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Slashback: Cradle, Indiscriminancy, Multiplicity
Power the hot tub with compost, remember the soy insulation. andyrossmeissl writes "William McDonough's book Cradle to Cradle was reviewed favorably back in 2002, and now its theories about making things sustainably will be put into practice in the C2C Home design competition. The judges (McDonough is on the panel) will present 9 awards and actually build four of the projects on sites in Roanoke, Virginia. Wanna try your hand? Students and professionals should register by November 15."
About that blind-date opportunity ... Alex Salkever, Tech Editor of BusinessWeek online, wrote with a response to the recent story about the dilemma Google faces in trying to make money from its Google News service:
"There is another side to this that I think is equally important, namely, that Google is undermining the news business with its algorithm-based story selection.It's clear to a journalist that this system was designed by someone who has no idea what's important in the news. While it may nail the top headlines, Google News can't do anything but that. There is no consideration of comprehensiveness of a story at one site over another. Often they cite bizarre news sources for stories way out of their specialty. Why else would we be seeing Al Jazeera as the top listing for a story on Kobe Bryant? The truth is, Web search in the Google model is a poor way to aggregate useful news. It's a great way to figure out what site posted news first but not much more than that.
All of which would be fine except that so many people go to Google for news that they have come to think its actually a really good source for news. It is, if you are searching for news. But if you are reading their home page it's wildly erratic. This ultimately hurts news outlets who work very hard to put together the best stories and draw traffic to their pages. Let me put it to you this way: Would you want the Google guys to set you up on a blind date? Guess what? They already did."
Fountain pens are still ineffective, at least. anomaly writes "I was quite displeased to see that the Kryptonite U locks were incredibly vulnerable to the venerable BIC pen.
I happened to be in the bike shop today and noticed that Kryptonite is sponsoring a lock replacement program. Now's the time to get that lock replaced with a more secure one - before the thieves make off with your bike. Kudos to Kryptonite for responding, and quickly."
Processor envy strikes hard. Adam writes "Orion Multisystems, the company which introduced two Linux-based multiprocessor supercomputers at the end of August, has begun selling the DT-12 Cluster Workstation online. The company claims that this 12-processor unit has a peak performance of 36 Gflops and is small enough to fit on a desk."
I never read that article (will go read it now) but he seems a little jealous of google news.. ... I rather LIKE having stuff just picked by a computer.. Eliminates bias AS LONG AS the news sites dont start learning how to make sure they are the ones that google news posts.
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
From my past experience with compost, I know that it doesn't smell that great, among other things. It would be interesting to see how they deal with this problem. I doubt my friends would want to hang out in a tub with the smell of manure and decomposing material in the air.
Actually, I've found CNN's site to be more useful for breaking news. Google News seems to have a niche in finding a specific story I want info on.
For example, my wife came to me yesterday and said that she had heard a story on the TV in the gym about some guy's toliet exploding. I searched on Google News and found that some idiot in Salt Lake City had collected gasoline leaking from his car and poured it down his toilet. The gasoline came in contact with the water heater, blew up his bathroom, and set his house on fire. So much for Myth Busters disproving the exploding toilet, eh?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I know it's old news by now, but the gun cabinet maker denies that their locks are having this problem- but is offering free lock replacement.
Old news link about the gun cabinet.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
That's odd.. why would the toilet be plugged to the water heater?
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
I'm not sure how impartial google news really is.
Since results must be biased in some way by the number of sources reporting a story, and the majority of our sources are (arguably) biased, won't the results come out skewed anyways. Regardless of Google's impartiality, I wonder how much of a chance smaller and important stories really have of making it to the surface? A kitten stuck in a tree covered by several newspapers might be able to creep pretty high, but a massacre in some remote country may rank pretty low.
Then again, Google is pure genius, so let's all not worry. ;)
I already get the Dallas Morning News, USA Today and the NYTimes, electronically, in my inbox every morning. I KNOW what "the journalists" give me as what THEY think is "important in the news."
What about those times when I DON'T want a journalist to decide for me what's "importantn"??
I think Google provides an excellent service.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
Before they had their news aggregator there were several others such as NewsHub and even Yahoo had one for a little while (though recently NewsHub's server performance is much slower, it started when Lycos became more visible on the home page). I agree with others that more filtering features needs to be added or publicized at the Google one to search by region, by newswire, etc.
Take the Al-Jeezera on Kobe Bryant story example. There you have a perspective that nobody in the U.S. will otherwise be exposed to. Sure, they probably didn't do much in-depth reporting, but who needs in-depth stories on sports figure rape cases, anyway? That's the kind of thing that U.S. media has too much of as it is. I would rather learn what some nameless Al-Jeezera reporter thinks of Kobe Bryant's case than that of the whole cast and crew of Denver TV newsrooms put together.
Anyway, Google News Search and Alerts are indeed superb. Much better than the MSN and Yahoo alternatives, and I've been reading side-by-side alerts on a variety of topics for several months now.
I think his point is somewhat valid - I really don't feel that Google News does a very good job of picking the best articles on a subject to make the front page. Quite often, I will want to read about a story, and the couple of sources listed on the front page will all be two paragraph summaries that provide absolutely no detail. I often have to search through the list of sources to find a decent story.
I really don't know why this is. Maybe it is just really hard to properly organize news. Considering how good of a job Google did with web search, I would expect more out of them. Maybe we just need some startup with brand new ideas to revolutionize the news aggregration business.
All that said, the article submitter (Salkever) did sound like a whiny jerk. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with computer aggregrated search results - Google has just been doing a pretty poor job of it so far.
"It gathers the most COMMONLY REPORTED events into headlines..." Jeezus!! I thought slashdotters were above-average thinking folk. This entire thread is rife with people who think it's just peachy that things are so "convenient." Does it NOT occur to anyone here that if an ideological group can purchase up a bunch of "news sources"/media outlets, they can control what is "most commonly reported"? Sound familiar? It should. I get it, it's great for YOU (and all of the other posters who seem offended by the questioning of their right to a 'media-teat'), but do you ever leave your computer and go outside? There's a plethora of people who employ absolutely NO "discernment" when it comes to "news stories." How else do you explain the current US Administration's ability to (at least up to now) virtually will things into existence (or non-existence) by simply repeating them over, and over, and over, and over....? I'm not suggesting it should be stopped or outlawed, but let's engage a little more critical thinking about the overall consequences of our use of technology before we blindly throw-in behind it because WE think it's "cool." I think the overall point is solid and well taken--add this sort of mainstream news aggregation to a list of things we shouldn't necessarily do just because we "can."
Without studying locksmithing, how can we know Kyptonite has changed lock core vendors? How do you know that they have solved the root problem? A $50 lock should be good against far more specialized tools than a Bic pen - how can you be sure that they have done a real security audit, when they didn't find this themselves? How can you believe that they even have the capability?
You are waiting for a patch from Microsoft for a buffer overflow in an obvious location. You can wait for a patch, and hope that the next flaw is sufficiently less obvious, or you can install OpenBSD. That is, buy a big sold steel padlock from a vendor which at least tries for real security. Something that you'll actually see on the streets of NYC - Medico, Multilock, etc.
I don't see the popularity argument with Google News at all.
... from the San Diego Union Tribune. The Seattle Times story is buried in the green links.
For example, right now there's an AP story about Mt St Helens
The locks come with a thousand dollors of insurance, I would imagine it is in their best interests to replace them with working models.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Kryptonite is willing to replace all the old locks except for their most popular model
Like many, many, many other bike owners, I have the Evolution 2000 lock. This is likely the best-selling bike lock in the world.
Yet when I try to register in Kryptonite's lock-swap program, their on-line form lets me select any model that they make, except for the Evolution 2000.
Maybe one of the dozens of other locks listed is same as the Evolution 2000. Hopefully this is so. But they sure aren't making it easy for a lot of their customers to get a replacement lock.
Of couse not, but it has a different spin to American outlets. By comparing the stories from the two, you can get a kind of triangulation on the "true" events.
Certainly reading Al-Jazeera is likely to get you a more different second perspective than watching two US commercial stations.
Google doesn't "pick" the best news articles or search results, it basically sorts them by popularity.
Semantics. The articles that make the front page are "picked", whether it is by a human or a computer. I realize that Mr. Google is not personally reading every news source and deciding what to highlight.
If an article discusses a particular search result more deeply, that article rises to the top of its search results.
Maybe this is the intent, but currently, Google News does a terrible job of putting the in-depth articles at the top.
When you can give us a workable definition of "properly", I'll consider your arguments
Working Definition of Properly (In the Context of Orginization of News Stories): The organization of news stories is considered to be properly done when the most informative and thorough articles are ranked highest.
Working Definiton of Informative and Thorough: The most informative and thorough news articles are those which cover the most aspects of a story, and provide the most detail. In general, this implies that a longer article will be more informative and thorough, although exceptions are possible. In addition, providing insight into a story from multiple ideological viewpoints will contribute to the thoroughness of a story, and illogical and poorly formed arguments will detract from the informativeness of an article.
Now will you consider my arguments? All I am saying is that quite often, I find that Google sucks at picking good articles to present. You don't need any intellectual arguments about absolute criteria for determining the value of an article to understand that simple concept.
I read Google News for the same reason I metamoderate slashdot. It gives me a random glimpse of some things I wouldn't read otherwise.
It's not the best view, but it's an interestingly quirky one. But I also read other sources for a more consistent view, the same way I read the Slashdot homepage.
A forensic examination of the lock would probably indicate traces of bic pen shavings -- probably proof enough that the lock had failed. They'd be hard pressed to get a ruling in their favor uner those circumstances, I think.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.