I am just trying out scoutle which I discovered from some random blog. Apparently it is a new service that aims to automate bringing people who might be insterested in your content, to your blog. It does this by tracking the number of visitors along with a sort of social networking where people who find each other interesting form a scoutle connection. Between these two, you get a rating. There’s also the automated scout involved which you get to personalise and give a nice name and quote (Meet the Void Seeker)
Every time you get a visitor to your website (it does not have to be a Scoutle user) we will allow your Scout to walk two times, which will allow your Scout will meet other Scouts that are promoting their websites. The system will try only to find interesting Scouts for you to meet, based on interests, networks, connections and more. The number of Scouts your Scout meets depends on the number of visitors to your website. Also, don’t forget that when you have a visitor on your website, two other Scouts will visit as well, using the Stage you have installed.
It’s all a bit complex on first read so I didn’t understand how it works very much but since it’s automated and all I thought I’d give it a go and see what it does.
If you’re interested, give it a go and if you find the Division by Zer0 interesting just add me as a contact in scoutle. I’m curious to see what this thingamajib does.
What I’m not certain of is if the flash widget should be as visible as possible or out of the way. At the moment I’ve placed it on the bottom of my bottombar and out of the way. It means that it will load for people visiting but they are unlikely to notice it. If they are supposed to click it however, maybe I should be placing it on my sidebar.
Unfortunately my sidebar is only visible from my single post pages so someone visiting my homepage or a static page will not see it. I’m also not certain if having it appear twice (sidebar and bottombar) is a good idea :-/
Like any good atheist, I’ve been trying to keep myself in the loop by monitoring the Atheosphere. Unfortunately, due to the sheer quantity of such content (At the moment, the Atheist Blogroll is at more than 700 individual active blogs) it has always been a bit overwhelming.
I’ve tried using Planet Atheism, but I quickly realised that it is tracking only a limited amount of blogs (certainly not as many as the blogroll).
I then registered to the all the Atheist blogs through the OPML for a while but that was just overwhelming, not to mention time consuming (to update the folder each time a new blog was added). I then tried simply registering to the Google Reader tag that Larro is maintaining and that was a bit easier but I still had the problem that the quantity of the posts was overwhelming. With more than 1000 posts a month it is simply impossible to find the good ones. I even tried using other services like Reddit Atheism, and Atheism Spot but these have generally very low output and generaly partisan-y.
The Bashboard of AideRSS
In the end I just decided to see how I could fix this and fortunately, I happened upon AideRSS. After a bit of struggling and some firefox restarts (simply because of the amount of ram all the scripting ended up consuming) I managed to get it organised and ready for the godless.
How does this help? Well instead of simply seeing each and every post people are making, many of which will be not be very relevant to your interests, you can choose to limit the items you see to only the ones that have been more “popular” or succesful.
‘Ah’, I hear you say, ‘Won’t that just mean that the popular bloggers out there like will hog all the spotlight, even more than they do now? Small blogs can rarely get 5 comments on a post where, Pharyngula would be hard pressed to get less than 20.’
Have no fear. This is where the beauty of this particular system is. The posts you see when you filter by popularity, are not the most popular posts compared to other blogs but compared to other posts in the same blog. Thus while I may, on average, get 1-2 comments per post, a post that gets 10 will be considered good and one that gets, say, 30 will be well on its way to “best”. Also, since it takes into consideration diggs, del.icio.us bookmarks, linkbacks etc, you may get “popular” even without any comments at all.
This way, even though my post got 10 posts while Pharyngula’s got 100, we are both simply “good” since, compared to ther of our own respective posts, these are simple “higher than average”.
This does not mean of course that you should stop using Reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon etc. On the contrary, you should keep using them because the popularity of each post is using (Well, not at the moment, but very soon I’m being told) ratings on these services as well. The only difference is that this popularity does not stay in the respective service but it helps people who use AideRSS to see the more interesting posts.
So how can you get in into that action? There’s a few ways.
You can grab either the Atheist Blogroll Good posts of the Best posts OPML files that I’ve created and import them into your feed reader of choice. The Good posts will give you more content as the bar is lower.
You can simply subscribe to my own Top Stories that I’ve set up on my account. I will try to keep this updated with new additions to the Atheist Blogroll.
If you’re using Google Reader, just grab the plugin and you’re done 😉
You can create an account with AideRSS, grab the original Atheist Blogroll OPML [3. Will become outdated on the next blogroll update though] and the use the import function there. Once the feeds are insterted in your account (it won’t take long as they’ve already been analyzed with my import) you can change the filter settings to what you want and grab you own customised feed. You’ll have to update your blogroll manualy with this method however. However now you can select some on low filter and others on high.
So you’ve got quite a few capabilities to work with this already. If you are getting as overwhelmed with news and posts as I am, hopefully this will help you cut down on the clutter. Plus, if you join AideRSS you can get the stats for your own site and see with one look which of your posts are the more popular. You can see the Division by Zer0 here for example.
In the last few days it seems that there has been some commotion on the subject of the A|N in the Atheosphere. I’ve been keeping myself busy with other things and haven’t been very active in the Nexus and thus I missed the actual conversation.
What happened in short is that after the donation request, some people raised concerns regarding where the money is going, why so much is needed and other assorted questions. It seems that there is a general feeling of distrust and skepticism on this issue which I think culminated with the recent posting from the Atheist Blogger.
Adrian has since changed his opinion on this after private correspondence he had with Brother Richard but I think the whole event was for the best.
You see, I am a big supporter of transparency and furthermore I am a skeptic. It goes against my nature to simply accept someone’s word that “it’s for a good cause”. Indeed I am diametrically opposed to the following statement from the donation page:
Quite a few members have chastised me for posting the below budget. Many feel that I am being way to open and only making it easier for people to make me a target for their scorn.
If anything, I feel that there was not enough information provided in the donation page which is what led to people to question the amount of money requested. If the A|N were to not just request this amount of money, but also keeps thins secret I wouldn’t have bothered donating. Indeed I avoided donating anything before I got a breakdown of the donation amount and even then I did it conservatively as many sums were suspicious.
I can truthfully say that the only reason I donated in the first place is because I’ve already invested some time and effort to the A|N and I’ve grown to trust Richard from private conversations. However this is certainly not true for all, and Richard cannot really have one-on-one chats with every member of the Nexus in order to build up the same level of trust, and this is where transparency comes into play.
All examples of the Rational Responders or the FFRF making a lot of money and keeping things secret mean absolutely nothing to me, for I have not donated to them either. However I do believe that people who donate to those causes do so because of the level of trust and goodwill the people in charge have built up. The A|N OTOH is very new in all this and there is basically very little reason for people to donate – until that trust and goodwill has had time to grow.
For each vocal person like Adrian Hayter, who comes out and declares the reasons why he is leaving or not donating, you can be certain that there will be 100 silent ones who have the exact same concerns. I had many of the exact same questions with regards to the donation breakdown but instead of driving me to write about it, I decided to wait and see.
For this reason, the A|N team should be actually glad that someone voiced these concerns. By having someone challenge the donation drive and ask for questions, we (the silent majority) have now a much more clear idea of what is going on and can decide either way. Indeed having such a “detractor” admit publicly that he was wrong, is a good thing in the long run. It is in A|N’s best interest to encourage skepticism, not hide it.
Frankly, those who seem determined to stick their heads in the sand bother me more than those asking tough questions. I am an atheist, but I was a skeptic first. To see dissent and skepticism discouraged in a community of atheists is surprising. The investigation was the right thing to do, and people should keep asking questions until they have been answered to everyone’s satisfaction.
Do not put your head in the sand and do not expect freethinkers to follow the religious motif of giving 10% of their income unquestionably. Yes, the respect to authority and the blind trust for “benevolent dictators” give the religious front much power and influence, but it is also part of their weakness.
You will never get the same behaviour from people like me, but make an effort to earn maintain our trust and 10% might start looking too little.
Just a quick note. Dr.Horrible is being streamed for free once more (at the time of writing). I don’t know what changed the original plans to have it for free only for the first weeks but it’s there now. If you still haven’t seen it, Git!
If you don’t know what it is, has your router been blown for the last month? One Word: New-Super-Anti-Hero-Musical-Short-Series.
This is a historic event. I’m certain that fame and fortune will not be very far back!
In case you haven’t seen my recent page about it and you don’t care to read it, Complexlife is a lifestreaming plugin which is a fork from SimpleLife (You see what I did there? 😛 ).
After adding a lot of features and options to it and seeing that Simplelife is not progressing I thought I’d go ahead and just upload it as a new version. This will allow me to have a more organised development and also have the help of anyone who wishes to improve it.
I’ve already got a few features I want to add and I’m also going to be merging changes from other places where I find them, i.e. the trumblog.
So if you’ve got a self-hosted WordPress blog, give it a go and let me know what you think. I’m eager for feedback.
Σε περίπτωση που δεν το ακούσατε ακόμα, τo πρώτο Lindependence τελείωσε με επιτυχία. Για μια μικρή πόλη στις Η.Π.Α. τα αποτελεσματα ήταν πολύ θετικά και η προσωπική μου άποψη είναι ότι θα βοηθήσει στην “word-of-mouth” διαφήμιση του GNU/Linux όσον αφορα το desktop.
Ο λόγος όμως που γράφω αυτό το κείμενο δεν είναι απλά για να διαφημίσω αυτή την πολύ σωστή κίνηση αλλά για να επιστήσω την προσοχή σας στο πόσο πολύ το αγνόησε η κοινότητα του Λίνουξ.
Απο μεγάλους κόμβους στόν τεχνολογικό κόσμο (Slashdot, O’Reilly) μέχρι αφοσιομένες στο Gnu/Linux ιστοσελίδες (Linux Journal, FSF), η αντίδραση ήταν μια απαθής αδιαφορία! Πέρα απο μερικά σημεία όπως το LXer, σχεδόν πουθενά αλλού δεν είδα, αν όχι ενθουσιασμό, τουλάχιστον μια απλή ανακοίνωση. Αντίθετως πολλοί είναι αυτοί που συγκεκριμένα απέφυγαν να το ανακοινώσουν.
Το όλο θέμα είναι λυπηρό. Είμαστε μια (σχετικά) μικρή και αποκεντροποιημένη κοινότητα που δεν έχουμε κανένα άλλο για υποστήριξη εκτώς απο τα μέλη μας. Είναι εντελός αντι-διαισθητικό να κινούμαστε σε τέτοιες κατευθύνσεις μόνο και μόνο επειδή δεν συμφωνούμε με τις πρωτοβουλίες που παίρνουν οι άλλοι. Ειδικά τα μεγάλα μέλη ενημέρωσης για οτιδήποτε Λίνουξ θα πρέπει να είναι αγνωστικά στο τι παρουσιάζουν σαν νέα, εφόσον έχουν να κάνουν με το θέμα.
Δεν υπάρχει κανένας λόγος να μην αναφέρουν, έστω και αν συντομία, οτι η Μέρα Λινουξαρτησίας “θα γίνει την Τάδε μέρα” ή ότι “έγινε με επιτυχία”. Κανένας. Το να μην το αναφέρεις καν είναι μια ένδειξη μικρότητας και συμφωνώ με αυτούς που πιστεύουν οτι η ζηλεία είναι ο υπαίτιος. Γιατί δεν το κατάφεραν οι ίδιοι…
Όπως τα έφεραν οι εξελίξεις, ο Ήλιος (Helios) και οι συνεργάτες του τα κατάφεραν μια χαρά αλλά η ελειψη οποιασδήποτε βοήθειας έβλαψε αρκετά τον ενθουσιασμό τους. Ελπίζω μόνο να συνεχίσουν με τον ίδιο ρυθμό και να μην το βάλουν κάτω γιατί πραγματικά εμπνέουν πολλούς μας αλλά και το γεγονός οτι κάνουν την θεωρία πράξη μπορεί να αλλάξει και γνώμες.
Fuck! I just now realized that when I upgraded the robots meta plugin it b0rked all its settings. Specifically, it checked all the checkboxes and as a result nothing on all my sites was being indexed. I only noticed by accident!
I had an intense argument yesterday afternoon with a friend, lets call her S. The argument started from how dangerous it is to talk back to the various immigrants when they make a sexist remark or something similar. The discussion moved to how the government is protecting them instead of punishing them, how they all know each other and how 90% of them are criminals and are only in Germany to exploit the social rights. All the while anecdotal evidence was used to back each point.
CC - photo credit: •● planeta roig
I had an intense argument yesterday afternoon with a friend, lets call her S. The argument started from how dangerous it is to talk back to the various immigrants when they make a sexist remark or something similar. The discussion moved to how the government is protecting them instead of punishing them, how they all know each other and how 90% of them are criminals and are only in Germany to exploit the social rights. All the while anecdotal evidence was used to back each point.
During the last and most heated part of the argument, S expressed the idea she thought would resolve this issue. Kick all the immigrants which do not speak the language and are not otherwise “integrated”, out of the country.
This is a sentiment that it seems people everywhere share. I’ve seen it in Greece (Albanians), I’ve heard it from US (Mexicans) and I see it now in Germany (Turkish mostly). The idea that with by kicking the immigrants out, things will magically become better.
There’s various ways one rationalises this. Others think that immigrants are taking over the jobs while others that immigrants do not integrate into a society and thus drag everyone down. I seem to keep running into the second case.
The line of thought seems to go like this:
Immigrants come to our country
Some of them do not care to work and abuse our social programs
The government seems to protect them (insert anecdotal evidence)
All the dangerous criminal gangs we run into are foreigners. Our countrymen would never act like that.
Thus the solution is to kick the criminals out of the country since they do not want to be like us.
Now I understand how one can be exasperated with their government when they hear the anecdotes of how they always seem to take the side of the immigrant. I was told a specific example of a guy getting stabbed by some teen Russians because he tried to stop a fight and the government decided to not punish them because “their life would be ruined”. The guy went into the hospital apparently and he was told by the Russians that “they would finish the job when you get out” and the Government again didn’t do anything about it. Examples like these can really make your blood boil and lead one to espouse radical positions.
The underlying sentiments people express is that
The Government should be on our side
Foreigners are more dangerous and thus should have less rights.
The first point is wrong, not because the government should be on the immigrants side, but because the government should be fair and neutral to where one’s parents happened to fuck in.
I wholeheartedly oppose the Government falling over itself to please other cultures or religions. If a muslim woman wants to wear a burqa in their job where business clothes are the norm, then, tough. If the business is not prepared to allow other employees to wear whatever they want, then she should not be allowed either. Just because one comes from a culture where one thing is the norm, it should make the society where they go to, to conform to it.
On the other hand, if that muslim woman did a crime then the solution is not to judge her by islamic law or to kick her out of the country. The solution is to treat her exactly the same as any other person. No entitlement because she’s foreign but no extra punishment (like deportation) either.
The second point is the one that mostly annoys me however. It is something that passes into racism quite neatly. People do not realise what they are really advocating when they request that someone be treated differently solely because of their birthplace. When I called S out on it with “What you are advocating is racist” I got the immediate reply “I’m not a racist“. Good thing that I has seen this video just recently
[youtube]b0Ti-gkJiXc[/youtube]
But that’s exactly it. Whenever I tell S to do something about the problems her response is that “People who complain in Germany are called Nazis.”
When your solution to the problem is racist (kicking the foreign criminals out), then people will unfortunately come just to that conclusion. When I hear stuff like “All Russians know each other” or “The Turkish don’t want to integrate” then alarm lights start flaring in my head. Generalisations like this are the precursor to more nasty stuff.
But I can foresee one asking: “If indeed the majority of criminals are immigrants, wouldn’t it make sense to get rid of them?“. Why is this wrong? Because they are basing the argument on correlation. It is not an inherent characteristic of an immigrant that he’ll become a criminal in another country but it is a very likely outcome that a poor & desperate will. The reason that so many criminals are foreign is because so many foreigners are poor.
CC - photo credit: Stitch
I do not know how the German society is, or how welcoming (and indeed my experience is that they can be quite hostile) but when your society does not accept someone as it would accept one of your countrymen, you lead them to povertry and desperation. Once you get a good number of such people, their mentality shifts to considering all of your countrymen as hostile bigots.
Once this happens, it starts feeding upon itself and things like ghettos start popping up. Convince a sufficiently large group of immigrants that your society is hostile and they will become an opponent. They will abuse your laws and form into criminal gangs in order to survive.
It is also because of how a society works that a class of people are impoverished and some of them turn to crime. Were you to kick all foreigners out, the same system would necessitate that part of your middle class be impoverished in order to keep the wheels turning. You would still have the same criminal elements, only now they would speak your language (in slang) as well.
When you tell me that “Germans do not always carry a knife on them” it is because all Germans you know are middle class and this is because the low class is now comprised from the impoverished immigrants. Kick them out, and you’ll start seeing Germans, Greeks or Americans in their place.
One final thing that annoys me is when I tell people to do something about the problems they have in their society. I tell them to speak, to be active, to think of solutions and I get the same response: “Nothing will ever change”. This kind of defeatism is exasperating especially because when you explain that nothing fixes itself and you have to fight against poverty or change the current system, I end up hearing “Kick the foreigners out”
Like any good atheist, I’ve been trying to keep myself in the loop by monitoring the Atheosphere. Unfortunately, due to the sheer quantity of such content (At the moment, the 
Just a quick note. 
Απο μεγάλους κόμβους στόν τεχνολογικό κόσμο (Slashdot, O’Reilly) μέχρι αφοσιομένες στο Gnu/Linux ιστοσελίδες (Linux Journal, FSF), η αντίδραση ήταν μια απαθής αδιαφορία! Πέρα απο μερικά σημεία όπως το 
