Wednesday, July 31, 2002

Guns and Violence. Water is 19 times more dangerous to children than guns. Bathtubs are twice as dangerous to children as guns. Fire is 18 times more dangerous to children than guns. Cars are 57 times more dangerous. Household cleaners and poisons are twice as dangerous. Defensive gun use prevents far more crimes than the police — as many as 3.6 million crimes annually are prevented by armed individuals. [The Washington Times] Link   Discuss [The .NET Guy] 10:31:34 PM    comment []

Fun with trolls.. Arguing on the Internet. Maybe it was a brush-with-mortality that gave me the perspective to see more clearly something that had been lurking around on the edge of my consciousness. Here it is, do with it what you want. So much of the debate on the Internet seems aimed to so thoroughly discredit (or humiliate?) someone so that everyone will instantly stop listening to that person. I saw it in a new way when I saw Scott Rosenberg confronted by one of his detractors. Sheez, don't they know how hard it is being Scott? He does it cheerfully and honestly, oozing integrity, holding up far more of the Internet than he probably ever bargained for. Such a position leaves no room for subtlety or complexity. No one is so devoid of intelligence or soul. Not even a serial murderer, convicted and sentenced to death, has as little grace as the fools who argue this way say. Greg Hranek explained this to me in an email last night when he raised the issue of honor, in re discourse on the Internet. Aha! How come I never viewed it that way. A good retort to a flamer. You have no honor. Heh. [Scripting News] I've kept three things in mind while discussing things on the internet, Imagine the person is sitting next to you as you're talking to them. Phrase accordingly. Imagine they know where you live. What you way will be recorded for the ages, and a quick check of IP adresses shows who you really are. I had a friend who was a third generation hacker, and he specialized in pinpointing people and sending them emails with satellite photos of their house telling them to knock it off. Never threatening them, just usually replying to the "You'll never find me!" trolls. This "no honor" thing works as well, and makes for a good fourth rule. [Ryan Greene's Radio Weblog] 10:29:48 PM    comment []

The Making of a BattleMech. CSG Starfury One January evening Jim arrived home from work early and there were two pickup trucks in the driveway with him. Oh yeah, he had said something about getting a couple of old shipping crates for the kids to play with. He and his friends unloaded the crates and dragged them into the garage. Little did either of us know then that these crates would take over our garage for many months to come and keep Jim very busy for the next seven months. [Michael J. Hehir's Radio Weblog] 10:27:16 PM    comment []

Living Long Beats Living Large. Eat fish, tofu, rice and vegetables (and don't forget the seaweed). Go easy on the starchy carbs, red meat and dairy food. Life expectancy for Japanese reaches new record NJ.com TOKYO (AP) — Life expectancies in Japan, already the world's longest for both sexes, reached new records in 2001 for the second straight year, a government report said Wednesday. The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said women could expect to live 84.93 years and men 78.07 years in 2001. That was longer than in 2000, when the life expectancy for Japanese women was 84.62 years and men 77.64 years. One bizarre note in the story about a social phenomenon that skewed the figures somewhat: Japanese have had the longest life expectancy for years, though suicides linked to the country's economic stagnation caused the figures to decline in the late 1990s. One thing the story neglects to mention is how healthy and active most Japanese seniors are. They're generally not sitting around in nursing homes waiting for the Reaper. I swim with a team that includes people in their 70's, 80's and even 90's and these people are good. They invariably look at least 20 years younger than they are. [Antipixel] 10:14:50 PM    comment []

Hacking Taxi Cab Billboards. The Sizzle: What's Up In Digital Marketing and Advertising "A new technology developed by Vert, a small company based in Somerville, Mass., transforms ads on top of taxicabs into real-time, animated electronic billboards. Vert's software, first tested in the Boston area, lets advertising messages change according to ZIP codes, neighborhoods, even city blocks, enabling marketers to target audiences in a way never before possible with outdoor transit advertising. With Vert, a Webserver, built into taxi-top screens, communicates with a global positioning system. The GPS determines the taxi's location. In turn, a wireless modem, which keeps in touch with Vert's central server, delivers the relevant ads for a particular area. So, a cab passing through a city's financial district can display stock quotes. Another traveling in a Latino neighborhood can relay ad messages in Spanish. Or a taxi at an airport can beam temperatures of major cities to travelers. The messages appear in color on the taxi screens-10 times brighter than televisions-in a format similar to Web banner ads.... One company test-driving the technology is Lycos. 'We thought it was perfect for Lycos because you can target by city blocks or areas of the city,' says Kim Patrick, vice president of Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos, the Boston agency handling a $20 million year-long campaign for Lycos. The Vert-enabled cabs are part of a $1.2 million effort within the larger campaign to attract 18- to 34-year-olds in 'unexpected places.' By year's end, roughly 200 Vert-enabled cabs will be deployed in Boston and in New York...." [Business 2.0, via Andy Rhinehart] Sounds like something out of Minority Report (how long before they're talking directly to you). It's definite eye candy for pedestrians, but won't it be distracting for other drivers? As Andy says, "some heavy information shifting" going on here in terms of moving targeted advertising to where people are. Another example in the news today is Sony Ericsson's upcoming 60-day PR campaign to plant actors in tourist attractions and clubs to get people to notice and interact with their new T68i cell phone (which can also be used as a digital camera or for videoconferencing). I'll admit that if I was at a bar and I saw someone videoconferencing with the T68i, I'd go up and talk to them, but then I'd do that almost anywhere with any cool gadget. [The Shifted Librarian] 10:38:11 AM    comment []

posted by crunchland July 31 7:41 AM | 13 comments. Heather Champ is the Queen of the Known Universe. Someone in Brazil really likes some of Heather Champ's photographs. They like them so much that they put them prominently on the top of the main page of their website. But they didn't just put them on the website, they direct linked to them on Heather's server, and this is how Heather found out. So she's done what most webmasters do -- she's replaced the images with new ones. The only thing is, aside from the lack of control one has over access to the original file, isn't direct linking to images (and other content) on servers that aren't your own the whole effing point of the world wide web?! [MetaFilter] 10:36:03 AM    comment []

Guerilla Marketing. WSJ.   Guerilla marketing for a new phone/camera product from SonyEricsson.  >>>In one initiative, dubbed Fake Tourist, 60 trained actors and actresses will haunt tourist attractions such as the Empire State Building in New York and the Space Needle in Seattle. Working in teams of two or three and behaving as if they were actual tourists, the actors and actresses will ask unsuspecting passersby to take their pictures.<<< [John Robb's Radio Weblog] Whenever I'm in public taking photos with my PEG-NR70V, people always come over and ask me "Hey, what's that?" I explain the camera, the MP3 player, the movie player, the memory sticks etc, and people really seem to dig it. The point is, this campaign will probably help, right up until the subject of price comes up, much like with my Clie. [Ryan Greene's Radio Weblog] 8:30:31 AM    comment []

posted by luser July 31 4:02 AM | 8 comments. Attractive people planted in bars are being paid to chat you up...about the New Sony Ericsson T68i! and so am I [MetaFilter] 8:23:54 AM    comment []