Author: Brian Carnell

Pop-Up Ad Madness

Via Slashdot comes this Fox News article about people’s frustrations with pop-up ads, especially the pervasive X-10 ads.

How pervasive are the X-10 ads? I was watching a clip on Sports Center where an infielder flubbed a routine pop-up and the broadcaster said that something like, “That’s the worst handling of a pop-up I’ve seen other than X-10.”

Personally I didn’t really have much of an opinion one way or the other until I tried web surfing with my wife’s laptop which is a 233 mhz K6 with about 32mb of RAM — the last thing you want to happen when running this machine is for a new window to randomly open up.

The X-10 technology is very cool, but their ads leave a lot to be desired.

Are The Cave Engravings Fakes?

Maybe I’m just too cynical, but when I saw the photos of these newly discovered engravings on a wall in a 30,000 year old, I had the same thought Jorn Barger had: I wonder if this may prove to be a hoax?

Look at this picture, for example, which I swiped from the Associated Press depicting a bison and a horse (presented here for educational purposes, blah, blah,blah):

Maybe it is genuine, but it looks too good to be true — frankly it looks like it was made with somebody using modern tools.

Douglas Rushkoff on the Future of the Internet

I admit to owning a couple of Douglas Rushkoff’s books, and he’s always struck me as 50 percent genius and 50 percent moron (and 100 percent self-promoter). Anyway, MetaFilter linked to an article Rushkoff wrote for Yahoo! Life, basically doing a lame rehash of a “the internet’s not about making money, it’s about connecting people” rant. Rushkoff writes,

Or have a look at Blogger. ItÂ’s not just a Web site; itÂ’s also a set of publishing tools that allows even a novice to create a Weblog, automatically add content to a Web site, or organize links, commentary, and open discussions. In the short time Blogger has been available, it has fostered an interconnected community of tens of thousands of users. These people donÂ’t simply surf the Web; they are now empowered to create it.

Sure, except that Blogger never made any money to pay for its expensive servers — aside from the sort of speculative investments that Rushkoff disparages throughout his article. In the end it had to be bailed out by Dan Bricklin’s company.

Same thing with Plastic and Slashdot, which Rushkoff also salivates over. How long will Plastic be around now that its parent company laid off pretty much everyone, and Slashdot is chained to the fortunes of VA Linux (another company that relied on speculative financing).

Because he’s so safely liberal, the main political site that Rushkoff mentions is the rather dull Alternet.Org, whereas there’s far more interesting experiments in sharing and connecting on sites like FreeRepublic.Com or EatTheState.Org, both of which are far more interesting than Alternet.

Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime for No Compromise?

No Compromise! recently posted a page on its web site that had me laughing out loud in front of my computer. Titled, “Help No Compromise!” the page was basically a laundry list of ways people could help No Compromise generate the revenue it needs to stay afloat. “…Please help ensure our survival so we can continue to serve the people who are fighting in the trenches,” the plea read. So how does one go about helping No Compromise? Lets see.

You could subscribe to the zine using a credit card (with helpful PayPal links and buttons if you’re so inclined). But why not do a little more? No Compromise joined two affiliate programs, LD.Net and IGive.Com. According to No Compromise, “We receive commission if you use the following links to buy services. We don’t endorse them, but if you are going to shop anyway, please use these links so we receive the commission fee!” Sure, and I don’t endorse meat eating, but I figure if they’re going to kill cows anyway, who am I to deny myself a double cheeseburger?

Ld.Net is reselling telecommunications products (primarily cellular phone and long distance service), while IGive.Com is set up specifically to aid groups advocating one cause or another to purchase items and have a percentage of the purchase price go to that cause. Their business model seems to be trying to drive ideologically-mind shoppers their way, which doesn’t seem like a very promising business in the long run.

Hmmm. Credit cards to pay for subscriptions? A cut of online sales for everything from cut flowers to books made out of dead trees? Is it just me or did No Compromise just become capitalists? I wonder how long before Rodney Coranado denounces this as just the sort of business practice that is destroying the world? (In fact Coranado has denounced these sort of business practices as literally terrorism within the pages of No Compromise — maybe its editors missed that issue).

And of course what would any self-respecting hardcore animal rights group be without a mission statement?

No Compromise is dedicated to unifying the grassroots animal liberationists by providing a forum where activists can exchange information, share strategy, discuss important issues within the movement, network with each other in an open and respectful environment and strengthen the grassroots.

Here I thought the group’s mission was to provide a platform for terrorists and help animal rights extremists harass and commit acts of violence. I suppose the links they provide to terrorist manuals is part of their goal of creating a “respectful environment.”

I’m sure glad they cleared that up.

Help No Compromise!.

It Is Not a Sequel, It Is Literature?

What exactly was Dave Winer talking about yesterday when he posted the sentence below, about Alice Randall’s controversial The Wind Done Gone,

Listening to her talk about her family and especially her father, there’s no doubt that the book is literature, not a sequel as the heirs of Margaret Mitchell have claimed.

The last time I checked, a sequel to a novel would generally be classified as literature. Besides which, Randall’s novel has generally gotten very bad reviews with most reviewers noting that had the Mitchell estate not done something as absurd as taking Randall to court, that the novel would have gone largely unnoticed.

The biggest absurdity in the The Wind Done Gone case, however, is that 65 years after Gone With the Wind was first published and 52 years after Mitchell’s untimely death, the novel is still not in the public domain thanks to the several copyright extensions largely bought and paid for by a handful of large media corporations.

Friends of Animals Goes Ballistic

Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals, went ballistic over the past couple weeks releasing two open letters on a popular animal rights news list that ended up getting her banned temporarily from the list. Both letters featured Feral charging that other animal rights groups were not abolitionist enough for her taste.

On June 26, 2001, Feral and Great Ape Standing & Personhood co-founder Lee Hall unleashed an letter ripping into In Defense of Animals over a National Institutes of Health contract for taking care of chimpanzees. The IDA put out a press release saying they were disappointed that the NIH had awarded the contract to a company that breeds animals for medical research purposes.

Feral and Hall in turn attack IDA for its implicit concession that it is okay to keep some chimpanzees in captivity. For example, consider this paragraph from Feral and Hall,

Your Release quotes Representative James Greenwood’s statement that the NIH “already has more chimpanzees than necessary.” IDA’s use of this reason to oppose the contract ignores the reality that Chimpanzees should not be owned by exploiters — “necessary or not. The very fact that the law considers research on Chimpanzees “necessary” both justifies and codifies the human right to torture non-human great apes.

In a follow-up press release dated July 3, 2001, Friends of Animals slammed People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals without naming the group specifically. According to FOA’s press release,

During the last several months, one group professing to advocate
animal rights activism — has been promoting McDonald’s. Now this organization is giving the nod to Burger King’s new endorsement of “humane standards” for animal slaughter [a clear reference to PETA]. Not surprisingly, another animal welfare association has jumped on board to laud the fast food establishment’s reform measures. Meanwhile, a coalition of groups is busy advocating a “reform” initiative in Florida to make the farming of pigs more “humane” before they are slaughtered.

Instead of using pressure tactics to force changes in the way animals are slaughtered, FOA is clear that abolition of meat eating is the only acceptable goal,

It is time for all of us who care about animals to accept one clear and simple fact. There is no such thing as humane animal agriculture. The life of a “farmed” animal is hell from the moment of birth to the moment of slaughter. The improvements that are being pushed by such welfare-oriented animal groups will do nothing to prevent animal suffering, or advance the goal of animal rights.

It is a very good day when PETA is attacked for being too soft on animal rights.

Source:

Open letter to In Defense of Animals. Priscilla Feral and Lee Hall, June 26, 2001.

Abolition, Not Reform. Priscilla Feral, Press Release, July 3, 2001.