YouTube’s lack of moderation
June 28th, 2007 by Ben
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My friend Tim is calling YouTube on the hateful comments found on their site. He has written to them:
As far as I can tell, the publication of these comments on YouTube directly contravenes the Code of Conduct, which states: “We encourage free speech and defend everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view. But we don’t permit hate speech which contains slurs or the malicious use of stereotypes intended to attack or demean a particular gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, or nationality.”Please can you clarify: does the Code of Conduct apply to comments as well as to videos?
Mocha in Rails
June 27th, 2007 by Ben
Mocha’s the mocking library that James maintains and comes out of work we did here at Reevoo.
I was dead pleased to see these warnings when running Rails’ ActiveRecord tests:
Skipping group_by_non_numeric_foreign_key_association tests. `gem install mocha` and try again. Skipping reloading_fixtures_through_accessor_methods tests. `gem install mocha` and try again. Skipping QueryCacheExpiryTest tests. `gem install mocha` and try again. Skipping mocking connection.commit_db_transaction tests. `gem install mocha` and try again.
Cadmium Coaxial
June 15th, 2007 by Ben
Enjoying Jonathan Meades.
Tonight he described something as the “cadmium coaxial of soufflé culture”. More of this, please – veiled insults that scan.
Teaching Physics
June 7th, 2007 by Ben
I suffered the first year of GCSE exams – many years ago now – and I vaguely remember what I studied in Physics. I didn’t go on to study physics at any higher level, choosing instead to study ‘arts’ subjects. But, I’ve always considered myself to be of a scientific mindset.
I remember doing experiments, drawing graphs and generally being involved in trying to divine physical laws from experimental evidence. F = ma; the connection between volts, amps, watts and ohms; latent heat of evaporation and fusion; and so on, so forth. Basic stuff, maybe, but an important ideal was being taught – through observation and experiment we can derive understanding of fundamental ways in which the world works.
Wellington Grey’s abject criticism of the current physics curriculum makes me think that we’re letting down today’s children with woolier nonsense and a serious lack of rigour. He makes what seems to me to be a deeply, deeply important point. This can’t be right, can it?
Growing love for uncyclopedia
June 7th, 2007 by Ben
MacGyver “One day, while shaving with his duct-tape razor, MacGyver noticed that the earth was about to be hit by a meteorite. Taking a plastic pink flamingo, a pair of red satin boxer shorts and a moderately-sized gerbil, MacGyver managed to redirect the meterorite into North Korea. He was hence given the keys to the world, an event which is now known as Christmas.”
Can this be true?
June 5th, 2007 by Ben
I hope it isn’t, but I fear that it might be:
And the government want to give the police more powers....
Oh, and let’s file it under “important things that didn’t make the mainstream news.”
Twittering MP
June 5th, 2007 by Ben
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Alan Johnson has a twitter account where he’s pushing out details of his campaign for the Labour deputy leadership. Great stuff.
The Guardian quotes Stuart Bruce: “Being secretary of state for education and employment is a critical job and there is no way Alan could do a blog properly. It’s better to not blog than to do it badly. Most people don’t have a clue what senior politicians do. Using Twitter gives a real insight and clearly shows that he’s an ordinary guy.”
I notice that John Edwards, Democratic presidential hopeful, is one of Alan Johnson’s friends. He’s got a lot more friends that Alan though.
There’s an unenthusiastic article over at the Grauniad, and other coverage I’ve seen has been more critical.
It’s disappointing to hear overtones of same journalistic backlash that blogging inspires. Should we be surprised that many journalists neither understand nor support something that allows news to be pushed directly around without them in the middle?
All those journalists that lazily republish press releases that land on their desks must be wondering how long their jobs will last. Another good thing.
It makes me laugh that twitter is criticized for its inanity: “There are a lot of people twittering about their cat or their sandwich. Yet there are also some great uses.” How many telephone conversations are equally banal? It’s the same thing people!
Anyway, full marks to Alan Johnson for trying to open up his campaign a little.
Nice cartoons
June 3rd, 2007 by Ben
Still on the Danish theme…. Pharyngula: “Atheists rioted in the streets worldwide today reacting to a Danish cartoon depicting nobody with a bomb on top of his head”
Hmm. Some redesign
June 2nd, 2007 by Ben
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My bank, the Cooperative Bank, have redesigned their site.
It now takes me one more click, through slower-loading pages to get to my internet account. And on the way, they post lots of pictures telling me how good it is and why I should open one – I’ve been a customer for more than 10 years.
The internet banking application – which is shockingly bad – hasn’t changed for years.
Hmm. Some redesign.Update Oops, I tell a lie – I can click through to the internet banking from the home page, it’s just not very visible among all the marketing crap.
List of things I learnt at Reboot
June 2nd, 2007 by Ben
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I have no idea how many of these things are true, but all of them are interesting:
- There are loads of words for what we do with twitter – microblogging, ambient intimacy, continual partial attention, picking lice or keeping in touch.
- 95% of the atoms in our bodies are replaced over the course of one year
- Social networks have very low click-through rates for current types of web advertising, and excessive advertising is one of users’ most frequently-made complaints.
- I can’t keep up with everything that’s happening… and that’s ok
- All human cultures give gifts, but not all of them use money
- Online communities can help heal shattered communities
- Surveys of successful online companies show that teams of eight to ten craftspeople outperform any other arrangement
- The Roman Army was organised bottom up from teams of eight to ten men who shared a tent
- The current ways to measure traffic online can be inaccurate by more than two orders of magnitude
- The most used application on a mobile phone is the clock
- People who tell others about their martial arts skills early in conversations seem deeply insecure
- We approach computers as we would approach people – in a social way
- Computers that pretend to be human are just rude
- Calculus-based trust is weaker than interaction-based trust
- Some websites aren’t products, but just useful features of the internet
- ‘English as a first language’ is the least-spoken dialect of english
- Existentialism is taking over as a mode of understanding knowledge
- A cool conference does not a social movement make
Then, my brain was full and I had to go home. Hopefully more stuff will emerge from my subconscious over the next few weeks.