Why Copyright Extension is a Very Bad Idea

Related: What is Wrong with Copyright Taking Public Good for Private Special Interests - Lessig Video: Information Revolution

Watch the Full I Have a Dream Speech

Sorry EMI Music Publishing has blocked you from seeing Martin Luther King's I have a Dream Speech. Sadly our society's historically important moments are not considered something people should see to the copyright cartel and those they pay in congress to push their agenda. I can't imagine Martin Luther King would have desired to restrict those seeing his message. I do understand that it isn't uncommon for those that gain the rights to material created by great people seek to cash in rather than to promote the work the great person did (and still would be doing if they could).

Today is Martin Luther King Day in the USA. Watch the entire I Have a Dream Speech.

Death of Newsprint

End Times by Michael Hirschorn

The thinking goes that the existing brands—The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal—will be the ones making that transition, challenged but still dominant as sources of original reporting. But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business—like, this May?
...
And it will seriously damage the press’s ability to serve as a bulwark of democracy. Internet purists may maintain that the Web will throw up a new pro-am class of citizen journalists to fill the void, but for now, at least, there’s no online substitute for institutions that can marshal years of well-developed sourcing and reporting experience—not to mention the resources to, say, send journalists leapfrogging between Mumbai and Islamabad to decode the complexities of the India-Pakistan conflict.
...
Common estimates suggest that a Web-driven product could support only 20 percent of the current staff; such a drop in personnel would (in the short run) devastate The Times’ news-gathering capacity.

The benefit of a free press that also has resources to investigate is very important. I would think it would make sense for Google, Microsoft... to buy trophy media outlets if they were in danger. My guess is setting up some type of foundation might well make sense. The company that buys it would want to benefit from the purchase by having content to make money on, but I don't think they would want to manage the media outlet as part of their organization.

The exactly solution going forward is not easy to see. But some solution that provides for a free press with funding is important to any country and so we need to find a solution.

I also have no doubt the value of this to society is lost by many watching what passes for our free press today. With all sorts of useless, superficial, stories that mainly seem to just be splashy graphics, exciting sound effects, and almost no content. There is no loss to society if that goes away. There is a great loss to society if work of those like Bill Moyer's went away, Here is an example David Heath and the Seattle Times exploring congress hiding earmarks while claiming reform. This is the type of free press the founding fathers had in mind to check the power of corrupt government officials paying out public dollars to award those giving them checks and hiding those favors from public view.

Related: Programmable New York Times On the Way - Deming and the New York Times - Washington Paying Out Money it Doesn't Have - Time to start a newspaper by Seth Godin - Lobbyists Keep Tax Off Billion Dollar Private Equities Deals and On For Our Grandchildren

PageRank Distribution

Continuation of Last Google Toolbar PageRank Update of 2008

I see very few pages with a PageRank of 1. This doesn't make that much sense, logically. The vast majority of pages should have a page rank of 1. Now it could be those are pages that no one (or at least I) never see. I would think, roughly, the distributions of 211,111 pages would be

no pagerank 100,000
pagerank 1 100,000
2 10,000
3 1,000
4 100
5 10
6 1
7 0
8 0
9 0
10 0

Now this isn't exactly true because there would be natural clumping... So a higher number of high page rank pages would make sense to me. But I think that means if you had say 2 more pagerank 6 pages that you would lose hundreds of pagerank 2, I would think.

Also my choice of 100,000 at no pagerank and pagerank 1 is basically arbitrary. But the whole area of no pagerank I find confusing to reconcile with the logarithmic scale. Some pagerank 0 could be so low a pagerank it is less than .5 and so not displayed as 1. However, some are also penalized to that "rank"... Anyway I just made it up completely. The rest I am just making up to but based on the idea if a logarithmic scale were used a very quick estimate that is at least better than no concept of just saying well 211,111 and 11 possible "ranks" means each rank should have about 19,192. I think the above estimate I made are at least more accurate than the true distribution than a estimate that each pagerank has an equal number, even if my rough guess isn't very accurate.

Well part of the problem in trying to figure this out is that I don't think Google ever confirms it is a logarithmic scale. But I think it is (or something close to it). I'll try to do some research on this - just because I find it interesting.

Related: Multi Site PageRank Checker - Google's Search Results - Should Factors Other Than User Value be Used

Ruby on Rails Tutorials

Nice post with a bunch of Ruby on Rails Tutorials

Ruby On Rails Tutorial: The Basics A two-part tutorial to getting up and running on rails by Huw Collingbourne.
...
Catching rails error messages An easy example of how to use the 2.x approach to catching errors in your rails applications.
...
Stop Rails from sending email A useful way to check that mail is getting sent, without actually sending it.
...
Ruby on Rails Rake Tutorial Gregg from RailsEnvy again running through how to make the most of rake. If you’re not already writing your own custom tasks in rake you should definitely take a look because there is probably a handful of things your could (and should) be doing in it.
...
Ruby on Rails Security Guide Storing and protecting the session, user management, projecting from injection, and more.

Follow the link for many more.

Related: What Does This Error Mean - ruby on rails posts - Ruby on Rails Job Opportunity

Last Google Toolbar PageRank Update of 2008

Matt Cutts has confirmed that Google has again updated the PageRank displayed on the Google Toolbar. Looking at my blogs it seems to be effective approximately Dec 16th. I have some blog posts from the 15th and before with pagerank. On the 16th I have one post with a pagerank and several without. On the 17th none of my posts have pagerank. This means while the pagerank was displayed today, the data used is from about December 16th, I believe.

The displayed pagerank is more fun than a measure that can be relied on. But I still find it fun to look at the pagerank values - except when they go down for my sites :-(

Check the current pagerank on your sites using our related site: Multiple Site PageRank checker. Updates from our Google PageRank Update, July 2008:

Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog - 4 (July 2008), 4 (December 2008)
Curious Cat Engineering and Science Blog - 5, 5
curiouscat.com - 3, 3
externs.com - internship directory - 4, 4
Statistics for Experimenters - 3, 4
CSS 4 Free - 4, 5
Wordpress Themes for Free (new site from November) already a 3 Google pagerank.
Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections (one of my most popular pages since 1997) - 3, 3
Multi Site PageRank Checker - 1, 3
John Hunter 4, 4
Life and Legacy of William Hunter (my father) ?, 4
Justin Hunter (my brother) ?, 2
Curious Cat Articles and Links (this blog) - 3, 3
Curious Cat Management Improvement (v.1) I started the blog on blogger and then moved it to my own domain using WordPress in 2006, still it retains a pagerank of 3
My Kiva page ?, 3
Reddit management (new in September) 0
Curious Cat Web Directory 3, 4
Rocky Mountain National Park photos ?, 2
Boston Museum of the Fine Arts, Glacier National Park Photos, Parfrey's Glen, Wisconsin Photos, The Cloisters Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky ? , 0 ( much of the Curious Cat Travels seems to be without pageranks - which seems odd to me but...)

The Curious Cat Engineering and Science Blog has actually been a pagerank 6 before, but I think it is a high 5 (of course I may be biased and that is just wishful thinking). Many brand new posts for example have ranks of 4, likely because they were on the home page when the snapshot was taken - Bird Brain, Passion for Mechanical Engineering, High School Inventor Teams @ MIT...). Another thing this means is those pages are really not pagerank 4 even today. The toolbar snapshot from Dec 16th shows them that way but only because that was the value on Dec 16th.



Now, I would guess they are probably really pagerank 2 or so. If I just look back at say random posts in August 2008 (or really any month) they will be between 0 and 3. I really don't understand the differences between say 0 and 2. While there is some difference, most of those pages have 0 links from external sites. And then I will have a small number of posts that get significant external links that maybe be 3,4 and even 5 pageranks: The Engineer That Made Your Cat a Photographer, Sep 2007, pr 3, Best Research University Rankings, Sep 2008, pr 4; Economic Strength Through Technology Leadership, Jul 2007, pr 4

In my experience it is often more telling how the pagerank of internal pages. I find it that there are many sites with say a pagerank of 3 or 4, or even 5, on the home page but almost no pagerank on internal pages. While other sites with a pagerank of 3 or 4 have many internal pages with pagranks of 1, 2, 3 and 4,

Related: Google's Displayed PageRank - Web Page Authority

Festivus

Festivus airing of the grievances.

Don't Forget Your About Page

The about page of a blog is often neglected. There are different options for what to emphasize, but I think it is wise to include an overview of the blog and links to some posts you would suggest for first time visitors. Think of it as a way of helping someone decide if they want to subscribe to the blog feed. Here are some of my blog about examples:

Curious Cat Engineering Blog - Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog - Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog - Free CSS Web Site Templates Blog

Related: Build Your Online Presence - Gallery of Free WordPress Themes - Seth Godin on Marketing and the Internet

Is The World Finaly Growing Wise

Related: Code Monkey - Dancing Around the World - Computer Speakers

16 Useful .htaccess Tricks and Hacks For Web Developers

16 Useful .htaccess Tricks and Hacks For Web Developers

6. Hotlinking protection with .htaccess is very important because anyone can hot link to your images and eat up all your bandwith of your server. The following code will help you to prevent that.

Options +FollowSymlinks
# Protect Hotlinking
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?domainname\.com/ [nc]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|png)$ http://domainname.com/img/hotlink_f_o.png [nc]
...
11. Block access to your .htaccess file - By adding he following code to your htaccess file will prevent attempts to access your htaccess file. This extra layer of security protects your htaccess file by displaying a 403 error message on the browser.

# secure htaccess file

order allow,deny
deny from all

To Do List

I think that is pretty funny. More funny political cartoons.

Related: Fun Rant on Arguments - Code Monkey - Kids on Scientists: Before and After - Quantum Teleportation

Watching the Watchmen

Unfortunately I have grown to question the trustworthiness of the system of justice. This doesn't mean I think it is totally corrupt but I think the amount of lawlessness by those given the responsibility to serve society has grown too large. It seems to me more oversight is needed. And unfortunately those with such responsibilities are doing the opposite. For example, the despicable political actions by the Justice Department undermine the public's confidence in honest government just when we need to have a government we can trust to protect us from terrorism and increasingly well armed criminals.

Cop Busters is a program that is headed by a man that is most likely in it significantly for the publicity. I would wager the vast majority of those in the law enforcement community are honest and law abiding, in general. However, the community seems to be far too tolerate of abuses by those in their ranks. Given that shows like cob busters may help. Why doesn't the law enforcement community itself find the corruption and illegal practices and eliminate those involved themselves?

Gotcha!

There was no probable cause. So a couple of questions come up. First, how did the cops get turned on to the house in the first place? Cooper suspects they were using thermal imaging equipment to detect the grow lamps, a practice the Supreme Court has said is illegal. The second question is, what probable cause did the police put on the affidavit to get a judge to sign off on a search warrant? If there was nothing illegal going on in the house, it's difficult to conceive of a scenario where either the police or one of their informants didn't lie to get a warrant.

Cooper chose the Odessa police department for baiting because he believes police there instructed an informant to plant marijuana on a woman named Yolanda Madden. She's currently serving an eight-year sentence for possession with intent to distribute. According to Cooper, the informant actually admitted in federal court that he planted the marijuana. Madden was convicted anyway.

What we need are watchmen inside the government that are trustworthy and vigilante. What we need are people at the Justice Department that put the safety and security of the public first. What we need are people that put the rule of law above the rule of their personal desires.

10 years ago (whether I was right or wrong) I would not have said the abuse of law enforcement authority was a huge concern. Yes, any time you have many thousand of people involved in something, some are going to abuse their authority. But I thought on the balance that abuse was minimal and the danger from such abuse was much less than the danger from actual criminals. Now I am sadly much more inclined to side with the founding fathers worries about the unchecked power of the government.

As those in law enforcement fail to address these problems they make the situation much worse. People are losing the ability to rationally believe the law enforcement community is most interested in enforcing the law. Seeing so many examples of abuses of power by the watchmen is a dangerous thing for society. And when the law enforcement community is more interested in protecting those inside their ranks engaged in unlawful behavior than in upholding the law it is very dangerous for society.

It is not acceptable for those with the awesome responsibility to protect society from criminals to behave as too many are now.

Related: Freedom Increasingly at Risk - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - Photographers are not a Threat - More SWAT Failures

Gallery of Free WordPress Themes

WordPress Themes 4 Free is the newest curiouscat.com site. Find great, free, designs for your WordPress blog.

Build Your Online Presence

My comment on: Promoting Your Services (Link broken so I removed it, original post from PoeWar, very good site on writing and resource for writers)

I think another great way to promote your business is to write and post to your own site. I encourage management consultants (the people I most deal with - example: Peter Scholtes) to create an online presence that illustrates what value they offer. And for writers it should be an even better fit (you can show exactly what you offer - your writing). Setting up a blog is a very easy way to do this. You can use Wordpress to set up a free blog without any technical knowledge.

Then you can market by doing what you want to do: writing. You will have to take some other steps to market yourself also but a home on the web highlighting your writing is an excellent tool.

This next tip is probably most suited to someone getting started as a professional writer, or one just getting started online, but really can work for anyone. Basically unless you are so busy with paying work that you can't fit it in, I think it is a good idea (and at that point continue your blog by linking to the paying work).

I also think writing guest posts for other blogs could be a useful promotion strategy. You will increase those that know about you and gain links back to your site which will help your site grow. And, another benefit, for writers is you get to practice. You can experiment, and try new things. While I don't think of myself as a writer, I have written a great deal building my web sites. The sheer act of writing for different audiences as a guest blogger I think would be good experience for a writers.

I tend to favor thinking about marketing differently - especially for small businesses. Amazon spends very little advertising. Instead they see free shipping as marketing. They see paying referral fees to websites that provide them paying customers as marketing. Very smart, in my opinion. So for writers think of writing posts for your site and for some others as a form of advertising. Plenty of very successful people market using their free writing online: (example: Neil Gaiman, Joel Spolsky...). And some turn that free writing into a platform to sell ads and then make a living just doing that: Dooce.

Another good example of innovative marketing: Giving Away Your Service for Free on Weekends (from Joel Spolsky mentioned above).

Related: My web home - John Hunter - Seth Godin on Marketing and the Internet - Your Online Identity - Innovative Marketing Podcast - Don't Lock Your Content Inside a Proprietary System

2,700-year-old marijuana found in Chinese tomb

2,700-year-old marijuana found in Chinese tomb

The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly ``cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany. The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.
...
Remnants of cannabis have been found in ancient Egypt and other sites, and the substance has been referred to by authors such as the Greek historian Herodotus. But the tomb stash is the oldest so far that could be thoroughly tested for its properties.

The 18 researchers, most of them based in China, subjected the cannabis to a battery of tests, including carbon dating and genetic analysis. Scientists also tried to germinate 100 of the seeds found in the cache, without success.

Related: 2,000-year-old Seed to Bear Fruit in Three Years - Huge Tomb Uncovered in Rome

ISTJ

This blog seen as an ISTJ (introverted, sensing, thinking, judging) blog by Typealyzer. The site analyzes the blog and provides a Myers Briggs type personality categorization. Some other blogs categorizations:

• Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog - ISTJ - The Duty Fulfillers (I am the author)


• xkcd blog: ESTP - The Doers


• Dooce: ESFP - The Performers


• Engineering &... (I am one of the authors): INTP - The Thinkers


• Daisy the Curly Cat: ESTP - The Doers


• Signal to Noise: ISTP - The Mechanics


• CSS4Free (I am the author): ESTP - The Doers

I don't give the categorization much weight but you might find it fun. I am not convinced it isn't almost totally random. A similar site guesses whether the author is a man or woman: "We have strong indicators that http://dooce.com/ is written by a man (99%)." "We guess http://blag.xkcd.com/ is written by a woman (50%), however it's quite gender neutral"

The categorization software seems to only use the home page (the exact url you use) to categorize the site. If it is effective at all (which I could see it being - for some categorizations anyway) increasing the pool of data used would likely help a great deal. My guess the current method also means the categorizations for sites could vary a great deal over time.

Notice how the Myers Briggs type "names" (for each group) are given a positive spin. Nothing like ESFJ - "The Lazy Couch Potatoes."

Google SearchWiki

Google now lets you customize your search results. You can move results around (change the order in which they appear) add your notes and remove sites you don't want to see. Others don't see your notes by default but they can choose to look at all the notes for a search.

Suggestions for Improving Google (Jan 2006)

1) Let me chose the type of files searched (exclude pdfs, word, power point..). Then if I can’t find what I want I can expand to include them. At the very least give me some way of making the type much more visible (I realize it is there now but I often click before my mind notices...).

2) Let me remove web sites from my default searches. I would imagine this could even be used to help Google’s normal search results by getting a sense of sites huge numbers of people “block” The same spam sites show up for searches and I would rather block them if Google can’t figure out how to do so.

3) Let me create site search lists, where I create lists of sties I want searched

The third one Google did a year or two ago. I have created several search sites based on that capability: investing search - science search - Management Search.

Related: Google Knows it is a 2.0 World - What Factors Should be Used to Determine Search Results - Google PageRank Update - Yahoo's Open Approach to Search

Manners

Re: Bad manners

One of the things I have grown to appreciate the importance of is some shared sense of manners. As a kid I thought worrying about which fork was used for salad was silly. Actually I still think that is silly but I didn't appreciate the annoyances caused by people that just don't care about how there selfishness impacts others when I was a kid.

Now I understand how a shared sense of common courtesy is important - to hold back people from being overly selfish (how about the idiots that insist on yelling into their cell phones in libraries, or when they are being waited on in a store, or wherever else they happen to be doing, for example).

And if I must comply with a few rules I find silly so I can exist in a society where others have a shared sense of unacceptable behavior that is ok with me. I now appreciate the idea of acceptable codes of conduct that people are encouraged to follow. I really didn't understand how selfish so many people would be without rules telling them not to interrupt others, or eating with their mouth open, or treating others with respect, or realizing you must share with others (toys, when you are a kid or time with other speakers...).

I tend to be a bit cantankerous, refusing to accept things just because that is the way things are. But I have grown to appreciate the wisdom of good manners. Within that acceptance there is still room for me (and those like me) to quibble with some of the rules of good manners, but the concept I now appreciate.

Monty Python on You Tube

Related: Ministry of Silly Walks

NORC

I heard a new acronym recently that I thought was amusing: NORC: Naturally Occurring Retirement Community. Essentially these are similar to "strange attractors" in chaos theory where retired people are naturally drawn to live. Perhaps areas with good medical facilities, near recreation and shopping areas, community centers, libraries... that can be walked to.

Related: retirement planning posts on the Curious Cat Investing blog - How Walkable is Your Prospective Neighborhood