Mark Evanier:

... many years ago, around the time I started edging into the TV business, I attended a lecture by a very accomplished, successful producer ... a man with many prestigious credits. He told us that we had to recognize and avoid what he called "The Marley Ideas" -- notions so dreadful that they were dead from the moment of conception. As an example, he told us that one TV network was then considering an idea so terrible, so guaranteed to fail, that everyone involved with it should be immediately fired for programming malpractice. And the way he described it, it sure sounded like you'd be an idiot to think that they could make a weekly series out of the movie, M*A*S*H.

Television · 2005/02/20 · Comment · Link

Trying the New Google Crowbar

I'm researching the new Google Toolbar beta, which enables Internet Explorer users to click an AutoLink button that edits Web pages, adding links when it recognizes a book's ISBN number, street address, or package tracking number in the text of a page.

Though it's a cool hack, as I said on Jason Levine's weblog, at first glance this seems like overstepping the boundaries of copyright. Robert Scoble voices similar concerns.

I fund my Web server in part through the revenue generated by affiliate links to my books -- sites earned around $3,300 from Amazon.Com referrals in 2004.

In principle, Google Toolbar's new functionality could be used to replace these links with ones that commercially benefit Google.

In practice, the current beta only adds a link to ISBNs that do not already have a link, as you can test on my book list. When the page is loaded, the toolbar's AutoLink button becomes Show Book Info. Clicking the button turns the plaintext ISBN for Movable Type 3 Bible Desktop Edition into a link to Google's toolbar proxy, which in turn redirects to an Amazon page for the book. The ISBNs for other books, which have my Amazon affiliate links, are not altered.

Before:

After:

Without question, Google's software is creating a derivative work when a user clicks AutoLink. Levine believes that since a user has the right to alter a work for personal use, provided that it is not redistributed, this feature simply puts that right into practice -- like a TiVo user fast-forwarding past commercials.

I support the use of ad blockers, image blockers, and browser plug-ins that alter the presentation of Web pages for readability or accessibility reasons. Perhaps this falls into the same area.

However, I think this feature is different than software that excludes content entirely or alters it for presentational purposes.

The alterations are so subtle that users would not be clear that a page's publisher did not author these added links, which may be to undesired sites and services.

For instance, if you visit a book's page on the retailer Bookpool, clicking Show Book Info revises the page, linking the ISBN to the book's page on Amazon.Com. Anyone care to guess about whether Bookpool would approve of this change?

Google derives commercial benefit from the added links, and could even implement the feature in a manner that replaces links from which a publisher earns revenue.

This feature reminds me of cases where a company added its own pop-up ads triggered by other publishers' sites or framed someone else's pages.

Carry Google's new feature to its natural conclusion, and a browser such as Mozilla Firefox could add functionality that replaces all affiliate links it recognizes with ones that benefit the Mozilla Foundation.

I have a lot of respect for Levine's armchair legal analysis on Q Daily News -- he's a constitutional law junkie who attended oral arguments in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale and reads amicus briefs for fun. But I have trouble believing the courts would support the for-profit alteration of Web pages in the manner facilitated by the toolbar.

Publishing · 2005/02/20 · 66 COMMENTS · Link

XMLSucks.Org: Well-Formed Criticism

You'd expect a site called XML Sucks to ruthlessly slag the data-description language, but Aaron Crane has produced a pretty even-handed analysis in slides for a LinuxWorld 2003 presentation.

XML does have a number of technological problems, but ... the technological problems can be managed [and] the political and commercial advantages of working with the same open standard as everyone else are enormous.

One bogus criticism: Crane's complaint about the verbosity of element names. With today's disk space, processor speed, memory, and compression, it's farcical to think that we need to sacrifice human readability by taking advice like this: "Avoid repeating the element name in the closing bracket."

Somewhere, a coder who had to implement a spreadsheet on a circa-1981 IBM PC in 16K of memory (expandable to 64K!) is reading this and mocking us. And he's saving his work on floppy disks bigger than his head.

As he notes on his site, Crane originally produced the slides as XML.

2005/02/19 · 1 COMMENT · Link

My Cruise Ship Has Come In

Got back this weekend from a four-day cruise aboard the Disney Wonder, a gargantuan ship that sailed from Port Canaveral, Florida, to Nassau, Bahamas, and Castaway Cay, a private postage stamp of an island owned by Disney.

My wife and I were celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary by sailing beyond the reach of cell phones, the Internet, weblogs, and responsibility. We didn't even have to decide where to eat -- meals were covered by the ticket, and everything was so decadent that if you didn't order the specials, they'd bring them anyway so you could try them.

One more day of that, and they'd have to tow me behind the ship like Herbie the Fat Fury as we headed back to port. The staterooms got smaller with each meal.

As a practicing neurotic, I couldn't help but think of the Titanic, which was 83 feet shorter, 14 feet thinner, and held around the same number of passengers (the Wonder's maximum population: 3,325). Standing on our veranda at night, all you could see were rolling, pitch black seas and the distant lights of the Carnival Fantasy, a ship following roughly the same path.

As it turns out, comparing your cruise ship and its nocturnal companion to the Titanic and Carpathia is a poor way to go back to sleep.

The ship was crewed by hundreds of people, most of whom were young, foreign, aggressively chipper, and worked like galley slaves. (One of the current stage performers has a LiveJournal.) According to our Indonesian waiter -- every guest has staff who follow them from meal to meal -- they work a six-month contract of seven-day weeks, return to their countries, then hope for good customer reviews to get rehired.

A more industrious weblogger has posted much better Disney Wonder pictures than I took -- especially this shot of Castaway Cay.

The bayfront shops in Nassau were a reminder of home. I could pretend I was on St. George Street by stripping the word Bahamas off row after row of knick-knacks, replacing it with St. Augustine, and paying taxes on my liquor.

There was one striking difference between the towns and their assortment of tourist merchandise: a Nassau shop sold a barrel-wearing, spring-loaded carved man who turned out to be anatomically correct.

Having never been on a cruise ship before, I was awestruck by the insane engineering genius required to turn a 2,000-room hotel on its side and float it around the world. It's only a matter of time before they strap rockets on one of these, fill it with battered calamari, key lime pie, alcohol, and tourists, and send it 'round the moon.

On the final night of the cruise, I was hopped up on Beck's and Killian's Irish Red, trying to bust a move old-school on disco night in the Wavebands nightclub. It wasn't easy to lift a foot, then look for the floor's new location before putting it back down.

I must have been a gruesome spectacle, because each time I tried to leave the floor, a pair of attractive young women I didn't know yelled "dance, gray hair, dance!" When the DJ started playing music like Pearl Jam's "Evenflow," I knew he was throwing everything he could into making me stop the Elaine Bennis-like gyrations before I broke a hip.

Jacksonville · 2005/02/18 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

Democratic Podcast: Return of Deficits and Debt

Saturday's Democratic response to the presidential radio address was delivered by Terry McAuliffe, the outgoing chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

McAuliffe's tenure ends on Saturday, when the DNC will meet and choose Howard Dean to replace him.

The transcript of McAuliffe's remarks:

I'm Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

This week, President George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union address, and though he claimed our nation is strong, he did not and could not say that America is stronger today than it was four years ago.

Four years ago, when President Clinton left office, our nation was experiencing the longest economic expansion in our history. We had moved from record deficits to record surpluses. Unemployment was at a historic low and America was respected in the world.

But after four short years of Republican control, our economic growth has slowed. We've returned to the days of deficits and debt, and America is no longer seen as a beacon of freedom and progress.

And now these same Washington Republicans want to privatize Social Security. While Social Security faces challenges, Bush's privatization plan would make things worse.

Here's how: First, in order to pay for the creation of private accounts, Bush wants to borrow $2 trillion from foreign nations.

Secondly, Bush wants to cut benefits. How? He wants to change the way Social Security benefits are calculated, and by doing that, future retirees will see a nearly 50 percent cut in benefits compared to the current system. And that's whether you set up a private account or not.

And here's the worst part. Even after all those cuts and massive borrowing, private accounts would actually do nothing to help save Social Security. Don't take my word for it. Bush's own White House admitted that this week. In fact, private accounts would actually speed the insolvency of the program.

Benefit cuts, massive debt and more insecurity are not the type of drastic changes we need to make to our nation's retirement security.

Americans deserve better. After all, Social Security is not a handout. It's an earned benefit, one that every American pays into over his or her lifetime and one that every American deserves to get back -- guaranteed.

For our part, Democrats are for giving Americans more options and choices when it comes to retirement security and savings. And we agree there must be discussion about Social Security and the challenges that lie before us.

But according to the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security is solvent until 2052. And even after 2052, it still will not be bankrupt as the president has said. There's no dispute that Social Security faces problems down the road, and we must address that. But we have the time to do it right.

And that begins with telling the American people the whole truth. Bush's plan, as I've said, will force America to borrow $2 trillion from foreign nations, further increasing our national debt. It will also result in a guaranteed cut, and that's the truth.

Democrats want any plan to solve the Social Security challenge to be rooted in fiscal discipline with budgets that pay as we go. Democrats will insist that any change in the system not result in benefit cuts. And those two principles for the safety and security of America's seniors we will not yield.

Democrats will reach out. We will work across the aisle. But we will also hold feet to the fire and make the Washington Republicans accountable for their selfish agenda.

This is Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. And thank you for listening.

Podcasts · Politics · 2005/02/08 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Ouch: In Jacksonville Wednesday, Minnesota Vikings quarterback Daunte Culpepper spontaneously gave a paralyzed local athlete two diamond necklaces worth about $75,000 during an NFL awards ceremony Wednesday, then subsequently took them back.

Jacksonville · Sports · 2005/02/03 · Comment · Link

Wikipedia's Rank Decision

I haven't had much luck calling attention to the downside of the nofollow attribute, but one of my scenarios is quickly coming true: a large Internet site is hoarding its Google PageRank by using nofollow throughout the site.

Wikipedia has placed nofollow on all external links, based on my spot check of random entries such as Gregorian calendar, MacGuffin, and Albert R. Broccoli. This change was made with little if any discussion, though there appears to be an effort now to decide whether it should be rescinded.

If this becomes Wikipedia policy, several million external links on 1.2 million pages will no longer contribute to Google's ranking algorithm, and Wikipedia's own pages will get a boost, as Phil Ringnalda describes:

Previously, if you were a certain well-known encyclopedia written as a wiki, you would generate a lot of PR just by having half a million pages, and that PR, along with any from external links, would be distributed around the site by internal links, and would also be distributed to any external sites you felt were important enough to link from your encyclopedia articles.

Now, as a byproduct of antispamming, every single bit of PR that each page has to distribute will be distributed only internally, to your own other pages, since all external links are nofollowed. Net result: you are more popular than before, the sites that you pretend to call important are less popular. You will tend to come out higher in search results, they will tend to come out lower.

I'm guessing this change was motivated by a desire to avoid spam abuse, but the practical effect is a huge site that shares none of the benefit it receives from 139,000 pages that link to its site.

Wikipedia · 2005/02/03 · 7 COMMENTS · Link

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