Short Takes: Data Mining and the Attention Economy
Posted by Jacob Harris Thu, 09 Mar 2006 23:24:00 GMT
Okay, I won’t deny that this is a new category of postings inspired directly by Slashdot’s notion of Slashbacks, short little postings that track followups to previous postings as well as miscellaneous tiny bits that don’t warrant their own postings, but are still above the level of bookmarks or Kottke’s remaindered links. I still am a firm adherent of Slow Bloggging, but I like to update notable developments to previous postings too.
The Myth of Total Information Awareness
Impressive computer security expert Bruce Schneier has posted his own similar analysis on the excessive confidence being placed on data mining as a counterterrorism tool (Data Mining For Terrorists) that’s worth a read. Not only is it smart, it’s well-written to boot.
Of course, Congress did have a chance this week to assert some oversight over domestic spying and the like. And what action it was, as they promptly rolled over to avoid any possible political embarrasment for the GOP. The Roman Emperor Tiberius’ comment to the Senate of his day is as apt today: “how eager you are to be slaves”.
The Future of Feeds
The Emerging Technology conference has concluded and there have been several nice talks posted. One of the major themes this year was discussion about the Attention Economy, how to cope with information overload and rise to the top. O’Reilly has some summaries of talks on this subject by Clay Shirky, Seth Goldstein, Felix Miller, and Ray Ozzie. Tim Bray’s summary is also good too. . While you’re at it, be sure to check out Entrepeneurial Proverbs as well.
If you were intrigued by future business of RSS, all of these should be worthwhile reads for you.
Good And Bad Customer Service
I brought my Canon camera back to life last weekend. All it took was removing the outer case, extracting an internal hidden battery and replacing it after an hour to reset some internal component. That’s it. Luckily I’m not scared of opening up electronics, but it still galls me that Canon charges $175 to do this very thing, The disposable mentality behind consumer electronics still mystifies me.
What camera was it? Have you had it long?
Your links don’t work properly when you’re on a RSS feed… you need to include your domain name too. ;-)
Thanks Robby! Fixed…
Damen, the camera in question is a Canon S400, although the problem apparently affects several cameras in the line. Basically after a few years or so, you start getting a “Memory Card Error” that cripples the camera. This is apparently more of an issue with an internal component and not the card and resetting the battery seems to force a hard reset and cleanup corruption I guess.
This is not my first time opening up electronics and while I’m not really at the level of Make Magazine, I’m not scared by it and I enjoy it to some degree. I repaired an original airport base station that went under because of defective capacitors and it’s been working fine since. Still, for most people and most consumers, the prevailing attitude seems to be throw it out rather than repair it. And who can blame them? The entire consumer electronics business is built upon a churn of people upgrading their stuff before it’s broken or even that much obsolete.
Funnily enough, opening up a camera like this really shows you how much business there is between ostensible rivals even. The LCD display said Sony on it and there were quite a few Samsung components on the memory board.