The title of this post is a bend of the lyrics “I’ll live a lush life in some small dive” from the song Lush Life, which is among my personal favourites. Why did I choose it? Because it radically contrasts what I’ll discuss here.

When I go out clubbing, I like to experience change. Going out is about breaking a routine. Sometimes I go to rougher places where I can get my mouth dirty rather than a posh bar or a so-called gentelemen’s club (or anything akin to it). The type of people whom I meet is fascinating and at times even inspiring. It gives a nice break from the ordinary and otherwise banal life.

When it comes to literature, on the other hand, I don’t fancy quite the same contrast. Frankly, I no longer follow sports and ‘celebrity’ news. I don’t read tabloid either. Some days ago I received another request for my address, for a free preview (prerelease) of a book. The last time I turned down the offer, but friends argued it was silly. In hindsight, I should have probably accepted the offer that was there. It was a book packed with sophistication. This time for a c change, the book appears to be tabloid-style, with sheer disdain for George Bush.

TUDIES which analyse large volumes of communication have always been interesting. For instance, most of the E-mail traffic nowadays is identified as SPAM; and over 80% of it is said to come from compromised Windows PC‘s. However, for a change, this is not what I wish to discuss today. I don’t want to have yet another bite at the effects Windows has on the WWW. It leaves me bitter.

Earlier today I read that only 37% of all E-mail at the ‘average’ office are personal E-mails. The rest are not. Some E-mails these days are invoked from a system rather than a human. Typically these are less interesting, less urgent, or can be altogether ignored. Some of that is mass mail, automated and despatched using address databases.

It is sometimes hard to discern between a personal message–one to which a response would be polite–and one which is targetted at a wide audience and whose content is carefully doctored to appear personal. I would like to recommend and promote a personal tip of mine. It is a little method I thought about for detecting and telling apart computer-generated from human-generated mail. When entering your name (e.g. at registration stage), for example, always append extra spaces that serve no purpose but preserve the integrity of the name. Having done so, you challenged the wisdom of the bot. Before punctuation, for example, you can see if a human inserted the name properly. A naive algorithm will not bother to crunch spaces, so the automation deems self-evident.

In other circumstances, having the recipient’s addresses within sight may help. Full headers can be very informative and various Thunderbird extensions even simplify text with representative figures (e.g. routing information as a series of flags, mail client name as an icon, signature as an icon, etc.). It makes the information easier to digest and it adds a wealth of knowledge that is often missed. Lastly, never discount the BCC tricks. A seemingly personal message can reach anyone ‘on the same wagon’.

HE Labour Party is having its annual one-week conference at the hotel where I regularly work out (been there since 2001). As a consequence, and as was the case 2 years ago, the place will be closed to all guests and all members. In the interim, I am forced to go to a different health club (YMCA), which is located further away. Although the equipment there is better, I don’t fancy the idea of going there on a daily basis. But this uncalled-for event intersects with another factor that makes this somewhat of a timely opportunity.

Due to an injury in my right arm or chest (ongoing for 3 weeks and counting), I might just rest for a week. It’s my first major workout-related injury ever (been over 10 years), apart from temporary back issues. I finally realise for myself the pain and nuisance that is prolonged injuries. On the brighter side of things, this will give me more time to be on the Internet. I typically have 15 hours per week consumed due to this long-standing exercise regimen. But I could use the energy…

This may actually be my first break since April. And having finished the competition, I can afford this break, I think.

ITH success in any Web site comes some spam, which needs to be combatted effectively. Herein I will deal with social bookmarking Web sites in particular. Spam is not always automated. There is brute-force spam that is scripted; but there’s also self-promotion that strikes in the form of mass submission. And people have begun trying to game Netscape, whose front page bears an admirable PageRank 9. This keeps the Anchors and Chief Editor on their toes.

The problem has become somewhat universal across this new wave of sites comprising contributer-driven content. Digg has had submission parasites, yet human moderation, as well as spam report widgets (community-driven), have it eradicated early on. I usually report any suspicious submission as spam, at least as soon I spot a distinct and objectionable pattern. When the same person always posts to the same domain, for instance, that’s a red flag. Sometimes you can align the username with the domain’s affiliation, but sometimes consistency in the URL is enough. And ‘sock puppets’ (same person with multiple identities that boost a bogus sense of consent) are another-yet-closely-related matter altogether.

When enough stories get intercepted, links the to the domain are banned by principle (for a month if not permanently), or particular Web addresses blocked for good. This sends the appropriate message: abuse, then get your domain blacklisted. This may be better than banning the users who could otherwise change their ways and contribute differently; in a positive way, that is. In fact, some people just haven’t grasped the concepts of social bookmarking, so they fail to see the wrongdoing.

When banning users, there is a need for caution. A pissed off innocent user is far worse than spam that successfully percolates because people talk. They have blogs, so a good rant with proof can get heavy exposure very quickly. And it affects reputation. Look at what has happened in Digg more recently.

An afterthought: One possible workaround to ‘sock puppets’ would be to demand that each newly-subscribed user supplies a unique E-mail address, as well as logs in with an IP address that wasn’t yet used in registration on that same day. This can’t stop instantiation of puppets or protect against proxies and dynamic IP’s. However, it definitely slows down the abuse and reduces incentive to game the system.

was not able to reproduce an achievement I had attained 2 years ago, as well as 3 years ago. Although I did my best in this years’s Mr. Fitness competition, another participant, who is also a tough competitor, did brilliantly. Fortunately he is a friend, which by all means makes me happy for him.

Although I was expecting to have won the mini triathlon — that which was completed this morning — overall, I am expecting to finish in a repsectable second place. Well done, Mike Coogan. You deserve the big trophy this year. I will still have my memories of some older and more successful endeavours…

Net neutrality is somewhat similar to the closing of software in the eighties. It involves greedy corporations that observe somethings open with financial potential, as well as benefits to be reaped. They introduce restrictions and kill openness to serve interests and agendas.

This initially happened not so long ago, as Open Source software merely vanished in the 80′s. GNU/FSF were formed to bring it all back. It is a successful effort whose fruits we only begin to see as people learn from past mistakes. They want to have control rather than be controlled. It is important to ensure that the same ideas do not spread to media and information, much of its embodiment being DRM.

Most sadly, the same approach and idealogy is now threatening the Internet. History may repeat itself as the same approach is now takes our cyberspace, including the World Wide Web. Imagine being charged to visit sites, read articles, etc. Suddenly, you see elevated newspapers that overcharge. Freedom no longer prevails.

The gain for the corporation has a price. It is made possible at the expense of free wealth of information that, much like open source software, promotes exchange of knowledge and makes engineering, for example, advance more rapidly. And while ignorance is bliss to most, it is most blissful to the corporation (or sometimes government) that takes advantage of it.

T has been argued and nearly publicly announced that WordPress.com is headed towards a get-your-own-space program. I think this would be an excellent idea. Essentially, a blog that runs on WordPress.com can be accessed transparently from a personal domain rather than a subdomain on WordPress.com.

Interesting thoughts spring to mind. One can get a wordpress.org blog hosted by a third-party (through a manual installation or using a one-click-away script). Alternatively, anyone could just start things on a small scale with WordPress.com, then growing big(ger) with a personalised, top-level domain. While I’m not sure how search engines will deal with redirections or URL changes (this could get tricky), it could be done properly by sending HTTP header with status code 301. I heard success stories, as well as ‘Googlejuice’ disasters. But people’s bookmarks should not be an issue.

Chiroweb.com, for example, has been doing essentially the same thing, namely letting you have your own domain hosted as a subsite on a root site, which is at the same time accessible through your won domain. Page composition (CMS front end), on the other hand, is, as expected, restricted by the service, so there is limited freedom and scope for manoeuvre, development, and extension. This can nonetheless be circumvented by changing hosts and installing an alternative (temporary site mirror) manually. It should be possible with WordPress.org, but probably not with Chiroweb, whose templates are proprietary/licensed (example below).

That’s my relative in Florida!