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Be Not Paranoid, Young Paduan Grasshopper
There's been a lot of jabber about
the Viacom/YouTube suit over the past day, and a lot of induced paranoia.
Let me see if I can sum up a few things:
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The only "personal" information a
web site can garner from a visit is your computer's IP address. However,
only your ISP knows who that number goes to, and having battled invasive
practices for two decades they'll be loathe to give it up. It would
take a court order for each and every case.
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Web sites can collect lots of other
data, but none of it could be called "personal". They know your operating
system, browser type, the general area of the country you're in, whether
or not you've been on the web site before, and a few other snippets like
that.
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I hate to be cruel, but nobody cares
what videos you watch. Honestly, I know that comes as a shock because
you think your web activities are pretty much the most important thing
in the entire universe, but the cold, hard truth is that no government
agency, not the FBI or the NSA or XXX, gives a rat's ass what web sites
you've visited. Whatever's below "inconsequential", that's us.
If someone posts a "How to be a terrorist" video, the FBI might be very
interested in who's watching it but that's not you.
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Along the same lines, that's not
what the suit is about. Viacom doesn't want your IP address for personal
identification, they want it to prove that more people watch pirated videos
on YouTube than legal videos. And they have to do it by IP address,
rather than the 'Views' on the YouTube page, because the 'views' don't
differentiate between IP addresses. If the same fanboy watched some
clip a hundred times, that's only supposed to count as once, and the only
way that can be done is by IP address.
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There's probably a pretty good chance
this thing will be reversed on appeal. This is the same old "Who's
responsible?" argument that's been battled back and forth for years.
This is one of the things that ISPs have had to fight from the beginning.
It seems pretty clear that an ISP should hardly be responsible for the
web sites it hosts, any more than the phone company should be held liable
for what's said on the telephone.
In YouTube's case, being open to public contributions, it seems a little
over the top to assume YouTube is voluntarily allowing pirated videos on
their site, as Viacom would have the courts believe. It's probably
nothing more than a case of manpower. The question arises, how many
dozens of censors do you have to hire to keep up with the deluge?
I don't know the numbers, but if somebody said "thousands" of videos were
uploaded to YouTube every day, I'd figure that to be correct.
And, to expound just a bit, remember that policing such things isn't easy.
If you're reviewing some polished music video that could have been professionally
produced and is therefore copyrighted, how do you know? Where do
you start? It could take you 10 minutes to track down the information,
if not longer.
Times thousands of videos a day.
In a just world, the court would have slapped YouTube with a nasty fine,
ordered them to double the work staff and told Viacom to bugger off.
I've spent a few hours over the past
day reading various articles and blogs on this, and there's no question
it's being blown way out of proportion. To those who worry that it's
"the next step toward government domination", I'd be willing to bet that
the FBI and NSA (and others more secretive) already have all of the information
they want about you. If you want to worry about something, I'd suggest
there are a lot more things worth worrying about.
Guess The News Source
It's just stunning what kind of news articles one
can find if one haunts the very fringes of the Internet. End of the
world? Be here in 10 minutes. Aliens from space? They're
living next door. The perils of drinking from plastic water bottles?
You're dead already. If you're looking for some wacky, far-out article,
you're sure to find it somewhere!
With that in mind, check out this
jaw-dropping headline:
Yep, global warming is already here
and the end is nigh. Forget making out your will. Why bother?
Today's question, of course, is where
did this wild, panic-evoking headline come from?
A. The National Inquirer
B. The Sci-Fi Channel's advance
movie notice
C. Ripley's Believe It Or Not
Museum
D. A 1936 New Yorks Times article
E. None of the above
To see the surprise, panic-evoking
answer, highlight the following with the mouse:
Answer: this
morning on FoxNews
Update!
I'm tellin' you guys and gals, it's
just amazing what one can find when one seeks out the very fringes of the
Internet. Aliens from outer space? They're busy making plastic
water bottles laced with enough Bisphenol-A to destroy mankind. Global
warming? Scientists give the planet about 5 years before it reaches
the point of spontaneous combustion.
And you just wouldn't believe why:
Yep, forget all that chit-chat about
coal plants and carbon dioxide and cow farts and all the rest. Apparently,
the gas used to make flat-screen TVs is something like 10 billion times
stronger than carbon dioxide and if just one can of it bursts open at the
factory, the earth's temperature will immediately rise 10 degrees.
OSHA climate scientists figure that at least three bottles will break over
the next 5 years, hence the "planet to reach boiling point" article yesterday.
And just where, dare we ask, did
this terrible, fear-provoking headline come from?
A. The Sierra Club web site
B. The Greenpeace web site
C. The Save Our Earth Society
web site
D. The NASA web site
E. None of the above
To see the terrible, fear-provoking
answer, highlight the following with the mouse:
Answer: this
morning on FoxNews
The 'Outraged' Tally
Neal
Boortz and his crew did an interesting news search the other day:
We started talking about all of the
"Muslims Outraged" newspaper headlines we had seen over the years. Using
the Yahoo search engine I looked for the number of hits on various versions
of "Muslims Outraged." We put the phrase into quotation marks so that it
would only show a hit where those words appear together. That particular
grammatical usage would more often appear in headlines than in the body
of a story where the phrase would more likely be "Muslims were outraged."
So .. here are your results:
|
| Democrats Outraged |
45,600 hits |
| Muslims Outraged |
35,600 hits |
| Republicans Outraged |
13,800 hits |
| Catholics Outraged |
11,500 hits |
| Christians Outraged |
2,990 hits |
| Jews Outraged |
2,060 hits |
| Libertarians Outraged |
57 hits |
| Buddhists Outraged |
24 hits |
Clearly, when it comes to being outraged,
Democrats take the trophy home, with Muslims right behind. Libertarians
and Buddhists bringing up the rear. With all of the terror, murder and
mayhem that radical Muslims have unleashed on the world, and considering
the fact that Muslims are involved on one side or the other of almost every
shooting war in the world today (of which there are about 130 or so), it
is frankly surprising that they find enough time to express so much outrage.
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Too true. I'd only add that
most of the Republican "outrages" were probably liberal-driven MSM hyperbole.
Just for fun, here's a Google search
of the top contenders:
| Democrats Outraged |
16,800 hits |
| Muslims Outraged |
15,400 hits |
| Catholics Outraged |
2,860 hits |
| Republicans Outraged |
2,400 hits |
Democrats: still the reigning champions!
Surfer's Delight
By way of Ace's,
here's a video of the longest wave in the world.
The wave, called Pororoca, is a tidal bore at the mouth of
the Amazon River. Its created when the leading edge of the incoming tide
from the Atlantic forms a wave that travels up the river. Still a secret
to most, the wave has developed into somewhat of a legend amongst surfers
and an annual championship has been held there since 1999.
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Firefox Update
 Well,
hum.
I had already downloaded the new
Firefox v3.0 and was preparing to install it and write a quick review when
the bad news started drifting in. First, some guy on Ace's site had a number
of 'fixes' to un-do some of the damage done, then it was Boingboing, then
Glenn over at Instapundit linked to some guy's horror story.
It appears the program, itself, works
fine. The complaints were all about secondary issues, like plugins,
widgets, colors, sidebars; whatever.
So, without belaboring the issue,
it seems fairly apparent that the best advice would be to wait until the
next release and then gauge it afresh.
Bahrain's 'Tree of Life'
There's an intriguing line in the
great Steve Martin movie, 'LA Story':
As far as I'm concerned, there are only three mystical places
in the world; the desert outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Tree of Life
in the Arab emirate of Bahrain, and the restaurant at the corner of Sunset
and Cressa. Because that's where I first met her, and that's where
I first touched her."
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As far as the desert goes, while
the high desert of the Southwest is certainly stunning, almost ethereal,
I wouldn't quite call it 'mystical'.
Ditto the restaurant, although I
have to admit that Martin felt strongly enough about the "her" in the movie
(Victoria Tennant) that he ended up marrying her.
But then there's the 'Tree of Life'
in Bahrain:
It's an acacia tree that stands alone
in the middle of a vast desert without a drop of water within hundreds
of miles, and it's been growing that way for 400 years.
Hence the mystery and the name.
Legend has it that it's the original
spot of the Garden of Eden, and what we're seeing are the last vestiges
of the indomitable will that created it.
And the whole thing would still be
easy to shrug off, until you remember that even with all our modern science
and wonder drugs, this gnarly old tree located in one of the most inhospitable
places on earth, without even water to sustain it, will probably outlive
us all.
A Lesson Learned
Pre-democracy Russia:
"A pack of cement used in creating ... good weather in the capital region
... failed to pulverize completely at high altitude and fell on the roof
of a house, making a hole about 80-100 cm (2.5-3 ft)," police in Naro-Fominsk
told agency RIA-Novosti...
The homeowner, who was not injured, thanked the
State for understanding that she was not part of the vile plot and sending
her off to the gulag.
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Post-democracy Russia (with real
quote):
"A pack of cement used in creating ... good weather in the capital region
... failed to pulverize completely at high altitude and fell on the roof
of a house, making a hole about 80-100 cm (2.5-3 ft)," police in Naro-Fominsk
told agency RIA-Novosti...
The homeowner was not injured, but refused an offer
of 50,000 roubles ($2,100) from the air force, saying she would sue for
damages and compensation for moral suffering, Interfax said.
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Make that a lesson learned well.
Perfect:
At Least They Proved Their Point
There was an intriguing ad on MSNBC
the other day. You hear about those "visual graphics tricks" that
advertising people pull, and you have to figure this is just another example
of it. I think it's one of those 'subliminal' things they talk about.
What gender is this person?
Now, before you say 'guy', take a
closer look. Guys don't usually wear frilly blouses with cute bows
on the front and rounded collars, do they?
Or perhaps the ad agency is going
for that 'artistic musician' look, where it's okay to wear sissy clothes
as long as you're being musical about it?
But the fact that we're discussing
it at all says something, though, doesn't it? It's still possible
the question could go either way if not both ways.
Well, back to that 'subliminal' stuff
I was talking about:
An American Lion
 After
all is said and done, there has really only been one president of the United
States who in his heart was one of us, the lowly We, the People.
Teddy Roosevelt.
Oh, it could be argued that the Humble
Log Cabin crowd Abe Lincoln springs to mind were "one of us", but they
all became that most horrid of things, politicians, once they achieved
national status. Teddy, alone, never forgot we, the people.
Yeah, ol' TR. He was a Republican,
right? Oh, of course he was. One of the most famous Republicans
in history! Why, just look at some of his Republican platforms!
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Break up Big Business
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Give Big Labor national power
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Deplore the difference between the
rich and poor
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Push for national health care
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Push for national workman's comp
insurance
And, if those heinous crimes
weren't enough, check this out!
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Gave women the right to vote
Scandalous! That's what happens
when you let a RINO take power, folks!
But then...
But then, at the time, the country
really needed such progressive ideals. Some of the big business barons,
alone, were pulling in more cash per year than the federal government,
and big business was on a path to monopolize the only means of transportation
in the country, the railroad. That's simply too much power in the
private sector and Roosevelt correctly put an end to it.
He also put an end to the idiocy
of women not voting, and he honestly tried to ease the plight of the black
man, but society simply wasn't ready for that major a step. This
was only two generations removed from the Civil War, so the South was still,
in great part, the South.
And while he was never able to implement
his national health and insurance programs, he did raise working conditions
for the average slob considerably. This is in an era of 12-hour work
shifts and child labor, both of which he abolished.
He also racked up a number of global
accomplishments, such as building the Panama Canal, sending our fleet of
battleships around the world to establish ourselves as a world power (the
first time a nation had ever done so), and what really put our fledgling
nation in the big leagues was his negotiating an end to the bloody Russo-Japanese
War, something no diplomat alive thought possible.
 And
no article on Teddy would be complete without mentioning how he brought
the conservation of our natural resources into the public eye. In
those days, most Americans viewed the country to be so vast that our resources
were infinite, but TR saw otherwise. For example, hundreds of thousands
of trees were being logged every year, but virtually nothing was being
replanted. Roosevelt strongly believed that we had the right to use
the land, but he believed just as strongly that we didn't have the right
to waste it.
For your education, enlightenment
and enjoyment, I highly recommend "Teddy Roosevelt: An American Lion".
It's reasonably even-handed, pointing out his mistakes as well as his victories,
and did a decent job of putting things in historical perspective.
As I noted above, when you start listing out his platforms, he sounds shockingly
liberal, yet at the time it was exactly what America needed.
America being we, the people.
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