Democracy: The Least Bad Option
A comment on a Florida news site about Florida's gubernatorial election:
to all those complaining about cott, do you have an alternative other than Sink? Cause Sink is the main reason I voted for Scott. I dont trust either one of them, but Sink, I didnt even see the whites of her eyes, she was always squinting for some strange reason. Reminded me of Nancy Pelosi.
That person's vote counted as much as mine.
Not Now, I'm Getting Tested for STDs
A current story on CNET describes a British effort to create a cell phone app that can conduct tests for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs):
In an attempt to cut the UK's rising rates of herpes, chlamydia, and gonorrhea, British health officials say that sexually-transmitted infections will soon be able to be diagnosed by placing urine or saliva on a computer chip, plugging it into their cell phones or computers, and getting results within minutes.
Leaving aside the issue of whether it's a good idea to manufacture one-use computer chips for people to pee on, the story is illustrated by this David M. Goehring photo, which he licensed under Creative Commons:
CNET is following the license, but I wonder what Goehring's subject -- shown frequently in his photos -- thinks about being the poster child for getting tested for STDs.
Rainn Wilson: Failure Was Good for Me
Two years ago, Rainn Wilson of The Office was the lead star in The Rocker, a movie that cost $15 million to make and only earned $6.8 million. It opened on 2,784 screens and earned $1,180,836 the first weekend -- only $424 per theater. Wilson didn't take the failure well, he recently admitted in an New York Magazine interview:
I was literally in my car at five-thirty in the morning and I started to weep ... as I drove down the 105 Freeway. They said, "It's just like Kelsey Grammer when he did Down Periscope." And I was sobbing, thinking my movie career was dead. ...
I'm so glad The Rocker bombed, because it taught me one of life's big lessons: You can't control the results. You just have to take care of your work. Your life is a gift and you have to make it your own. I don't know any other way to sum it up that doesn't sound completely corny. I learned that lesson, and I learned it by being in one of the biggest box-office flops in Hollywood history.
Wilson's philosophical bent is reflected in SoulPancake, an online community he runs that is trying to lure unsuspecting young people into well-considered lives. I joined today as rcade to poke around.
Stopping Viruses on Windows XP with ESET NOD32
I recently spent a week fixing my son's Windows XP computer after it was infected with a virus on the same day the machine's Norton 360 subscription ran out. As I was going from PC to PC in the house updating Norton, a virus infected a bunch of Windows system files and began sending out hundreds of Russian Viagra spams.
Norton apparently stops protecting you from viruses the second the subscription ends. I expected it to stop offering updates, but I didn't know it would refuse to scan new files using its existing virus definitions. This obnoxious policy, along with the fact Norton let another virus hit that computer a year ago, inspired me to look for a new antivirus program.
After wiping out the entire hard drive and reinstalling Windows XP, I decided to try ESET Smart Security 4, which includes the NOD32 antivirus program and firewall and spam filters. NOD32 gets pretty good reviews for catching viruses based on their behavior, not just on matching a database of known malware:
AV-Comparatives, a European test lab, rates it Advanced+ (the highest rating) for proactive non-signature detection of viruses, with few false positives. But it rated just Advanced on a separate test of on-demand signature-based scanning. That makes a lot of sense, as ESET focuses strongly on heuristic and behavioral detection of malware, even malware that's too new to have a signature.
I also installed Ad-Aware Pro, a program that has successfully caught and stopped viruses in the past that were missed by Norton.
Rebuilding the PC after a virus infestation was difficult because the HP computer did not come with drivers on a CD. Instead, HP started using a hidden partition on the drive you're supposed to be able to access by running a recovery program during system boot. This did not work, so I had to install a second wireless card just to get Windows updates and all the necessary XP service packs.
I'll post here if another virus gets past the new security regime. If anyone has tips for additional programs I should be running alongside ESET and Ad-Aware, please post them in comments.
Mayhill Fowler Breaks Free of Huffington Post
When I visited the Newseum in Washington last year, I had a pang of journalistic envy over a display honoring Mayhill Fowler, the blogger who broke the "clinging to guns and religion" story about Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign. Fowler was one of the Huffington Post's legion of unpaid citizen journalists, covering the race like a swarm of locusts.
Fowler burned her bridges at Huffington this week, writing a public resignation letter after she couldn't convince the site's editors to start paying her for journalism.
I would not expect to be paid for punditry. The Huffington Post business model is to provide a platform for 6,000 opinionators to hold forth. Point of view is cheap. I would never expect to be paid there when the other 5,999 are not. However, the journalism pieces I have done in the past year seem to me as good as anything HuffPost's paid reporters Sam Stein and Ryan Grim produce. Why do they get money, and I do not?
She's getting roughed up in the comments, particularly by journalists who think the work-for-free crowd is making it impossible for them to earn a living. But it's not like it was ever easy to establish a print journalism career. The entry level pay is horrendous. Back in the '80s, I had a college friend whose first newspaper job paid so little he lived out of his car. Another was offered an internship for Nightline that didn't pay a cent, despite the fact the show was making millions for ABC.
Reading Fowler's story, I am struck by the amount of time she continued to write for Huffington without compensation. She gave them two years of free labor after she established her name as a political reporter, but it doesn't sound like she was ever treated well by the site despite bringing it considerable media attention.
If you want to see how much Huffington Post values citizen journalists, the response to Fowler by site spokesman Marco Ruiz makes it pretty clear:
Mayhill Fowler says that she is "resigning" from the Huffington Post. How do you resign from a job you never had?
Arianna Huffington praised Fowler in an interview this year, saying that she "showed how much a citizen journalist could influence a national election."
In the same interview, Huffington pointed out that her site has a valuation of $100 million.
Once Fowler valued herself higher than $0, she became a nobody to them.
Related posts:
- A Huffington blogger who worked with Fowler has a different take: "Mayhill still doesn't get that many people still hold a grudge against her for BitterGate."
Comics Publisher Has Lousy Rep with Freelancers
The small comic book publisher Bluewater Productions keeps getting an enormous amount of mainstream media attention for publishing cheezy comics about celebrities and other public figures, like its upcoming biographical book about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg:
Bluewater Productions Inc. is doing a "giant-sized" 48-page bio-comic that will explore the question, "Who is the real Mark Zuckerberg?"
The company said it had good success with comics like its "Female Force" series featuring women like Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey. The company has done other bio-comics about soccer's David Beckham and singer Lady Gaga.
So, Bluewater believes there's an audience for a $6.99 comic book about Silicon Valley's latest young billionaire, who Forbes magazine says is now worth more than Steve Jobs.
I would pay $6.99 not to get to know the real Zuckerberg.
One thing that the press doesn't report about Bluewater is that the company offers its creators an incredibly lousy contract.
The artists and writers aren't paid any advances, collecting only a royalty if the book meets the contract's definition of a profit. The company has in its short life amassed an impressive collection of disgruntled ex-freelancers. The artist Sean Gordon Murphy, now working with DC Comics on Joe the Barbarian, did his first job for the publisher. He said in an interview, "I never got paid. From what I can tell the owner has published that stuff illegally and is continuing to burn people under a new name, Bluewater."
Chase.Com Website Down for Hours
J.P. Morgan Chase Credit Card customers have been unable to check credit card activity online or pay credit card bills for at least 12 hours Tuesday. Currently, customers trying to log into their accounts on Chase.Com get the message, "This website is temporarily unavailable. We're working quickly to restore access, and we encourage you to log on later. Thanks for your patience."
The site offers customers access to credit card information, checking and online bill paying services. The credit card provider has 16.5 million customers who use its online banking services.
Several customers exchanged information about their experiences on Yahoo Answers. "For what it's worth, I haven't been able to get on it since yesterday. Got different messages," wrote one customer. "First, one about maintenance. Next, one about upgrading their website and now, just an apology and try again soon. Kind of scary when you can't check cc activity. They obviously have a serious problem, routine maintenance does not take that long."
A spokesman for the company contacted by ABC News said that the server outage is due to an unspecified technical problem. No estimate has been provided on when the problem will be resolved and service will be restored.
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