The Lexicographer's Rules

This is a list of all the Wifi signals iStumbler on my MacBook picked up at the Brasil Coffee Shop at the corner of 30th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan at 7:15 p.m. Friday, June 9, 2006. There are 53. (Click for a readable image.)

This suggests a number of ideas:

Wireless devices are pervasive.

A planned network might be more efficient, especially given the number of devices using the same frequency.

The number of secured networks is surprisingly large/small (depending on your perspective). (A number that look open—that have the green symbol next to them—are in fact regulated by MAC address or, as in the case of GoldenTree, by user/password authentication via a web page). I am, in fact, posting this using an open network.

The number of opportunities for Wifi abuse in Manhattan are greater than zero.

The 2002 Manhattan wardriving map needs to be redone.

A warflying map of Manhattan needs to be done: what would that list look like five stories up? Twenty?

This article from the New York Times about Netflix seems like an obvious ripoff of the famous Chris Anderson “Long Tail” article in Wired from October 2004. How could David Leonhardt write an article like that and not mention the concept of “long tail” at all?

Today the web site got a mention on the WOR Morning Show, hosted by Ed Walsh and Donna Hanover.

Lynn Murphy, an old American Dialect Society hand (one of those people I only know through the ADS email list, which I first joined in 1992, though she hasn’t been very active on it for a number of years), has a new blog: Separated By A Common Language, about the differences between British and American Englishes. She’s an American linguist living in the United Kingdom.

It’s exceedingly strange to me that none of the Newsday blogs link to any other Newsday blogs, as far as I can see. Those blogs should behave like a blog network, with headlines, links, and cross-promos appearing on every page.