ROCK THE VOTE!!@#%!

Remix culture! YeeeeeaaaaaaaAaaAaahhhHhhhhhh!@#!

http://www.command-post.org/2004/2_archives/009752.html

HARDCORE DEAN!!! (MP3 via The Command Post)

Josh Marshall interviews George Soros for his blog, Talking Points Memo.

I've meme'd several interviews following Soros and his take on the Bush Doctrine before. This one is a good read to stick in somewhere with all the articles about the SOTU you will read today..

Talking Points Memo | George Soros Interview

Here are some thoughts on the State of The Union Address..

This might surprise some, but I was very happy to see attention drawn to the Patriot Act right off the bat. This is a big issue, and (duh) we know Bush would like it to get "renewed", that's not shocking. However, I would have certainly been _very_ angry if it wasn't mentioned. As far as "The Union" is concerned, this is a pretty big issue, and it lies dead ahead. This may have been a very good time for that reminder to get pounded into most of America.. It is very important that it occured within that first 15 minutes when people are still likely to be paying attention and tuned in.

It came at a great point too. The opening was basically "We kick ass", "We work hard", "We have accomplished much", and "Our service people rock".. Then we had the "We have faced serious challenges", "Our enemies are everywhere", and of course "We must follow through". Then, the Patriot Act comes up.. No time was wasted. That made me happy, and the use of the word "renewed" is so much nicer then something like "confirmed"..

I'm of the opinion that anything done with it should have another sunset clause. Another four years. Because of the gravity of the issue, I see no reason why we shouldn't be forced to revisit it, over and over if necessary. Intelligence and law enforcement are always going to have issues involving search/surveillance powers. They are necessary to confront new asymmetric threats, which we are still learning how to combat.. They are also highly effected by advances and changes in technology, something we can't accurately predict. The rules governing these powers will likely change over time if they are to be both effective and safe guard rights.

No one disagrees with the idea that there should be accountability, oversight, yadda, yadda.. However, ideas about the specifics are lacking and will likely remain absent when the bill expires. Any powers that exist for any extended period of time, are likely to find themselves abused at some point, even if they are not being abused right now. That flaw is one of power and human nature, not of law.. We could also come up with something that is completely ineffective.

Fears need to be addressed. Right or not, some people don't trust government. That should be seen as a built in defense mechanism of freedom and liberty, not a problem or a lack of patriotism. Another expire date is an easy way to keep people from screaming bloody murder. At least nothing would have gotten worse, been "lost", or become hopeless. Clearing up a policy such as this would actually help Bush greatly in his re-election bid, if handled correctly. The dems seem to either be pandering to their far left by tossing around the word "repeal" (not going to happen), or pandering to the moderates by saying nothing hence getting nothing wrong. Neither of these approaches are going to work if Bush decides to lead on the i... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

State of the Union Address (text & video via whitehouse.gov)

This is the graphed out web of trust formed by pgp keys of people involved with Apache.

This is using GraphViz also. I like the use of shading to draw certain nodes out.

Found via Kevin Burton's blog.

Apache Keys - Web of Trust Graphing

lclough wrote:
] Wow. The underlying data would be really valueable for anyone
] doning social-network research.
]
] MemeStreams seems small. Is this a result of the interface or
] is it really small? It would be interesting to see graphs of
] usage over time for the frequency with which folks read,
] recommend, and post. Even better would be summary data in a
] tabular form that one could crunch.

MemeStreams is still small. We are growing, but we are still small. The main page has a fair amount of readers and we get tons of referrals from Google, but there are only a handful of active users who post frequently.

After we get the next version of MemeStreams up, we plan to expose XML based interfaces for querying link data. This will not only allow people to access the data for research, but also to support other visualization tools such as Touchgraph.

] A philosophical question. Is MemeStreams going to be a single
] community where everyone reads more or less the same set of
] posts, or a community with multiple foci of interest? How
] will the new developments support the one versus the other
] approach?

Nothing about MemeStreams design limits it to one group of people. Nothing about our intent for the site limits it to one group of people. Quite the contrary actually. We feel that the fact MemeStreams is only one group of people is a sign of its youth and immaturity. It is one community. One young community. Someday, there will be many communities present here. We have not created the architecture necessary for this to happen yet, so it hasn't. :)

The main page (which Decius and I usually refer to as the "democratic view") has whatever is most popular on the system, but the Reputation Agent is completely different for every person. The Agent's content is based on the system's understanding of the social network present, in relation to the user or a specified group.

One thing that I don't think most people realize: There are no "admin accounts" on MemeStreams, or anything like that. Decius's account, my account, your account, etc, are all the same. No one has any more power to make links appear on the front page then anyone else..

While on this topic.. I wish I never made the "most recommended users" page at the root of the Social Network section of the site. That page seriously misleads people. That list doesn't really have any bearing on anything.. That's built by totaling up a number of metrics, that are never actually totaled in that way, anywhere other then that page. Decius, Jeremy, and myself will always be at the top of that list. It wouldn't be possible to nock us from the top spots.. We have been actively using the system since day one, so someone would have to post and be recommended a truly insane amount to make up for the fact we have several years of system usage on them. In the year in graphs, you are seeing lists built on the same metrics, but with a timeframe taken into account so its in context.

RE: MemeStreams - The Year in Graphs 2003

] This collection of web pages documents Brad's activity on
] the system and the people who's lives he effected, from
] the first day he logged on MemeStreams to the day he
] passed on.

I had just finished the Year in Graphs when we heard of Brad's overdose. The idea of putting this together came to me immediately.. However, it took me about a week to get my shit together enough to actually do it.

I'm not sure what to say about it. I wasn't sure what to write on the intro/index page either. I spent a good afternoon of staring at a blank copy of VIM trying to come up with something. Then it dawned on me that the community could speak for itself, so I just started cut and pasting whatever made sense. It felt like that was a copout at the time, and it still does now..

However, I still can't think of anything to say about the matter. I can think of a few things I want to scream.. Really fucking loudly.. All of them at Brad.

For now, I'll say I miss him.

... and stay away from Heroin.

Brad

For several months now, work has been underway building the next version of MemeStreams. It has been necessary to recode most of the site from scratch, so its taking awhile. At any given time the trials of life, lack of funding, bad timing, hardware failure, and general bad luck is screwing up the works. However, we _are_ making progress.

Just before the new year, I hit the point in the development process where new capabilities of mining and graphing social network data were becoming available. I decided to go off on a little tangent, embrace the milestone, and do something to show our technology's progress. The result is the Year in Graphs 2003. Over the course of putting this together I've wound up fixing all kinds of problems with our database conversion code and wrote much of what will become the new graphing engine. I even had a really good "eureka" moment in relation to some of our network theory.. Its been time usefully spent.

That being said, this is all very kludgy. I did not spend that much time crossing I's and dotting T's.. The fonts in the nodes are hard to read, some of the graphs look "squished", its missing the "Show Links" feature the current Social Network portion of the sites has, etc.. There is much room for improvement with our graphing. I look forward to additional feedback.. :)

While these graphs may be fun to look at, the data they are built with is what's really exciting.. The same thing that allowed me to make these graphs is what's going to lead to improvements in the capabilities of the Reputation Agent.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy browsing through this review of the past year!

MemeStreams - The Year in Graphs 2003

] Nokia will make an internal version of the Perl scripting
] language for Series 60 smartphones available to its
] developer community, Lee Epting, Nokia's VP of Developer
] Relations, tells us. Nokia acknowledges a demand for more
] developer options as Nokia's Symbian-based Series 60
] platform reaches mass market volumes.

This qualifies as "rad".

The Register | Nokia to release Perl for smartphones

] Is that our productivity is up but we aren't producing enough.

Tom on deficits, labor and otherwise..

The Problem...

battle beatbox flautist

The man can do sick things with a flute, a mic, and a lexicon effects box. This is the most impressive one man act I have seen this year..

Tim Barsky