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I open today with an e-mail that came in on Friday:
"Obviously a leak to the press can't come from the press"Really? Why not? History shows us that the press is not above making up their own news.—Bob Fair
In that case I'd been talking about the Plame leak and the news (?) at the time that it had been Novak who leaked to Rove. Though I still maintain that it doesn't make sense for a leak of classified CIA information to originate with the press, Mr. Fair's point came immediately to mind when I read about the reporting of Edith Clement's expected nomination to the Supreme Court:
In this case, it was clearly the fault of that villain, "Speculation."
Meanwhile, wants the source on Edith Clement outed.
And even when the name is finally right, the facts don't quite fall in line. (.)
— Downloads galore. I feel like we've been here before, but that's OK. If that's the case, I'm glad to be back.
Speaking of music downloads, — This is one of those things I'm not gadgety enough to use, but the idea of trying to retain the tradition of album art in this age of downloading when even the song exists only in the ether is a noble one.
Word on the street is that Longhorn's official name will be . As a matter of full disclosure, Microsoft is a parent of MSNBC.com and the source of my paycheck. I'm sure it was merely an oversight that I wasn't kept in the loop on this.
Of course, if you're looking for inside perspective Microsoft, a good place to go is Robert Scoble. I don't see any mention of the Longhorn name there, but paying attention tomorrow morning for an announcement.
(While there I clicked .
And I was interested to see Scoble of the A-List hegemony. (And a little more .)
is not very thrilling, but what I like about it is that no matter how poorly you do, it will still let you know your score rank. It only displays the top 1000, but it'll let you know where you fit in the grand scheme. I'm #7923 thank you very much.
I found the Video of the Day at that site as well: shows us the videos famous people do in Japan that they think their American fans will never see. (found via )
NYers to NYPD: ' — and corresponding .
I wonder what will say.
And speaking of the terrorists successfully forcing the restrictions of freedoms, sums up objections to the PATRIOT Act.
Lest I get too dramatic about withering rights, NBC's got a rough lesson in from Sudan.
The Smoking Gun has been on a roll with lately.
. For real.
Also,
Awesome video. I was able to do something similar once, though not as dramatic, with a fly. Soak it in water, tie the string to it, then cover it in salt to draw the water out and it "comes back to life" tied to a string. I don't know if a bee "drowns" the same way a fly does though.
I'm hesitant to link to this video because it has lots of loud cursing (the visual is totally work safe, the audio, no) and I don't know the background, so for all I know it's a hoax. But it does seem likely that as the first wired generation comes of age, parents and teachers may find themselves in a new kind of public spotlight. . I remember a similar video not too long ago of a teacher flipping out on a kid for not being appropriately respectful during the national anthem.
I believe the MSNBC.com quote at the top of this blog about good reporting from Iraq comes from , and it's certainly apt in the case of . Where else have you seen a report like this?
Speaking of Mideast news,
The environmentalists are upset about Harry Potter... or at least the : "'If [Scholastic] had printed the book on 100 percent recycled paper, its 10.8-million print run could have saved 217,475 trees,' Greenpeace's Wellner said."
— short, well done animated film
Recently we saw a blogger earning 5 figures in one month from Google Adsense. Now we get a peek at the Adsense return for the .
— The image of two people about to be hanged is remarkably powerful.
In a telling blog post, , covering this morning's bombs in London, starts off concerned and ends with a cricket report.
Upcoming movie to be excited about: — is pretty heavy to download, but the subtitles are hard to read on the smaller versions. Strangely, I can't seem to get at the trailers from the English version of the site, but I did find .
Mailbag! Mailbag!
Hi Will!
Thank you so much for including the link to the Japanese sausage site. It brought me back memories of my childhood when my mom used to make boxed lunches and include little weiners cut into the shape of octopodes and crabs and rabbits.
-Erika H.
Dear Erika,
I bet you did well when it came to trading lunches.
Cheers,
Will
Will,
Not to give you a history lesson but shouting "Bang, bang!" was common for soldiers in training for WWII. There is even the tragic story of a paratrooper named Blithe who, while he was the point man on a raid in Normandy during the early days of the invasion of France, "reverted to his training". Instead of firing his weapon he pointed his finger and shouted "Bang, bang!" and was shot in the neck as a result. Happily, he survived. You can read the story in The Biggest Brother by Larry Alexander and also in Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose. No Monty Python punch line there.
I do enjoy your blog though. In fact, it's the only one I read regularly.
—hawki
Dear Hawki,
By all means, I'm always open to a history lesson. Thanks for the context.
Regards,
Will
Will,
Zooming in on the Google moon map winds up with a picture that is obviously fake... it's not green.
—P. Michael Bowden
Dear Michael,
Another scandal exposed at the hands of a blog!
Well done,
Will
Hello,
Interesting column. In your 'about' you write about Blogdex, Daypop and blogburst as sources.
You should really try:
Since you seem to use those tools for a living I don't need to bore you with the differences of BlogsNow and all those old style crap.
Enjoy, and yes, once you switched to BlogsNow as your almost only source, as I am sure you will do, just mention it accordingly.
Thanks,
Andreas
Dear Andreas,
Yes, as a matter of fact, I use BlogsNow often, not only the main links page but for the video rankings (in fact, I was pretty bummed when you took those out temporarily). I really need to update that "about" page. I don't think blogburst even exists anymore.
Thanks,
Will
please,
just fyi.
re creative commons, the license attached to the subway image did give permission for:
"You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work only under the terms of this License, and" etc
that's saying you have "unlimited worldwide nonexclusive reproduction rights" to his image, but you don't have copyright.
sounds nice, but would Will want to give away all those rights to his works? for $0.?
for comparison, for submitted images, which TAKES similar rights and more on all submitted images.
Since they want rights equivalent to those of the copyright holder, they actually become effectively co-copyright owners, for $0. If i read it right, you can send them an image and get $0., but they can sell it and sublicense it, for $X.
But don't miss the clause where you waive any "moral rights" to your submission!
regards,
dlr
Dear dlr,
Yup, it sounds like you got that exactly right. Basically the guy gave away his photo for anyone to use as long as they gave him credit for the photo itself. So while he got no money, he did get a big spike in traffic to his site (I assume).
As chance would have it, today I clicked to the item you're talking about. You may find this a more persuasive explanation than I was able to give.
Cheers,
Will
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My neighborhood theater just raised the price of a ticket again to $10.75 and you can't get any popcorn for less than 6 bucks. I'll never pay that much for popcorn, and I'm too cheap to see any but the most talked-about movies at that price. Home theaters always seemed excessive to me, the ultimate admission that yes, TV watching is my hobby, but I may be driven to that.
Speaking of movies, is a "weekly roundup of misleading review blurbs—in ads for movies, books, theater, and more." The most recent one I can find is from the end of June, but I love this idea. I always wonder what's left out of those ellipses-filled quotes?
Between the and this morning's new , I'm not sure how much John Roberts is still on the news radar, but since I had to do some clicking on the matter for the TV folks yesterday, I'm happy to share:
- 7 Questions for John Roberts — What I'd like the Senate to ask the Supreme Court nominee
- has a great psychological profile of the photo of Roberts that is being widely circulated.
- ? This is a useful look at some of the arguments that are likely to take place, but leaves out a couple big ones, including the military tribunal decision.
- Speaking of military tribunals, calls that ruling a gift to Bush.
- Speaking of presidential power, points that out as a significant difference between the perspective of Roberts and the outgoing O'Connor.
- used to sit on the board of directors of a group called Feminists for Life.
- round-up page is working well.
- Speaking of round-ups, the is doing a link harvest every day.
- (, though some of it makes legal references that go over my head)
"Out of several million trials, they've detected small but 'statistically significant' signs that ."
I've only been to a few parties full of bloggers, but while they were socially awkward, they were generally friendly and nowhere near as depressing as the girl in .
— Don't worry, you don't need the Japanese, the pictures speak for themselves.
Video of the Day: I keep running into videos of . Before you see him on Letterman, you can say you saw him when he was just an Internet viral video.
- A gallery of vintage snapshots & vernacular photography
? These guys took a poll and made t-shirts based on the results. I'm not sure I agree. Friday is definitely not green.
— I just thought he was gleeful at the idea of nominating a Supreme Court Justice. Also and . Nightline ran the video of it Tuesday night and the Daily Show did a funny segment ("Dancin' Jack") last night, so I'm sure we'll see more than still shots online any second now.
Are the Rolling Stones really planning a ? (And if so, why is everyone linking to a local Rochester, NY version of the story?)
Enough people are pointing to that it hit its bandwidth limit and crashed, but I found at the Register. The idea is that you submit a photo of how you want to be displayed on TV if you're killed by terrorists. Why you'd submit a photo to a site with such finite bandwidth is just one of many questions that make me suspect the whole thing is a hoax.
Speaking of speculating about hoaxes, ? They really get that big outside of Hollywood?
Commuter Click:
"I've never walked off the set of a TV show in disgust before, ." A video game expert walked off a CNBC show after realizing the show was not about what he'd been told. CNBC is related to MSNBC.com, but this is the first I've heard of this story so I have no inside perspective to add.
.
Folks are waiting to find out why was taken by the Iraqi secret police. though he doesn't explain how they manage to have a secret police at all. Don't they only barely have regular police?
"The Defense Department quietly asked Congress on Monday to for military recruits to 42 for all branches of the service."
", sorted out, melted, and layered into an empty tub"
— Click them, they're animations.
As you probably saw, James Doohan, , died yesterday. , a Next Generation Star Trek cast member and iconic blogger offers a brief but poignant note. In an interesting aside, we received this letter to the editor:
NEVER, in the entire Star Trek series or movies, did ANYONE ever say "Beam me up, Scotty" as reported by AP.—JM
A little baffled by this, I forwarded it to whose research seems to mostly agree with the letter.
— "Less lethal"? Isn't that like less pregnant?
"PhotoMuse.org, the collaborative Web site of the George Eastman House and International Center of Photography Alliance, is currently under development. ... When completed, the site will provide in-depth access to the extensive photography resources of both institutions."
— None of the links work here, but that's OK, if you haven't read the book and want to just make sure you're familiar with the concepts, this is handy.
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The dust is still settling in the wake of the president's nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. In the early goings there were a lot of bios and histories posted (, , , , ), and now we're seeing some reaction round ups. is doing what he does best. is also gathering reaction. And has set up a John Roberts blog tracking page.
Meanwhile, the to let bloggers do the dirty work of trashing the nominee. While some are certainly , others feel it's . , "As Roberts answers all questions posed, we can then decide whether it's worth opposing or not."
But as we wait for the blog distillation process to take effect, I'd like to mention that occupied most of yesterday, the nomination to the Supreme Court of Edith Clement. As everyone "" she was to be the pick, we learned , what her , to her, and even checked out for good measure. To be clear, everyone pointed out that it was just speculation and not definite, and everyone is allowed to muse, so there's no fault there. But if there was ever any doubt that the entire media world could be manipulated from the hottest-shot TV anchor to the lowliest blog, that thought can be put to rest. I don't even fault the White House. Perhaps the misdirection served some useful purpose. But the media definitely ran after it like a dog falling for the ol' fake tennis ball throw.
China to send pig sperm to space — This can only mean .
The first
— I'm looking for the Monty Python copyright that must surely be on this page, but I don't see it.
Folks in Toronto were surprised to learn that Miss Universe in a public square in town. to point out the inconsistency of the application of the law. (Note: Are pasties on a transsexual work safe?) Meanwhile, that totally reads like a law with a story behind it. I'd love to know caused the town legislators to draft it.
The post office explains .
Speaking of Google Maps, — This seems like a stalker's dream. I fear we may be running out of good Google Maps ideas...
...which may explain why they've moved on to . UPDATE: Reader Pedro Farinas recommends you zoom all the way in. Hysterical.
tears Creative Commons to pieces. I agree that Creative Commons is hard to understand, however, I can think of one recent example when the CC system worked and was easily understood whereas I had no clue about the otherwise applying copyright law. Remember from the London Bombings? The blogger released it under a specific Creative Commons license and I was able to click it and understand clearly what permissions and conditions he was allowing. Maybe there's already a copyright equivalent of what he did, but I've never seen it presented like that.
"Terrorism generally implies attacks against unarmed civilians for political, religious or some other ideological reason. But it's a that can leave journalists taking sides in a conflict. "
Yet another article on how Costco is rejecting greed in favor of lower prices and treating employees better. I think this is the third one of these I've seen.
is never going to be able to live down that one fateful day. (Note: Bikini girl ads on this site. If you keep clicking you'll likely find yourself in un-worksafe waters. You'll find some cool videos too though.)
While there I played with this cool Flash animation called . It's interesting to note that the original file , so this is just floating around the Internet with a life of its own. I was able to find some info about it on this cool .
What was it like to of the guy who died having sex with a horse?
— They taunt and play games with spammers. Good.
A lot of folks are interested in . I only played the mpeg because I don't want to play games downloading yet another media random player, but it looks like they've done something similar to the HP commercial with the photos that turn into frames.
— History of the Roland TB-303 Bass Line music machine, which it turns out you hear in music all the time but would never think to identify as an instrument.
— speculated about wrapping in June, so they're right about on time.
makes fun of the Japanese movie poster for The Passion of the Christ but ends up with a really interesting string of comments from readers.
To the mailbag!
"Books on the Bitwaves"
Will,
I used to be involved in finding, and tracking down the sources of, books posted online. This was all centered on intellectual property protection. There's plenty of material available to explain the copyright protection side of the argument.
The other side of the argument is presented best, both by word and deed, by Charles Stross. His was posted online for free, the same day the paper version was released. It is accompanied by explanations of why he did this, and by something we couldn't have foreseen from the "nay" side of the argument, links to an online glossary, an extension of his scenario into a GURPS role playing system, a "technical companion" article on Wiki, and more.
I think this can be taken as an important object lesson in intellectual property in the present and the future. I don't mind being proven wrong. I don't mind that I put more work into this than I put into my 'real' work at the time. I DO mind that the better answer was this simple, and I didn't see it.
—D
Dear D,
I just clicked something similar from Cory Doctorow the other day. I have to wonder if these free online releases will be as successful once they become more common and don't make news just by virtue of their existence.
Regards,
Will
Sixty years ago, on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated. That started a series of aboveground nuclear tests that lasted until 1963---or until 1970 if you count a spectacular venting by underground shot Baneberry. Much of that nuclear fallout came down with
the rain. about nuclear tests and fallout (full disclosure: I wrote a history book about it).
Regards,
Richard Miler
Dear Richard,
Thanks. By the way, did you see the recent ?
Cheers,
Will
• |
The new Harry Potter has been . How could this happen and how does one pirate a book anyway? It starts by deciding not to present an official eBook version of the book, leaving those interested in such a format with no recourse but to do it themselves. So, working together they assign chapters or part of chapters and proofreaders and they assemble it into a file — actually, they assemble it into files. I found a zip file containing a .txt, .doc, and .pdf version of the book. And somewhere out there the audio book version is being passed around. I haven't heard it, but speculation is that it's a more traditionally pirated version of an official audio book. What other kind of pirated audio book is there? Not long ago, fans shared the effort of reading chapters of out loud into a microphone to record a collaborative unofficial audio book. That was with the author's permission, but given how quickly it occurred to Potter fans to transcribe hundreds of Half Blood Prince pages, it's not beyond comprehension that they'd be capable of an audio book as well. (P.S. I did actually purchase the book on Friday, and as you know, I hate reading a lot off the screen, so my pursuit of a bootleg was purely academic.)
Speaking of Harry Potter, online fans are spreading the word:
Speaking of spoiled endings: — A site dedicated to spoiling the endings of books. The first click was just book covers, no spoilers. From there you click the book you want to know the ending to. Note: This site has pop-ups like crazy. I got three in one click and I have the blocker on.
Speaking of endings, today's Video of the Day comes from . The re-ended Star Wars is hysterical. It never dawned on me that Darth Vader could have used the Death Star to blow up the planet that was in the way of blowing up the rebel planet. (It's a file.)
Speaking of sharing a book with the reading public, here's the latest version of Gaping Void's "."
You know you're an incurable blogger when you photoblog .
From the blogware article we linked to in the last entry, many folks are finding this handy.
explains the difference between civil and criminal contempt (as pertains to Judith Miller).
Speaking of Judith Miller, on how she's doing in prison. The lesson seems to be that prison's harshest punishment is the food.
When I saw the link text to a that a nanny had been fired for her blog, I thought it was just another in a long string of that type. Then I started reading the article and after only a few sentences was reading about breast touching and I thought it was just another in a long string of THAT type. But to me, the most interesting aspect of the piece is about how reading a blog makes the reader feel about themselves in association with the blogger. And then the clicking got really good...
...Following a link from (where there's considerable and thoughtful analysis), I found described (not flatteringly) in the Times piece. She writes quite an impassioned response, and let me just say, thank God for blogs so she could have the opportunity to do so. Having read this far, my head was swimming with the themes and lessons and complexities in the story — only to be further compounded by interesting blog . I had planned to lead today's entry with this, but even after putting Clicked aside and sleeping on it I'm digesting, so I'll leave it as a recommendation, if you have the time, this set of links makes for some good food for thought.
— It pretty much goes without saying that whenever you have "super-" added onto something, it's way better. In this case, thermal imaging night vision for your car. Now you'll only crash into cold things.
Having just seen War of the Worlds Sunday, I'm having a hard time making a joke about NASA accidentally sending .
Speaking of War of the Worlds, this is where you go around New York City killing Tripods. Not exactly Grand Theft Auto, but it's fun that people are coming up with these.
Speaking of Google games: — Fun, but also disappointingly difficult.
Speaking of games,
" is a planar figure consisting of two alternating sequences of isosceles triangles which, once it is folded along the edges, exhibits extraordinary spatial properties." Just click it, you'll see.
made between $10 and $20 grand from Google AdSense last month. That is to say, 5 figures in a month , for blogging.
— Oh c'mon, you know you've tried to remake the napkin into what it looked like before you opened it.
A Colorado lawmaker has caused a bit a stir by threatening a . Though we saw some Letters to the Editor supportive of the idea, the blogosphere seems pretty united in regarding the comment as a stupid thing to say. I clicked and . Reader "RM" submits that the idea is .
— form follows data - towards creative information visualization
New term: ""
Related: — I don't own the gadget to make this work, but it's worth a peek because it's not hard to imagine the things that could be done with this technology and no doubt we'll be hearing some excited chatter about it.
— Obviously you shouldn't actually try this.
Speaking of fermenting, — One of the more bizarre things about it is that the process produces odorless gas and an odorless "residue."
— The essay points out a connection between use of the tactic and countries occupied by someone else's military, but doesn't exactly explain the logic of killing yourself for the cause.
To the mailbag!
Hey Will That's not ...It's !
— Jim Semanko
Dear Jim,
I think we've found Rorschach Mountain.
Cheers,
Will
Thanks for the link to The Sideshow - but, um, I am not a "he".
Cheers,
Dear Avedon,
What? Do you mean to tell me that someone with a pink blog could actually be female?
(I think my mind went to and it was all down hill from there.)
Sorry 'bout that,
Will
Hey Will,
As for that ABC News clip linking Saddam and OBL, !
You're too good to get caught on something like this. Hit some late-night parties this weekend?
—Josh Gibson
Ottawa, ON
Dear Josh,
I actually knew the six-years-old part. I thought that made it more credible because it was before anyone cared about spinning it with relation to the war. What I didn't know was that the 9/11 commission had shot it down (though I guess I knew implicitly that they'd shot down any collaborative connection), and what else I didn't know is that this thing gets passed around seasonally like the flu.
I Technorati searched the video and Googled the reporter's name and nothing in particular jumped out at me. The reason I'd Googled the reporter was to see if she'd done a follow-up. I couldn't find one, but now I'm even more curious about what she has to say.
Thanks,
Will
Thought you might find , wouldn't want to get Google into political hot water. :)
-Richard
Dear Richard,
That whole idea of auto-keywording or relevance or whatever they call it when the software takes a guess at how to pair things based on the words it sees on the page is definitely an imperfect science. You may have seen that some of the ads here at MSNBC.com are based on the same technology. Unfortunately, sometimes that makes for some unfortunate matches. We had a story about a stabbing murder and the software placed an ad for steak knives on sale on it. D'oh! (By the way, if you ever see something like that on the site, let me know. We do take the ads off when they're inappropriate.)
Cheers,
Will