theory | General Musing

It has been almost 1.5 weeks since Google’s FeedBurner removed the FriendFeed subscribers from it’s statistics. Or is it that FriendFeed no longer publishes the data to FeedBurner? I know that the 1000+ FriendFeed readers can still view my blog items – if they want to – and I have no issue with the artificially boosted numbers being brought back to normal.

However this has revived a 2009 discussion in the Google Group about the quality of FeedBurner, and the need for there to be an alternative to this poor service this Google application is delivering. However none seem to mention the elephant in the room: FaceBook.

In 2009 FaceBook acquired FriendFeed, and with it the now infamous Like button. At the same time Google was busy developing their Wave, on which they seemed to wipe-out earlier this year. As I’ve said previously the time between the mainstream acceptance of the Social Media application and the start up is between 2-4 years. It’s could be easy for me to blame Google for not acquiring a great product like FriendFeed, yet now with this tit for tat strategy that FaceBook and Google have been employing it is no wonder that applications, like FriendFeed, and users thereof are being further effected by this exercise in Game Theory.

FeedBurner has indeed been living up to their caption: “We set feeds on fire!” Now all we need to wait for is the Phoenix that arises from the ashes.

Written by Daniël W. Crompton (webhat)

December 6, 2010 at 8:59 pm

Posted in blogging, risk, technology

Tagged with facebook, feedburner, friendfeed, game, google, theory

Locard’s MacGuffin Theory #television

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TV is great, and I watch lots of it while playing on the computer, whether that’s researching a blog or real work. I love the workings of the mind and the workings of science. Which is why I like CSI, Bones and Numb3rs. The latter one annoys me often by using Mathmatics as the Deus Ex Machina, not that the former two are any better with their liberal use of the MacGuffin. CSI and Bones have the advantage of “Locard’s Exchange Principle” to produce the MacGuffin.

“Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves, even unconsciously, will serve as a silent witness against him. Not only his fingerprints or his footprints, but his hair, the fibers from his clothes, the glass he breaks, the tool mark he leaves, the paint he scratches, the blood or semen he deposits or collects. All of these and more, bear mute witness against him. This is evidence that does not forget. It is not confused by the excitement of the moment. It is not absent because human witnesses are. It is factual evidence. Physical evidence cannot be wrong, it cannot perjure itself, it cannot be wholly absent. Only human failure to find it, study and understand it, can diminish its value.” – Professor Edmond Locard^*

Alfred Hitchcock gave the example of a MacGuffin thus:

“It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says, ‘What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?’ And the other answers, ‘Oh that’s a McGuffin.’ The first one asks ‘What’s a McGuffin?’ ‘Well’ the other man says, ‘It’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ The first man says, ‘But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,’ and the other one answers ‘Well, then that’s no McGuffin!’ So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all.“

Originally posted here.

technorati tags: television, tv, locard, csi, bones, numbers, linguistics, macguffin, theory, wikipedia

Written by Daniël W. Crompton (webhat)

June 20, 2010 at 10:16 am

Posted in linguistics, television

Tagged with bones, csi, linguistics, locard, macguffin, numbers, television, theory, tv, wikipedia

Just Finished Reading #books

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Another one of the books I got from my friend who cleaned out his storage is Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick. It introduces the principles and early development of chaos theory, explaining Mandelbrot Set, Julia Sets, Lorenz Attractors etc. without delving into the complex math.

After I got back from Portugal I went to my friend’s house and what should I see there, the movie Chaos which mentions the book and actually includes some of the information in the book. I thought Wesley Snipes was the strange attractor in the movie.

technorati tags: books, mandelbrot, chaos, theory