Disqus - Latest Comments for Steven G. Harms

Re: A Comment of Mine on Immigration on Reddit

Steven G. Harms — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:46:44 -0000

Daniel,

3 years ago when I left the Silicon Valley I got rid of my great big plasma screen TV and went to a smaller DVD / monitor all-in-one combo.

I realized about 30-60 days later: I didn't miss it at all.

During my last vacation ( 17 days ), I promised myself to not read reddit.

17 days later, I didn't really miss it that much. The content there is usually a few good programming articles and then a whole lot of nonsense. Reddit is like a big bowl of pasta: your guts tell you it's tasty and delicious, but you wind up bloated and in need of a few laps—that you probably won't take.

So, should people be reading reddit? Probably not. If they want to waste time on the internet in a slightly better fashion, reddit versus collegehumor or digg is a good place to start, but I'm of the suspicion that:

<ul>
<li>nytimes.com</li>
<li>programming.reddit.com</li>
<li>icanhascheezburger.com</li>
<li>insert political review site here, i'm a huffingtonpost guy myself</li>
</ul>

would keep one informed and give one a ton of time to do other things ( work on a startup, learn to bal-swing, foment political change, or to have some quality time with their SO ).

Re: Guaranteed to Make You Feel Better — No Matter What — I Promise

Steven G. Harms — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:02:12 -0000

They make ’em cute so we don't eat them.

Re: Very Poor Rhetoric on Race

Steven G. Harms — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 12:11:51 -0000

Derek,

If you look at the population demographic that has most impacted the Western workplace since 1960, you will see it has been women. I find your suggestion that "women don't constitute a culture" highly specious: if what you said were the case I don't believe there would be the women's magazine movement, cars designed for feminine choices, ad infinitum. Allow me people's exhibit 1: Oprah Winfrey. One of the wealthiest people in the world, also black, also a woman. Any interview with her will confirm women are treated as a minority but she had the diligence to transcend that.

Further your definition of what does and does not constitute a “culture” — and thus a minority culture — is nebulous. Is a minority a race ( Asian ), a gender ( women ), a sexuality ( lesbian ), a religion ( Catholic ), a historical ancestry ( Armenian ). It gives your argument a protean quality which makes any true understanding difficult.

I can certainly say that the Jewish minority seems to have done well with itself— but you could say that you meant racial groups. I could say that the Italian minority has done well with itself; but you could say you meant non–national boundaries, etc.

Re: Hacker Culture Music

Steven G. Harms — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:45:35 -0000

Using IRC was mad-cool, but had he been using BitchX it would have been more winful.

And where was the part where he asked her “äsl” ( Swedish for age / sex location )?

Re: The Hacker Anthem

Steven G. Harms — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:46:58 -0000

Using a vid such as this to explain interface scan options of nmap would be most seriously excellent.

Re: Information Shadows

Steven G. Harms — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:57:58 -0000

I too really enjoyed this, but I'm having a bit of a difficult time understanding what an information shadow really is.

<ul>
<li>For all things, if has a unique, pervasively accessible identifier ( UPC / Thing taxonomy / Binomial Nomenclature / etc. ) it has an information shadow.</li>
</ul>

Taking the Tom Coates paraphrase:

Paraphrasing Yahoo!’s Tom Coates, first we learn to digitally point at a thing's information shadow, then we can glue information handles to it. Once the shadow has handles, we can grab and throw the information around.

So that would be saying "This book has a UPC" ( pointing, above ). The Amazon API would be like "gluing handles" because now I can allow programmatic access to the object as its set of properties. The "information shadow" is the "mentions" of that object, in sum.

Thus flickr picture "YYYY" is a unique ID and it can be mentioned in its tags "Rome coliseum ancient archietucture" ...and...can be mentioned in my blog post "I was just in rome and (insert pic )" AND can be part of the "Best of Rome set" and thus the information shadow of YYYY is, effectively, the commentary of the object, in aggregate. In theory, across a semantic web, a definitive information shadow for YYYY would pull all allocations, all mutations of the the associated keyphrases, and then provide the 'total shadow' ?

Is that how you guys read it?

Re: Information Shadows

Steven G. Harms — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:48:16 -0000

Because I'm obsessive like ’dat, I tried to re-organize Mike's argument into something that, to my mind, had a bit more of a logical progression: précis here.

Re: Facism: “I Don’t Think That Word Means What You Think It Means.”

Steven G. Harms — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:02:20 -0000

Well the most basic tool for discerning communism from fascism is to realize that fascism is far right. They both happen to be at such extremes that they're near the point where extremes wrap around onto one another. National socialism is also a bit of a confusing factor here for while they claimed socialism, they were certainly far right, as you note above.

Communism is the nth degree of socialism and holds at its heart the abrogation of The Church, unsurprisingly it found its authors in Protestant countries.

It's not coincidental that fascism took root in an extremely conservative, Catholic country. To go from papa to il papa ( pope ) to il duce ( Mussolini, generically it means leader, or general ). A country that lauds the preservation of the sacrosanctity of "the family" may find itself accommodating the seeds of fascist thought.

I would not stretch the affiliation of Catholicism and fascism, though. Such a conclusion might be tempting based on Catholic-leaning Austria and Southern Germany being the origins of the National Socialist movement, but methinks that's going a bridge too far.

There's a start :)

Re: A Comment of Mine on Immigration on Reddit

Steven G. Harms — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:46:44 -0000

Daniel,

3 years ago when I left the Silicon Valley I got rid of my great big plasma screen TV and went to a smaller DVD / monitor all-in-one combo.

I realized about 30-60 days later: I didn't miss it at all.

During my last vacation ( 17 days ), I promised myself to not read reddit.

<ul>
<li>nytimes.com</li>
<li>programming.reddit.com</li>
<li>icanhascheezburger.com</li>
<li>insert political review site here, i'm a huffingtonpost guy myself</li>
</ul>

would keep one informed and give one a ton of time to do other things ( work on a startup, learn to bal-swing, foment political change, or to have some quality time with their SO ).

Re: Guaranteed to Make You Feel Better — No Matter What — I Promise

Steven G. Harms — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:02:12 -0000

They make ’em cute so we don't eat them.

Re: Very Poor Rhetoric on Race

Steven G. Harms — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 12:11:51 -0000

Derek,

Re: Hacker Culture Music

Steven G. Harms — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:45:35 -0000

Using IRC was mad-cool, but had he been using BitchX it would have been more winful.

And where was the part where he asked her “äsl” ( Swedish for age / sex location )?

Re: The Hacker Anthem

Steven G. Harms — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:46:58 -0000

Using a vid such as this to explain interface scan options of nmap would be most seriously excellent.

Re: Information Shadows

Steven G. Harms — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:57:58 -0000

I too really enjoyed this, but I'm having a bit of a difficult time understanding what an information shadow really is.

<ul>
<li>For all things, if has a unique, pervasively accessible identifier ( UPC / Thing taxonomy / Binomial Nomenclature / etc. ) it has an information shadow.</li>
</ul>

Taking the Tom Coates paraphrase:

Is that how you guys read it?

Re: Information Shadows

Steven G. Harms — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:48:16 -0000

Because I'm obsessive like ’dat, I tried to re-organize Mike's argument into something that, to my mind, had a bit more of a logical progression: précis here.

Re: Facism: “I Don’t Think That Word Means What You Think It Means.”

Steven G. Harms — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:02:20 -0000

Communism is the nth degree of socialism and holds at its heart the abrogation of The Church, unsurprisingly it found its authors in Protestant countries.

There's a start :)