OneMind

The FBI has been quietly using a program called ATS (Automated Targeting System) for two years in an effort to spot criminals and terrorists based on what the government sees as key indicators of potential bad guys. The system looks at things like how you pay for your ticketes, your motor vehicle record (huh?), seat preference and meal choice (right, crooks and terrorists are probably vegans, eh?).

This is another of those “if you’re not a bad guy, what are you worried about?” things the government does and naive people rationalize. But this one has a kicker: the data can be shared with a broad array of people including private industry, but not with the person being rated.

“The government notice says ATS data may be shared with state, local and foreign governments for use in hiring decisions and in granting licenses, security clearances, contracts or other benefits. In some cases, the data may be shared with courts, Congress and even private contractors.”

Your government doesn’t trust you. Should you trust your government?

Search at Amazon.com used to be so good. Type in a word or two of a book title and wham, get a list of books with yours almost always near the top.

Now they let you search inside books. When you search for key words, they don’t confine themselves to the title. Now you get crap and garbage and useless nonsense results from search.

Great move, guys. Very helpful.

For example…

(Read more if you want to see a good example of this idiocy.)

I did a search today for the book called “Integral Trees” by Larry Niven. It came up alright, but I also got:

Integral Psychology by Ken Wilber because of a reference on p. 3 to “trees in the integral forest”

The Christmas Tree in Rockefeller Center because of this passage: “an integral part of delivering the tree in perfect condition”

Celtric Tree Mysteries which contains this gem: “A deep understanding of this tree grammar is an integral part of successful tree magic.”

And a few others. They get more absurd as you go down the list.

At the very least, Amazon.com owed it to its long-time users to allow a “search in title only” option.

I’ve been using Skype for a few weeks to replace my cell phone when I’m in my home office. Until recently, I wasn’t giving my SkypeIn number to anyone because I wasn’t where I could be sure I’d be in front of the computer to answer. Now I am. So I gave it out. Now I find that the OS X version of Skype (2.0.0.6 and the new Beta 2.5) does not allow one to answer incoming calls. Just can’t. Period. Tech support’s been useless. They had me reinstall Skype after blowing away all the .dmg files I had (which clearly shouldn’t have been necessary but I did it anyway).

When I get an incoming call, I don’t get a small window showing who’s calling and offering me accept and reject buttons, like their site and docs show. Instead, I get a larger window that shows who’s calling, has a big phone in the middle and, as far as I can tell, no way to answer the call, only to hang up on it or pause it or put it on hold.

Anyone got an idea WTF is going on here? Does Skype’s support for OS X suck that badly? Or am I doing something wrong or overlooking something?

I’m about to move to Project Gizmo even though it’s not nearly as popular just because it works.

Clearly it’s a case of too little, too late for this disastrous season, but the Oakland Raiders today demoted offensive coordinator Tom Walsh and replaced him with Ron Shoop. Shoop was the OC in Chicago in the early 90′s when the Bears had a powerful offense.

Walsh was head coach Art Shell’s good buddy, which is the only explanation for why a guy who’d been out of pro ball completely for 12 years got the key job when Shell was named the new field general. The Raiders’ offense has been a disaster, scoring a pathetic league-low 132 points through the first 11 games. The Raiders are guaranteed their fourth consecutive losing season.

I’m a big fan of Shell’s. I think he was probably a good choice for the job. But he’s disappointed me greatly by first hiring his old, out-dated buddy and then by refusing to acknowledge the guy’s culpability for an offense that, on paper, should be one of the best in the league.

I can’t believe Sen. Joe Biden actually blamed Mexico for the immigration problems we have. Not that he’s necessarily wrong (I’m not sure there isn’t enough blame to go around several times and the Mexican socio-economic situation is certainly a contributing factor) but what a bone-headed position for a would-be Dem presidential nominee to take.

He’s off my list. (Actually, he was never on it, but now he won’t get near it.)

Salon.com today has a good piece on former Buddhist monk B. Allan Wallace. A former disciple and still colleague of the Dalai Lama, Wallace has a new book called Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge. The Salon.com interview centers on Wallace’s beliefs about why science shouldl study reincarnation and Buddhism, his criticisms of Christianity, and other related topics.

Good read.

Hindsight is, of course, 20/20, but it seems clear to me after reading and watching the replays that the Oakland Raiders got jobbed in San Diego this afternoon.

Here’s what happened (no dispute as to facts). The Chargers, down 14-7 with a 4th-and-2 inside 12 minutes decide to go for it from the Oakland 40. Vincent Jackson makes a diving catch of a pass for 13 yards and a first down. In his exuberance, he jumped up and spun the ball forward, despite the fact that he had not been ruled down by contact and no whistle had blown. The Raiders recovered. Pretty clear, right?

Not for this crew of striped-shirt yardbirds. They first made the right call. Then they huddled and decided that Jackson didn’t fumble. Rather, they decided, he’d thrown an illegal forward pass. Huh? So he got to keep the ball but they imposed a 5-yard penalty. (There ensued more confusion over whether that penalty took them out of the first down range or not, but that’s not relevant here.)

As Raider CB Fabian Washington said after the game, this was an identical situation to a play involving Plaxico Burress in 2000 when he was with the Steelers. And it seems to me, as a knowledgeable fan and former football official, that the rule here is pretty clear. If a player isn’t down by contact, the ball is live. If he loses possession — regardless of how or why — that ball remains live. It should have been Raiders’ ball and that could well have swapped the momentum enough to give the Raiders a badly needed victory.

The NFL office will probably notify the Raiders some time this week that the officials screwed up. That’s happened at least a couple of times already this season. But meanwhile, Oakland and its fans have another plank in their platform of conspiracy theories. And this is one about which they are absolutely correct as far as I can tell.

The San Francisco 49ers’ loss to the St. Louis Rams this afternoon can be attributed to two bone-headed plays by the Niners down the stretch.

The first big dumb move was made by Coach Mike Nolan. Fourth and inches inside the Rams’ 10. We’ve been ramming the ball down St. Louis’ gullet all afternoon. We’re up by 1, 14-13. Does he give his offense a chance to put the game effectively out of reach? No. Like the coward he too often is, he plays it safe and goes for three.

The second big dumb move was by rookie Marcus Hudson. The Rams are driving with under 30 seconds left, no time outs remaining. They’re inside our 15, but they really only have time for one more play, maybe two if they’re really quick. He refuses to get off the pile after a dead stop of a Rams’ play, drawing a 5-yard delay penalty but, more importantly, stopping the clock. The Rams score on the next play.

This one should have been in the W column. The Niners were the better team most of the afternoon. It’s a shame to see idiots cost the other 50-plus players on the roster a win they really could have used.

Let’s see what happens to all the ridiculous playoff talk now.

Very often when I read articles about where the application software space is heading, I get a dichotomous view. Folks on one side of the argument swear that there’s no way Web services can displace desktop applications and that trying to use the Web to deliver and use produtivity applications is just wrong-headed. Those on the other side laugh up their sleeves and think that those folks who advocate desktop applications are just old fogeys who are as doomed to failure as any pet food site from Web 1.0.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this isn’t an either/or situation; it’s a both/and. Some apps will remain desktop-bound. Others will work best confined to the Web. But many applicatons, it seems to me, will benefit from being hybrids. Such software will be perfectly capable of running either on the Web or on the desktop, with some features duplicated but many more isolated to one environment or the other.

These are the types of applications for which Adobe’s new Apollo technology will perhaps be best suited. Some parts of the UI will be housed on the client machine because their dynamic nature makes it difficult for them to be generated efficiently over a potentially slow Internet connection. But some parts of the UI will work best on the Web using 2.0/AJAX techniques to create a smooth user experience without leaving the browser and its connections to Net-borne information and content. Similarly, some of the functionality may best be handled locally (e.g., personal preferences) while others may work best on the Web (e.g., access to a network-based database).

As is so often the case when two extremes present themselves, the truth may well lie somewehere between them.

There appears to be some momentum building around the idea that if Ohio State and Michigan are still ranked 1-2 in the BCS when the NCAA football season ends, Michigan should not get another shot at the national title. Pure, unadulterated cow dung.

If Michigan, on the strength of schedule, performance against other ranked teams, and all the other criteria, remains the #2 team in the nation after having been beaten by three points in a game that was clearly not decisive, then the national title game should be a rematch. I mean, let’s face it, those two were as evenly matched as any two teams were or are likely to be. Neither team dominated the game. I’m not going to argue that Michigan should have won or could hve won, though both may be true. The point here is that you don’t let the top-ranked team off the hook and hand them a better shot at the national championship by allowing them to play a lower-ranked team just because they’ve already played No. 2.

Let’s let the standings determine the pairings, OK, guys?