Seriously?
Tag: Stupidity
Yahoo Mail Fail
My oldest online identity, claimed in 1996, is with Yahoo . I use it for Flickr but gave up on Yahoo Mail years ago. Email address spoofing is a long-standing problem, which I assumed the […]
Pitch-me Journalism is Anything but Journalism
So, let me understand. David Pogue, the popular blogger contracted by the New York Times, shills for public-relations companies—demonstrating gross conflict of interest—and the consequence is what? He’s barred from making certain PR-influenced speeches?
The Times doesn’t go nearly far enough. The excuse: “Pogue is a freelancer, not a staffer. Philip B. Corbett, associate managing editor for standards, noted that under the policy freelancers are held to the same standards as staff members ‘when they are on Times assignments’. In this case, he wasn’t on assignment for The Times”.
Matt Taibbi Wits British Petroleum Senseless
It was sickening enough when British oil giant BP set new standards for corporate scumbaggery in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, turning the Gulf of Mexico into its own personal toilet and imperiling entire species […]
Old Media Should Pay Up If It Wants to Tumblr
There goes the neighborhood. Big media is invading Tumblr. For weeks I had been meaning to blog about how old media might ruin Tumblr. I shouldn’t have waited. Monday’s New York Times story “Media Companies Try Getting Social With Tumblr” raises the topic without rightly razing it. How could Jenna Wortham’s story have been any different, since The Times is among the old media vanguard invading Tumblr. Jenna’s story positions the big media invasion as something good. I most certainly don’t agree, given Tumblr’s free-for-all embrace.
Protecting Legacies
Cash cows are wonderful things to have. But you have to use the revenue to invest in the future, not to protect the legacies. Steve Wildstrom That one statement assesses everything that is wrong about […]
‘Hey, Buddy, You Can’t Poop There’
While shaving this morning, I heard someone outside talking to his dog: “Hey, buddy, you can’t poop there”. Yeah, like the dog understands what the guy is saying. Owners’ actions—letting a dog do its business anywhere it pleases and then cleaning up the dodo with a baggie—reinforce the animal’s poop-anywhere behavior. Dogs are responsive to humans. This owner, and the many others I see here in California, train their animals to behave a certain way: Poop anytime, anywhere they want. Outside the residence, of course. 🙂
Wall Street Journal's Pay-more Paywall demands Too Much
Do you pay Rupert Murdoch 18 bucks a month for a Wall Street Journal iPad subscription? I dare you to confess. Today, during News Corporation’s earnings call, CEO Murdoch claims that the Journal has 64,000 active users on iPad. Presumably one of them is you.
I ask because I see the Journal as having gone too far with its paywall approach. I’m testing iPhone 3GS again, and I downloaded the WSJ app last week. I logged in with my web subscription account, and the Journal let me read for a couple days. Then came the demand for more cash. Not much, just a buck a week. But I already pay for the web subscription, for which the Journal charges about $150 a year. So Murdoch wants another 52 bucks a year for iPhone and about another $215 for iPad, which I also am testing? OK, it’s only $207 a year for iPad if taking advantage of the $3.99-a-week promotion.
Misplaced Lock
Misplaced lock; spotted outside Horton Plaza, San Diego. Photo taken and uploaded from Google Nexus One smartphone.
Sick NBC Has 'Conan Fever'
There’s a collective scorn for the way that NBC has so openly pooped on its audience like Triumph the Insult Dog: replacing its 10 p.m. lineup with five nights of cheap, clunky Jay Leno shows […]
I’m With Coco
Conan O’Brien may not last much longer as Tonight Show host, but he has my support. Even if he loses his job, Conan will be a winner. Say, can Conan collect unemployment? Now there would […]
Where the Rubber Room Meets the Road
I have a suggestion for Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City schools: Publish a teaching offenders list.
I must be a slow learner, because until Saturday I hadn’t understood New York City’s losing battle with the powerful teachers union. Once teachers achieve tenure—after 3 years—they are employed for life and damn near undismissible, even for cause. Journalism professor Samuel Freedman wrote about the situation for the New York Times two years ago: “Where Teachers Sit, Awaiting Their Fates.” I missed that one, but not Steven Brill’s shocking “The Rubber Room: The battle over New York City’s worst teachers” in Aug. 31, 2009, The New Yorker.