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Trippi Didn't Say What Reuters Said He Said

February 14, 2004

Trippi Didn't Say What Reuters Said He Said "How Web Support Failed Dean in Crunch: Ex-Manager" by Eric Auchard ran on Reuters the day of Joe Trippi's speech to E-Tech in San Diego. What exactly did Auchard get wrong?

Let's take a look. This is the relevant portion of a short news story:

How Web Support Failed Dean in Crunch: Ex-Manager

Mon February 9, 2004 07:52 PM ET

By Eric Auchard

Internet activism that thrust up the Howard Dean U.S. election campaign later hobbled the organization's ability to respond to criticism in the weeks before the primaries, Dean's former campaign manager said on Monday.

Wrong. Trippi did not say his ability to respond to critics was hobbled by "Internet activism." Rather, he couldn't figure out a way to get that "activism" into the game as a plus factor on his side. He was the one with the Internet troops. But he (somehow) could not command those troops to come to the campaign's aid, and so Dean did not benefit, in a storm, from having all the extra hands-- the Deaniacs and their energy.

That has nothing to do with reacting to criticism. Trippi thinks far too much of himself as a campaign manager and tactician to say something like: "we were getting hammered and I was helpless, I couldn't respond." No way. He responded with Realpolitik of his own. But the movement for Dean was out of alignment with the candidate's predicament.

Joe Trippi, who resigned after defeats in Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary, said the direct involvement of so many Internet supporters deprived the campaign of the traditional weapon of political surprise.

Wrong again. Trippie said he went to the "weapon" of surprise, just as the playbook calls for. What are these sentences about? "We weren't trying to keep the Net roots out of the loop. We were trying to keep John Kerry out of it." That's Trippi saying: "I did what I had to do, but the people at the blog were saying, we don't understand, why didn't you tell us you were going up Friday night with a new ad we haven't even talked about yet?" Check the transcript, please. Trippi spoke of no blasts from shotgun SURPRISE that he could not make, because of the Net.

"We were having a real problem with how to say, 'We could be in real trouble here,"' Trippi told a technology conference of the tactical trouble the Dean campaign had in balancing the need to keep supporters informed.

This doesn't have errors, but "balancing the need?" You can't balance one need. You need a least two. Reuters informs us of one need: "to keep supporters informed." And here it keeps the second need secret.

The transparency of the anti-establishment Dean campaign made it hard to respond to political attacks from his eight other Democratic opponents and media criticism of the candidate's missteps, he said.

Note that there are no quotes in this graph. That's because it's wrong and Trippi didn't say it. It wasn't hard to respond to attacks. It was hard to explain to Net supporters a.) why Trippi was playing hardball and shifting tactics and concealing his hand, b.) what they should be doing to help Howard Dean win, since this was an emergency. The "transparency" of this "anti-establishment" campaign created problems, yes, but they were not the variety named by Reuters: losing the element of surprise, not replying to criticism.

"We couldn't figure out how to tell people we had a problem without raising the wrong impression. Part of the problem is that the press are reading our blogs (Internet journals)," he said.

The quote seems accurate. But again, the "couldn't figure out" part has nothing to do with a failure to respond to critics, employ stealth, bomb back in the air wars. Trippi believes he did all that. But he could not harness the power of Net supporters--600,000!--to help in what the campaign most needed, on the ground, in Iowa. He was not trying to say to the assembled group: you hobbled me, got in my way, tied me down, and I couldn't respond to those media critics. It was subtler, more like:

I tried to tell you what I needed from you. But I wasn't clear and you weren't thinking. The Reuters account, (which made Instapundit, before it got knocked down at Instapundit by Matt Welch and others) is simply an incorrect paraphrase of what the man said. The problems in the dispatch are those of reading comprehension, not bias. But it confirmed a claim of Trippi's: ""The political press could never figure out what the Dean campaign was. Now they feel qualified to comment on whether what it did worked."

No reason at all to accept my conclusion, which is that Reuters, in this section, got it all wrong. (The interesting question is why. Misreadings have a logic of their own, sometimes.)

Read the thing yourself. And the Q and A too.

Then read the Reuters report.

What do you think?

Others on the Reuters story: Techdirt thinks something is odd.

This is interesting: The Scobleizer, "A Conversation With Eric Auchard," in which a weblogger who thinks Reuters got it wrong meets the author of said dispatch. "We had a nice conversation. He said that he had read and considered what I had to write and appreciated that. Then he explained his point of view. While discussing news judgment and other factors I found myself thinking just how unlikely this exchange would have happened five years ago."

Mary Hodder of UC Berkeley reflects on "A Conversation With..."

Howard Rheingold: "I was hoping for critical analysis from Trippi, and thought perhaps he was resorting to a refrain that goes back at least as far as Richard Nixon, blaming the defeat on the media. Then Eric Auchard, a Reuters reporter who was in the same room with me completely reversed Trippi's meaning and reported: 'Internet activism that thrust up the Howard Dean U.S. election campaign later hobbled the organization...'"

Posted by Jay Rosen at 01:10 AM | Comments (0)

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San Diego, CA: Feb. 9-10 When Joe Trippi took the stage here at O'Reilly's Digital Democracy Teach-In, it was an address to Net loyalists by a fallen hero. Trippi had lost three battles in full public view: Iowa, then New Hampshire, and then his position at the top of what he yet called an "insurgent" campaign. If you knew the history, knew the crowd, and had followed Trippi's press, it was an appearance not without drama.

O'Reilly Nation also knew, or thought it knew, that much more would be possible in the future, as the tools that had come into politics kept growing and the social momentum crept up. Here, Trippi was more like an Apple executive speaking to talented developers, who have to be convinced to keep developing a cause--a platform--that everyone knows may be lost. Other heads of big enterprises spoke: Wes Boyd of MoveOn.org, Scott Heiferman of MeetUp.com, David Sifry of Technorati, and Tim O'Reilly himself. Jeff Jarvis lifted the killer quote from O's welcome: "User contributions are critical to market dominance." If this becomes true in politics, what does politics become?

The premise of platform replacement is casually accepted in this crowd because it happens all the time. In politics, in journalism, in campaigns, a system overhaul is anything but normal. To me this is one of the great contributions techies have made to politics, which can always use people who see that things could be very, very different. (Micah Sifry, a writer for The Nation, has a yes, but view: "People here talk like all that's needed is better tools, and then people will pick them up and take back their country from the powers-that-be. There's almost no sense of how hard organizing actually is, or why.")

The establishment had been shocked to see a power source that large--Dean raised $45 million--develop from a previously unknown direction. "The political press could never figure out what the Dean campaign was," he said. "Now they feel qualified to comment on whether what it did worked." True. But the press feels qualified to comment on any flat-on-your-face failure, which Dean has become in journalists' eyes.

It was from that moment in political time that Trippi told his story of the climactic events in Dean's demise. The story was about broadcast politics winning out in the end.

Broadcast politics has many other names. It's politics in endless refinement of the one-to-many model. It's big donor politics. It's when you purchase all the air time so your rivals can't respond, or drive up the negatives before a candidate is known. It relies on message delivery to targeted groups. It's the astroturf effect--top down media blitzes disguised as "grassroots" eruptions--and other manipulations like it. Broadcast politics takes for granted that 50 percent of the country will not participate in the vote for president, and this is one of the most political things it does.

Long ago this got called the media campaign, where the basic means for connecting with voters are thirty-second ads, the news on television, the debates, a candidate's life story (in its mythic version), and a "message"--controlled at the top, refined by polling data--that is to be endlessly gotten out. There are big historical reasons why this system is in charge, which Trippi did not bother with, except to give broadcast politics a symbolic birthdate-- 1960, and the Kennedy-Nixon debates.

Today this politics, in Trippi's telling, is interdependent with the finance system that supports it in both parties, the lobbying culture that overtakes Washington once the elections are run, the political establishment in the two parties, the commercial media's tollgate system through which the ads and images are run, and the national press, which both reports on the political game and becomes a player in it.

"We were hot in January" of 2003, Trippi said, meaning: Dean was picking up support far in excess of his national profile. But the press did not notice this until the fundraising figures came in from later quarters. Even then journalists didn't understand how Dean had done it. It was not until Al Gore's endorsement on December 9th that the system was shocked into recognition-- "this guy's going to be the nominee."

From here the pace quickened.

The press turned up the scrutiny and put Dean in its sights. Meanwhile, rival candidates began to contemplate their attacks, and started swiping some of Dean's message, using it as their market research. The Washington establishment grew alarmed-- and with reason. On December 14, former Clinton administration official Everett Erlich wrote this in the Washington Post:

Other candidates -- John Kerry, John Edwards, Wesley Clark -- are competing to take control of the party's fundraising, organizational and media operations. But Dean is not interested in taking control of those depreciating assets. He is creating his own party, his own lists, his own money, his own organization. What he wants are the Democratic brand name and legacy, the party's last remaining assets of value. This is what the Net had wrought, and it seemed to be working. The press realized that a "front loaded" primary schedule, designed by party insiders to produce an early winner, might make Dean unbeatable after Iowa and New Hampshire. Journalists are often accused by journalists of sharing one bias: love of a good story. (A forgivable sin.) An easy triumph by Dean and a list of meaningless primaries to play out is not where the love is for political reporters.

Howard Kurtz wrote ahead of the development that reporters want a two-man race for Christmas. If at that time, you are threatening to run away with it, the press looks (and "votes" via headlines) for a lead challenger to emerge; if there are several challenging, the press looks for a frontrunner. These are the semi-predictable parts of a zeroing-in mechanism, in which every movement is magnified. One can complain about the heightened scrutiny and magnifying effect, but this is sometimes like saying: hey, turn that lens back, I want to be out of focus, take me out of frame.

You run for president to make it into that spotlight, which either consumes its subjects, or clarifies them on the public screen, fixing an image of the candidate for the electorate just tuning in. If Dean and Trippi were not ready for that, they were not ready for Prime Time.

With the arrival of the new year, the countdown to the caucuses began. Richard Gephardt, in Trippi's incendiary phrase, began his "murder-suicide" by stepping up the attacks on Dean. Criticism, missteps and gaffes began to characterize news coverage. "We ran straight into broadcast politics," he said. This, according to Micah Sifry, is "the webocrats catchphrase for top-down, capital-intensive politics, where the main goal is having or raising enough money to buy broadcast power to send a message to the passive masses."

and there was really no way….we couldn't figure out a way to communicate what was happening to us in a way that either didn't sound desperate -- I do not know what the word is for it-- but did not ring alarm bells the wrong way... "Figure out a way to communicate" involves the press. The conditions of scrutiny Dean had entered disallowed honest communication with the base in the very public terms the Dean campaign had half-pioneered. If you leveled with supporters and sent out the call, "we're in trouble if we don't make a big turn away from what we're doing," then the press--on frontrunner alert--would seize on that.

Transcript of Joe Trippi's Feb. 9th speech, Down from the Mountain.

"Okay, so I rambled a little." (Trippi at his weblog) And don't forget his Q and A with journalist and weblogger Ed Cone.

Audio file: Dan Gillmor, Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen in, "Gatekeepers No More," panel discussion at the Digital Democracy Teach In.

Oh, and thanks to Matt Welch for the title of this one. I told him what I was writing about, he nodded. "Your post is called Tripping Point."

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Changes at http://www.andrewsullivan.com

BEAGLE UPDATE: She's fine, looking somewhat pleased with herself. One of the "incidents of marriage" should surely be the joint cleaning up after sick pets or children. I second this reader sentiment: "Beagles are the exemplars of 'clever but not smart.' Although grad students may compete for that title..."Quite.

- 8:54:25 PM

NOT ON LEHRER: They're trimming the segment. I'm trimmed. Reliable Sources was a little surreal. We had to discuss why we won't mention the story that we weren't discussing.

- 3:52:28 PM

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY: Rough night. Friends of ours - a couple from Chicago - were visiting and dropped by to leave their bags while we went to dinner. It's Valentine's Day and so a large amount of chocolate was brought and left in a bag on the floor. We have a beagle. You can fill in the rest. When we got back, there were wrappers all over the apartment, beautiful Godiva boxes ripped open, small little brown paper cups strewn on the bed. Major score for the beagle. But horrifyingly dangerous. The beagle - she's called Dusty - was cowering and looking really, really guilty. Animal hospital? I took her out, got some emissions, gave her huge amounts of water and hoped for the best. A little while later, the puking began. Chocolate doggy-puke. Projectile vomited all over the place - couch, chairs, etc etc. I was relieved, actually. Probably saved Dusty's life. But we were up all night. So if I'm a bit cranky today, give me a pass.

- 12:09:00 PM

SANITY FROM ELLIS: John Ellis gets it pretty much right about the Kerry story: Let's say this is a story about Colin Powell. Let's say that there is a woman who has approached numerous media organizations and every Republican political opponent of Mr. Powell's with a story. The story is that her "best friend" or her "close friend" (who used to be a reporter with the AP and at some point worked for Mr. Powell) had an affair with Mr. Powell and was shipped off to Africa when Mr. Powell decided to run for President. What is known about the source of this information is that she has a major axe to grind; she hates Powell. She really, really hates him. She is grinding the Mother of All Axes. Publish her story or not? The answer from "mainstream media" so far: "No." Good decision: "yes."Maybe this will be the first time that a true firewall is established between the web, the Brits and the rest of the media. Maybe I'm wrong and this won't break out as a major story. That in itself would be a media milestone. (On the other hand, Drudge got 15 million hits in the past 24 hours - twice his normal traffic.) Can we all pretend we didn't hear this and carry on as normal?

- 11:13:46 AM

IT'S EASY NOW: Kerry denies it on Imus. Why would he do that if it were true? He can't be suicidal. Right now, you have to assume there is no truth to this. So I will. Meanwhile, the question of whether I've been "Moby'ed" arises. Was that highly polished email I received and posted yesterday, positing the possibility of a Republican plot ... a plant? Jonah writes about a strategy openly discussed by Moby (one of my favorite musicians but a Bush-hater). Here's what the techno-wizard told the Daily News: "No one's talking about how to keep the other side home on Election Day," Moby tells us. "It's a lot easier than you think and it doesn't cost that much. This election can be won by 200,000 votes." Moby suggests that it's possible to seed doubt among Bush's far-right supporters on the Web. "You target his natural constituencies," says the Grammy-nominated techno-wizard. "For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you're an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion. "Then you go to an anti-immigration Web site chat room and ask, 'What's all this about George Bush proposing amnesty for illegal aliens?'"So was I Mobyed? The email writer wrote me back again in the middle of the night - 4.57 am - to deny any wrongdoing. Here's the text:

Dear Andrew,

I want to thank you for the compliment you paid me by posting my letter on your site, though in light of the day's developments, including your brief exchange with Jonah Goldberg, I find myself regretting the decision to write it. It seems I did, indeed, jump the gun when I presumed the source of the rumor to be Republican. (It was a natural enough assumption, given that Drudge broke the story, but premature nonetheless.) At this point, I suppose I shall simply wait and see how the situation progresses.

As to your concerns that my letter may have been a plant and that I may be a Democratic activist in disguise, rest assured that I am not. I may be growing increasingly disenchanted with the Republican party, but if I decide to withdraw my support from them in November, I will likely just remain at home rather than transfer it to any of the lackluster crop of Democrats currently on offer. In any event, I hope my earlier email did not cause you any unwarrented discomfort vis-a-vis your colleagues, and I thank you again for giving a wider voice to my concerns.

Sincerely,

PaulIt's Krugman! Only kidding. Actually, there's a HUGE qestion-mark hanging over this email, and that is its email address. I should have worried about that before. It's from "disillusioned_conservative@xxxx.com." (I'm not giving out a person's email address in full. The writer could still feasibly be genuine; and people are innocent till proven guilty.) But how many people have an email address that reflects exactly the sentiments of one particular email? It is impossible to verify all letters. My general view is that if they make good points, I couldn't care less who sent them. And then there's human nature. I think I was Mobyed.

- 10:59:23 AM


Changes at http://www.corante.com/loose/

February 13, 2004

Rosen on Trippi

Jay Rosen has written one of his typically brilliant, nuanced analyses.

Here's the EULA for the rest of this blog entry: By reading the following concluding paragraphs from Jay's article, you hereby promise to read the rest:

Transparency--a buzzword but not only a buzzword--is a first casualty of Realpolitik. "We weren't trying to keep the Net roots out of the loop," Trippi explained. "We were trying to keep John Kerry out of it." You cannot afford transparency or deliberation as the race intensifies. Could this be announced? Impossible. And so your distributed supporters, organized in affinity style or by weblog, had to sense it happening, or read between the lines of what the campaign was saying. What alternative was there? E-mail 300,000 of your best people and ask them to keep it quiet? "The press reads the blog."

That was the tipping point, in the story Trippi told to E tech. Net politics had done a lot, and confounded the establishment. But it was still immature, only half developed. A lot of people feel that way about Trippi himself...

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Changes at http://www.newmediamusings.com/

Kynn Bartlett on Experiment lands Kynn in Orkut Jail JD on The Blogfather's hit list Vin Crosbie on Congress using Super Bowl flap to impose content controls A fan on The Blogfather's hit list Howard Owens on Lt. Col.: Bush aides destroyed military documents Google bans non-profit's ads

Spotted this in the paper today. Associated Press:

Online search engine leader Google has banned the ads of an environmental group protesting a major cruise line's sewage treatment methods, casting a spotlight on the editorial policies that control the popular Web site's lucrative marketing program.

Washington D.C.-based Oceana, a non-profit group, said Google dropped the ads because they were critical of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines.

The ads violated Google's policy against ads criticizing other groups or companies, said spokeswoman Cindy McCaffrey.

It's a dicey issue, but now that Google serves as a major editorial gateway, I would argue that more speech is better than less speech, even if the occasional advertiser is offended.

February 13, 2004 at 09:27 PM in Search engines | Permalink | Conversation (0)

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Microsoft source code pops up on P2P networks

The purloined Microsoft source code has quickly found its way to the major file sharing networks, CNN reports.

February 13, 2004 at 05:40 PM in Computing | Permalink | Conversation (0)

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Congress using Super Bowl flap to impose content controls

Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of the Privacy Forum and one of the folks I interviewed for my upcoming book on the personal media revolution, had an interesting posting on Dave Farber's mailing list today:

It is now utterly apparent that there are those in the administration and Congress attempting to use the recent Super Bowl "incident" as an excuse for massive controls over all forms of TV and radio -- including cable and satellite (the Internet they've already been attacking with laws currently before the courts, of course). ...

Some of the new "indecency" measures being proposed in Congress:

- massive increases in maximum fines

- making networks pay 90% of affiliate violation fines

- basing fines on the wealth of the broadcaster, e.g. allow a *single* fine to reach 10% of a station's yearly revenue

- extending indecency bans to cover "gratuitous violence that is detrimental to the health and safety of children"

- extending indecency bans to *all* forms of TV and radio, including broadcast, satellite, and cable

- allow license revocations to occur after three indecency violations

and on and on, with both Democrats and Republicans spewing forth various draconian content-control gems of dubious constitutionality.

I'm not an apologist for obscenity or the other garbage that makes up so much of today's broadcasting scene. But I am very concerned to see Congress in the process of pandering to those who would happily reestablish the Hayes Office (look it up, kids!) -- and worse -- if they could.

Lauren's remarks may be a bit overheated, given some of the legislation proposed, but he's right that we need to keep this incident in perspective.

February 13, 2004 at 02:06 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Conversation (1)

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Vin Crosbie said:

Interesting and frightening concept: The television impact of Janet J's nipple becoming the catalytic 9/11 event for foes of libidinous behavior. At least she wasn't romping naked afield with the New England Patriots!

On 27 February 1933, a Dutchman who wanted to make a lone and spectacular act of defiant protest against what he thought was a repressive society set fire to the German capitol (Reichstag) building. His act resulted in the extreme opposite results that he wanted. I hope Janet J's act doesn't.



Webcasting royalty rates set

CNET News.com: Copyright Office sets Webcasting royalty rates.

February 13, 2004 at 01:56 PM in Music | Permalink | Conversation (0)

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Nude students an issue at Harvard mag

Harvard Crimson: On Tuesday, Harvard University approved H Bomb as an official campus publication. Two days later, college officials said the magazine, which is expected to run nude photos of undergrads, won't get Harvard money. Related stories:

Hartford Courant (Tribune registration required): Harvard Student Magazine Finds Nudity Is The Issue.

The H Bomb's founders tell the Crimson they're publishing not a nudie magazine but "a literary arts magazine about sex and sexual issues at Harvard. It will contain fiction, features, poetry, and art." Sort of like Salon meets Nerve meets the NY Review of Books. No word of an online site for the pub.

Thanks to Romenesko for the links.

February 13, 2004 at 01:54 PM in Media | Permalink | Conversation (0)

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6 reasons for sharing stories before publication

Austin American-Statesman's The Scene: Breaking the rules of journalism: Six reasons why sources should see stories before publication.

1. Every story can be improved by having insiders vet it--whether they come off as good, bad or indifferent in the story. "I've never been disappointed," Dobie says. "Every story gets better."

2. Any disagreement over whether the story is fair is hashed out on the front end, with all interested parties being given an opportunity to have their say. "It's actually the stand-up thing to do," Dobie says. "to let people scream at you on the front end. Sometimes, we learn something in the process that can make the journalism better."

3. Stories are not shown selectively. "It's a judgment call," Dobie explains. "I don't favor one group or another but just use common sense."

4. A non-cooperative source will sometimes be lured out of a foxhole and provide new and helpful information. The fact is, in stories I've written for the Scene, we've shown drafts to the attorneys for people we were investigating. When they see what we are up to, they sometimes agree to cooperate.

5. The stories can and do get better without the news organization necessarily being susceptible to pressures. "We don't cave to pressures, but we try to listen intelligently," Dobie says. "It's all a matter of judgment."

6. In the long run, media organizations get better stories if they have a reputation for getting their facts right, for listening and for being fair. Often times, showing stories, or parts of stories, in advance of publication to sources helps a newspaper in source development over the long haul.

February 13, 2004 at 01:47 PM in Media | Permalink | Conversation (0)

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Editorial cartoons should be unbalanced

More timidity in newspaper land: EditorandPublisher.com reports that too many newspapers want fair, balanced editorial cartoons. "But that's not what editorial cartoons are supposed to do," says Chris Lamb, author of "Drawn to Extremes: The Limits of Editorial Cartoons in the United States." "As the newspaper industry has declined in both readership and influence, so too have the journalistic responsibilities of editors, who opt for publishing generic syndicated cartoons over provocative, staff-drawn cartoons because they are cheaper and generate fewer phone calls."

Thanks to Jim Romenesko for the brief.

February 13, 2004 at 01:41 PM in Media | Permalink | Conversation (0)

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Okrent begins a blog of sorts

Daniel Okrent, the New York Times' public editor (pictured), has begun a quasi-blog in which he posts periodic comments and responses to reader emails and phone calls.

And CyberJournalist.net's Jon Dube interviews NYTimes.com Editor in Chief Len Apcar about the Times' campaign trail unblog.

Steve Outing also interviewed Apcar, and writes at E-Media Tidbits:

I had a conversation with Apcar yesterday (for a column I'm writing), and he made some interesting comments about blogging at the Times. First, he acknowledged that the freewheeling nature of blogging makes highly edited publications like the Times "very uncomfortable." The experiments above are blog-like, but he hesitates to outright call Okrent's reader-interaction feature, for example, a "blog." There's still much oversight and editing involved. Apcar did say that he can foresee the day when, as an example, a Times science writer might blog under the Times banner. Some writers at the paper indeed want to do this, and to communicate more directly with readers. "I'm open to this," he says, but it hasn't been made a high priority yet.

February 13, 2004 at 01:33 PM in New media, Weblogs | Permalink | Conversation (0)

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John Perry Barlow's fantastic voyage

John Perry Barlow has, in effect, donated his body to The Discovery Channel as he gets into shape (before a global audience) and undergoes "the disorienting experience of improving health" with the help of a Greek benefactor at the posh Canyon Ranch spa, among other places. Read My Body, the Fixer-Upper, for a riveting look at his just-begun fantastic voyage. Good luck, John!

February 13, 2004 at 01:22 PM in Science | Permalink | Conversation (0)

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Artemis Records to license songs to Altnet

Jon Healey in the LA Times: In the music industry's most significant endorsement to date of online file sharing, independent label Artemis Records has agreed to make its albums available for purchase on Kazaa, Grokster and two other peer-to-peer networks.

February 13, 2004 at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Conversation (0)

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The Magic Kingdom and the kings of porn

Chicago Tribune (Tribune registration required): Culture clash: Will the Magic Kingdom Be Ruled by the Kings of Porn?

February 13, 2004 at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Conversation (0)

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The Blogfather's hit list

Paul Boutin in Wired magazine: InstaPundit.com is the most visited blog in the world. Here are 11 bookmarks that that helped turn law prof Glenn Reynolds into a rock star.

February 13, 2004 at 12:20 PM in Weblogs | Permalink | Conversation (2)

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A fan said:

What are your top links, JD? Where do you like to visit?

JD said:

I'll post some links sometime soon, but I just received a major freelance opportunity that I need to dive into. I mostly use this page, and my RSS feeds, as jumping off points for three to four dozen blogs I frequently visit.



Microsoft patents Office XML formats

Slashdot: Microsoft Patenting Office XML Formats. News.com reports that Microsoft has filed for patents in multiple jurisdictions to control the way other applications use Office's new XML-based file formats. Musings from pundits suggest that OpenOffice.org and other applications might be blocked from interoperating with Office.

February 13, 2004 at 12:14 PM in Computing | Permalink | Conversation (0)

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New software allows game copying

ZDNet:

Software maker 321 Studios, whose products for copying DVD movies have drawn controversy and lawsuits, released a new application Thursday for copying PC games.

Game X Copy allows PC gamers to create a backup of any title and store it either on the PC's hard drive or recordable CD or DVD, according to the company. 321 spokeswoman Julia Bishop-Cross said the software was created at the behest of parents, who wanted a way to protect their investment in PC games for their children in case a game disc becomes scratched or otherwise unreadable.

February 13, 2004 at 12:12 PM in Games | Permalink | Conversation (0)

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From the Daily Mis-Lead:

Later: The Boston Globe reports that other principals in the case dispute Burkett's account.

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Howard Owens said:

Now that this story has been debunked, are you going to post a correction?

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Kynn Bartlett said:

FYI, I'm back in Orkut Jail again!

This puts me in a sort of "read only" mode, where I can get messages (including email), read other profiles, and explore my list of friends, but I can't actually change anything. I can't add a friend, I can't remove a friend, I can't leave or join communities, I can't write messages or post on community bulletin boards, and I can't change my settings.

None of this really bothers me much, except that I wanted to ignore some folks who were (in my opinion) being obnoxious with friend-of-a-friend email. When you've got 150 friends, that's a lot of people you're potentially connected to. Sadly, I can't even remove them.

Why not? Orkut won't tell me. I'm just randomly in and out of jail (mostly in) whenever I log on.

One of my co-workers dubbed me "the Willie Horton of Orkut."

--Kynn