Honest technology executives

The idea of honest executives is a hard one to encapsulate, so when I saw Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols blog post about Honest Technology Executives I had to read it, and it is pretty amusing. So I did some poking around, and found another blog post of his entitled Five Reasons to Fire Ballmer (for those who don’t know, Ballmer is the CEO of Microsoft) which was also quite amusing, and I think fairly accurate. Last but not least he has a very funny and excellent post entitled Dear Microsoft, thanks for the help, Linux.

I recommend all three highly, but you should avoid drinking while reading them, or it may cost you a keyboard.

AP Violates Own Copyright Law By Quoting 22 Words from TechCrunch

Yep. Seriously. You can read it here. Also PJ at Groklaw has written an excellent article called What’s Fair Use, Anyway? AP Has a Thought, and So Do I that I highly recommend.

It doesn’t look this this one is going to go away anytime soon.

Drudge Retort, Media Bloggers Association, and Associated Press

It appears that the situation is far more complex than it appeared immediately. A statement made by Robert Cox of the Media Bloggers Association attempts to clear things up:

1) The Drudge Retort accepts user generated content.
2) Apparently some users were posting complete AP articles.
3) Rogers Cadenhead is in effect for this case the site owner, not an individual blogger.
4) Both the AP and New York Times stories are inaccurate.

It appears in fact that AP was acting in a proper manner, however the situation was reported inaccurately not only in the media, but in the blogosphere, and the large corporation against the small blogger has inflamed things.

I am very cynical where corporations are concerned. In most cases the only care of the corporation is profit, irregardless of the cost to the community. Pollution, worker injury or death, deforestation, etc. are all acceptable if a profit is earned. So my first instinct is to attack the corporation in question, because I can be sure that 99% of the time I’m right. It appears that this is the other 1%, and I owe an apology to Associated Press.

Activism and Wikipedia

Yeah, Wikipedia isn’t always accurate. You have to cross check what you find, to be sure of the accuracy (which you should have been doing anyway ). That said, it tends to be more accurate than a lot of sources, and you can find some truly amazing things there.

About 10-15 years ago my Father-in-Law bought Pierre Berton’s “The Great Depression”, a truly fantastic book. There was a lot that bothered me in that book, starting with the opening, which documents Toronto Police clearing the lawns of Queens Park with horses and clubs, because someone was speaking that they didn’t approve of. Rather than just arresting that one person, they assaulted nearly every person who was there, including people there to eat lunch in the sunshine, mothers walking their children, etc. This really bothered me at the time I read it. Heck, I didn’t believe it at first, but yes, this really happened.

So the other night I found a reference to a Red Squad, which was interesting, and lead me to an article at the University of Chicago about Red Squads, which lead me to a page about the Haymarket Bombing, which lead to an article about the Patriot Act in the USA, which lead me to an article about the Domestic Security Act of 2003, which lead me to an article about COINTELPRO, which lead me to an article about The Church Committee, which led me to an article on Red Scares or the Red Menace. And all of these articles are pretty accurate.

Why is this important? Because the Swedish Parliament has passed a regulation meaning that Swedes Are To Be Wiretapped, Despite Protests.

So it’s not only the USA going berserko with the Patriot Act, it’s not just the Italian Police beating protesters with truncheons, there is a madness which appears to have infected every country in the world, an insanity beyond parallel.

And if we don’t stop them, it will get worse.

The Associated Press Embargo Part Deux

Mary Hodder has pointed out at BoingBoing that the stories in both the New York Times and AP covering the story claimed that negotiations were going to occur with a blogging group about what could and couldn’t be posted.

Mary has written a correction of this in the blog Napsterization. Rogers Cadenhead of Drudge Retort asked the Media Bloggers Association to talk to AP specifically about his situation. The Media Bloggers Association does not negotiate for bloggers as a whole, indeed they are unable to, as they don’t represent most of us.

It appears that AP on being contacted by an Association thought that they had more authority than they do, or AP lied to try and cool the situation. In either case, I’m still not happy with them, and they won’t get any page clicks from me.

The Associated Press Embargo

It appears that the Associated Press has lost it’s collective mind. Or it’s getting REALLY bad legal advice. They’ve tried to attack the Drudge Retort using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act based on the fact that the Drudge Retort used direct quotes, of less than 80 words in it’s reports. This story has also been covered by News Hoggers, Ann Althouse, Workbench, BuzzMachine, and even the Guardian newspaper in the UK has noticed this.

So avoid Associated Press. Let’s starve them of page hits, and see how they like it. Their actions may not be illegal, but they are immoral. Since they don’t want to be quoted, let’s do what they want. Heck, let’s go further, and pretend they don’t exist.

Pulling Together A Random Album Name And Cover

Ganked from figmo who ganked it from folkmew….

1 – Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 – Go to Random quotations: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 – Go to flickr’s “explore the last seven days” http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Put it all together, that’s your debut album.

This is mine, and I kind of like it:

The Poor, Poor, Puppy

I took Mark outside to do his business just before Canada’s Worst Handyman was about to start. We’d just gotten into the back yard, when there was a bright, bright flash. About 4 second later there was a huge “Kaboom.” Mark jumped about 6 feet straight up, and took off for the door like a shot. He stood outside the door barking his fool head off, until Ian let him in (I was still making my way to the door). He ended up sitting on the couch shivering, and only settled down when number1catlover sat on him.

Poor, pitiful puppy.

I hate it when Firefox crashes

Writer's Block: Irksome Films

Irksome Films? There’s so many of them.

The Avengers
Thunderbirds
The Pink Panther (the one with Steve Martin)

Hollywood has this ability to totally mess up anything and everything. I understand that they are doing an American version of Life on Mars, and that they’ve now bought the rights to do an American version of Little Mosque on the Prairie. Argh!