Interesting post over at Gulfstream (no permalink, sorry) about free software that doesn't seem so free from a company called Sveasoft:
Sveasoft have produced a new firmware for a Linksys wireless router. The software, like the original software, is based on Linux, and is licensed under the GPL: once you own a copy, you're free to give it to anyone you want. However, Sveasoft themselves will only give you a copy of "pre-release" version of their software if you pay to "subscribe" to this service. Ordinarily they wouldn't be able to charge very much for their software, because once one person has a copy of the software, they are legally allowed to give it to all their friends. (They could also sell it for less than Sveasoft charges.) However, the deal with Sveasoft is that if you do this, they won't sell you newer versions of their software. According to the FSF, this is quite okay.
Sveasoft will give you their pre-release software for free and allow you to distribute it, but if you do, you can't get support or buy future versions of the pre-release software. When I first read about this, it seemed to run counter to the free software philosophy, but upon further reflection, I don't see any real technical or philosophical objections to what Sveasoft is doing.
The 9/11 Commission released their findings today (WaPo PDF of the Executive Summary). I've created an HTML version of the Executive Summary with permalinks for each paragraph for easy linking and copy/paste.
Boy howdy, if this don't sound familiar:
The appearance of Eastman's cameras was so sudden and so pervasive that the reaction in some quarters was fear. A figure called the "camera fiend" began to appear at beach resorts, prowling the premises until he could catch female bathers unawares. One resort felt the trend so heavily that it posted a notice: "PEOPLE ARE FORBIDDEN TO USE THEIR KODAKS ON THE BEACH." Other locations were no safer. For a time, Kodak cameras were banned from the Washington Monument. The "Hartford Courant" sounded the alarm as well, declaring that "the sedate citizen can't indulge in any hilariousness without the risk of being caught in the act and having his photograph passed around among his Sunday School children."
These days, there's talk of banning camera phones from anywhere you could possibly carry one: locker rooms, battlefields, subways, and movie theatres. Awake, citizenry! Our indulgence in hilariousness is at stake here! (via red)
Considering how much I didn't like the first one, I was quite surprised at how much I enjoyed the sequel. Still a few cheesy bits (the laughing mask needs to go), but the action, love story, and comedy were great.
More information on Spiderman 2...
For a friend's birthday, her wife arranged for a helicopter ride and invited a few people along. Never having been on a helicopter before, I happily joined in.
The ride up and down the Hudson only lasted about 7 minutes, but it was great fun. Reminded me a lot of flying with my dad as a kid. And seeing Manhattan from a different angle was a real treat. Here are a few photos I took of the ride.
Think Secret says Apple is introducing the new models of the standard iPod on Monday (contrary to an earlier announcement). More interesting is this little puzzler:
Apple will not announce the new models through a press event, though Think Secret has learned that the announcement will be delivered through an out-of-the-ordinary publicity medium.
An "out-of-the-ordinary publicity medium"? Said medium is either a weblog (a new Apple blog? one of the many iPod news sites? Engadget or Gizmodo?), skywriting, with chalk from the back of a bicycle, or a free concert in Central Park by Prince.
Update: Or perhaps the cover of Newsweek? Not sure how that's out of the ordinary. (thx Ryan)
Further update: Predictably, Gizmodo and Engadget both have the Newsweek cover as their top story. Can you tell which one of the gadget sites is which? (I've removed the logos from the screenshots...and this is a mostly rhetorical questions...I don't need your answers via email.) And while we're on the subject, based on the latest stats, how long before Nick moves all his Gawker properties over to porn? Fawker, Boinkette, and Jismodo anyone?
Until this evening, I'd never actually seen any of Ken Jennings' 30+ appearances on Jeopardy. Now that I have, I sincerely believe that he cannot be beat. The man is a frigging machine. Unbelievable. I'm beginning to think this is actually plausible.
Various news articles have stated that Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy contestant who has won 31 straight games and $1 million, is back in Utah after taping the currently airing episodes months ago, implying that he lost at some point (neither Jennings nor Jeopardy employees can reveal any details about future Jeopardy episodes).
But what if the show is just on a summer break from taping? Perhaps Jennings is still the reigning champion and will remain champion for years to come. The nerdy Mormon's appearance on television will become a part of normal life in America. Lincoln's on the $5 bill. Sun rises in the east, sets in the west. Michael Bay's movies suck. Ken Jennings is the Jeopardy champ. There are now three constants in life: death, taxes, and Ken Jennings.
In short order, the ratings of the now-live show go through the roof, singlehandedly propping up the dying network television networks. To placate the increasingly vocal anti-Jennings contingent of viewers, the producers start throwing all sorts of special contestants at him. Harvard professors, Disney Imagineers, Rhodes Scholars, a 10 yo genius from South Korea, Danny Hillis, David Foster Wallace, Edward Witten, and even Ben Stein. Jennings defeats them easily, deciding the games well before Final Jeopardy, much to the glee of Jennings' burgeoning fan club.
Jennings, now making hundreds of millions of dollars in endorsements (he's under exclusive contract to Nike, promoting their sportswear geared toward the "intellectual athlete") protests when -- starting in early 2009 -- contestants are allowed to use Google's new S4 (Synaptic Semantic Search System) interface during the show to research answers, but still defeats all challengers. In 2012, the first contestants sporting genetically enhanced "buzzer thumbs" appear on the program. In 2013, the first computer systems to pass the Turing test are allowed as contestants. Jennings handles them all, au naturel.
Inevitably, a Jennings-based religion springs up. A young Mormon living a few blocks from the studio where Jeopardy tapes, reveals he has recently discovered a previously unknown book of the Old Testament. The lost book, coincidentally entitled "Trebek", tells of a living God from "the land of salt, jazz, and many wifes Who shall smite His enemies with a magical rod and infinite wisdom for the amusement of His followers" and promises salvation and everlasting life for whosoever believeth in him. After the new religion's leader appears on Oprah, the Church of Jennings becomes the fastest growing religion in the world.
And then, on January 17, 2026, Jennings loses to a young woman from Ohio (they later marry) by $1 on a Final Jeopardy question about the short-lived talk show Cooking with JK Rowling & Jay-Z. Many die. Upon seeing Jennings' wager come up short, Alex Trebek suffers a massive pulmonary embolism on set. His last words were, "Alex Jennings...I like the sound of that". The elderly, always susceptible to harsh conditions, are hit hardest; Jeopardy becomes the third leading cause of death that year for the 80-100 demographic. Network TV almost collapses (saved only by Survivor: Mare Tranquilitatis), and Jeopardy ratings fall well below pre-Jennings numbers. Jennings retires to Utah, now wholly owned by the Church of Jennings, Inc. And very gradually, people adjust to a world without Ken Jennings as reigning Jeopardy champion.
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations
by James Surowiecki
"The problem with the global village is all the global village idiots."
-- Paul Ginsparg
"You don't do good software design by committee."
-- Donald Norman
"There's no justice like angry-mob justice."
-- Principal Seymour Skinner
"A person is smart. People are stupid."
-- Agent K
The wisdom of crowds you say? As Surowiecki explains, yes, but only under the right conditions. In order for a crowd to be smart, he says it needs to satisfy four conditions:
1. Diversity. A group with many different points of view will make better decisions than one where everyone knows the same information. Think multi-disciplinary teams building Web sites...programmers, designers, biz dev, QA folks, end users, and copywriters all contributing to the process, each has a unique view of what the final product should be. Contrast that with, say, the President of the US and his Cabinet.
2. Independence. "People's opinions are not determined by those around them." AKA, avoiding the circular mill problem.
3. Decentralization. "Power does not fully reside in one central location, and many of the important decisions are made by individuals based on their own local and specific knowledge rather than by an omniscient or farseeing planner." The open source software development process is an example of effect decentralization in action.
4. Aggregation. You need some way of determining the group's answer from the individual responses of its members. The evils of design by committee are due in part to the lack of correct aggregation of information. A better way to harness a group for the purpose of designing something would be for the group's opinion to be aggregated by an individual who is skilled at incorporating differing viewpoints into a single shared vision and for everyone in the group to be aware of that process (good managers do this). Aggregation seems to be the most tricky of the four conditions to satisfy because there are so many different ways to aggregate opinion, not all of which are right for a given situation.
Satisfy those four conditions and you've hopefully cancelled out some of the error involved in all decision making:
If you ask a large enough group of diverse, independent people to make a prediciton or estimate a probability, and then everage those estimates, the errors of each of them makes in coming up with an answer will cancel themselves out. Each person's guess, you might say, has two components: information and error. Subtract the error, and you're left with the information.
There's more info on the book at the Wisdom of Crowds Web site and in various tangential articles Surowiecki's written:
- Smarter than the CEO
- Interview with Bill James
- Blame Iacocca - How the former Chrysler CEO caused the corporate scandals
- Search and Destroy (on Google bombs)
- The Pipeline Problem (drug companies)
- Hail to the Geek (government and information flow)
- Going Dutch (IPOs)
- The Coup De Grasso (fairness in business)
- Open Wide (movies and "non-informative information cascades")
Inspired by Dana's post about Flickr colors, here's the Flickr spectrum, starting with the Flickr Homeland Security Advisory System:
SEVERE: brick, flag, carpet
HIGH: flower, sunset, kitty
ELEVATED: daisy, cab, fries
GUARDED: sky, jeans, hair
LOW: tree, wasabi, watermelon
couch, blueberries, flower
football, ice cream, hats
cat, tie, sky
sky, feet, chairs
tile, sculpture, polaroid
maude, bitch whips, pillow
Trolling around the Web for reviews of Gus Van Sant's rumination on Columbine, I came across this anecdote from Roger Ebert:
Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" No, I said, I wouldn't say that. "But what about 'Basketball Diaries'?" she asked. "Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?" The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.
The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."
In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.
Some folks don't cotton to Ebert, but I like him fine.
More information on Elephant...
Some of you may have noticed that the Wisdom of Crowds post disappeared from the front page. I've been having lots of trouble with the MTAmazon plug-in that helps power the books section of the site. The basic problem is that the cache is somehow getting corrupted and/or the Amazon API is down and the site won't publish if there's a book post on the front page, which pretty much renders the whole site useless from an updating perspective. It worked well for months and now, poof, it doesn't...without any changes having been made in how it works. Several others on the MTAmazon-users mailing list are having the same problem, and up until today, deleting the cache fixed the problem (as suggested), but even that doesn't work now. With the caching mechanism, you'd think it would fail more gracefully than that.
Anyway, has anyone run into this problem and discovered a solution?
You'll find more in the archives or you may peruse the books, remaindered links, or further afield separately.
