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Dan Gilmor, author, Journalist (that with a capital J, mind you), and Blogger (also with a capital) has a problem. Actually he has many problems, but this particular one is a commenter he’s acquired in recent months, a troll. Granted, a troll of the worst kind, but a troll none-the-less.

The troll has become somewhat of a problem for Dan because, as trolls are known to do, this one has mired up many a comments section of Dan’s less-than-technology angled posts. See, Dan likes to trade his popularity for the Left, spinning any incident of marginal importance as the Tea Party du jour. His troll enjoys spewing idiocy for the Right. To me, this seems like a pretty fair balance in the Commons that Dan has so dilligently put forth as the New Media. You know, the one where everyone has a voice.

Oh, unless you disagree with Dan. Then he’ll threaten you with a new *shiver* Comments Policy. That’s right, if Dan doesn’t get his way, he’s taking his ball and going home, closing comments on any future political posts. Of course, a troll is better than that and will comment of political stories in the comments of other posts, so the likely outcome would be no comments anywhere on Dan’s website.

Pity, he almost got it.

The original poster on this kuro5hin article starts out trying to cast doubt on the Ohio numbers from the election. Fine, nothing new there. But, someone who actually knows how to crunch numbers pipes in in the comments section with some pretty interesting numbers and, well, basically says “I don’t see anomolies, but if you do, refute this data”.

This is why numbers, and not emotions, matter in elections. Because when you get down to it, you can spin “voter attitudes” and “I remember 2000, and this year was different”, but if you can’t quantify it, it doesn’t count.

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So, apparently if you own a NBA team, you no longer get to have an opinion. Mark Cuban, owner of the Mavricks, Benefactor, and blogger, has been fined by the NBA for this entry in his personnal blog. (He has held back on directly commenting, and just announced the fine.)

He also asked what the blogoshpere (I hate that term) thinks of this.

I think it’s bullshit. My company is ISO certified. If a member company got fined every time a they complained about some aspect of the ISO board, ISO would be richer than the United States. How does an orginization think it’s going to grow or address issues that members have with it when they won’t even let you voice your opinion? Is the NBA that scared of what one owner thinks that they have to try and silence him through fines (which, by they way NBA, if you havne’t noticed, it’s not working).

Does it affect how I interact with the league? Not really. I gave up on the league a long time ago. Hell, I live in Detroit and I didn’t even watch the playoffs. The league is more interested in making superstars. It’s better business. It’s easier to polarize the league and concentrate on three or four uberteams than it is trying to make a wholly competitive league (look at baseball for the eventual outcome of this). I find it amusing to watch Cuban go at it with people who still don’t get it, and never will. Sorry you’re out some cash Mark; but if your opinion is worth every dime, if to no one else but yourself, than that’s good enough for me.

From El Reg:

Trippi isn’t the only one to blame. All the blogging believers are at fault.

Even if Jesus set up a blogging cafe in the center of Rockport, Texas and extolled the virtues of a woman’s right to choose while snapping pictures of gay weddings with his Nokia, it would have made no difference to this election. All of the bloggers would have told themselves about the miracle, while Bobby and Bobby Sue went right along with their business.

The longer the Democrats pretend that their vacuum of righteousness is actually reaching the public at large, helped by NPR, the more trouble they will be in. Be it an internet wasteland like New Mexico or fat pipe rich Connecticut, it doesn’t matter. George W. Bush kicked your blogging ass.

’nuff said.

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Alice and Bill have an article today about some of the upcoming supercomputers.

But the big news is IBM’s prototype Blue Gene/L, being developed for the Livermore Labs. It currently runs at 70.72 teraflops –but they’re still tweaking it. When the final version is finished, it should hit 360 teraflops without breaking a sweat.

The current record? Two years ago, 35.86 teraflops. The newest computer, IBM’s Blue Gene, potentially could increase the record by a factor of 10. What are they going to use this for, you might ask. Well, at least they’re doing the right thing. Blue Gene would (finally) be powerful enough to do protein folding, something which is currently being done through distributed computing (and a very worthwhile cause, I might add). Protein folding could lead to huge advances in the understands and eventual treatment of Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s disease.

Computer science (the real science part) is finally producing machines that can do things not just that humans cannot do, but doing things we never thought we’d desire to do. Sure, playing chess against a machine is a novel activity, but divining intelligence from such an encounter is another thing altogether. When we do reach the computing power of a human brain, what then? It’s not like we’ll stop development of computers; we’ll obviously surpass that level quickly. And that’s a big deal. For the first time in history, mankind will have access to answers from an intelligence more powerful than himself (faith-based Q&A aside).

How does that molecule act when we drop in, say, this new chemical? Does the reaction differ in someone who is taking drug A? The computer will tell you, accurately and relatively quickly. Whole buildings will be devoted to simulating individuals many times over, simply to test reactions to, well, anything we can imagine.

It’s a very exciting, and scary, time.

This article on Metacrap is a quick and dirty reasoning about why this renewed talk about the “Semantic web” is a load of, well, metacrap. It’s a business, people, and all they want to do is sell you something. If this brilliant idea were remotely achievable, it would have happened already. There are no tools we don’t have that are fundamentally stopping a world of meta-meaningfulness.

I’m looking at you, tech writers. Content management is all about metadata. This is a must read for every tech writer, even you crotchety ones.

2.3 People are stupid
Even when there’s a positive benefit to creating good metadata, people steadfastly refuse to exercise care and diligence in their metadata creation.
Take eBay: every seller there has a damned good reason for double-checking their listings for typos and misspellings. Try searching for “plam” on eBay. Right now, that turns up nine typoed listings for “Plam Pilots.” Misspelled listings don’t show up in correctly-spelled searches and hence garner fewer bids and lower sale-prices. You can almost always get a bargain on a Plam Pilot at eBay.
The fine (and gross) points of literacy — spelling, punctuation, grammar — elude the vast majority of the Internet’s users. To believe that J. Random Users will suddenly and en masse learn to spell and punctuate — let alone accurately categorize their information according to whatever hierarchy they’re supposed to be using — is self-delusion of the first water.

Yep.

I voted for George Bush.
I am not a redneck.
I do not spend my days watching cars race around a track, drinking cheap beer and slapping my woman on the ass.
I am not a bible thumper. In fact, I am an atheist.
I am not a homophobe.
I am educated beyond the fifth grade. In fact, I am college educated.
I am not stupid. Not by any stretch of facts.
I do not bomb abortion clinics.

You will not be thrown in jail for the sole reason of being a liberal.
Your child’s public school will not suddenly turn into a center for Christian brainwashing.
Your favorite bookstore will not turn into puritan central.

This is not Nazi Germany in any way.
You will not be forced into concentration camps.
You will not be burned in human-sized ovens because of your religion.
We will not be forced to wear uniforms and march in line every day.
You will not live in fear.
If you think this is a country in which you have to live in fear, I have some friends in Iran who would like to have a little talk with you.

There’s going to be so much wailing and gnashing of teeth, you’d think the Democrats were the ones that would set up a Theocracy. JasonUCF on Slashdot summed up wonderfully why the Democrats lost. And why they will continue to lose until they change drastically.

I can’t find the right word. Annoyed? Depressed? Flustered? None of them carry the meaning for me.

This was not Bush’s election to win. This was Kerry’s election to lose. And man, did he lose.

When will the democratic party realize that they need to get in the game, play it tough? America doesn’t want a smarty pants North Eastener with a fake politican smile a mile wide. America obviously responds to the aw shucks grin, the not too einstein but firmly resolved mindset.

When will we realize that whining about problems won’t work when the majority of the population doesn’t want to think about problems? They want a bed time story, and someone to turn the light on and off for them.

When will the democrats grow a fucking backbone and nominate a real candidate? I swear this makes me think of the axiom that, at heart, democrats are goths. They love losing, and lamenting about losing.

Kerry’s campaign was self destructing a week before it won Iowa. I don’t think they ever got a campaign together that worked. There was no clear delivery, no clear ideology, NO RESPONSE to the clear Republican attacks. When Kerry won the primary I was flabbergasted. I figured we probably wouldn’t win then, but I held out hope, I stood on street corners, I called people, I campaigned.

A 4 million popular vote for an administration that admits no wrong, that has no coherent diplomatic policy, that has no coherent domestic policy. Why? Because 9/11 changed everything? Because we needed to “kick some ass abroad”? These are the responses I get from Bush voters. They don’t even know what the Clear Skies act is. They’re not familiar with North Korea. We have to find a way to dumb ourselves down into simple ideology. Easy digestible soundbites. It sounds ridiculous but I see no other way — 1992 was “The Economy, Stupid”, nothing else has worked. People don’t want to think about problems, they want to eat McD’s and watch Joey.

I’m so… frustrated.

I take issue with a LOT of what Dan Gilmore says today, but he’s got one good point I’ll agree with; maybe it’s actually time for a new party. And Nadar doesn’t count.

Link to Slashdot comment

I love flickr; the meta nature of the photos you get with even the most cursory searches are bizarre. Here’s one that’s pretty damn weird (photo of a diseased fish, anyone?), and the comment for the photo is even better. To writ:

Why Kerry lost:
The refusal of the Democratic party to represent left/center mainstream values of peace, environment, small business, and innovation. Instead, homo-marriage, stem cell research, and minor issues that do not affect majority have hijacked the party. Homo-marriage lost Ohio for Kerry, and the next four years with it. Was it worth it? No, not for Matadors. Our natural resources will suffer for this. Our support is no longer worth it. You freaks are the new Nader. Get out! Time to take our party back!

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It might take them a while, but eventually everyone will pick up on this. If Bush wins, the Republicans will have control of the White House, the Senate, and the House.

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