... and the winner is: Postfix!

Qmail versus Sendmail

DiseaseSter is social software site where you track what diseases you got from what people. Got AIDS? Know who you got it from? Blog it! TB? Get connected with the community. Its not just about long term and fatal diseases on DiseaseSter. Their site is setup extremely good for tracking common cold type things. You can make note of people you suspect of infecting you, people you think you may have infected, etc. Its the start of the flu season, and I expect this will be the point where DiseaseSter goes mainstream. Due to the way people become connected on DiseaseSter, it more closely tied with your real life friends then any other social network site. The people you interact with every day are surely the ones you will infect and be infected by. This is really limited by real world connections, in a way no other social sites are, and that's pretty interesting.

This site is still very new. Like most of the other social network sites, they have not implemented FOAF yet, but they say it is on the way. I'm sure there are many researchers that will find ways to use this information to track epidemics. This site could be used for a sort of distributed open research.

In the intro flash (which is very funny, in an all too surreal sort of way) they list off a bunch of ways they see this site being used to curtail infection. At my last jobby-job, there were many people who traveled frequently, and we were always infecting each other with various flu type crap. They allude to this tool being useful for quickly alerting you of an infection risk in your immediate social network. I'm not sure how useful that would be. They seem focused on using this as a coordination tool for businesses (telling people to say home who have been exposed to something?), and some lofty goals for health care services integration. They say nothing about the site being used for people with compatible VD hooking up, but the site seems geared for that too. I could see why they would leave that out. People are going to have no problem figuring it out.

So this idea of tracking diseases as links using an artificial network model is pretty neat, abet really strange. There is a disturbing big brother aspect to this. It may be a perfect example of a way these sites, and IT in general, are mutating concepts of privacy. This site encourages people to snitch on people you suspect of being sick, but it also keeps track of how accurate you are. Something in the FAQ seemed to denote they remove links from people who's links are often disputed. I guess only time will tell how well it works..

What does everyone here think about this?

Update: Clearly, the secret is out.. The site isn't responding to requests anymore. This must be going around the blogs..

DiseaseSter - Where the network gets biological

] Let's rewind history and study another rumor, one which
] cost Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) his candidacy in 2000.
] McCain was running a close campaign against George Bush
] in South Carolina, when Karl Rove introduced his
] brilliant strategy: push polling (Rove has been involved
] in push polling since the early 70s). Essentially, calls
] were made to households asking "Would you be more
] likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for
] president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate
] black child" Many took this to say that he had one,
] and seeing McCain and his wife on stage with their
] adopted Bangladeshi daughter, concluded that the rumor
] was true. The sight of the little dark skinned girl made
] the seed planted earlier grow, and McCain ended up losing
] South Carolina and subsequentially dropping out of the
] race.
]
] So what does push polling have to do with a rumor of
] Kerry having an affair? Well some would argue that they
] are merely separate heads of the same beast. Pointing an
] indignant finger at the machinations of Karl Rove, the
] Bush administration's strategist who has a penchant for
] dispersing rumors, many on the Democrat side will claim
] that Rove is up to his old shenanigans and that the
] rumors have no basis. What caused McCain to lose in 2000
] could inspire Democrats to rally behind Kerry, and lead
] to a major rift between the parties and brings the race
] to a closer finish. Theoretical, but plausible.

This was posted on the 6th.

A Kerry Affair & Push Polling

Acidus wrote:
] A great way to protect all types of transactions. The Credit
] Card companies refuse to adopt it because it anonymizes people
] and their transactions, and thus they would no longer be able
] to sell the data.
]
] Hashing is your friend

I need to vent.

This sounds interesting, however I can't open the documents. The HTML protocol description isn't that helpful for getting the big picture, and the word documents crash my copy of MS's OSX Word. MS's formats are not cross platform, even using their own products on both platforms. I have the same problem with some WMA using OSX Windows Media Player. All this MS crap simply DOES NOT WORK.

Are PDFs that hard to make? Seriously. There is a place for non-editable formats, they remove complexity and platform dependent issues that causes problems. A few weeks ago, I had someone talking my ear off with shit about how Postscript is evil. News flash! Postscript works, there is a place for it, this is it. At least I can read the document on every platform, and have it display properly without having all the same fonts installed as the person who authored it. I'm not saying that editable formats shouldn't be distributed also, that's asinine. However, something I can display on all platforms would very helpful in situations like these.

Update: This is similar in some ways to the problem posed by source only licenses. You can lay the argument on me all day about how having (and knowing how to build from) the source empowers the user, but its just a flawed argument. The user is concerned with the app working, and that's it. The developer is who you need to empower. As long as the only thing that differentiates a user and a developer is a decision and another download, its all good.

RE: Secure Electronic Transaction Specification

Boyskout, hot pixie girls that rock.

This was a SF band, recently relocated to NYC.

Boyskout video

] President Bartlet (Martin Sheen): I like how you call
] homosexuality an abombination.
]
] Jenna Jacobs: I don't say homosexuality is an
] abomination, Mr. President, the Bible does.
]
] President Bartlet: Yes, it does. Leviticus.
]
] Jenna Jacobs: 18:22.
]
] President Bartlet: Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you
] a couple of questions while I have you here. I'm
] interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery
] as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown
] sophmore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table
] when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be?
] While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of
] Staff Leo McGarry insists on working on the Sabbath.
] Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I
] morally obligated to kill him myself or is it okay to
] call the police? Here's one that's really important
] because we've got a lot of sports fans in this town:
] touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean.
] Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the
] Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame?
] Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be
] together to stone my brother John for planting different
] crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small
] family gathering for wearing garments made from two
] different threads? Think about those questions, would
] you?

The West Wing has some great writers.

The West Wing

irc.freenode.net:#meme .. I appear to be the only person who is ever in there other then bucy, who drops in occasionally. We announced it awhile back, a few people started to idle in there, no one was ever alive at the same time, then it just died..

Take two?

] MacBand is an online directory of songs and loops made by
] artists using Apple Computer's GarageBand software.

[ All of them are offerred under Creative Commons licences... an interesting implication for the Remix Culture meme the community seems so fond of... neat idea. -k]

MacBand.com - Share Your Music with the World

] 1. The Internet isn't complicated
] 2. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.
] 3. The Internet is stupid.
] 4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.
] 5. All the Internet's value grows on its edges.
] 6. Money moves to the suburbs.
] 7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.
] 8. The Internet's three virtues:
] * a. No one owns it
] *  b. Everyone can use it
] *  c. Anyone can improve it
] 9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been
] so boneheaded about it?
] 10. Some mistakes we can stop making already

World of Ends

] Stratton Sclavos, chief executive of VeriSign Inc., told
] investors in a conference call last month that the
] company might relaunch its "Site Finder" service as early
] as April.

Sometimes it feels as if there is not to be a moment of rest, on any front.

Where are the non-wildcard DNS based methods of directing browsers to lookup services? I remember there was much talk here of other ways to approach the problem. A quick search revealed this thread: http://www.memestreams.net/thread/bid8950/

washingtonpost.com: VeriSign Reconsiders Search Service