Google: Undemocratic?
It seems that another person has come forward
to question
Google’s impartiality. According to an article at Salon,
one Daniel Brandt believes that
Google’s PageRank algorithm is biased and
undemocratic.
A quick refresher: PageRank is one of several methods Google uses to evaluate pages in response
to a query. The exact details are secret, but it involves calculating how important
a page is based on the importance of the pages which link to it. As I recall from
an old paper written about their early implementations, it involves lots of
matrix manipulations that get applied repeatedly until things stabilize. Google
claims that this method is unbiased because it is completely automated; pages
with a high PageRank (apparently named for Larry Page and not the fact that it
ranks pages) are those which the web as a whole have deemed linkworthy. Furthermore,
it’s not the only factor considered. ZedneWeb, for example, has a pretty low
PageRank (so far as I’m aware), but is listed pretty high in searches for
“David Menendez”
because my name is mentioned in the page title. While PageRank can occasionally
place an important but irrelevant
site high in the results, it’s mostly pretty solid.
Mr Brandt would no doubt disagree with my assessment. I won’t claim to
know what he’s thinking and I haven’t visited his site
google-watch.com, but his main complaint
seems to stem from a misunderstanding of Google’s purpose. Part of the reason
Google became so popular was because people could ask it for IBM and the first
entry would be IBM’s site (plus, all the other results would be high-profile,
non-porn sites that mention IBM—I remember some of Google’s promotional
material where they made a big deal of the fact that every result they returned
actually contained the search terms; doesn’t give one a good impression of their
competitors, does it). Mr Brandt would probably prefer some site that
promotes awareness of IBM’s awesome power and nefarious schemes.
(I’m not slamming IBM, by the way. I just picked a big company at random.)
On the other hand, he does raise an issue that I had not been aware of:
Google’s 36-year cookie. Apparently, Google uses a super-long-term cookie
to associate a user with their search preferences. That seems pretty
innocuous, but consider that this means Google can also keep a list of the
things you search for. Again, that’s not a bad thing in itself, but it does
give one pause.
Fortunately, you can use Google without cookies and can delete the cookie
without causing problems. Also, because Google doesn’t collect information
like your name or e-mail address, they don’t have any real way to link your
searching history to you personally. And the vast number of preferences in
their database and the huge number of queries means it’s unlikely that they’re
paying much attention to you, personally. But still….
I’m not worried. It seems unlikely that Google has sinister intentions at this
point. Perhaps new evidence will emerge, but until then there’s no point in
avoiding the most effective search engine on the web
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Hot off the wires
I’ve played around with NetNewsWire Lite a bit since I
last
mentioned it, and I can confidently say that it’s very well made.
It’s fast and reliable and has a pretty straightforward interface. The only
problem, for me, is that it doesn’t fit into my browsing style.
Essentially, NetNewsWire is a web browser companion optimized for
reading the headlines of multiple web sites (assuming they provide an
RSS feed). Looking up the
headlines in NetNewsWire has two advantages over looking them up in the
web browser. It’s faster, because it involves downloading smaller files,
and it remembers which headlines you’ve already seen. Thus, someone who
has subscribed to ZedneWeb’s headline feed
can see at a glance when I’ve added new things, because NetNewsWire will
note that there are X unread posts.
Thing is, I prefer reading weblogs directly, as they tend to involve
lots of short articles on the same page. It makes more sense for larger,
magazine-like sites and those Slashdot-style news forums, but I don’t
read as many of them as I used to.
On the other hand, I’ve been exposed to some interesting stuff
that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen if it weren’t for NetNewsWire’s
default subscriptions.
For example, an article at Plastic
notes the possibility that
MIT used images from
the comic book Radix in their bid for a military contract
to design equipment for the high-tech soldier of the future.
Or this Kuro5hin article about political
clichés in sci-fi/fantasy settings, particularly the way people accept
monarchies, chosen ones, and us-versus-them morality in these stories
without thinking about them too much. I actually think the article’s arguments
aren’t particularly strong, but it does touch on a point relating to my own
work.
Matt Groening, talking about the ill-fated classic Futurama,
noted that one thing he was trying to avoid was the new age military feel
seen on shows like, say, Star Trek. (Which, if you look closely
enough, seems to be advocating socialist military dictatorship as the ideal
government.) That comment struck a chord with me, because it made me recognize
an overly-military feel in Starcruiser Anonymous, where virtually
everyone has a rank. Although I haven’t had much chance to demonstrate it,
I have chosen to downplay rank in the future—actually, I’ve chosen to pretend
those references were never made—and give the crew more of a private sector
feel.
But getting back to NetNewsWire—the theoretical subject of this post—it
does illustrate another reason to break
up the web browser. Right now, your web browser keeps a list of all
the pages you’ve visited in the recent past (for some value of “recent”).
NetNewsWire also keeps track of pages you’ve visited, in the sense that it
remembers which items you chose to view in the browser. Unfortunately, it
has no way of knowing what pages you’ve visited in the browser on your own.
If both NetNewsWire and your browser(s) used a common history, that, at least
would not be an issue. Not a compelling reason by itself, just something nice.
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Avoiding the flame war
There was a recent minor flare up in a part of the weblog community.
Rather than describe it myself, I’ll refer you to
Jonathon Delacour’s
summary which pretty much explains everything and links to the
original posts so you can see what happened yourself.
What’s notable is how civil the discussion was. Had similar accusations
been made on a web board or on Usenet, it’s likely that both sides would
have started namecalling and created a big ugly stink until someone apologized
or everyone involved got bored. That’s a huge generalization—plenty
of news groups and message boards manage to avoid generating into flame
wars—and this was probably a special case, as the people involved are
fairly high-profile and generally civil, but it interests me.
One theory that’s been proposed to explain the tendency of
on-line discussions to devolve into pointless argument has to do with
the anonymity of on-line discussion. This sort of argument is more
likely to occur among people who don’t know each other very well
(or actively dislike each other). Another theory simply notes that
many of the cues present when people speak in person, or even over
the phone, are absent in text. It’s easier to misinterpret what
someone meant to say, because you can’t go by facial expressions,
gestures, or tone of voice. Irony, in particular, is a minefield
on-line.
But none of that explains why weblogs don’t have the flame wars
that you see in other forums. In fact, there’s no hard evidence
that they don’t; I’m basing this all on my impressions. But since
I’m on a roll, I’ll continue.
The primary difference between inter-weblog discussion and other
forums is that weblog posts are naturally grouped by author, while
forums are grouped by topic. While my thread
description language is able to treat them identically,
I think the different organization changes the dynamic of
conversations, because they’re harder work. On a message board
or news group, replying to someone is simple. In the blogosphere,
the barrier to entry is higher, because it requires you to have
a weblog. Then, replying to someone is a matter of referring to
their post in your own—but that doesn’t guarantee that the person
you’re replying to will even see your post. Carrying on
a back-and-forth discussion requires both sides to pay attention
to each other. It’s harder for third parties to enter and turn
the argument into a real flame war, because they have to be noticed
as well.
Of course, many weblogs have commenting systems, and I’ve seen
plenty of rudeness in those. In fact, I’m sure there have been
back-and-forth flames among weblogs. But something about the
structure of the blogosphere makes it seem somewhat flame-retardant
to me. I suppose time will tell.
(via Doc Searls)
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Also
From C-net: “Games
push for more than pretty faces”. As the increases in
processing power and software complexity allow more and more realistic-looking
video games, designers are starting to worry about other aspects of
realism, like non-player characters who aren’t morons. While I
remain impressed with what’s possible visually these days, I also
remember that visuals and sophistication aren’t everything. After
all, people still talk about
Marathon even though its engine is laughably primitive
today, because it had such a great story and fun netplay. (Which, come
to think of it, have nothing to do with each other. Weird.)
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