Archive for February, 2005
02.08.05
Posted in General at 10:39 am by Nicholas
Today I was browsing Wikipedia, as I am wont to do, and was informed that someone had written me a private message. It read:
Please stop adding nonsense to Wikipedia. It is considered vandalism. If you want to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. andy 22:49, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Now, there are three interesting things about this message. First, I have never added anything to Wikipedia that could reasonably be described as nonsense. I’m a huge admirer of the project, and have nothing but the utmost respect for its content and its maintainers. Second, I haven’t added anything to Wikipedia in at least a year. What I did submit, way back when, amounted to nothing more than a few minor grammatical corrections, if memory serves. And third, I was not logged in when I received this message.
As it turns out, I received this message because someone from my IP had submitted something of dubious value to the site sometime last week. If I had received the message while browsing at home, that would be the end of it; I have a dynamic IP at home, so the submission in question could have come from any Comcast customer in my neighborhood. At work, however, we have a static IP. That means someone where I work vandalized Wikipedia … and that, I’m almost positive, means one of my students is responsible.
I teach computers to fifth through eighth graders — about a hundred of them. Some of them are remarkably technologically adept, but most of those, I think, aren’t the ones I need to worry about. (Besides, it doesn’t take much computer knowledge to figure out how to use a Wiki — that’s kind of the point.) I can imagine what happened: a kid does a Google search for a class research project, finds Wikipedia in the results, and eventually notices those “Edit” links in the text. The temptation and curiosity is understandable at that age. But it brings up an interesting point: during our internet research unit, I avoided mentioning Wikipedia to the kids, partly out of laziness. Telling them about it would have meant telling them why it’s a good thing, but also why it might not be so good for general research purposes. It would have meant explaining the concept of community-edited content and describing some of the experiments that have been done to test Wikipedia’s accuracy. Inevitably, it would have meant answering questions about how they themselves could edit Wikipedia’s content … and why they probably shouldn’t. I only had a few weeks to cover that unit, and quite frankly Google gave me enough headaches. But did I do them a disservice by ignoring it altogether? Wikipedia articles (and mirrors thereof) pop up frequently in searches; I knew that at some point they’d run across it. (I also knew that chances were good they’d get valid information, and that their teachers wouldn’t know anything about Wikipedia and wouldn’t dock them for using it as a primary source.) Would any mention at all have been better than none, or would it have created more problems than it solved?
I don’t know. But I do know that if I find out who vandalized Wikipedia, someone’s getting extra homework real soon.
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02.07.05
Posted in General at 11:33 am by Nicholas
Volvo is giving away a suborbital flight with Virgin Galactic on a passenger-bearing commercial spaceship. All that’s left, I guess, is for someone to start selling a flying car.
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02.03.05
Posted in Food, Science at 10:59 am by Nicholas
Anyone got a few hundred bucks for dinner?
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02.02.05
Posted in Gadgets at 9:07 am by Nicholas
Wired has an interesting article today about Microsoft employees and their iPods. It’s very encouraging, but not surprising. I’ve tried a few of the other MP3 players out there — some are cheaper, some are smaller, some have all sorts of features like FM radio and built-in voice recording — but none approach the usability and elegance of the iPod. I have a third-generation 20GB iPod, and when it dies I’ll buy another. I plan on getting an iPod shuffle soon, too.
It was interesting watching industry reaction to the iPod shuffle — by which I mean not the reviews and other media coverage, but the response of other MP3 player manufacturers. They said the technology was old, it didn’t have anything new to offer, and it wouldn’t be usable without a screen. Less than a month has passed, and those same competitors are now dropping their prices in an attempt to compete. Apple stores can’t keep the shuffle in stock — most have a waiting list of around 120 buyers.
What those companies either didn’t realize or didn’t want to admit is that the shuffle couldn’t help but be popular at this point, because only on an iPod can you play music from the iTunes Music Store. That means more exclusive tracks, more celebrity playlists (turns out Andrew Lloyd Webber likes Eminem), and more overall selection than you’ll get from any other legitimate source of music online. With that kind of momentum behind it, the shuffle doesn’t need a screen to be successful. Besides, if you’re in a situation where looking at a screen would be pracitical, Apple suggests an iPod, iPod photo, or iPod mini. If you’re jogging, you don’t need a screen — take an iPod shuffle.
So I’m glad to learn that white headphones are a familiar sight in Redmond, but I’m not surprised. Apple got this one exactly right. They released a good product with a good online service supporting it. They enticed people to use that online service by offering good software for free, and by securing exclusive content that people actually wanted. They timed everything perfectly — they didn’t put a lot of money into catching the early adopters, but they also didn’t take on the burden of entering a mature market with a new product. And they understood, as they always do, the importance of design and the “cool factor.” Microsoft didn’t. So now Microsoft employees wear their iPods to work, and it’s not because they’re not loyal, but because it’s the best product in its class and offers music they can’t get on a Microsoft-backed player.
Besides, if Microsoft wants to hire the best and brightest tech workers, it should expect to learn from those employees. If the they overwhelmingly choose a competing product, it says a lot more about the product than the employees.
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02.01.05
Posted in General at 10:52 am by Nicholas
I’ve never been a drinker. Even when I spent three months in France I only drank once — and that was because the chef at a restaurant in Troyes brought a bottle of Calvados to the table and sat down to drink with us. It’s not that I’m opposed to it on moral grounds; I’ve just never cared for the taste of alcohol.
Recently, though, I’ve branched out a little bit. On my birthday last year I had a Guinness and a Blackthorn cider — and, at the instigation of the friends who took me out, a shot of vodka, which tasted like rubbing alcohol to me. And recently I’ve had a few glasses of red wine — mainly Pinot Noir, at first inspired by Sideways. I find I like red wine more than white wine, possibly for the same reason I prefer Guinness to lager: the deeper and richer the drink, the less I taste the alcohol. Pinot Noir in particular has a sort of peppery, spicy flavor that I quite like.
But I’m far from a connoisseur. Wine terminology confuses and annoys me. I’ve been a tea nut for several years, and tea terminology can be pretty baroque at times (single-estate first flush tippy golden flowery orange pekoe Darjeeling, anyone?), but it’s nothing to what the wine snobs dream up. As an example, take a look at the words used to describe flavors and aromas. Tea tasters use words like “grassy,” “herbaceous,” “bright,” and “astringent.” Some might come as a bit of a surprise, like “cheesy” or “stewed,” but it’s not hard to imagine what characteristics the taster is referring to. But look at the terms used by certain wine tasters — some excellent examples of which can be found in Stephen Shapin’s article “Hedonistic Fruit Bombs” for the London Review of Books. Blue-tinged? Lanolin? And what’s all this about helicopters? I mean, I can be as snobby as the next guy, but I call BS here. And I’m not drinking anything that reminds someone of “cat’s pee.”
I like the article, though — especially the bits about one wine critic becoming so influential that he shapes the entire industry. Even though this particular critic seems relatively reasonable (at least I can imagine what a “fruit bomb” would be like), the loss of diversity in subjectively judged markets like wine (or movies, literature, music, etc.) always makes us culturally poorer.
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