On the political compass, I fall in the “lefty libertarian” quadrant — not far from the Dalai Lama. In AD&D terms, I think that means “chaotic good.”
Economic Left/Right: -3.25
Social Libertarian/ Authoritarian: -6.15
Political Compass Questionnaire
I may be way off base here, but isn’t Ms. Dewey uncannily similar to Microsoft’s earlier pathetic attempt at humanizing the computer, Clippy? Sure, one is a babe, and the other is a cartoon paperclip. But work with me here: They both have a pretentious, officious manner. They both rap on the glass to get your attention (and both of them are equally clueless that my LCD monitor makes more of a “tap tap” sound, not “dink dink”). And both get in the way of you actually getting the work done that you want to do.
It seems that Microsoft can’t seem to get off the annoying animated character trip. It’s as if Bob had never died. And I have to say, the MsDewey site is frankly not that impressive. It’s a stunt site designed to show off the fact that Microsoft engineers can hire an actress, write some Flash code to tie together one or two dozen short video clips with some dissolve transitions, and integrate the whole thing with a search engine. Impressive, guys.
The problem may be that Microsoft is filled with engineers who really do wish that their computers would talk to them like this. If their computers took on the persona of a soft-core porn actress (NSFW), even better. The rest of us, meanwhile, just want our computers to disappear: Give us the information we want and get the hell out of the way. Maybe that’s why stripped-down interfaces like Google’s are so popular. (Thanks to KJ for pointing this out)
I’m Emperor Norton, it seems. Rum and Monkey: The Historical Lunatic Test
A small but growing collection of short, useful how-to videos from PC Magazine: PCMagCast Video
The solution to global warming? Nuclear winter! Climate scientists to discuss the chilling consequences of nuclear war
“The glorious thing about the Internet is that it allows us to aggregate the combined stupidity of literally millions of people:” Seven Habits of Highly Successful Websites (Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought)
The first installment in a series of short (2-3 minute) how-to videos from PC Magazine and PCMagCast, starring yours truly. In this video, I show you how to get rid of that animated puppy that pops up when you’re searching for files on a Windows XP machine.
“News is something someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising.” –Lord Northcliffe
By that measure, there are mighty few true news reporters in tech publishing right now. Declan McCullough, certainly; Kim Zetter’s coverage of e-voting machines also qualifies. Who else is uncovering news from the tech world that somebody wants to suppress?
(Quote taken from a biography I’m currently reading: All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone, by Myra MacPherson. An alternate version of the quote: “News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising. “)
First thing in the morning, even before checking email, spend an hour getting your most important task done. 10 tips for time management in a multitasking world ยป Brazen Careerist
Groups of people are uncannily accurate at guessing the number of beans in a jar, the weight of a steer, and the like. In fact, the bigger the group, the more accurate its collective guess — a principle known as the Condorcet Jury Theorem. There’s a significant limitation, though: This only works if each person in the group has a better than 50% chance of getting the right answer. If the individuals in the group have a less than 50% chance — for instance because they know absolutely nothing about the question at hand — then increasing the size of the group will decrease the likelihood of their getting the right answer.
I learned this today by reading Ethan Zuckerman’s interesting review of Infotopia by Cass Sunstein. The converse of Condorcet — that groups of ignorant people make worse decisions as the size of the group increases — is Ethan’s formulation. I’m not sure if either version of the theorem is borne out (other than in pure theory and in relatively abstract test cases) but they sure make a compelling argument for the importance of a voting public being educated and well-informed — and it’s a significant proviso to glib statements about “the wisdom of crowds.” Ignorant voters make bad decisions — worse the more of them there are. Informed voters make good decisions — and better ones the more of them there are.
