jr conlin's ink stained banana

i admit it, i read my spam.

Well, not the H3rb4l viGara ads or the various online thievery rings casinos, but the really odd ones. These fall in to several classes, mostly since i turn off HTML and strip attachments for my incoming mail. There are blocks of semi-nonsensical text that are always fun reads, as are the various HOT STOCK TIPS which just aren't panning out. In all fairness, they have doubled their market value in the past six months rising from $0.05 to a whopping $0.10 a share, but do you really want to line your portfolio with shares of "Dr. Squeeze International Inc." ?

Then, there are my favorites, the link exchanges.

These are folks that have latched onto the idea that if they can possibly raise their Google Rank above page 8,000 they'll break it big. Now, mind you, since they're spamming this out they've absolutely no idea what kind of site i run, and could very well damage whatever rank they may have by being associated with a bunch of "bad neighborhood" sites, but by gum, they desperately want the world to see their low, low prices on low pressure hydraulic release valve systems assembled with loving care by under-educated third world children, even if that means exchanging a link with a site that has absolutely nothing what-so-ever to do with them.

You know, i'm half tempted to start up a site featuring pictures of brutal fluffy bunny molestation just so i can list "Featured Linking Partners". What better way to really bring out the kind of prestige and awareness your British debt consolidation service needs that a nice prominent link on bunnybugger.com? Maybe you'll be featured as a Rabbit Rapist Rave Pick! What's more in with the other notable easy home finance sites, there would be a nice prominent link to BunnyBugger.com "The only way to come, is in a bunny's bum".

Granted, most of the rest of the site would be under construction, but the most disturbing picture would have to be the "Coming Soon" animated placeholder.

i tell you, it's pure marketing genius.

Shaun of the Dead

Sadly, the movie website isn't up.

.

It's official. For those of you living under rocks, Microsoft and Google are officially "arch-rivals".

i'd note that i think that this article is important for two reasons.

The first is that this is the second time Mr. Bill has said that Microsoft needs to move away from the Operating System business and do more online. Much like everything related to Microsoft, things don't really get going until the second or third release. In this case, it's a press release.

Why i think that it's important is because Microsoft traditionally has not had a good deal of luck in the online arenas (WebTV, MSN, etc.) , mostly because it's a very different place. On the web, you have no friends. You cannot strongarm your way to do anything. That kinda flies in the face of the more traditional MS model of doing judo-domination.

i also don't expect them abandoning their existing software base anytime soon. It's their cash cow and business focal point. It's their one lever point where they can dominate and subjegate the user. Yes they may lose some market share to rivals, but they sure as hell aren't going to be losing big corporate and government contracts any time soon. The cost of replacing the desktop (and retraining, and software acquisition and retraining) is simply way too high and probably will continue to be so for five to eight years. (Yes, Linux guys, you read that correctly.)

The other thing that i thought was interesting was the growing statements that Microsoft will be going after Google in providing both comprehensive search for the net and for the desktop. Mind you, Microsoft has made a fair amount of noise about this for Longhorn (which may or may not replace the file based operating system with a database) and even now allows you to associate extra or "meta" data with given files.

The thing is, i'm not really sure i'd use that. Now while i'm reasonably certain that neither will compromise my privacy by reporting back any local infromation they find to their respective motherships, i can't really be all that certain that other programs won't. If i'm a virus writer, you've now drawn big happy targets on your personal or financial information files regardless of where-ever they may be. (We've already seen virus that attack address books (even "encrypted" ones), why wouldn't they go after other targets as well?)

What's more, and from a less paranoid point of view, it still doesn't address the root problem, people aren't organized. By providing a database so that you can literally spray your files whereever you please, you're not really being horribly efficient. What you're doing is requiring an indexed lookup for every single file operation you do because you can't be bothered to keep files in a consistent location. Good thing you've got that spiffy 4Ghz processor and 2GB RAM, huh?

Ok, one other thing. i'm also not really happy to hear about the fact that these two are going to be competing for search. People were complaining about how RSS hits impact their site, but not a lot of folks talk about how searchbots are also pillaging their bandwidth. If you've got a popular site that changes frequently, expect to lose up to three times your site's total data capacity (try figuring that out for dynamic sites) per day from the various crawlers out there.

Fortunately, i'm not popular enough here for it to be a consideration, and i don't pay for my bandwidth at work, but it is something that i think about for sites like BoingBoing and slashdot. It's a catch-22, right? You don't want to deny searchbots because you want to have your content crawled and indexed so you get traffic, yet if you modify your pages to remove items that could be spidertraps you run the risk of setting off the "stealth" flag and getting your page dropped. Robots.txt helps, but even that requires a great deal of rigourous thought to ensure that things are working they way you want, and due to the somewhat fickle nature of the spiders, you're never sure which path will get you better placement.

Hmm… Sadly, we're living in interesting times again. Hopefully, i'm just being paranoid, but i can't help think that we're also living at the edge of a great deal of enlightenement that we're going to have to pay for.

A few folks are commenting about one of the problems of syndication, specifically the fact that at the top of every hour or so, they get hit by a barrage of RSS requests.

Honestly, i look at it from a slightly different point of view.

First off, what are you trying to accomplish by using Syndication?
This is a legitimate question that i'm damn sure a good many folks just don't understand. Syndication (be it RSS/Atom/CDF/ or whatever) serves two roles, one is notification the other is distribution.

By Notification, i mean informing people who ask that "Yes, i've got something new." For the record, this is how i tend to use Syndication. i run a little reader plug in Firefox called Sage (the update to RSS Reader) which allows me to do a general request for new content. It doesn't automatically poll, which was annoying at first, but i've learned is actually preferable. This way i'm not distracted by notifications of content, but can read them at my leisure.

The other role is Distribution. Using most Syndication mechanisms, it's possible to provide most if not all of your content. This can be helpful if you're providing content to remote sites or aggregation portals, or if you're just being a nice guy.

i'd also not that these roles are not exclusive, and in fact, are often mixed. The question then becomes "What do i want my audience to do?"

Personally, i want my audience to come here to my blog so that they can read and participate in whatever stupid drivel i post. To that end, i generally make the abbreviated RSS feed available. This is a feed i've created that has the least amount of information i feel i need to provide for folks (leading excerpts of the last ten posts, no HTML formatting) . This is the feed i provide automated crawlers and other bots.

i also provide a fully formatted distribution because folks asked for it. i provide that mostly because i don't expect those folks to come to the page, but of course, they will anyway.

If i started seeing the kind of load averages that would make me wonder about the value of offering RSS to the public, i'd solve the problem just like i'd solve the problem for any other web service, i'd spawn it off onto it's own server, just like Mail and HTTP are on separate servers. If it backlogs and times out, big deal, my main server is still there and folks would hit that instead, or they'd simply pick it up on the next refresh. The savvy folks would also be smart and pick some random, non :00 time to go fetch data and normalize my load distribution anyway.

i dunno, i just don't see what the big deal is. Folks, this is protocolled content, just like the stuff you're normally producing. If you're having scaling problems, don't blame the protocol. (Because, obviously that HTTP protocol is crap and simply can't scale.)

Ok, i admit it. i get the StarWars.com newsletter. Mostly because now-a-days it's like getting a regular update detailing the progress of the slow motion train wreck. Case in point, this little tidbit from the latest dispatch:

– Ewoks and Droids on DVD — At the end of 2004, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox Home Video will release the 1980s Saturday morning animated adventures of Ewoks and Droids, as well as the live-action television movies The Ewok Adventure and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.

Needless to say, i'm disappointed that this landmark series wouldn't include StarWars Holiday Special (including the hit "What do you get a Wookie for Christmas (when he's already got a comb)?")

*sigh*

That's the reason i don't find Star Wars quite as appealing. It occured to me that the fundemental difference between both sides is that the Empire wanted to kill off things like Gungans and Ewoks and the Rebels wanted to save them.

And again i cried when Lord Vader died.

Now those miserable fuzzy bastards are going to be around for ever. DAMN YOU LUKE SKYWALKER!