Month: January 2005

Shady journalism

It’s hard for me to comment on this story about Iraq the Model that Jeff Jarvis writes about today without using lots of profanity to describe this Sarah Boxer character who wrote it. Suffice to say the story is factually wrong on several counts, not to mention hateful. Iraq the Model is not hosted on … Continue reading “Shady journalism”

It’s hard for me to comment on this story about Iraq the Model that Jeff Jarvis writes about today without using lots of profanity to describe this Sarah Boxer character who wrote it. Suffice to say the story is factually wrong on several counts, not to mention hateful. Iraq the Model is not hosted on a server belonging to CIA Tech Solutions and it never has been. It’s on Blogspot and always has been. Some guy associated with CIA Tech took it on himself to register some alternate domain names for a number of Iraqi blogs, including ITM and Riverbend’s, but he did so on his own and never hosted these blogs. This is explained in the comments to the Martini Republic posting that was apparently the sole source for Boxer’s article.

Sarah Boxer has just put the lives of the ITM bloggers in jeopardy on the basis of a lie. There is a special place in hell for people like her, and the sooner she finds it* the better this world will be.

(*not that I intend to send her there, mind you.)

UPDATE: Now some may argue that Boxer simply doesn’t understand the difference between a web host and a name service. If that’s the case, why did the New York Times assign her a story about a blog?

The current controversy

Another week, another blog controversy, and once again Hugh Hewitt is in the middle of it. This one deals with an alleged conflict of interest on the part of Daily Kos, and it’s been spread into the MSM by an article in the WSJ and into the nutcase media by Hugh Hewitt’s “Black Blog Ops” … Continue reading “The current controversy”

Another week, another blog controversy, and once again Hugh Hewitt is in the middle of it. This one deals with an alleged conflict of interest on the part of Daily Kos, and it’s been spread into the MSM by an article in the WSJ and into the nutcase media by Hugh Hewitt’s “Black Blog Ops” appearance on the O’Reilly show. Anybody who reads this site knows I’m anything but a fan of Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. I once contributed to a left/right blog he set up to cover the last election, but quit when I sensed it wasn’t serving my interests. Not a fan at all. That being said, the allegation that Markos’ ties to the Dean Campaign were not adequately disclosed is every bit as much a load of crap as Hewitt’s attack on the MSM for reporting on the efforts by creationists to inject religion into biology classes in Pennsylvania. Anyone who read Kos on a regular basis during the election year knew he had ties to Dean, and anyone who’s read Kos even once knows he’s a Democratic Party activist and fund raiser. Hewitt is completely off base (once again) on this controversy and he’s got no business trying to pass himself off as some sort of authority on blogs for the purpose of flogging his own book on the O’Reilly show by helping the Falafel Man trash bloggers generally. Hewitt’s popularity is a testament to the rampant stupidity in American society. He’s a man of no insight, a panderer, and a wart on our democracy.

And don’t even get me started on O’Reilly, the only man in America capable of making Air America look good. Bloggers, especially those of us in the political center and to the right, had better realize who our friends are in this world. Self-promoters like Hewitt, O’Reilly, and Armstrong Williams are not among them.

Incidentally, the attempt by the ethically-challenged former gossip columnist Chris Nolan to reduce the Kos controversy into an inside-politics conspiracy to keep Dean out the Democratic Party chairmanship is no more persuasive than another tinfoil hat theory I’ve heard that right-wingers drummed it up for a similar reason or to take the heat off Williams. Zephyr Teachout raised the issue because she thinks it has important implications for blogging, and if you look at it closely it doesn’t incriminate Kos or Dean. Her thinking was just her thinking, so if anybody looks bad it’s mainly she, not Dean, Kos, or the Party.

UPDATE: As if on cue, Zephyr digs a deeper hole for herself. What a sad case that woman is.

Van Gordon Sauter on CBS News

A former president of CBS News adds his two bits to the discussion of their credibility crisis (emphasis added): What’s the big problem at CBS News? Well, for one thing, it has no credibility. And no audience, no morale, no long-term emblematic anchorperson and no cohesive management structure. Outside of those annoyances, it shouldn’t be … Continue reading “Van Gordon Sauter on CBS News”

A former president of CBS News adds his two bits to the discussion of their credibility crisis (emphasis added):

What’s the big problem at CBS News?

Well, for one thing, it has no credibility. And no audience, no morale, no long-term emblematic anchorperson and no cohesive management structure. Outside of those annoyances, it shouldn’t be that hard to fix.

Personally, I have a great affection for CBS News, even though I was unceremoniously shown to the door there nearly 20 years ago in a tumultuous change of corporate management.

But I stopped watching it some time ago. The unremitting liberal orientation finally became too much for me. I still check in, but less and less frequently. I increasingly drift to NBC News and Fox and MSNBC.

Sour grapes from a disgruntled former employee or a unique insight from somebody in a position to know things the rest of us don’t? We report, you decide. Link via Jeff Jarvis.

And here’s Krauthammer’s take on CBS News:

This is not an isolated case. In fact the case is a perfect illustration of an utterly commonplace phenomenon: the mainstream media’s obliviousness to its own liberal bias.

I do not attribute this to bad faith. I attribute it to (as Marx would say) false consciousness — contracted by living in the liberal media cocoons of New York, Washington and Los Angeles, in which any other worldview is simply and truly inconceivable. This myopia was most perfectly captured by Pauline Kael’s famous remark after Nixon’s 1972 landslide: “I don’t know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don’t know anybody who voted for him.”

Sounds about right to this biased observer – false consciousness it is.

Blogger ethics for the rest of us

This link on Instapundit will take you to the disussion of blogger ethics inspired by the revelation that the Dean Campaign paid Daily Kos in order to increase their chances of favorable comment (see WSJ article). It’s unusual for Glenn because reader comments are enabled. Most of us are never going to be offered money … Continue reading “Blogger ethics for the rest of us”

This link on Instapundit will take you to the disussion of blogger ethics inspired by the revelation that the Dean Campaign paid Daily Kos in order to increase their chances of favorable comment (see WSJ article). It’s unusual for Glenn because reader comments are enabled.

Most of us are never going to be offered money to shill, so it’s not a terribley relevant issue across the board – even LGF guy Charles Johnson says he’s never been offered shill money – but a lot of bloggers will toe one line or another for a link or two, so maybe that’s the relevant issue. Sometimes I’ve done that, and sometimes I done the opposite, attacked somebody for the attention it draws. I suppose neither tactic is especially ethical, but the fawning probably works better, and I finally decided since I couldn’t stomach either to make a new and more obscure blog than the one I used to tend. It’s more fun this way, I can just write what I like and to hell with everybody else.

Public Enemy Number One

I hereby declare Zone Labs, manufacturer of a personal firewall variously called Zone Alarm and Computer Associates EZ Armor, public enemy number one. They’ve committed a number of offenses that have the net result of preventing Mozilla Firefox from running on computers that have been infected with their crappy software. Here’s what happens: 1. You … Continue reading “Public Enemy Number One”

I hereby declare Zone Labs, manufacturer of a personal firewall variously called Zone Alarm and Computer Associates EZ Armor, public enemy number one. They’ve committed a number of offenses that have the net result of preventing Mozilla Firefox from running on computers that have been infected with their crappy software. Here’s what happens:

1. You install Firefox on a computer that has previously had Zone Alarm installed and then un-installed. Most people will un-install Zone Alarm after a few minutes because it’s so annoying.

2. Firefox reports a “connection refused” error each time it tries to access any web site at all.

3. You go to the Firefox BBS for advice, wade through 18 pages of postings, and learn you have to install a newer version of Zone Alarm.

4. You download the new version of Zone Alarm and try to install it, only to get an error message that says it can’t be installed until you un-install the previous version.

5. You can’t un-install the previous version because you’ve already un-installed it.

6. You’re screwed, Firefox is screwed, and you want to beat the crap out of the entire Zone Labs crew.

But there is a way around this: delete the Zone Labs folder in Program Files, and, using regedit, remove all references to Zone Alarm and Zone Labs from the Windows registry. Now you can install the new version of Zone Alarm, run Mozilla, permit it to pass the firewall, and then un-install the crappy firewall. If you have XP with SP2, you probably need to un-install SP2 before doing this.

Zone Labs’ software continues to block Internet access after the firewall has been disabled, and the older version leaves parts of itself on your computer after it’s been un-installed. Their software is indistinguishable from a virus and nobody should use it anywhere at any time.

Zone Labs sucks.

UPDATE: Not all versions of Zone Alarm have this problem – the current one ( 5.5.062.000) appears to be OK, and the one they were shipping three months ago was OK. In between then and now, there were at least two defective versions. The problem is, however, that if you installed and then un-installed the defective version you probably don’t know what it was.

I don’t personally use or have a need for a personal firewall because I have a LAN that sits behind a NAT box/firewall/router. But why anybody who builds a personal firewall sees a need to block browser accesses to the Internet is a matter of great mystery to me, but what would I know?

Based on past performance I stand by the claim that Zone Labs sucks and would not recommend their software to anyone. If you can’t do basic Software QA you don’t belong on my gear.

I have a similar opinion of Symantec, based on their product support strategy. They will not provide telephone support without a fee over and above the cost of the product, and their web knowledge base is totally inadequate. The only thing they do well is issue refunds, presumably because they’ve had so much practice at it.

The world is wide open for a good anti-spam and anti-virus company.

Should be obvious

Many of the neo-cons are in the curious position of supporting the Intelligent Design silliness while not signing up for belief in a god, for reasons that Ron Bailey explained very well in a classic essay in Reason magazine a few years ago. So it’s heartening to see an outbreak of good sense at NRO … Continue reading “Should be obvious”

Many of the neo-cons are in the curious position of supporting the Intelligent Design silliness while not signing up for belief in a god, for reasons that Ron Bailey explained very well in a classic essay in Reason magazine a few years ago. So it’s heartening to see an outbreak of good sense at NRO on the part of John Derbyshire, especially since NR founder Bill Buckley is soft on creationism himself. Now if somebody can just talk some sense into Hugh Hewitt we might make some real progress. (H/t Instapundit.)

Evolution isn’t a hard issue to understand, and even the Pope is on the right side of the question (he accepts natural selection as “more than an hypothesis”). So how can you trust the political analysis of people who can’t get it right?

Personal animus

There is another way to look at the Rathergate story, however. While the left sees it as simply rushing a story onto the air before all the nasty details were spruced up and the right sees it as liberal bias, it can be seen, quite convincingly, as personal animosity on Rather’s part against the Bush … Continue reading “Personal animus”

There is another way to look at the Rathergate story, however. While the left sees it as simply rushing a story onto the air before all the nasty details were spruced up and the right sees it as liberal bias, it can be seen, quite convincingly, as personal animosity on Rather’s part against the Bush family, going back to Dan’s attempt to ambush Poppie Bush on Iran/Contra only to have his ass handed to him on a platter concerning his walking off the set in a snit when a football game threatened to run over into this time slot. While we can never tease these explanations apart completely, personal animus has to be at least part of the story.

That, and Dan’s just a weird bird with enough power to play out his personal problems on the air at the most critical juncture in a presidential campaign.

Blogger takes on Washington establishment

John Fund has a nice little column on my buddy Stefan Sharkansky’s work to keep the Washington governor’s election honest: The new media–talk radio, bloggers and independent watchdog groups–have followed up their success in exposing Dan Rather’s use of phony memos by showcasing another scandal: Washington state’s bizarre race for governor, which features a vote … Continue reading “Blogger takes on Washington establishment”

John Fund has a nice little column on my buddy Stefan Sharkansky’s work to keep the Washington governor’s election honest:

The new media–talk radio, bloggers and independent watchdog groups–have followed up their success in exposing Dan Rather’s use of phony memos by showcasing another scandal: Washington state’s bizarre race for governor, which features a vote count so close and compromised it allows Florida to retire the crown for electoral incompetence. If Democrat Christine Gregoire, who leads by 129 votes and is scheduled to take the office Wednesday, eventually has to face a new election, it will have been in large part because of the new media’s ability to give the story altitude before it reached the courts.

The issue is far from settled, and Stefan’s work has given it a prominence that the Seatlle media wanted to avoid at all costs.

Gates warning

Bill Gates has a few words to say about the Creative Commons folks on CNET: CNET: In recent years, there’s been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, “We’ve got to look at patents, … Continue reading “Gates warning”

Bill Gates has a few words to say about the Creative Commons folks on CNET:

CNET: In recent years, there’s been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, “We’ve got to look at patents, we’ve got to look at copyrights.” What’s driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?

Gates: No, I’d say that of the world’s economies, there’s more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist.

And this debate will always be there. I’d be the first to say that the patent system can always be tuned–including the U.S. patent system. There are some goals to cap some reform elements. But the idea that the United States has led in creating companies, creating jobs, because we’ve had the best intellectual-property system–there’s no doubt about that in my mind, and when people say they want to be the most competitive economy, they’ve got to have the incentive system. Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the future.”

I like Bill Gates.

UPDATE: Professor Lessig, the guy who writes all those “The Sky Is Falling” Internet books, is sad, and Boing-boing makes drawings to show how very hip they are.