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26 Jul 2010 23:27

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Politics: Old media having a hard time keeping up with those Web kiddies

  • There are more tools than ever to check things out, but once things start flying at light speed as it did with Sherrod, nobody seems able to hit the pause button.
  • Politicifact.com editor Bill Adair • Regarding the speed of the news cycle and how quickly it can flip. The best example of this is how, at the beginning of last week, The Washington Post made a bold bid to grab the week’s news cycle with their “Top Secret America” series, only to have it quickly pushed aside by Andrew Breitbart and Tucker Carlson, who each scored cycle-grabbing headlines with much less work and much bigger payoff. And unlike the Post’s meticulously-checked series, some of the info Breitbart in particular had was straight-up wrong. And now this Wikileaks story proves it even more – the Web can own the news cycle far more easily than old-school media. And the old-school media, for good and bad, has to play catch-up. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Jul 2010 21:11

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Tech: The Library of Congress made iPhone jailbreakers’ collective days

  • yes They’re now allowing people to legally jailbreak their spiffy phones without fear of retribution. iPhone users win.
  • no That doesn’t mean Apple has to make it easy for you to jailbreak it. They can still void your warranty.
  • yes They’ve also made cracking and ripping DVDs totally legal, and expanded unlocking rights. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Jul 2010 20:57

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Politics: The Fairness Doctrine: Why you should miss the broadcast balancer

  • Imagine a world where you didn’t hear only what you wanted to hear. In the age of the Fairness Doctrine, broadcasters were actually required to give time to the voices they might otherwise choose to shut out.
  • AOL News opinion guy Barry Weintraub • Lamenting the long-lost Fairness Doctrine, which created boring TV but led to a much more well-informed electorate. Now, let’s face it – in the age of blogging, we could never realistically go back to this, because technology has become more customized in the 20-odd years since the FCC took it away. But it’s probably important to note how it ended. Basically, Reagan staffer Mark S. Fowler, claiming that it violated the First Amendment, started tearing apart the long-standing policy as FCC chairman. Just seeing how television – let alone talk radio, that quickly-budding bastion of angry politics – has changed in the last 20 years suggests how necessary it or something like it just might be. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Jul 2010 20:56

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U.S.: Bell, California: Home to a bunch of rich bureaucrats, apparently

  • 36,664 the population of Bell, California
  • $787k the amount Bell’s city manager Robert Rizzo makes yearly, which is very high for the city’s size – he’s also not the only one, either
  • $0k the amount the city’s embarrassed mayor, Oscar Hernandez, will make for the rest of his term – and he’s not running for re-election source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Jul 2010 20:22

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Biz: BP drama: Tony Hayward’s heading to Russia – with his pension!

  • $930k the amount he gets from his pension when he quits in October
  • 1 yearthe amount of salary he takes with him, or $1.4 million dollars
  • $15Mthe total value of his pension – plus his life back! source
  • » Plus, there’s more: Hayward also has a sizable amount of stock, and whenever he cashes that out, he’ll be an extremely rich man – he’ll be worth several million.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Jul 2010 10:37

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Politics: Andrew Sullivan: Wikileaks proves how tough Afghan War’s end will be

  • What do we really learn from the Wikileaks monster-doc-dump? I think the actual answer is: not much that we didn’t already know. But it’s extremely depressing – and rivetingly explicit – confirmation of what anyone with eyes and ears could have told you for years.
  • Mega-blogger Andrew Sullivan • Describing the nature of what’s inside the Wikileaks data dump. (We couldn’t have said it better.) The Atlantic Wire has a pretty succinct report of what the data shows. Sullivan, meanwhile, says that the data shows how politically treacherous all of this is for the U.S.: “A president who withdraws and then presides over a terror attack will be vulnerable to cheap political attacks of the Palinite variety.” Is he right? Should we take a more minimalist approach to the war, as Joe Biden is pushing? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 8 Comments • Permalink

26 Jul 2010 10:28

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World: Afghanistan and The White House: How do THEY feel about Wikileaks?

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

26 Jul 2010 10:13

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Tech, World: The United Arab Emirates is all scared of the Blackberry

  • what The United Arab Emirates (a.k.a. the really rich Arab nation) says that the BlackBerry’s offshore storage model conflicts with the country’s 2007 data-storage law.
  • why Some of the platform’s numerous applications “allow people to misuse the service, causing serious social, judicial and national security repercussions.” source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Jul 2010 10:05

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World: Love Parade tragedy: Angela Merkel promises “intensive” investigation

  • The organisers have said themselves that they will not hold any more Love Parades but such large events need to be made safe and the federal states of course have the required police forces to do this.
  • German Chancellor Angela Merkel • Regarding this weekend’s tragic Love Parade incident, which she says her government needs to get to the bottom of to figure out what happened. “It now needs to be very intensively investigated as to how this happened because the many young people who were delighted to be going to the event have had… terrible memories and we have to do everything to make sure that something like this does not happen again,” she said. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Jul 2010 09:58

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U.S.: South Park terror threat guy on trial for (unrelated) terror charges

  • Remember this guy? He’s currently on trial for terror charges for attempting to go to Somalia to join the terror group Al-Shabaab. Zachary Adam Chesser, also known as Abu Talhah al Amrikee, has already hit radar screens this year after he made a veiled threat against the South Park guys for their infamous Mohammed episodes. Chesser, a Virginia resident, is being held without bond while a judge decides his fate. His trial continues today. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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