Slashdot Mirror

Check out Book Burro which lets you see the book prices from other sites. It uses xmlHttpRequest to grab the prices. Amazon wrote about it on their web services blog

Another cool script if you are traveling and very flexible is Expedia Expanded Search.

And if you like non-DRMed MP3, Amazon has them. You can download them faster (skipping intermediate pages) using Amazon Free Music Helper.

Also, for those who don't know, this is his blog. It is a very good blog in fact, one of the few that I go out of my way to refresh several times a day.

Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush. That was a good one.

I also got a good chuckle out of the Inspector Dan Rather Mystery

Audi just produced its 500,000 CVT. They do not make hybrid cars.
http://typingtalker.typepad.com/machines_with_moto rs/2005/04/ford_cvt_rip.html/

The Mini Cooper is available with a CVT -- also non-hybrid.
http://typingtalker.typepad.com/machines_with_moto rs/2005/04/mini_clubman.html/

Audi just produced its 500,000 CVT. They do not make hybrid cars.
http://typingtalker.typepad.com/machines_with_moto rs/2005/04/ford_cvt_rip.html/

The Mini Cooper is available with a CVT -- also non-hybrid.
http://typingtalker.typepad.com/machines_with_moto rs/2005/04/mini_clubman.html/

Here is a better link:

http://brianoconnor.typepad.com/animal_crackers/DE ER.HTM

The current government, you mean? The one that wants biometric National ID cards tied to passports?

I don't see how you can claim that the Blair government hasn't introduced anything as oppressive as the Patriot Act when the Civil Contingencies Act exists, along with the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001, which, unlike the original Patriot Act, does not contain sunset provisions (provisions which the Bush administration may convince Congress to overturn, unfortunately). And which, since the government has been returned, is unlikely to be changed or repealed, even if Tony Blair is tossed on his behind and replaced by Gordon Brown.

Heck, maybe you can give this a read, and see if you can find anything that the author asserts which isn't true.

I lived in the UK for a bit under a year, finishing out my military service. It was incredible to me to hear Brits aghast abotu the evils of the Patriot Act when they were under far more draconian laws, with cameras on every street corner, an Official Secrets Act (which exists to protect Officials, not secrets, as they said in Yes, Prime Minister), police taking DNA samples from anyone arrested and a Home Secretary who seemed to be trying very hard to make the Bush administration seem reasonable and protective of civil liberties.

Of course, if you point this out, you're purveying anti-British propaganda. Just like anyone who criticizes the Bush admin hates America.

The UK is just ahead of us in the US in the turn back to totalitarianism. We Yanks should look at the UK if we want to see what our future will look like.

And, for those who don't think the Brits love being screwed by their government, that government was returned this week. With a reduced majority because of Iraq (not civil liberties, Iraq) and anger among hardcore Labour supporters that Tony Blair isn't socialist enough.

Would it surprise you to know that many Christians I meet and talk with at my University would say that they feel attacked or persecuted?

No, there are a lot of whiners in the world, and an unfortunate number of Christians with a persecution complex.

There are a fair number of white men who whine that the deck is stacked against them. Does this make it true?

It's easy to keep quiet when you can just turn your dogs loose and let them do the shouting for you. That's PR-101, dude, and you fall for it like a sheep. Stay above the fray and look presidential while the wolf pack does your hunting for you.
Also, there are two kinds of protesting losers -- whiny losers and fuming, spitting, tantrum-throwing losers. I'll take the whiners any day.
Want to see the fuming, spitting, tantrum throwers?

if you want a more genuine position on piracy, take a look at the PC game industry:

http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2005/03/ burn_the_house_.html

Q: I am one of the bad guys: I'm working on a big budget next generation console game. I want to ask about totally legalised piracy? Not Russia and grey market - I'm talking Blockbuster. 20 dollars a year you can borrow whatever you like then give it back. People are going to rent my game for 4 dollars. I won't see any of that. They're robbing me!

Chris: I'm pro-piracy. I want people to play the games I make. I do it because it's art. I think DRM is a total fucking stupid mess. If the game industry collapses and can be reborn, I'm all for it. Pirate on!

Greg: they're not pirating the game! Someone bought a legal copy! The world is not designed in such a way that money inherently funnels its way into your wallet!?

Warren: I never minded piracy. Anyone who minds about piracy is full of shit. Anyone who pirates your game wasn't going to buy it anyway!

THOSE ARE THREE GAME-DEVELOPERS. they make their living making games. and they are notoriously underpaid and vastly OVER-worked (80-hour workweeks during long, long, long extended crunch times)

what they say is pretty moving and shocking, considering the flapdoodle from the RIAA that we've become accustomed to.

the RIAA has turned file-sharing into a "moral" episode about violating copyright law. as it's been said already, they're just turning their lost profits into a moral crusade against p2p. their copyrights/industry aren't actually being abused or exploited or appropriated (except by capital P-pirates, who pirate music/software and then sell it for huge profits). they're just being looked over; they're a has-been. people have better things to do than pay 18 bucks for a shitty cd with one good tune on it. there's tons of LEGAL free music all over the place.

oh well for the RIAA :(

you're playing Nice Guy ("they're bullies, but what they're asking isn't unreasonable...") but you're still an idiot.

violaters of Jim Crow were breaking the law too. just because the dixiecrats had the law on their side, does that make their demands unreasonable?

the RIAA is a stinking pile of filth. and it's important to note that many students SHARE MP3's LEGALLY, both download/upload not only mp3's that both sharers already own.

LEGITIMATE FILE-SHARING already HAS been trodden on in many cases. there's no "would be [trodden upon]"-- it's already happened and is still happening.

"The only type of crime with a lower recidivism rate is murder with 6.8%" (and thats not even the lowest rate quoted there)

Even when they multipled it by the "unreported crime" factor, it still comes out low compared to other types of crimes. Even when its reported at nice high levels like 50% here it's STILL lower than every other kind of crime (except 30% for manslaughter).

So I guess the answer is, "unless you kill someone, you're probably going to do whatever it was again", and thereby we can justify putting everyone but murderers to death.

This reminds me of a U.S Religious Lobby group that has been trying to stop/prevent Canada from legalizing same sex marriage. I can't find the original story link from the Toronto Star, but managed to find others.

Here here here here

Here is a quote from one of the stories:

Powerful U.S. religious groups are sending money and support to allies in Canada to fight same-sex marriage.

Patrick Korten, vice-president of communications for the Knights of Columbus head office in New Haven, Conn., said no limit has been set on the help his organization is prepared to offer. "Whatever it takes," he said. "The family is too important." Mr. Korten said the U.S. headquarters of the Catholic men's group paid $80,782 to print two million postcards being distributed in Catholic churches across Canada. "It has been extremely enthusiastically received in Catholic parishes all over Canada. As a matter of fact we may have to print some more -- there was a great deal of interest in it. It offers a quick, simple but effective way for Catholics ... to make their feelings about the same-sex marriage bill known to their MPs." Another opponent of same-sex marriage, Focus on the Family, is also sending support and services worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to its Canadian affiliate. James Dobson, the charismatic founder of Focus on the Family who has been described as one of the most influential Christian figures in the United States, personally waded into the debate two weeks ago in a radio show taped in Colorado Springs, Colo., and transmitted as a paid broadcast to 130 stations in Canada. "It is clear here in the United States that the American people do not want same-sex marriage. I would hope that Canadians who also do not want same-sex marriage would be encouraged by what has happened down here."

What the hell is wrong with the USA, when they have to force their religious beliefs on other countries? Canadians hate being told what to do by Americans, and we usually will do the opposite of what they want, just to spite them.

See the GDC rant session which was previously reported on Slashdot.

I've been using a USB device for Skype that allows me to use a normal phone with it for a few months now. Works great. Skype's not for everyone, and it doesn't work perfectly all the time, but it's the first one that I've actually used with some frequency (the "virtual" company I work for uses Skype and SkypeOut a lot, because it's cost-effective). It's great that there's a Mac, Windows, Linux and Windows Mobile version of Skype. I've used all but the Mac version of it (too lazy to install), and they all work great.

John Perry Barlow had an amusing blog entry about his experience with Skype. Personally, I disable strangers from trying to contact me, but so far, it seems like Skype is this decade's ICQ.

Actually, no I don't know how much the tax rate on the rich has fallen since 1950. But I can tell you how much it's RISEN since 1979. Get your facts straight dude. I 1979 the richest .1% paid just over 5% of the tax revenue collected. Now they pay almost 10%.

But the people who end up with the money the corporation makes, shareholders and employees, all pay taxes on the money they receive. The corp itself may only pay a small amount but the money gets taxed eventually when someone receives it as personal income.

Besides, the rich pay a higher share of taxes now than they did in 1979. It's misleading to say corporations don't pay tax, corporations are made up of individuals, and individuals pay tax. Does it really make a difference to anyone who isn't a tax lawyer that the money goes through a step in between?

I know you said you don't use Orange, but they are launching the Treo 650 tomorrow:

"Official launch of the Treo 650 in the UK"

You think it's OK for someone to be fired just because of their personal views?

No, but it happens all the time anyway. Since 1886 when corporations were de facto granted virtual personhood, corporations have become the most powerful citizens. So what can you do?

--Rob

>Sure, I could buy a PDF converter, You might not need to buy one.
I haven't used this:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
it's a PDF creator as a printer driver.
Here's a blog including this and other methods:
http://tenser.typepad.com/tenser_said_the_tensor/2 004/11/word_doc_to_pdf.html

I have to agree with you about incompatability though.
My girlfriend's last minute job application (saved as a .doc under OO) crashed her work XP version. Not good.
.rtf anyone?

Oh, you mean the proof that gayness is caused by a virus?

http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/brandautopsy/2005/ 02/hugh_pimps_a_ta.html/

It should be pretty easy to get a high power and supremely noisy transmitter to play havock with this threat to national security.

Might even make the pringles cans go 'POOF'

http://technovia.typepad.com/technovia/2004/05/lon ghorn_specs_.html

In a nutshell, it comes from a slide at a developer's conference, indicating the kind of machines that may be around for Longhorn's lifetime, and that the OS should be able to take advantage of such high specs, not that it will require such high specs.

Every time there is an article related to either the GPL or the RIAA someone raises the same argument. And it should get the same answer...

The purpose of the GPL is to ensure freedom. If it wern't for the possibility that someone monopolist would take free code and use it to make obscene profits, while at the same time making that code incompatible with the free versions, most of the "open source" or "free software" work would probably have been Public Domain instead.

The reason RMS devised the GPL was as a great way to subvert the system to force freedom.

The RIAA on the other hand is an immoral, corrupt organization that keeps artists poor, charges obscene prices for music, while using those profits to lobby congress to get themselves infinite copyright against the intent in the US constitution, and stamp out any competing form of music distribution. I don't see any moral comparison at all.

Here is an excellent article that might inform you on the subject.
New Arguments Against P2P: The Phony Moral Debate


Are we only for the idea of intellectual property when it applies to GPL authors? I'm told in one situation that copyright is flawed and evil, and in the next I'm told to follow GPL copyright.

I am for the original intent of copyright and patents in the constitution. Not what they have been corrupted into by mega corporations. Again, the GPL wouldn't need to exist if it wern't for the misbehavior of corporations. Copyright in its present corrupted form is flawed and evil. You should follow the GPL because its purpose is to ensure freedom. Your freedom even. The GPL is to ensure YOUR freedom to use and study the code.

Calm down, it is OK... the world understands, it's in France's nature to surrender. They just can't help it.

-
"I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me." -- General George S. Patton

- Ken Beyer (ILM production engineering manager): "Six hundred Linux desktops will be used for Star Wars: Episode III to be released summer 2005."
Sequence supervisor Robert Weaver noticed a tremendous performance boost upgrading from RISC (Sun/SGI) workstations to Linux PCs during Star Wars, Episode II:

AMD64 used for Episode III
Alias/wave Maya used for Episode II, Lord of the Rings, and Spiderman

Xp64 used on episode III. Don't know how much though.
Episode 1 hardware and software. Yes,Pixar's Renderman and Alias|Wavefront`s Maya . SGI computers.

The linux cluster used at Industrial light and magic.

Maybe this works: http://joi.typepad.com/photos/cc_anniversary_03/ci mg0171sized.html

"Hi! I'm Mr Massive P2P Downloader and I just have one thing to say. "Your characters, story, levels, music and graphics", just want to be free. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Might I recommend McDonalds work. I haven't figured out a way to download that...yet."

Hi Mr. Massive P2P Downloader....I could care less if you pirate one of my games, I doubt you would have ever played it all if you hadn't stolen it anyway. So, You make no difference in my profits ;) ...and it looks like I'm not alone.

You hit the nail on the head there. Sony's decision to offer the top 500 shows that they really don't understand what makes ITMS so successful at all.

If there are any Sony folks reading, you should click through and read the following articles immediately:

• The Long Tail
• Millions of Markets of Dozens

Here's the key grafs from the 2nd piece (by Joe Kraus, founder of Excite and now chief of JotSpot):

Let's look at the Amazon example. This graph shows that Amazon sells roughly 2.3M books and that the average Barnes and Noble retail store stocks 139,000 books. So, Amazon stocks roughly 2.2M more books that Barnes and Noble.

No surprise here. That's the benefit of an online storefront. Massive inventories housed in ultra-low-rent areas that are fronted electronically.

The astonishing figure is the percent of sales that comes from the "long tail" of books (books that Amazon carries but that Barnes and Noble doesn't).

57%.

57% of Amazon's sales come from books you can't even buy at a Barnes and Noble...

Yep, just like I would imagine a good chunk of ITMS sales come from singles you can't find at your local Sam Goody -- and Kraus cites in the same article that "every iTunes song has been purchased at least once", which would seem to bear that out when you figure that ITMS has an inventory of over a million songs. That's a heck of a long tail business.

If Sony had a brain they'd be figuring out how to use the PSP as a platform to revitalize their back catalog -- all those movies they've got sitting around that aren't Top 500 material, but which have a few fans here and there. If they can get the distribution system efficient enough the profits would probably be considerable.

It's a joke that came up after the '04 elections. http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/11/a_mode st_propos.html

What, like this?

As the GDC yellowshirt volunteer who did the data entry for the paper evaluations they hand out for Burning Down the House and the Spore presentation, I can verify that this Best of List is quite likely correct.

For Burning Down the House, numerous people wrote in 6's and circled those, writing in comments that their only complaint was that it didn't go on long enough. A handful of people dinged certain speakers point-wise. But for each person who saw fit to ding Laurel or Zimmerman, many more sang their praises. In talking to people I heard that Laurel had a certain wry humor that was lost on some people who might have taken her too literally, and a handful of people thought Zimmerman interrupted too much. But the mean was 4.67 out of 5 or higher for all speakers. It would have been much higher if our data entry system accepted numbers higher than 5, as significant amounts of people wrote in 6's. The mean overall score for the session was, if I remember right, 4.90 out of 5.

Here's a transcript of Burning Down the House if you want to read for yourself what was said. It can't quite capture the energy of the discussion though.

http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2005/03/ burn_the_house_.html

As for Will Wright's talk on Spore, well, it was overwhelmingly positive. His score was a mean of 4.98 out of 5 with 212 received feedback forms. Numerous write-ins of 6s and 10s which just get counted as 5 by us yellow-shirts. Overwhelming positive comments also, including many people making liberal use of f* bombs in comments such as "f***ing great!!!11" or "f*** me!!!". ; -) Only negative comments were, of course, that no room is large enough to hold the audience Will attracts and we all want him to talk for hours at a time instead of just one hour.

I'll have to recommend a google search for "Spore screenshots" if you want to know more about that, as EA immediately went into info control mode and even shut down the movie theater re-broadcast immediately after. This was received with groans, grumbling and one person shouting "Challenge Everything!"

But the consensus that these two talks were among the highlight of the GDC is supported numerically. I didn't do the numbers for it, but I'd also suggest that the Experimental Gameplay demonstration was extremely excellent as well.

Do you think that she has a nice ass?

Maybe it would look like this

I've had unreasonably high hopes for "Sin City" ever since I watched that fabulous trailer. But it's not like graphic novels-turned-movies have impeccable track records on the big screen, so imagine my concern going into this.

For lack of a more eloquent explanation, "Sin City" freaking rules.

Remember the first time you saw "Pulp Fiction"? You were unnerved and at times downright repelled, but you admitted that it was the freshest, most original thing to be put into a theater since... ever, and you couldn't wait to talk about how amazing it was with everyone you knew? "Sin City" is kind of like that.

http://sarahlane.typepad.com/sarahword/2005/03/cel luloid_lane_.html

1. Is "Sin City" a family movie?
- Heavens no. It's incredibly graphic and gruesome. I know YOU'RE into that, but don't bring the kids.

6. Does the all-star cast detract from the story at all?
- Refreshingly, no. No one character is the main star, it's more like a bunch of supporting roles. Great supporting roles. These actors are stoked.

8. Are we talking CG animation or live action?
- Almost all the live action was done with green screens and props, then the magic was painted in later. It's amazing.

10. I was pleased to see lots of hot chicks in the trailer. Can I expect more of that?
- You sure can, my friend! But they'll also chop your head off. Literally.

So the person who doesn't trust themself with an extra $500 a month is suddenly able to make sound financial decisions with a $6000 tax refund?

Well, ya know, a smiliar Java app on Solaris will probably match or best a C# app on equivalent Windows machine. Why? Cuz the devloper of the OS can be free to tie in all their optimizations into their VM. Mono is slower, besides being a clean room impl, because it's fricking hard to port VMs to other architectures and they haven't tied all their calls to the low level OS like M$ has!
Sun has done an admirable job porting their VM across so many archs, but only from a server perspective.

Which is not how most people think of when they think of .NET/Mono vs. Java, but I do.

I made the jump years ago and think mostly in terms of the server and Weblications - a completely different ball game and, in my view, where things are going and finally back on track. .NET/Mono are no where near Java in terms of scalability and performance. I worked on a project - and this was even four years ago - where 75 Java app servers ran across 150 cpus. This company has made billions in transactions across those systems. And that was four years ago!
Java's way ahead of .NET/Mono on the server and this is where Sun got it right. If you've ever used Sun hardware, with all their little management niceties and gizmos, you would know they've got their shit together on this. Their experience with building, albiet sometimes complicated or academic, scalable apps is what they're all about and this has all filtered into Java.

Sure, for some desktop app or photo sharing web site, Java's not the way to go. But for medium to big web projects where stuff just has to work, then there's no other game in town. They'll own this space for some time to come. Windows is all about the PC and local client apps. But that door's starting to close and it makes sense for more and more non-Office style programs to be run over the net.

Linky dropped $20 bucks

All? Loved? Both very strong words that may be overdoing it a bit. While I enjoyed TSS when Leo and Kate started it, it never was a truly geek show as another poster mentioned. Kevin (bit player then co-host) was the token "uber" geek and you had to wonder how much was knowledge vs showmanship. The show went downhill rapidly after Leo left. Leo now has a popular radio show. Kevin is off doing his own thing mostly. Patrick is doing occasional articles and recently started a blog. Morgan Webb has her own blog too, of course.

You won't find them on these sites, but BoingBoing had some choice words from Greg Costikiyan (game design pundit and one of the primary guys behind the old Paranoia pen-and-paper RPG) on Iwata's speech. The upshot of his remarks were, basically, sure you're original, but only because the practices of big companies, like Nintendo, made it difficult for other people to take those kinds of risks, by making all their games blockbusters and thus making it difficult for small studios to compete.

At first I thought he had lost it. Thinking about it some more, however, and I can say that actually he's pretty close to the money.

Nintendo has a support website for their developers. While the juicy info is locked off behind site registration (NOT FREE) and such, there is information on what your company can do to gain Nintendo developer status, and what you can do, as an individual developer, to become a licensee. Guess what? They're only looking for established developers.

Let's dissect this for a moment though. In order to program for their system on your own, you must already be an established developer. You can't just tinker, and if you come up with something great, go from there.

I've done some looking into the GBA specs lately, on homebrew sites and such. Here's the secret: the Gameboy Advance is super easy to develop for! You don't even need an official dev kit. Give me a few weeks over the summer and I could easily come up with a working demo of one of my "closet" designs, even though I am not what you would call an "established" developer. (In point of fact, I'm an English grad student.)

But here's my point. It's precisely outsider developers, such as what I'd like to be, who would be most likely to come up with the most inventive and unusual games. And it's established developers who are most likely to give you Guy Game XVIII. Nintendo is not alone in this either -- licensing fees are big bucks, and so are dev kits.

Nintendo is the company, currently existing, that comes up, on the average, with the most innovative games in the industry. I don't think this is arguable. But it all comes from in-house with them. Sony is the only company that has an official path by which a hobbyist can get his own code running on their console -- and it ain't cheap either. Of course Microsoft has tools by which you can develop for Windows, but it's not as easy to pick up on DirectX programming, it seems to me, as it would be to cook something up for the GBA.

Anyway, just a bit of frustrated ranting. You may now resume with your ordinary, everyday existence.

I read the blog of Scott Miller, CEO of 3DRealms, quite frequently. He's a really smart guy. If companies followed the advice he dishes out on his blog, they'd be much better off. He's especially keen on marketing. For example, he has some great ideas on naming games and on avoiding using long titles like Star Wars Dark Forces II Jedi Knight III etc. Very smart stuff.

So why he has so f-ed up the marketing on DNF is beyond me. Frankly, I think he's betrayed the relationship between developer and fan more than nearly any other gaming single company. The problem is not that they've taken so long. If they had never released any information at all about DNF but simply announced the game and released it a year later after a PR blitz, it wouldn't have been a big deal. People might've wondered why it took so long, but they'd probably be too busy playing the game to care.

Instead, Miller and 3dr has arrogantly strung their fans along by surfacing every 2-3 years with a carrot of information or screenshots or an E3 preview. Then, when the enthusiasm level is just enough to maintain a slight knowledge of the game, they dive back into the murky depths of "when it's done."

"When it's done" does not inherently violate the relationship between developer and fan. But as soon as companies like 3drealms start relying on fan enthusiasm and fan network news distribution, they owe more to them than to snub their nose at the fans, say in a British Lord accent, "When it's done," and then walk away backs turned. DNF is a perfect example of this elitism.

There was a sociological study done a few years back that showed that the time people wait for things demonstrates the level in society of the two groups of people. This study was talking specifically about people waiting in doctor's offices or at a government institution. The longer people waited in these offices, the more important the person was they were waiting for - either a doctor or an institution. The longer we sit in a waiting room, the more we need to be in the waiting room. Doctors and buerocrats can get away with that because of their level of importance in society. Simply, we need them more than they need us, and that's why we wait.

But there's a discrepency in this when we apply this same theory to gaming. We don't need a DNF as much as Scott Miller and gang need us. We've been getting along fine without them. And perhaps Miller and 3drealms have enough money that they don't need to work quickly on the game, but if they have other aspirations for DNF - for it to become a benchmark, or just known as a really fun game - they're going to have to drop this elitist "when it's done" attitude and do one of two things: a) shut up about the game and stop releasing any kind of information like this, or b) set a date for the game and stick to it as best as they can.

Some of the more succesfull studios get away with "when it's done," namely id and Blizzard to name a few. This is just the validity of the sociological study; that we actually do "need" a game from id and Blizzard and are willing to wait long enough. Why this works for id and Blizzard and not 3drealms is that the first two companies have never betrayed the trust. While utilizing the fan network and and fan ethusiasm, they have never taken advantage of fans to maintain momentum while they diddle-dally on a game. 3drealms has violated that relationship - time again and time again. Gamers are a very forgiving bunch - throw a great screenshot their way and usually all is forgiven - but I think that DNF has broken a cardinal rule, and "fans" may relegated it to special level of gamer hell.

From The Longtail Blog
"What's changed is the presumption that the primary rights-holder is the best at extracting the commercial potential of creative material. Instead, anyone can do it: the advertising company that remixes an old movie to sell a car; the Linux t-shirt done Warhol-style, or just plain old DJ magic. "

"Let them eat cake" Well now that cake is actually free and we all want to sell it. Now if you can put a custom birthday signature on that cake you might have a business. This is one of the reasons film school is starting to see a new wave of interest. Communication and creativity, not business processes, are going to be the only things left after the so called Web2.0 is done modernizing commerce.

...give me a break!

A break? Sure! I'll even throw in a few clues.

First, Gannon had to submit to the same security checks as everybody else.

Second, if you read the Coulter piece, you no doubt noticed that she "outed" a number of journalists and media figures that use aliases. So, there is nothing odd there.

Third, every White House calls on people known to ask friendly questions. No set ups required, and probably no surer way to make yourself fee important by being called on for questions at the White House.

Fourth, regarding the Plame affair, the New York Times seems to be singing a different tune these days as to it being "illegal". I wonder why?

Fifth, if Gannon isn't a "journalist", and you think he shouldn't have gotten a press pass after going through the checks, then you are saying that the White House should pick and choose who it considers to be journalists. Isn't that a comforting thought? Some blogs dwarf the readership of even major city news papers. Where is the cut-off?

You seem to be riding the band wagon to try and turn the presence of a marginal gay journalist asking friendly questions at White House press briefings into a major scandal. I think that you are in for a long, slow, bumpy, and ultimately disapointing ride. I guess you have to play the cards you're delt.

Does this means more pics like these:
Runtime error
Bluescreen

Perhaps we could /. this person instead Google Sucks!

As explained in this blog:

RAOP protocol itself has already been analyzed by DVDJon and its implementation is availabe as an open source C# software called JustePort. RAOP protocol is based on RTSP wrapped with AES and RSA cryptography, on which Apple Lossless files are streamed.

AES and RSA are also open methods in conjunction with RTSP. Seems pretty open to me.

This provides more useful information to help backup your claim, but also mine...

Some random blog

Feel free to go google DMCA abuse. There's about 100,000 hits, and you might find one or two in there that might lead you to understand WHY it's reasonable to think that a corporation might go after this, using the DMCA as a weapon, because they've done it before.

The FatWallet one is particularly educational. I invite you to go read it. It's even less applicable to the DMCA than card-stripe reading, and it happened anyway.

just one thing... Disney are doing their level best to suppress hosting of "A Night at the Hip Hopera"...

So get hold of it while you can...

Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts.

Yo is sure to get schooled from my mad skillz. Oh by the way, this 3l33t haxor had oatmeal for breakfast this morning. Oh and here's a picture of my cat.

It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.

On one level, blogs are intended for brief communications or thoughts that often revolve around a central theme, but not always. Often they are intended as a means for maintaining communication with family and friends or as a creative outlet. However, this guy has obviously not been very informed or is lazy about finding informative/interesting blogs out there like:

Kevin Sites whose reporting pioneered the use of the blog in combat reporting.

Dan Gillmor whose new efforts are targeted at grassroots journalism from sources exactly like blogs.

Or Chris Anderson's blog The Long Tail which discusses businesses, economic, cultural and political models whose goals are to take advantage of the significant portion of those populations underlying the distal distributions of a curve.

And many others whose careful investigation, research, thought and reporting go into the content on their blogs.

Oh, and then there are the blogs like mine........