] Popular culture has become one of America's biggest
] exports. Every year the U.S. sells more than $60 billion
] worth of music, books, movies, television programs and
] computer software to consumers abroad. And this estimate
] does not even include the revenues made by illegal
] copying and other forms of piracy. In Europe or Canada,
] one need only flick on the television, buy a compact disc
] or browse the entertainment section of a newspaper to see
] the ubiquity of American culture.

Scientific American: Digital Entertainment Jumps the Border

Locutus differs from most other P2P networks on several levels, most prominently its focus on security. Ask any InfoSec professional and they will tell you about the risks of file sharing, especially in a corporate environment.

secure transactions. just what's needed to keep the RIAA off your back.

P2P: you just can't stop it

Computer training has become the living hell of the American workplace, a loathsome ritual that highlights the mounting battle between the computer cognoscenti and us mere mortals.

Wow. The Washington Post is on it this week.

This is a meme that I've hinted at in previous posts, but this article really seizes what I've been talking about from the user's perspective. Technology sucks. We're at a stage where it should be elegantly simple, like a telephone. Yet everything seems to be engineered to require 5 techs and a slaughtered goat in order to make it function appropriately. When is it going to get fixed?

Royal Standard Has Given Way To a Royal Pain (washingtonpost.com)

Be sure to check out the Psionics section, particularly the Psionic Helmet.

Future Horizons - Advanced Technology

"Speed kills. But it is not only the speed at which people drive that is the problem: the speed of the music they are listening to also has a hand in their fate. An Israeli researcher says drivers who listen to fast music in their cars may have more than twice as many accidents as those listening to slower tracks."

Fast music linked to car crashes

Check out Bubb Rubb and L'il Sis talkin bout whistlers.

Humor, on so many levels

"This toy story has a happy ending. The Lego Stanley Cup has been recovered."

Lego replica of Stanley Cup recovered

"The Archangel Gabriel is one of Christianity's great communicators -- it was he who brought word to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus, the Bible says. So it was only natural that when a search began for a patron saint for the Internet, Gabriel's name arose."

Do you think I have a shot?

A Patron Saint for Hopeless Clickers

Please read and rerecommend. I want this to get as much coverage on the site as possible, and I want feedback.

Currently the privacy policy says that your reputation tables are private. This reflects the fact that I think what you read ought to be your own business.

However, what you recommend is not exactly the same as what you read, and this is reflected in the reputation data. When you recommend something you are telling the site that you like it. Telling the site implies that you don't mind the site knowing. In fact, you want the site to know. If I do a little digging I can see who you got an article from, directly. This is a bit of an oversite. Something that can be "matured" out of the code. Thats one direction to go in from here. Keep the reputation data as private as possible.

However, if I monitor the site, and I see a certain person recommend an article, and then you rerecommend it, I'll know where you got it from. I do this often enough, in an automated fashion, for long enough, and I'll get a pretty good understanding of who you are reading. The site can't protect you from this. By recommending articles you are making them public. By making them public, you are giving up some of your privacy.

The only way to truely protect the fact that you are reading someone's recommendations is to never recommend their recommendations. They will still show up in the agent, but this information, I think, is private and ought to stay that way.

However, and as I've hopefully illustrated, the recommendations are public in a very real way. What I want to ask the site is if the recommendation DATA ought to be public too.

The reason I want to ask you this is because Rattle has assembled another visualization. This visualization is interactive. You can see a graph of the people who are highly connected to you, click on their names, and see a graph of the people who are highly connected to them, and so on.

Right now this data is amusing but not all that rich. There are about 15 people who regularily post to the site, and they hold all the reputation capital. Everyone's graphs look pretty similar, because we are all really recommending content from the same 15 people, even those of us who don't often recommend content and who aren't often read.

This is going to change.

As this site scales, clusters are going to form. I think the one that currently exists will always exist, but there will be others. People will begin to have different perspectives on the data, based on their interests. Thats what this site is designed to do.

And as those different communities of interest begin to form, the maps of the reputation data rattle is developing will become richer, and you will be able to surf through MemeStreams via the reputation system, hopping from person to person in search of interesting ideas.

I think this is a very compelling feature set, and I want to enable it. But, I've promised to keep your reputation data private. All of it. This promise may not have been very well thought out, but I did make it. So I can only break it with your permission, and that is what I am asking for.

I want to publish your recommendation related reputation data. Your clickthrough related reputation data will stay private. What is published is the number of times you have rerecommended articles from another person on the site, in the form of a graph.

Its similar to the graph on the "Visualizing Memestreams" page, but it is labelled, and interactive.

An important privacy question

Stolen from a posting on Slashdot.

1. A tremor in the pants. The last time I felt this was in the presence of my old master.

2. You are unwise to lower your pants.

3. We've got to be able to get some reading on those pants, up or down.

4. She must have hidden the plans in her pants. Send a detachment down to retrieve them. See to it personally Commander.

5. These pants may not look like much, kid, but they've got it where it counts.

6. I find your lack of pants disturbing.

7. These pants contain the ultimate power in the Universe. I suggest we use it.

8. Han will have those pants down. We've got to give him more time!

9. General Veers, prepare your pants for a surface assault.

10. I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants back home.

11. TK-421. . . Why aren't you in your pants?

12. Lock the door. And hope they don't have pants.

13. Governor Tarkin. I recognized your foul pants when I was brought on board.

14. You look strong enough to pull the pants off of a Gundark.

15. Luke. . . Help me take...these pants off.

16. Great, Chewie, great. Always thinking with your pants.

17. That blast came from those pants. That thing's operational!

18. Don't worry. Chewie and I have gotten into a lot of pants more heavily guarded than this.

19. Maybe you'd like it back in your pants, your highness.

20. Your pants betray you. Your feelings for them are strong. Especially for your sister!

21. Jabba doesn't have time for smugglers who drop their pants at the first sign of an Imperial Cruiser.

22. Yeah, well short pants is better than no pants at all, Chewie.

23. Attention. This is Lando Calrissean. The Empire has taken control of my pants, I advise everyone to leave before more troops arrive.

24. I cannot teach him. The boy has no pants.

25. You came in those pants? You're braver than I thought.

25 Lines From Star Wars that can be improved if you substitute the word 'Pants'