Curitoria - an idea

I have a vague notion of a web tool that I hope this post can capture before it gets completely lost from my mind. There are tons of ways to write something, and put it on the web, most of which have been captured into walled gardens.

There are fewer ways to read things, but lots of platforms to do it on. You have browsers on everything from  Desktops all the way to smart phones. A simple HTML page can be seen on more than a billion devices. The mechanisms we have to checking multiple pages, and keeping track of them are far fewer. One of the big ones (for me at least), Google Reader, is about to hit the end of it's shelf life.

This means I have to either work with something only available on my one machine, and hope it never breaks, or go to another walled garden sort of thing, and hope for a longer shelf life. Subject to the whims of whoever controls the reader.

--- I also have a different complaint, one semi-related... in that it's become obvious that any message system which has ranking eventually results in a community of consensus which seems quite intolerant of outside views, to the point that it's a self sustaining thought bubble, which actively pushes out reality it doesn't want to address.

Ranking in these systems is always along a single dimension, which results in a popularity contest. The encourage results are those that are emotional (usually funny or sarcastic), with the occasional nod to actual insight or wisdom. In depth thought is discouraged, as the first written responses are read and rewarded far more than those requiring time.

--- There is also the complaint that the walled garden has essentially captured our souls. We used to have lots of ways to do things, blogs, web sites, etc... these seem to have all been subsumed by facebook, twitter, etc... for each style of conversation, there is a walled garden for that.

So..... here's my idea to try to weave a solution to all of these in one fell swoop.

We have a locally run server on each users PC (or a cloud server, if the user so chooses), to keep their view of things consistent and persistent. What are they viewing?  All of the comments about things they ever want to keep up on. Think of RSS but with millions of feeds. A web of comments, threaded together by the users comments and curation.

You would have your own collections of things, with each item having at least a URL to find the source, along with the timestamp of it's curation. There would also be rankings (on an unlimited number of dimensions... i.e.   wisdom, humor, insight, novelty, evil).

So each person would curate, and share their rankings of things in an RSS style feed, if they so chose. A group of people would then be able to converse and share content gathered from anywhere, without having to put it all into a walled garden.

--- Another way of viewing this is to say I'm deconstructing the message board, and re-creating it as a distributed decentralized federated replacement that nobody would own, and anyone could improve.

The key is to figure out how to do RSS on a much larger scale, with as little overhead as possible. There could be millions of items, which may only be updated one in a lifetime, or every minute. Some form of expectation has to be factored in, so we're only polling those frequently changing things frequently.

Some form of aggregation of output would be good as well. If I could specify that I'm going to publish all my comments at a given URL, then it makes it much easier to follow everything I do, in one spot, instead of checking all the gardens that might be affected.

---- To recap... I want to be able to comment on posts from anywhere, and have other people do the same, and be able to share those comments, rakings, curation, etc... without having to put them everywhere.

How to install Windows Server 2008 r2 to D:

This is the only way I've found so far that actually works to put Windows 2008 server on D:

• Install Windows 2008 on C: (you will trash this later, get used to wasting time)
• After successful installation, use the storage manager to change the name of the CD-ROM drive to R: and reboot (rebooting is important, don't skip it)
• Use the Registry editor in Administrator mode to rename key  HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices\DosDevices\C: to D:
• Reboot, and windows will act stupid
• Start task manager to run Explorer as administrator
• Run Windows Setup from your CD, and install again (this time to D:), and do NOT upgrade
• Eventually you'll have a system installed on D:, and a Windows.old directory to nuke.

It took me about 30 hours to figure this out, I hope I save you some grief.

Google to disorganize the world's information, and be evil.

Google supposedly wants to organize the world's information, while not being evil.

They are about to close down Google Reader, which is one of the best ways to use RSS feeds to keep tabs on a lot of web sites without having to visit each and every one. It keeps track of what you have and haven't read, and is a great way to organize information.

Now I learn that it's about to go away.

First they hounded Aaron to death, now they're killing some of the utility of RSS.

Lots of evil at work here.

Another sad day.... 8(

Super wire - A call to action

I believe it is well within the capabilities of any non-chemistry adverse hackerspace to eventually create polymer cables which are 10 to 10 million times better than silver at conducting electricity up to the melting point of the polymer.

Here are some pointers to get you started.

Ultraconductors got killed in the 2008 market crash. Had they not got killed, they were making superconductors out of plastic, they called it Ultraconductor [chavaenergy.com]. (Not to be confused with the speaker cables of the same name). This stuff conducted at room temperature a million times better than silver! I have no doubt they could have done it, had the economy not killed them. Here are the relevant patents.

US Patent 5,777,292 [google.com] - Materials having high electrical conductivity at room teperatures and ...
US Patent 6,804,105 [google.com] - Enriched macromolecular materials having temperature-independent high ...

Here's a 2005 interview (.pdf, sorry), which may give some insight about Ultraconductor.

The 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry [nobelprize.org] (pdf) offers some good info about conductive polymers.

US Patent 7,014,795 [google.com] discusses the growth of crystalized electron pairs (otherwise referred to as polarons in other places), the diagrams are especially helpful.

Again, I believe it is well within the capabilities of any non-chemistry adverse hackerspace. Let's get out there and  do this awesome thing!

Jury Nullification - fact or fiction?

It's been a week since Aaron Schwartz gave up, and decided he had no options left. Why has it take me all this time to even consider if asking the jury for reasonable compromise was an option?

I have no idea if jury nullification is something that can be done in the 21st Century here in the US or not. If not, then I believe we need to change it, NOW.

Could someone reading this give me a good solid non-wikipedia based answer as to what would have happened if Aaron had tried to use this concept in his defense against rabid prosecutors?

I want to know.

Self Valeting Cars

Imagine a car that can go find it's own parking spot, and return when you call it on your phone.

It could come get you if you need a ride, and are stuck at the office.

Imagine if ZIP cars could do this!

The future is cool again!

A Critique of modern discourse

A Metafilter story got me to writing about the problems with modern discourse as seen on the Internet. I thought I would spend some time refining and extending those thoughts here. By no means is this the definitive word on what's wrong with the internet, but I hope that a cogent summary might help fix things.

Time Pressure

1. First post phenomenon - On a site such as /., comments are sorted by default in the order they are received  This means that the first post gets the most feedback, and sets the tone for the rest of discussion. This results in a bunch of hasty, emotional, not well considered crap that then has to be moderated around in order to extract value.

2. 15 Minutes of fame. - Any post gets attention, and then gets pushed under by the oncoming store of other stories in 15 minutes, maybe a bit more if you're evil like Carmen Ortiz... but only a bit more. This means that any effort you do put into something isn't going to pay off much.

Text is Messy

3. Comments on a message board are usually undifferentiated text, sometimes with a bit of formatting. There is no easy way to tell visually what the meaning is without forcing oneself to read it all, and then start to draw out conclusions about structure, agreement/disagreement, etc.

Moderation is a kludge

4. Most moderation systems are a layer of code designed to filter out crap, and help extract some value from an otherwise overwhelming amount of undiluted text. Like spam filters, there are behaviors and techniques that get used to route around them.

  The most common form of moderation system is to have a ranking system (like/dislike), which turns commenting into a popularity contest. The funniest or most vocal viewpoints drown out everything else.

5. Popularity contests are 1 dimensional - There are lots of reasons someone might want to flag a post (which isn't quite granular enough for me, but you have to start somewhere)... agreeing with a post as "having value" is the standard here in the blue, but elsewhere it's a direct measure of the groupthink agreement. (/.  for example)

Wouldn't it be better to have multiple dimensions of ratings? Factual/wrong, Conservative/Liberal, Cheap/Expensive, True/Lie, etc.?  They wouldn't have to be the same set of things either, but it would be easier to code for lets say Funny, True, Insightful as separate (orthogonal) dimensions.

6. The missing half of Facebook - Facebook doesn't allow the inclusion of negative votes, so it's actually only 1/2 dimensional.

Anonymous people are assholes
7. Anonymity allows people to say things they'd not say in person. Remember the Id in Forbidden Planet?

So, how can we help fix it?
There are a number of strategies to be used to help fix this.

Use your blog more
The first is to blog more, and comment less. If you find yourself writing something in a comment that seems to be really insightful, make a more refined blog post out of it (linking back to the discussion for context). Blog posts are better than comments on someone else's site for a number of reasons:

• You own the post, and can tweak it later if necessary. This times into and builds your reputation internet-wide, instead of in on little corner of it, subject to whim.
• The post can be found later, as a stand-alone piece to be referenced, and can be more self-contained.
• Time pressure is less because blog posts can stay "popular" for years. A few hits per month done a few dozen times means you're always getting feedback and links.
• If you've already written about a particular view, link back to it, and perhaps tweak it a bit with improvements.

Build a better commenting system

Someone (me?) needs to come up with a better commenting/moderation system, that allows the multiple dimensional rating that I discussed above. It would be nice to discover visually how the arguments are inter-related about a given topic, to allow one to focus ones time better, and improve signal/(signal+noise) ratio.

Review your comments periodically

It would be good if we all where to re-read the things we've written with some distance of time, and get a better sense of ourselves. This can help us to all be better writers and readers.