And Or

...Aaaand we're back.

2010-07-10T23:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a really clever scam idea: offer compensation to scam victims! Appeal directly to confirmed rubes.

2010 SCAM VICTIMS COMPENSATIONS PAYMENTS.
YOUR REF/PAYMENTS CODE: ECB/06654 FOR $500,000 USD ONLY.

This is to bring to your notice that our bank (ECOBANK INTL. PLC) is
delegated by the ECOWAS/UNITED NATIONS in Central Bank to pay victims
of scam $500,000 (Five Hundred Thousand Dollars Only).

You are to send the following informations for remittance.
Your Name.___________________________
Address.___________________________
Mobile Phone .___________________________
Amount Defrauded.___________________________
Country.________________________

Send a copy of your response with the PAYMENT CODE
NUMBER(ECB/06654).

NAME: MR.
SCAMMED VICTIM/REF/PAYMENTS CODE:
ECB/06654 $500,000 USD.
TEL :+2348058548116

Email:ecobnkscamvictim@bnuhr.com

Yours Faithfully,
Mrs.Henderson Elizabeth
PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER

Abrupt Goodbye

2009-11-24T01:48:00.000-08:00

Collaborative story telling

Abrupt Goodbye is a collaborative chatting game released by an indie game studio. The whole thing is browser based and all of the content is user generated. I think that it's possibly a first foray into a entirely new type of game.

The premise is supplied: A blind man is waiting for a train, a woman approaches him and talks.

Abrupt Goodbye is cool for a number of reasons:

- It is infinitely replayable - each completed game extends the content of the game a little bit, so the next game is longer and more varied.

- It's totally asynchronous, but puts two 'sides' against each other. Each side is several players working together without communicating.

- The system is set up to be self-improving - as you choose your conversational options, you vote for the most interesting ones. So there's a constant positive reform going on there.

You can crowdsource communication the wrong way, (as with some blog comments), or you can do something really great with it, like Abrupt Goodbye. Go play, it rules.

More OSS Volunteerism

2009-11-08T20:13:00.000-08:00

Open source software isn't second-class volunteering. In terms of effectiveness per time spent on it, it's astoundingly helpful.

Because code is replicable and useful, it helps a lot of people. Giving away closed source software would be one thing, but open source code is reusable by other projects, viewable by people learning how to code, and fundamentally supported by the community. Writing software is also potentially research: solving problems in new ways is one of the ways the state of software advances. There's no limit to the number of people you're helping: the developers of Apache webserver deserve thanks whenever a page on the internet is served. (To anyone who thinks OSS puts coders out of a job, think of all the jobs the Apache foundation has created.)

Because coding, project management, UI design, QA testing, and all the other skill that go into successful open source projects take years to learn, the volunteer hours put into those activities are a scarce and extremely valuable resource. Suppose your friend, a lawyer, was looking for a way to volunteer four hours a week. Your friend can't decide whether it would be more helpful to bake rolls at a food kitchen or give pro bono legal advice to DV sufferers. Or maybe your teacher friend can't decide whether to teach ESL or do laundry for a church. Sure, your friends might enjoy both gigs, and they're all nice causes, but your friends have the opportunity to contribute skills which are much more scarce, and you'd probably recommend they do that.

That's why if you have skills or money to contribute to an open source project, you should act without hesitation: it's an unselfish endeavor that makes a big difference to a lot of people, and it's a great way to volunteer. It helps a lot of people in a real way.

And it definitely, definitely counts as volunteering.

OSS Volunteerism

2009-10-06T12:52:00.000-07:00

Most of the time, volunteering occurs in an institutional way for a specific cause. People volunteer in a lot of different ways - for example, along class boundaries there's an interesting difference: People of lower social classes tend to donate time, effort, and money to religious causes, and to those who live below the poverty line. The higher classes tend to donate to and volunteer for causes that perpetuate their way of life - schools, colleges, art galleries, medical organizations. In addition to donating a larger percentage of their income on average, people of lower class tend to volunteer more of their time. That's interesting.

People who donate their time and effort to open source software projects don't always look at it as volunteerism. It's less institutional, it's not usually through a church or school, and an open source developer is unlikely to be sent an appreciation card or invited to a brunch for their efforts. Because software lives behind the computer, it's difficult to see how much work goes into it, and because it generally spreads on the internet it's difficult to thank an open source developer in person.

Few open source projects interact in person with their users. This is a distinction AmeriCorps calls 'indirect service'. It's not seen as more noble per se, but it is considered important and some programs demand a certain amount of it. It really does seem like a purer form of volunteerism to interact directly with a population than to serve by handling paperwork or answering phones or doing data entry.

It's definitely still volunteering.

Chat With Turk, Outline

2009-09-19T13:01:00.001-07:00

How Turkchatting works:

A user says a phrase A to Turk
Turk remembers phrase A for later.
Turk thinks of some 'similar' things that Turk has previously said that resemble A. (These are potential phrases B)
For each of B, Turk checks to see what responses he has received when Turk said those. Turk picks one of these. This is phrase C.(If Turk has no good historic B phrases, he uses an untried one, something he's heard but never said, which is his phrase C.)
Turk responds with phrase C, which hopefully shares some context with phrase A, or maybe is a wild guess.

Right off the bat we have a system that has a lot of inherent randomness, even though it doesn't have any entropy - the page just collects user input and regurgitates it according to the above. It does get tuned with use, insofar as the list of phrases (and appropriate human given responses) grows over time. Of course, Turk doesn't track context at all, and doesn't even differentiate from the conversation to conversation on his own. From close up, it's very naive.

However, it works as sort of a conversational echo chamber - the user dictates the course of the conversation, whether they are greeting the Turk (he often returns the greeting), insulting him (he usually responds in kind to profanity), or asking questions about the nature of the page. He sometimes accuses the user of being a bad chatbot.

At best, the conversations generated by a mature Turk system more closely resemble the ones found in the front cover of an old yearbook than a live conversation, and that makes sense. I'm not sure what to do with him now, any ideas appreciated.

You should chat with a Turk

2009-09-18T20:32:00.000-07:00

There's a little Internetology experiment I'd like to share with you. What if I paired up a random person on the Internet for a conversation? Actually, that's been done before.

What if I paired you up with a random person, but told you that it was a chatbot? Finally, what if that chatbot was non-stateful and just replied the best it could to everything you said to it? Would that the result of that be interesting or just confusing?

(Coarse language warning: Like I said, this is an experiment in chatting with strangers on the Internet...)

Try Chat with A Turk. Go ahead, I'll post the results and an overview of the algorithm here soon.

The physics of IP

2009-07-21T19:30:00.000-07:00

Equity demands information-makers be compensated. But I don't think that it follows that people should have exclusive and enforced rights to information. We could reward them by paying them out of taxes, or paying them a pension, or some other means. Telling them they own forever the stuff they make but that they can sell rights to it just seems:

1. Bad for the greater good because it stifles innovation and hurts consumers and information producers alike
2. Hacked on, given the amount of paperwork and disputes the system generates
3. Completely impossible to enforce anyway

The problem is not just that the practical aspects are flawed, I think the deeper problem is the construct of ownership of a non-scarce good. We won't come up with any 'good' way to regulate the ownership of information because the idea is really silly from the outset.

If Newton's heirs started suing people over their use of the theory of gravity under some forgotten English law, we wouldn't just say "Oh, science doesn't count", we would say "You can't possibly own that, that's insane" but I don't think it's any less sane than owning a song or a drug formula.

That said I have no objection whatsoever on industry regulated appellations like champagne and feta. They don't claim ownership of ideas, just namespace. Not offensive to me. Not so much brand names either.

The Comment Transcompetency Halo Effect

2009-06-21T13:19:00.000-07:00

When you're reading comments on a [blog|youtube|forum|news article], and it's the kind of toxic or wide-open environment that breeds bad comments, you might experience the following:

Comment 1: hay guise i think this is cool i don't know about you but i like pickles
Comment 2: THE PRESIDENT IS A SCIENTOLOGIST MY COUSIN TOLD ME ABOUT IT PASS THE WORD ON
Comment 3: This post kind of reminds me of Neuro Linguistic Programming or something. Also, the president is not a Scientologist. He is, however, a robot.
Comment 4: Macs suck, they dont have viruses becuz nobody even cares enough to right them lolol

After skimming those comments, I get the distinct feeling that "yeah, maybe the president is a robot." It's as if anyone who can string along a coherent sentence in a real landfill of a comment thread becomes a trustworthy informant, and things they follow with seem a little bit less crazy.

That, right there, is The Comment Transcompetency Halo Effect. Now that you're aware of it, don't ever be fooled by it again.

Hypercapitalism

2009-04-28T00:31:00.000-07:00

'Hypercapitalism' is so poorly defined that the first google search result isn't a wikipedia page. That's sad, so I'm going to put a solid word out there.

My new definition: The idea that the purpose of capitalism is to supply goods and services to the net benefit of society, and that business is a vehicle to apportion those goods fairly. (See also: corporate responsibility, conscious capitalism)

Dio Games, an indie software venture operating out of Romania, has a very novel game called Orbital Trader that has an excellent and intentional bent towards the hypercapitalistic. You see, in the present, one amasses great wealth by supplying goods and services. In the future, it's really much more profitable to do that in a way that helps people. Commerce is no longer a chimera that beats people into the ground; nor does a ruling class decide how to wreck things for society. No, now the economy and all the players in it are scrambling to fill needs, invest in the greater good, and be proper stewards of the markets they're in.

Give it a try, it's a really cool game.

More Puzzling SQL

2009-04-07T10:33:00.000-07:00

Cool:

Juozas solves sudokus in a readble mysql query.

One tough puzzle

2009-04-04T14:51:00.000-07:00

And for a mental break after a few weeks of living swamped-in-code, here's One Tough Puzzle.

I spent four long, happy years writing programs to solve puzzles - in Java and PROLOG - for my AI Bachelor's, and the last several solving problems that are harder and more useful to solve - in php and SQL. So it's come to this, I'm using today's tools to solve yesterday's non-problems.

Here's a hard-coded SQL script to solve this puzzle. It's not terrifically extensible beyond 9 glossy pieces, but it is proof that SQL can do it given the chance.

CREATE TABLE tiles (id serial, one text, two text, three text, four text);

INSERT INTO tiles (one, two, three, four) VALUES

('s','s','h','c'),
('h','d','d','h'),
('s','d','h','d'),
('s','d','s','h'),
('c','h','d','c'),
('h','d','c','c'),
('h','s','s','c'),
('d','c','c','d'),
('c','h','s','h');

SELECT mi.id as middle,
e1.id as cw1,
d1.id as cw2,
e2.id as cw3,
d2.id as cw4,
e3.id as cw5,
d3.id as cw6,
e4.id as cw7,
d4.id as cw8

FROM tiles AS mi

JOIN tiles AS e1 ON e1.id not in (mi.id) AND ((mi.one = e1.three) OR (mi.one = e1.four))
JOIN tiles AS e2 ON e2.id not in (mi.id, e1.id) AND ((mi.two = e2.three) OR (mi.two = e2.four))
JOIN tiles AS e3 ON e3.id not in (mi.id, e1.id, e2.id) AND ((mi.three = e3.one) OR (mi.three = e3.two))
JOIN tiles AS e4 ON e4.id not in (mi.id, e1.id, e2.id, e3.id) AND ((mi.four = e4.one) OR (mi.four = e4.two))

JOIN tiles AS d1 ON d1.id not in (mi.id, e1.id, e2.id, e3.id, e4.id) AND
(((e1.three = d1.one) AND (d1.four = e2.one)) OR
((e1.three = d1.two) AND (d1.one = e2.four)) OR
((e1.two = d1.three) AND (d1.two = e2.four)) OR
((e1.two = d1.four) AND (d1.three = e2.one)))

JOIN tiles AS d2 ON d2.id not in (mi.id, e1.id, e2.id, e3.id, e4.id, d1.id) AND
(((e2.three = d2.one) AND (d2.four = e3.two)) OR
((e2.three = d2.two) AND (d2.one = e3.three)) OR
((e2.two = d2.three) AND (d2.two = e3.three)) OR
((e2.two = d2.four) AND (d2.three = e3.two)))

JOIN tiles AS d3 ON d3.id not in (mi.id, e1.id, e2.id, e3.id, e4.id, d1.id, d2.id) AND
(((e3.four = d3.one) AND (d3.four = e4.two)) OR
((e3.four = d3.two) AND (d3.one = e4.three)) OR
((e3.one = d3.three) AND (d3.two = e4.three)) OR
((e3.one = d3.four) AND (d3.three = e4.two)))

JOIN tiles AS d4 ON d4.id not in (mi.id, e1.id, e2.id, e3.id, e4.id, d1.id, d2.id, d3.id) AND
(((e4.four = d4.one) AND (d4.four = e1.one)) OR
((e4.four = d4.two) AND (d4.one = e1.four)) OR
((e4.one = d4.three) AND (d4.two = e1.four)) OR
((e4.one = d4.four) AND (d4.three = e1.one)))

ORDER BY middle DESC;

Echo Chambers

2009-04-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

In keeping with his long tradition of thoughtfully incendiary blogging, Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror posted on the necessity/efficiency of English as a lingua franca for software developers.

Advocating the adoption of English as the de-facto standard language of software development is simple pragmatism, the most virtuous of all hacker traits. If that makes me an ugly American programmer, so be it.

So it goes, and it was, I'm sure, a reminder to native English speakers that they are fortunate to not have to learn another language in order to communicate with other software developers around the world. As you would expect if you were a frequent Coding Horror reader, the comments were full of offended and well-meaning developers who were angry at connotations of cultural imperialism. While communication would be streamlined if everyone spoke a common language, it would certainly be a shame to lose the world's other languages.

When the story was posted to Slashdot - presumably a more rational and international community, the comments seemed to me to revolve more around a discussion of the use of English as a necessary common medium for code, comments, and technical documentation. There were vivid handfuls of stories from non-native English speakers on how they learned English - whether from Sesame Street, the Internet, or grade school. Snarky debates about the linguistic heritage of English, the relative usability of it, and so on. Fine points and spirited back and forth. All in all, nearly the opposite of the posts on Jeff's blog. In all, the Slashdot echo chamber has a different shape that at this point reverberated with sounds of logical discussion. Particularly interesting to me was this post:

However, the main reason why finns speak pretty decent english is our school system. Studying english is mandatory from grades 3 to 9 in the elementary school and any route you continue from there also requires you to study english. We believe that in the modern world it is just a basic requirement for everyone to understand the same language.

I agree, a common language is necessary. Already the ability to speak the de facto language of the internet is a huge asset, for the individual and for all of us. More intriguingly, why the huge difference? The medium is similar.

Project of the Week: DM's iPhone Helper

2009-01-18T00:46:00.000-08:00

Dungeon Masters, take heed:

The DM's iPhone Helper is here to assist you while you're generating adventures. Enjoy!

Copyleft books on Intellectual Property

2009-01-11T14:46:00.000-08:00

Heads up: If you're at all interested in contemporary discussions of intellectual property, I have as many as three (3) fascinating books for you to download. Note that these links are to the content owners' websites.

Against Intellectual Monopoly is a biting criticism of the values in place behind IP law. It argues that our culture is inherently sharable, but that its channels have been hijacked. This one comes from a fairly radical standpoint, compared to most.

The Public Domain: enclosing the commons of the mind comes at the problem from a more naturalist angle, tracing the origins of intellectual property from royal privilege grants to trade guilds to the founders of the US. It makes a number of solid, innovative arguments against the present brokenness of the system.

FREE CULTURE is, to my knowledge, the most authoritative IP reformist document existing. While Lawrence Lessig is not the most progressive of the group (left of center and strongly in favor of fair use protections, though in favor of keeping protections on the books), he does attack the problem with as much depth as has been plumbed for the layperson.

The law may not be on our side, but these books prove that the great minds are. Download and tell your friends.

These letters are free

2009-01-02T14:08:00.000-08:00

I think:

1. Information, because it does not exist in the same way physical objects do, cannot be owned the way physical objects are. A disk can be owned, a song cannot. A book can be owned, a sequence of words cannot.

2. The idea that we have constructed a practical system to encourage innovation by assigning property rights to data as though it were an object is poorly executed and irresponsible, and does more harm than good.

3. Allowing society to determine how to best reward the creation of culture would be more desirable than our current application of law to create a 'market' of ideas that is artificially propped up and enforced.

4. Someday we will collectively realize 1, 2, and 3, and abandon our attempt to assign rights to intangibles. This will not stifle the production and accumulation of culture.

The idea that culture will not be produced without patents and copyrights is preposterous. Instead, ideas will be shared, reviewed, and distributed more (not freely, but more commonly) when they are free of these contrived laws.

More on Developers and Games

2008-12-30T12:31:00.000-08:00

Hilarious:

The fantastic element that explains the appeal of games to many developers is neither the fire-breathing monsters nor the milky-skinned, semi-clad sirens; it is the experience of carrying out a task from start to finish without any change in the user requirements.

Also, I forgot one of the present's best developer/game designers: Kory Heath. His website is lots of fun, go read it.

Need Anticipation

2008-11-24T01:01:00.000-08:00

Please forgive me; I am here reposting a bit on Need Anticipation:

An advantage often enjoyed by e-commerce ventures not available to other types of businesses is the use of algorithms to solve technical problems too complex for humans. Historically, supply chain management, enhanced pricing discrimination, and data mining have all bolstered the income and profitability of e-commerce vendors. One promising new technology which retailers are currently investigating is consumer need anticipation - accurately predicting the desire for a good or service, and offering it at an opportune point in time. Existing data about the customer (or other customers) is leveraged to make an informed decision about what products to offer.

While marketing has long been concerned with creating the need for a product, it is important to make note of the new distinction here: consumer needs have, at the point of time of suggestion, already been created or at least lay dormant - need anticipation intends to identify the consumer's existing willingness to purchase an item and consequently offer the item. It is also important to note the possibility of this technology to build customer closeness in a way concordant to branding by allowing the customer to spend additional time browsing recommendations, allowing users to recommend products to friends, and allowing users to rate items they are interested in. These features not only keep customers on a website for longer, they give the user solid reason not to switch to a competing website (and lose the use of their ratings) and they give the user a motivation to invite their friends (to gain and give recommendations).

Amazon may well be the most successful early adopter of consumer need anticipation tactics. When a new user arrives at the site, they are greeted with the message "Hello. Sign in to get personalized recommendations. New customer? Start here." [1], along with generic recommendations of bestsellers, sale items, and seasonal items. When a user logs in, they are presented with new recommendations based on recently added products. Throughout the process of viewing products (a procedure roughly corresponding to browsing), the user is shown a histogram outlining what products were bought by users who viewed the current product, instantly showing the path of least resistance for most consumers. This entrusts that the customer can easily find the most 'purchasable' similar products. Suggestions are based on items "Frequently Bought With Items in Your Cart", "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought", "Frequently Bought Together" [with the currently viewed item], and "These recommendations are based on items you own and more." [2] Clearly, Amazon engineers are making use of several different easily obtained statistics to make recommendations, and it seems as though most data points are being put to use in some way or another.

Technically, the statistical approach to Amazon's approach seems to be ad-hoc and relies on the common sense translation of user data into predictive sets. Amazon does not disclose any of its algorithms, and seems mostly intent on providing for its users raw data of the type "You may like the following..." While the simple correlation of two or more items may not find a granular, specific likelihood of a user's desire for a book, Amazon's methods seem effective enough to bolster sales by offering the user a product they are likely to buy based on the purchasing patterns of similar users. Though other companies have pursued the same approach, Amazon's engineers seem to have taken the lead in accurately predicting a user's habits. [3]

Despite the success of this approach, more incisive algorithms are under development which attempt to predict a quantitative rating of a product based on prior ratings of other products: enter the Netflix Challenge[4]. Netflix has built an empire on the ability to deliver their physical product (DVD rentals) quickly, efficiently, and without hassle to the consumer, but the company is less than content to rest on their laurels. By providing anonymized data to software developers, Netflix hopes to arrive at a superior ratings prediction algorithm. Basically, entrants to the Challenge are given 100 million DVD ratings entered by 480 thousand users, and are asked to generate as accurately as possible ratings for more movies. The company justifies the $100 million US prize on the basis that the basis that "Netflix is all about connecting people to the movies they love." It is clear that Netflix is forward-looking in their desire to suggest to users movies that they will like (thereby increasing use of their service), and admirable that they are advancing the state of the art in order to increase profits. Users have so far created entries based on expert systems, neural networks, and other advanced artificial intelligence algorithms. [5] The Challenge itself is an innovative form out outsourcing that may be saving the company money: According to Vivek Ranadive, "Holding on to a competitive edge means staying one step ahead, and the more reliably one can predict the next step is often the difference between success and failure."

1 Wikipedia: Amazon

2 Amazon

3 BusinessWeek

4 http://www.netflixprize.com/rules

5 Ranadive, V. (1991). The Power to Predict. McGraw-Hill (January 2006)

2009 is Fast Approaching

2008-11-16T19:36:00.000-08:00

...as it always has been.

I haven't read any really great predictions for 2009. What will the web see next? I have some ideas, and it's one of those times when what I think is going to happen is also what I want to happen. That, I suppose, is the definition of optimism.

I predict that in 2009, the next economies to move to the web will be professional services like medicine, law, pharmacy, engineering, and business consultancy. While of course people in these markets already find each other on the internet, I think that our changing circumstances will begin to make it cost effective and reliable to conduct these services - legal counsel, healthcare, and other informational services that require very skilled, even licensed practitioners - online and with a maximum of automation and generalization.

One of the reasons I think this is likely to happen so soon is that it is already beginning to happen, peripherally, in the form of online health records, college classes, investing sites (especially those already offering financial planning advice), and so on. I think the main drivers for this trend will be a generation of Americans slowly coming into adulthood that is able to trust the internet, a changing healthcare system in the US, and exponential growth in developing markets in countries that have fewer skilled professionals but a growing middle class able to purchase professional services over a more ubiquitous internet.

This isn't a very bold statement - sorry - but we hope that economic downturns inspire new levels of efficiency, and I'm thinking it could be the catalyst we need to move the remainder of our information services online.

I also think that the first real entirely online careers will be created - while many service jobs become automated, telepresence positions (eg. controlling a fruit-picking robot from a computer in another place or doing data entry) will become more commonplace as the manufacturing and installation of those systems plus remote labor costs falls below the local labor cost for those outsourceable but non-automatable jobs. I think it's likely that 2009 and 2010 will see a taste of this, like maybe increased use of Amazon's Mechanical Turk. The constantly falling price of computers and internet access would really be a telling factor here, I think.

Here's hoping 2009 is a good year for technology and prosperity everywhere in the world.

Things the Collective Should Do: Open Academic Web Journal

2008-11-07T20:12:00.000-08:00

I'm suggesting here a free-content, openly accessible online repository where researchers, professors, and students publish scientific journal articles for peer review and wide distribution.

This website allows scientific research papers to be published by qualified academicians. The articles can be freely read and peer-reviewed online. Articles are translated into other languages so that they can be read worldwide. A system of of moderation provides a meritocratic means of awarding prestige and press based on quality. An accompanying print journal is provided pro bono or at nominal cost to institutions. To increase the prestige of the journal/repository, it is marketed as a trustable, progressive, intelligent institution, and content is carefully reviewed.

The current scientific publication industry relies on established branding of respectable journals and the 'publish or perish' dynamic to keep it afloat. Authors often have to pay for their articles to be published in print-bound journals, which are then sold at a high price to academic institutions. At best the publishing industry contributes little of value to the system, and at worst prevents most people from accessing information that could be useful in the hands of the general public. In essence, the current system lacks utility in spreading scientific knowledge and neither apportions prestige fairly, nor distributes knowledge widely.

Minds around the world would benefit greatly, as the results of studies would be available internationally in many different languages. Universities and authors would also benefit because they are now able to publish and access papers at lower cost. Science as a whole would benefit due to the increased volume and visibility of papers published. Because of the greater number of eyes on the articles and the increased ease of peer review, communicative openness and the scientific method would benefit.

In order to be successful, the open web journal would require buy-in from academic institutions and scientific readers. A combination of aggressive marketing and branding to entice article submissions will facilitate presenting the site as a respectable, reliable source of information. We will need to develop the website's software, decide how the site is run and edited organizationally (peer review and editing will play a huge part)

The overall progress of science will be assisted, because knowledge will be exchanged more freely. People who would otherwise not have the opportunity to read current scientific literature will have the chance to be inspired as well as educated by it. Competing with current journal models may persuade existing publishers to become more free in an economic and cultural sense. Researchers will have a website which will both distribute their knowledge to the world and grant them recognition for their work - without charging admission. Counting readers or articles would be simple metrics. Measuring changes in research job satisfaction, number of articles published worldwide, or cost of subscriptions to existing print journals would tell other sides of the story.

Things the Collective Should Do: Developing World B2B Portal

2008-10-31T22:14:00.000-07:00

Let's imagine a website which gives small businesses in developing areas around the world access to free web-based business software, financial planning resources, commercial contacts, and other information they need to be successful.

This website will provide leaders of new and developing businesses access to a suite of software that provides simple and reliable double entry bookkeeping, payroll processing, sales forecasting, and other necessary business management functions. Additionally, the website will include a free portal to crucial services such as employment postings, regional legal guidelines, sales opportunities, and business development tools. Access to local and global contacts via this portal will give businesses more viability, give them access to wider markets, and put them in touch with the contacts they need to be successful. Businesses may be able to apply for microfinanced loans, government incentives, and other means of attaining capital.

This website will address informational and logistical barriers to entry of small businesses in remote or underdeveloped areas without an existing support network, widespread infrastructure, and preexisting culture of entrepreneurship. The

Entrepreneurs in the developing world would have better access to verified information, support networks, and new markets. This empowerment of individual businesses would also lead to new local jobs, increased availability of goods and services, and the generation of wealth throughout communities.

The first step to properly implementing this website would be to conduct a needs assessment of areas that would benefit from online business development software to figure out who we could reach and what we could offer them. Creating usable, reliable online business management software with the features needed by small businesses in the developing world, translated for many possible markets would follow, and finally, recruiting business experts to share knowledge of standard practices, financial howtos, and entrepreneurial techniques would get the site up and functioning.

Optimally, those businesses that used the website would have better access to crucial information and would be more likely to succeed and grow. These businesses would set an example in their communities and share their knowledge via the website, enabling sustainable business practices to spread through their localities. One would compare the outcomes of a sample of businesses who used the software with similarly equipped businesses in the region who did not. For product-driven companies, an increase in the number of potential customers who would like to import their product would lead to fairer, more competitive pricing for goods.

Game Design as Programming

2008-10-25T02:12:00.000-07:00

What is it about game design that lures software developers? Both are geeks, to be sure, but there seems to be a special draw that somehow grabs hold of both.

Andrew and Kristin Looney are good case studies to start with. Before starting their own company inventing games, they worked as as computer scientists at NASA. The love of computer science is evident in their games, which are rife with simple mechanics that end in beautiful systems of input and output.

Richard Garfield, designer of Magic: The Gathering and other wildly popular thinking games, also began as a Bell Labs scientist. Magic's inventive abstract system of interaction between cards was completely new at the time, but appeals to many - Garfield's game is absurdly popular around the world.

Paul Sottosanti is a php developer-turned Magic-designer turned game-developer. His latest work, Tiny Adventures, builds cleverly on the new paradigm of social networking games.

There are a lot more examples of software devs-turned-board game developers, but take these clever people as examples to start with. Common geek-appeal aside, what is it that draws programmers? The game as a microcosm of reality with its own rules, structures, and beginning and end seem common to all four of our cases. Software is similar in its use of interconnected modular parts. The shared Ludism and limitless exploration potential of programming languages and games is equally likely.

Thoughts?

Things the Collective Should Do: Free Online College

2008-10-22T19:52:00.000-07:00

We're talking completely free, accredited, online associate-level college courses.

A free online college offering courses adhering to high levels of quality. The courses are (in US terms) in the 100-300 level range, enough to satisfy general education requirements and demonstrate a student's commitment to an institution of higher education. Courses are accredited by relevant standards bodies, and admission is not restricted in any way. Students' knowledge of the course topic is vetted by open-book online tests, peer reviewed papers, peer-judged class competitions, readings followed by captcha-like comprehension tests, class discussion followed by peer ratings, and/or other scalable systems of measuring comprehension of materials. Courses are copyleft and the subject matter is crowdsourced and peer reviewed.

Cyclical educational disparity exists worldwide. Entirely-online classes are becoming increasingly common but still have costs that preclude the enrollment of the average world citizen . Education is not a zero-sum game, and information is easily recyclable for many minds. Everyone should have a chance at achieving a high level of education, and this idea removes some of the social and economic barriers to this.

Marginalized populations who currently do not have access to high school or college would be able to obtain a higher education, and would be able to apply to other colleges with proof of their academic experience. Existing colleges would have a much wider pool of applicants from more diverse backgrounds. Additionally, seniors and working adults will have the opportunity to engage in life-long learning. Society worldwide will be enriched by a general increase in education.

The first step is the creation of software that would allow people to freely contribute to open sourced course material. The success of Wikipedia is indicative of the willingness of Internet users to contribute information and editing to worthwhile causes. All course content would be reviewed by Professors to ensure that accreditation standards are being met. The software in question would also be usable by students. The college would require marketing designed to appeal to a diverse student body. Peer editing and adherence to high levels of quality will facilitate wide spread accreditation of classes.

If more people obtain free college-level learning, the idea will be a success. The disparity within education can be measured in terms of average levels of learning across overlapping boundaries of gender, income, nationality, and race. The number of person-credit-hours would impart the degree of success of the free online college. A shift in international attitudes toward learning would also indicate improvement. A measurement of the educational divide will be demonstrated in an increased proportion of college students from marginalized backgrounds.

10 to the 100th!

2008-10-19T02:56:00.001-07:00

Project 10^100 is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. The due date is October 20th - get your revolutionary ideas in as soon as you can! - and the vetting process includes expert consensus as well as internet voting.

I've sort of been waiting most of my life for someone with a lot of money to ask "How can we change the world for the better?" and I'm taking this as my chance to get it all out of my system.

We're going to be speaking Truth to Power, man. With Love, man. We're going to be posting some of my pinko, humanist, fossy, digerati-ass ideas here in the next few days, after they go through the formal proofing and rigorous editing process and all that.

Community Wi-fi

2008-10-13T01:55:00.000-07:00

I'm expanding my Meraki network as quickly as possible, now that my little Apple-imposting device has nearly paid for itself. My rationale on originally starting the network several-fold:

In my AmeriCorps days, I would have lied, cheated, or killed to obtain internet access without having to pay $50 a month for it. As it happens, I never killed anyone, but I'm fairly sure the other two were covered depending on your interpretation of local wireless network laws.

The vicious amount of bandwidth (note: not nearly as much as is still advertised) I'm paying for from my ISP is barely consumed even at our peak hours with several devices connected and active.

Sharing with friends is one thing, sharing with strangers is both more rewarding and more dangerous. I didn't trust my network administration skills enough to allow strangers any access at all to my internal network, but I still wanted to let neighbors and bus-stop-waiters have access to the many useful functions of the internet.

Meraki is an inspiring, well designed service, as NetEquality and others can attest. I can't call it revolutionary until some real gains are gotten in areas where access to the internet is a paucity, but I'm for it.

More IP Polemic

2008-10-13T01:13:00.000-07:00

Aside from the aforementioned pragmatic rejection of IP that I and many others hold, there exists a (currently very unpopular) idealistic aversion to it. The argument states that there is no way to 'own' ideas. Given that we've legislated a lot of other intangibles into existence (citizenship, time, etc) I'm not doubting our theoretical ability to legislate the ownership of information. I'm not even asserting that information wants to be free, though the statement has its merits. I'm just very, very skeptical of the idea that information can belong to a person.

For one, unlike other types of property information isn't even close to a scarce good. Once it exists, it can be replicated over and over for free, being built upon in any number of ways. To have exclusive ownership of something infinitely replicable seems beyond human ability.

Once a person invents something - a joke, a meme, a new and useful process - I can agree that they're the sole holder and proprietor of every iota of that idea. But once it's outside the mind of that person, I'd be forced to argue that it belongs equally to everyone who witnesses it. They've already multiplied it in their mind, potentially forever, and can't disown it for any amount of money or effort. Are they just borrowing it? If they don't own the copy in their mind, does the creator (or whoever the creator sold the idea to) own that region of their thoughts, or just the observer's rights to share it?

The idea strikes me as preposterous on a really basic level. Please remember that I'm thinking of this as someone who traffics in information for a living, at let me know where I'm differing from a thought-out schema of our ability to own data.