I am dismayed by the way Google has rolled out Buzz, and I am not alone. Many bloggers and news organizations have raised issues with Google’s misguided assumption that email contacts form the same kind of social network as users of Facebook and Twitter (etc.) have built up over time. For example, a NY Times [...]
Posts under ‘tangential’
be careful when choosing email addresses
i’ve been receiving a growing number of “wrong number”-type email messages. it started a couple of years ago with one or two every couple of months; now i am receiving about one per week. while this is more of a nuisance than a real problem, i feel like it is just one more unintended consequence [...]
on backing up
i’ve been thinking a lot about backups lately, and have been inspired to make sure my dissertation is backed up so that if anything were to happen to my laptop all the work i’ve done won’t just disappear. when i worked in industry, it was somebody else’s job to make sure my laptop backed up [...]
hmmm….
when i saw the title of this paper, “An experimental study of simulated web-based threats and their impact on knowledge communication effectiveness”, i figured it must be about computer security and phishing or viruses or something. then i read the abstract: It is evolutionarily adaptive for humans to have enhanced memories of events surrounding surprise [...]
you know you’re working too hard when…
… you’re reading a research paper and you find yourself writing “hilarious!” in the margin next to a paragraph that says: “For instance, several of our subjects used terms for sexual anatomy to refer successfully to some of the figures. Such messages, in addition to producing correct identifications of their referents, probably lead their recipients [...]
