Bloglines sold to Ask Jeeves
Bloglines has been sold to Ask Jeeves - so how do you see this now in terms of using your feed in Bloglines? Is that still just as okay as before? Or is there a difference now that suddenly bigger money is flowing?
Archive 5. February 2005
Bookmarklets and Firefox
Since I temporarily rebuilt my environment and removed CodeTek Virtual Desktop, I was able to play around with Firefox a bit (which is incompatible with the CodeTek part and causes quite a bit of trouble when you use it with it). I noticed something strange: when I use the WordPress bookmarklet to blog a page, the little window always gets put in the background. Kind of annoying - you have to move the large website out of the way to get to it. Has anyone else seen something like this and maybe knows a solution?
For now I'm back to Camino as my browser. It's the same renderer anyway.
Pentagon 'News' Websites
The Pentagon pays news websites on the internet with slightly biased reporting. Objective: to improve the image of American politics. Even CNN is already reporting on this. And no, this is not funny - quite the opposite.
Pentagon officials say the goal is to counter "misinformation" about the United States in overseas media. - sure, we all believe that, they just want to correct false information. And certainly not spread their own lies. We would never suspect anything like that.
Spammers in Preparation
For a good reason, here's some information and a warning: if you find comments in your blog right now with content like "I agree with you," you may be receiving a visit from a spammer. The spammers have figured out that in some blogs (especially newer WordPress versions) you need to have one approved comment before you can then use that address to post further comments—which of course are then just spam. So: even though it's nice when someone agrees with you, in this case you could be approving a Trojan horse comment.
Stoiber: Red/Green responsible for NPD's success
Stoiber claims Red/Green is responsible for the NPD's success - of course their success is certainly not due to the constant right-wing flirtation of the Union parties and the FDP. No, it's absolutely absurd to believe that voters who constantly read verbal attacks on foreigners from the opposition and are repeatedly drilled with how terrible the many immigrants are might eventually vote one level further to the right.
In times when Chancellor Kohl held fiery speeches against foreigners, there were also firebombs against asylum seeker homes.
Of course, unemployment and the general economic situation of these people is a significant factor - but that is not insignificantly determined by the Union-governed states. How many initiatives were blocked in the Bundesrat because they didn't go far enough for the Union parties? I cannot see where the CSU's anti-foreigner agitation and the constant demands for even more welfare cuts by the CDU and FDP are supposed to contain any perspectives that should motivate NPD voters to vote for a different party.
Sorry, but all the major parties can claim the NPD's successes - they botched them together. The naivety of MĂĽntefering is just ridiculous - of course the voters are the cause of the NPD's success. But the major parties lay the groundwork just as much as the rest of society. To claim anything else would mean that daily politics are not part of society and social development - and that is highly absurd.
And sorry, but platitudes like those from our Federal President don't help either - if what happened in Saxony was really a wake-up call, where are the awakened politicians? Are they hiding under the bed in fear now? Where is the factual engagement, where is the categorical rejection - when NPD politicians repeatedly receive sympathetic votes in Saxony? When a minister-president of a certain Hesse writes forewords to ultra-right books? When Union politicians themselves give fiery speeches or support party members who repeatedly make blatantly antisemitic statements?
The loss of reality of some politicians is reaching frightening proportions. People, you are part of society - and your actions determine the direction of society like the actions of no other population group. And as part of society, you are part of the problem.
Tagging at blogg.de
blogg.de now also does tagging - and after I asked, now in the same way as Technorati. So with the category tag in the RSS feed if one is present there. Since I've always used categories like tags on my blog anyway, that's extremely practical - my posts end up in the right section on blogg.de. Nice. By the way, in my opinion that's also the smarter alternative to the easily set up group blogs as they should be implemented via Topicexchange - simply a central ping service and corresponding entries in the RSS feed.
And Again Brand Madness
The Hermenschauer was asked to remove an article that references this article on Feuerwehr.de. The article discusses a company that holds a combined word and image trademark for "First Responder" and is attempting to take action against simple mentions of the word portion in domains and online presences. This is despite the fact that, according to the description on Feuerwehr.de, they have already been rejected by courts for this and there is a clear ruling that their trademark is only valid in combination.
To me, this looks very much like an attempt at censorship. Though I don't understand the reasoning behind it—the trademark holder apparently set up or is trying to set up an online magazine around the topic. But something like that can hardly work if you first antagonize the people who actually deal with the subject matter. Who would be interested in such an online magazine if they had previously received a cease-and-desist letter from them?
Certainly, the partly privately-run fire department websites are potential competitors—but that's just how it is on the internet, you're not alone there. And lawyers don't help with that either.
US music industry accused deceased of file sharing
US music industry accuses deceased of file sharing - they must have taken advice from Kanther. But I do find it quite nice of the music industry that they now want to possibly drop the lawsuit. You have to be persistent - even dead women over 70 shouldn't get away with file sharing without a computer...
Another death in Georgian government - and although I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories, I'm starting to find this suspicious. Okay, one death is coincidence. Two deaths from the government could maybe still be coincidence. But if a third person dies now, I won't believe in coincidence anymore.