July 30, 2004
Comment Abuse
Comment spamming has quickly become a blogger's worst nightmare. Even if you aren't familiar with the term you've probably seen it. The spam usually looks innocent enough, "Hey, nice site!" or "I was browsing and came across your site." But they generally leave links or addresses to porn sites.
Do they think you will suddenly flock to their XXX site because they ran across a hard-to-find link to internet porn? Nope. The main reason they leave comment spam and leave huge numbers of it per site is to make the Google search engine more aware of it. All I am to these scumbags is a bit of free advertising.
I apologize if you happen to see one before I'm able to clean them out but after receiving 463 pieces of comment spam in just under 2.5 days, it's hard to react very swiftly.
July 15, 2004
Does all information want to be free?
I ran across an article at Wired News that was lamenting the fact that the New York Times didn't make its online version friendly to Google indexing and also that the archives were a fee-based system. Now I'm sure everybody has their own opinion about exactly how newspapers should handle an online presence but frankly I'm tired of hearing the over-simplified and ignorant, "Information wants to be free" argument. Like communism, that theory only works in a vacuum and last time I looked, I don't see a bell jar outside.
The reality of the news is that people have to be paid to gather it, edit it, and distribute it and there are more costs associated with all of those jobs too. Just looking at the Web distribution, you need a computer system to store and organize the news content, to dynamically create each page of content and to serve the Web content. You also need to pay for the internet access as well as a system administrator to fix the things that break and someone to design the site.
My point is simple. There's a reason that samples are free but the product costs money. Why should news as a product be any different?
We should also understand that the large media outlets like CNN and NYT don't provide free online versions out of the kindness of their hearts. They are using their content to win mindshare. They all want to be the first source people think of when they want news.
Smaller newspapers are a different story though. Nobody in California is going to go to the Sandusky Register for their daily dose of world/national news. They need to adopt a different strategy for a Web presence. In fact, they charge a little over $1 per week for access to their content and access is free to subscribers of the printed version.
I think more people ought to be glad that some news sources give us the benefit of each day's product for little or no cost and we should value that instead of complaining that we don't get *enough* services for free.
July 04, 2004
DC part II
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I went to DC again to visit with Beth and Shannon and we did more touristy things including visiting monuments and attending a rib-fest that really wasn't. (short version: most rib vendors were competing only... we could smell them cooking but couldn't eat any. Grrrrrrr) |
Photos by DANIEL MILLER
An ornate lamp post lights the wall up in the National Postal Museum in Washington D.C.
A Haitian street artist paints a long mural at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall.
The sunset partially illuminates the bronze equestrian statue of Brigadier General Casimir Pulaski at Pennsylvania Avenue at E & 13th Streets. Pulaski came to America from Poland and, after declaring his intention to become a citizen, fought under General Washington. He lost his life in the siege of Savannah on October 11, 1779.
The Washington Monument is framed by trees along 14th Street.
Hundreds of people still mill about the Pacific half of the new World War II Memorial at 11 p.m. The memorial lies between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.
