StupidFilter

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Here’s a neat idea — a filter for detecting stupidity in online communications and filtering it out.

StupidFilter was conceived out of necessity. Too long have we suffered in silence under the tyranny of idiocy. In the beginning, the internet was a place where one could communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people. Then, Eternal September hit and we were lost in the noise. The advent of user-driven web content has compounded the matter yet further, straining our tolerance to the breaking point.

It’s time to fight back.

The solution we’re creating is simple: an open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English. This will be accomplished with weighted Bayesian analysis and some rules-based processing, similar to spam detection engines. The primary challenge inherent in our task is that stupidity is not a binary distinction, but rather a matter of degree. To this end, we’re collecting a ranked corpus of stupid text, gleaned from user comments on public websites and ranked on a five-point scale.

Eventually, once the research is completed, we plan to release core engine source code for incorporation into content management systems, blogs, wikis and the like. Additionally, we plan to develop a fully implemented Firefox plugin and a WordPress plugin.

More power to their elbows, as we say in Ireland. And if you’re puzzled by the reference to ‘eternal September’, see the helpful Wipipedia entry. Basically, it’s shorthand for what AOL did to online discourse.

What Apple does next…

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This is why I love the Web. Evan DiBiase, an undergraduate in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, writes:

Before installing any iTunes upgrade, I dump the strings from the old iTunes binary. Once the new version has installed, I diff* the new version’s strings against the old’s, to see what shows up.

When I did this for the recent 7.5 upgrade, I found the following interesting (new) strings…

Such a simple idea. Such a smart idea. And guess what it reveals? Coming soon to an iTunes store near your screen: video rentals.

Evan also found this ad…

… and wondered what it might mean. The answer is simple: Microsoft’s Zune publicists don’t speak English. (Mind you, Apple’s are no better: remember the ‘Think Different’ slogan? Now if it had been ‘think differently’…)

*Footnote for non-techies: diff is the Unix/Linux which compares two files and lists the differences between them.

Blair to join Ratzinger’s army

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Hmmm… Stryker McGuire writes:

It’s one of the best-trailed conversions in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Former British prime minister Tony Blair, an Anglican, is to be formally received into the Church in the next few weeks, according to The Tablet, a London-based Catholic newspaper. Blair has regularly, though quietly, attended Catholic services over the years with his wife and four children, all of whom are Catholics, and his conversion was rumored for the 10 years he was in office…

Someone once observed that Blair and Margaret Thatcher had a lot in common in that both Prime Ministers always believed they were right about everything. The difference between the two, however, was that Blair also believed that he was ‘good’.

Oh, the joy of it!

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Stephen Fry, while extolling the merits of the iPhone in the Guardian, needs to deal with the nay-sayers first.

I should first get out of the way all the matters that will please those of you wrinkling your noses in a contemptuous Ian Hisloppy sort of way at the sheer hype, pretension, nonsense and hoopla attendant on what is, after all, only a phone. There is much to support your case.

Proud techie owners of rival devices can say: “What, only a 2-meg camera? What, no GPS? What, no 3G? What, no video? What, no third party applications?” What, no Sim card swapping?” A whole heap of what no-ing can be done.

Proud non-techie people can say: “I just want a phone that lets me make a call with the minimum of fuss. I don’t want a ‘design classic’ and I certainly don’t want to be locked into an 18-month data plan, whatever that might be.”

Even those excited by the iPhone and likely to block their ears to the derisive hoots above, even they must allow themselves honestly to accept its drawbacks. Text entry is, despite the spine-tingling brilliance of a creepily accurate auto-correct facility, clumsy. There are perhaps a dozen niggles of that nature (though the camera isn’t one: the iPhone’s lowly 2-megapixel snapper easily outperforms higher-spec rivals). So what’s to set against these drawbacks?

Beauty. Charm. Delight. Excitement. Ooh. Aah. Wow! Let me at it.

Lovely stuff. Smart move on the part of the Guardian to snap him up as a columnist.

Lest we forget…

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… what Steve Ballmer is really like.

And here is The Word of Ballmer:

“Optimism is a force multiplier. It reminds us all as leaders that while you want to be very realistic – you could never put on rose-coloured glasses and not see the situation where you are precisely – on the other hand, if leaders can’t see a path to success, and cannot be fundamentally optimistic, no matter what the odds, it is hard for an organisation as a whole.

“Whether our stock price has been flat for five years, despite the fact I think we perform well – optimism, optimism,” he chants, clicking his fingers.

“Am I realistic about what is going on and yet optimistic about our future, whether it is share price, innovation, competitive situations? When you are behind you have to say, ‘We can catch those guys’. When you are ahead you have to be able to say, ‘We can keep ahead of those guys’. And yet they both require a certain form of optimism, tempered with the right kind of reality.”