Is there an infotech equivalent to the SAT coming?

ETS (the makers of the SAT) seem to be cooking something like this up...

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061029-8102.html

Monday Morning links

LA times looks at why net gambling is legal but offline isnt:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-ackman29oct29,0,656569.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

Brits most spied upon country in west:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2761-2426874,00.html

The art of image altering (photoshopping)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/29/sunday/main2135644.shtml

For Halloween PCWorld has 15 freaky websites:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,127508-page,1/article.html

Has Myspace already jumped the shark?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/28/AR2006102800803.html

Another free font collection:
http://neatfonts.com/

FW: [IP] CA Combining Shopping and Voting Data

From the IP list.  Spooky!

Sam

-----Original Message-----
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/10/26/schwarzenegger.consumers.ap/index.html

California shoppers, Schwarzenegger is watching you
POSTED: 2:54 p.m. EDT, October 26, 2006

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Gin or vodka? Ford or BMW? Perrier or 
Fiji water? Does the car you buy or what's in your fridge say 
anything about how you'll vote?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign thinks so.

Employing technology honed in President Bush's 2004 victory, the 
Republican governor's re-election team has created a vast computer 
storehouse of data on personal buying habits and voter records to 
identify likely supporters. Campaign officials say the operation is 
the largest of its kind in any state, at any time.

Some strategists believe consumer information can reveal a voter's 
politics even better than a party label can.

"It's not where they live, it's how they live," said Josh Ginsberg, 
the Schwarzenegger campaign's deputy political director.

The idea is an outgrowth of techniques that businesses have long used 
to find new customers. Using publicly available data, the Bush 
campaign in 2004 knew voters' favorite vacation spots, religious 
leanings, the music and magazines they liked, the cars they drove.

Few people might realize how much information is publicly available, 
for a price, about their lifestyles. Companies collect and sell 
consumer information they buy from credit card companies, airlines 
and retailers of every stripe.

Using microtargeting, as the practice is known, Bush's campaign 
teased out supporters in swing states such as Ohio. Schwarzenegger -- 
whose political operation is run by two Bush veterans, campaign 
manager Steve Schmidt and strategist Matthew Dowd -- is ripping a 
page from that book.

<snip>

Are you ready to re-shock the monkey?

Following on some other high profile contests for fans to remix their favorite songs, Peter Gabriel released a sound pack to help his fans remix Shock the Monkey.  The winners and runners up have been announced!

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/oct2006/gb20061018_117320.htm

The winning track is here:
http://www.realworldremixed.com/remix.php?remix_id=KZ2Y83edFlCVmBU.

PBS gets clued in to Creative Commons

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/10/digging_deepercreative_commons.html

(Almost) All of my Flickr photos are CC licensed.  It is definitly cool when someone finds a piece of work that you have done and likes it enough to use it in their own projects.  Sometimes you dont even know that they have done that, which is just fine with me, so long as they arent selling the derivative work. 

Sam

Article about Monmouth&Google trouble plus data on ego searches

http://outlook.monmouth.edu/Issues/06-Spring/04-19/The%20Outlook%20April%2019%202006.pdf

Not sure why I didnt hear about this when it went down.  But consider
this:  Even if Google removes the data from its cache, there is no
guarantee that anyone who ever accessed that data directly from Monmouth
or Google will have.

So what can you do?  Well, first thing to do is try an 'Ego search'
every few months.  Don't just use google, try some of the other sites
(and make sure they arent now using Google's search engine and data) =)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_search

Also try a Technorati or other Blog search (Icerocket perhaps)
www.technorati.com
www.icerocket.com

Article about Monmouth&Google trouble plus data on ego searches

http://outlook.monmouth.edu/Issues/06-Spring/04-19/The%20Outlook%20April%2019%202006.pdf

Not sure why I didnt hear about this when it went down.  But consider this:  Even if Google removes the data from its cache, there is no guarantee that anyone who ever accessed that data directly from Monmouth or Google will have.

So what can you do?  Well, first thing to do is try an 'Ego search' every few months.  Don't just use google, try some of the other sites (and make sure they arent now using Google's search engine and data) =)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_search

Also try a Technorati or other Blog search (Icerocket perhaps)
www.technorati.com
www.icerocket.com

Now is the time to think about your financial future

We all know college is a huge debt trap.  Even if you are on scholarship
you can run up huge credit card debt going out partying, eating, buying
clothes, and the unexpected costs you didnt think about for your
classes.

I've been checking out both Quicken and Microsoft Money and found them
to be huge helps wrangling personal finance, but more than that, its
keeping a pulse on the money sites on the web has been a huge help too.

Here's a few of my new favorites:
http://www.pfadvice.com/
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/
http://www.fivecentnickel.com/
http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/
http://www.2millionblog.com/
http://www.fool.com/
http://www.pfblog.com/
http://www.stopbuyingcrap.com/
http://youngandbroke.typepad.com/young_and_broke

What about you guys?  Are there any financial advice web sites that you
cant live without?

The history of home computers

As shown in TV commercials:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/16/2312238

Our privacy is already lost and nobody seemed to notice or care

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/

Like I tell our class, this isnt me just being a paranoid conspiracy theorist.  These technologies already exist and are being exploited, by marketers, lawyers, local police and the national government.

Help me understand this

OK, I get the appeal of Myspace and Facebook, but are people REALLY friending ads and shills?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/technology/16social.html?ei=5088&en=bc427f77cbf79159&ex=1318651200&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1161093727-eQ7xyJW2fX5HbIjIeEvbIw

Mr. Bing Gordon (Electronic Arts) talk at Digital Life

I had the opportunity to watch Mr. Bing Gordon, president of Electronic Arts, speak at the Digital Life show at the Javits in NYC last week.

http://static.flickr.com/102/269809879_5ef8769ff2.jpg
http://static.flickr.com/95/269818271_0126466962.jpg

I _think_ the full video of his talk is available here:
http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/paul/archive/2006/10/14/150587.aspx

I cant tell tho because the video feeds are disabled here at work.

Anyway, Mr. Gordon knew that his audience was going to be packed with about 2000 high schoolers who are interested in digital media, and his talk focussed on areas that they can concentrate on to find interesting careers.  His message was that Movies, TV, Books and other media arent being replaced so much by games and net communities but integrating together and forming new bonds that make for compelling content.  I wrote to Mr. Gordon to ask him some follow up questions and he was nice enough to provide his lecture notes, and they can be found here:

http://zorak.monmouth.edu/~posten/BingGordon.ppt

He concludes:  The chances of you making a living playing video games is VERY small.  Obviously players like Thresh and Fatal1ty are the exception.  The opportunity to make a living by making games has never been greater in his opinion tho. 

Give his slides a look, there is some neat info in there that might give you some ideas for avenues you might like to explore.

Mindblowing new interview with Steve Ballmer

Not sure which is crazier, how honest Ballmer appears to be or how much I actually agree with his answers (And it is RARE that I agree with anything from Microsoft besides the 360). 

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2006/tc20061011_940241.htm?campaign_id=bier_tco.g3a.rss1011a

"[Take open source.] Open source is not a new technology area. It was a new business model. In the last three or four years, we have competed very well by extending our value. Open source never goes away as a business model or competitor. We have learned how to compete with open source, and we will compete with it for the rest of time. But competing with open source will have to be something that's burned bright on the foreheads of our senior people.

The second big competitive force is advertising as a business model. Typically, people just want to reduce that to Google, and if you want to do that, you can. But it's do we embrace advertising fully enough as a business model? Because at the end of the day, anybody who comes at you with a cheaper-to-the-customer proposition, you got to worry about. And advertising looks cheaper to a consumer than something you pay for.

In the case of open source, we couldn't adopt the business model. We adopted a competitive approach that so far has worked very well. In the advertising case, we can embrace that model. We don't have to sit here and say it's that bad."

My head just exploded

It's only taken 25 years of evidence to get the message across, this is very encouraging.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061010-7946.html

NYT on Spore, plus PS3 preorder blizzard

Good info on why Spore will be different from anything before it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08games.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5088&en=d5d1134494106bbd&ex=1317960000&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

BTW, those of you who asked when they could preorder their Playstation 3s?  If you didnt get to Gamestop or EB before 10:15 this morning you missed that window.  Keep your eyes peeled at the big tech web sites for your opp at Toys R Us and Circuit City, those will go even faster.  And for those who miss it, expect to pony up over $2k to get one on Ebay....  Or wait till March.

Technorati

Now Searchable on Technorati. =)

Here we are now, entertain us (and arrest us for our cybercrimes too!)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/technology/09steal.html?ex=1318046400&en=f1ebf6a3fd0b8c89&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

 

IBM presents:  you make the call!  If I take my library of legally purchased iTunes tracks and use a ‘hacker’ tool to convert them to open mp3s, does that make me a criminal?  The DMCA says yes.

From [IP], 60 Minutes gets its hands on the no-fly list

Absolutely ridiculous use of technology (a computer database) gone awry because of the knucklehead people using it.  Embarrassing and unacceptable.

-----Original Message-----
Begin forwarded message:

From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org>
Date: October 6, 2006 3:32:17 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: 60 Minutes gets its hands on the no-fly list

        Unlikely Terrorists On No-Fly List
        Steve Kroft reports lists includes President of Bolivia,
        dead 9/11 hijackers
        http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/05/60minutes/main2066624.shtml

Excerpt:

        Gary Smith, John Williams and Robert Johnson are some of those
        names. Kroft talked to 12 people with the name Robert Johnson, all
        of whom are detained almost every time they fly. The detentions
        can include strip searches and long delays in their travels.

        "Well, Robert Johnson will never get off the list," says
        Donna Bucella, who oversaw the creation of the list and has
        headed up the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center since 2003. She
        regrets the trouble they experience, but chalks it up to the
        price of security in the post-9/11 world. "They're going to be
        inconvenienced every time ... because they do have the name of
        a person who's a known or suspected terrorist," says Bucella.

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

This is supposed to make me want to buy Vista?

As anyone who has followed the development of the game Halo will tell you, Microsoft is VERY good at Viral Marketing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haunted_Apiary

Somehow tho, this just doesnt seem like its going to make me want to buy MS Vista...

http://www.clearification.com/

It seems like MS is trying to fight back against the very successful (and funny) Get a Mac campaign, but MS just isnt that cool, or funny.

http://www.apple.com/getamac/

Heck, it doesnt even measure up to Burger King's Subservient chicken =)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Subservient_Chicken