Flagging a poll: Not so fast on Bull `dynasty'
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For 12 days in the middle of August, a research firm commissioned by Sports Illustrated polled 1,004 sports fans on a variety of topics for the magazine's 50th anniversary issue.
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As all experienced racetrackers realize, picking horses a few days before the races are run is no way to bet winners. Too much new information surfaces at the last minute to make bets earlier than the last possible moment.
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Shortly after the election, Atrios posted a short piece on how to build the popularity of a blog. In it, his number one recommendation was to update frequently &mdash; at least once per day. People do not bother reading sites that only update once every several days. This, in case there is still confusion amongst those who run this fair website, is why the diary section overtook the regular article sections in terms of hits.  In order to avoid stagnation, history tells us, we need a constant influx of new users. At present, however, the only good reason to register a new account is when your old one gets banned. There is simply not enough front page content to attract the interest of potential new users. Additionally, without the life line provided by freshmeat.net's syndication of kuro5hin (ended some time last year), we need substantially more provocative and note-worthy content if we are to bring in fresh blood.  There are two simple administrative actions that could quickly allieviate the current front page content situation.
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Company exec's post-launch spiel published too soon, it seems
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Like many of you, I spent a long time watching the election returns come in, and I saw the election eventually handed to George Bush.  I saw exit polls that did not correspond to the results in certain states.  I heard about the diebold president talking about using his machines to turn the election.  I have spent a long time over the past day checking information about the election, information from 2000, comparing data.  And after all of this, I feel I am able to post a list of some questionable data that I have seen:
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In March 2002, I made a bet with Martin Nisenholtz about the relative importance of weblogs and the New York Times. I was and am a blogger, and Martin worked then, as he does now, for the Times. For the actual terms of the bet, read the piece on the LongNow site, and a story I wrote to announce the bet. A few comments.  1. It seems now is the time to decide who won the bet, if either of us did. 2. The world that I hoped would come about did not. While blogs have broken many stories, they have not, in general, turned into the authoritative sources I hoped they would in 2002. When the blogosphere resembles journalism it's often the tabloid kind.  3. I wouldn't mind losing the bet. That is, I wouldn't mind if the Times fully embraced the web, and I suspect Martin wouldn't mind if blogs rose to the quality of the Times. 4. If the bet had been held a year later, it seems there would be a pretty good chance that Martin would have won the bet because they recently took down the firewall at the Times, allowing search engines to index the full content. In the past, articles would remain visible for a couple of weeks then you'd have to pay money to access them. I believe they have a special deal with Google and other crawlers that allow them to get past the membership wall. For most of 2007 the Times articles were behind the firewall, and were less likely to be pointed to (which is how they rise in rank at Google). 5. It certainly is fun to speculate, but the decision about who won belongs exclusively to the Long Now Foundation. They have to decide who determines what the top stories of 2007 are, and imho they should consult with search experts to determine how to do the queries. Apparently it makes a difference how you do it.  But ultimately it's their decision. 6. Whether Wikipedia has more or less results seems to be a sidebar to the bet, which only talks about blogs and the Times. 7. Another interesting sidebar is rich media. In 2002, before podcasting had taken hold, before YouTube existed, it would have been hard to forsee the story of the South Carolina beauty queen, or the Don't Tase Me Bro guy. Questions about the future are always framed in the context of the past. Did the question Martin and I asked have any value in 2007, or did it just say something about the world of 2002?   Update: Paul Boutin who arranged the bet, apparently in conjunction with Google (I didn't know this) in 2002, weighs in.
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Jeremy posted a bit over a week ago at his ShoeMoney.com blog his answer to the question: &#8220;Are you a SEO or not? You say you are not yet sometimes you say you are? SEO FLIPFLOPER!&#8221; The answer might be confusing for some, but made me chuckle. He basically said that he is quite good at SEO and [...]
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Last season, when Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished 19th in the Nextel Cup points standings, his mouth often ran faster than his sluggish No. 8 Chevrolet.
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The exit polling got it wrong, as did predictions that the popular vote would be close. Turns out bookies make the best pundits. Despite predictions of a tight election by major news organizations and pundits
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More and more bloggers are waking to the news:  Lessig :   ...  "Bush has won the popular vote. And it would take a freak of nature to imagine the 220,000 provisional ballots would fall strongly enough to shift Ohio. He will win the College. He is our President - legitimately, and credibly."  "Our criticism of this administration must now focus narrowly and sharply: on the policies, not on the credibility of the man."  Joi Ito :  "As Larry says, "It's over. Let it go." Jon is saying, "Don't complain - organize!" Although the previous post about the wacky voting system is interesting, it's unlikely that any sort of recount or technicality will change the fact that today, the people of the Uni ...
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Tycho:   It has become the Saturday tradition to do the next strip upon the expo's stark and terrifying stage, but since Armadeaddon needed its proper epilogue it got moved out to Wednesday.  Gabe was highly indulgent of audience suggestions in the final version, far more than he is to me, adding many, many things based on them being called out from the microphone - he has a version with more additions still that he'll be putting up later today.  But there are things in there like the blue ball in the last panel - to say nothing of the official "Hot-Dog Fairy" merchandise! - that began as anecdotes and have now graduated to true PAX lore.
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No sense pointing the finger at Hewlett-Packard anymore; we have Congress and the FBI to do that. But I did want to discuss the âI didnât know what my employees/vendors/executive staff were doingâ defense -- which was, of course, made famous by Enron , so you have to know it just wonât do. Instead of looking backward, I spoke with a couple of experts on governance, privacy, risk, and compliance assessment about how companies can do the right thing in the future.
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Call the Bowl Championship Series flawed. Call it a bogus way of crowning a national champion. Call it nasty names that can't be mentioned here.
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The way I heard it, Oklahoma went off as a 3-point favorite in a lot of places. This had to do with a lot of, ahem, "smart" money coming in late on the Sooners.
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There's been a mostly fantastic discussion about fair use in this neighborhood for the last few days.  It started when a photograph of Lane Hartwell's was used in a video spoof of the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire."  The first I heard of this was in a Twitter post of hers where she said she was turning off access to her entire Flickr collection because this picture was used without permission. A series of communications with the people who did the video resulted in the video being taken down. Later Mike Arrington, who is a lawyer, wrote a piece saying she didn't have right on her side, and that the video's use of her picture was probably fair use. I found Mike's piece compelling. Others took offense. It thought it was a useful part of the discussion. I understand Ms Hartwell's point of view. I hate it when people copy a whole post of mine and paste it into theirs. But then I grab bits of images and put them on my blog and people rarely complain. The blogosphere is built on being loose about copyright and fair use.  I'm doing a deal with a content company and all these issues are coming up. We haven't been able to write a contract that covers all the things they want covered and make it possible for me to do what I need to do, and they want my product to work. It's a real mess we're in. Bloggers are supposed to be radicals when it comes to fair use and copyright, but that generalization doesn't work with many creative people. Hartwell's position in some ways is like the RIAA or MPAA, who bloggers often dismiss as clueless. How can we have it both ways? How can some defend her position yet not defend the entertainment industry? There's a lot to discuss here, and a lot of the discussion on the blogs has been informative and respectful. Not all of it, but to an unusually high degree.  So, I am interested in doing an in person "flash conference" on the subject of fair use in a few weeks. I'd say next week if it weren't Christmas. Most conferences are so boring. I want to do a conf on a hot subject when it's still hot in the blogosphere. This may be a good subject for such a quickly organized conference. What do you think of the flash conference idea for this??
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Opinion Stepping in and taking charge
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I like politics. I follow it the way some people follow sports. The Democrat Party     and Republican Party are major league teams. They battle each other in national, state and     local contests. They have mascots, both created by the same person.     They have fanatical supporters just like any sport. Like minor league teams, there are also minor political parties to watch that sometimes play spoiler and sometimes     gain enough strength to influence the major parties. Some operate only locally, some statewide, and some try to operate     nationally.    I also enjoy following individual personalities. People love and hate them like they love and hate sports teams and athletes.     I'm sometimes startled by the degree of blind adoration or blind rage that politicians can inspire in otherwise calm,     rational people.    Lately, I've noticed that there's a growing tendency to divide the United States into red states and blue states. People seem     to think that it's possible for an entire state to be Democrat or Republican. How can that be if it's difficult to even     categorize individual Americans into definite camps? Now, although once restricted to politics, the idea is spreading to     other arenas. I saw a suggestion that Hollywood start targetting states as red or blue audiences. I've seen statistics that     compare red states versus blue states on categories such as religion, income, and even gifts to charity.    The division of the United States into red and blue states is overly simplistic and misleading.