lexisnexis new

What do we think of LexisNexis Academic Search (beta)?

I can’t seem to find any indication about what the EasySearch does for default searching… it just says it lets you ’search just like you can on the Internet’ or somesuch.  What does that mean?  Does that mean search the way Google searches, or the way Yahoo! searches?  Is it like an Excite meta search? What’s it doing?  Is it a default AND-ing operation between each term, or a default “exact phrase” operation?  The tutorial didn’t clear this up for me…

sousveillance hurts 2

You know, on second thought, if anybody takes pictures of me “against my wishes”, I might, myself, respond with anger and agression.  Mr. Miller admits he was arrested by the Miami police “after taking photos of them against their wishes.”  (I don’t know the law, but it sounds wrong to arrest him for this, given…  When did it become a crime to take a photo?)  But get some common sense, man.  If the cops clearly don’t want their photos taken and you insist on doing it against their will, you may have to rumble.

search wikia talk

Jimbo Wales posted on the Search Wikia mailing list that a big announcement is due out soon (possibly today, says he).  The chatter on the list is sometimes interesting, but there’s a goodly shot of talk-about-the-talk-on-the-list.  One contributor and another trading jabs (that’d be Seth and Jimbo, by the by)… So.  What Search Wikia?

Read the wiki content page here, and brainstorm sheet here.

Some highlights of discussion:

• True visual searching?
• Mediated search, but how?
• Taxonomy vs. folksonomy (again)
• Query forms that rank what the searcher values as authoritative?

So we wait.

sousveillance hurts

Police officers do not like being photographed, at least not when this guy does it. Sousveillance isn’t any kind of instant fix like “oh, you’re recording this? well we’d better all be on our best behavior,” you know. It’s not a reverse pan-opticon, where we all watch the authority and the authority stops doing naughty things. It’ll take many more years and tears and plenty of diligence… maybe a live webcast library for people on the streets, recording their encounters in real time… but the blade cuts both ways.  We’ll all have to start wearing disguises to hide the fact that we make so many trips down to the local (whatever spot you go to that you don’t want folks knowing that you go to).

“My name is Carlos Miller and I am a writer, reporter and photojournalist who was arrested by Miami police after taking photos of them against their wishes, which was a clear violation of my First Amendment rights. I have pleaded not guilty to the nine misdemeanor charges they conjured to justify their arrest. My trial begins May 7th.”

This is not something that regular folks or the state is going to just give you. Nobody’s ready for this particular future yet. This is just a whiff of what losing control of your personomy feels like. We like our privacy, all of us (but do you actually get privacy when your on public time, in public uniform?), and we’re wary about where the line blurs.

But, hey. Keep trying if you want to.

AIDS awareness + betel nut

{UPDATE: it occurs to me to ask, anybody know if betel is legal in the States?  Anybody know where I could find them if they, um, are? E-mail me if ye do knw.} 

Betel nuts are good. Sure, they give you lip cancer, make your teeth red, stain the sidewalks up so horrible that it looks like blood from scooter wrecks everywhere… but they also give you a hot charge that rises from deep in your shoulders and throat and rushes up through the top of your head. Its like chewing tobacco, drinking a beer real fast, and downing a pot of coffee all at once. ‘Tis lovely, if you have the taste for it.

China Post has this:

Health officials want to turn the scantily clad women who sell betel nuts at stands along Taiwan’s roadways into anti-AIDS campaigners.

Betel nuts, chewed as a mild stimulant, are popular among truck and taxi drivers — and vendors often compete by staffing roadside sales booths with young women in bikinis, translucent blouses or nurses’ uniforms with miniskirts.

The government plans to have the women give their customers boxes containing condoms and an AIDS warning, Yang Shih-yang, an official at the Center for Disease Control, said yesterday.

“Research done from Africa to Himalayan countries has proved one thing: The AIDS viruses are spread along the highways,” Yang said. He was apparently referring to truckers and cab drivers engaging in prostitution or sex with multiple partners.

$175, but still

PC World had:

…XO is not designed for modern office use, but for three universal traits that every kid has in common: learning, socializing and creating, Bender said.

That is why the XO’s desktop page shows a graphic map of WiFi signals up to 2 kilometers away, allowing all the XO laptops in a village to share drawings, notes, photographs, and musical compositions. The mesh of laptops could also share a single Internet connection, allowing them to use a distant ISP or a single schoolhouse server.