Roe v. Wade or Loving v. Virginia were decided.
I'm conflicted here - on the one hand, I understand the general rule that #queryfail was not, in general, polite or civil to the authors cited. Even if specific identifiers had been removed, there were apparently sufficient specifics several times for individual authors to identify themselves, and I recognize that this is painful.
At the same time, I really understand this urge, because it's hit me too - not about writers, but about interviewees. (I often do the front-line interviews for people wishing to become software engineers employed by my employer. As a consequence, I'm often the first engineer an applicant talks to, and so get largely unscreened candidates.) This urge didn't hit me with my first bad candidate, or my second, or even when I did the interview that still makes me shudder and stands out in my head as "worst.candidate.ever". Those interviews led to griping to my spouse and commiserating with my co-workers.
But then, the economy went south and the volume of interviews I was doing went up. Although I don't think the aggregate quality went down, something felt different. The increase in volume (and I was still doing only ~ 1 interview/week) led to an urge to be public about the worst of it. (Let him that hath understanding google for it)
I can only imagine what it must feel like for agents with the volume they deal with.
The current unread email count in my inbox stands at 2775. I'm pretty sure I'll never get it all read, and will simply need to programmatically dump everything older than 3 months not addressed directly to me.
Lee@#14:
My current employer offers a substantial quantity (and quality) of free food as one of its many benefits. The justification is that it increases the sense of community among employees. I'm not sure how well it works with a larger company, but we're not complaining :).
(Background: Lee and I have the same employer)
Although it may not work on an overall company basis, having the option often means that some of my teammates and I will eat lunch together, along with people from other teams who see a group heading out, think "Hey! Lunch group!", and join us. There's also a community of people defined as "those of us who show up in NYC before 8:30" who will regularly end up eating breakfast together. Even if it's just one other person who can break for lunch around the same time, it's much, much nicer to eat lunch with someone else than all alone.
I voted an hour ago here in NJ. (Burlington city, ward 3, district 1) In the past, I've gotten there at 5:55 (polls open at 6) and been the only one there when the polls open, though there's usually a few other voters in line by the time I get all the way through the process and am leaving. This year I planned to get there earlier, but still only got there at 5:53, and wound up being the third one in line. There were five of us in line when the polls opened.
Of those five, two were first-time voters, and three were African-American; normally, the people I see voting at that hour are all as white as me despite the district I'm in being about 20% A-A. (And I wasn't the youngest one in line at 6 am; normally I'm the youngest by at least 20 years)
Wesley @#35:At this point, McCain and Palin probably figure nobody will bother to hold them accountable for anything--that, what the hell, maybe in a couple of months nobody will even remember what they do and say today.
Here's my suspicion: McCain figures that nobody will hold him accountable because he suspects he's going to die within the next four years. (i.e., this is his last chance at a presidential bid)
Only McCain and his doctor really know how bad his previous brush with melanoma was, but my strong suspicion is that by the time the next presidential election rolls around, McCain will at least be seriously ill from complications related to cancer, if he hasn't succumbed by then.
Jaime@64:
It's not just you, but it is targeting the swing states primarily. There's strong suspicion that the distribution of this DVD was behind the terrorist attack described here.
Sten,
I know Republicans, even of the evangelical Christian tribe, who are wonderful people. In fact, I usually eat breakfast with one since an odd confluence of schedules makes us the only people around that early in the office.
And for the sake of my breakfast conversation, I am looking forward to a decrease in political heat and a general smoothing out of political waters. During the primaries, we could talk politics so long as it was still a horse race on both sides. Now, though, we have to confine ourselves to other topics, such as the wrongness of turkey bacon. Frankly, we beat that topic to a pulp months ago.
So, I get it. You're uncomfortable with this direct political rhetoric implying that the choice between candidates matters enough that ML would appear to take sides. And indeed, my breakfast conversation would go much smoother if we could safely wander over to politics and comfortably agree that everyone had both good sides and bad sides. There have been some awkward silences lately.
But you know what? I do more than eat breakfast. I am not completely insulated from what policies get enacted in Washington. I have to live with whatever happens, and do strongly believe that my life will be materially different given different policies.
And, yes, Obama isn't perfect. He veered way to hard to center after getting the nomination for my tastes. He has shown repeated issues with addressing grown women he's not close to as "Sweetie". My first reaction on hearing his VP pick was "He picked Biden? Edwards was irresponsible running for President with that affair waiting to explode, but you know what Edwards wouldn't have done? He wouldn't have picked Joe Bankruptcy Biden." I still think Biden has a lot to answer for his role in shaping and supporting the bankruptcy bill.
That being said, are you surprised that our hosts and the vast majority of commenters here see the Obama/Biden ticket as far, far preferable to the McCain/Palin ticket? Are you honestly surprised that Theresa would link to sites that, while partisan, make an argument from well-documented history, (*) and condemn the tactic of guilt-by-osmosis?
What site did you think you were reading? Our hosts are very well known to be: 1) progressives, and 2) political pragmatists. They've never shown to hold with the protest-left tactic of voting third party because the Democrats are ideologically sullied. I find your surprise and disappointment - if genuine - very puzzling.
(*) Mostly. The Keating five stuff is well documented, but I concur with SeanH@11 on the quality of "John McCain's Sweet Ride"
The overall impression of these accounts was that they were astroturf, and very poorly constructed astroturf at that.
We need a new term.
Traditionally "astroturf" has meant "the appearance of a grassroots campaign that is actually done by large moneyed interests buying peoples' time".
Now, is it astroturf when PZ Myers sends his horde of readers to go crash a poll? He isn't paying anyone. He isn't even getting anyone to do anything they wouldn't do of their own inclination; he's just saying "do it over here", and providing a link. Is it astroturf to bus in your ardent supporters, if those supporters aren't otherwise compensated for their support?
I think we need another term to account for things like this twitter account. I have no reason to believe that this twitter account is anything other than what it appears - the twitter account of an unrepentant misogynist and racist who sincerely believes the bile he tweets out, and who uses twitter only to yell out politically-motivated slurs.
Now, calling this strategy ("send a bunch of the most rabid supporters we have over there and turn them loose to do whatever they want") astroturf feels wrong. That feels like stretching the word to cover activities that might have a similar effect, but in execution are distinctly different.
These people aren't artificial grass, they're weeds.
Therefore, I propose:
"tares" (or possibly "darnel") - rabid supporters of a particular side in some topic of general interest who join a site/forum/whatever solely to exclaim their passionate support of whatever it is they passionately support, totally disregarding the surrounding culture and etiquette of the place they've invaded. A subspecies of troll.
"sowing tares" - the act of encouraging rabid supporters of candidate/cause X to descend in large number upon some site/forum/whatever and "make themselves known".
I like "tares" for the cultural resonance of the phrase "sowing tares" (see Matthew 13:24-30), but it lends itself to easy misspelling as "tears" which then makes no sense, so maybe "darnel" is a better term.
As for "can we have this for the whole internet", for a while I've been maintaining a greasmonkey script that provides the equivalent of a usenet killfile for the comments sections of a whole bunch of different blogs. Some people swear by it (in the good way); I find it helps more with the cluelessly bizarre than with actual trolls per se, who do tend to get stomped on by the blog owners. (there are a few regular commentors at "Good Math/Bad Math" who seem to define "cluelessly bizarre")
However, I've never made that script cover Making Light - there simply isn't a need here. True trolls are swiftly disemvoweled, and those that aren't are made quick sport of by the social environment. It seems acceptable.
@44:I take it that your (2) is referring to the "secure" attribute that one can set on cookies, but apparently no-one ever does? I have seen it claimed that if you check that "use https:// only" box in gmail that it actually *will* set that attribute on its login cookie, which would protect at least your gmail account against the attack you're referring to. I can't check for myself because I don't have a standard gmail account.This is getting dangerously close to areas I shouldn't be talking about, but that's not quite what I mean. (Setting the secure attribute on the login cookie is only part of what's needed to protect against this) The issue is that on an unsecured wifi network an attacker can inject HTML into any non-ssl response from anywhere, which can cause your browser to fire off a request.
There's a fundamental problem when these two things are combined:
1) A service that can recognize a user automatically via unencrypted communication, and
2) Attackers who can cause a user to visit an arbitrary site in an environment where they can watch all the unencrypted communication
Checking the "ssl only" option in gmail does two things:
1) It sets things up so that your gmail session cookie will never be sent in the clear, and
2) It configures google's accounts login feature so that it won't send you to a non-secure URL that generates a new session cookie, even if you enter gmail through a non-secure url.
It's not enough to exercise personal URL hygiene and only visit services you care about through https urls, if there's still a way for the service to automatically recognize you and hand you a non-secure session cookie.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 12 |
| 2008 | 24 |
| 2007 | 25 |
| 2006 | 22 |
| 2005 | 36 |
| 2004 | 11 |
| 2002 | 1 |
Total: 131 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
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