GeekNights 071126 - The Post-Historic Internet

Rym

Tonight on GeekNights, we finish our discussion on how Google has changed the face of the Internet. In the news, Scott hereby declares that Digg is dead to him, and GeekNights points out that Slashdot says that Bruce Schneier notes that John Tehranian writes that copyright law in the US is a tangled and frightening mess.

Scott's Thing - Jinzora Media Server
Rym's Thing - Roo in the Background

HMTKSteve

Mixx is the new Digg.

Apreche

Mixxis the new Digg.

Just checked it out. Not so hot.

thaneofcawdor

Kangaroos are like a plague where I live. There has been a lengthy drought in our area and the 'roos tend to migrate from water source to water source. This leads to them crossing highways en masse, and there's always at least two or three dead ones by the side of the road between where I live and where I work. It's a damn shame.

Come to think of it, they may not be dead, they may just be taking a break to whack it. I never look too closely.

HMTKSteve

Even though the early search engines were susceptable to high density keyword duplication (video games, video games, video games) that is an easy thing for a search engine to filter out. A simple conditional check where the search engine ignores pages where they keyword density is higher than 5% or the keyword appears more times than the word "the" would work to weed out these sites.

The problem with Google basing its search results off of links is that it is far harder to detect a paid link than it is to find keyword spamming on a page. It is also far easier to game Google because it weighs the anchor text used as well as the site being linked from.

I can understand Google's desire to see people use the "no_follow" tag on paid links but why? If someone pays $10,000 a month to TechCrunch, should the link they buy carry no "Google Juice"? If TechCrunch is willing to take the money they must have trust in the site being linked to.

Google can easily discount links from directory sites and sites that are off topic but it is nearly impossible (without eyeballs checking) for Google to detect a paid link. One way they can detect it is if you have a high Page Rank site about "jet fighters" with links to a web site about "DUI Lawyers".

As long as search engines make public how they rank sites there will be SEO gamers who will game search engine results.

HMTKSteve

Digg went downhill about the time they pulled the top diggers list down and changed the algorithm to make it harder for top diggers to get content on the front page.

If someone is a "top digger" it means that the stuff they submit is liked by the members and promoted to the front page. Punishing the top diggers did nothing good for digg.

I know quite a few of the top diggers and it is frustrating to see a story with well over 200 diggs stuck in the upcomming section while other stories (submitted by members with no front paged stories) jump to the front page with only 50 or less diggs on them.

By making it more dificult for the "top diggers" to get content onto the digg front page it only hurts digg in the long run and reinforces the notion that digg is a site made to be gamed. It's one thing to handicap a better player in a video game setting to make things more challenging when playing against novices but digg is not supposed to be a game!

PS: I can't get the spell check to work on IE6 anymore.

Apreche

PS: I can't get the spell check to work on IE6 anymore.

Don't use IE6.

Omnutia

If you need your ID3 tags filling out use MusicBrainz Picard. It will automate the whole process. My music got mostly correct tags.
And seriously, download a maximum of 1 album at a time!

HMTKSteve

PS: I can't get the spell check to work on IE6 anymore.

Don't use IE6.

I don't always have a choice.

Apreche

If you need your ID3 tags filling out useMusicBrainz Picard. It will automate the whole process. My music got mostly correct tags.
And seriously, download a maximum of 1 album at a time!

That's what I was doing. It couldn't handle the quantities I'm dealing with. Also, it is not so good when it comes to some of the crazy ass shit I've got. When I find the program that can handle my 160 albums of Super Eurobeat without killing itself, I know I've got it right.

HMTKSteve

Are there any real small computers you would recomend for this jukebox system? Something I can put in my audio cabinet?

Apreche

Are there any real small computers you would recomend for this jukebox system? Something I can put in my audio cabinet?

Mac mini? ASUS eee PC?

Omnutia

I find the program that can handle my 160 albums of Super Eurobeat without killing itself, I know I've got it right.

This is why I add only a few songs at a time. I have only 2180 tracks but I can get to exactly the song I want whenever I need to.

Apreche

is is why I add only a few songs at a time. I have only 2180 tracks but I can get to exactly the song I want whenever I need to.

I have over 10000 tracks, most are unsorted.

HMTKSteve

I spent part of last weekend feeding CDs into my laptop for itunes to rip. I have several hundred CDs in my collection and it is a long process.

Neito

If you need your ID3 tags filling out useMusicBrainz Picard. It will automate the whole process. My music got mostly correct tags.

I tried this. It didn't work the way I wanted. The Winamp auto-tagger's actually pretty good.

Anastius

is is why I add only a few songs at a time. I have only 2180 tracks but I can get to exactly the song I want whenever I need to.

I have over 10000 tracks, most are unsorted.

Didn't you say you categorize your music somehow? How do you do that?

Apreche

Didn't you say you categorize your music somehow? How do you do that?

Back in the day, years ago, I had sorting system. I would do it all by hand as I got new music. Not only did I let the unsorted music pile up, but I decided I didn't like the current sorting scheme. I tried to resort everything using the musicbrainz, but that was no good either. So now I have a folder of stuff that is semi-sorted with musicbrainz. A folder of stuff sorted by hand from way back in the day. And yet another folder of completely unsorted stuff. Oh, and there are lots of duplicates and stuff in there too.

...

I have over 10000 tracks, most are unsorted.

Wheck. I got 2050 songs and I got the majority sorted. First letter of the artist, full artist name, album name, songs. Whenever I download a song I put it in the correct folder according to first letter of the artist, and if I have a lot (10+) songs of said artist I make a folder for that one in the proper folder, and if I have an entire album of an artist, etc, etc. Very easy to keep in order when you download new songs. Legal downloads of course. Damn, I realize I still have to listen to the ep.

Viga

I thought I had a lot of music. Everyone here kicks my ass at how much music I have. Sorting is easy for me. One folder is Japanese. One folder is English and other. I don't really sort by genre and stuff.

Apreche

There's a newer and better version of MusicBrainz Picard than the one that comes with Ubuntu. I've used it on a few albums so far, and it's working decently enough. It will take awhile, but I think this will work.

Thaed

I do the cost benefit analysis thing Scott was talking about all the time. It keeps me from doing playlists on iTunes and capturing cool songs I hear on podcasts. Strangely enough, it also keeps me from watching anime despite my desire to watch anime. I just never get to it.

HMTKSteve

I use the cost-benefit analysis on lots of things. Right now my wife keeps bugging me that she wants a diamond. I point out that they are really only useful for industrial purposes.

She counters me by trying to say my purchasing of video games is a waste of money. Yeah, the day the video game industry starts a marketing campaign on how you should not buy used video games because they are part of someone else's memories is the day I start giving that line credence.

I'm just too practical. Having a diamond on your finger says nothing other than, "look what I convinced my husband to buy for me!" OR "Look, I have so much money I can buy pretty rocks to wear on my fingers!" now, if that ring was a personal communication device that had to have a diamond on it to work THEN I might consider buying it for her.

I am tempted to buy a fake diamond and give it to her, just to see what sort of reaction I get.

Andrew

I'm just too practical. Having a diamond on your finger says nothing other than, "look what I convinced my husband to buy for me!" OR "Look, I have so much money I can buy pretty rocks to wear on my fingers!" now, if that ring was a personal communication device that had to have a diamond on it to work THEN I might consider buying it for her.

xenomouse

I am tempted to buy a fake diamond and give it to her, just to see what sort of reaction I get.

If you don't want to buy her a diamond, just tell her - don't be duplicitous about it. If you do want to buy her a ring and if your hesitation is the cost, put the time into shopping. I suggest you try Amazon's "Create Your Own Ring" utility.

Apreche

http://www.gemesis.com/

HMTKSteve

I have told her I will not be buying her a diamond.

@WIP, if that video were true I would buy one.

belarm

I was listening to this episode on the way to work, and the bit about digg sucking ass (it does) got me thinking. You've got a reservoir of people with similar interests at your disposal in the form of this forum. Would perhaps some manner of interface similar to digg's podcast digging system, specifically tailored to deal with RSS feeds, be workable?

The basic system, as I imagine it, would be thus: forum user (whose account must be <arbitrary age> old to protect against spamming) submits an RSS feed and selects the category it should belong to, and forum users can vote it up or down. This would be fairly simple to implement.

As an added bonus, you could make a feed aggregator that grabbed the entries from the top x (specified through a GET variable in the requested feed URL) feeds in a category. Hence, a bit of zeitgeist without the unwashed masses getting their grubby little homeopathy-hawking mitts all over it.

Thoughts? Request for help with implementation (this sounds like a massively fun project to me)? It seems that, with the number of posts of the form "What <x> do you other geeknights listeners go to," around here, this project would be well received by the community.

Apreche

belarm, what you want would be achieved if everyone here just used del.icio.us.

belarm

del.icio.us would work quite well, but I'm talking about finding & ranking "primary" sources, which at this point interests me a bit more than having individual articles pointed out as good. Obviously the del.icio.us approach has its merits, as well. If that's more what you're interested in, then that is plainly the way to go.

Apreche

del.icio.us would work quite well, but I'm talking about finding & ranking "primary" sources, which at this point interests me a bit more than having individual articles pointed out as good. Obviously the del.icio.us approach has its merits, as well. If that's more what you're interested in, then that is plainly the way to go.

You can del.icio.us the primary sources.