Tag: complaint

Time magazine is on notice

TIME.com: Do Newspapers Have a Future? — Oct. 2, 2006 — Page 2

But there is room between the New York Times and myleftarmpit.com for new forms that liberate journalism from its encrusted conceits while preserving its standards, like accuracy.

I was just about ready to remove Time magazine from my Google homepage because they were disappointing me with thin articles, but this one is a little better. It whines a little about the blogosphere and how the bad bloggers are getting treated like journalists without having to pay their dues as whatever journalists are before they get a job with a big paper. But then it goes on to talk about the need for old school media to find the spot between bloggers and where they are now where people want to read them, and they still make money.

I do have to take issue with this quote:

The Brits have never bought into the American separation of reporting and opinion. They assume that an intelligent person, paid to learn about some subject, will naturally develop views about it. And they consider it more truthful to express those views than to suppress them in the name of objectivity.

American papers objective? I don’t know what American paper he’s reading, but if it’s really objective, I’d love a subscription. I have yet to find a news source in between “OMG Bush is a jerk” and “Fight terrorism at all costs!”.

I’d like to see old media compete. I think that established newspapers have a place alongside blogs, and it’s an important place. They just need to figure out what that place is, and how to monetize it.

Pope a liar

CNN.com – Pope: ‘Total and profound respect for Muslims’ – Sep 25, 2006

Pope Benedict XVI expressed “total and profound respect for all Muslims” at a meeting Monday with ambassadors from Muslim nations and other Islamic leaders.

Really?  Is that why you said something insulting and inflammatory, then apologized for the reaction of the Muslim community?  If I punch you in the face, then say, “I’m sorry you were hurt”, that’s not a sincere apology for my actions.  That is saying, “I didn’t do anything wrong.  It’s unfortunate that you had a negative reaction to what I did.”  It places the blame on the injured or offended party, and it does not show respect for anyone.

Oh, thats encouraging

TIME.com: Why The Democratic Wave Could Be A Washout — Oct. 2, 2006 — Page 1

Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, says the opposition hasn’t sold a vision for handling terrorism, Iraq or jobs. He also cites a drop-off in turnout for most Democratic primaries this year as one sign that the Dems aren’t strong enough to mount a takeover of power on Capitol Hill.

This article is a little short on content, but it speaks to what I can’t figure out about the Democratic party. People are abolutely livid about the way things are going with our Republican-led government. All the Democrats have to do is say, “Hi, we’re not Republicans, and we have a plan.” And then demonstrate with a few talking points that they might, in fact, actually have a plan. That’s all they have to do to win just about every contested election in the country.

But they can’t seem to do that. I haven’t seen a poll anywhere that suggests the Democrats are going to win any big battles. It’s disgraceful. Democrats, this is why Republicans make fun of you. You’ve been handed half the elections in the country on a silver platter, and you’ve done nothing at all.

I’ve said it before – if the Democrats don’t take the Presidency and a strong majority in Congress, the party should be disbanded for absolute and utter incompetence.

Up yours, Peter Angelos

ESPN.com – MLB – ‘Free the birds’: Fans walk out in protest

“When you get down to facts, putting together a team that can compete in the AL East means having a payroll between $100 million-$110 million. That money comes from the consumer, and I have chosen to keep ticket prices to a minimum.

Let’s just see how many teams have a lower payroll than the Orioles, and a better record. Toronto, San Diego, Texas, Minnesota, Oakland, Cincinnati, Arizona, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Colorado, and Florida. Hmm. And look at that, Toronto is in the AL East. They made huge free agent signings over the winter to not win the division. It might take $100 million to win the division, but it doesn’t take $100 million to finish above .500.

For the record, I know it’s hard to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox. I understand that. But spending a ton of money is NOT the answer.

I’m not sure how I feel about the staged walkout at Camden Yards to protest Angelos. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to get anyone anywhere. Is Angelos going to sell the team because 1000 fans walked out? I’m going to have to say that’s unlikely. Is he going to change the way he does things? Well, if nine straight losing seasons hasn’t changed him, I don’t think 1000 angry fans will, either.

Stupid computer

So, I’m at work right now, and I was about to actually do some work, and apparently my server died overnight, which isn’t that unusual.  It’s just a local server running on my machine so I can test our Java web app.  It dies a lot, it’s not a big deal.  Except that this morning, it wouldn’t come back up.  So I tried rebuilding it, and got this error: “creation was not successful for an unknown reason”.  Now, we use Eclipse as our IDE, and for the most part I love it.  It works well, it has a lot of nice conveniences built in, and an active developer community writing plugins.  But when I get error messages that say, “Like, um, something’s wrong, but, um, we don’t know what it is, or how you might fix it”, then I start to get a little annoyed.

Now, I know it’s tough to write good error messages.  Believe me, I’ve written some bad ones myself.  But, damn it, I’m actually trying to get some stuff done here, and Eclipse is not cooperating.  Stupid Eclipse.  If I hadn’t already gone to get coffee, I’d do that now.  That’s how mad I am.  Instead, I’ll probably waste some time until some coworkers get here, and then waste some more time, and then maybe try to fix my server.  Maybe.

Dont take a picture of this

Top Ten Things NOT Safe To Photograph | DSLRBlog

  1. Underground/Tube/Buses
  2. Refineries or other Industrial plant
  3. Police
  4. Government buildings
  5. Bridges
  6. Tunnels
  7. Shopping malls
  8. Airports
  9. Office Buildings
  10. Houses
    When I see things like this, it makes me want to go photograph the Metro, industrial plants, the White House . . .  The story in the post is about a guy detained in France, so I can hardly blame that on our current administration and their civil rights == terrorism campaign.  But if I were one of those sites with, you know, readers, I’ll bet one of them would do it.  As everyone knows, as the number of readers goes up, the probability of stupid trolls increases exponentially.  I’d do the math, but I don’t know they keyboard codes for limits and integrals.  I’m sure you understand.

I shake my fist at you, minivan

A blue minivan was the first to trigger my smug reflex.  I knew she was going to do it the minute I saw her.  And not only did she turn into the third lane from the left from the far left lane, but she was poking around under her seat or something while we waited for the light.  Who knows what she might have been looking for?  A pound and a half of pot she grabbed from Willie Nelson, probably.  Or an assault rifle.

But she got hers.  I honked at her as she cut me off.  She’ll think twice about doing that again, I assure you.

Surprise! Youre Jewish.

Allen Says He Embraces His Jewish Ancestry – washingtonpost.com

“I was raised as a Christian and my mother was raised as a Christian,” Allen, 54, said. “And I embrace and take great pride in every aspect of my diverse heritage, including my Lumbroso family line’s Jewish heritage, which I learned about from a recent magazine article and my mother confirmed.”

If you’re 54 years old, and have to find out about some aspect of your family heritage from a magazine article, I don’t think you can claim to take great pride in that aspect. This is his grandfather he’s talking about. It’s obviously not something his family takes pride in. It’s pretty obvious to me that Allen is a racist. That doesn’t bother me so much. What bothers me is that he seems to think it’s okay to express his racist feelings, which is just mind-boggling. If he’s a racist, fine. That’s his problem. But when he continues to make remarks that demonstrate total insensitivity to different peoples of the world, I start to wonder if he should be involved in politics. There are plenty of non-caucasian and non-christian residents of Virginia, especially around DC, and I think they deserve a representative who doesn’t hate them. Or, at the very least, a representative who can acknowledge that other peoples have an equally valid claim to personhood as he does.

I don’t know much about his opponent (Although I voted for him in the primary) except for an offensive paper he wrote 20 years ago about women in the military. I’m inclined to forgive that in the absence of more recent examples of similar things.

Where are the drivers in the wrong?

I was all set this morning to scowl smugly at any driver who dared to turn into my lane from the wrong lane at Seven Corners.  I was eagerly anticipating the opportunity to bask in the glow of self-righteousness.  I could almost taste it.

And no one was there to turn next to me.  I was so disappointed.  We left the house a little earlier than usual this morning, and there just wasn’t any traffic.

As an aside, do you see what I did there?  I managed to turn a day in Northern Virginia with no traffic into a complaint.  That skill (And I was born with that.  That’s not something you can learn) is why I run Complaint Hub, and you just read it.  Anyone can complain about stuff that sucks.  But it takes a true visionary to complain about the lack of one of the things that everyone complains about.

Big surprise – Microsoft Zune to suck after all

Medialoper » Zune’s Big Innovation: Viral DRM Link via Techdirt.

Everything I had heard so far about Microsoft’s supposed iPod killer was pretty good.  They were going to work out some way to reproduce your iTunes collection so you didn’t have to repurchase all those songs (Because Apple sure as hell wasn’t going to let you transfer those songs to a competitor’s product).  It really sounded like they were going to try and create a music player that didn’t assume everyone was a criminal.

Unfortunately, things are not what they seemed.  If you share a song via the Zune’s wireless sharing, it will apply DRM to the file so that you can only play the song for three days or three times.  I assume the intention here is to allow you to share a song with your friend so the friend will go buy his or her own copy.  I don’t necessarily have a problem with that – I understand that Microsoft and the record labels are just trying to make a buck, and I really do fully support capitalism.  But the article explains how this is a problem.  Let’s say I’m an amateur musician.  I create a new song on my computer by sampling my cat scratching in her litter box and set it to a beat of me kicking the wall as the Redskins got manhandled by the f’ing Cowboys.  I decide to apply a Creative Commons license to my work, because I think it would be cool if someone else sampled my work and used it in their own song, so long as they give me credit.  So, I have this song on my new Zune, and I’m playing it at a party.  Someone comes up to me and says, “Dude, I love that song!”.  He has a Zune, too, so I share the song with him.  Oops, Microsoft’s DRM just violated the Creative Commons license.  Creative Commons forbids any kind of DRM (Which is a large part of the reason I chose the license).

I haven’t bought a cd in close to a year.  The last cd I bought, in April of 2005, was Garbage’s Bleed Like Me.  I bought it without hearing it, because I really like Garbage.  I put it in my computer so I could rip the MP3’s FOR MY OWN PERSONAL USE (I wanted to make an MP3 cd to use in the car so I don’t scratch up the original, and so I can fit ten albums on one disc), and the cd told me to go jump in a lake.  My computer didn’t recognize the cd as an audio cd.  It would play it, but it didn’t see any rippable files.

What I really should have done was return the cd as defective.  I bought the cd assuming that I could listen to the music however I wanted.  Unfortunately, that was not the case.  I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll buy Garbage’s next cd.  Part of me wants to boycott it, but the other part of me knows that will hurt me (as I like the music) more than it hurts the company selling the cd.

The real problem here is that the music industry has made it so hard to buy a song once and use it in whatever legal way I want that I’ve just stopped buying music completely.  It sounded like Microsoft was going to help that problem, but apparently that’s not the case.  I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.