A Blog About Making Culture
Alright, Kids.
August 4, 2006
You want links? You got links.
- Seth Stevenson defends the word "sucks" in Slate. This seems relevant to me because my keynote at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference last week was callled Trying Not To Suck and because I used to get in trouble with my dad when I was a kid and said something sucked
- On the entitlement of fandom addresses the fundamental issue of people who try to kill the things they love. This an especially pronounced trait amongst crowds or groups of fans.
- Just randomly, this old Salon story about the acquisition and death of Webrings by Yahoo came up in a conversation today. I always loved reading Katharine Mieszkowski's stories back then.
- What's wrong with Social Software? Part one, part two, and part three. Greg Knauss is so smart I'm surprised The Man hasn't had him killed.
- I do a lot of public speaking, so I tend to be pretty critical of presentations. ("Steve Jobs is a fantastic presenter, but do people really find smugness that appealing?") However, I'm comfortable in saying this presentation a few months ago by Intel CEO Paul Otellini is just plain grim. If he's not a natural presenter, why not get someone who is? If he's excited about it, why doesn't it show? This stuff matters!
- We will unleash a swarm of 480 million tiny satellites to blanket the globe in a coppery ring of surveillance! Bwa ha ha ha! Except it actually happened. Project West Ford makes the looneys seem sane.
- Beaver Cheese, Cheese Reviews. Reviewing all 43 cheese from Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch, and a number of other cheese as well. I also admire CheeseReviews.org: "Cheese Reviews is still in it's vestigial stages. But it is envisioned as ultimately being a full featured cheese portal and community." I love cheese, and I love the web.
Previously: I'm a Cranky Geek!
Next: YouTube Killed My Baby
Dan Zarrella
I never got in trouble for saying something sucked, but I did get in trouble for saying something blew.
François PLANQUE
About the word “suck”: I can’t help but remember Adam Curry citing his daughter pushing it to the next level:
“It sucks so bad (that) it swallows!”
Ouch! :>
Bob Aman
Greg Knauss was right on the money with the first article, though his second one is ironically at odds with the first. He was decrying (correctly) the evils of rigid metadata, but then in his second article, he was complaining of non-portable relationship information, which, in the form of FOAF, tends to be among the most rigid metadata around. I think he’d be much happier with XFN or something like it.
Jason
Did someone say cheese??
Winnie W
Knauss may not have noticed the Custom Friends Groups feature in LiveJournal, otherwise, he may not have bundled it under the simple social apps. User have a lot of flexibility in how to group their relationships. Admittedly, it’s a difficult feature to find. We’re still working on the usability of the site.
As for his second point, as a designer I can see why businesses aren’t into sharing their privacy groups. As a user of social networks, I’m completely annoyed with NOT being able to combine my privacy groups on all my services. But that would require companies to play nice together, and like he says in part 3, it’s High School all over again.
But enough work talk. Time to check out the cheese.
Shri 
The Man? I am wondering who would that be? Pardon my ignorance here…
And, by the way, about saying the s-word, I think it’s better than saying the f-word, eh?
Regards, Shri.
Emma
I definitely had this arguement with my mom as a kid. She was appalled that I would say such a word, and at first I did feel really bad when I would accidentally use it. But, as this article states, it feels less and less vulgar as the years go by! I never think of the origins anymore-it’s just the same as saying “that stinks” in my mind.
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