A study of YouTube videos about vaccinations found that those presenting a negative view were more likely to have unsubstantiated information in them, and also tended to be more popular. I’m not sure why anyone is surprised by this.

This is a case of self selection bias. Positive messages are already widely distributed through push media by governments and other PR programs. It would follow that that those searching for vaccination information on YouTube are more likely to be looking for other viewpoints not already well represented. Once a viewer’s negative opinion of vaccination programs is validated by a video, they’re more likely to rank the video higher and generate additional traffic by sharing the content with others. I expect a similar analysis of 911 related videos would find a similar bias towards conspiracy theories.

The study really just highlights how those holding passionate views on a topic can skew the outcome of an analysis. In this case reviewers should be careful not to assume both sides are equally likely to take the time to rank and share a video.

In mid-August SFWA’s (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) epiracy committee chair, Andrew Burt, sent a notice to Scribd listing documents that SFWA alleged were being hosted in violation of copyright terms. Unfortunately the list of was poorly researched and little more than a list of documents that contained the words “Asimov” or “Silverberg”. After a couple of email exchanges, Scribd removed the documents.

The result was a number of legally published works were replaced with a page displaying “The document … has been removed from Scribd. This content has been removed at the request of copyright agent Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.” One of the authors affected was Cory Doctorow, who wrote an article on Boing Boing denouncing SFWA’s abuse of the DMCA. SFWA has acknowledged for the error, and contacted the affected authors to apologize. As others weighed in, the issue seemed to spiral into a freedom vs. author’s rights battle, with neither Scribd or SFWA looking good.

While reading about this, I was reminded of the issues some publishers and authors had with Google’s plans to build a full-text index of books, their main concern being that it was not a fair use of copyrighted material.

Put these two stories together, and I think there is an opportunity for Google to provide a valuable service that authors would support. By adding copyright information in a standard format to the book index, anyone would be able to check the copyright status of text indexed by Google. Add an API that returned results in a machine readable format, and sites such as Scribd could easily verify if text is copyrighted and under what terms before publishing it.

Google and the authors would each benefit from a copyright search. Google gets support from authors, and could potentially avoid scanning and verify books by having authors or publishers submit the text for indexing. Their search results would likely also contain advertising for places to purchase copyrighted works. The authors get a single point for maintaining copyright information that is easily referenced by others.

This does little to combat the blatant piracy, but legitimate sites hosting content would have access to an easy way to verify copyright information.

The Australian is reporting (via the INQUIRER) that security experts have found that jihadi terrorists groups can using virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft as training grounds.

Online worlds represent another communications medium, but are poor alternatives to web sites and online forums. World of Warcraft is a game with strict play rules - about all it could offer is improving team coordination. Second Life residents do have the Second Life Liberation Army creating problems at times, but they are little more than pranksters whose worst offense is probably taking a game a little too seriously.

The best quote is from Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, who says,

terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments.

It’s pretty clear that Mr. Zuccato has never looked at or played WoW. Nothing in the game even remotely resembles real-world arms, nor are in-game tactics of any use in the real world. I doubt even the most fervent radical islamist believes a Bringer of Death would be of much use out here.

A friend is in need of a notebook to use for a while so I’ve pulled an old 500MHz PIII from miscellaneous parts I had lying around. There’s no money to spend on software, and he’s not the type to spend money when free alternatives are available. The machine will be used for blogging, writing, playing some media files, and general surfing.
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I’ve just upgraded to Kubuntu 6.10 - actually I did a full reinstall since I hadn’t had much time to use the install I did at the beginning of the summer. This install went a lot smoother than 6.06 did in June. The graphical install worked, and the disk partition tool was able to change the partitions on my disk that already had an XP install on it without any problems.

After the base install was done, I had to spend a couple of hours sorting out a variety of small problems while trying to get to a usable system state. The time spent made me realize just how far Linux is from being accepted at the desktop by average users.

I am surprised to see that basic items like MP3 support still aren’t part of the default install. I understand the licensing concerns, but surely something can be done to solve them. Accessing media on network shares is still problematic, too. A share can be seen, but the media can’t play off it without editing /etc/fstab - try explaining that to a non-technical friend.

When I started configuring the wireless network I found three different tools installed, each of which had a different interface and only one of which could support WPA. In the end the wireless service didn’t get configured because my network card (Broadcom based) wasn’t supported. The system didn’t tell me that either - I remembered from earlier work that the Dell notebooks required extra monkeying around to get wireless working.

Software remains complicated to install, and standard ways of doing things aren’t in place yet. Getting packages I wanted to use required editing the apt configuration files by hand. Even after downloading some packages, the installs failed until I updated the /bin/sh link to point to bash instead of dash.

One area where Linux has simplified things better than Windows is updates. If you stick to using the default package manager for a given distribution, updates for the entire system are simple. There’s no need to connect back to the update service repeatedly (like one must in Windows), or to update individual software packages one by one.

It seems to me that there is too much focus on evangelism and ideals, and too little focus on the actual needs and wants of the average user. Decisions can’t be made simply based on performance, or licenses, or idealistic views of what an OS should be. Usability and consistency are vitally important.

When creating documents in HTML that make use of <div> blocks to position elements on the page links can appear to stop working if they are in the area bound by the block. Browsers appear to render HTML code in different orders, so a block that appears after a link will suppress the link in the rendered page. It is obvious once you understand the problem, but took some time to sort out when I could see the text clearly, especially since in one case the link worked in IE but not Firefox
An example:

<div style="position: relative;">
    <p style="position: relative;">
        <a href="">
            This link likely won't work.
        </a>
    </p>
    <div style="position: absolute;
                top: 0px;
                width: 100%;
                border:solid 1px;">
        <p style="text-align: right">
            DIV block text on the right.
        </p>
    </div>
</div>

Fortunately the fix in some cases is as simple as reordering the link and <div> blocks so that the block gets rendered first:

<div style="position: relative;">
    <div style="position: absolute;
                top: 0px;
                width: 100%;
                border:solid 1px;">
        <p style="text-align: right">
            DIV block text on the right.
        </p>
    </div>
    <p style="position: relative;">
        <a href="">
            This link should work.
        </a>
    </p>
</div>

Clear as day once you know what’s happening - the text has rendered properly and appears to be a link, but it cannot be clicked in some browsers. The <div> that has been layered over top of the text can be seen through, but the hotspot for the link is in the layer under the block.

I installed the SARE rule updates channel into a nightly sa-update routine yesterday, and noticed today that the rules didn’t appear to be getting used. I had misread the docs initially it turns out - you must use the updates.spamassassin.org channel if you plan to use any other channels since SA expects to find all rules in one location.

When I tried adding the default channel tonight I was getting the following error tonight while setting up sa-update:

error: GPG validation failed!
The update downloaded successfully, but it was not signed with a trusted GPG
key. Instead, it was signed with the following keys:

24F434CE

Perhaps you need to import the channel's GPG key? For example:

wget http://spamassassin.apache.org/updates/GPG.KEY
gpg --import GPG.KEY

After poking around for a bit I found the last line of the message is misleading - you actually want to run sa-update --import GPG.KEY after downloading it.

The guys on Cranky Geeks were discussing the merits of cellular phones having all sorts of extra features on them. North Americans are less inclined to see their phones as all-purpose devices as Europeans do. One comment made was that Europeans refer to their phones as their “mobile”, instead of “phone”. The cranks overlooked the fact that here in NA we refer to them as our “cell” - a word that usually describes a really small living organism not normally thought of as being multitasking. Perhaps it’s the name that’s holding us back?

After failing to get Ubuntu to install this week, I downloaded the Kubuntu DVD image and used it to boot my notebook. It looked very similar to Ubuntu during the startup process, and left me at KDE desktop instead of a Gnome desktop (hence the K in the name). I’ve come to prefer KDE over the past couple of years because it’s easier to switch between Windows and KDE - the metaphors are similar. I haven’t bothered to take the time to get my head around what Gnome is doing. For me, KDE just works.

The install process was also very similar, but this time an option to format the partitions as they were created was available. It made a difference - I was able to create, format, and then install to a partition created in the unallocated 20gigs on my disk.

The rest of the install process was a breeze. The only change to the system I felt necessary after initially installing was to enable the root account. I appreciate that working in a non-root account and using sudo is a safer way of administering the machine, but I prefer to su into root as necessary and do a bunch of tasks at once.

I haven’t worked on the notebook under Kubuntu as of yet, but I’m pleased the install was smooth.

I think Claude Lewis missed the point of the science in Stop ‘medicalizing’ bad behavior (Philadelphia Inquirer - 2006-06-07). The commentary was written in response news “intermittent explosive disorder” (IED), a condition doctors suggesting may cause road rage, or other anger that is out of proportion to the situation. Lewis is concerned that research provides excuses:

The risk is this: The more things we label disease, the less we label as transgression. If you think of your problem as a “disease,” to be treated like a disease, that lets you off the obligation to change that behavior.

Of course, one only needs to look at the examples of drug addiction and alcholism Lewis uses to see this isn’t true. While alcholism is now understood better by the medical community, the effects of it are still not excused by society. Increased understanding does not “lend legitimacy” , but improves our ability to deal with the conditions. It helps those surrounding someone with the condition to understand why the solution isn’t always as simple as it would appear it should be. “Stop taking drugs” is easy for the us to say, but known to be incredibly hard for the addict to do.

I’m a proponent of individual responsiblity. It bothers me that society allows lawsuits against tobacco companies to include anyone under 35 (they knew it was addictive), or that any of the endless “it’s not my fault I was an idiot” suits can actually waste the court’s time. People need to responsible for their own actions, and must account for their own circumstances. If you’re prone outbursts, then it is your responsiblity to recognize the signs, and take steps to keep yourself on the safe side of the anger threshold. Similarly, if you’re an alcholic, you shouldn’t find yourself in a bar.

The viagra example is a good one. Fixing the medical condition doesn’t necessarily fix the underlying factors that caused the condition. If the problems are internal to a relationship, viagra fixes nothing, but if factors external to the relationship are the source of the problems, perhaps the little blue pill helps keep the relationship strong so that the external issues can be faced. The individual is responsible for looking at his circumstances and knowing if he’s dealing with the right problems.

Lewis ends off with his alternative to the scientific approach to understanding a problem - it’s not his problem:

One cure for road rage, our new “disease,” is quite simple: Suspend the errant driver’s license for two, five or 10 years.

Thankfully, the medical community isn’t content to just lay blame, and beat the offender with the biggest stick around. They don’t excuse the behaviour, but work to find the underlying causes to of the behaviour so that those engaging in it can understand themselves better. If you know what the problem is, finding the solution is much easier.

So why do the research? It’s part of the illness called the scientific mind: it causes those afflicted to seek to know why simply for the sake of knowing why.