Special Interest Group on CRAP http://www.sigcrap.org Not affiliated with ACM. They have their own crap. Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:00:05 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 The continuing erosion of privacy http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/06/17/the-continuing-erosion-of-privacy/ http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/06/17/the-continuing-erosion-of-privacy/#comments Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:00:05 +0000 Kevin McCurley http://www.sigcrap.org/?p=345 I’ll take the opportunity to recommend the recent book by Susan Landau on wiretapping. Privacy is increasing in importance over time, and I’m noticing a lot of fuzzy thinking about how to respect privacy. One incident that recently came up is the fact that my car reports latitude, longitude, position, and speed whenever it downloads an RSS feed (yes my car actually downloads RSS – it’s a Nissan Leaf).

]]> http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/06/17/the-continuing-erosion-of-privacy/feed/ 0 Anniversary gifts http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/04/13/anniversary-gifts/ http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/04/13/anniversary-gifts/#comments Thu, 14 Apr 2011 05:03:18 +0000 Kevin McCurley http://www.sigcrap.org/?p=338 There is a traditional list of anniversary gifts, and there is the revised list below.

  1. Paper
  2. Plastic
  3. Caulking
  4. WD-40
  5. Duct tape
  6. Styrofoam
  7. P.V.C.
  8. Gelatin
  9. Latex
  10. Naugahyde
  11. Rayon
  12. Spackle
  13. Fiberglass
  14. Oil
  15. Salt
  16. Cortisone
  17. Vinyl
  18. Ink
  19. Plexiglass
  20. Straw
  21. Aloe
  22. Terra-cotta
  23. Teflon
  24. Salmon
  25. Silver
  26. Soy
  27. Balsa
  28. Sponge
  29. Cardboard
  30. Soup
  31. Terrycloth
  32. Suede
  33. Glue
  34. Down
  35. Burlap
  36. Leaves
  37. Glycerin
  38. Wicker
  39. Soil
  40. Ice
  41. Paprika
  42. Spandex
  43. Foil
  44. Tissue
  45. Cork
  46. Velcro
  47. Rope
  48. Cast iron
  49. Frosting
  50. Gold
]]> http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/04/13/anniversary-gifts/feed/ 0 My proposal for tax reform http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/04/11/my-proposal-for-tax-reform/ http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/04/11/my-proposal-for-tax-reform/#comments Mon, 11 Apr 2011 18:56:35 +0000 Kevin McCurley http://www.sigcrap.org/?p=327 My proposal for tax reform is very simple. Make every senator and congressman do their own taxes.

Only then would they understand the colossal mess they have created. In fact while we’re at it, give them pencil and paper and calculator and make them do it that way. We’d have tax reform so fast …

]]> http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/04/11/my-proposal-for-tax-reform/feed/ 0 Would it be so bad? http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/04/06/would-it-be-so-bad/ http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/04/06/would-it-be-so-bad/#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2011 06:08:22 +0000 Kevin McCurley http://www.sigcrap.org/?p=333 I saw a news story today saying that the price of UC tuition might go as high as $20,000 to $25,000 per year. As distressing as that sounds, I’d like to remind people that universities typically offer a lot of financial aid to students from needy families. While nobody likes the idea of paying more tuition, I think it could be helpful to charge tuition of $25,000 to families who can afford it, while maintaining a strong financial aid program for families who can’t. Why should I receive a subsidy for my daughter to attend UC when I could afford to pay the tuition?

]]> http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/04/06/would-it-be-so-bad/feed/ 0 GoogleMeh http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/31/new-product-from-google/ http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/31/new-product-from-google/#comments Thu, 31 Mar 2011 20:29:01 +0000 Kevin McCurley http://www.sigcrap.org/?p=306 If +1 is the equivalent of “Like”, then +0 is the equivalent of “Meh”.

]]> http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/31/new-product-from-google/feed/ 0 http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/03/318/ http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/03/318/#comments Thu, 03 Mar 2011 23:05:43 +0000 Kevin McCurley http://www.sigcrap.org/?p=318 A few years ago I worked on a coupons project at Google, and I ended up getting on a mailing list from the Food Marketing Institute in order to understand manufacturer’s coupons. The email they still send me is pretty funny.
Meat?

]]> http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/03/318/feed/ 0 You can’t make this stuff up http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/01/you-cant-make-this-stuff-up/ http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/01/you-cant-make-this-stuff-up/#comments Wed, 02 Mar 2011 06:32:38 +0000 Kevin McCurley http://www.sigcrap.org/?p=313 You can't make this stuff up
I suppose they are related…

]]> http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/01/you-cant-make-this-stuff-up/feed/ 0 Experimenting with comments http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/01/experimenting-with-comments/ http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/01/experimenting-with-comments/#comments Wed, 02 Mar 2011 05:31:34 +0000 Kevin McCurley http://www.sigcrap.org/?p=301 When I first set up my blog at sigcrap I enabled comments on the site. This quickly became a pain in the ass, so I ended up disabling the feature. The whole point of social media is to encourage discussion, but it was simply too annoying to moderate comments.

Later on I imported the RSS from my blog into both Facebook and Google Buzz, so I could do my own posting on my site, but let the conversation take place wherever my friends preferred it. This works pretty well, but when someone visits sigcrap.org, they wouldn’t see the conversations that had evolved among their friends. I recently went through the exercise of installing the facebook and google widgets for embedding comments (You’ll see them on the left). Neither one of these is very compelling, but they hint at a future in which your view of a website is tailored to your own social context. When you go to sigcrap.org, you’d see whatever lame comments your friends made about my post, but everyone gets their own view.

I think we have a long ways to go on this, since neither of these widgets is very good yet.

]]> http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/01/experimenting-with-comments/feed/ 0 Shaking down science http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/01/shaking-down-science/ http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/01/shaking-down-science/#comments Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:00:18 +0000 Kevin McCurley http://www.sigcrap.org/?p=294 Matt Blaze’s blog is always interesting, but he hits the nail squarely on the head with this one. It even gave me the inspiration for my blog. http://www.crypto.com/blog/copywrongs/.

]]> http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/03/01/shaking-down-science/feed/ 0 The tipping point on social networking http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/02/20/the-tipping-point-on-social-networking/ http://www.sigcrap.org/2011/02/20/the-tipping-point-on-social-networking/#comments Sun, 20 Feb 2011 18:28:05 +0000 Kevin McCurley http://www.sigcrap.org/?p=297 If I rank my activity in social networking sites, it probably is proportional to the number of friends that I have on these accounts. In decreasing order this would be:

  1. my corp buzz friends on my google.com account
  2. my facebook friends
  3. my public buzz friends on my gmail account
  4. my twitter account.
  5. my quora account

I’m sure that if you get too many friends on any particular network, your participation will decline due to spam and friendships that are too faint to sustain. What is the tipping point and how would you measure it?

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