06 Jan 2006
Wal-Mart apologizes for snafus

Man, heads are gonna roll in Wal-Marts's IT division, but, to be honest, writing good software that recommends purchases, no matter if it's based on a theme as is the case here, or on prior purchases, as with iTunes and Amazon, can be a really tough nut to crack. iTunes consistently suggests that I'd like music from "Mary Poppins", and Amazon seems to think I'd really enjoy the Christian section of their online store. And theme based engines usually don't code an entire tag database - they try to discern the meaning of words - Africa is the home of the great apes, after all, and chocolate is dark...

You get into the same kinds of problems with filtering software as well. There was a purchasing site for forestry products run by Lumberman's Exchange, called, naturally enough, "lumbermansexchange.com". Numerous filters blocked this site as porn! Sounds silly, until you break the domain down like a computer would. Then it becomes "lumberman sex change" ... and the company had to shut the domain down and move to a new location.

It seems that Wal-Mart has proven once again that, while computers are excellent for intensive computation, they have no sense of context and meaning, and until they develop one, we'd best stick to letting humans make buying suggestions for e commerce.

The retail giant apologized Thursday after its Web site directed buyers of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Planet of the Apes" DVDs to consider DVDs with African American themes.

(link) [CNN.com]

00:00 /Technology | 1 comment | permanent link

Logging may hinder forest regeneration, increase fire risk

I don't know what to think about this. The study was a very short time, in only one area with a particular mix of trees. And I generally like the idea of salvage logging because it reduces waste, and perhaps reduces the numbers of healthy tress logged. On the other hand, any modern logging operation necessarily tears up the ground and leaves piles of bunch lying about. And that can certainly have an effect on both seed germination and future fire hazards.

Perhaps it's more a question of logging techniques than it is the salvage logging itself. Indiana is not known for massive forest fires (Hel, it's so humid here in the summer it's often difficult to get a fire going despite your best efforts!), so I've not had much experience with forest fires on a western scale. But I hate to see willy-nilly logging, and I hate to see wasted resources. So maybe the science will advance here and we can actually balance the needs of humans with the needs of the rest of the ecology.

A new study done in the area burned in the catastrophic Biscuit Fire in Southwestern Oregon in 2002 found that allowing trees to naturally regenerate works about as well or better than logging and replanting, and that undisturbed areas may be at lower fire risk in the future.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Most–and least–rewarding careers

This is just a bizarre article: he lists engineers and programmers as excellent and good career choices, then mentions in passing that most of those jobs are going to India and China for 20% of current US salaries! He rates clergy as an excellent career choice - then mentions you don't even have to believe in god (or, presumably, gods) to do it! Police officer is rated 'poor' while firefighter is rated 'good' - and both have nearly equivalent satisfaction ratings. Huh?

Curiously enough, he lists the most dangerous job (in terms of getting killed or injured) as farmworker. Yeah, I can see that...

The popular book The Jobs-Rated Almanac attempts to rate careers. Alas, in its attempt to be as objective as possible, it seems to have missed the mark. For example, its No. 2-rated career is actuary. Yes, it's lucrative and the working conditions safe, but most people would find a life of analyzing insurance statistics, pardon the pun, deadly.

(link) [U.S. News & World Report]

00:00 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Microsoft unveils rival to iTunes

I wouldn't be too worried if I were Apple... knowing how Microsoft has crafted their code in the past, it wouldn't surprise me to find that clever hackers could embed executable content to hijack your machine in a Windows Media file. Won't that be fun! And the subscription model they've gone with here is doomed in the long haul - your music only plays as long as you maintain your $14.95 (or whatever) per month subscription. Drop the subscription and your computer empties itself. It's a great way for companies to attempt to lock in consumers, but I think most consumers are smart enough to not turn over the keys. For an example of how this is currently playing out sans M$, just compare the results for the "new Napster" and iTunes.

Bill Gates aims to take over your living room and late Wednesday he unveiled a new music service and new software to do it.

(link) [CNN.com]

00:00 /Technology | 2 comments | permanent link

When in Rome ... or Beijing

This has been all over the place - I spotted it first on Secular Blasphemy, and I must say that it's so refreshing to see Microsoft following the lead of Cisco in aiding and abetting repressive regimes worldwide. It's the new global economy, all right.

At China's request, Microsoft shuts down a politically sensitive blog which runs on its web log-hosting service, arguing that it must obey local laws in order to continue doing business in China.

(link) [Wired News: Top Stories]

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Dark as a Dungeon

Inside a Coal Mine, Brazil, Indiana, 1928[spoken intro] I never will forget one time when I was on a little visit down home in Ebenezer, Kentucky. I was a-talkin' to an old man that had known me ever since the day I was born, and an old friend of the family. He says, "Son, you don't know how lucky you are to have a nice job like you've got and don't have to dig out a livin' from under these old hills and hollers like me and your pappy used to." When I asked him why he never had left and tried some other kind of work, he says, "Nawsir, you just won't do that. If ever you get this old coal dust in your blood, you're just gonna be a plain old coal miner as long as you live." He went on to say, "It's a habit, sorta like chewin' tobaccer."

Come and listen you fellows, so young and so fine,
And seek not your fortune in the dark, dreary mines.
It will form as a habit and seep in your soul,
'Till the stream of your blood is as black as the coal.

[chorus]
It's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew,
Where danger is double and pleasures are few,
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines
It's dark as a dungeon way down in the mine.
It's a-many a man I have seen in my day,
Who lived just to labor his whole life away.
Like a fiend with his dope and a drunkard his wine,
A man will have lust for the lure of the mines.

The midnight, the morning, or the middle of day,
Is the same to the miner who labors away.
Where the demons of death often come by surprise,
One fall of the slate and you're buried alive.

I hope when I'm gone and the ages shall roll,
My body will blacken and turn into coal.
Then I'll look from the door of my heavenly home,
And pity the miner a-diggin' my bones.

-- Merle Travis

I lived several years in coal country - southwestern Indiana in Warrick, Posey and Gibson counties is riddled with mines, and still produces quite a bit of coal. My stepfather was a former miner in western Kentucky, who only left when his mine closed. When you get to know the guys who do this every day, day in and day out, you understand the real meaning of courage, discipline and camaraderie. The only analogy I can think of is the military - it's that serious down there. My heart goes out to the families of the miners who lost their lives in the recent Sago accident.

00:00 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Chicken Industry Plans to Test Flocks

What really struck me here was the exposure of industrial agriculture. We're not chicken farmers - we're the chicken "industry". The sheer size of commercial operations is staggering - the average flock of meat birds is 55,000 to 60,000, and that there are an estimated 150,000 flocks produced year.

By way of scale comparison, my meat flocks are 200 birds, and I produce 4 or five flocks in a typical year. I wouldn't have to test any of my birds for bird flu - if it gets in, my flocks would be dead within the week. And, because all of my birds are free range, it'd take out my egg layers, too.

I know that testing 11 birds out of 60,000 is seemingly insignificant, but bird flu doesn't spread by eating contaminated meat - just breathing the same air as the vector is enough. Consequently, this is more of a measure to protect the industry than it is to protect consumers. There is no protection for consumers: if it gets in, you'll be eating a lot of lamb, beef and pork. There won't be any chicken. And if it makes the evolutionary jump to be transmissible human to human, more than a few of us will be dead.

AP - Chicken companies intend to test every chicken flock in the United States for bird flu before slaughter, an industry group said Thursday.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Felony For Refreshing a Web Page?

Is this the same prosecutor that'll be going after the NSA for tracking us via cookies ?

An 18 year-old boy was recently arrested in Ohio for telling fellow students to refresh the schools web page in order to slow down the server. He is being charged with a felony and is currently being held in jail. According to Canton City Prosecutor Frank Forchione "This new technology has created a whole wave of crimes, and we're just trying to find ways to solve them."

(link) [Slashdot]

00:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

When Bugs Aren't Allowed

The article cited does list some very interesting ideas on building correctness into the system from the get-go. But in a business environment, there's always a perceived time pressure to release software: this can be mitigated somewhat by trying to release in stages, but marketing doesn't always see things the way engineering does, so there's usually a disconnect between expectation and reality.

When you're writing software for an air traffic control system, military avionics software, or an authentication system for the NSA, the delivered code can't afford to have bugs. Praxis High Integrity Systems, who were the feature of a recent IEEE article, write exactly that kind of software. In "Correctness by Construction: A Manifesto for High-Integrity Software" developers from Praxis discuss their development method, explaining how they manage such a low defect rate, and how they can still maintain very high developer productivity rates using a more agile development method than the rigid processes usually associated with high-integrity software development.

(link) [Slashdot]

00:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link