Anthony De Rosa
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A “debate” between former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush has been nixed because the promoter overhyped it as a death-match faceoff between the men, The Post has learned.
Secret copyright treaty leaks. It’s bad. Very bad. - Boing Boing
I’m trying to reserve judgment, but I’m not sure how this is defensible.
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad. It says:
That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)
- Boston MediaNEXT (via studio20nyu)
Fresh Air Fund partners with Onesight to provide free eye exams and eyewear to the children who need them.
This past summer OneSight reached out to us and helped over 3000 Fresh Air children by making sure that every child who needed the gift of sight was screened. The Fresh Air Fund is so happy OneSight and their traveling optical clinic are able to help at Fresh Air camps.
I’m a big supporter of the Fresh Air Fund. If you’d like to know more about them and how you can help, head over to FreshAir.org
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David Carr, A Look Under The Hood at Coverage of Bloomberg’s Run
The MSM failed to capture the discontent but Gawker and the Awl certainly did not. The large outlets showed they’re still bound by corporate bureaucracy, not agile enough to accurately gauge and report the sentiment of what people really are saying and thinking as quickly as new media can.
Anyone who paid any attention to social networks could have told you there was a large population of discontented voters in this New York election.
Big Neighborhoodr news!
We have been selected to present Neighborhoodr at the upcoming Web 2.0 Expo
Many proposals were submitted for consideration and we were chosen as 1 of only 5 who will present at Launch Pad. Register for the Expo and join us!
There was some confused & indignant reactions to my statement that Sloane ends up with Cameron & not Ferris. I’ve based this belief on many many viewings of the movie, discussions with fellow fans, an interview I once read where John Hughes said that Cameron and Sloane end up together (which of course I can’t find), and some wonderful Hughes essays that I’ve read over the years. seularen posted a gorgeous paragraph or two about Sloane & Cameron & said:
Sloane and Cameron totally end up together. Sure, Ferris is super excited about marriage, but do you ever think he’d actually go through with it? Of course not. Plus, Ferris isn’t really a real person to Sloane; he’s more of a caricature. Only Cameron really sees Ferris for who he is, which is a confused teenager propping up his huge cut-out image of a Titan amongst men so he can hide behind it.
The moment that cements Sloane/Cameron for me is actually when they’re talking about Ferris during the parade. It’s their ~shared interest, if you will, but you see the realization sinking in that Ferris is bigger than both of them. The parade is when you see Ferris truly enjoy himself, and it’s in that moment when he’s at his biggest. He leaves Cameron and Sloane both behind in his brightest moment, and I think he’d leave them both after graduation as well.
(I may have written a film essay about this once.)
Also, I want to read that essay! It’s a great debate and I enjoyed reading the responses. Proof once again that John Hughes was genius.
Sloane winds up with Charlie Sheen (Boy In Police Station) after stealing him from Jeanie Bueller (Jennifer Grey).
She likes bad boys, and Ferris was always just a minor league bad boy compared to the future Ricky Vaughn.
“Rather than compete fairly, Intel used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “Intel’s actions not only unfairly restricted potential competitors, but also hurt average consumers who were robbed of better products and lower prices.”
You’d think that, with blood in the water, the traditional coziness that develops between official flacks and the beat reporters who have to talk to them every day would break down into some kind of last-man-standing slugfest. But in the Spitzer case, the opposite happened. The revelations upended the worlds of both reporter and flack alike, and the uncertainty, long hours, and breakneck pace of the scandal actually seemed to throw them together as they worked toward what seems, if you read the e-mail exchanges, like a common goal of getting the news out and behind them.
Which makes sense on a human level. But sometimes good reporting—especially of the government watchdog variety—requires an inhuman suspension of compassion. The infractions documented in these e-mails are misdemeanors, but—in addition to being an unvarnished peek inside the media machinery—they’re indicative of the creeping social and professional alliances that inevitably develop between PR handlers and their overworked, easily manipulated charges in the press corps. And they give the lie to the myth of the vigilant watchdog press that keeps the government on its toes. Next time you hear New York Times editor Bill Keller claim that newspapers are uniquely situated to do the “hard, expensive, sometimes dangerous work [of] quality journalism,” remember that his reporter broke the story of Spitzer’s dalliances with prostitutes. But also remember the time his reporter e-mailed the Gov. Paterson’s flack to request permission to call Paterson’s former mistress.
- John Cook, The Spitzer Files: How The New York Times and The Press Serviced Client No. 9
Tonight was the worst of all possible outcomes.
In New York, the wingnuts lost, teaching the conservative activists a valuable lesson about electoral math. It’s a lesson I didn’t want them to learn.
In Virginia & New Jersey … a loss is a loss is a loss. I don’t care what the cross-tabs didn’t indicate about Obama. Perception is reality in politics. It’ll energize the base and the media narrative will suck, suck, suck right at the height of healthcare reform.
In Maine, that’s the very definition of a bad beat. The bible-thumpers pulled this one out real nice. Mainers were angry at top-down governance from the legislature. And now it’ll scare off other state legislatures from taking civil rights into their own hands. It was the only one that really mattered tonight.
Fuck.
Jersey had nothing to do with Obama.
People don’t realize how fed up those on the left were with Corzine and the corruption up and down the political offices. This was a referendum on letting people get away with murder on Corzine’s watch. It didn’t matter if he had a better economic plan than Christie or not, people were fed up.
This was a very personal, regional thing. It was going to be anybody but Corzine, not matter who the alternative was. Not even Obama could have saved him.
Thirty years ago today, the American Embassy in Tehran was seized. The 444 days that began on November 4, 1979 deeply affected the lives of courageous Americans who were unjustly held hostage, and we owe these Americans and their families our gratitude for their extraordinary service and sacrifice.
This event helped set the United States and Iran on a path of sustained suspicion, mistrust, and confrontation. I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran. We have recognized Iran’s international right to peaceful nuclear power. We have demonstrated our willingness to take confidence-building steps along with others in the international community. We have accepted a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet Iran’s request for assistance in meeting the medical needs of its people. We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.
Iran must choose. We have heard for thirty years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for. The American people have great respect for the people of Iran and their rich history. The world continues to bear witness to their powerful calls for justice, and their courageous pursuit of universal rights. It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.
- President Barack Obama’s statement on Iran today.
Healthcare provision seeks to embrace prayer treatments continue reading…latimes Fine, you wanna play that game? Faith healing should be covered? (And by the way, did Jesus charge when he “faith healed” the sick? Didn’t think so.) Then I want my [hypothetical, hopefully nonexistent, future] abortions covered. OK?
A little-noticed measure would put Christian Science healing sessions on the same footing as clinical medicine. Critics say it violates the separation of church and state.
Reporting from Washington - Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.
The provision was inserted by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) with the support of Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry and the late Edward M. Kennedy, both of Massachusetts, home to the headquarters of the Church of Christ, Scientist.
