Oblomovka

2002-09-23»

There are a few net innovations that have far greater ramifications than you would, at first hearing, expect them to. Napster, at heart just IRC with a UI, was one. Google News is another.

In its first day, I’ve already noticed:

• The front page changes its editorial stance depending on where the earth’s terminator is. So in the evening on the West Coast, Google News is lead by the South China Morning Post, and various Asian english-language papers. By the late evening, the BBC and European papers are kicking in.
• The site may be created by algorithms – but what about the choice of sites? The most arbitrary dividing line I see in Google’s coverage is what is a news site, and what isn’t. Slashdot is, for instance, as well as some very obscure newspapers. What about Blues News or Scripting News, though?
• Big companies spend mucho money paying “clipping services” that send them copies of any press coverage they receive. Clipping services are going to have to find some added value, very very quickly.

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2002-09-20»

Neal Pollack proves the self-parodying can still be parodied.

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2002-09-19»

Doc has the info on my close encounter – it was a Minuteman III missile launch from Vandenberg airbase. The bowl-shaped scattering patterns came from the first and second stage separations, I suppose. Greetings from the heart of the military-industrial-entertainment complex!

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Want to brighten up your dull grey box? PC fans with colour LEDs, fifteen bucks.

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We just saw the weirdest thing in the dusk sky above San Jose. Initially, it looked like a very brightly lit jet, with a thick vapour trail behind it. It seemed pretty high, but was far brighter than it should be that altitude. I thought perhaps the setting sun was catching a plane-wing at an angle. Then as we watched, a bowl-shaped vapour plume formed around the dot and behind it (a bit like the vapour blanket you can see forming around the plane halfway down this page, but I guess larger given the apparent distance). The dot carried on for a bit longer, then formed another bowl-shaped cloud. That bowl then appeared to contract in on itself, there was what looked like a scattering of debris from the dot, and the dot disappeared. The whole thing was over in less than a minute.

It was a pretty big deal – the vapour trailed crossed a sixth of the sky or more, about 40° from the western horizon. I’m sure we weren’t the only people to see it. I always wonder where to look for discussions of these geographically constrained phenomena online. Guess I’ll keep an eye on the local papers for a while.

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2002-09-17»

Alright, now I’ve got my tickets, I feel safer telling you this: Philip Glass and the Glass Ensemble are performing a live accompaniment to a showing of Koyaanisqatsi in San Francisco next month. I’m a bit too excited.

Those who now hate me will be relieved to know that the DVD of the film is already out.

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2002-09-14»

Woah. WiFi hotspots have been rolled out in Japan by … McDonald’s and Denny’s? According to Trends In Japan, they are:

Wireless LANs Appearing in Schools and Homes

When wireless LANs first made their appearance, they could be found only in a few hotels or coffee shops, but this year many businesses have been installing wireless LANs for the convenience of their customers. One after another, such chains as McDonald’s, MOS Burger, Mister Donut, Starbucks Coffee, and Denny’s have been creating hot spots in certain model outlets. In addition, rail companies like the East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) have been creating hot spots inside of stations, and some districts and cities are now working to make their entire area a hot spot.

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2002-09-12»

Infinite Matrix is a great online sf zine. It’s having a fundraiser. Ursula K. Le Guin has donated a “lunch bag” for auction, embroidered by her own hand. ‘”You can only have lunch once,” she says helpfully, “because it isn’t washable.”‘.

If I was a zombie who developed my prose style by eating brains, I would eat Le Guin’s brain first. You can read her latest short story, set in the Earthsea universe, for $0.91 here. (I know it looks like I’m being paid off by FictionWise, but I just want to applaud their promotion of uncrippled e-texts. For the record, I don’t touch their “secure” editions).

After Ursula, I would move on to John McPhee‘s lobes.

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2002-09-11»

Top W3C HTML honcho Steven Pemberton spoke on XHTML2 at BAYCHI yesterday, and included this great quote (from, it looks like, the linux-elitists mailing list).

“Google is, for all intents, a blind user. A billionaire blind user with tens of millions of friends, all of whom hang on his every word. I suspect Google will have a stronger impact than [laws] in building accessible websites.”

“In a world where Google likely has a valuation several orders of magnitude higher than any chrome such as flash, graphics, audio, interactivity, or “personalization”, I see a heady revision.”

Karsten M. Self

Steven this HTML page as his presentation, transforming it into powerpoint-esque viewpoints (outline view, slide-per-page view) with a bunch of stylesheets.

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2002-09-10»

Within a few hours of posting the correction to ZDNet’s article on drive-by spamming, Adrian Wright, the original misquoted expert, e-mailed me. “Saw your comments on Oblomovka. Not exactly professional behaviour for a Sunday Times stringer”, he wrote. I asked him what he thought was unprofessional. As yet he hasn’t replied.

Meanwhile, the original misquote is already beginning to spread. News sources like ZDNet are seen as authoritative sources online and off. From miscellaneous Slashdot posters to Professor Ed Felten, there are now people who cite the piece as proof that there are recorded instances of drive-by spamming.

As far as I know – and more importantly, as far as Adrian Wright, the original source, knows, there exists no such evidence. The lead to the story, “‘Warspammers’ are taking advantage of unprotected wireless LANs to send out millions of junk emails” is simply not true.

Terry Schmidt, of NYC Wireless wrote independently to the ZDNet UK journalist, Graeme Wearden, asking in the light of the new comments by Adrian, admitting that he’d never seen a case of drive-by spamming in real life, ZDNet would correct the original story. Here’s what Graeme wrote:

I asked Wright if he would like me to change anything in my story – he didn’t.

I think that’s because, even if he did say ‘could happen’ rather than ‘is happening’ (and sitting in the middle of that audience, I thought he was discussing something that is taking place, and that’s what I wrote down), Wright thinks it very likely that drive-by hacking is occuring.

That looks like the truth. But it’s very different from the original story. That article – still being spread, still being read – continues to mislead people into believing drive-by spamming is happening right now, and that Adrian Wright had seen it happen.

Misinformation like this has consequences. It encourages people to believe that having an open network is an uncivil thing to do; that they should cower in fear at the spammers stalking the streets, looking for outlets. It encourages people to believe that the only solution to their fear, uncertainty and doubt is to to hire security consultants with experience of this rampant menace. And the more the original misleading article sits there, the further the misinformation spreads.

This seems to be the opposite of what a journalist should do; and the opposite of what a security consultant is paid to advise. I’m not sure who is to blame here: but if anyone is being unprofessional, I don’t think it’s me.

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