March 27, 2003
Journalists censored again, this time by hackers
Sheila has an instructive new item: In Defense of Al-Jazeera
Hawk thrown to the wolves
Whoa! Breaking news: Richard Perle, head of board that advises U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, resigns.
When is a free download not?
I'd been meaning to pass along my financial condolensces to my friend Glenn, who's been double hammered by the money gods this week. See Glenn's blog for all the background, but here's a quick summary from Wired News:
It seemed like a good idea at the time -- author Glen Fleishman reasoned that by offering his book, "Real World Adobe GoLive 6," as a free download, he might be able to kickstart sales, which were languishing. Rather than taking the time to download the 922 pages of the PDF file, maybe readers would decide to buy a hard copy on Amazon or elsewhere. It turns out that instead of the few hundred downloads that Fleishman was anticipating, the book was downloaded 10,000 times in just 36 hours, racking up a bandwidth bill of $15,000 (Fleishman's provider, Level 3, charges incrementally for bandwidth used)."It's a financial catastrophe. I'm a working stiff with a mortgage. I never suspected the penalty would be so high for giving something away. It's like living in Singapore and getting 15 years in jail for chewing gum. I was aware I would be charged a fortune for high bandwidth. But I never suspected we would have topped a few hundred downloads."
Fleishman could have made use of file-sharing networks like Kazaa or Gnutella, which require users to bear the cost, says sci-fi author Cory Doctorow, who recently released his first novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," as a free download. Alternatively, Fleishman could have released the book under an open Creative Commons license, which would have allowed it to be posted to the Internet Archive and other open content Web sites, says Doctorow.
"It doesn't make any sense to be the sole point of distribution for a file like this. It highlights the design flaw in the client-server Internet. The more popular a file becomes, the more of a penalty people pay to get it. I think the lesson is 'Use P2P networks.'"
IE messes up again
For some reason, Internet Explorer 6.0 just decided to reorder all of my links in alphabetical order. (No, I didn't right-click and ask for this.) So all of the links I access very frequently below the browser's address field are now screwed up. Any way to overrule IE on this, other than manually and laborioiusly?
Giving users control over text size
After my brief list of suggestions yesterday on how to improve the fabulous Technorati service, its creator, Dave Sifry, said he'd go along with giving users the ability to increase the text size on the site. Dave asked: How does one accomplish that?
I responded that I had removed the offending code from Userland's Cascading Style Sheet template on my Manila blog nearly two years ago, and so can't remember what the expunged code said, but I believe it was something like this:
body {
font-size: 0.75em; [or maybe: height="12px"]
}
Any bloggers out there using Blogger or Userland software with the CSS template intact?
kpaul said:
I dropped him an email, but maybe it was detected as spam. ;)
In any case, all you need to do is change any reference to:
font-size : 1em;
(or another size, say 12px or 10pt)
to:
font-size : 80%;
He should be able to open it up in a word processor and do a find/replace to replace all 12pt with 85% for example...
JD Lasica said:
Perfect. Thanks, kpaul.
Operation Enduring Blitzer
Light blogging today. Have work to do, and the war is messing with my head.
Real Time
Caught my first Real Time with Bill Maher the other night on HBO. He's still got it. Especially liked his tagline for this whole affair: Operation Enduring Wolf Blitzer.
Quote of the Day
From today's Washinton Post: "I wouldn't go into Baghdad until I had another armored division come up into my rear." ó Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey
Move over, honey
Is it coincidence that "reporters embedded with" a military division sounds remarkably similar to "reporters in bed with"?
FAIR report
Fairness and Accuracy in Media released a report yesterday: Lack of Skepticism Leads to Poor Reporting on Iraq Weapons Claims. It begins:
A lack of skepticism toward official U.S. sources has already led prominent American journalists into embarrassing errors in their coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, particularly in relation to claims that proof had been found that Iraq possesses banned weapons.
Free Kevin Sites
Anil Dash has built a blog tracking mentions of the CNN journalist whose Iraq war blog has been nixed by clueless CNN honchos.
World and America watching different wars
Christian Science Monitor: In the Middle East, Europe and Asia, war coverage doesn't resemble what we're seeing in the U.S. Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.
Lessons to be re-learned
Remember that famous aphorism? "Never stop to eat at a place called Mom's. Never play poker with a man called Doc. Never start a ground war in Asia." Still seems apt.
In non-war news
Sunday's New York Times Magazine published a profile of a remarkable man, Woody Norris, and the remarkable music product you'll be hearing about soon, HSS. I don't use the word "genius" lightly, but Norris is clearly one.
Marketers turn to weblogs
NY Times: Webloggers as pitchmen.
AOL: The Free Ride Is Over
Wired News: AOL Time Warner will end free online access to some of its highest-profile magazines as part of a previously announced effort to help its troubled AOL unit. The restrictions initially apply to People and Entertainment Weekly magazines, which will only be available on the Web to AOL subscribers or people who buy the magazine.
TEACH Act and DMCA in conflict
Chronicle of Higher Ed: College Media Group Cautions That 2 Copyright Laws Could Collide.
Score One for Big Media
Biz2: The digital video recorder pioneer Sonicblue fell victim to Hollywood's bullying. With its demise go some of the best things about digital recording.
What the media may not tell you
AlterNet: "If the FCC sweeps away media ownership restrictions, what will the impact be on the watchdog role of the press?" writes Jeffrey Chester. Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.
The next Supernova
The next Supernova conference will be held July 8-9 in the Washington, DC, area. Speakers already on tap include:
* Reed Hundt (former FCC Chairman)
* Jonathan Schwartz (EVP of Software, Sun Microsystems)
* Joichi Ito (CEO, Neoteny Co. Ltd., Japan)
* Kevin Lynch (Chief Software Architect, Macromedia)
* Bruce Mehlman (Asst. Secretary of Commerce for Tech Policy)
* Craig Donato (CEO, Grand Central Networks)
* Clay Shirky (author and consultant)
