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23 January, 2003
The Fake Box Incident
From
CNN:
'Made in China' labels hidden at Bush event
Another photo here.
(via The People's Republic of Seabrook)
Posted on 23 January, 2003
More Photoshop Fun
I'm beginning to think that worth1000.com just might be the most entertaining site on the Web. Check out the "Rock on" galleries, here and here. Ordinary photos, converted to photos that rock.
Posted on 23 January, 2003
Would You Trust a Search Engine That Lies to You?
I read a blog entry at That's My Blog! this morning, which led me to MSN's search page. There, I noticed the following statement in bold letters:
More people use MSN Search than any other search service*
The footnote referenced by this claim is:
*Source: Jupiter Media Metrix U.S., July, 2002.
That's strange. I could have sworn that Google was the most popular search engine. Am I that much out of touch?
As a reality check, I took a a look at the access logs for j-walk.com. Google accounts for about 70% of all searches that led to my site. MSN Search, on the other hand, accounts for less than 7% of such searches. Keep in mind that most of the material at my site deals with Microsoft stuff, so if there's a bias I would think it would be in favor of MSN.
So I checked the original study by Jupiter Research.
Jupiter Media Metrix provides US web site ratings based on a sample of thousands of web surfers in the United States. Most are home users, but a number of "at work" users are also in the group. All these web surfers have meters on their computers, which monitor the sites they visit. This metered information is compiled to produce Jupiter Media Metrix's results.
Also, the study measured "audience reach," a crude number that counts those who used the service at any time during the month. A much more meaningful measure would be the number of search requests actually made.
In other words, the
study is extremely limited (i.e., home users in the U.S.) and not at all
representative of the actual web searches that occur. And, it fails to take into
account the fact that Internet Explorer, by default, takes the user to MSN's
search page when the user clicks the Search button. And then there's IE's
"search from address bar" feature, which is responsible for millions of
unintentional searches at the MSN site.
MSN, of course, knows that their statement is not true. Yet they continue to display it prominently. I guess they hope that if people read the lie often enough they'll actually believe it.
Microsoft. The folks who invented the concept of Trustworthy Computing.
Posted on 23 January, 2003
Senior Talk
Three old guys are out walking:
First one says: "Windy isn't it? "
Second one says: "No it's Thursday."
Third one says: "So am I... Let's get a beer."
Posted on 23 January, 2003
Copying a Master Key
From the New York Times: Master Key Copying Revealed:
A
security researcher has revealed a little-known vulnerability in many locks that
lets a person create a copy of the master key for an entire building by starting
with any key from that building.
Posted on 23 January, 2003
Making Shorter URLs
You need to send someone a URL via email. So you copy it from your browser's Address bar and paste it to your message. In many cases, you'll find that the URL is huge -- so huge that it occupies several lines in your email message. Depending on the email client of the recipient, that wrapped URL may or may not work when it's clicked. Outlook Express users know what I'm talking about.
Solution? Use a service that will generate a shorter URL for you. Several services exist, and all are free. For example, here's a lengthy URL:
I used tinyurl.com to convert it to:
One of these services, notlong.com, provides a chart that compares nine of these services.
With one exception, these services all claim that the shorter URLs will never expire. But, of course, no one can predict how long a company will remain in business. Therefore, if longevity is a concern, use these services with caution. For example, you might want to avoid using these short URLs in newsgroup postings. Google archives these posts, and it's quite possible that the short URL will not be valid in a few years.
Posted on 23 January, 2003
The Museum of Shopping Lists
To view other people's shopping lists, go here. These lists are from UK shoppers. If you're more interested in American shopping lists, try this site.
(via Magnificent Obsessions)
Posted on 23 January, 2003
A Stunning Visual Illusion
You've probably seen the "checker shadow" illusion, in which two checker board squares appear to be different shades, but are actually identical (I covered this topic in November).
Here's
a similar illusion.
It's animated, and is actually much more amazing that the checker shadow
illusion.
The main page has links to a few other illusions.
The images on these pages represent examples of visual illusions used experimentally by Duke University Medical Center neurobiologists Dale Purves, Beau Lotto, Shuro Nundy, Amita Shimpi, Mark Williams and Zhiyong Yang to develop a wholly empirical theory of vision. This theory holds that all visual perceptions (illusory or otherwise) are basically an evolved set of behavioral reflexes no different in principle than the knee-jerk response produced when the doctor taps your knee with a rubber hammer.
Posted on 23 January, 2003
A Correction for The PreSurfer
An item titled "I Love/Hate Bill Gates" at the PreSurfer's blog caught my attention.
Is Bill Gates the most hated man in the world? Or do you love him? Since the Internet is a good reflection of what's going on in real life, I decided to let Google do the job. I hate Bill Gates = 137,000 search results. I love Bill Gates = 425,000 search results. There you have it! It's moodily introspective, but the lovers outnumber the haters by a substantial amount.
Unfortunately, this analysis suffers from a serious methodological flaw. The search terms were not enclosed in quote symbols. As a result, the search results actually located the Web documents in which all of the individual words appear-- but not necessarily together as a phrase. Consequently, his results are completely expected: On the Web, the word love appears much more frequently than the word hate (75,600,000 for love, 7,890,000 for hate).
A more accurate way to answer this burning question is to search for the quoted phrases. I've taken the liberty of doing so, with the following results:
- "I love Bill Gates" = 166
- "I hate Bill Gates: = 660
Applying this analysis to the newsgroup archive at Google yields similar results:
- "I love Bill Gates" = 841
- "I hate Bill Gates: = 4,179
The proportions are remarkably similar: In both cases, the Gates haters outnumber the Gates lovers by a margin of about 4-to-1.
Posted on 23 January, 2003
Unclaimed Baggage Center
Did
you ever wonder what happens to all of the lost airline luggage that is never
claimed? It is sold to the
Unclaimed
Baggage Center, in Alabama. Here, it is sorted out and sold to the public at
a large store, or
online via their web site.
Over one million items pass through the store annually. About 60% of the merchandise is clothing with the balance of the store dedicated to cameras, electronics, sporting goods, jewelry, designer optical, books and of course, luggage. The vast majority of items are from unclaimed baggage which, after at least 90 days of intensive tracking by the airlines, are declared unclaimed. However, lost and unclaimed cargo is also now available in special areas of the store.
Posted on 23 January, 2003
Interactive Singing Horses
This
Flash
app kept my attention much longer that I thought it would.
Posted on 23 January, 2003
Paint By Numbers
An online
paint-by-numbers system called
SegPlay.
Many images are available for this Java app. Kids might enjoy it, but I think most adults will get bored in about 34 seconds. Fortunately, each image has a fast forward button, which completes the painting automatically..
The company, SegTech, sell a Photoshop plug-in that converts images into "vectors, contours, and patterns." The paint-by-number images were produced using the software.
Posted on 23 January, 2003
More on the Music Industry
Both from Wired:
- The Year the Music Dies, by Charles C. Mann
- Hating Hilary, by Matt Bai
Posted on 23 January, 2003