Read a little. Learn a lot. • Tightly-written news, views and stuff • Follow us on Twitter • Be a Facebook Fan • Tumble us!

03 Dec 2010 18:45

tags

Culture, U.S.: Church pastor: Sure, we’re a hate group

  • I do hate homosexuals and if hating homosexuals makes our church a hate group, then that’s what we are.
  • Pastor Steven Anderson • Of the Faithful Word Baptist Church. The Tempe, Arizona church was recently classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group; this was the church’s response. source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 Dec 2010 18:07

tags

Tech: Prolific email spammer really clogged the tubes

  • 33% of all spam on the Internet sent by one guy source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 Dec 2010 17:56

tags

Tech, U.S.: FBI agents seize the wrong email account

  • good The FBI obtained a warrant to seize the emails of prolific Internet spammer Oleg Nikolaenko, wanted on a felony charge.
  • bad Due to a typo, they accidentally seized the wrong Gmail account (the FBI agent in charge dropped an ‘n’ by mistake).
  • bashfulThat agent now has to go back to federal court and get another search warrant – this time for the right email address. source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 Dec 2010 17:41

tags

Politics, U.S.: 2012: Pawlenty leads the pack in book sales

  • 12k Amazon users purchased Mitt Romney’s recent book, “No Apology”
  • 9k readers went for Newt Gingrich’s “To Save America” for their 2012 fix instead
  • 263k fans opted for Tim Pawlenty’s upcoming manifesto, “Courage to Stand” source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 Dec 2010 17:30

tags

Politics: Obama looks stupid wearing leather bomber jacket in Afghanistan

You know, every time a president wears one of these stupid jackets, they look like they were pulled out of a G.I. Joe assembly line. Wear a suit, poser. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

03 Dec 2010 17:12

tags

Tech: Level 3’s fight with Comcast over Netflix heats up, big time

  • If the dispute were simply ‘commercial,’ the dispute would have already been settled or would never have arisen in the first place. Comcast’s status as the nation’s largest provider of consumer broadband service enables Comcast to force Level 3 to pay the ‘toll’ Comcast has demanded.
  • A statement from Level 3 Communications • Complaining about Comcast’s plan to charge a toll for its handling of Netflix’s traffic – which effectively doubles the amount of bandwidth they’ll be sending to Comcast’s customers. As this could have the effect of hurting end-users by incurring more charges on them, Level 3 is right to push back here. This is a net neutrality fight that you should watch, because Comcast appears to be using their leverage as an internet provider to protect its cable business. This is bad. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 Dec 2010 16:40

tags

About: EasyDNS and why having a small writing staff sometimes sucks

  • We’d like to fess up to something. Earlier today, we wrote a blog post about the latest bit of the Wikileaks saga. In the post, we mentioned a site called EasyDNS as being responsible. When we wrote the entry, we weren’t intending to blame them, but just to note that it happened. If Amazon of all sites can’t handle Wikileaks, we’d expect their beleaguered DNS provider to have even more of a claim than Amazon did. (And others weren’t quite so kind.) Here’s the problem, though. It wasn’t EasyDNS. It was EveryDNS. Without intending a pun, it was an easy mistake to make. EasyDNS soon after wrote a blog post about how everyone was making the same mistake as us, including Gawker, and called us out for it. (Deservedly, mind you. Let’s own up to the fact that we’re not perfect.) We’d like to offer up some thoughts on this whole mess:
  • How we work We’re a small staff, and whenever me (Ernie Smith) or fellow blogger Seth Millstein blog about stuff, we’re usually working alone, with the goal of trying to cover a lot of stuff quickly. We’re looking up interesting links but offering up commentary or interesting quotes, numbers or blurbs in the process.
  • Our weaknesses Unlike a larger site, like, say, Gawker (who made the same mistake and isn’t owning up to it), we don’t have an army of editors and are often working around other jobs, so sometimes we’re forced to write our posts in a limited amount of time while self-editing. Some days it doesn’t work out for us, but we try.
  • Owning up to it Look, our friends at EasyDNS have had a rough day, and we made it a little bit rougher on them. There are some weaknesses in how we work, and instead of chalking it up to a two-second mistake, we’re going to work on our self-editing processes to ensure diligence. To EasyDNS, we’re sorry. source
  • » One other thought: We’d like to think that when we screw up, there’s opportunity to be found in it. Maybe the problem is collective workload. So, let’s try to make some lemonade out of this: We’re always interested in having more voices on ShortFormBlog, so let us know if you might be interested at trying your hand at the short-form storytelling we do.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink
 

03 Dec 2010 12:26

tags

Offbeat: Posted without comment: Company makes bombproof underwear

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 Dec 2010 11:53

tags

Culture: Weird Ronni Chasen case remains weird, won’t stop being weird

  • $6 million the amount of money Ronni Chasen was worth, according to her most recent will
  • $10 the amount she left for one of her nieces; she was very generous with about everyone else source
  • » Meanwhile: The case remains incredibly weird and interesting. John Walsh of “America’s Most Wanted” claims that a report on his show was the major coup needed to lead to the suspect. Police, however, are dubious about whether he was the guy. So are neighbors, who say that Harold Johnson (labeled as a professional hitman) didn’t own a car, rode a bike everywhere and was “paranoid.” All in all, more interesting than the Phil Spector case.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 Dec 2010 11:40

tags

Politics: Deficit panel vote ends in tears – without the votes needed

  • 11-7 so much for them getting fourteen votes, right? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
top tags
older >>