Akkam’s Razor

I just deleted 110 links from my blogroll - including many from blogs I read everyday (and some I don’t - sorry Philly Sports Blogs). My logic was that there was no real incentive in linking to blogs who would never link back, secondly, that I frequently link to and mention blogs that I frequently read inside of post content, and three, and this is the main reason, that I disliked the look of an exceedingly long right-sidebar, often-times 150% of the homepage and several-hundred percent longer than a single post. If you think you should be listed (and virtually all the PhillyFuture blogs are listed), drop me an email.

I saw this regarding journalist bloggers - my responses are interspersed into the author’s text.

• Blogs bury yesterday and make last week disappear. Like the clocks in The Exorcist, blogs demonstrate reverse chronology in an unsettling way. Today’s entry is on top. Until tomorrow, when yesterday slips away. Wednesday buries Monday and pretty soon the good stuff is down in the basement somewhere. Want context? Just check out our handy tag cloud! Click around and you’ll find it. . .somewhere. Maybe.

Palm has long been thought to be circling the bowl.  I was quite surprised and bewildered that Palm had poached a trio of Apple talent, wondering why they would leave Apple for Palm.  (To be fair, the Palm Centro seems to be well received and doing quite well, especially at its bargain price point).
Now, when looking at the prospective upgrade for the Treo, the 800W, I can’t help but think of the amazing similarity to the phones we’ve seen prototyped and the emulator in the Software Development Kit for Android.

I find it interesting that in all my years of celebrating the proud Irish tradition, I had never come across this alternate explanation of events.

Student at Ryerson College in Toronto runs a Facebook study group - professor finds it, changes his grade from B to F, school recommends expulsion!  Someone is ignoring the changing of rules of the online world!  In this case, the University is PUNISHING collaborative problem solving!

First-year student Chris Avenir is fighting charges of academic misconduct for helping run an online chemistry study group via Facebook last term, where 146 classmates swapped tips on homework questions that counted for 10 per cent of their mark.

Received two interesting and presumably unrelated Comcast mailings today.

The first was my bill (I pay $60 per year for an unlisted number? WTF!), which included a revised “Agreement for Residential Services” (PDF here from Comcast). More on that in a minute.

Next was an awesome letter telling me that I’m such an awesome customer that my bill will be increasing an awesome $20 at the end of my promotion period, but no worries, like the hero in a Michael Bay movie, I will be receiving a totally awesome $10 credit on my bill (which is really a $10 surcharge). Brilliant. Also included were three coupons for three on-demand movie rentals valued at $4.99 each (sadly, not including Wrestlemania or Hot Tub Housewives 37). If this is how Comcast plans on staving off the exodus towards FIOS, they are in for a world of hurt.

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Direkt

It appears that linkblogs may become a big deal.  I guess there still is a place for human collected and edited content on the internet.  So, if you are so inclined, my linkblog (aka my shared items via Google Reader) can be found here.

I’ve been reflecting how trust works on the internet, and specifically the blogosphere.When people discuss ‘trusted computing’ online, it’s usually in terms of ‘being ‘an authenticated user, meaning that they are who they say they are.  Since much of the activity online is either anonymously (although no one is ever truly anonymous) or pseudonomous, then  reputation is based on what you do (or don’t do) and what you contribute to your given group.

To quickly sum up what this means, here are some of the reputation metrics that I scribbled down:

As soon as I had heard that a second fiber-optic undersea internet cable (map and story here and here - the number of broken cables now stands at four) had been broken in the Middle East, I automatically thought of the United States, the Bush Administrations desire to hit Iran, and the USS Jimmy Carter.

In the US Navy, tradition is that Presidents names are placed on aircraft carriers. But things would be different for Jimmy Carter, a former Nuclear Submariner. The Seawolf class submarine that would eventually bare his name would also be different than her class-mates.

I’m not sure what the tipping point event was, but the entirety of the internets has declared War on Scientology.

My guess is that Scientology, as is their usual heavy-handed (including the US Government in Operation Snow White) , litigation-prone, cease-and-desist method, rapidly compelled several internet outlets to pull the creepy Tom Cruise internet video (which, as is always the case with these censorship moments, only makes the subject more desired and more easily available). Currently the entire movie is available in several formats and as a bittorent on the Pirate Bay.

Here’s the short trip to crazyland:

There an interesting tale coming out of Texas [NPR]:

Faster than a speeding bullet — and bigger than a Wal-Mart.

That’s how residents near the west Texas town of Stephenville described an object they spotted in the sky one night last week.

Dozens of people — including a pilot and a police officer — said a UFO hovered over the farming community for about five minutes last Tuesday before streaking away into the night sky.

Pilot Steve Allen saw the object when he was out clearing brush off a hilltop near the town of Selden. Allen described the unidentified object as being an enormous aircraft with flashing strobe lights — and it was totally silent.