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The XFL is dead! Now who had May 10th in the pool?
comment posted at 7:05 AM on May-11-01

Are the Conservatives actively trying to lose votes amongst the 18-24 demographic? Whilst executives at the BBC are rapidly losing their nerve when it comes to home grown programming, Channel 4 has consistently experimented with new formats and programming styles. The intent of the Blue party seems to facilitate the blanding out of television. Would a privatised C4 have the nerve to show its excellent history programmes in primetime? You can expect it will only lead to attitudes like those expressed by the producers of the US version of 'Survivor'.
comment posted at 2:01 PM on May-10-01

Robots.cnn.com is a mirror of CNN, without the ads. (It looks like they use it for web crawlers.) This reminds me of channel.nytimes.com, the backdoor for the New York Times that allows you to skip registration for almost every story. Anyone know of any other major media backdoors?
comment posted at 9:36 PM on May-10-01
comment posted at 9:38 PM on May-10-01

Sometimes, the very worst songs get stuck in one's head. I am ashamed to admit that right now it's a bit of europuff from the comely Kylie Minogue, Your Disco Needs You. But that isn't nearly as bad as an unfortunate friend of mine who couldn't stop whistling the Horst Wessel Lied after seeing a documentary about Nazi Germany. When does a guilty pleasure become, well, too guilty?
comment posted at 2:11 PM on May-10-01
comment posted at 2:57 PM on May-10-01

What's going on America?!? Influential Republicans and Democrats in the House have threatened to hold back $244 million in dues to the United Nations if the United States does not recover a seat on the Human Rights Commission next year.
comment posted at 3:58 PM on May-10-01

The Bush Landgrab George's latest: get the federal government to seize land so the power companies can string more power lines up. Aren't the Republicans supposed to be against federal land-grabs like this, or is it okay as long as we're not saving endangered animals?
comment posted at 10:03 PM on May-9-01

the truth is out there? Do aliens exist? I'm not sure, but a presentation before the National Press Club does lend a certain credibility to the idea, or maybe it discredits the press instead?
comment posted at 9:23 PM on May-9-01

Got Milk? Two reporters win a lawsuit against Fox for being fired when they wouldn't lie about bovine growth hormone.
comment posted at 5:07 PM on May-9-01
comment posted at 10:37 PM on May-9-01

A Cure for Poverty? (NYT, free registration required. It's worth it this time, really). "The depressed poor perceive themselves to be supremely helpless -- so helpless that they neither seek nor embrace support. This means that most people who are poor and depressed stay poor and depressed. Poverty is depressing, and depression, leading as it does to dysfunction and isolation, is impoverishing. " via FMH
comment posted at 4:50 PM on May-9-01
comment posted at 5:11 PM on May-9-01

I've been very disappointed at the lack of Jakob-bashing in recent weeks, so I stopped by useit to see if he had actually stopped being a dope... Nope!

"Two years ago, I predicted that poor intranet usability would cost the world economy $100 Billion in 2001. I just computed a current estimate of the cost of poor intranet usability for Business 2.0 magazine. Surprise -- the result is exactly as predicted: $100 Billion lost per year."

Does anyone else find it fishy that this guy is being asked to verify his own predictions?
comment posted at 4:26 PM on May-9-01

BBC to North America and Australia: Drop Dead. The BBC World Service is dumping all shortwave broadcasts to the US, Canada and Australia as of July. If you want to listen you'll have to get it off the net, or hope your local public radio station uses at least a few WS programs as cheap filler material. A couple hundred US stations do this, but did we mention they tend to do it at 3 in the morning? (Scroll down past the Angola stuff in the above link.)
comment posted at 2:06 PM on May-8-01
comment posted at 2:26 PM on May-8-01
comment posted at 2:27 PM on May-8-01

A Day at the Races: PM Tony Blair calls for the General Election on June 7. What will the next month of campaigning be like? Well, Trimble has already threatened to resign his post in N. Ireland.
comment posted at 1:57 PM on May-8-01

Top 25 Women of the Web as selected by "San Francisco Women on the Web". Evidently they have different criteria than I do; no Hannah, no Jennifer Ringley, not even Danni Ashe. In fact, I've never heard of any of 'em. What make these ladies "top"?

Who would you nominate for a list titled "Top 25 Women of the Web", and why?
comment posted at 2:37 PM on May-8-01

Could this be the straw that breaks the Camels back.
comment posted at 2:40 PM on May-8-01

The Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) was founded in 1914 to support amateur radio experimenters (hams) that the U.S. began licensing in 1912. The ARRL's 163k+ members refer to each other by strange codes, speak in arcane abbreviations, and do extremely cool things like talk to the space shuttle and international space station via ARISS/SAREX (in the news recently), do two-way EME (earth-moon-earth) communication, and ragchewing (chin wagging) with folks in other countries via commercial and homebrew equipment. And their handbook is a great reference for anyone interested in the nuts and bolts of electronics. Sounds like fun.
comment posted at 2:53 PM on May-8-01

Don't like the rulings? Fire the umpire. Trent Lott got the Senate's parliamentarian, a Republican, fired because he, appropriately, wouldn't exempt some bills from filibuster. It seems the GOP has abandoned any pretense of bipartisanship.
comment posted at 1:46 PM on May-8-01

Fatbubble -- include-all blogging in real-time? This new program will allow you to spy on what your instant messenger buddies are browsing on the web, let them know what you think about the sites they're on, rate them, comment on them, send them to a friend etc. (Their press release)
comment posted at 6:36 AM on May-8-01
comment posted at 6:38 AM on May-8-01

Last week, the United States lost its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

The U.S. has been voted out of something again, losing its seat on the International Narcotics Control Board, a worldwide body which monitors drugs manufacture and illicit drugs trading.
comment posted at 6:45 AM on May-8-01

The Greatest Generation? (preventing some thread hijack) While I don't doubt the bravery of those that defeated Hitler, I wonder if it's a little presumptious of any generation to consider themselves "the greatest"
comment posted at 8:53 PM on May-7-01
comment posted at 6:24 AM on May-8-01
comment posted at 6:28 AM on May-8-01

Yahoo Shutdown by... what else... California... non-huge-ad non-news.com version the power crunch is getting worse, when blackouts were ordered. Apparently it hit Exodus, and the backup generators didn't kick in properly.
comment posted at 8:40 PM on May-7-01
comment posted at 6:21 AM on May-8-01

Chris Evans and Billie have wed. What is it with DJs and singers? And I thought this was the strangest showbiz news in the UK this weekend. Doh!
comment posted at 4:08 PM on May-7-01

"Dawson’s Creek" is really an indoctrination tool for homosexual activists. "The Family Research Council has taken offense at everything from 'Friends' to 'American Pie'. And don’t even get them started about all the gay people on television".
comment posted at 3:50 PM on May-7-01

"..this vengeance, this rage, isn't helping us one bit." The father of one of the victims of the Oklahoma bombing speaks out about why he's forgiven Tim McVeigh. The article also talks about the social pressure on Oklahomans who are against the death penalty and a Colorado politician who's upset because the killer of his aunt failed to apologize before his execution.
comment posted at 6:41 AM on May-7-01
comment posted at 6:52 AM on May-8-01

Wow, the cubs have actually started off pretty good this year, over .500 since, ohh I can't remember when. I'm kinda excited, but still don't like Baylor too much. Anyway, is anyone else upset at how MLB has redone all the team's sites so that they can be the same? Sure the design is not horrible, but that's not the point, is everything on the net doomed for the cookie-cutter formula?
comment posted at 9:36 PM on May-6-01

I need your help in figuring out why I saw two pop-up windows when visiting Amazon.com several times in the past week: the usual one for Amazon's most recent promotion, and one for one of their competitors. If you see a DealTime pop-up ad while visiting Amazon.com, please help me figure out how it got there. I think something insideous might be going on, but I'm having difficulty re-acquiring the pop-up.

Please see more details inside if you're interested, otherwise you can ignore this. I'll post the results under a separate thread if they're interesting.
comment posted at 11:09 PM on May-5-01

Pssst -- buddy, wanta buy a kidney? There is a regular trade from China of transplant organs taken from executed prisoners. People from the US have been travelling there and buying organs, then coming back to the US. Should we do anything about this, and if so what?
comment posted at 10:08 PM on May-5-01

Apple to NUblog: Drop Dead When Joe Clark went looking for information about OS X's out-of-the-box inclusion of multiple languages, Apple's PR agency decided he wasn't worth talking to because he wasn't "credentialed."

As Deborah Branscum writes: Weblogs and webloggers may not get respect at Edelman or, perhaps, at Apple. But they should. Time to wake up, folks, and get a clue. [found via NetworkWorldFusion]
comment posted at 4:10 PM on May-4-01
comment posted at 4:17 PM on May-4-01
comment posted at 9:37 PM on May-4-01

Bellsouth raises its rates. Here's another link to the same basic information. To summarize: "Now that we've used our monopoly ownership of the telephone lines to blow out all the small-fry DSL competitors, we're going to reap the benefits by further screwing our choiceless consumers."
comment posted at 1:38 PM on May-4-01

OK, cue the first GM babies. This time the men in white coats have crossed the line.
comment posted at 11:07 AM on May-4-01
comment posted at 11:21 AM on May-4-01
comment posted at 1:14 PM on May-4-01
comment posted at 1:18 PM on May-4-01

Quoth the Raven: "Buy A Ford Explorer on Yahoo!" In the category of "new and exciting ways to annoy users - I mean, generate ad revenue," the front page of Yahoo! now has a DHTML ad involving, um, blackbirds flying off a wire and eating birdseed, revealing an ad for an SUV. On the one hand, it's a clever use of DHTML. On the other, I just feel dirty.
comment posted at 11:33 AM on May-4-01

Anti-porn groups have declared May to be "Victims of Pornography" month. Looks like some other folks aren't on the same page when it comes to the significance of the month. Which would you rather celebrate? (And for the love of all that is good and right, don't tell us how you're celebrating!)
comment posted at 11:27 AM on May-4-01
comment posted at 12:23 PM on May-4-01

I bet you think this [article] is about you, don't you?
(apologies to Carly Simon and anyone inflicted with the earworm.)
comment posted at 9:59 AM on May-4-01

These are the coolest people ever. I have been using them for newsreading for about a year now; today my pc got fried, got a new hd and all, I've lost my login/pass, asked them again and got a prompt reply. The service is really good, the severs are fast, faster than att's @home, stuff shows up in matter of minutes. It's things such as these that make you remember, if for a second, that not everything's a part of some big corporate whore-machine.
comment posted at 9:45 PM on May-3-01