ndmckinney|net

Apparently, your location determines how you party in Holland. Also a surprise: going out in my old home of Rotterdam means spending more. I always went out for 2-for-1 night at Concordia, so I don’t know anything about spending big.

[From Amsterdamned if you do, Rotterdamned if you don't - Radio Netherlands Worldwide - English]

I love that flickr is so friendly.

According to a report from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, there are 90 guns per 100 citizens in the United States. Worldwide, there are 875 million guns, 270 million of which are in the hands of American citizens.

The report goes on to say that only 225 million of the worldwide supply of firearms are in the hands of law enforcement and military personnel. The remainder are held by private citizens.

And yet, somehow, our high incidents of crime are unconnected to gun ownership. Strange…

[Via Le Monde.fr : Les citoyens des Etats-Unis sont les plus armés au monde]

I’ve more or less declared victory in the war on blog spam. Using some nifty filters, I’ve been able to catch automated posts on my site and prevent them from being posted. Like email spam, I’m having a hard time figuring out what the point of it all is.

I have two theories why people write bots to scour the net looking for blogs. The first is pecuniary. If there wasn’t money to be made, I doubt many people would spend the time and effort to write these programs; there certainly would not be the continued battle against filters and other preventive means. The second is for spite. For some reason, there is an entire subset of society that enjoys nothing more than to disrupt normal behavior and functioning. However, given that the links connect to other spam sites, it seems unlikely that disruption is the sole reason for blog spam.

I’m curious about other experiences people have had in dealing with blog spam. Feel free to post. Hopefully, you won’t be caught up in my spam filter.

The group Reporters Without Borders [Reporters sans frontières, or RSF] has published their annual list of countries that are ‘enemies of the internet’. RSF states that the countries on this list are openly hostile to free speech on the internet.

The list of countries, in alphabetical order, is as follows:

• Belarus
• Burma
• China
• Cuba
• Egypt
• Iran
• North Korea
• Saudi Arabia
• Syria
• Tunisia
• Turkmenistan
• Uzbekistan
• Vietnam

The big surprise on this list is North Korea; I’m not sure North Korea is even connected to the internet. They don’t have a ccTLD, and I’ve never heard of a North Korean website. I guess that they are at least in principle opposed to the internet.

Removed from this year’s list were Nepal, Maldives, and Libya.

[via BBC News]

There are many conduits by which information travels about the internet. Two of the largest sites on the internet are Slashdot and Digg. Both sites bring news and information about technology. Slashdot is moderated; Digg is not, opting to be run solely by its readership. For this reason alone, I will always prefer Slashdot to Digg.
Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re like me, you don’t go to the grocery store very often.  You’re usually left with a few odd ingredients.  What to do?  Consult Snacksby.  If you’re hungry and are too lazy to make a trip to the grocery store (or your local Chinese restaurant), type into Snacksby’s search engine a list of whatever you have lying around the kitchen, and the site will list all the recipies people have contributed.  Discovered that mustard and peanut butter sandwiches are actually pretty tasty?  Add the recipe to the engine.  This is a fantastic application, and a good use of social networking principles.

While decompressing from studying for my civil procedure final, I came across Last.fm, the self-proclamed “Social Music Revolution.” I must say, I’m impressed.

Similar to other social networks, last.fm relies heavily on user tagging to categorize and locate music. This quickly develops into a wealth of music that, ordinarily, I would not have found.

The system is easy enough to use. It consists of two major components: a plugin for your music player to link it to a list of what tracks you listen to, and a radio player, which allows you to listen to new music. It generates a list of what you have listened to and, based upon your tags, recommends new music. Thus far, it hasn’t done well to find new music for me, but I have to spend some time getting data in the system first, I think.

I’m hopeful that this system will work well for me. I’m certainly willing to give it a try.