March 2007

Over at the Tucows Blog, I’m writing a series of follow-up articles that expands or explains some of the things covered in the article by our CEO Elliot Noss, Questions to Ask Before You Pick Your Domain Name Registrar.

The first article in the series, titled Domains Explained, Part 1: Registrants, Registries, Registrars and Resellers, explains some the confusingly similar terms registrant, registry and registrar as well as the often-misunderstood term reseller. It starts with the handy diagram below and then explains each term in detail.

[Cross-posted to Global Nerdy.]

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Hey, something to watch while on the elliptical machine on Monday morning: Chris Locke writes that he met Kathy Sierra on Thursday night — on camera, by way of a CNN interview. According to the email sent to Locke by CNN, unless some “breaking news of a serious status” occurs, the interview will be broadcast on CNN American Morning (which airs from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern).

Don’t worry if you’re too busy in the morning to catch the segment. Someone will upload the Sierra/Locke summit segment to YouTube within an hour of its initial broadcast, and the analyses should appear online shortly afterwards.

[Cross-posted to Global Nerdy]

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In response to what happened to Kathy Sierra (see here, here and here), Andy Carvin has declared today “Stop Cyberbullying Day”.

He writes:

I think we should all set aside some time that day to address cyberbullying. Write a blog post pointing to online resources about cyberbullying. Post a podcast about personal experiences. Create your own public service announcement about the dangers of cyberbullying and post it on YouTube. Then tag it with the phrase stopcyberbullying. If you’re uploading it somewhere that lets you type in your own tags, be sure to include it. If you’re blogging and don’t have tagging built into your blog, you can embed it with the HTML code shown here so it will be picked up by search tools like Technorati. The more people we can get blogging about it, the better, because that will catch the attention of search tools and social media websites, spreading awareness further. It will also allow us to aggregate everyone’s posts so we can see who’s participating.

And if you don’t have a blog or don’t want to post anything online, you can still get involved. You can use some of the educational resources on sites like cyberbully.org or Nancy Willard’s website in your classroom that day, or with your kids at home. You could hunt down other resources and share them at your school, your church, your community group. You could even write a letter to the editor or to your political representatives and tell them what you think.

Of course, one day isn’t enough to change everything. And there are other days of the year where other people are fighting to raise awareness, like Safe Internet Day. But it’s a start. And perhaps we can use some of our energies that day to discuss what we can do to make online safety a topic that we deal with on a regular basis. So I’ve created an online social network called Stop Cyberbullying using a free tool called Ning. Anyone who joins can post resources and share ideas, including text and video. I’ll also use the site to aggregate a stream of what people are doing in support of Stop Cyberbullying Day, assuming people accept my challenge to take action on Friday.

So without further ado, I declare this Friday Stop Bullying Day. If we don’t take a stand, who will? -andy

There’s been some discussion in the comments to an earlier post on the topic. I’m a bit too busy to write in depth about what I think, but if you’ve got two cents on the subject, feel free to post a comment.

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Remember that xkcd comic featuring the time traveller from the future who liked to dress in “period costumes” of early 21st century bloggers?

Well, we’ve now got a temporal causality loop on our hands. On Tuesday night, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation presented Cory Doctorow (a friend and former boss of mine) with a Pioneer Award, they were inspired the comic (which has made its way around geek circles) and also presented him with a red cape, goggles and a balloon:

Congrats, Cory!

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It looks as though May will be a busy conference month for me, what with my booked ticket for RailsConf (Portland, Oregon) and likely-but-not-yet-confirmed trips to ISPCON (Orlando, Florida) and Mesh (thankfully, in Toronto) conferences, shown in the screenshot of my calendar below:

I still have to fit Toronto Technology Week and an as-yet-unscheduled DemoCamp into that month.

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Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

My friend Paul is always looking for a newer, better routine for his tae kwon do black belt demonstrations. He might want to consider this!

I like the dog — it looks as though he’s asking “Ooh! That looks fun! Can I kick the bus too? Can I? Huh? Can I? Huh?”

Or perhaps he’s saying “No, you idiot! I said that to win the game, you have to defeat the BOSS!“

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Here’s a Google Map with directions for “Toronto to London”. Pay particular attention to step 26:

Click the map to see its Google Maps page.

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Click the photo to see it on its original page.

The photo above comes from SFGate.com and was captioned with this:

Disturbing decal: School official Cyndee Garcia shows off a sticker that will soon be placed in various locations in Orosi, Calif., in hope of dissuading mothers from abandoning their babies. Three newborns, all genetically linked to the same mother, have been left in the same neighborhood in the last few years. The most recent one, a girl, died.

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The “Just Gay Enough” Doctrine

Back when I was a single guy and lived in what I think was one of the Accordion City’s most swingin’ bachelor pads, a friend of mine invited me to be a “contestant” on a television show called Love by Design. It was a home decoration show disguised as a “Dating Game” show in which a bachelorette would visit three guys’ apartments while they were away and select her date based solely on decor. She and the designer host would then redecorate the lucky guy’s place, and only after the redecoration would they meet.

Being bachelors, my housemate Paul and I did a reasonable job of sticking to a housekeeping doctrine we ended up calling “Just Gay Enough”. Our motto was “We cook, we clean, we don’t have sex with guys,” with the Standard Seinfeld Disclaimer implied in that statement. We even kept a couple of things around to accommodate the ladies, such as a pretty good collection of herbal teas and a couple of Sex and the City DVDs (which, come to think of it, I haven’t watched in about three years).

I can’t remember which particular young lady asked us questions about the “Just Gay Enough” doctrine, but I do remember the conversation going like this:

Her: Who cleans?

Paul: Both me and Joey. We have a schedule over here [points to fridge], and we have a cleaning assignment once a week.

Her: And you cook dinner for each other?

Me: Yeah, we take turns.

Her: How do you work out the grocery bill?

Me: We split it evenly for things we both use.

Her: [Impressed at such an arrangement by two paragons of dude-itude] So you make dinner for each other, huh? How about lunch? Do you pack each other’s lunch?

Paul: [Thinks for a moment] No. That would be too gay.

Me: I agree. Besides “I pack Paul’s lunch” sounds like some kind of sex euphemism.

Paul: Yeah, that’s too gay.

Her: But what’s the difference? Making dinner for each other isn’t too gay, but making lunch for each other is?

[Paul and I ponder this conundrum for a moment.]

Paul: Too gay.

Me: Oh yeah, way too gay.

I can’t explain the logic behind it, but I can cook dinner for Paul but would feel icky packing a sack lunch for him. I can’t even type “Packing Paul’s sack lunch” without cracking up.

“It’s Not You, It’s Your Apartment.”

Over in the New York Times, there’s an article titled It’s Not You, It‘s Your Apartment that looks at a few people in New York whose dating lives have been confounded by their home decor. There’s the guy with the really old, really tacky sheets:

There’s also the guy with the lego sets and Sonic the Hedgehog action figure collection:

Did I mention that the guy with the cheesy sheets also has a giant Raggedy Ann doll and a collection of “glamour shots” (whatever that means) of his ex-girlfriends?

And here’s a strange case: the guy who had to break up with his boyfriend because his place was too nice:

The story’s pretty amusing. Go check it out.

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This one’s been getting buzz among music fans: a YouTube video featuring Kermit the Frog performing Hurt. Don’t show this to any Sesame Street fans; Kermit’s “heroin junkie” scenes will traumatize them.

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[Wednesday, March 28, 2007, 5:17 p.m. EDT -- Edited to correct grammar and to boldface a very important point.]

There’s a reason that I like to call Doc Searls “the adult supervision of the blogosphere”. He’s taken a reasoned and very measured approach to the Kathy Sierra affair in his posting titled Getting Past the Bottom of What Went Wrong. Now he reprints a letter by Alan Herrell, a.k.a. The Head Lemur, which sheds some light on what happened. Here’s the most relevant snippet:

…just about every online account that i have has been compromised. Most importantly my digital identity and user/password for typepad and wordpress. I have been doing damage control, for my clients. How the fuck i got to be part of this mess is revolting.

The Kathy Sierra mess is horrific. I am not who ever used my identity and my picture!!

Be sure to read the whole thing, and pass it around.

This brings me to an important point, one that I should have made extremely explicit, especially in light of the strong emotions that this subject brings up. The evidence for the “who did it” part is still circumstantial, and it’s awfully tempting to point fingers and name names — it’s slander, and it ain’t right (Kathy herself did this, but I’m going to wait a little longer before I comment).

For the moment, the best points to discuss are:

• Balancing freedom of speech and its unintended consequences
• Identity and anonymity
• Snark, satire, lampooning and so on — where do each of us draw the “too far” line, and why?
• The nature of the commentary so far

Let me know what you think. There’s been a little-back and forth going on in the comments to an earlier post — take a look and if you’re so inlcined, feel free to join in.

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The latest articles on Global Nerdy are…

• Samsung Introduces 64GB Flash Drive: Compared to a conventional 80GB hard drive, Samsung’s new 64 gig solid state hard drive has 4 times the read speed, 6 times the write speed, 1/4 of the weight, 1/3 to 1/15 the power consumption and no moving parts.
• Developer Links: Some of the most interesting (to me, anyway) links for developers I fdound yesterday.
• Microsoft to bulk up ad business with DoubleClick? “Microsoft is late to the digital ad game, and, like all of the latecomers to the business, is having a difficult time making up ground with a direct assault on Google’s search lead. A deal for DoubleClick, however, would buy them significant distribution of more traditional digital ad formats, while they build the portal/destination business at Yahoo!’s and AOL’s expense.”
• When MS Said They Were Adding Transparency to Windows, I Don’t Think They Meant This: Microsoft’s PR company’s dossier on a reporter doing a story on Microsoft gets emailed to that reporter; hilarity ensues.

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“We don’t take kindly to ‘your kind’ ’round here is a stock bit of dialogue from a zillion movies set in a small town in the southern U.S., but it’s also the opener for this warning that a guy in Franklin, Tennessee (home of Veggie Tales!) hands out to those who dare to break their U-turn laws…

Click to the photo to see it on its Flickr page.

Here’s the text of the letter:

Dear U-Turn Laverne,

We don’t take kindly to “your kind” in this small town. U-turns were outlawed way bak in the horse and buggy days which obviously you are too young to remember. We were are [sic] appalled when we witnessed your u-turn almost directly in front of the old movie theatre. Let this be a friendly warning “OUTTA TOWNER” that we will kindly perform a citizen’s arrest if we cathc you even appearing to pull another stupid stunt like that. Your lic. plate has been recorded & you have been fore-warned “buster”

Signed,

Concerned citizen’s [sic] for a better-safer Franklin!!

If they’d pulled a three-point turn, I think the “Concerned citizen’s for a better-safer Franklin” would’ve simply shot them on sight. I get the feeling that they’ll be talking about this for years to come: Hey, Jed, remember that there time back in aught-seven when them outta towners pulled a u-turn? We done showed ‘em!

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Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

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