Saturday, January 18, 2003

Web site owner goes to court to force 'troll' offline. [...]It's rare for a company to sue someone for bombarding its message board, said Wendy Seltzer, a staff lawyer with the Electronic Freedom Foundation in San Francisco. Seltzer said that, contrary to popular belief, Internet speech can almost always be regulated. Even though there are all kinds of Web sites distributing all kinds of thoughts, there's no purely public place for the rejected outcasts.[...] "It sounds in part that this [lawsuit] highlights the lack of public spaces on the Internet," Seltzer said. "I would be more comfortable saying they could kick off whoever they wanted if there was someplace else they could tell him to go." It doesn't highlight that at all. The troll could easily set up his own Web site, blog, or discussion site, if he wanted to air his ideas. Effectively public discussion areas exist have existed on Usenet for decades. If they are not more popular these days is because trolls have sharply decreased their signal/noise ratio. I support the EFF in general, I don't like them talking nonsense. 9:56:16 PM

NetNewsWire Pro is coming along nicely. The editing facilities are much nicer than editing in a browser text box. 7:15:09 PM

I just reserved a Hertz car through AAA for a trip to Tahoe next month. Unfortunately they were out of my preferred vehicles (some Subaru AWD) so I had to go with a generic SUV (yuck!). I called Hertz afterward to ask if I could be wait-listed for a Subaru in case one becomes available. The very nice agent explained that her computer did not offer a field for wait-listing, and the only thing I could do was to ask when I get to SFO if by chance they have a Subaru available. This is idiotic. I would pay more for the Subaru, which I much prefer because better handling, greater safety, and better fuel economy. I can't imagine that this is the first time someone asks to be wait-listed for their preferred vehicle. A simple information system change would make the customer happier and possibly increase revenue. Unfortunately, most of our services are converging to uniform mediocrity in information handling, which is evident in the awfulness of the Web sites for most large service organizations, which don't work with standard-compliant browsers, require the same information to be entered over and over again, use menus with huge numbers of items, give bad error messages, have confusing instructions and navigation, and fail to accommodate non-standard requirements. My current hall of shame includes Mid-Atlantic AAA and US Airways. 7:11:02 PM

A nearby town is considering changing an ordinance to allow Segway class vehicles on the sidewalks. The engineering of the unit is brilliant, but it isn't clear that it addresses the right problems. Most of the US is urban sprawl that makes walking out of the question for most commuters. Devices like the Segway raise the speed of a person by a factor of two or three, but this raises the question of where the vehicle should travel -- it may be too fast to mix in with pedestrians and far too slow to be on many roads.[Steve Crandall's Surf Report 2.0] Here in Philadelphia, the vehicle/pedestrian conflict is already present, with cyclists moving between road and slidewalk as it suits them. I understand the temptation, given the heavy traffic and the narrow streets. I don't see that Segways would be any worse or any better than bicycles from that point of view. However, both in the city and in the suburbs I know, the poor condition of sidewalks and the many obstructions from mailboxes to bollards could be an issue for Segway users. Real-life sidewalks have sharp ridges raised by tree roots, and holes left by utility work. The drop from sidewalk to street varies a nice ramp to 6 inches. Streets have potholes. Some enough to do real damage to car suspensions. I'm not sure that all the Segway's stability mechanisms would be enough to absorb a six-inch deep hole. 11:28:26 AM