Want to know why yesterday’s foiled terrorist plot actually worked? Watch the show with zefrank – 08-10-06 and you’ll understand. To wit:
Today the President said, “This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom to hurt our nation.” Generalized statements like this which instill nebulous fear without specific information are exactly in line with the goals of terrorism.
Indeed.
Why are developers always, always at loggerheads with residents? What is it about open land, rows of modest houses, and quiet neighborhoods that just screams “Build condos on me!!!”?
In many ways the Lower Ninth Ward incorporated all of the components of a lively, sustainable, engaging Smart Growth neighborhood. Residents understand the authentic connectivity that made their neighborhood work, the kind of physical, social and economic co-mingling that so many Americans desire, but which actually existed in the Lower Ninth.
It’s easy, even in the wreckage left by the hurricanes, to understand how the Lower Ninth Ward represents the idea of “neighborhood” and “community” — not as developers build them, or planners map them, or architects design them or politicians campaign in them. [source]
Hmm, that sounds downright lovely. With my developer hat firmly in place, I must recommend bulldozing the entire Ward and find my company’s Johnny Mallseed to skip through town to sprinkle the area with Quik-E-Marts, 7-11s, and a Taco Bell. Then, when I have my “business district” in place, I can start plunking down boxy, 3-story, walk-ups, modestly landscaped and selling for three times the local market value. That’ll price out all those undesirables.
So, in my continuing immersion (descent?) into all thing New Orleans, I have one nagging question at the fringes of my mind: How, exactly, does a Michigan resident (native and current) actually go about involving himself in, well, all things New Orleans? I can’t go there with any regularity or, for that matter, at all, at the moment. I can’t attend meetings or talk to citizens or any of that.
Or can I?
Excuse me while I wax poetic, but I can do much of this from the relative comfort of my home and/or office via the mystical experience of the Internet. From Blogometer to NorthWest Carollton, Think New Orleans to Gentilly Girl, Ray in New Orleans to Your Right Hand Thief, I can virtually participate. I can hear podcasts of meetings, collaborate on Wikis, comment on blogs. I can, for intents and purposes all my own, become part of a larger community, one that only exists because of technology. Granted, many of these blogs and the people behind them can interact in ways I cannot, but that’s part of the community as well.
Which leads us full circle to the burning question: How, exactly, does this Michigan resident (native and current) involve himself in all things New Orleans? As I look, I see a list already exists for me at the New Orleans Wiki in the form of the To Do Today list.
Since Karen has clued me in to the BNOB documents as a starting point, it seems logical that I would start by populating the Architects and Non-profit Organizations databases at the Wiki. Alan mentioned that a whole lot of you are doing research; where would you like me to start?
So, I’ve been drawn into New Orleans politics, mostly because a) they matter and b) people around Ann Arbor think their politics are as important, which they are not. What got my hackles up was a “vote” conducted by Concordia Architecture and Planning (which I talked about over here). I’m still coming up to speed on a large backstory, but the current issue is basically this: planners are being chosen to rebuild the city after Katrina. Yeah, by the way, you should read some blogs from New Orleans; it’s not all puppies and song-birds down there yet.
Think New Orleans exposed a process for receiving input from New Orleans citizens as a sham; many citizens groups considered the process a vote and their one opportunity to influence or outright choose the planners. Concordia, after the fact, is saying that it wasn’t, and that the process was, in fact, a “consultation”.
It should be noted that this “consultation” took the form of an easily-manipulated and impossible-to-verify online form, akin to, as Alan Gutierrez called it, a guestbook. Now Concordia is attempting to manage the damage, insisting that it wasn’t a vote. I bit, jumping into the conversation.
As one of those who bit hard on calling that process a vote, I’m as guilty as anyone for propagating what, apparently, was a myth. But, that said, you can’t call it a vote (and, let’s be clear, it was called that on UNOP’s site — and still is (Google cache) — and then change the marketing of that voting event in mid-stream because you don’t like people latching onto that word.
But, really, the only questions left fall into the “what now” category. Concordia, the ball is in your court. Since you have carried out an unbelievably flawed “consultation”, not utilized the only means to identify voters (their codes), and failed to even consider how to include over 75% of the population of the city, how do you prove (not state, but convince) those watching this democratic process that the flavor of this process isn’t as rotten as it smells?
Your own model states: “Concordia has been developing tools to promote the comprehensive planning and design of facilities in the context of the total community.” The total community. I think, measured against your own model, you have missed the voice of the total community and, out of principal, should want to do it again, correctly.
Concordia seems to be managing this democratic process. They are also the ones fighting for buy-in, the whole while promising this was the important moment. Well Concordia, the challenge is, for you, this: your words have created importance around an event your now wish to downplay. The proverbial genie is out of the bottle. The responsibility now lies in your hands to legitimize the event, because right now, it’s looking pretty discredited. And, as action goes, so follows reputation.
This was, for anyone without a vested interest in it not being so, an election. Hell, you have the Mayor calling it “democracy in action”. It’s time to drop the smoke, mirrors, and pretense and ‘fess up. How, precisely, will this democratic process work? How, precisely, will you collect legitimate “consultations” from the citizens of New Orleans? And how, precisely, are the citizens of New Orleans being made, not made to feel, vested in the activities that will will rebuild their city?
AOL recently released the search records of thousands of “anonymized” users. Except, user 4417749 was pretty easy to track down. She’s a 62-year old from Georgia and the New York Times tracked her down and interviewed her.
AOL’s response? “There is not a whole lot we can do.” Stunning. Thanks, AOL, for proving once again that you don’t get it. Of course there’s nothing you can do because you should have done anything in the first place. Why, in the name of all that’s holy, did you post that information in the first place?
As some in the article point out, now we can talk about the long-term aspects of the breaching someone privacy like this and the boundaries of where our data can and can’t go. It’s a long overdue converstation. Too bad we had to drag the search habits of a grandmother into the street in order for us to talk about it.
New York Times article
Expert: 40 Percent of World of Warcraft Players Addicted | TwitchGuru
Ah, yes, another “Games are The Ruin of Society” expert. In this week’s episode, the good Dr. Maressa Orzack. Dr. Orzack is the founder of Computer Addiction Services, which in no way compromises her objectiveness. She is “swamped” with addicted gamers coming into her addicted gamer treatment center, which is a hell of a coincidence.
World of Warcraft takes center-stage in this interview with TwitchGuru, a shocking turn for the press as it finally shifts its focus from the glamorous world of Hello Kitty console games and handheld, stand-alone Yahtzee units. Shining a dim light on the underbelly of the gaming world, Dr. Orzack absolves the gamer and places the blame squarely where it belongs; on the game company.
They design these MMOs to keep people in the game. I do think the problem is tied in with other things like family issues, but the games themselves are inherently addictive. That’s ultimately the cause of the problem. [emphasis mine]
Those poor victims of Blizzard’s dastardly plan to rule the world via subscription. Ah, then we get to my favorite part of the show; the numbers.
Well, let’s take World of Warcraft as an example. Let’s say there are around 6 million subscribers for the game. I’d say that 40 percent of the players are addicted.
Wow, 40%? 2.4 million people are addicted to World of Warcraft? Can any other drug, game, or activity claim a 40% addiction rate (besides the crack they are apparently handing out to researchers)? And how did she arrive at this statistic? We have no idea. There are no citations, no studies mentioned, just some number plucked from the air by a doctor with much to gain by propagating the idea of widespread, highly-contagious addiction to an entertainment media.
Now, do I think people can be addicted to video games? Sure, why not. People are addicted to the oddest things: food, gambling, spray paint. But, do I think that 40% of WoW players are addicts. Hell no. Of course the game is designed to pull you in, that’s its purpose. No one would pay $15 a month to play something that wasn’t compelling. But, at it’s heart, it’s a game and if you can’t let go of the game, the problem is you, not the game.
… but, it was close. 17 votes.
I voted against this proposal. Why? I didn’t understand the benefit. I read the article in the paper and my reaction was “there is no added value to me for voting this through”. Most of Chelsea lives less than 5 minutes from a fully-staffed firehouse and the services have been outstanding. We have a full-time chief. This Proposal felt like an accounting move, not something that would make us all now live less than 3 minutes from the fire house.
More than anything, I didn’t understand the need. As a business-type person, no one took the time to explain to me what issue was being solved with this proposal, with more of my money.
And then, the kicker; that last line: “A small portion of the revenue collected may be required to be distributed to the City of Chelsea Downtown Development Authority.” Please, someone, tell me what that’s supposed to mean? How did the DDA get a cut of a Fire Authority proposal? What’s that money for? How much of the $1.4 million dollars do they get?
If there’s a compelling reason to give the City more money, that’s one thing. But slapping a ill-defined proposal with “Fire Authority” and trotting out missives like the last line of the Proposal just doesn’t cut it.
Update: I didn’t link to the results page. It’s here.
New Orleans parishes are in the process of choosing the planners that will guide the rebuilding of the city. These are people who will be tasked with urban planning, clean-up, and spending millions of dollars in federal aide money.And they’re choosing these people via an online poll. You read that right, an online poll. It gets better. Want to qualify to vote in this election? Guess what, since you’re online, you already do! Oh yeah, the only qualification to vote is a valid email address. And, the kicker, the poll is being run by a local architectural firm. Hm, wonder if they stand to gain by, say, having one of their own become the planner for the old French Quarter?
This is a travesty of a election, hardly worth the use of the word. Between this website, my ISP, work, and Google, I could easily vote over 50 times in an election for New Orleans. No one would ever be able to verify that I was, in fact, a resident of Michigan. No one would ever be able to verify that onlinepollssuck@youknowwhatpart.com isn’t being used by a legitimate New Orleans resident (hey, I just host email accounts for displaced residents). And worst of all, the poorest and hardest hit of residents aren’t likely to have email addresses, internet access, or even computers. Where is their voice in this process?
This is your money, your tax dollars, that are going to be spent to rebuild New Orleans, not just the residents of Louisiana or New Orleans.
The word needs to get out. Tell a friend, call a paper, submit this to every political site you can. Digg the story, it’s been submitted to Slashdot, hell, go read the original article yourself.
So, I found an interesting thing today; my site has been scraped, my content stolen. The last post here has been posted, in it’s entirety, on two spammer website. Both WHOIS lookups go through proxies, one Tor and one at Carnegie Mellon University. You can see both stolen posts here and here (yes, I’m linking to the spammers). So, aside from the image I’ve replacee (since they deep-linked to my image), what else can you do about this? There’s no contact links, obviously, and the poster is hiding behind proxies.
Ideas?
This post is in a new category, “Spot the Sarcasm”; guess why.
Windows has a wonderful feature for Internet Explorer users called Trusted sites. Trusted sites are described as “Web sites that you trust not to damage your computer or data.” Pretty straightforward, right?
But, as they say, the devil is in the details. Let’s say you have a web application that lives at www.webapp.edu. www.webapp.edu uses a central single-signon service for authentication; let’s call that www.signon.edu. Both www.webapp.edu and www.signon.edu are listed in the Trusted sites zone for Internet Explorer.
If you now attempt to log into www.webapp.edu via www.signon.edu, you get a security warning.
Considering it’s Microsoft, I let a little slide. But this rates as one of the stupidest security errors I can think of. Let’s break it down.
Both sites listed are on my Trusted sites list, a list I had to manually edit to add the sites. That means I spent time and effort to verify that the sites were trusted, find the zone, and then enter the sites. The warning states “If you don’t trust the current Web page, choose No.” Why would I ever choose No? Both sites have already been trusted. Both sites are obviously known to me. Why am I even given this dialog box?
Then, let’s look at the dialog box. For “security”, the focus is defaulted to No, the option I don’t want 999,999 out of 1,000,000 times. It’s also lacking, for security, a basic of standard dialog boxes: hotkeys. This one? No way. I have to either click Yes or arrow over to Yes. Dismissing the dialog results in.. ? Anyone, anyone? That’s right, a 404 error; very intuitive to the average Internet Explorer user.
But let’s think about what sites go on a Trusted site list, since Microsoft did not. It’s highly likely that sites manually added to that list are put there because I a) trust them and b) go to them a lot. I want them on that list because that security zone is more open, allows more browsing freedom, maybe requires it for functionality (yes, Web apps use pop-ups). Why do I have to confirm every single visit to a “trusted” site, but not to any other random site not listed as a trusted site? Logically, if I don’t trust a site, shouldn’t I need to verify that I do, in fact, want to go there? (Note to IE team, please, for the love of God, don’t implement this hypothetical.)
And, the best part of all? It is not optional for me or my team to use either IE or have our sites listed as Trusted sites. Our division administrators have placed both www.webapp.edu and www.signon.edu in the Trusted sites list and Webapp requires IE for certain administrative functions.
To all our users, Firefox is supported (thank goodness); I would recommend it for you. To Microsoft, please hire more user experience engineers. When you see posts like “Deleting a Shortcut In Windows Vista Takes How Many Steps?” on Gizmodo, you have issues.