The Disemvoweller

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Xeni Jardin is one of the co-editors of Boing Boing.  She posted a piece on Edge.org called Online Communities Rot Without Daily Tending by Human Hands that essentially fleshes out the thinking behind her very descriptive title. (Hat tip to Ed Cone for pointing to it).  Among the very smart things she wrote I found this bit to be flat out brilliant:

Finally, this year, we resurrected comments on the blog, with the one thing that did feel natural. Human hands.      

We hired a community manager, and equipped our comments system with a secret weapon: the "disemvoweller." If someone’s misbehaving, she can remove all the vowels from their screed with one click. The dialogue stays, but the misanthrope looks ridiculous, and the emotional sting is neutralized.

Now, once again, the balance mostly works. I still believe that there is no fully automated system capable of managing the complexities of online human interaction — no software fix I know of. But I’d underestimated the power of dedicated  human attention.

I suspect Ed is hunting for a Typepad version of the disemvoweller as we speak.  If I got more than my normal quota of one comment per millennium I probably would.

THE Davis Cup in Winston-Salem

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Daviscup
In the spring of 07 the US played Spain in a Davis Cup quarterfinal tie here in Winston-Salem.  The US won and then went on to win the Cup itself in December.  It seems the Cup, the actual physical Cup, is on a Victory Tour and today it’s in Winston-Salem.  If you hurry you can see it at the Ski & Tennis Station on Stratford Road until 4:30 today.  You can also see it at the Joel Coliseum during the BYU-Wake Forest basketball game tonight.

Celeste and I had lunch at Mayberry’s and then toddled on over to see the thing at the Ski & Tennis Station.  It’s huge and it’s fun to look at the inscriptions from the ties that were played literally decades ago.  I took particular pleasure in looking at the ties from the 60s that featured the great Australian teams with players like Stolle, Emerson, Newcombe and Roach.  Of course I was looking for the American teams to, but since it started to get crowded with people wanting to take their picture with the Cup I needed to get out of the way before I found them. 

Kids as Oracles

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Fred Wilson has a great post titled What My Kids Tell Me About the Future of Media in which he evaluates the current and future state of media based on the consumption habits of his kids.  Here’s an excerpt:

1) When they walk into a DVD store, they rarely walk out with a movie.
It’s almost always the first season of a TV show they’ve heard is good.
They’ll go see a movie in the theater but don’t really enjoy watching
movies at home or on their computers. They feel that TV shows are
better written and more interesting.  And the entertainment value is
certainly more compelling. For roughly $40US, they got something like
25 episodes of Brothers and Sisters…

2) They will play games whenever given the opportunity. My oldest,
Jessica, favors brick breaker on her blackberry and admits to be close
to addicted. She claims to know kids who play it under the desk at
school…

4) The only time they listen to radio is when we have it on in the
car for short rides. If it’s a long ride, we almost always plug in the
iPod and they’ll take turns DJ’ing…

5) They still read books the way we did as kids. That doesn’t seem to have changed a bit…

6) They love magazines and read all the fashion, cooking, and gossip
magazines they can get their hands on. They read about the same topics
online and on TV (particularly food), but they show no signs of moving
away from the magazine. In fact, I detect a growing obsession with
magazines among my family. They literally fight over a new issue the
day it arrives.

7) They don’t seem particularly interested in newspapers. They get most
of their news on the Internet. Josh will read the sports pages over
breakfast and the girls will glance at the front page. Important
current events and politics will sometimes generate enough interest
that they’ll read the front page portion of a story and then launch
into a discussion over breakfast. But I don’t see a commitment to
newspapers like we have in my generation and my parents generation.

If you’re interested in the future of media I’d definitely read the rest of his post.  I’d say that my kids’ habits closely mirror his, and I’ve been struck by how my kids also enjoy books and magazines but only look at the newspaper when they have to cut out an article for a current events project at school. 

One thing that is intriguing to me is how much more fun my oldest finds gaming when it’s done online against lots of different players.  He’ll still play games offline if that’s his only choice, but he gets really charged up for the XBox Live games and it almost doesn’t matter which game it is.  And the thought that there are millions of kids (and adults) like him out there truly boggles my mind.  I think that’s a truly game-changing, culture-shifting phenomenon.

How the kids watch TV is also interesting.  If they’re
worn from a long week of school they might veg out for a couple of
hours in front of the tube, but really they just watch it in short
bursts and then head to the computer to fiddle around online, or read a
magazine or read a book.  They aren’t as likely to passively watch TV
as we were growing up back in the 70s and 80s, probably because they
have more choices but also I think because that they get interaction
when they go online.  Actually going outside and interacting with other
kids at quaint pastimes like, oh, football or basketball is another
story entirely.

As for music, in our house the kids seem to find their music via word of mouth, whether it’s online or offline.  I know this because I have a Rhapsody account set up and they have to come to me to purchase songs to download to their MP3 players.  When I ask them where they find the songs the answer is always "It was on some friends MySpace" or "So and so told me about it at school" or "my best friend let me listen to it on her iPod on the bus".  In my day we found most of our music from listening to the radio in addition to recommendations from friends and being bombarded with someone else’s music selections bellowing out of his boombox.  Also, if you wanted just one song from an artist you had to buy the album or get a friend to tape a song off of their album (and later CD) for you.  Now with services like Rhapsody the kids mix and match what they want: one Black Eyed Peas tune, a couple of Fergie tracks, etc.  I think they’d fall over if they had to spend $15 to buy a CD that has just three songs they like.  For that matter I’m right there with them.

I’d say it behooves all of us to watch how our kids operate because in a few years the media companies are going to change how they deliver their wares to meet those habits and we’ll be following their lead.

Next: Dorothy and Toto Renditioned to Guantanamo

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Fec is reading The One Percent Doctrine and has pretty much sold me on what my next read is going to be by sharing an anecdote that contains the following:

The book tells of a specific incident after 9/11 where the FBI
briefed the president about a group of middle-easterners attempting to
buy a large warehouse in Kansas. Due to the Cheney doctrine of acting
upon even the slightest suspicion, effort was expended to find out what
these characters were up to. In days subsequent to the report, the
president, as was his custom, asked for progress in the investigation.

The briefing FBI agent, succumbing to the president’s penchant for
operational bravado replied, “Mr. President, the FBI has Kansas
surrounded.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Bush replied. Later, it was determined
that the suspects were planning to run flea markets and needed a
location to store their goods.

Read the rest of Fec’s post because, well, it’s good.

Based on a Couple Days Experience I Highly Recommend Powerline Networking

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Despite my earlier lamentations about running a home office network I do want to make a recommendation for anyone that is setting up a network in their house.  Definitely check out powerline network gear as an alternative to wireless.  FYI, powerline networks allow you to plug a network cable from your router into a small converter that plugs into any power outlet in your house, then you plug other converters into any other outlet in the house and run network cables from those to the computers you want to connect to.

My office is the hub for our home network and is located on the top floor of the house.  The kids’ computer is just down the hall from mine and Celeste’s computer is downstairs.  Both are close enough that they shouldn’t have an issue with wireless signal strength but unfortunately they do.  Celeste in particular would have very sketchy connections that varied from moderate to very weak, and that made her online experience not-so-pleasant.

Last week I was reading a small-biz magazine and came across an article that said that the latest generation of powerline networking gear had eliminated a lot of the problems experience with the first generation gear back in the late 90s and now offered more reliable and faster connections than most wireless networks. 

Xe102gcropped
On Friday I was in Staples and saw that they had a Netgear Wall-Plugged Ethernet Extender Kit – XE102G for $99.95.  Since that price matched what I found in my online searches I snagged it and brought it home.  The setup was incredibly easy:

  1. Plug one adapter into a wall socket in my office.
  2. Plug a network cable from our modem/router into the adapter.
  3. Plug the second adapter into a wall socket in Celeste’s office.
  4. Plug a network cable from the adapter into Celeste’s computer.

I did this and fired up her browser and found that she was connected and had great connection speed.  The only problem that we’ve found is that certain appliances, like a vacuum or hairdryer, can slow down the connection by providing a little interference but it’s not a major issue.

According to Netgear’s info we can connect up to five devices in a similar manner so I’m probably going to get adapters for the kids’ computer and for the XBox 360 that the oldest son is saving up to buy.  That way he can game online and maybe we’ll see him on the weekends instead of having him disappear for two days to a friend-with-XBox 360’s house.

A couple of things to point out:

  • You have to plug the adapters directly into the wall, and not into surge protectors.
  • A great advantage in addition to the simplicity of these things is that they are more secure than wireless.  Unless someone plugs into your house’s power you shouldn’t have any security issues outside of normal internet security.  In other words your neighbor can’t piggyback your connection unless they plug an adapter into your house and then run a network cable to their computer.
  • The exception to the security issue might be if you live in an apartment building.
  • If you’re in a really old house without upgraded wiring you might have issues.
  • I found this much easier to set up than any wireless network I’ve had in the house.  Who knows what the long-term performance will be but the short term has been fantastic.

Home Office Fun

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Working out of a home office has some definite upsides and downsides.  The upsides include not having to shave every day and working in sweats.  The largest downside is being your own tech support.  Take this morning (please)…I get up to my office and find that I cannot get to my email or get my browser to "find" the web.  Strangely my VOIP (Vonage) phone works and I can access my client’s VPN (virtual private network).  To rectify my situation I resort to all my old tricks:

  1. Re-boot the computer.  No joy.
  2. Unplug the modem/router for a couple of minutes.  No joy.
  3. Unplug the modem/router and the Vonage converter for a couple of minutes.  No joy.
  4. Re-boot and unplug everything for a couple of minutes.  No joy.
  5. Start cursing. No joy, but some relief.

I run down to Celeste’s office to see if she can connect.  No problemo for her, so that means that the problem’s with my PC.  Using her computer I Google my issue and get some tips involving manually resetting DNS’s, pinging and other nefarious and hideously technical actions.  I continue cursing.

Upon returning to my office I decide to plug the cable from my router directly into my computer, thus bypassing Vonage.  Voila I’m online.  Still haven’t totally resolved the issue, but hopefully I’m getting close.

Still cursing.

links for 2008-01-04

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What Will They Do With Mr. Snow Now?

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** Update: 1/3/08 – In reading the print version of the story in this morning’s Winston-Salem Journal I found more information that wasn’t in the early edition of the story on their website yesterday.  Apparently there’s a very real possibility that Mr. Snow will be returned to the classroom according to schools Superintendent Don Martin.  (I also might have missed it my reading of the earlier version, but I don’t think so).  Either way I think that’s great news.**

Lewisville science teacher Alan Snow was accused of improprieties twice last school year.  The first accusations were leveled in October, 2006 and he was suspended for a couple of months before being cleared and returned to work in early 2007.  Then just weeks before the end of school he was accused again in May, 2007 and suspended on June 1.  By law the suspension could only last 90-days (see August 19, 2007 article) so the school system had to either return him to work or let him go.  The risk in letting him go was that if he was cleared of charges then he could sue the school system for wrongful termination, and the risk in returning him to work was that if the allegations were substantiated then the school system would have some very upset parents who would accuse the school system of putting their children at risk unnecessarily. The school system’s solution was to give him a job as a kind of floating advisor within the school system, a job that they assured parents would limit his exposure to students.

Today the Winston-Salem Journal is reporting that 22nd District DA Garry Frank is not going to charge Mr. Snow with anything and the case will be closed due to insufficient evidence to prosecute Mr. Snow.  In September Mr. Frank was asked by Forsyth County DA Tom Keith to take over the investigation.

I think there are a few questions that need to be addressed by the school system:

  1. Will Mr. Snow be allowed to return to teaching?  If not, then they need to explain why a person who has been accused of something yet has not been proven to have done anything wrong can be denied the furtherance of his career.  Sure he still has his job, but that’s like saying that an executive at a Fortune 500 company still has a job after being involuntarily transferred to the mail room.  He might still have a job but he’s lost his career.
  2. What kind of procedure, if any, is the school system going to implement to better protect teachers and other staff from false allegations while keeping the children’s safety a priority?
  3. Is the school system going to investigate those that accused Mr. Snow?  Some have said that the first allegations against Mr. Snow were made by teachers who didn’t like him.  Were they investigated or censured in any way?  If the accusations were made by fellow teachers shouldn’t their names also be made public?  Why should they be protected by anonymity?  Obviously if allegations were made by children they should remain anonymous.
  4. Is there anything the school system can do to speed up the investigation process?  For those keeping score Mr. Snow has had to wait about 7 months to be cleared of these latest allegations. My understanding is that the school system turns these investigations over to the sheriff/DA and
    then waits for results before proceeding with their own
    investigations.  The sheriff says that his office has higher
    priorities like investigating murders.  The result is that the teacher being
    investigated is in the horrible position of being publicly accused of
    something that is only vaguely hinted at, knowing full well that
    everyone in the community is assuming the worst, and with no recourse
    other than to wait to be charged or cleared.
  5. Why do they not detail the allegations publicly?  I suspect they think they are protecting the rights of the teacher and the accuser, but I think that they do more harm than good.  If the details aren’t provided then the public is naturally going to assume the worst.  On the other hand maybe it is a good idea to leave the details out, but do they or can they allow the accused to opt for the release of the details?  At least that way if the person is accused of cursing out a student rather than touching them inappropriately he can get that information out there so no one looks at him as a child molester when he goes to the grocery store. Since the accuser’s name is not provided at all there’s no risk to that person either way.

For some background here’s links to articles in the Winston-Salem Journal and items on this blog about Mr. Snow’s charges:

Winston-Salem Journal
10/31/2006 – Lewisville Science Teacher, Principal Suspended with Pay
12/14/2006 -School Misconduct Probe Ongoing
12/30/2006 – Principal of Lewisville Elementary to Return After 2-Month Suspension
1/17/2007 – Parent Confronts Board About Plans for Teacher
1/18/2007 – Suspended Lewisville Teacher to Return to Work
6/1/2007 – Teacher Suspended for Second Time
8/30/2007 – Suspended Teacher Gets Transfer to Non-Classroom Job
1/2/2008 – Suspended Lewisville Teacher Will Not Be Charged With Crime

Blog
10/31/2006 – Trouble at School
1/17/2007 – Different Trouble at School
6/4/2007 – More on Lewisville Teacher Alan Snow
6/29/2007 – More Fallout from the Mr. Snow Situation at Lewisville Elementary?
8/31/2007 – Mr. Snow Back at Work, but Not at Lewisville Elementary

links for 2008-01-02

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The Year in Review – Evergreen Version

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The year that was.  Lots of people were born, lots of people died.  Lots of people did some really smart things, lots of people did some really stupid things. Somewhere there was too much rain, somewhere there was drought.  Some world leaders acted like assholes, and others acted even assholier. Some people complained about the weather, and others just complained. Some people starved, others were gluttonous. Some people fought, others loved each other and most did both. The earth orbited the sun once, the sun didn’t notice and now we start over.