“President Bush has essentially told American kids to drop dead, and we are not going to let that happen.”
Chuck Loveless, Legislative Director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which is running eight targeted television ads.
Month: October 2007
links for 2007-10-10
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Excellent. The Busheviks broke a window into bin Laden’s operations, making them aware of a security breach, and wasting several years work. Heckuva job, dubya . . .
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yeah, I always chuckle at that one too.
adventures in online commerce
There I was, poised to buy the new Radiohead release. But wait, what’s this? I can’t see the image of the security code I need to key in!
Eventually, with several reloads of the page, I got both a graphic and an error-free page (some elements were failing to load over a secure connection). Not sure this has been all that well tested . . . why do I think they could have simply asked Amazon to handle all the backend magic? True, Amazon isn’t much on the “set your own price” business model, but the association with this experiment might have been worth it.
I paid US$9.99, near enough. Five quid, plus a £.45 service charge. I’ll have the full release in about 5 minutes, all 48Mb of it. My hunch is, we’ll see more of this. If, as Alex Ross suggests, the order numbers are sequential, they have made connection with a lot of fans (mine was WAS4413188).
money-grubbing
One of my kind Flickr pals (who happens to be local as well) may be able to hook me up with a Nikon D50 that will be some surplus to his requirements in a few weeks. That means I need to dig up some scratch.
Ideas welcome. Maybe I’ll start ghost-writing kids school papers. Nah, mine aren’t old enough yet.
I wish I could count on some passive earning, like the real estate I give to Google on every page, but it’s so hit and miss: I may get a $1 a click on some things and then a whole lot of nothing. Right now, I am about $23 away from a check from them since Nov 14 2005 (!!). At $77 over 694 days, that’s $.11/day.
Once middle school is in full swing, life should become a little easier, as they will start earlier and I won’t need to do fetch and carry duties. But that’s almost two years away.
gerrymandering
Beyond Red & Blue: America’s 10 political regions redefined:
“Beyond Red & Blue” was conceived about four years ago, in anticipation of the 2004 presidential election. The idea was to divide the United States into 10 regions of equal voting power, each with a distinct history and political bent.
I have recommended the Nine Nations book to people for ages now, since I found it to be a pretty convincing way to understand the continent. I’m not sure I see how this map works: is the Spanish-speaking population of the Southwest really considered a bloc with the Spanish-speakers in So Florida? They do come from different places, after all.
I understand that it’s a political map but I’m not sure I understand the breakout of regions all that well. It’s really just a gerrymander.
I can agree with the western version of the Upper Coasts, as it maps well to the Ecotopia nation from Nine Nations (and I live there, so it’s home). But do the sons of the pioneers out here really share all the much with the sons of the Mayflower back east? This area was settled by Midwesterners, in large part, perhaps explaining why it went with the Union in the War of Southern Secession.
I think the idea of geographically coherent regions that share political and cultural interests makes more sense to me: lumping people together seems counterproductive.
links for 2007-10-09
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this is why camera phones are a good thing.
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An interview with comix master Alan Moore. it’s not all underwear perverts and magic, you know.
there are still .arpa addresses in use?
I found 4.64.66.208.in-addr.arpa in my log files. According to .arpa – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I shouldn’t be. It doesn’t do any harm, I know, but it seems odd that an organization that came along long after ARPA’s day was done would still be using that nomenclature.
quote of the day
Is There a “Liberal Professor” Problem?:
I don’t think any institution anywhere has a too-few-Republicans problem: universities don’t need more believers in intelligent design or the appicability of the Laffer curve or the unitary executive or the genetic inferiority of Africans or more disbelievers in global warming. Do other disciplines have a too-few-conservatives problem? Perhaps, but I don’t think it can be solved: I cannot think of a sociology department that would be improved by hiring Charles Murray or a philosophy department that would be improved by hiring William Kristol or a Middle Eastern studies department that would be improved by hiring Daniel Pipes.
dog bites man
This just in — Republicans Distrust Media:
Republicans “remain deeply distrustful of the national news media — in sharp contrast to Democrats, who have a great deal more trust in the media’s accuracy,” according to a new Gallup poll.
“Overall, less than half of Americans, regardless of partisanship, have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the mass media. Nearly half of Americans — including over three-quarters of Republicans — perceive the media as too liberal while fewer than one in five say the media are too conservative. Americans are less likely to perceive bias in their local news media than in the national news media.”
Akin to “all politics is local,” local news is always understandable because you know the people and places involved. Your tribe, your local neighbors, are unlikely to be much more liberal or conservative than you are. The stuff that airs on New York stations might not be popular or even possible in Peoria.
The flip side of this? As everyone eventually learns, there is nothing more discouraging that reading a general news article about your area of expertise, as it makes you wonder how many of the other articles you’ve been read are just as fact-free. I suppose a lot depends on how much depth and breadth the local newspaper features: if everything you read reinforces what you already know, you’re not really being informed. This is the benefit to having more than one local newspaper. What big cities in the US have two or more independent (ie, without conjoined business operations) newspapers? I know most cities have a large daily and a few smaller free papers, and the free papers do add some balance, but home delivery builds a habit.
New York has the Times, The Sun, The Post, Newsday, and probably more I don’t know about. What other US city has more than one?
do digital music licenses trump “Fair Use?”
Do Amazon’s new license terms mean an end to Fair Use provisions?
Business & Technology | Unlocked music isn’t unlimited | Seattle Times Newspaper:
When Amazon.com launched its MP3 store last week, I thought the Seattle company had found the perfect formula for selling digital music.
Prices are lower than Apple’s iTunes, audio quality is generally higher and none of the songs is embedded with obnoxious copy-protection software. I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon leapfrogs into first place in the downloadable-music business that Microsoft, Sony and others have struggled with for years.
Does that mean it’s time to say goodbye to the neighborhood record store?
I’d say no, after reading the fine print in Amazon’s user agreement. That’s when I decided to keep buying CDs, maybe forever.
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Amazon’s contract says you “may copy, store, transfer and burn the Digital Content” for personal use. But then it goes further and specifies restrictions, saying you “agree that you will not redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, sub-license or otherwise transfer or use the Digital Content.”
I suspect this won’t hold up, if contested. And unless there are some hidden watermarks, I’m not sure how they can enforce it. They do store a Song ID in the metadata
but that just takes you to the track. I suppose a comparison of a ripped-from-CD file to a purchased one might reveal something.