I see an execution gap here, though. My blog is, what, 2600 pages? I'm obviously not going to build that XML file manually (with one node for each page). Google does provide a Sitemap Generator, but it's Python code meant to be run on my web server. My Python skills are nil, so that route isn't viable for me either. I expect that there's a good many 'webmasters' (as in, people who design and run websites) who don't know Python from perl.
Given the CC license, though, maybe somebody will grab the code and build an idiot-proof solution for the Sitemap Generator.
No Dirty Words in Google, Eitther
on
Google Suggest
·
· Score: 1
Google appears to have pulled an MSN Spaces--they appear to have excised a number of 'questionable' terms from the suggestion list. There's little reason behind their approach. For example, the app won't suggest 'lesbian' or 'homosexual', but it will suggest 'dyke' or 'lesbian'. Anything related to 'anal' or 'oral' is out, but 'wanker' and 'golden shower' are in. 'Asshole' is out, but 'assholic' and 'asstastic' are in.
Obviously, you can search for any term--Google just won't predict the first list for you. In a typically American approach to censorship, there are not restrictions on racist or violent terminology. 'KKK', 'snuff', 'torture' and 'bum fights' are all in (as they should be). But we can't be predicting terms like 'oral exam' or 'sex education', can we?
I checked the Advanced settings for Google Suggest, and my SafeSearch was turned off (set to 'no filtering'). Either it's a bug, and Google Suggest isn't reading this setting, or Google Suggest won't suggest these terms, regardless of setting.
In my experience, the MSN Search results changed significantly within 10 hours of my completing a search: First search test. Somebody tries the same queries 10 hours later. I'm not sure what to conclude from that, but clearly some magic is happening behind the MSN curtain.
D'oh, my math was off by a bit because I mis-read the PDF I referenced. Here are more accurate numbers:
If they sell an average of 800,000 songs for the year (unlikely, I think), then that's the equivalent of 3.5 million CDs a year. That sounds impressive, until you consider that Germany, France and the UK bought about 725 million CDs (PDF) in 2001. With those numbers, the iTunes sales would represent a world-changing 0.4% of music sales in those three countries.
And the headline reads:
All of Europe buys equivalent of 65,000 CDs this week.
Europe buys roughly 3 billion recorded music units (PDF) (almost all of which are CDs) a year. Even if iTunes maintained that sales rate (which is extremely unlikely), they'd sell the rough equivalent of 3.4 million CDs a year, or roughly 0.1 % of the total CDs sold. Sure, that'll make a dent in this whole piracy thing.
Did We Accidentally Inspire Gmail?
on
Gmail in the News
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
About two years ago, my colleagues and I at Cape Clear devised something called GoogleMail. It was an extremely simple email interface to the Google API. You just send an email to google@capeclear.com and receive a reply with the top ten search results. I just checked it, and it still works.
As you can see by the news coverage (scroll down), everyone loved the idea, even though it was practically useless. The only exceptions seemed to be visually-disabled people and those in countries whose governments blocked Web access to Google. We were contacted by Google and asked to change the name, which was fair enough. It now goes by CapeMail.
I imagine a scenario, though, where somebody at Google brings up our little invention at a meeting. "GoogleMail? They can't call it that. Get legal on the phone." Legal calls us, and we change the name. However, the phrase GoogleMail sticks in somebody's head back at Google corporate HQ. Two years later, Gmail is borne. Coincidence? Probably, but it's fun to speculate.
Let me quote Cory Doctorow here, who is fond of saying:
No consumer ever woke up in the morning and said "you know, I want to do less with my music today".
For me, it's the principle of the thing. If you look at the last hundred and fifty years of technological development, copyright regularly gets broken. It's happened again with peer-to-peer file sharing networks.
DRM represents and maintains the status quo. Artists still get shafted while studios make more profit and we get less control over the music we 'own'. Furthermore, it endorses instead of punsihing an industry that refuses, again and again, to embrace technological change. Alternatives like voluntary collective licensing of music file sharing offer a way forward.
In my view, buying from the iTunes store is a tacit approval of the music industry and its appalling treatment of its consumers over the past five years. Me, I'm waiting for a paradigm shift.
Using a standard connection and browser, you can't access this site from outside the US (I'm all of 50 kms north of the border in Canada). There are ways around this particular bogosity, but it's generally so irritating that I don't bother with whatever site sets this restrictions. I noticed that Showtime does this as well.
For anyone interested in celebrities going abroad to sell products and make big cash, check out the excellent www.japander.com. Not only is it an interesting site, but it's a heck of a URL.
I've been using this bag for the past couple years, and it strikes an excellent balance between style and features. It's got enough pockets to hold media and cords, but it's not a laptop bag's answer to cargo pants. It's also very comfortable on the shoulder.
I bought mine in Vancouver, BC, here:
http://www.paperhaus.com/item.cfm?pId=70684
I just asked Froogle, Google's product search engine, and it offered these results for a 40 GB unit. The best price on a new iPod it found was $464.00, which is about 10% off.
Charles is an old classmate of mine from university. I, too, saw the show in Vancouver, and really enjoyed it. These were my thoughts:
Last night I went to the 'Pick of the Fringe' and saw my former classmate Charles Ross use the Force in his excellent One Man Star Wars Trilogy. In an hour, he runs through the essential (and sometimes non-essential) bits of all three movies, pausing twice for drinks of water. It is a remarkably manic performance. He sweats excessively, and never stops moving for the hour.
He flies the ships, does all the voices, sings the music and fights the battles. His mimicry is remarkably well-observed. From the gentle heaving of the X-Wing fighters to Yoda's cane work, he gets all of the details right. His rendition of the music is particularly effective, and proves a handy transitional shorthand between scenes. It's like watching an eight-year-old playing in his backyard. When the death stars blow up, Charles skips around the stage making explosion noises like every one of us did in 1983.
In short, it's a show worth seeing.
Thank god there are tools to make it and consume it. For the uninitiated, it's not fun. It's not fun at all.
I've been using this tool for a few months, and even with its auto-magical bits, the WSDL still regularly gives me a headache. Oh, for the days of CORBA IDL.
Recently I've become increasingly interested in digital rights issues. These include things like copyright law, online censorship, file-sharing networks, consumer rights and so on. The biggest NGO for these issues in the US is the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Is there an analogous organization in Canada?
After a Google search, I turned up the Electronic Frontier Canada. The Web site looked pretty, uh, "old school", so I sent an email to the EFF to enquire. They said that EF-Canada was not associated with them, and just a like-minded organization that was "moribund."
If there isn't any such organization, myself and like-minded Canucks may try to ressurrect EF-Canada. Cheers. DB.
Re:why would anyone quit gaming?
on
The Aging Gamer
·
· Score: 1
As a 28-year-old who's been gaming since he was 11 or 12, I do know what you're talking about. Much-loved games like EA Sports' NHL series (hey, I'm Canadian) are getting less interesting. So, I regularly think that maybe I'm getting less interested in computer games.
Then I play a game like Medal of Honour, and am blown away by the immersive atmosphere and detailed graphics. It's the first game that ever made me think twice about shooting opponents (it gives one pause when they're screaming and crawling around, begging for mercy).
More significantly, I think online gaming represents an important paradigm shift. There's Quake, and then there's Quake played online, and (this is really a truism now) they're totally different. For me, being able to play against human opponents makes all the difference and has breathed a lot of new life into tired genres like the first-person-shooter. Thanks. Z.
Forgive me if I tee-off here:
Companies such as MovieMask and CleanFlicks are producing sanitized movies for a sensitive audience. They are censoring works of art and the movie studios are permitting them to do so. Why? Money. These censorware companies and the studios recognize the massive market of conservative Americans who are desperate to bowdlerize what they and their children are watching. The censorware companies sell DVDs or software at a premium price and the studios put movies in the hands of viewers that overwise wouldn't watch them.
Here's an example I found on the Web. In the original version of this scene from Titanic (shown on the left...her naked chest is blurred, which rather detracts from the point), Kate Winslet is lying nude on the couch while Leo draws her. In the 'revised' version from MovieMask, she's chastely wearing a blouse.
Now Titanic ain't exactly Citizen Kane, but this is wrong on so many levels. It's called artistic vision, folks, and it's not to be taried with. Artists have very few rights in our culture, but presenting their art the way they intended is one of them.
Because I believe that any unauthorized change to a work of art is unforgivable, I'm reticent to address specific cases, but I can't resist. In this case, this is a critical scene in the film's romantic sub-plot. When Winslet's character, Rose, exposes herself hear to Jack, it is a statement of the changes in her that he has engendered. It is Rose's pronouncement of independence. Now it'sjust a scene about the heroine getting drawn.Furthermore, the historical details of costume and scenography received exacting detail in this film. Which historian picked out Winslet's digital ensemble? Dave, the video editing guy?
MovieMask ('You're gonna love it!' says product endorser Marie Osmond) and its brethren offer sanitized versions of, among others, Fight Club, Saving Private Ryan, Schlinder's List and Training Day. In all of these films, the violence is crucial to the artwork's theme. Not just plot or setting,but theme--the films' central messages. The idea of violence as therapy is at the centre of Fight Club. The first twenty-six minutes of Saving Private Ryan represent one of the most moving and powerful depictions of war in cinematic history. To cleanse them of violence is to strip them of their power. To edit Schlinder's List, deeply disrepects the trials of the Jewish people. Without drugs, violence and foul language, Training Day is Turner & Hooch with goatees.
Much of the market for this product comes from Christians in the United States. Why do I say this? It's espoused on Christian sites like this, CleanFlicks is based in Utah and the Moral Majority has a rich history of censorship. Why do these people want to see these films in the first place, if they're morally dubious? So they can chat about Matt Damon around the water cooler? Tough luck. You either opt in to our culture of violence and sex or you opt out.
But that's not true...if you're only opposed to violence, go see My Big Fat Greek Wedding. If you're opposed to sex and foul lanugage, you're pretty safe watching The Bourne Identity or Panic Room. If you're opposed to both, try The Man Who Wasn't There or Star Wars or Shrek. Unless you're particularly conservative, you've got lots of options. Exercise discretion. I do it, my mother does it and so can you. Alternately, you can suffer alone on your moral high-ground.
But that's not true, either. There's a massive multi-million dollar industry in Christian music, films and books. You can consume art for a lifetime and not hear a secular note, view a Hollywood frame or read an aetheist page. In fact, from what I can tell, the per-capita expenditure on Christian art among Christians is way above the secular average. All the more power to them.
Ultimately, this type of censorship is worse than banning art outright. This way, people have the impression that they've seen a film (why stop there? Shall we cover up Michaelangelo's David's naughty bits?) when they've seen a toothless abberation, a mere shadow of the actual artwork. To the users of MovieMask's and CleanFlicks's and a dozen others' services, do everybody a favour: either watch original films that you're comfortable with or, better yet, just throw out your TV.
Slashdot Mirror
I see an execution gap here, though. My blog is, what, 2600 pages? I'm obviously not going to build that XML file manually (with one node for each page). Google does provide a Sitemap Generator, but it's Python code meant to be run on my web server. My Python skills are nil, so that route isn't viable for me either. I expect that there's a good many 'webmasters' (as in, people who design and run websites) who don't know Python from perl. Given the CC license, though, maybe somebody will grab the code and build an idiot-proof solution for the Sitemap Generator.
Google appears to have pulled an MSN Spaces--they appear to have excised a number of 'questionable' terms from the suggestion list. There's little reason behind their approach. For example, the app won't suggest 'lesbian' or 'homosexual', but it will suggest 'dyke' or 'lesbian'. Anything related to 'anal' or 'oral' is out, but 'wanker' and 'golden shower' are in. 'Asshole' is out, but 'assholic' and 'asstastic' are in.
I've created a decent-sized list of what Google approves and disapproves.
Obviously, you can search for any term--Google just won't predict the first list for you. In a typically American approach to censorship, there are not restrictions on racist or violent terminology. 'KKK', 'snuff', 'torture' and 'bum fights' are all in (as they should be). But we can't be predicting terms like 'oral exam' or 'sex education', can we?
I checked the Advanced settings for Google Suggest, and my SafeSearch was turned off (set to 'no filtering'). Either it's a bug, and Google Suggest isn't reading this setting, or Google Suggest won't suggest these terms, regardless of setting.
Did you happen to notice how much Johnny Depp looks like Tom Petty from that creepy homage-to-Alice-in-Wonderland video, "Don't Come Around Here No More"?
Cause you can get bloggers. You know, I wouldn't mind bidding on Dan Rather.
In my experience, the MSN Search results changed significantly within 10 hours of my completing a search: First search test. Somebody tries the same queries 10 hours later. I'm not sure what to conclude from that, but clearly some magic is happening behind the MSN curtain.
D'oh, my math was off by a bit because I mis-read the PDF I referenced. Here are more accurate numbers:
If they sell an average of 800,000 songs for the year (unlikely, I think), then that's the equivalent of 3.5 million CDs a year. That sounds impressive, until you consider that Germany, France and the UK bought about 725 million CDs (PDF) in 2001. With those numbers, the iTunes sales would represent a world-changing 0.4% of music sales in those three countries.
And the headline reads: All of Europe buys equivalent of 65,000 CDs this week. Europe buys roughly 3 billion recorded music units (PDF) (almost all of which are CDs) a year. Even if iTunes maintained that sales rate (which is extremely unlikely), they'd sell the rough equivalent of 3.4 million CDs a year, or roughly 0.1 % of the total CDs sold. Sure, that'll make a dent in this whole piracy thing.
About two years ago, my colleagues and I at Cape Clear devised something called GoogleMail. It was an extremely simple email interface to the Google API. You just send an email to google@capeclear.com and receive a reply with the top ten search results. I just checked it, and it still works. As you can see by the news coverage (scroll down), everyone loved the idea, even though it was practically useless. The only exceptions seemed to be visually-disabled people and those in countries whose governments blocked Web access to Google. We were contacted by Google and asked to change the name, which was fair enough. It now goes by CapeMail. I imagine a scenario, though, where somebody at Google brings up our little invention at a meeting. "GoogleMail? They can't call it that. Get legal on the phone." Legal calls us, and we change the name. However, the phrase GoogleMail sticks in somebody's head back at Google corporate HQ. Two years later, Gmail is borne. Coincidence? Probably, but it's fun to speculate.
Let me quote Cory Doctorow here, who is fond of saying:
No consumer ever woke up in the morning and said "you know, I want to do less with my music today".
For me, it's the principle of the thing. If you look at the last hundred and fifty years of technological development, copyright regularly gets broken. It's happened again with peer-to-peer file sharing networks.
DRM represents and maintains the status quo. Artists still get shafted while studios make more profit and we get less control over the music we 'own'. Furthermore, it endorses instead of punsihing an industry that refuses, again and again, to embrace technological change. Alternatives like voluntary collective licensing of music file sharing offer a way forward.
In my view, buying from the iTunes store is a tacit approval of the music industry and its appalling treatment of its consumers over the past five years. Me, I'm waiting for a paradigm shift.
Using a standard connection and browser, you can't access this site from outside the US (I'm all of 50 kms north of the border in Canada). There are ways around this particular bogosity, but it's generally so irritating that I don't bother with whatever site sets this restrictions. I noticed that Showtime does this as well.
For anyone interested in celebrities going abroad to sell products and make big cash, check out the excellent www.japander.com. Not only is it an interesting site, but it's a heck of a URL.
I've been using this bag for the past couple years, and it strikes an excellent balance between style and features. It's got enough pockets to hold media and cords, but it's not a laptop bag's answer to cargo pants. It's also very comfortable on the shoulder. I bought mine in Vancouver, BC, here: http://www.paperhaus.com/item.cfm?pId=70684
I just asked Froogle, Google's product search engine, and it offered these results for a 40 GB unit. The best price on a new iPod it found was $464.00, which is about 10% off.
http://www.darrenbarefoot.com
Words. Words. Words.
Charles is an old classmate of mine from university. I, too, saw the show in Vancouver, and really enjoyed it. These were my thoughts: Last night I went to the 'Pick of the Fringe' and saw my former classmate Charles Ross use the Force in his excellent One Man Star Wars Trilogy. In an hour, he runs through the essential (and sometimes non-essential) bits of all three movies, pausing twice for drinks of water. It is a remarkably manic performance. He sweats excessively, and never stops moving for the hour. He flies the ships, does all the voices, sings the music and fights the battles. His mimicry is remarkably well-observed. From the gentle heaving of the X-Wing fighters to Yoda's cane work, he gets all of the details right. His rendition of the music is particularly effective, and proves a handy transitional shorthand between scenes. It's like watching an eight-year-old playing in his backyard. When the death stars blow up, Charles skips around the stage making explosion noises like every one of us did in 1983. In short, it's a show worth seeing.
Big deal, this is barely a step up from this: http://www.capescience.com/google/
Thank god there are tools to make it and consume it. For the uninitiated, it's not fun. It's not fun at all.
I've been using this tool for a few months, and even with its auto-magical bits, the WSDL still regularly gives me a headache. Oh, for the days of CORBA IDL.
Recently I've become increasingly interested in digital rights issues. These include things like copyright law, online censorship, file-sharing networks, consumer rights and so on. The biggest NGO for these issues in the US is the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Is there an analogous organization in Canada? After a Google search, I turned up the Electronic Frontier Canada. The Web site looked pretty, uh, "old school", so I sent an email to the EFF to enquire. They said that EF-Canada was not associated with them, and just a like-minded organization that was "moribund." If there isn't any such organization, myself and like-minded Canucks may try to ressurrect EF-Canada. Cheers. DB.
As a 28-year-old who's been gaming since he was 11 or 12, I do know what you're talking about. Much-loved games like EA Sports' NHL series (hey, I'm Canadian) are getting less interesting. So, I regularly think that maybe I'm getting less interested in computer games.
Then I play a game like Medal of Honour, and am blown away by the immersive atmosphere and detailed graphics. It's the first game that ever made me think twice about shooting opponents (it gives one pause when they're screaming and crawling around, begging for mercy). More significantly, I think online gaming represents an important paradigm shift. There's Quake, and then there's Quake played online, and (this is really a truism now) they're totally different. For me, being able to play against human opponents makes all the difference and has breathed a lot of new life into tired genres like the first-person-shooter. Thanks. Z.
Here's an example I found on the Web. In the original version of this scene from Titanic (shown on the left...her naked chest is blurred, which rather detracts from the point), Kate Winslet is lying nude on the couch while Leo draws her. In the 'revised' version from MovieMask, she's chastely wearing a blouse.
Now Titanic ain't exactly Citizen Kane, but this is wrong on so many levels. It's called artistic vision, folks, and it's not to be taried with. Artists have very few rights in our culture, but presenting their art the way they intended is one of them.
Because I believe that any unauthorized change to a work of art is unforgivable, I'm reticent to address specific cases, but I can't resist. In this case, this is a critical scene in the film's romantic sub-plot. When Winslet's character, Rose, exposes herself hear to Jack, it is a statement of the changes in her that he has engendered. It is Rose's pronouncement of independence. Now it'sjust a scene about the heroine getting drawn.Furthermore, the historical details of costume and scenography received exacting detail in this film. Which historian picked out Winslet's digital ensemble? Dave, the video editing guy?
MovieMask ('You're gonna love it!' says product endorser Marie Osmond) and its brethren offer sanitized versions of, among others, Fight Club, Saving Private Ryan, Schlinder's List and Training Day. In all of these films, the violence is crucial to the artwork's theme. Not just plot or setting,but theme--the films' central messages. The idea of violence as therapy is at the centre of Fight Club. The first twenty-six minutes of Saving Private Ryan represent one of the most moving and powerful depictions of war in cinematic history. To cleanse them of violence is to strip them of their power. To edit Schlinder's List, deeply disrepects the trials of the Jewish people. Without drugs, violence and foul language, Training Day is Turner & Hooch with goatees.
Much of the market for this product comes from Christians in the United States. Why do I say this? It's espoused on Christian sites like this, CleanFlicks is based in Utah and the Moral Majority has a rich history of censorship. Why do these people want to see these films in the first place, if they're morally dubious? So they can chat about Matt Damon around the water cooler? Tough luck. You either opt in to our culture of violence and sex or you opt out.
But that's not true...if you're only opposed to violence, go see My Big Fat Greek Wedding. If you're opposed to sex and foul lanugage, you're pretty safe watching The Bourne Identity or Panic Room. If you're opposed to both, try The Man Who Wasn't There or Star Wars or Shrek. Unless you're particularly conservative, you've got lots of options. Exercise discretion. I do it, my mother does it and so can you. Alternately, you can suffer alone on your moral high-ground.
But that's not true, either. There's a massive multi-million dollar industry in Christian music, films and books. You can consume art for a lifetime and not hear a secular note, view a Hollywood frame or read an aetheist page. In fact, from what I can tell, the per-capita expenditure on Christian art among Christians is way above the secular average. All the more power to them.
Ultimately, this type of censorship is worse than banning art outright. This way, people have the impression that they've seen a film (why stop there? Shall we cover up Michaelangelo's David's naughty bits?) when they've seen a toothless abberation, a mere shadow of the actual artwork. To the users of MovieMask's and CleanFlicks's and a dozen others' services, do everybody a favour: either watch original films that you're comfortable with or, better yet, just throw out your TV.