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News Briefs 16-06-2008

To paraphrase Pogo…
We have met the space aliens and they are us.

Quote of the Day:

Is the house of the soul a mere bungalow with a cellar? Or does it have an upstairs above the ground floor of consciousness as well as a garbage-littered basement beneath?

Aldous Huxley

  1. Jerry D Coleman
    Loren Coleman has recently announced at Cryptomundo the terrible news that his brother Jerry has cancer.

    In view of the sad incidents that have clouded Mr. Coleman’s life in the past months—the loss of his mother and his stepsister—incidents that obviously have hindered his sibling as well, I think I write for everybody when I state that I wish Jerry Coleman to keep himself strong & optimist, and I hope for him a full recovery of his illness.

    —–
    It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
    It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

    Red Pill Junkie

  2. More on bloggers’ boycott of AP
    UnAssociated Press now lists five pages of bloggers who have joined the AP boycott — along with many bloggers’ comments about why they’re boycotting AP.

    TechCrunch (the #2 blog in the world according to Technorati) posted this explanation of their position on the issue at their website:
    Here’s Our New Policy On A.P. stories: They’re Banned

    Regarding AP’s semi-about-face, the NYTimes’ article says:

    “On Saturday, The A.P. retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was “heavy-handed” and that The A.P. was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers.

    “The quick about-face came, he said, because a number of well-known bloggers started criticizing its policy, claiming it would undercut the active discussion of the news that rages on sites, big and small, across the Internet.”

    To which Hot Air replied:

    “Well, baloney. The about-face resulted from a large number of bloggers deciding not to send their readers to the AP’s sites, which would impact the advertising revenues gained from the extra traffic. The AP’s clients most likely explained that in an era of declining ad revenues for the news industry, they needed all the help they could get. The AP’s policy would have cut sharply into their sales — and would have eventually pushed those sites to use Reuters, AFP, BBC, and UPI feeds instead.”

    As for my take… TDG is a blog, you know. God forbid Greg should have to hire a lawyer just because I forgot to rewrite an AP headline (one the things AP is demanding). So until the smoke clears on this issue, I plan to play it safe by avoiding all AP content.

    If my concentration slips and I accidently post an AP story, I’d appreciate you readers pointing it out to me so I can delete it and replace it with an article from another source.

    Kat

    1. Well…
      We should be on the safe side, we always link to the original stories, and we have the tendency to invent our own headlines—that’s half the fun of preparing the News briefs 🙂

      But I suppose we need to support our fellow bloggers on this issue, until AP acknowledges they behaved like major douchebags 😉

      —–
      It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
      It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

      Red Pill Junkie

    2. First of all I had no idea
      First of all I had no idea that techcrunch or whatever is the #2 blog — I’d never heard of it before. Secondly — the fact that AD REVENUE is the acknowledged reason for fights about content control just shows that the internet has ALREADY gone the way of cable, t.v., radio, etc.

      The only interesting shows on mass media, after corporate take-over, are those permanently left in the fringe — unknown, unwanted — and even then any mass media is forced to be dependent on advertising.

      So http://ufomystic.com has those cheesy ads that block comments on occasion — Greg from here has noted how Amazon now does not allow sales of independent print-on-demand books — yahoo has t.v. ads essentially.

      The internet is DEAD.

      The next big revolution will be embedded microchips with direct mind-machine interface.

      Just as science becomes more obsessed with aliens, the turtles get more squashed by cars.

      1. Yep
        I must also admit my ignorance in not knowing about techcrunch.

        The story of the Internet has been—from my experience—one big battle between those who want to keep it as the Wild Wild West, and those who want to put a price tag on every single pixel displayed on your monitor. We are in the middle, struggling to make sense of this wonderful invention.

        PS: Gee… is it me or is it kinda difficult to pay attention to the clip embedded in the ‘Secret Plan To Kill Internet By 2012 Leaked?’ story? Somehow that cleavage doesn’t shout ‘professional journalism’ to me 😉

        —–
        It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
        It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

        Red Pill Junkie

      2. Intentional potholes
        John Cole at Newshoggers sums it up perfectly:

        Imagine what it would be like if every road in the United States was a toll road, and not only that, but you could insert potholes specifically for your competitor’s car.

        There’d be riots in the streets! Unfortunately, the majority of people are in some kind of hypnotic daze, apathetic and anesthetised, and just don’t care what’s happening to the internet. This is a serious issue, just as serious as the Middle East situation. Lives may not be at stake (well, actually, they are, considering Yahoo conspired with the Chinese government to arrest a Chinese man posting a democratic blog, and he remains in jail without trial), but our right to the free flow of information is. It’s a basic human right, and big corporations and governments are pissing all over it.

        *chuckle* This post just made Greg’s file at the CIA an inch thicker. 😉

        1. Greg’s?
          [quote]*chuckle* This post just made Greg’s file at the CIA an inch thicker. ;-)[/quote]

          …Greg’s? 😉

          —–
          It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
          It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

          Red Pill Junkie

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