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Sunday, August 31 2003

ahref.com has left the building

Last century, when the Internet was a lot different (yet not really that different), a friend/colleague and I started ahref.com - a website for web developers. (We tried the "community for web developers" tagline for a while, because "community" was big at the time, but it never really became one...)

We ran it cheaply; no investors, all the work done by ourselves, besides an occasional poorly-paid guest writer. It was pretty fun for a while; but it was somewhat of a drag eventually, putting a lot of work into something that took a lot of time to build up, had too many competitors, and had very little hope of making us wads of cash.

There came a point at which my partner bailed on the project, and I "bought" her out; for more than a little money, but not really a lot in the grand scheme of things. It became even tougher to maintain at that point; as my main jobs previously had been just programming, structuring, writing, and site admin. Now they included some occasional design, more writing than before, dealing with advertisers (we actually got a few), dealing with authors, and promotion. Lotsa work, little money, but it did have several advantages: I could get into a bunch of conferences for free (including some W3C ones, CFP, etc.), got some free books, and wrote some articles I'm still proud of. And I expect the site made me a little more attractive to potential employers.

Opened: May 1998 (maybe April?).
Most popular month: October 2000, 70,847 hits.
Last article written: September 2001.
Last external article added to Web Index: April 2003.

Wednesday, August 27 2003

Wrong Crowd

BoingBoing entry regarding the Burning Man Bingo card:

"Numerous BoingBoing readers have e-mailed to ask why John Perry Barlow's head was selected to represent 'A Bad Trip' (shown at left) That is not John Perry Barlow's head. That is Chuck Norris' head."

Mars

Good article at NASA about Mars' proximity to Earth, the part of Earth that will come closest to the planet (Tahiti), how long you can expect to Mars to be about this close (many weeks)...

Osirusoft/SPEWS is down

As dicussed/reported on Slashdot.org, Osirusoft, which provides DNS-based spammer blacklists, is out of commission. Usenet posters are unsure about whether it's gone away permanently or is preparing to fight the DDoS it's been suffering. In addition, some queries sent to Osirusoft are being sent back with a request to stop using Osirusoft.

A short while ago, my ISP had me shift IP addresses from one network to another; as a result, I found my IP addresses listed in SPEWS, the "Spam Prevention Early Warning System." SPEWS tends to be much more hard-core than other spam-fighting groups; among other things, if they feel justified, they'll list all of an ISP's IP addresses as potential sources of spam; this typically happens when an ISP helps a spammer by moving its server from address to address in order to avoid spam blacklists. This is why my new IP address was listed in SPEWS.

The result of being listed: my mail was bounced back from a couple of friends; and I noticed that my email would get a higher score in SpamAssassin (the spam-fighting tool I use). Getting email bounced was annoying; but I don't blame SPEWS for that, I blame my friends' ISPs - they should be using a scoring system like SpamAssassin that utilizes blacklists, and letting end-users filter based on their own judgements, rather than block everything based on the judgements of an anonymous group of annoyed sysadmins. See the Electronic Frontier Foundation's statement on spam blocking for a good discussion of spam blocking policies.

For those using SpamAssassin, to zero out the Osirusoft-based rules, put the following in /usr/local/etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf:

score RCVD_IN_OSIRUSOFT_COM 0 0 0 0
score X_OSIRU_DUL 0.0
score X_OSIRU_DUL_FH 0.0
score X_OSIRU_OPEN_RELAY 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
score X_OSIRU_SPAMWARE_SITE 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
score X_OSIRU_SPAM_SRC 0.0

Tuesday, August 26 2003

God chose me to write this book.

Thus spake Al Franken:

"...God answered, 'YOU KNOW THOSE SHITTY BOOKS BY ANN COULTER AND BERNIE GOLDBERG?'

"'The bestsellers that claim there's a liberal bias in the media?' I asked.

"'TOTAL BULLSHIT,' God said. 'START BY ATTACKING THEM. HE'S CLEARLY A DISGRUNTLED FORMER EMPLOYEE, AND SHE JUST LIES. BY THE WAY, THERE'S SOMETHING SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH HER.'

...

"'Got it. One last thing. Title.'

"'HOW ABOUT BEARERS OF FALSE WITNESS AND THE FALSE WITNESS THAT THEY BEAR?'

"'Hmm. I, uh, I'll work with that.' "

Sunday, August 24 2003

Photoshopped Saddam

Worth1000 is holding a contest - take a photo of Saddam Hussein, and put it anywhere into another picture. They've got Saddam Hussein as Elvis, Saddam with the Teletubbies, Saddam playing the flute...

Friday, August 22 2003

Sergio Vieira de Mello's last words

U.S. Army 1st Sgt. William von Zehle was the last person to talk to U.N. special representative Sergio Vieira de Mello, as he tried to dig de Mello out from rubble during the 3 hours following the bombing of the U.N. building in Baghdad.

Liberia Update

The BBC has a quick little article on Liberia's current situation and how it got there.

Impressive fund-raising

Wednesday 10pm: I get an email from the Democratic Party (I'm not a registered Democrat, but I'm on their mailing list) asking for money to help out the Democratic legislators in Texas who are fighting the Republicans' attempt (attempt led by Tom DeLay, and 2 years after the law states it's supposed to occur) to gerrymander Texas voting districts to grab 5 more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Thursday 4:15pm: I get an email from Zack Exley of MoveOn.org stating that they've already raised over $400,000 in one day for an ad campaign in Texas regarding the conflict there.

Friday 12:40am: they're up to $621,500.

Thursday, August 21 2003

American Media and the Culture of Fear

Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future moderated a panel on how the U.S. media focuses on fear-inducing, ratings-winning news while downplaying more important stories:

"Citing U.S. State Department statistics, he [Glassner] noted that the deadliest year for terrorism on record was 2001, when about 3,500 people worldwide died because of terrorist attacks. But more than 10 times that number died on U.S. highways in 2001 -- half of them as a result of drunk driving, he said. (According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 42,196 people died on highways that year; 17,400 of these deaths were alcohol related.)

"For a period of about 10 years, the media actually focused a lot of attention on drunk driving, and the number of resulting deaths decreased, Glassner said. But as soon as the media shifted its attention to incidents such as road rage, 'which threatens almost no one and has existed since the Model T,' the death rate from drunk driving started going up, he added."

Black People Love Us!

"We are well-liked by Black people so we're psyched (since lots of Black people don't like lots of White people)!! We thought it'd be cool to honor our exceptional status with a ROCKIN' domain name and a killer website!!"

Injectable male contraceptive

Straight out of India: Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance, aka RISUG.

"RISUG works by an injection into the vas, the vessel that serves as the exit ramp for sperm. The injection coats the vas with a clear polymer gel that has a negative and positive electric charge. Sperm cells also have a charge, so the differential charge from the gel ruptures the cell membrane as it passes through the vas, stopping the sperm in their tracks before they can even start their journey to the egg."

Pros: 1 injection lasts 10 years, reversible, less scary than a vasectomy.

Cons: needle near the family jewels, doesn't prevent STDs, hasn't been around for long.

More info in an article at The Hindu.

Monday, August 18 2003

Casinos vs. Card Counters

Coming soon to a casino near you: MindPlay MP21, technology that lets the casino track your betting patterns, read (based on invisible ink) which cards have been played, and figure out if you're a card counter.

The company behind the tech, and the casinos, say they won't use the system to get an edge over card counters (among other things, the Nevada Gaming Control Board is telling them not to); but then why build that capability into it?

Arnold down in the polls?

SFGate article asks how Cruz Bustamante has overtaken Schwarzenegger so quickly in the polls:

"How can someone explain Schwarzenegger getting 52 percent support in a CNN/Gallup poll last week and then only 22 percent support in the Field Poll a few days later? Different polling methods and companies would not explain a 30-point gap."

Possibility #1: Nobody had heard of Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante before last week. (Well, he only gained 3 percent between polls, but he could be giving all those previous Arnold voters second thoughts...)

Possibility #2: People are thinking about Schwarzenegger's plans to deal with California's economy, his political experience, his ability to manage huge organizations - and realizing he doesn't have any of 'em.

Wednesday, August 13 2003

Synthetic Diamonds

Wired on two companies - Gemesis and Apollo Diamond - that are making great progress on mass-producing synthetic diamonds. Theoretically, their technology will cause the price of diamonds to crash through the floor, disrupt DeBeers' monopoly on the diamond trade, and replace silicon in computer components.

Thursday, August 7 2003

Arianna Huffington interview

John Moyers interviews Arianna Huffington, candidate for California governor, at tompaine.com. Meanwhile, lieutenant governor Cruz Bustamante will join the race.

Sunday, August 3 2003

David Mikkelson of Snopes.com

The Online Journalism Review has an interview with David Mikkelson of Snopes.com in the aftermath of the Hunting for Bambi hoax.

When people forward me email hoaxes - virus warnings, unbelievable (or too-believable) government or corporate actions, money-making schemes - I tend to look 'em up on snopes.com and send the sender there.

Why trust snopes.com? Because David Mikkelson was a frequent and respected poster to alt.folklore.urban newsgroup before there was a web, and the folks on a.f.u took such things very seriously. And because snopes.com tends to list verifiable references for the things they debunk.

I've been thinking of issues of trust(ing websites) because someone recently asked me (offline) if I'd ever heard of Lyndon LaRouche. I told him I'd heard of LaRouche back in the 1980s; and that he's a fascist felon crackpot perennial presidential candidate. When I went to the Internet later to refresh my LaRouche knowledge and provide the questioner with hard evidence on why to avoid the LaRouche organization, it was hard to find; most of the hits you get by googling him return links to his own multiple websites. Most of the links critical of the man are to small-time websites that it's hard to know whether to trust (in general). (Major exception: a Washington Post series on him, which is result #87 (page 8 of the search results).)

Because respected newspapers don't have archives from back in the early '70s when LaRouche's "Operation Mop-Up" was happening, freely searchable and indexed by search engines, available, good information on such topics is hard to come by. You have to rely on old-fashioned technology like physical books to learn much about the topic.

About this site

This is the personal web site for Edward (Ed) Piou. Consisting mainly of a blog (operational since 1999) and various photos.

Some online projects I'm working on

Politics

Charity, Non-profits...

A while ago, I decided to put my money where my mind is on a (roughly) monthly basis and give to:

Photos

Public events documented through pictures...