# Notice (Oct 19/05): So ends my stay here on Blogger. This morning Google implemented an anti-spam 'feature' that forces me to answer a challenge phrase when I want to post to my own blog. No notice of the change, nothing. Worse is that it doesn't even work! I type the phrase, submit, "An error occured", post deleted. Damn you, Google. Chances are I will revive my blog somewhere else, sometime soon. I'll post the new coordinates here as soon as they become available. (BTW, I'm unable to post anything to my RSS stream, so I'd appreciate it if readers could spread the word and ask people to take a look at this notice)

Update (Oct 19/05, ~noon): After a frustrating few hours (and not just trying out alternatives to Blogger), I've decided that this is a good time to take a break from all this. A day? A week? Who knows. But I need to step away from it before I pass a heavy magnet over the whole mess.

Update 2: According to this post, the reason I'm seeing the CAPTCHA (challenge phrase) is that Blogger has classified my blog as spam. Thanks. User for five years and now I'm spam. I searched the Blogger site, but there is no mention of how to get the spam flag turned off. There is also no way of contacting anyone at Blogger. Wow. Spam they say I am, so spam I must be. Maybe it is time to take a break.

"The research also showed that avoidance of caffeine withdrawal symptoms motivates regular use of caffeine. For example, the satisfying feelings and perceived benefits that many coffee users experience from their morning coffee appear to be a simple reversal of the negative effects of caffeine withdrawal after overnight abstinence."

The research, led by McGill University biologist Graham Bell, looked at the response of algae to high carbon dioxide concentrations. Their findings showed that the plants could not adapt to high carbon dioxide conditions. This disproves the previous assumption that plants can take up extra carbon dioxide in the environment. According to Bell, these findings may be applied to other plants species. Over the next century we may see a dramatic change in all plants (including agricultural species) as our use of fossil fuels increases and generates increased carbon dioxide levels.

"Voting systems should enable each voter to inspect a physical (e.g. paper) record to verify that his or her vote has been accurately cast, and to serve as an independent check on the result produced and stored by the system," ACM said on its Web site. "Making those records permanent (e.g. not based in computer memory) provides a means by which an accurate recount may be conducted."

Now the pendulum has swung the other way. Now anything that became fashionable during the Bubble is ipso facto unfashionable. But that's a mistake-- an even bigger mistake than believing what everyone was saying in 1999. Over the long term, what the Bubble got right will be more important than what it got wrong.

A University of Alberta professor has harnessed the power of 4,000 computers across the country to condense 20 years worth of computing work into 48 hours.

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By definition, any customer experience project must involve real, live,
actual customers. It's not adequate to operate solely from pre-defined rules,
reams of quantitative data, or hypothetical (and fictional) stories of users.
Customers themselves must be the focus of the research, and their experience on
the site must be the basis of the resulting strategy.

The difficulty with this approach is that you cannot observe all the customers, so how can you be sure that the ones you do observe are representative of your customer population. Having said that, that may not be an issue at all.

What Hurst is proposing is that quantitative means of assessing customer experience is not enough to get a proper understanding of how customers actually interact with your site. He is advocating a qualitative approach, which means that you are worried less about how representative your sample is, but rather, if that your sample provides a rich insight onto the widest range of possible behaviours.

There are volumes of information written on this subject in case anyone is interested in using this method for evaluating their customer experience. Done properly, this research can provide valuable insights into what is happening and what people are thinking. It allows you do develop hypothesis, but not to test them. It is also a *lot* of work. See: qualitative research, grounded theory (I know, I know...), mixed methods, etc.

According to a study sponsored by Yahoo and advertising company OMD, Internet detox makes people feel emotionally vacant and lost in life. Twenty-eight participants were asked to record their thoughts and feelings during a two-week period of no Net usage. From studying the subjects' video and written diaries, researchers noticed that two weeks of Internet deprivation affected social lives and left many feeling bored.

Not surprisingly, the study's sponsors said the results provide a good opportunity for marketers.

It does not make sense to become a programmer. [...] I think the trend of pure programming jobs will continue to go offshore, because in many ways, our computers and communications technologies enable that to happen. [...]

The key is big-picture design--what you would call system architecture or system design. It's understanding end-user needs and translating them into the detailed specifications, designs and architectures that can and will be shipped offshore.

It's what we call the user-facing, or customer-facing, aspects of computing, which is sometimes characterized as "computing plus X." We are emphasizing a lot more with our students that they need to understand something besides computing--like business, biology, chemistry, mapping, geography, information retrieval or history. Like anything in addition to computing, because the big win with computing is that you use computers to do things. And to be a creative computer architect or computing systems architect, you need to understand "X" as well as computing.

“There can be no solution to global economic problems without the US,” said Phil Bloomer, Head of Oxfam International’s Make Trade Fair Campaign. “We look forward to seeing the US play a constructive role at the ICO to develop programs that can help alleviate the crisis for more than 25 million small coffee farmers throughout the world.”

South Korea is the most connected, high-speed Internet country in the world -- and the technology is having a broad impact on society, providing hints of what may come in North America as speeds and use increase.

The conference aims at bringing together experts in software engineering and knowledge engineering to discuss on relevant results in either software engineering or knowledge engineering or both. Special emphasis will be put on the transference of methods between both domains.

The software engineering industry is in need of some tough love, the kind of attention more commonly known as 'bondage and discipline' to pull it into shape and transform it into a serious profession.

The new CXT -- short for commercial extreme truck and built from the same platform as the heavy-truck maker's typical tow truck or cement mixer -- will be sold starting this week by Navistar's International Truck & Engine subsidiary. [...] Buyers will also have to have a fair amount of money to fill it up -- it's projected to get between 6 and 10 miles per gallon of diesel fuel.

Live Bookmarks: You can now subscribe to and read RSS feeds in your Bookmarks. When you visit a page that advertises a RSS feed by using a tag, a icon will appear in the status bar. Click it to view a list of feeds the page is offering. Click one to subscribe - this adds a Bookmark Folder that contains all the recent posts from the feed.

Recently there has been a revival of interest in George Orwell's 1984. But discussions of the book often miss the point. The most terrifying aspect of Orwell's Ministry of Truth isn't its ability to get people to keep people from speaking their minds, or even to believe lies; it is its success at getting them to give up on the idea of truth altogether. When, at the end of the novel, O'Brien, the sinister representative of Big Brother, tortures the hapless Winston into believing that two and two make five, his point, as he makes brutally clear, is that Winston must "relearn" that whatever the party says is the truth. O'Brien doesn't really care about Winston's views on addition. What he cares about is getting rid of Winston's idea of truth. He is well aware of the point I've just been making. Eliminate the very idea of right and wrong independent of what the government says, and you eliminate not just dissent -- you eliminate the very possibility of dissent.

Once a leader in basic education, Canada has cut its support of elementary and high schools over the past decade as a result of demographic change and provincial governments' increasing interest in universities, a new study finds.

"One way or another, it looks like distributed categorization is going to really take off, and soon. There’s just too much chatter going on about how to implement it for it not to happen pervasively."

"An anarchic antidote to management tomes promising the secrets of ever greater productivity, Bonjour paresse is a slacker's bible, a manual for those who devote their professional lives to the sole pursuit of idleness."

"Tired of staff members who they see as pushing the limits of professionalism and good taste, a growing number of employers are issuing lengthy dress codes, some with photos to illustrate the do's and don'ts. More schools also are getting stricter about student attire."

"Insurgents clashed with U.S. forces in the capital where nearly 40 died. The American military has also reported that fighting in Tarar in eastern Iraq, wich began on Thursday, has left 51 dead. There is no explanation, so far, why the fighting has erupted in the city."

The USA has entered into a military situation which is often regarded as illegal and immoral. American foreign policy has long been regarded as arrogant, ignorant, and inconsiderate. The overwhelming perception of American government as selfish, inconsiderate and lacking any sense of being a “world citizen”, has increased exponentially since the invasion of Iraq. Many people around the world are looking at this election to discern whether or not these horrendous attitudes are representative of the American people.