Dave Winer has a hint of surprise in his post on CES. It's no secret that events like CES are boring. That's because they're "leave ideas at the door" events. I mean, it's in Las Vegas, isn't that enough of a clue to the purpose of the event? The best thing is to just let other people do the donkey work of pulling the interesting stuff from these events and then thinking about it. I thought about going to BETT (the education in technology show) this week, but decided not to. It would be a big, lumbering, commercialised disappointment. The manufacturers are trying to sell new stuff to customers - be they corporate, educational, individual - which are supposedly 'new ideas'. They do things which are either obvious or unnecessary inefficiently, while the good ideas simmer under the surface (often utilising old time ideas) and let people innovate. None of that stuff happens in the big tech shows at Earl's Court or Las Vegas or the Portable Media Expo (to pluck some examples). And that's why I avoid them like I avoid herpes. 2006-01-13T23:46:30Z
Les Jenkins on Sylvia Browne: "It's not like being wrong has ever stopped her before. She¹ll just do what she did during the radio show and just pretend she never bragged about knowing they¹d be found alive and her fans will just pretend right along with her." 2006-01-13T23:12:48Z
Using Internet Explorer? Get your boomarks out and turn them in to OPML. 2006-01-13T22:42:42Z
Wonkette is discussing how Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey, "Satanic Dark Priest, Sanguinarian Vampyre and a Hecate Witch", is running for the Governor of Minnesota. I'd rather vote for him than one of George W. Bush or one of his fundamentalist fanatics. 2006-01-13T22:06:14Z
Ooh, there's video of the MacBook Pro. I'm on GPRS at the moment, but will look when I get a minute. 2006-01-13T17:48:47Z
Jack Krebs is "sharing the love" with that crazy-ass DaveScot guy who's now running Bill Dembski's blog. Dembski's blog was bad enough when it was just him. Now he's letting his fellow Kool-Aid drinkers run the show, and it's going to become even more kooky than it has ever been before. Hold on tight, folks, this is a one way train to Dumbsville, and there are no rest breaks. 2006-01-13T17:39:05Z
Low End Mac has an article on fun things to do with the OS X command line. And it's a reminder, as if any were needed, how great the "osascript" command is. 2006-01-13T17:28:00Z
I'm currently on the train, sitting next to a tit who is treating the train like his own private office. I do this, but I do it silently. That is the advantage of blogging and email - it's voice-free communication. (Or rather, spoken voice free - which is a good thing) 2006-01-13T17:11:56Z
John Stossel writes in Reason comparing Belgian and American schools. 2006-01-13T17:09:55Z
Scoble is pointing towards an RSS-to-podcast service. I still haven't found a good one yet (including the one Scoble links to, which ate my feed and did nothing in return). What someone needs to do is just make a service which lets you subscribe to feed2podcast.net/convert/whatever.com/rss.xml and it'll plonk out a podcast food. The problem is that these services require the owner of the blog to sign up and do stuff before making the feed, or they require extra software on the reciever's end. Better yet, this service would be built in to iTunes so when you choose "Subscribe to Podcast" in the menu, it gives you the option of text-to-speech for a blog. 2006-01-13T16:58:25Z
Paolo Valdermarin on Radio, OPML and local/remote distinction. I just wish that someone would produce a decent Gmail offline client. It's 2006 and we still haven't got synchronisation sorted out. 2006-01-13T16:51:54Z
Tara Smith points out how draining "the debate" can be. Oh, it is draining alright. It's far less draining online than offline because you don't have to keep reciting the obvious online. You can use a link. That's why, rather than get in to convoluted argument offline, I'd rather point people to t.o or equivalent. 2006-01-13T14:22:17Z
Daily Kos has an interview of Ed Brayton by DarkSyde, and he has one of the most sensible 'moderate' positions around (as well as being a tireless advocate against stupidity like Intelligent Design). He's also moved over to ScienceBlogs.com, so you can find his blog here. 2006-01-13T14:03:54Z
Ask MeFi are talking about developing 120s. First of all, do it yourself. It takes about the same time as taking it to a lab, and costs less. If you aren't doing it yourself, make sure that when you transport it you do it in a container. You can buy, for a very low cost, black 120 container tubes. If you are sending them off, wrap 'em in tin foil (I've got PGP installed, but I don't mean tin foil in that sense) as you never know what crazy shit the postal system gets up to in transit. And don't, for the love of God, use 220. As for affordable development? It's a myth. If you want to get good quality, you have to pay for it. "Crappy Snappies" will never rival doing it yourself. 2006-01-13T12:52:56Z
Techdirt is discussing 'plugging the analog hole' and the way that it is going to really kick amateur content production. 2006-01-13T12:42:38Z
The Guardian is discussing Sharon Lemburg / El Tejon. 2006-01-13T12:36:55Z
Read this. Christopher Hitchens gets it absolutely correct on Kitzmiler. (Via Jason Rosenhouse) 2006-01-13T12:25:48Z
Despite my protestation that just getting two sides often won't get the story, I do like Opimind. 2006-01-13T12:17:07Z
Jeffrey Shallit has a post on a guy called David Warren who is, it seems, a total moron. 2006-01-13T12:03:24Z
Russell Glaser (aka. Kazim) has a post on how the 'economic' wing of the Republicans are getting annoyed with the looney creationist wing of the Republicans. I don't agree with his conclusion, but it's worth a read. 2006-01-13T11:57:08Z
Hit and Run discusses Daniel Dennett's new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomena. 2006-01-13T11:24:11Z
Robert Scoble on 'method': "I want skeptical, educated, pragmatic customers. This is why I talk about my competitors so much and let you know what they are doing right". I like the idea of being a tech evangelist, and, in fact, I have all the qualifications to be one: a blog and opinions. The difference is that I don't belong to either Apple or Microsoft or anyone else. 2006-01-13T11:04:34Z
The Nation are talking about how there is serious talk about impeaching W. (via) 2006-01-13T10:05:36Z
Ask Yahoo! are reporting on the big shift to laptop. If I had £1,500 and Apple hadn't called their new laptop the "MacBook Pro", I'd probably switch back to laptop as a primary machine. Instead, it's now just my text workhorse (for Safari and OPML), while my desktop serves as file server. 2006-01-13T10:00:16Z
Steve Rubel has the juice on the new Google's mobile RSS reader. I'll try it later, but I prefer using my computer for RSS by miles, since I can't blog from my phone. 2006-01-13T09:58:57Z
P. Z. on Richard E. Baker who sounds quite like a total moron: "We spend all this malarkey and baloney when 99 percent of all the people who are taught this have nothing to do with the rest of their lives. These scientists, they don't care about wasting their own time or anybody else's time." 2006-01-13T09:56:41Z
Jason Rosenhouse has some fun with Phyllis Shlafly's meandering and moronic reaction to Kitzmiller. 2006-01-13T08:59:22Z
Things That Make You Go Hmm have a discussion of the difference between Slashdot and Digg. Here's the difference for me: Slashdot loads quicker, Slashdot has more intelligent discussion and Slashdot readers don't read TFA (which would explain Kottke's experience). 2006-01-13T08:56:07Z
Even if you don't vote, take a look at these headlines. Just looking at these makes me thankful that I get my news via RSS. My NewsRiver currently has no mention of 'Diana', 'Gipsies', marauding evil homosexuals, abortion, killer videogames, 'feral gangs', 'asylum seekers' or other such moral panics. 2006-01-13T08:51:54Z
According to this report, Tony Blair is at number 5 in the top ten role models for young people. The article also confuses school with education. 2006-01-13T08:47:23Z
Om Malik is saying that Six Apart is launching an affiliate programme. I have been planning a strange sort of "Learn to Blog" campaign, and this could be interesting... 2006-01-13T08:44:17Z
Here's what annoys me about FeedBurner. Feedburner doesn't actually link to the articles in some of their RSS feeds. Meaning that I can't blog them without opening the article up and copying the link. Perhaps I (or, better, someone else) should hack NewsRiver to get around this functionality breaking. It's really quite annoying. 2006-01-13T08:39:03Z
Why I Don't Do Comments 2006-01-13T19:59:05Z
Fancyclown comments on David Aaronovitch's blog: "For me a blog without comments doesn't qualify as a blog, as it stops the interaction between writer and reader, which is one of the best things about blogs."
I don't like them, because they aren't done well. They're not paged (meaning they make blog entries take ages to load). They're not threaded. And, worst, there's no notification that I've been responded to (whereas, if someone responds with a blog post, it hits my RSS reader within an hour or so (via Technorati). Theer's also no way for my readers to know when I've commented (which defeats the purpose of a blog, I think).
They also drag in the spam, which sucks. Even as I type this, my WordPress blog is getting spam. I might just turn comments off.
I've been burned (and watched others) by having comments deleted. Nobody bar maybe Dave Winer or a pack of hungry lawyers can stop me here (and the latter is far more probable - and scarier! - than the former).
Does it work? Not for some people. But, judging by my referrer logs, it does. Lots of people who I write about obviously have Technorati searches set up about themselves (some by name, others by blog URL). But ask me to find a comment I made on a Moveable Type blog three months ago, and I'll be dumbfounded. Perhaps I'd do something with Google, but it's hardly a decent way to find out what you've written.
Blog comments are an extra. If you choose to have them, good luck to you.
