Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs (and aggregation sites) are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate?the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is:

as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98
wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst

The above GUID enables anyone to easily search Google or other search engines for all blogs that participate in this experiment, once they have indexed the sites that participate, which may take several days or weeks. To locate the full data set, just search for any sites that contain this GUID.

Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above) [Note that the URL has vanished at least three generations back – DCH]. (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.)

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Windows XP SP2

Well, if you are one of the 5 people in the computer world who doesn’t know yet … Microsoft has released Windows XP Service Pack 2.

I’ve downloaded it … but I’m going to hold off on installing it for a while. Probably 2-3 weeks. For some undefinable reason … I just don’t trust MS to have tested it as well as it should be. Go figure.

Thanks to Mike Wills for pointing out the official download location early yesterday.

Same old same old

ZDNet is running an article titled “IBM overhauls iSeries for the long haul” where it’s discussing how IBM has revamped the iSeries (AS/400 … i5 … name du’jure) for the modern age.

I dunno … I still don’t see a ad’s on the TV touting the iSeries. I think there were some implied iSeries ad’s a few years ago … where the exec was all in tizzy because their server room was empty … except for a single black box (looked like an iSeries) … and a lone tech was walking out the door and said “We consolidated all the servers on the one box” (which is kind-a / sort-a what LPAR allows you to do) … but iSeries was never mentioned … just eServer.

Of course the biggest problem that iSeries faces these days is summed up by this final quote in the article:

You can run a Web server on an iSeries,” Eunice said, “but try to find yourself a Web programmer who has experience in that, or find yourself someone who’s an expert in Microsoft Exchange and also AS/400? Good luck.

Which is, unforunately, quite true.

Computers – then and now

At work, our ITS support person is going to be transplanting our development system from one set of hardware to another (slightly more powerful).

He sent out an email annoucing that he would be doing a full system backup tonight (always a good idea when doing a major system change). He indicated that he would be running the backup from home.

I responded …

You wimp … back when I was doing upgrades we had to wait hours for the system to prompt us for the next diskette.
Of course, trying to lift a 200mb hard drive would give you a hernia … instead of having to worry having about it getting lost in your pocket change 🙂

That got a laugh.

Darl McBride is a Maniac

Not my words … my friend Jim’s.

He pointed me to an article in TechWorld where they obviously omitted a small part of Darl’s statement (the obvious omission is in brackets) …

When people say SCO is just a litigation company, it really bugs me, [and I’ll sue the pants off of anyone who disagrees with me!]
– Darl McBride, CEO of SCO

Of course, the statement that got me was:

McBride also made clear his overriding goal – the destruction of the free software movement: “Wait until the SCO battles are over and let’s see if it’s free or not.” McBride has repeatedly said in the past that free software stifles innovation and harms the IT industry because companies can’t produce great products without any financial return. He continued to rant: “Keep your eye on the [court] filings. Over the coming year, one of the things that you’re going to see is that Big Blue has got big problems.”

Jim comment “that means destruction of the constitutional right of freedom of assembly” … and my only thought was that “People like McBride are against concepts of freedom … they want all the power themselves.”.

I guess McBride (and SCO) is a ‘corporate darwinist’ … he belives in survival of the fittest … ‘course cockroaches have survived for millions of years too.

Cookout and Archives

Today was a somewhat busy day … went to the annual Broadband Reports Chicago / SBC – Ameritech Midwest Cookout held at kcazzie‘s house.

It was enjoyable … lots of yaking about geeky stuff.

When I got home I started working on implementing a requested feature for the mailing list archives so that the number of results / page could be selected and remembered. Took a few hours to code and test, but it appears to be working well.

I also used the change as an opportunity to change the way the list index pages are generated … now I’m using Jamon … which is a nice templating engine for Java. I’m not using nearly all the capabilities of the package, but I’m pleased with the results.

iSeries Blogger Button

Ok iSeries Bloggers … now WE have a button!

I would suggest you reference it like this:
<a href="http://www.iseries.ibm.com" title="IBM iSeries -- For when you can't afford to be out of business"><img src="/images/iseries-button.png" alt="IBM iSeries"/></a>

Feel free to use the button graphic on your site … but, please, copy it to your own server instead of referencing mine 🙂

If you do decide to use the image … trackback to this post. Maybe I’ll setup an iSeries blog agregator sometime.