1.07.2007

bitching about the news is useless ... i know

There needs to be a word for online publications that forgo linking to story sources or reference material they may have consulted prior to writing and just gratuitously self link instead. A word that simultaneously conveys the fundamental uselessness and the conspicuous air the practice generates.

Not only does it condescendingly suggest that the writer has more correctly assessed the source materials than the readers could themselves, it boarders on a silent claim to be the end all of salient facts.

I suppose ad-blocking software aside I am able to 'vote' with my page views, but for the average web surfer their valuable ad impressions have already been volunteered by the time they realize the article sucks. I wonder how long before my browser as an info broker can be configured to disregard information that does not meet my licensing preference? How long before my websearches can be customized based on the openness of the data sought?

...

On an unrelated note, I found some interesting reading material today starting with a U of T project which uses programmable GPUs for real time computer vision processing. Surfing around there a bit led me to a fairly readable overview of wavelets, and a brief description of chirplets, signal processing techniques used in mars rovers, image formats, and digital cinema. Read up!

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