floating atoll

Categorizing with spaces

Jon Udell's been paying a lot of attention recently to categorizing XHTML elements. Two of his readers suggested that he use the class attribute, delimiting the categories (if necessary) with spaces; this is also valid CSS. I'm in favor of it as well, as it has worked well for me in two other circumstances.

At del.icio.us/crysflame, I keep a notebook of interesting links. Each link has several pieces of metadata; of interest is the tags field. The content of this field is a space-delimited list of categories, so to speak; a blog post about Google's IPO would be assigned "blog business", while a paper about graphing social dynamics would get "science social math". It's worked out very well for me, so far; I can find things easily enough by selecting individual tags, though more complex slices of the data aren't provided.

With the release of iTunes 4.2, a new field was added: grouping. At first, it was thought of as a similar sort of categorization field as the tags field: a space-delimited list of single-word categories. It turns out, however, that Apple has other plans for this field. While this puts somewhat of a damper on efforts to sort through music easily, the comments field can be used instead.

filster: Linking reputations networks to email whitelists.

I've written a procmail filter that checks incoming mail against several identity networks; when the sender's email address is listed, it adds a new header: X-Reputation: friend. Currently, plugins are provided for Orkut, FOAFweb, Reputation Research Network, and CPAN.

# When someone's listed as a friend, add X-Reputation: friend.
:0 f
|/usr/local/sbin/filster.pl

An addition to SpamAssassin's local.cf allows mail from these senders to pass through more easily, while allowing super-spam (scoring 20+) to remain blocked.

header REPUTATION_FRIEND X-Reputation =~ /friend/
score REPUTATION_FRIEND -7.0

header REPUTATION_PEER X-Reputation =~ /peer/
score REPUTATION_PEER -5.0

Combined with SPF, it becomes quite feasible to tie one's social networking profiles into a list of all the email addresses from which you don't receive spam.

The code is included in the extended entry of this post; please be aware that it is to be considered pre-alpha 0.0.1 pencil draft code. That said, it works quite nicely once you've got the prerequisite perl modules installed.

Update: Added code to link into the Reputations Research Network. Neat :)

Update: Linked into the CPAN author database and an instance of the FOAFweb as well.

Continue reading "filster: Linking reputations networks to email whitelists."

Failure to communicate

A growing segment of the technologically-enabled population is developing what I would best describe as a "derision" towards those who are not technically competent, for whatever reason. This sentiment is immediately apparent in the technical support industry, but I've seen it from peers who've never been formally introduced to tech support as well.

The common factor in the derision appears to be a result of differences between the two groups of people involved: those who feel they have invested much time in competence, and those who they feel have not. Over time, repeated communication failures left unaddressed appear to result in a build-up of resentment towards one (or, more often, both) parties.

One of the clearest examples of this can be found in comics that focus on these conflicts, such as Dilbert, Userfriendly, or w00t; in each, one can find the viewpoint of the "geeks" trying (and commonly failing) to communicate with the "newbies" — often with disastrous results. One can draw parallels to the similarly frustrating interactions between management and employees, as well; the stress of communication failures doesn't seem to be limited to outside interactions.

Standing guard at the far extreme of this reaction is the "Bastard Operator From Hell" series. For many years the saga has enchanted those who have been burned by IT work; at the core of all the angst-laced stories is the story of someone who used to try until it was hopeless, but now has turned to the dark side. Many techs wish they could do some of the things in the stories to their users, even in a humorous, non-lethal manner.

Some efforts exist to counter this trend; the perl-beginners mailing list handles a steady flow of traffic in polite Q&A; with novice users; it's worked out wonderfully, thanks to Casey's efforts. Other beginner outreach efforts surely exist as well.

I'm not sure how to stem this tide of bitterness towards others; perhaps including social interaction training with computer training? It's a tough call, and I don't have the information to make it. Comments welcome; specific incidences of kindness would be nice to know about.

Right of passage

During last night's game of Monopoly, I introduced a new twist into the game: right of passage. Trading properties with other players always results in a hotel war, so I tried a new twist: instead of asking for large amounts of cash or trying to execute an imbalanced trade, I requested mutual right of passage: that is, neither of us pays the full rent on the property being traded; instead, only minimum rent will be charged.

It worked out spectacularly. The other player got a complete set, I had passage to one of the three hotels, and the game continued. As time passed, we both had several chances to exercise the new agreement. Near the end, I escaped a loss by landing on a space that couldn't charge me; while I lost, it was an unexpected reprieve.

The dynamic of last night's game was changed rather distinctly by the introduction of a new trade agreement. Give it a shot, the next time you find yourself playing Monopoly, and tell me how it goes. I'd love to hear about other variations out there, as well; the game's been around for a good chunk of a century, so there's probably a lot.

Reporting in eight directions

The community push to syndicate every viewpoint, every post, through semi-interoperable standards like RSS and Atom has resulted in a dramatic shift in the media power balance; media organizations can no longer embargo certain topics, hoping they'll fade into the background noise. In most media organizations (newspapers, radio stations, etc.), you can find topics that are "blacklisted"; I'd never turn to Fox News to hear more about how Fox nearly sued itself over a Simpsons episode; I'd never turn to a corporation's blog to read more about one of their internal memos. In each case, I can rightly presume – these days – that they'll put their short-term interests ahead of longer-term goals, such as honesty and forthrightness.

The problem with embargoes is that they have a dramatic effect, in a world where the media is controlled by a few, not many. I pick up my local newspaper these days to understand how they think people are thinking; they provide a good viewpoint, and state it clearly. That's only one viewpoint, though — and if something were to happen that was an embarrassment to its financial supporters, I'm reasonably certain it'd never see the light of day, either as an article or an editorial.

That's why I read hundreds of RSS feeds. These days, everyone has an opinion (1.5 million people at Blogger, 1 million people at LiveJournal); this results in a new problem, isolating viewpoints I'm interested in hearing more about. I can guarantee that if one person refuses to talk about an issue, another person will happily do so (and probably already has); with millions of viewpoints on millions of things to choose from, I can tap an endless supply of opinion and fact to educate myself more effectively than I ever could with my local paper alone.

It's like Master George Xu said: You must be moving in eight directions. If someone blocks you one direction, you have seven other directions to move in; no matter what direction is blocked, there's always several left to you.

Eventually my local paper will discover the joys of syndicating the news, either for free or for profit, and then I'll be able to include their selection of viewpoints in my daily education. They don't seem to right now, though, and while their viewpoints are valuable enough, they're not enough to pull me to their site more than once a month (or less) — or to subscribe to the print edition, their primary revenue source. Sometimes I miss the local news, though; I'd happily pay for a monthly electronic-only subscription, if one was offered.

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Identifying the supernodes

Based on the top 100 listed at scripting.com's community feedlist, one third of the news I read is read by the other 125 people. This list is generated from the top 100 feeds out of everyone who's uploaded OPML; you can do so, too. Just create an account and you're set to go.

With this data, you could identify what blogs the top 100 most-read bloggers *aren't* reading, read them, and feed them interesting tidbits that they might not see otherwise. You could customize your blogging for any audience. You could target only B-list bloggers. You could create a directed network graph of who's reading who, find out who isn't reading who, and fill in the gaps.

If this new service provided an aggregate dataset, I could teach people to become supernodes. Unfortunately, the aggregate dataset being collected by this service is not available for download. I suggest contacting Dave and asking him to please republish the aggregated information in XML form.

Subtle Times at Floating Atoll

Recently, I've noticed more flirting than usual from the girls I interact with in my daily life; standing at the bike rack, working at the coffee shop, playing pool at the bar; I'm rather unaccustomed to the attention. It seems to be unrelated to my physical appearance, or at least the parts of it that I can change (haircut and clothes); I surmise, then, that I've started broadcasting some sort of "low-key" signal expressing interest.

It could be the other way around, though; I may have just recently learned how to interpret some "low-key" signal that I'm not aware of, such that it seems that now everyone's flirting with me; maybe they already were, and I just couldn't tell. Maybe it's both.

I think that successful low-key flirting requires both parties to actively work towards communication, even if the total conversation consists of eye contact on your way out the door. It's hard to say, but I suspect that it's similar to how your olfactory sense works: every nerve (person) in your nose (life) reacts differently to a given smell (interaction), and it's up to your brain to somehow make some sense of those reports and react appropriately.

Each time you interact with someone you're attracted to, dedicate a few seconds of thought (not too much) to the interaction. Don't worry about extracting useful conclusions from it, just think back to the interaction, compare it to other interactions, and then get on with whatever you're doing. Occasionally you'll know for sure that someone was attracted to you — and as you think back, you might suddenly realize that an interaction you thought was friendly was actually a flirt.

Most social groups have some forum where discussion about interactions is accepted; stereotypically, girls go the bathroom and guys go the bar. Over time, each person assembles in their mind some subconscious compendium of low-key signs and probable meanings; sharing situations with others allows this to happen much more effectively, as you can air several opinions about any given situation. That's at the core of my current social interaction theory: first, interactions; second, interpretation; third, comparison.

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