Month: August 2005

RADLEY BALKO: Two Articles. I have two articles up today.

The first is a review of Eric M. Jackson’s The Paypal Wars that appeared in last month’s Reason. It’s the sad tale of an idealistic, inspiring young company with a libertarian vision that was eventually worn down, water-down, and broken down by people who claim to represent consumers. Not surprisingly, Eliot Spitzer makes an appearance.

The other is my Fox column this week, which is a familiar bromide against the Republican Congress.

Also, I’ll be on WABC in New York at 11:20 this morning to discuss the obesity “crisis,” per this AP article. [Liberty & Power: Group Blog]

bq. PayPal’s story is a sad but instructive lesson in how this country treats its entrepreneurs. PayPal is huge and growing. With eBay branding, it now boasts 73 million users, making it by far the largest online payment service. But it’s nothing like what it was intended to be: a way for people to protect the money they earn from greedy governments and protect private purchases from the prying eyes of regulators. Greedy governments and prying regulators saw to that. The company sold out to eBay not because eBay beat it in the marketplace, not because eBay offered a better product, and not to reap a financial windfall for PayPal employees. PayPal sold out because, after the beating it took from those claiming to represent the interests of consumers, selling itself was the only way to keep the company alive. Exactly how consumers benefited from that isn’t clear.

Apollo Hits 5K. Apollo Lee rode his 5000th mile for the
year
on Saturday:

On Saturday, I finished my ride 45 minutes after sundown with a
blistering stomp and swoop around the block an extra time to complete
my 5000th mile
this year (and my first six-day week in a month). I feel so
spectacular at having achieved my goal mileage for the year with four
months left.

He has the benefit of good riding weather all year long, out there in
Silicon Valley, but we all know that good weather doesn’t automatically
push up your mileage! “Time in the saddle,” as Steve says.

Congrats, Apollo!

I’m up to 3643 miles so far this year. I’m ahead of last year by 1,400
miles (wow, I didn’t know that until just now!), and there’s a decent
chance that I’ll reach 5,000 before December 31st. In fact, I should reach
it sometime in late October, unless the weather turns really sour. (By then
Apollo will be well into his 6th K, of course.) By Seth Dillingham. [Truer Words – A Journal]

That’s an amazing amount of bike-riding for one year. And very precise–perhaps they have odometers on their bicycles? When I have to ride my bike to work during a bus strike, the only thought I give to the total mileage involved is in wishing it weren’t so much.

Notes and Tips: Apple Security Issues. “If a security flaw was found in 9.2.2 (or 10.1.5, or 10.2.8, for that matter) tomorrow, would Apple release a fix for it?” [MacInTouch]

I would be astonished if they did. Apple (as it exists today) has totally abandoned backwards compatibility.

Reason has no place…. …in the Republican Party anymore. When the party leaders repeatedly voice their support for teaching Intelligent Design in our schools, and attempt to claim that it is an alternative scientific “theory” of how life came to be, no rational person who values reason and the scientific method can call themselves By demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller). [Doing Something Different – Full Feed]

bq. Unfortunately the Democratic party can’t even muster the energy and enthusiasm around this issue that Pastafarianism has, which, despite being hilarious, is totally ineffective by virtue of being too subtle for those who need to get the message to understand.

That’s because the Democratic party leadership doesn’t want to throw away voters. Despite all the media hype about how Christian nutcase are all Republicans, there are actually a huge number of religious fanatic Democrats (sample quote: “Bush will burn in hell for stealing the election”). In fact, here in Los Angeles I run into a fundie Democrat around one a week, while I’ve only met one fundie Republican.

Canon EOS 5D, full-frame 12.8 megapixel. The biggest surprise of the day (not) will be Canon’s much-leaked EOS 5D. Yes, the specifications floating around for the last two weeks were accurate, this camera slots in above the EOS 20D but below the EOS-1D series with its full-frame (35 mm negative size) 12.8 megapixel CMOS sensor. Other key specifications; 3.0 fps continuous shooting, Spot metering, Custom settings mode, Picture Style parameters, 2.5″ wide viewing angle LCD monitor, marginally larger than the EOS 20D, USB 2.0 High-speed,… [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

I’m still waiting for a full-frame digital SLR from Nikon.

Hear, hear. Its TRUE. It is proven. Key Website Research Highlights Gender Bias:

bq.
A first-of-its-kind study conducted by experts at the University of Glamorgan has proved that men and women really are poles apart when it comes to what catches their eye on the internet.

—

With the internet doubling its size every two to three months, it is now more important than ever for websites to catch the eye of their target market.

—

“The statistics are complicated, but there is no doubt about the strength of men and women’s preference for sites produced by people of their own sex,” said statistician and co-researcher Dr Rod Gunn.

And – we learn – the internet favors the eyes of men:

bq.
Despite the parity of target audience, the results found that 94% of the sites displayed a masculine orientation with just 2% displaying a typically female bias.

Does this mean that when I say just like I’m not particularly fond of propelling around in masculine shoes designed for men, I’m not particularly driven to click around in a masculine looking website – I’ll finally be taken seriously …??
[BloggerdyDoc]

The linked article had this to say about what kind of websites men supposedly prefer. There’s no mention of what women favor.

bq. Where visuals are concerned, males favour the use of straight lines (as opposed to rounded forms), few colours in the typeface and background, and formal typography. As for language, they favour the use of formal or expert language with few abbreviations and are more likely to promote themselves and their abilities heavily.

This is rather odd, because in my experience websites intended primarily for men (and specifically, teenagers), such as game sites, generally have oddly colored text on a dark background (blue on black and red on black are very popular), are filled with obscure acronyms, and display a command of language that ranges from abysmal down to prehistoric grunting.

Perhaps gamer sites are not sufficiently masculine, and the study is actually talking about sites devoted to sports and beer. If so, I can’t say how well such sites might fit the list of things that men favour, as I have never been to a site devoted to either topic, and have no interest in changing that.

Curious. Are we really seeing a Doubling in the blogoshpere or have we all began writing secret blogs?

[BloggerdyDoc]

Perhaps the latter. Besides this site, I have another for my “Clan Lord” character, and often a temporary site that I’m using to test out one tool or another. For example, at the moment I have a third site for playing with the “OPML Editor”.

I installed “activeRenderer” in my copy of “Radio”, and created a test outline. It works!

de Menezes murder: Police Lies Unravelling….. The Observer | Focus | Death in Stockwell: the unanswered questionsWhy is there no CCTV footage?

Cameras at Stockwell tube should have provided footage of the ticket halls, the escalators and the platforms. Most modern tube carriages also have cameras inside. Yet police say none of the cameras at Stockwell was working at the time of the shooting. This is despite London being on high alert and tube bosses being only too well aware of the importance of maintaining CCTV systems.This… [Antiwar.com Blog]

More on the Menezes murder. Of course there is CCTV footage, and the cops have it. They’re just trying to keep it secret because they don’t want the world seeing videotape of an ordinary commuter being brutally murdered by thugs with badges. It’s the same principle as the US government defying a court order to release footage from Abu Ghraib.

Mistakes led to tube shooting. ITV News has obtained secret documents and photographs that detail why police shot Jean Charles De Menezes dead on the tube.

The Brazilian electrician was killed on 22 July, the day after the series of failed bombings on the tube and bus network.

The crucial mistake that ultimately led to his death was made at 9.30am when Jean Charles left his flat in Scotia Road, South London.

Surveillance officers wrongly believed he could have been Hussain Osman, one of the prime suspects, or another terrorist suspect.

By 10am that morning, elite firearms officers were provided with what they describe as “positive identification” and shot De Menezes eight times in the head and upper body.

The documents and photographs confirm that Jean Charles was not carrying any bags, and was wearing a denim jacket, not a bulky winter coat, as had previously been claimed.

He was behaving normally, and did not vault the barriers, even stopping to pick up a free newspaper.

He started running when we saw a tube at the platform. Police had agreed they would shoot a suspect if he ran. [ITV]

By now we already knew that the cops had lied in their initial reports, but now we know that the cops knew at the time that they were lying. What’s more, since this comes from secret documents which were “obtained” and not released to the public, we also know that the cops are trying to cover up what happened.