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A prominent one would be graphviz, of course. But most other software that describes itself as dealing with "mind maps" can only handle a basic tree structure, you're right. Another exception would be Tinderbox, but that's closed source.

If they are basically truthful, then they are improving on their record.

Can you provide some insight into how an utterly crude attempt to spam Google works so spectacularly, after all these years of tuning your algorithms to detect just this kind of thing?

Another Googler figured it out. yellowpagesgoesgreen.org actually bought hitchensweb.com, which used to be an authoritative result when Hitchens blogged there. Then they redirect it to yellowpagesgoesgreen.org, and they hid the words "Christopher Hitchens" in the alt text of some images on the page, which also fools our snippets. Pretty sneaky!

You can read more about the problem of distinguishing legitimate and illegitimate domain acquisition and redirection here:
http://searchengineland.com/do-links-from-expired-domains-count-with-google-17811

It's a tricky problem but we're on it.

FYI, in the future you can help us improve by reporting spam here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport

Can you provide some insight into how an utterly crude attempt to spam Google works so spectacularly, after all these years of tuning your algorithms to detect just this kind of thing?

I haven't had a chance to debug this unusual result myself, but I've forwarded it to the webspam team. Thanks. FYI, in the future you can help us by reporting spam here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport

Can you provide some insight into how an utterly crude attempt to spam Google works so spectacularly, after all these years of tuning your algorithms to detect just this kind of thing?

I suspect Google doesn't actually want all the spam sites to vanish from their results, because they profit from them: these sites are designed to entice you to click on ads, which leads to revenue for Google. I feel that the ease with which crude spam pages can still rise to the top of the search results is some evidence for this. The old (pre-IPO) Google would of course know that this is not a good long-term stragegy. Today's Google? It wouldn't surprise me.

I work at Google on Search Quality, and we really do have a firewall between the Search Quality and Ads departments. We make changes that we believe will help our users find better results, so they'll keep coming back to Google for years to come. We don't answer to Ads.

I suspect Google doesn't actually want all the spam sites to vanish from their results, because they profit from them: these sites are designed to entice you to click on ads, which leads to revenue for Google. I feel that the ease with which crude spam pages can still rise to the top of the search results is some evidence for this. The old (pre-IPO) Google would of course know that this is not a good long-term stragegy. Today's Google? It wouldn't surprise me.

My problem with Google's attempt to be "social" its that it makes their already spam-infested search results even worse, and it's difficult to opt-out. With all the effort that they claim to expend in fighting spam, why is it still so easy to game their system?

My problem with Google's attempt to be "social" its that it makes their already spam-infested search results even worse, and it's difficult to opt-out. With all the effort that they claim to expend in fighting spam, why is it still so easy to game their system?

But when they enthusiastically appease other, extra-legal demands for censorship they sometimes censor results worldwide, including those served to the US. Did you know that when you search on Google or YouTube that the results returned by Google are partly determined by the preferences of various Islamic pressure groups and foreign governments, including Pakistan?

Google censors results in the US in response to political pressure, and lies about it. No laws involved at all.

But it still seems to be trivial to spam the heck out of Google.

YouTube [i.e., Google] is already providing some of the censorship this guy is asking for. Perhaps not for him yet, but certainly for the Chinese and Pakistani governments and various Muslim groups. And not just for overseas consumption: much of this censorship applies to content served in the U.S.

I tried to install a program written in Ruby and the experience left me with a very bad impression of the Ruby ecosystem.

If the strangeness is you getting different results from different computers, it could be due to this.

Range in "square miles"? That's as silly as this.

robust, stable, or correct enough to release commercially, especially with an Apple brand on it.

This is hilarious. Do you need me to provide links for Apple Mail accidentally deleting mail, or the OS X Finder accidentally deleting files? And what about the bug-ridden iOS Mail program?

Too bad they haven't decided to stop filtering content in the USA.

Although flat-out astroturfing is usually obvious to the clued-in, there are more subtle forms of influence that may be tainting more online commentary than we might suspect. In the case of this blogger, he was not only accepting advertising but had received a free copy of the software that he was praising (~ $300), yet he seemed to honestly think there was no problem. And the software publisher, if his email to me is to be believed, actually doesn't think that he's paying for reviews.

Youtube isn't stopping anyone from talking about the issues, only from showing graphic violence

No, they are banning videos that just talk about the issues.

Private site, their policies

Agreed; they have a right to censor anything they want, and even to lie about it, as they do routinely. But Google's empire (YouTube, News, etc.) is so pervasive that their policies influence what people think they know about the world, so I think it's helpful to make their censorship practices better known.

Google already has a well established record of removing content that is critical of Islam, either in response to demands from Islamic organizations or the Pakistani government. The censorship applies to Google sites (like YouTube) served to the US, not merely to Islamic countries. In these cases Google falsely claims that the content has been removed due to a "terms of use violation" and refuses to discuss the real reasons for the censorship.

Sorry, my previous attempt at submitting this comment had a paragraph chopped off

I recently tried out basically all the calendering programs available as native applications on OS X and linux that had a chance of being able to sync with the iphone calender (which can use a standard webdav protocol for syncing). I wound up settling on Google's calender, which is a web application (even though it has had its own issues). (I used remind, and its curses front-end wyrd, for years, but no caldav sync there.)

I found it amusing that this web app was prettier, more responsive, more intuitive, and more capable than any of the native applications that I had tried to use (well, maybe Apple's iCal is about as pretty). All the native applications were either too slow, too buggy, missing some essential feature, or some combination of these. Amusing, because people have had decades to try to come up with a decent calendar app, and here is Google stringing one together to run in a browser, and it's better, even in ways (responsiveness) that you wouldn't expect.

I recently tried out basically all the calendering programs available as native applications on OS X and linux that had a chance of being able to sync with the iphone calender (which can use a standard webdav protocol for syncing). I wound up settling on Google's calender, which is a web application (even though it has had its own issues). (I used remind, and its curses front-end wyrd, for years, but no caldav sync there.)

That's interesting. Are they finally going to disclose their censorship of results in the US in response to demands from religious pressure groups? Or are they going to continue to pretend that this doesn't happen?

In the case of Google ('don't be evil'), the situation is more complex. For example, they have agreed to remove content from YouTube to satisfy the demands of the Pakistani government, who objected to videos that were critical of Islam. Google applies this censorship within the U.S., where no law requires it.

I use Chrome (on linux) as my default browser now. The only serious problem I have with it its handling of embedded fonts, but that might be a problem with webkit.

The insidious problem is not straightforward payment for sham reviews. It is analogous to the old-fashioned phenomena of magazines about cars or local magazines with restaurant reviews. Their source of income is advertising from automobile manufacturers and local restaurants. They may not be accepting payment in return for favorable notices, but their coverage happens to be favorable. The publishers know that if it ceases to be favorable, their revenue dries up. If a publication contains advertising, we know, I hope, that the content is inevitably influenced by it.

The influence can simply lead to stories not being covered. Has NPR's heavy, and daily growing, corporate advertising caused them to decide not to cover stories embarrassing to their corporate patrons? I don't know, but it would seem inevitable that editorial decisions will eventually be influenced by the dependence on corporate cash.

This problem immediately transferred itself to the web, and is not touched by the new FTC rules. The publisher of Tinderbox (a commercial knowledge management program for the Macintosh), for example, can come right out and offer advertising in return for reviews, with the unsubtle implication that those reviews should be favorable, but he's not offering to pay directly for the coverage, so this does not run afoul of the regulations. The reason that this is more insidious than straight out cash for sham reviews is that the latter, I think, are easier to spot. When someone is praising a product or service and receiving, or hoping to receive, the benefit of advertising, the writer may not even be aware of the influence.

I have nothing against him, but he's sharing his impressions with us one the same day that he got access. His insights are not profound.

He's either attacking straw men or telling us that twitter is an aid to productivity. Twitter.

Try this for a decent and recent writeup.

The straw men: all those dozens of people typing at me all at once! Who are these dozens of people and why would I be watching their typing? Although it's been disabled in the developer sandbox, there is a check box that turns this feature off.

I don't guess that Mr. Scoble has written any wave extensions. One very nice thing about wave is that it's pretty easy to do so; some simple python programming and you can make a robot to do something useful. Here is my robot that draws sparklines. Praise Google for publishing a powerful API (now they need better documentation).

Here is where wave can be immediately useful: the mess that an email thread becomes when more than two people are participating, some of them top-posting, quoting the entire thread in every reply, and so on, becomes a coherent document that can be simplified and neatened as it grows. And the entire history is conveniently available.

"Many bloggers have accepted perks such as free laptops, trips to Europe, $500 gift cards or even thousands of dollars for a 200-word post." Don't forget free software and advertising. The sleazy practice of offering advertising income to people who have nice things to say about a product is pretty well established by now; I doubt many readers are fooled.

The problem of Google as content provider and intermediary is potentially deep, and transcends copyright issues. For many of us, Google is where we turn first to find out about a subject. If Google decides not to include a source of information in its search results, we may never learn that such a source exists. But do they do that? Why would they? They not only do it, but are willing to lie about it. I show how with an example here: http://lee-phillips.org/youtube/

hasn't it? What about the stories about Microsoft?

Gary Null, the quack health guru, has his employees writing reviews of his "books".

Mark Bernstein, who sells hypertext software for the Macintosh, unsubtly suggests that he'll advertise on your blog if you mention his products,

hasn't it? What about the stories about Microsoft?

Gary Null, the quack health guru, has his employees writing reviews of his "books".

Mark Bernstein, who sells hypertext software for the Macintosh, unsubtly suggests that he'll advertise on your blog if you mention his products,

So what do you think about Google allowing extremist Muslims decide what videos you are allowed to see, and concealing their censorship like this: http://lee-phillips.org/youtube/

Google has removed videos critical of the Pakistani government at that government's request, and has many more shameful examples of political cave-in under its belt.

A related problem is Google's appeasement of muslim demands for censorship, not because they don't have a legal right to do this, but because Google is a de facto portal to ideas and speech, and so their capitulation to intimidation (as well as, for example, Borders and Waldenbooks removing magazines from their shelves if they contain articles that might upset Muslims) has the effect of abridgment of the freedom of speech. That this is happening within the U.S. and has a direct effect on what Americans are permitted to see and hear is alarming.

http://lee-phillips.org/primary/ yes, my graphical skills are weak.

I am far more concerned about Islamic censorship of the internet within the U.S. and other free countries, as well as intimidation of bookstores, publishers, and news outlets.

In the West, we find censorship abhorent, a crime against liberty. Capitulation simply to avoid controversy is the very antithesis of free exchange of ideas. This is essentially giving in to a mobocracy kind of situation, where a militant group successfully bullies someone into their way of thinking.

But this capitulation, specifically to offended Muslims, is becoming routine. Borders and Waldenbooks take magazines off their shelves if they contain articles that might upset some Muslims. YouTube removes videos that discuss Islam if Muslims complain. What we see and know, what we are allowed to discuss, is already in part determined by these mobs.

... that I got in snail-mail this week and reproduced at http://lee-phillips.org/ameritrade/ with my reactions.

I'm using it as my main browser, but I do have to use Camino or Safari for certain javascript-heavy interactive sites. This may not be Opera's fault, as these sites appear to be defective - if a site with syntax errors in its html or javascript fails to work correctly in a browser, I don't think it's fair to blame the browser, but not everyone agrees with this (they regard the ability to figure out how to parse incorrect markup or code a responsibility of the browser). I like it because it is great at displaying pages and navigating without making me touch the mouse. I can turn images on or off, fit the page to the window width, turn the stylesheet off, follow links, etc., all with the keyboard, and all the shortcuts can be customized. On the other hand some people love Opera because of its support for mouse gestures!

I like Opera. I use Opera.

There is another class of exploits related to the URL handler exploits that, as far as I know, have not been fixed. Look at http://lee-phillips.org/sshv.html for an example of a way to execute arbitrary commands on the target computer, and a discussion of how to secure your machine.

I've been enjoying plotting in Gnuplot with Python programs using gnuplot-py. I have some resources about Gnuplot on OSX here.

I've found a problem with Safari's use of the symbol font under MacRoman encoding. It's a bit too much to explain here, but I've put up a page about the problem here