] So welcome, and special thanks to those of you who
] arrived early and started colonizing the place before it
] was even completed. That really cheered me up, a couple
] of weeks ago. I don’t have to feel I’m moving into an
] empty (and dishearteningly brand-new) structure. There
] is already some human space here, the start of that
] sense of duration and habitation, and soon there’ll be,
] I hope, more.

] In spite of (or perhaps because of) my reputation as a
] reclusive quasi-Pynchonian luddite shunning the net (or
] word-processors, depending on what you Google) I hope
] to be here on a more or less daily basis.

Its live now!

William Gibson's Blog

... "You're not buying music, you're buying a key. That's what digital rights management does: it enables business models."

If this war is indeed the Vietnam of the Internet, we may just be on the verge of the Tet Offensive.

Studios Using Digital Armor

] Anyone is welcome to grab my crotch, I don't require
] dinner and a movie, just ask me. Is that asking too much?
] You wanna grab my crotch, please ask. Does that seem like
] a crazy person to you?" I had about 4 of them standing
] around. Finally Metro PD shows up. It's really
] interesting. First of all, the cop is a BIG P&T fan and
] that ain't hurting. Second, I get the vibe that he is WAY
] sick of these federal leather-sniffers. He has that vibe
] that real cops have toward renta-cops. This is working
] WAY to my advantage, so I play it.

Funny story. Same situation as that "Coffee or Tea" story thats been going around, only Penn handled the situation better.

Sounds fair to me.. You should ask before grabbing someone's crank. You know, give them a heads up.. "I'm going to grab your crotch." Totally reasonable solution to what appears to be a common problem at airport security checks.

Penn loves your freedom and his disposable income

Here they are, all in one place.

Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of 2002

] "The people are now the arbiters of the truth. And this
] is as it should be. The only people who are purely
] interested in the truth are the citizens at large. They
] are, therefore, the only people who can be trusted to
] find it."

A short rant Decius wrote about the impact that weblogs will have on the media.

Weblogs and Democracy

I guess I should make some comments about these, considering I made them.. :)

Before anyone sends me any feedback, please keep in mind, whats posted here is my proof of concept. Infact, if you look at the second graph, you notice its datasource is labeled "yeah.stat". That should indicate the half-assed mannor in which they came together. I must admit, I hope these don't make it out to a large audience (just watch, this is what gets us Slashdotted), because they are not up to my standards. I know, I know.. Release early, release often.. I heard you Eric..

I'm working on a new version of my graphing scripts that will do a number of things these didn't, such as using colors to convey link properties and topic information. I'm backed up with a bunch of work, so it may take a while.

There is one minor error in Decius's description. This graph does not take topics into account at all. I threw out all that information when generating these. The links do convey direction, so thats why some nodes have two links between them. If I wasn't throwing out topic information, there would be a number of nodes with over 6 links connecting them. [Update: Little unclear here. The dot graph dosen't take into account topics, other one does. My error..]

Expect the next set of graphs to look very different.

I would like to see people discuss the privacy ramifications of these graphs, as they see them. Since these graphs are generated using the most private of information, users reputation tables, I would like to see a discussion about this. Everyone involved with MemeStreams can easily be described as a "privacy zealot", so we are concerned, and we are listening.

In particular.. In this format, when private information is aggerated, does it become statistical information that can be desiminated without infringing on user's privacy? And can anyone think of a way that an individual user's reputation information could be mined from this graph?

Visualizing MemeStreams

] In other words, e-marketplaces are media as much for
] social interactions as they are for financial
] transactions. That is, who you are and what you're doing
] are as important as what you want to buy or what you want
] to sell. It's no accident that eBay is still around and
] making money for both itself and its, ahem, community of
] auctioneers. Your reputation on eBay can--and often
] does--matter far more than what you are attempting to
] either buy or sell.
]
] "Reputation marks the spot where technology and
] cooperation converge," Rheingold writes. "The most
] long-lasting social effects of technology always go
] beyond the quantitative efficiency of doing old things
] more quickly or more cheaply. The most profoundly
] transformative potential of connecting human social
] proclivities to the efficiency of information
] technologies is the chance to do new things together, the
] potential for cooperating on scales and in ways never
] before possible."

/me waves his arms around as if he is casting a spell.

Preferential Attachment and the Rising Meme

] Cybercafes in southern California are fast gaining a
] reputation as the 21st century equivalent of the wild
] West saloon after an escalating number of violent
] incidents led to a gunfight outside an Internet cafe this
] week, in which one youth was shot in the leg and another
] suffered head wounds.

This isn't a problem with video games or cybercafes. This is a problem with southern California.

Fights turn LA cybercafes into wild West saloons of old

666 + 1337 = 2003

] But the two heads of state who drew the most attention
] and applause were Fidel Castro of Cuba and the embattled
] president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, who recently invited
] Mr. da Silva to join him and Mr. Castro in what he called
] a Latin American "axis of good."

Well, they have a sense of humor..

Axis of Good