Moving

Alas,
5 years now with Blogger. I have outgrown Blogger and the software (though free) is not versatile enough for what I am wanting out of this site. So I am moving it to a managed Wordpress site on my own server. This is going to be a neat upgrade and I am excited about the future of this channel, I hope you will be excited as well. Please update your bookmarks and subsribe to the new RSS feed.

I am moving this blog to whuffie.esaukessler.com, and adding three side channels, one is a Tumblr blog that will contain short form media which will leave the front page for longer form journalistic endeavors (In theory). The other two channels will be public group called "Hiveminded" and a private group. Pretty much anyone is welcome to take part in the groups public or private. The only limitation, at this point, is you will need to have your own Tumblr account (It is free, easy, and requires only an email address). If you already have one you will know what I am talking about. If you do not I will explain in better detail on the new site soon. I really recommend you look into the Tumblr application. My wife and I have been using it for over a year and it is a robust, easy to use, social networked, media tool that I expect to use for some time.

Failure of the Watchers?

When personal information continues to aggregate at blinding speeds in the hands of our government, sentient people ask, what is privacy and why should it be valued? Transparency is the manifesto for those on the cluetrain, and many are espousing that privacy is only for criminals. Truly valuable men and women have nothing to hide and therefore freely give away privacy to anyone?

This is fine if you trust the content holders. Google with it's massive usership continues to uphold high whuffie ratings and is considered "trusted" at this point. Microsoft is not. Apple is for now.

This news item about corruption and mismanagement of information technology reminds me of the intrinsic weakness of government systems: all are weak.

"..the District may be unable to reliably answer the most important security questions: which servers were found, how many laptops were connected to them, what was the chain of custody and who had access to them."

Healthy information boundaries should be well thought out, tested, implemented, and reconfigured in today's citizen governemnt democracies.

Ebay Removes Whuffie/The Demise of Ebay?

According to this info from Ebay about changes in 2008 negative and neutral feedback will be removed from Feedback for sellers and buyers. They claim that too many people were afraid to leave negative feedback for fear of retaliation.

Brilliant. Theres a trust metric shot to hell. I guess that leaves an open door for a new auction site based on Ebay's model with an intact use of social trust. Or just a stand alone site that allows feedback for Ebay users...or better yet the implementation of true Whuffie!

This is a step backwards. The reasoning is wrong, as is the action. Corporate bureaucracy at it's best. Next they will say that to be fair to other bidder's sellers can only name one price and the first one to bid pays that amount.

I give Ebay negative feedback.

NYT: Israel Goes Electric

“With $100 a barrel oil, we’ve crossed a historic threshold where electricity and batteries provide a cheaper alternative for consumers,” Mr. Agassi said. “You buy a car to go an infinite distance, and we need to create the same feeling for an electric car — that you can fill it up when you stop or sleep and go an infinite distance.” full story

Futuristic Eye In The Sky Scam

My friend Dean sends me this story from the Associated Press. A couple has been convicted of bilking people for cash claiming that they can scan their bodies via satellite imaging and that government agents will repair any maladies found while you are sleeping. This is great Utopian science fiction.