A recent study from Stanford discusses how people decide whether the information on a website is credible.

I have a number of problems with the methodology but the results seem to echo a concern I have long had – that it may be harder to spot sites that peddle rubbish on the web than it would be to spot the same organization outside of cyberspace because you don’t get the same amount of information about it. The results seem to indicate that sites that are easy to use, professionally done and that provide contact information may be trusted even if they are by organizations the browser has never heard of. The Farsight Instutute, for example looks like a professional outfit until you notice what they are peddling…

I discussed this issue in New Scientist a five years ago.west 16159 middlesex pa100.3 sex radio talkin pornland alicepromotion 21sextury1sex 1sex aadultsex games adlutsexton uk fiction adam Map

This is a priceless anthology of corporate anthems from IT companies. I have a good friend at IBM and for the record he has never sung “Ever Onward“, their company song. Rather a pity…

…we’re big but bigger we will be,
we can’t fail for all can see,
that to serve humanity
has been our aim…

Well, indeed!

Someone elsewhere was talking about where to find good flash movies and I posted this up then realised you all might want to see it too:

This is bizarre.

These guys inspire and produce lots of interesting Flash stuff.

This is a directory of Japanese Flash movies advertising an ISP that is almost totally incomprehensible but bizarrely fascinating (found through NTK)

And this is monthly reviews mostly of streaming video but contains flash animations as well.

The News Quiz on Radio 4 has always been streamed live but if you missed it you missed it. Now, I discover, you can catch it any time. I found this out when I stumbled across a profile of Jeremy Hardy, the communist comedian (yes it is possible to combine the two!) who is a frequent contributor to the show.

N.B. people not from the UK may find the News Quiz heavy going as it requires a fairly in-depth knowledge of the news as seen from Britain. NPR listeners in the US may find it similar to (but, predictably, ruder and more caustic than) Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me.

If you want a cross-section of American opinion of recent films, Metacritic seems to do a better job than my previous favourite, the Movie Review Query Engine of collecting links to reviews from a variety of newspapers and giving an easy summary.

The Internet Guide movie database offers movie information about a large number of films over a long period and also offers more than just the summary information provided by the reigning champ of movie information sites, the Internet Movie Database. If you are looking for very basic information about an obscure film you might also try cnmovies.com which features the extensive Halliwell’s movie guide database.

Ethical problems galore here. A pair of deaf women in the US are using a deaf sperm donor to increase their chances of producing a deaf baby. Ironically, one of them is a major in medical ethics…

The story is a long one but if you want to know how the new baby turns out and read a bizarre further twist to the story, read the last few paras.

That is what a computerised train safety system would cost and the number of lives it is expected to save, on average, in the UK. Yet a new report by Rail Safety still recommends that it be installed. £3bn spent on (say) heart defibrillators would save many more lives in this country and if spent on carefully targeted overseas aid could save hundreds of thousands of lives. It seems to me insane to even consider spending it on improving rail safety when rail is already one of the safest forms of transport…porn sex amateuradult porno clip s100 sex best sitesgay free porn allpictures pornstar tyler aliciachat sex aaa freeporn absolutely free ebonyclips 100 porn free Map

An interesting news item about relationships that start online suggesting they might be better than ones that start more conventionally. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the detail of the study referred to in the news report.

I would say that it can work both ways – it can allow people to be more emotionally open but it also encourages (even more than usual) projection of positive characteristics onto the person you are corresponding with that may not actually be real, and because text can’t transmit tone of voice or body language it is dangerously prone to misunderstanding. So proceed… but with caution would be my advice.

Perhaps because of the difficulty in opposing software and intellectual piracy privacy without looking impossibly self-righteous or in the pay of big corporations, Garry Trudeau rather fudges the message this time around (in this and the 5 following strips). This is a pity, since the message “go ahead, take anything you like” promulgated across much of the Internet is one that needs some criticism by voices outside the industry.

Pigeons…