] Since the earliest research into the the English Language
] as spoken in North America was begun by Noah Webster in
] the early 18th century, the regional variations in
] dialect have always been the most challenging and
] difficult to explain field. Since the development of
] carbonated beverage in 1886, one of linguistic
] geography's most important and least investigated
] phenomena has been the sharp regional divisions in the
] use of the terms "pop" and "soda." Due to the domination
] of hard-line conservative lingusitic geographers in such
] leading institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford and
] the University of the West Indies, this dilemma has been
] swept under the rug . . . until now. Using the new
] technologies of the Internet and the World Wide Web, I
] and my colleagues at the California Institute of
] Technology and Lewis & Clark College are undertaking a
] bold new research into this fascinating area.

I memed the dialect survey at the bottom of this page a few months ago (search memestreams for dialect). I wonder is there is any relationship between the term "bog rolling" and the term "blog rolling."

The Pop vs. Soda Page

] The meeting is free and open to the public. Please
] pre-register at http://register.icann.org. ICANN also
] plans to webcast the meeting live. Further details
] including an agenda, background materials and webcast
] arrangements are available at http://secsac.icann.org.

There is a list of meeting attendees on the website. We'll be able to watch ICANN do nothing LIVE on the INTERNET! That is assuming we don't mistype the URL...

ICANN | Announcement | 30 September 2003

] On its own, Allen's experience seems easy to dismiss, but
] it's part of a pattern, the voting activists say, that
] reveals the voting industry's desire to keep people off.
] The worst transgression, one that almost everyone
] interviewed pointed to, occurred in a conference call on
] Sept. 16. The agenda for that meeting was sent to
] participants before the call, and it clearly states that
] the first order of business would be to approve new
] members, after which the committee would decide whether
] or not the draft standard was ready to be approved. The
] new members up for approval that day were Jim Adler,
] Alice Allen, Chuck Corry, David Dill, G.D. Miller, Ted
] Selker and Barbara Simons -- many of whom are in favor of
] verifiable audit trails in voting machines.
]
] But when people got on the phone that day, Vern Williams,
] a voting security expert at SAIC, an information
] technology consulting firm, suggested that the agenda be
] switched so that new members were approved after the
] committee voted on the draft standard -- a move that
] would ensure that the new members would have no say on
] the proposed standard. Williams' motion passed. Then the
] committee decided to open the draft standard for voting.
] And after that, the new members were approved.
]
] The activists were outraged at this maneuver. "I kept
] saying, 'We've been disenfranchised!'" says Simons, a
] computer scientist who worries about the security of
] electronic voting systems. Simons and others tried to
] reopen the vote on the standard, but one of the committee
] leaders then proposed a motion to adjourn the meeting.
] According to Roberts Rules of Order, an adjournment
] motion takes precedence over other motions. The motion
] won by one vote, and the meeting was adjourned.

More stupid voting tricks from those who would have to significantly alter their software to make it secure. I have to wonder, though, if the systems are this insecure, how hard could it have been to put it in place initially? Come on, even webcam girls have polls on their websites.

Anyway, it's another good look at how the good ol' boys club is trying to keep the status quo.

Details of the IEEE Voting scandal...

] The Wollemi Pine, a plant from the Jurassic age which
] survived in a single isolated Australian grove, is set
] for an amazing comeback.
]
] It was once thought to be extinct, but in 2005 small
] plants cultivated from the pines will go on sale.

wilpig:
] While the story for this is neat. I just love the title of
] the article.

I think the meant potted.... Doh!

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Jurassic pot plants on sale soon

Weblog run by some guy who is building a home made railgun. This was always the holy grail of geek projects, but we never seemed to have the time.

Jason Rollette Railgun Blog

Rattle just observed to me that Verisign's actions toward the Internet community were sort of like Bush's actions toward the UN. There may be more to that then you think. The moral standards of acceptable behavior are set by the leadership. If the leader says its ok to do a certain thing, then people will rationalize away any natural inhibition that they might have toward it. "He thinks its ok to do this and he is obviously smarter then me, so I'm going to ignore that nagging little voice and go ahead..."

The way we've been throwing our weight around and doing things that are of dubious responsibility simply because we can and the people who ought to check us really aren't in a position to do that.... Well that rubs off. A manager thinking of doing something this dramatic might have thought twice about it in a time when one feared reprisals from millions of angry people. That fear is the heart of democracy. You can't screw the people because they are collectively more powerful then you. You respect them.

I think we are in the process of loosing that fear.

Today, you take it when you can, and if millions are angry, fuck 'em, unless they have the power to do something about it, and you'll push back every step of the way. If you really are in a better position they are going to have to back down at some point...

Verisign is going to ignore new RFCs. They are going to ignore and fight ICANN rulings. They are going to push this and push this and push this.

Ultimately, unless some court orders them to put up, they will leave the engineering community with the choice of accepting their positions as owners of the internet, or fragmenting the internet so that no one can control it.

Verisign is betting that fragmentation is worse then authoritarian rule. It probably is in this case.

We just went through the new age of "boom," where everyone forgets that booms always bust. Now we begin the new age of empire, where everyone forgets that empires are always violently overthrown.

The reason we still have wars is that greed is more powerful then reason.

] Which is to say I have become the expert on the origins
] of Murphy's Law. This happened by accident and
] if I'd known what the consequences would be of
] sticking my nose into it - how I'd draw the
] wrath of Chuck Yeager, get caught in the middle of a
] nasty 20-year feud, and nearly wind up in a hospital bed
] - I probably wouldn't have bothered.

The history of Murphy's Law

] How is a meme created? You can sit back and observe the
] spread of a new fashion, a new slang word, a new way of
] walking or talking - and let a meme burst onto the scene
] in its own good time. An example would be the current
] epidemic of basically, which, as a synonym for er, has
] infected a ludicrously high proportion of sentences now
] uttered by English speakers. But the ultimate test in
] science is experiment: You don't just wait for something
] to happen and observe it, you make it happen.

Richard Dawkins tries to create a new word for atheists. He misses that memes don't work if they are forced. People are too adapted to resisting cheap marketing messages to adopt any saying they are formally requested to adopt. I predict a short life for "bright."

Wired 11.10: Brights

] Cyan Callahan, an employee at San Francisco interactive
] marketing firm Mindshare Design, signed up for the
] national Do Not Call List the very first week it was
] announced in late June. Like many Americans, Callahan was
] receiving an average of three or four calls a day from
] telemarketers and was fed up. More than 45 million irate
] citizens have signed up since then. Though the list
] doesn't go into effect until Oct. 1, Callahan says she
] has already had more nights of total peace and quiet. "In
] the last two months, I've come home and thought: 'Wow, my
] phone's not ringing. I like this.'"

They spelled her name wrong!

BW Online | Where Do Not Call Does Not Count

] The American Teleservices Association isn't laughing at
] Dave Barry, not after the Pulitzer Prize-winning humor
] columnist for The Miami Herald listed the group's
] telephone number in his Aug. 31 column and sparked a
] flood of phone calls to the group's offices.

Yahoo! News - Barry Column Turns Table on Telemarketers