Joey Baker

It’s kinda cute how the oligarchs bicker. There’s an old-timey feel to this that really brings out the “history repeats itself” vibes.

Great work from the SF Chronicle. With two contrasting propositions to eliminate city commissions in the upcoming election, the paper offers a game to try to eliminate as many commissions as you can, facts on what the city has found when it tried, and then details how the two propositions would work. It's a great explainer and Prop D (which is backed by a tech bro PAC) comes off looking real silly.

The cynicism it takes to build the thing, sell the thing, run the thing, apply the thing, all to tell kids they’re out of luck.

I guess if you sprinkle a little computer magic on your budget cut you’re absolved from actually making decisions and bear no responsibility?

The man is literally promising a military dictatorship.

And the people cheer.

If only there was an institution that could explain to these people that’s it’s not an “act”. 🙃

It’s not just AI spam that’s filling the internet. The SEO content game has been alive and well for over a decade. Even at presumably, the high end of this content—people pay money for access—hearing superficial nature of it is depressing. No wonder search results have been in steady decline. The web is so full of shit that the enshitifiers are getting tired of shitting.

Brings the receipts that AGI is soooo far away.

We knew this was coming: killer AI drones are here. Some hoped to put treaties in place ahead of time to limit the human damage. We’re much too late for that. Now, like poison gas (used by Russia against Ukraine), land mines (used by both Russia and Ukraine), cluster munitions (used by both Russia and Ukraine), nuclear weapons (threatened by Russia), autonomous drones will only have international norms set after we thoroughly explore all the bad ways to use them on the battlefield.

A consistent problem with weak government: it's inability to take action means that overtime, it's primary goal becomes self-perpetuation and not governance. When it encounters a crisis, inaction is more effective.

See also: The US Congress.

Yea… Idk. On the one hand, it’s true Ukraine needs cash and has scaled up its drone industry. On the other hand, there’s a ton of corruption in the country and the frontlines still need more drones. Seems unlikely they could export $20B worth of drones and still supply the front.

Levels of badness on display here:

1. ugh… horse race politics
2. Media navel gazing
3. She did poorly … compared to TRUMP!? Talk about different expectations.

Very much this:

1080p video, 21mp. wow.

Vincent LaForet has said it the best: "Something very interesting is coming…both to this blog and to our industry."

The New York Times has a really nice piece on Barack Obama's campaign.

I especially like some of the unique perspectives shown – and the interesting insight, that despite his lack of hair, Obama actually has a very unique profile, and is easy to silhouette.

A great TED talk by David Griffin.

Just… wow.

These videos are rather academic, and would be boring to watch, but their content is so amazing that I was entertained the whole time. The ease and quality of the result is simply astounding.

I bet the CIA could do this 10 years ago.

The WaPo has a rather touching article about the aftermath of being a war photog. I'd highly recommend the read.

I thought I'd put photojournalism and war behind me four and a half years ago when I traded in the dusty battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan for law school in Miami. But those words reminded me that you never truly leave the battlefield behind.

—Ricochet - washingtonpost.com

The audio slideshow is fantastic. The story is good. And it's another example of the Fourth Estate getting screwed. Keep shooting Zoriah (and by the way - I love your quote).

"They embedded a war photographer, and when I took a photo of war, they disembedded me," Zoriah says. "It's as if it's okay to take pictures of them handing lollipops to kids on the street and providing medical care, but photographing the actual war is unacceptable."

—Disembedded: Marines Send a War Photographer Packing

Some great photos and a really good script for the narration. Zalmai does a decent narration, but her voice lacks some of the emphasis that a good narrator requires. Well worth the watch, and worth hearing the story.

Ed Kashi talks about his project on Nigerian oil. The US buys half of the oil produced in Africa's most populous nation.

Trans Amadi Slaughter is the largest abattior in the delta. They kill thousands of animals a day, roast them, cut them up and prepare the meat for sale throughout Rivers State and the rest of the delta. Nearly all of the workers here, especially the meat handlers, are Hausa and Yoruba, mostly muslim too. In the delta fish was traditionally the main source of protein, but as fish stocks have dwindled due to pollution from oil and over fishing, meat is becoming more common in the delta.

Paul E. Steiger, ProPublica editor-in-chief, stated: “We couldn’t be more pleased. With these stellar staff additions, ProPublica’s initial news staff of 28 will include seven Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters and editors.”

—ProPublica Announces Six More Staff Hires, Including Four Pulitzer Winners

Cheers to ProPublica!

A really phenomenal panel discussion from some top dogs in the newspaper business that has a very optimistic view of newspapers online. Undoubtedly funding is the primary problem, but the subscription model seems to be favored.

Interesting but rather brief audio slideshow by Tyler Hicks on Kabul.

Hicks narrates the show himself in a boring, monotone voice, and with some slow string music in the background. I'd have liked to hear more details like the escalator, but I do really like the choice to crop all photos wide and short.

Now there's a government that knows how to do PR.

I don't think I really have to write about this one. Just a question: What does this mean for social aggregators? Can they support 'real' journalism?

Normally, I would add a short article like this to my Tumblr feed with a few tags and move on. But this is a really important story about the importance of spreading the freedom of the press to third world. Furthermore it's a great example of how an educated (literate) populace needs a Fourth Estate to assure that the government remains in check.

I don't often go for human interest stories, but this is truly inspirational.

Paper Cuts maps Newspapers journalists laid off.

The world's largest photo agency announced Wednesday that it has completed its deal to go private and will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange at the end of the day.

—Getty Images Sale Complete

There goes the Neighborhood?

It's possible, but for sure, this is just another example of a media conglomerate expanding its reach. It will be interesting to see if there is any policy shifts within Getty in the coming months.

This is really only funny if you've seen WallE, but it sure is funny.

…Until you start thinking about the sad truth about this site. The media industry is moving in this direction. This is an example of the ultimate media conglomerate. I'll leave it there before I get into a weird and far-fetched thought experiment.

Time has a collection of Getty Images that show a non-traditional look at the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament.

There are several that I like, but the above image is my favorite. I have no idea where that lighting came from (graduated filters?), but it's rather perfect.

Tribune, meanwhile, told its employees Wednesday that it hoped to wring more value out of its "underutilized" real estate in Chicago and Los Angeles, extending an asset-selling program Tribune is pursuing to service a $13 billion debt load, much of which it took on from going private.

—Washington Times - In 'survival mode,' newspapers slashing jobs

Fantastic, the newspaper industry is in freefall. Selling assets just to cover your own costs is not a winning strategy. (I know, I played Railroad Tycoon ;) )

Looks like the Tribune Co. is especially in trouble.

Several good examples of bloggers doing a wikipedia-style check on the mainstream media.

The BBC reports a very cool new technology that allows scientists to track penguins based on their biometrics.

I certainly can't tell one penguin from another, and if software can do that, think of the implications. Imagine a computer that knows, and can automatically keyword photos based on who's in them. Just tell the computer once, who someone is, and you're good to go.

Mr. Fox said that Google’s approach was different from what Yahoo, AOL and others call behavioral targeting. Those companies look at what a user did a few days earlier to show them ads about the same topic today. Google says it believes that search engine advertising is most effective if it relates to what the user has most recently searched for.

“We are trying to understand what the user is trying to do right now,” Mr. Fox said. “In some cases, those queries are ambiguous, so you need a little more context.”

—Google Tries Tighter Aim for Web Ads - NYTimes.com

Google being smart yet again. This is what everyone should be doing.

In the same way that if I'm reading the sports section of the paper, I want to see ads about golf balls, I don't want to see ads for photo equipment when I'm searching for movie times.

Cheers to Google.

Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of the News Corporation spoke at the famous All Things Digital today. His interview was rather enlightening.

Interesting to note:

• The conference is put in association with the Wall Street Journal, which Murdoch Owns.
• The interviewers are presumably employees of Murdoch.
• Most of the questions are fairly soft, but there are a couple that have a point to them.

Nikon has posted an interesting (though clearly biased) interview with Hiroshi Takeuchi, one of the engineers behind the new scene recognition system in the D3 and D300. Aside from the cool graphic (above), it's interesting to read about how this has been developed (and makes me anxious to try it out).

Apparently, the tie-in with the AF system works very well, which allows you to compose your picture first, then auto-focus. This is much improved over the auto-focus in the center, then compose system that every other camera has depended on.

While there is no question that the First Amendment protects coverage of spot-news events in public places, it is also clear that private events may be legally controlled by their organizers. Organizers may say who may or may not attend. They may also require that attendees agree to certain conditions.

Journalists are equally free to decline to agree and simply stay away.

—Your Right$ Vs. Their Right$ Right? - The Digital Journalist

Good advice to photographers – beware what you agree you can('t) do with your images when shooting an event. The obvious problem for journalists is that standing on higher moral ground isn't really an option. If you don't shoot an event, someone else will, and they'll have the published photos to prove it.

As another example, consider the template:

{Location}-{Country}-{State}-{City}-{Caption} for a photo that has “Location” and “Caption”, but no “Country,” “City,” or “State.”. Assuming that location and caption are “Home” and “Having Fun” respectively, it becomes:

Home-Having Fun which is better than it would be without these special rules:

Home----Having Fun

—Jeffrey Friedl’s Blog » Preset Templates in My Lightroom Plugins

Sweet!!! This is a much need addition to Adobe Lightroom. The current ability to place metadata fields just about anywhere is very cool, but poorly implemented. It appears that Mr. Friedl has managed to fix this inadequacy – I'd love to see his solution made into a plugin that any other plugin can call / see Adobe adopt it.

TIME.com is running an article on the history of the Church of Jediism. Please pause reading and laugh for a while; I did.

The article, entitled: 'Star Wars' is My Co-Pilot is a Q&A of the weirdest and wackiest coverage that I have ever seen on a major news site. Be sure to check out the disappointingly short, but fantastic video they published with the story. Cheers to TIME for covering (and publishing) this fantastically off-beat story.

TIME hired 6 of the world's top graphic designers to design this year's TIME 100 cover. The first few are very cool (the latter get a bit cliquè), above is my favorite.

https://blip.tv/play/gshVtNIUAg.x?p=1

This is a great clip about what web 2.0 is – from an academic (but still very exciting) point of view.

…and it is still possible to spend months in the jungle and come back with amazing photos. See here for more.

They then ranked ISPs by how many attempted TCP connections were interrupted by reset packets. And guess who is at the top of the list.

If you said "Comcast," you guessed correctly. According to the Vuze people's initial results, the number of reset connections was 20 percent for that ISP's subscribers.

—Vuze says some ISPs abuse TCP resets; data not that clearcut

Well, they are a bit of a biased source– but this is certainly a limit on the internet – censorship in a form not quite as extreme as China's but certainly uncalled for. It is reasons like this that we need government regulation on the internet.

The technology is 15 years old at this point. For a country that depends as heavily as they do on the internet, the US, the internet is still a wild-west of legality.

Rupert Murdoch is moving to tighten his already-imposing grip on American news media, striking a tentative deal to buy his third New York-based paper, Newsday, and getting his first chance to appoint the top editor of The Wall Street Journal, after the resignation of the editor on Tuesday.

—Murdoch Moving to Buy Newsday for $580 Million - New York Times

Woah. This deal is surprising to say the least, but I rather like the way the NYT covered this. It's biased, no doubt about it, but I think this is a rare case where being biased is a good thing.

News Corp. buying Newsday puts it in control of another of the nation's top 10 newspapers (the other being The New York Post), both in the New York area. The article does state that "a takeover of Newsday by News Corporation, which also owns two New York City television stations, could face trouble with regulators."

The article fails to mention that the NYT is also in New York City and will have to deal with the fallout from the takeover as well.

That said, I'm a big fan of Outfoxed, a big critic of the Murdoch Effect (though I actually like some of the 'infotainment' principal), and against media conglomerations. Though this article was a bit more news analysis than it should have been, I'm pleased that the tilt was so anti-News Corp.

To make the attack on CNN a literal truth, Chinese Hackers have launched a DoS attack on CNN.com. They've got so far as to launch a downloadable tool for all those interested in assisting in the next attack.

How does bringing down a media outlet help stop western media bias? …when the bias is that the Chinese society is closed and not open to hearing outside opinions?

TIME yet again posts a fantastic photo collection. This time, by Magnum Photographer Stuart Franklin who spent 10 years photographing trees. A rather mundane, but fascinating subject.

The official Communist Party newspaper, the People's Daily, said patriotism should be expressed rationally.

They also accuse the West of supporting Tibetan separatists, and the Western media of bias.

—BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | China urges 'rational' protests

Sort of the anti-protest protest in China, I find this to be… ironic.

• China has heavily state-controlled media. It censors the internet, specifically western news sources and sites (like wikipedia) that could contradict the State's version of events. Complaints about a western media bias are, needless to say, ironic.
• there were less than 1000 protestors. in china, the most populace place in the world, the number '1000' doesn't mean much when it comes to people. it is a very weak show of force. 1,300 people protested in london in the same time frame against the alleged media bias. if londoners can gather that many people for this cause, than certainly, the Chinese conter-parts can at least match them in numbers. It's almost like a PR stunt by the State as a way to show that their people are behind them.
• China has a history of stopping free speech that they don't agree with. Clearly, they allowed this protest to continue despite being "closely patrolled by police."

All that said. The right to protest and voice an opinion is a welcome improvement to China's state-controlled politics.

Representatives of the EU's 27 member states formally agreed today to harmonize their respective countries' definitions of criminally prosecutable acts of terrorism by expanding them to include three new types of crimes: "public provocation to commit a terrorist offence, [terrorist] recruitment, and training for terrorism." The definition of "public provocation" was especially controversial, and it encompasses content posted on the Internet, including not only direct incitements to violence but also terrorist propaganda and bomb-making expertise.

—EU states agree that inciting terrorism on the Internet is a crime

As a timely follow-up to the recent news that the UK has jailed 6 men for publicly supporting terrorism through speech, the EU has legally declared that internet support of terrorism is also a crime. This is a severe blow to freedom of speech advocates everywhere.

Terrorists are using the internet to spread their message. I don't deny this at all. The problem with making that act illegal is the definition of who a 'terrorist' is. I heartily submit that this definition is by no means concrete enough to make their support illegal.

Al-Queda is a terrorist organization. Banning their internet activities probably enhances our security. Is Hamas a terrorist organization? They are also a political group. Should be ban them? What about PETA? Should their website be taken off-line?

Fortunately, there is still good news. Although the EU has passed this law, they have not really provided a means of enforcing it. Though the paper precedent is on the books, it does not look like it can be acted on … yet.

U.S. and Iraqi troops clamped down on Sadr City after fighting spread and attacks against the Green Zone intensified in the wake of the offensive. Four Americans were killed in near daily shelling.

—Iranian Ambassador Denounces U.S. - TIME

This TIME article does a pretty good job showing how much of a mess Iraq is right now. The Iraqi army is attempting to be effective, but they still rely heavily on the US and the UK to do their job. Their job of course, is to try to maintain some sort of status quo between themselves and the insurgents. Iran is not helping matters at all, with their ambassador calling for the end of bloodshed – but only for those on his side. US soldiers continue to die without accomplishing their mission. And, concrete walls are still being constructed in an effort to secure the green zone.

Right. It's been said before, but: "mission accomplished." Right.

China's fight with CNN is part of a broader effort to challenge those who question its response to last month's protests in Tibet or criticize the Olympic torch relay, which traveled Thursday through New Delhi under heavy guard on its way ultimately to Beijing.

—China Spurns Apology, Keeps Pressure on CNN - washingtonpost.com

There's a great example of how free the Chinese media is – no word of protest against the regime is to be tolerated. Granted, CNN certainly editorialized in their coverage – cropping a photo to eliminate protestors.

Nonetheless, this latest 'offense' took place on the show The Situation Room which is a FOX inspired show on CNN. That is to say, it's full of opinions and not facts.

The Chinese media seems to make a habit of taking a bit of truth (usually a rightful complaint) and spinning to the point where it's unrecognizable.

At his home in Riyadh, his family kept a Filipino cook, driver, and maid who washed his briefs. "I don't know how to cook or to clean my clothes," he told me. "So, whenever I am in the United States, I just wear my underwear once … and then throw them away."

—Inside Saudi Arabia. - By Nicholas Schmidle - Slate Magazine

What a great quote to pull out in a brief article about the state of social progression in Saudi Arabia. The article is short, but worth a read to get an idea of what a modern, islamist, monarchy is like.

Six men convicted of supporting terrorism through speeches at a London mosque have been handed jail terms.

—BBC NEWS | UK | Six jailed for supporting terror

The UK has just sentenced six men to jail terms based on something they said. That's right, 'freedom of speech' – not guaranteed by the UK government exists just a bit less than it did.

Granted, these men were Muslims who spoke out in favor of Al-Queda or other Islamist terrorists publicly. Granted, I have no liking of what they said, and I am personally very glad to see them in jail.

The question remains though – is it okay for a government to abandon the freedom of speech so blatantly?

PopPhoto is running a great series of articles on pro travel photographers, and how they 'made it.' The stories are interesting reads and the photos, are pretty spectacular. I particularly like Gregg Bleakney, who's photo is above.

Wang crawled to the master bedroom, hid behind the bed and tried to think of who might have a BlackBerry on hand. The obvious answer: a Hill staffer like Pitts.

—Press secretary to the rescue - Ryan Grim - Politico.com

Here's a feel-good story: a Washington Press Secretary helps out one of his reporters in the midst of a home-invasion. Here's to always being 'connected.'

Speaking at the parade, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran was the most powerful nation in the world.

—BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Iran shows off its military might

The laughable statement made by Ahmadinejad is just another in is list of half-truths and lies that he's said on the world stage.

This however, is not what I want to address. This article, which is not much more than large blurb (it has no direct quotes, is only 11 paragraphs), is accompanied by the photograph above.

Now, I can guarantee that there are shots of large missiles, tanks, and even the 200+ aircraft that flew over as part of the parade. The editor, however, chose this rather humorous picture of Iranian troops on ¿dirt bikes? It looks like they're riding two to a bike.

I think that this a perfect example of editorial bias – for the better.

This is by far the coolest picture of the group, although I quite like the opening photo as well.

Yesterday's Papal visit to the White House was a feel-good affair. President Bush spoke first, saying "Here in America, you'll find a nation that welcomes the role of religion in the public square." Which is a little bit frightening coming from the chief executive of a government that is supposed to firmly believe in the separation of the two.

The Pope followed with his speech, where said this:

"Democracy can only flourish, as your founding fathers realized, when political leaders and those whom they represent are guided by truth and bring the wisdom born of firm moral principle to decisions affecting the life and future of the nation," he said.

—At White House, Pope Lauds Americans’ Faith - New York Times

Wonder if democracy is flourishing under Bush?

Not that I understand astrophysics mathematical calculations, but it seems that I don't really need to. I mean, if NASA can be off their calculations by a magnitude of 1000, then what do I need with that kind of science. Let's just leave it to the 13 year old German boys to predict the end of the world.

The article cover the entire story nicely. But I think I'll just leave it at a picture is worth a 1000 words.

Commandment I Thou shalt not launch preventive wars.

Commandment II Do not exaggerate the threat posed by terrorism.

Commandment III Dry up the terrorist swamp.

Commandment IV Recognize that not all terrorists are the same.

Commandment V Reject the idea of "a clash of civilizations."

Commandment VI Do not allow neoconservatives anywhere near Middle East policy.

Commandment VII Talk to Iran.

Commandment VIII Make resolving the Israeli-Palestinian crisis our top foreign-policy priority.

Commandment IX Get the media to grow a spine.

Commandment X Grow up and join the world.

—Iraq: The ten commandments | Salon

That should give you a pretty good idea what the article is about. The intro is way lefty and liberal – deciding that there is no choice but the withdraw from Iraq – even if McCain is elected. The meat of the article however, is fantastic. I highly reccomend the read. The list of ten things that needs to be done is quite good in my opinion.

Summary:

• Bush's overall approval rating: 33%
• Disapprove: 64%
• Approve handing of Iraqi War: 33%
• Disapprove: 65%
• Approve handling of economy: 28%
• Disapprove: 70%

Public disapproval of the way President Bush is handling the nation's economy has hit a new high in Washington Post-ABC News polling, and his overall favorability rating remains near an all-time low.

In a poll that confirms what most of us already know… the economy is doing poorly and the Bush Administration is not doing any better.

In case you're wondering what all the Olympic torch protestors have been complaining about, the BBC is running an article about a recent report from Amnesty International on the death penalty around the world. The article focuses on China.

"As the world's biggest executioner, China gets the 'gold medal' for global executions," said the organisation's UK director, Kate Allen.

"According to reliable estimates, on average China secretly executes around 22 prisoners every day - that's 374 people during the Olympic Games," she added.

Apparently, the idea of capital crimes is a bit different in China than the rest of the world:

More than 60 crimes can carry the death penalty in China, including tax fraud, stealing VAT receipts, damaging electric power facilities, selling counterfeit medicine, embezzlement, accepting bribes and drug offences, Amnesty [International] said.

…and the idea of due process is a bit different than western states:

The BBC's Quentin Sommerville, in Beijing, says justice is usually swift - most of those sentenced to death are executed only weeks after they are found guilty.

The article then goes on to discuss the findings in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries – where the death penalty is also prevalent. Iran was the only country to have more reported capital punishments than China.

The report and article end with a call for the world to stop employing the death penalty.

WebKit now supports gradients specified in CSS. There are two types of gradients: linear gradients and radial gradients.

—Introducing CSS Gradients

For us geeky web designers out there this is just plain Cool!

For those not so geeky, it means this: what could have taken over 20 lines of code can now be done in 1. Oh and when you're browsing, you won't have to download all kinds of drop shadow images – which means faster loading times.

The Associated Press announced Monday it will … develop an advertising-supported service that will deliver stories and photos to advanced cell phones, including the iPhone.

—AP Cuts Prices, Announces Mobile Product - washingtonpost.com

And the inevitable happens. The AP goes online in mobile (and bigger way). The strategy to encourage outlets to tag online photos is great for the industry as a whole.

Of course, this will help the newspaper industry a lot too:

Altogether, the expected savings from participating in the digital indexing program combined with the savings from the new pricing mechanism would add up to $21 million. That represents 10 percent of the total fees that member newspapers pay the AP.

By "style" I mean, very simply, the combination of the photographer's way of work plus the end result. … With "meaning" or "contents" I am trying to describe what the photos actually say, their intended message.

Continuing the trend of Media Outlets reporting the good news of other outlets, The New York times is reporting that a CBS journalist has been freed in a raid. Richard Butler is a photographer for CBS who was kidnapped two months ago. He was found bound and gagged in a house in Basara.

It's good to see any journalist, let alone a photographer, freed.

XSS attacks were becoming more popular because more and more websites were writing their own snippets of code so visitors could get more out of a site, he said.

—BBC NEWS | Technology | Hackers exploit poor website code

Here's the downside the Web 2.0 – a lot of what web designers are trying to accomplish has never been done in quite the same way before. That means that they're writing a lot of custom code… and making a lot of the security mistakes that 'standard' code had eliminated years ago.

So… 'bout time we found a serious downside to Web 2.0.

Unsurprisingly, the Olympic torch hasn't sparked any protests in the non-democractic country of Oman. Of course it helps that the country is controlled by the Sultan who is an absolute ruler. His interest in limiting any protests is this:

Oman has strong economic ties with China, a major importer of its oil.

It seems that the stop in Tanzania was equally uneventful. The country is democratic, having developed it's government after it's British colonial experience. I suppose that the people of the country have worries greater than the human rights violations of China and/or the freedom of Tibet.

A sneak peak of Photoshop CS4.

TIME is running some excerpts out of Nick Veasey's new book which captures photos without using visible light like most of us do. This concept is actually that original, people have thought of it before, but Veasey is particularly talented, and his subjects are well chosen.

Capping a week in which protesters snuffed the torch in Paris and forced organizers to reroute its course in San Francisco, the South American leg of the relay was more festive than disruptive. Small groups of demonstrators held signs decrying human rights abuses in China, but the most serious threats to the torch's progress Friday were a few lobbed water balloons -- easily swatted away by the Chinese security forces that jogged alongside the torch bearers.

—A Lighter Day for Torch in Argentina - washingtonpost.com

Well… good news. There were protestors, and they did make themselves heard. It's a shame that they tried to put out the torch – but it's comical that their attempts were primarily using water balloons. …The security people explained before going to Argentina that the torch was propane powered and a rain storm wouldn't put it out, I doubt water balloons will have any effect – let alone enough accuracy.

Looks like the run the Argentina was uneventful, which is great, but the article did have one great quote at the end from an anonymous Chinese blogger in regards to French protestors trying to put out the torch:

"France, I thought you were a romantic and beautiful country but now I realize you are ugly and full of rubbish. No country can stop China from being strong and developing," said one anonymous online commentator.

Me thinks that the Chinese media is putting a pretty strong 'spin' on why these people are protesting. It appears that this guy believes that the West is upset at China's strength and presumable economic progress. I'm pretty sure that the protestors are upset with two things:

1. China's human right's violations
2. Freeing Tibet from Chinese rule

Chinese economic progress has nothing to do with it, but here's to Chinese censorship!

We carried the injured to our own cars and hurried them to nearby hospitals. Others used wooden carriages to do the job of the ambulance. Some rescuers were using fire extinguishers and buckets filled with water to fight big fires, and others were wrapping the bodies of women, kids and men with blankets and kept shouting, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.”

—My Neighborhood - Baghdad Bureau - Iraq From the Inside - New York Times Blog

This is another piece of phenomenal journalism from the NY Times. Written by an Iraqi journalist employed by the Times, this piece describes the resolve and willingness of the Iraqi people to deal with the problems of their country—namely terrorism.

The piece is short, and well written, very worth a read to get a quick insight into the mind of an Iraqi.

Authorities are deploying 1,300 federal police, 1,500 naval police and some 3,000 traffic police and volunteers — enough to ensure security "without going to the extreme that nobody will be able to see the torch," Irarrazabal said.

—Olympic Torch Stops in Argentina - TIME

HAHA…haha…hoho…hehee… sniff – oh dear. Well, at least we can still see the torch.

Comm 'on people … isn't this getting a bit ridiculous? I think that Mayor Mauricio Macri who "… urged protesters to stay away and not make "politics" of a sporting relay," is half right. I mean, yes, it is a sports relay – but you're kidding yourself if you think politics aren't involved. The Olympics were created to show international unity – if there isn't international unity (don't know if you've been checking the news recently, but there's not), then people have the right to protest the Olympics.

Protesting is the right of all people who live in a free state. They even have the right to try to challenge something as symbolic as the Olympic torch. Granted – they risk bearing the consequences (and they well should); but they do have that right.

The security around the Olympic torch should lighten up. It's good that they're so vigilant, but they need to understand the right that people have to protest is going to be used. It's their job to 'secure' the torch not to hide it, put it out, put it on a bus in case of rain, or somesuch.

Also on Friday, the chairman of Japan's National Public Safety Commission said Japan will not accept Chinese security guards when the city of Nagano hosts the torch relay on April 26.

"We should not violate the principle that Japanese police will maintain security," Shinya Izumi said at a press conference. "I do not accept the idea that they will run in Japan as they did in other countries."

The Chinese runners, who wear bright blue tracksuits, ran to protect the torch in London and Paris, where chaotic torch protests interrupted the relay. Beijing has said only that the unit's mission was to guard the flame.

Way to go Japan. I'm well aware that there are greater political statements to be made hear than: 'the Chinese security are overbearing and out-of-line,' but I'm hopeful that Japan at least will host the torch correctly – displaying it proudly and let the protestors do what they may.

Says Alia Nasayif Jasim of the secular Iraqi National Accord bloc: "As Iraqis, from what we've seen of the bitterness in the American relationship with the Middle East, we don't think it matters who holds the presidency."

Moqtada al-Sadr, who demands an immediate end to the "American occupation," expressed more apathy than a particular preference for Clinton or Obama — both of whom have called for a timetable for exiting the country. "Before each election campaign, we hear a lot of promises and slogans, but the reality after the election is something else," says Sadrist Member of Parliament Fawze Akram, who said he doubted any candidate would actually follow through on a speedy troop withdrawal.

Tahsin al-Shiekhly, spokesman for the Baghdad Security Plan, which oversees police and military checkpoints in the capital, said … "The U.S. has a commitment to the people of Iraq. They liberated them and they have come to rebuild the country. Whoever the next President is — even Hillary Clinton — I don't think they will withdraw troops from Iraq," he said. But so long as that concern is met, Sheikhly said he would choose Obama. "I support Barack Obama because I think he is reliable. He is trying to fix the base of American society and trying to cleanse American foreign policy."

—A Baghdad View of the US Election - TIME

What an overbearing sense of … apathy. It seems that Iraqis have accepted the fact that the US troops are necessary to prevent total chaos – they also don't see a way for the US to withdraw, it's just not in anyone's interests right now.

The fact Iraqis seem to think that it doesn't really matter who wins the next election is probably a sad, realistic truth. Us Americans all seem to think that who controls the presidency next will have a huge impact. – Indeed it will, but not on troop levels in Iraq. It probably won't really effect the short-term in Iraq at all.

What the Iraqis do fail to realize is that the next president of the US will have a drastic effect on the long-term US policy towards Iraq. In my opinion, they better hope it's a democrat and not a neo-con that gets the oval office next.

In its recently released annual report titled “The State of the News Media,” the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is led by Tom Rosenstiel, stated that broadcast news outlets needed to diversify more quickly across platforms if they were to survive.

—CBS Said to Consider Use of CNN in Reporting - New York Times

…which doesn't mean that we need to loose diversity in our news media – yet again.

The idea of CBS cutting most of it's reporting capabilities in favor of relying on CNN is not just bad, but horrible. The last thing we need is a bigger conglomeration of media outlets relying on each other.

CBS may be that solid third place finisher, but it doesn't matter. They keep the two top dogs (FOX and CNN) in line. Its important to have as many media outlets as possible so that:

• Other media outlets will get their 'facts' checked. When a news company reports something wrong, its frequently another media outlet that corrects them.
• It would be easy enough to fool one watch dog, it's harder to fool two, it's harder still to fool three. You get the point… The more news organizations we have out there, the less likely it is that the public will get fooled
• The basic principal of a free market should prevail.

Please CBS, say it ain't so!

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

—ABC News: Sources: 'Principals' OK'd Harsh Tactics

This new is a couple of days old, but … wow. I suppose this has been known/guessed at for a while now. But it's a pretty easy step here to say that 'senior administration officials' have committed a crime or two here. As a matter of fact, they certainly have.

advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

"The men in blue perplexed everyone," she said. "Nobody actually seemed to know who they were officially or what their title was. They were kind of very robotic, very full on."

—Top Cops Protect Olympic Flame - TIME

My last post encouraged me to do a little bit more searching into the Olympic torch journey. Apparently, these Chinese men in blue are the official security detail from China. They're the ones who decided to put out the Torch in France and have been very rough with … everybody. Be they protestors, torch bearers, or the Chairman of the Olympic Committee (really, read the article).

Several thoughts occur to me:

• If the Chinese are this serious about security, then the chances of a terrorist succeeding in Beijing are very small, go China.
• The fact that these high ranking security guards only understand basics of other languages and were chosen based on how "tall, handsome, mighty, in exceptional physical condition similar to that of professional athletes" they are means that the Chinese are just going to run this Olympics their way – forget everyone else.
• That's not necessarily a bad thing. It might help us westerners better understand the Chinese way of doing things.
• …or it will just piss us westerners off and cause all kinds of incidents

(oh, yea, and I really do like this slideshow from Time that I keep pulling pictures from.)

"I took my kids out of school early to see it," said Greta Keegan, waiting patiently on a curb along the announced route with Cormac, 9, and Maeve, who turned 12 on Wednesday. By 2 p.m. there was no sign of the torch

—San Francisco Takes Olympic Torch Off-Route - washingtonpost.com

The whole point of the torch going through a city is so that people can see it. Hiding it for security concerns is just dumb. If people want to protest, then that's their right, for that matter, it should be encouraged!

Like women who inch their head scarves back to see how much hair they can show or people who flout the ban on alcohol by drinking at home, bloggers seem to be testing just how far they can push. And, like Iran’s other rule breakers, some pay a price.

—Iranian Blogosphere Tests Government’s Limits - New York Times

Blogging from Iran is … challenging. The Iranian judicial system is divided into two. The first is essentially a criminal court, they try things like murder or theft. The second is a religious court which can try … anything that is declared to be against the Islamic state of Iran.

It's a dangerous place to test the limits.

So you know that feelin' when you know you had a good shoot. There's a smile on your face. A bounce in your step. You drop everything to upload the images and three star them almost immediately.

...this feeling was ruined for me today when I picked up a copy of the student daily. Not only was the back page photo grey - legit, no tonality whatsoever - but the edit was atrocious. I knew I had better photos than the ones they ran; I had posted them on facebook! ::insert mental screaming here:: I am sick of subpar editing! and learning nothing more than the latest mix of Cher and DJ Unk! I want someone to see where I'm not seeing, to give me suggestions, and slam my framing (or lack thereof). I want someone to transfer my card, hand it to me, and tell me "you're good."

—Confessions of a Caffeine Addict: I must be American, 'cause I run on Dunkin'

Well said. Can't tell you how much that bothers me too.

No doubt, sports are a little hard to edit. Frequently you do need that shot of that one play or that one player doing just the right thing. It's hard if you don't come back with the shot they need. Editors frequently have a choice of publishing a sub-par shot that shows what they need to depict, or pissing off the sports editors and publishing a shot that is good, but doesn't go with the story.

Which is better for the paper? I don't think there is a hard and fast rule. Ultimately, the situation should never exist. It's the photographer's fault if they didn't cover the story well enough to come back with the photos that are needed. It's hard to complain if you didn't do your job right.

On the other hand, if you did do your job; did come back with that shot that tells the story of the whole game, and the editor still picks a different shot … well, then. He better have a damn good reason. If he doesn't then he's not doing his job.

• Craigslist
• Word of mouth.
• Referrals from a past job.
• My college buddies. (Especially Chris)
• My colleges job board for alumni
• Comedy Central/MTV job hunt board
• Monster.com
• Krop
• Freelancers Union
• Unsolicited resumes

—Freelancers: How do you get work? | creativebits

Great idea for freelance work that I never considered: craigslist. Totally free and really well trafficked.

A few quick quotes from a Washington Post article about the hearing/media frenzy that will occur tomorrow.

"We cannot … just say we're coasting through and waiting for the next president."

—anonymous GOP senator

"I think it's a very significant issue that has not had sufficient exposure. They're perfectly content to watch us spend our money while they build up these huge cash reserves from oil windfalls. It's a real stick in our eye, as far as I'm concerned."

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee

—Congress To Hear Of Gains In Iraq - washingtonpost.com

Yea, woah. Wish I had said it that clearly.

Congrats to the Post and the NY times. The Post has done a magnificent job – especially with the Walter Reed stories. They are a fantastic example of investigative journalism and leveraging the name of a powerful newspaper for the 'public good.' Reports on the political power of Dick Cheney and the importance and use of military contractors also took the prestigious prize.

I'm very happy to see that the prize is still being given to the deserving. Granted I know none of the 'behind-the-scenes' story here (overt reference to The Wire), but these are, in my opinion, the top stories of the year. The Pulitzers are no Oscars – the really do matter.

Cheers all.

Pretty good collection of protest pictures in the collection actually, but I really liked this shot… of the French Police wearing… roller blades. I mean, I've heard of bike cops (bike shorts are not good uniform wear) and horse cops (can't they get ticketed for all the poop they leave?), but roller blading!? The 80's would like their cops back please.

Only the French.

I've been sitting on this article for a while, meaning to respond to the many points it makes, both good and bad. It was published last week. In short, it's an excellent review of the current state of the newspaper industry.

Like I suggest, there are points that I agree with, and points that I don't. I will try to write that post in the near future, but if you have any interest in the current state of f the industry, read this (very long) article.

I will be traveling (in Dublin) this weekend, and will have limited internet access.

One of the nice things about Word and Photoshop is that once I fire them up and start working, I can forget all about the Internet for a few hours. Sometimes, my PC and I just want to be alone.

—Cloud computing is well and good, but it can't beat the desktop computer. - By Paul Boutin - Slate Magazine

I couldn't agree more. The idea of putting all sorts of applications online is interesting, but not really practical. Photoshop Express is interesting, but it's no more than a proof of concept to me. Perhaps worth having as a tool on an online picture ordering site (like MPIX) as a means of last minute adjustments.

Similarly, gDocs, is convenient if I need to share text with someone as I type it (and see theirs), but it's really not a replacement to Apple Pages, which I do use instead of Microsoft Word.

This guy's basic point is good. Computing through the browser is an interesting idea, but yet to be practical.

The real money will be made when someone figures out how to use these simple apps as they are – not as desktop replacements, but as quick little apps that plugin into simple web apps. The web is about collaboration, make the web apps about that too.

In a forum posting Tuesday, iStockphoto head honcho Bruce Livingstone said the Getty Images subsidiary had 2007 revenue of $71.9 million, and it paid $20.9 million to those who contributed the imagery it licenses.

—iStock reveals revenue, photographer payouts | Underexposed - CNET News.com

The first interesting thing here is that iStockPhoto pays out roughly 29% of what they make on sales – that's pretty much as suspected. That $71.9mil number though is kind of scary. That's a lot of money to making on royalty free sales. It means that it's revenue lost out of a lot of pro's pockets.

At the WWDC show last June, however, Adobe & other developers learned that Apple had decided to stop their Carbon 64 efforts. This means that 64-bit Mac apps need to be written to use Cocoa (as Lightroom is) instead of Carbon. This means that we'll need to rewrite large parts of Photoshop and its plug-ins (potentially affecting over a million lines of code) to move it from Carbon to Cocoa.

—John Nack on Adobe: Photoshop, Lightroom, and Adobe's 64-bit roadmap

So… Windows will get a 64-bit version of Photoshop in CS4, Mac will not. Bummer. Real big bummer.

As I'm not in NY right now, I don't have access to a copy of the Times, but apparently, they've introduced a new design type that front loads a bunch of summaries into the first 3 pages of the paper.

Sounds like a good idea to me – people are used to seeing quick little blurbs on the web all the time. Moving a print paper in the same direction seems like a logical choice. Of course, it only works if you have full articles to back the summaries up.

Maybe it's cause we're electing a new president this year?

There's a beta of Adobe's Lightroom 2.0 out!!! Whoopee!

Update: Here's a pretty good feature summary/review of the new Lightroom.

Update2: The above article combined with Adobe's own warnings have convinced me not to adopt this is my primary workflow software yet. (huge bummer) The fact that metadata almost certainly won't carry over and the inability to support LR v1.x libraries is a huge pain. Plus it's not been guaranteed that libraries created in a beta of version 2 can be carried over to the shipping release. I'll just have to wait for beta 2.

Not that I share all the comments that I make in other forums/blogs, but I thought that this one was particularly timely as it sort of address something I've been thinking/dealing with a lot recently. Which is to say – marketing for the masses sucks. Find a niche, become the best there.

The secular government of Turkey has gotten the Supreme Court to hear a case on banning their main party from politics. The competing party, which insists that they to are secular has been increasing in popularity and represents the single biggest challenger to the current government.

My question is this: Which is less democratic: to ban a religiously tilted political party or to ban a political party?

well, crap.

funny funny.

For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us.

Leave it the BBC to break this new first: the US Treasury Dept. is going to try to avoid a recession/depression.

HAAHAHa. hahaha. hehehee. sniff Oh dear. wow.

This is a good one. Pretty spectacular actually. Apparently, Sony BMG, strong member of the RIAA, was caught using pirated software on their servers in France. 47% of the software on the servers was pirated. That's quite a bit of piracy there.

Questioned about the fact that this is perhaps the single act of an employee, the CEO of PointDev retorts, "I think piracy is linked to the policy of a company. If the employee has the necessary funding to buy the software they need, it will. If this is not the case, he will find alternative ways, as the work must be done in one way or another."

—Slashdot | Sony BMG Sued For Using Pirated Software

"At first I thought these were American soldiers and I wanted them to leave but when they said they were Muslims I knew they were our brothers," a young Afghan man says.

—Muslim Troops Help Win Afgan Minds – BBC News

Apparently, the United Arab Emirates (the UAE, a small little country south of Iraq for those not familiar with the region's geography) has secretly had troops in Afghanistan helping both the American and British soldiers on the 'hearts and minds' campaign.

Fascinating and really good to hear.

Here is what happens in the dream: Because I know a little Arabic, I somehow find myself a translator for the invaders, even as some of my Chicago buddies are in the alleys plotting against my employers. And each night when I walk home along my beloved Dearborn Street under the rusty elevated tracks and past the White Hen grocery store, I wonder what the guys poring over maps in their armored vehicles plan to accomplish against a few million South Siders fighting in their own alleys. That’s usually when I wake up.

—In Shiite Slums, Victory Must Be Won in the Alleys - New York Times

An incredibly personal account by James Glanz, who tells the rather amazing story of Sadar City from a depressingly personal way that shows greater knowledge of the Iraqi political and cultural realm. It's a short and good read.

The designer of Coda. This mostly satisfies my geeky side to watch, but it does have a bunch of funny lines (if you're a geek), and stays entertaining (mostly if you're a designer, programmer, or a geek).

The most interesting part for me (as a geeky designer) was that he jumps straight to photoshop to do mockups. I've always been told (and I find it much easier to) sketch stuff out before hand – then go to photoshop. I suppose if it works for him, then cheers; just not my approach. Although his process of creating a huge multi-layered PSD file is exactly what I do too. I wish my developer (coughphillcough) would look at the darn thing though.

I've been holding off finalizing my Italy photos because of the problems with Lightroom 1.4, which of course I upgraded to the instant I got home from Italy. I've been waiting for them to release a fix, for over a week now to no avail. In re-reading the post, I discovered that uninstalling does not require me to delete all my preference files as I had originally thought. I will go a head and put LR 1.3.1 back on (there's not that much of an upgrade anyway), and finish those photos.

...erm but not tonight b/c I'm going to a football match: Brazil v. Sweeden. Should be a fun, wet, time.

I'm a big fan of the Photographer's Rights PDF. I carry a copy around in my camera bag at all times, and tell all photogs that I know about it. If you're going to photograph in today's security conscious society, you have to know what you can and can't shoot. I've just come across the UK version of this leaflet which is important as the laws in this regard are drastically different between the two countries.

No matter how long you're in this business of conflict photography you will always feel fear. When you no longer feel it, then it's time to get out.

—John Moore, Pop Photo

Awesome idea:

The company [Google], joined by other heavyweights like Microsoft and Dell, has long been lobbying for the Federal Communications Commission to free up unused broadcast TV channels known as "white spaces" for unlicensed use by personal devices. That portion of the TV band is highly prized because it can propagate long distances and through obstacles.

—Google outlines proposal for 'Wi-Fi on steroids' | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Thankfully, this student wasn't expelled, but the whole this is rather ridiculous.

Basically, this: a freshman at the university of Toronto (Canada) created a study group of facebook. His professors, apparently unaware of what goes on in a study group, not only failed him (he was earning a 'B'), but recommended him for expulsion based on 147 counts (the number of people in the group) of academic integrity violations.

Wow, do they not get it. Online does not equal cheating. Free access to more people and more information is one of the great things about the internet. Using a facebook group to post questions from previous tests, class notes, chapter summaries, etc… is just genius. I wish I could have had such things in high school. It's a logical use for not only the internet, but Facebook.

The milestones for each 1,000 deaths — while an arbitrary marker — serve to rivet attention on the war and have come during a range of pivotal moments.

—US Death Toll in Iraq Hits 4,000 - TIME

Been meaning to post this for a while now: Fantastic collection of photos from Iraq. Truly some of the best I've seen.

Apparently, rechargable batteries loose quite a bit of their charge, on their own, in a month. Something like 20-30%. That's a lot of juice. What is means is this: recharge your batteries before a shoot.

It also appears that lower capacity batteries actually hold their charge longer. So check out 2000mAh instead of 2500mAh batteries.

I'm not a coffee drinker, but this sounds like good news overall. Starbuck's is, while a huge conglomerate, a fairly friendly company IMHO (in my humble opinion). These changes sound good to me. Besides – what's the downside to more free stuff?

A must read for every photographer.

THE TEN LEGAL COMMANDMENTS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

I. Anyone in a public place can take pictures of anything they want. Public places include parks, sidewalks, malls, etc. Malls? Yeah. Even though it’s technically private property, being open to the public makes it public space.

II. If you are on public property, you can take pictures of private property. If a building, for example, is visible from the sidewalk, it’s fair game.

III. If you are on private property and are asked not to take pictures, you are obligated to honor that request. This includes posted signs.

IV. Sensitive government buildings (military bases, nuclear facilities) can prohibit photography if it is deemed a threat to national security.

V. People can be photographed if they are in public (without their consent) unless they have secluded themselves and can expect a reasonable degree of privacy. Kids swimming in a fountain? Okay. Somebody entering their PIN at the ATM? Not okay.

VI. The following can almost always be photographed from public places, despite popular opinion:

• accident & fire scenes, criminal activities
• bridges & other infrastructure, transportation facilities (i.e. airports)
• industrial facilities, Superfund sites
• public utilities, residential & commercial buildings
• children, celebrities, law enforcement officers
• UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, Chuck Norris

VII. Although “security” is often given as the reason somebody doesn’t want you to take photos, it’s rarely valid. Taking a photo of a publicly visible subject does not constitute terrorism, nor does it infringe on a company’s trade secrets.

VIII. If you are challenged, you do not have to explain why you are taking pictures, nor to you have to disclose your identity (except in some cases when questioned by a law enforcement officer.)

IX. Private parties have very limited rights to detain you against your will, and can be subject to legal action if they harass you.

X. If someone tries to confiscate your camera and/or film, you don’t have to give it to them. If they take it by force or threaten you, they can be liable for things like theft and coercion. Even law enforcement officers need a court order.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU’RE CONFRONTED

• Be respectful and polite. Use good judgement and don’t escalate the situation.
• If the person becomes combative or difficult, think about calling the police.
• Threats, detention, and taking your camera are all grounds for legal or civil actions on your part. Be sure to get the person’s name, employer, and what legal grounds they claim for their actions.
• If you don’t want to involve the authorities, go above the person’s head to their supervisor or their company’s public relations department.
• Call your local TV and radio stations and see if they want to do a story about your civil liberties.
• Put the story on the web yourself if need be.

—Photojojo » Photography and The Law: Know Your Rights

But Apple's radical opacity hasn't hurt the company — rather, the approach has been critical to its success, allowing the company to attack new product categories and grab market share before competitors wake up. It took Apple nearly three years to develop the iPhone in secret; that was a three-year head start on rivals. Likewise, while there are dozens of iPod knockoffs, they have hit the market just as Apple has rendered them obsolete. For example, Microsoft introduced the Zune 2, with its iPod-like touch-sensitive scroll wheel, in October 2007, a month after Apple announced it was moving toward a new interface for the iPod touch. Apple has been known to poke fun at its rivals' catch-up strategies. The company announced Tiger, the latest version of its operating system, with posters taunting, REDMOND, START YOUR PHOTOCOPIERS.)

—How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong

Apple is an evil genius, if you believe this article. It makes many good points, and though long is well worth the read.

Fantastic short article on why the economy is in the shitter.

Pretty good article on recoding a site css for mobile content. It's got some links to a lot of basic info that designers should know.

Photography is decent, I like this photo the best out of the bunch. It is a great photojournalistic collection though. Does a real good job of giving you a sense of place.

Iraqis are finding their lives more hopeful but give the United States little credit for the improvement, an international media poll finds.

Instead, poll respondents credited the Iraqi government, police and army.

—Iraqis Don't Credit US for Safer Lives - TIME

Huh. Appears the surge hasn't worked. Go go Bush! (yet again)

I'm a bit of a geek, and have understood for a long time that file systems are a key part of an OS, and that the end-user just shouldn't mess with this kind of stuff. So, I never really did. The link below is an Ars Technica article that goes through the history of file systems and explains exactly what they are – in a very engaging way. Well worth a read if you're at all interested in geeky stuff.

We are only now learning about NSL abuses that occurred in 2006. This suggests that we won't learn about 2007 abuses until 2009, and abuses happening today won't be revealed until 2010. After-the-fact investigations and procedural reforms are no substitute for case-by-case judicial oversight. Once abuses have occurred, there isn't a lot that can be done about them. Only by having a judge review each and every national security letter—before it's issued—can we be confident that the abuses identified in recent OIG reports will not recur in the future.

—Continued NSL abuses show FBI biased, cannot police itself

National Security Letters are a way for the FBI (and presumably other government agencies) to subvert the need for a court order. Rather disturbing that these exist at all, let alone have gone rampant.

An interesting view of a shuttle launch that I haven't seen before. Shot by Eric Thayer for Reuters.

The Lightroom 1.4 update for Mac and Windows has been temporarily removed from the Adobe.com web site. Those Lightroom users who have installed Lightroom 1.4 should uninstall the update and install Lightroom 1.3.1.(Mac, Win) until a further update can be provided.

—LightroomNews » Blog Archive » Adobe Yanks Lightroom 1.4 & Camera Raw 4.4

Ouch. That's no good. There's a bug that affects only Windows users and DNG. There's an Olypmus processing bug. But the killer is a bug in the EXIF timestamping that will modify an original RAW files. Ouch. Get this fixed quick Adobe!!!

Great, short, article about the state of Iraq. Quick read that's very worth your time to get a sense of what Iraq looks like now.

Troubled Italian carrier Alitalia has agreed to be bought by rival Air France for a cut-price 138m euros(£106m:$215m) in a move to save the state airline. BBC: Alitalia accepts Air France offer

Not that this has to do with anything that I normally blog about†. Just that I find it interesting that Alitalia, which I flew to Italy last week, offered great service. Aside from a hiccup at Milan Airport which was no fault of theirs, their service completely satisfactory. I suppose I was surprised to learn that they are struggling financially so much.† side note: huh. never really thought about that before. I blog. I'm a blogger. Interesting.I sort of hate people who call themselves bloggers. Sounds very… pretentious. Ah well, nothing to be done I suppose.

The media didn't do this kind of "immune system" work when it reported on the run-up to the Iraq war. As a result, more than 70 percent of Americans were convinced that Saddam Hussein was involved in the massacre of September 11. More than 4,000 Americans and over one million Iraqis have been killed in the violence that perhaps could have been averted with better journalism.

—Appalling Spread of False Information Requires Stronger Media Accountability | MediaCulture | AlterNet

Article from the leftist Alternet, but addresses one of the key problems of today's media/government/world. The Press is doing a poor job of being a watch dog, the Iraq war is a case in point.

Most Americans just don't care about politics, current news, etc… that's why Paris Hilton gets as much play on CNN as the election. Mass media has to cater to their customers and not just cover the news.

And that's the problem. Major media outlets are no longer just interested in covering the news for the sake of coverage. They're about making money; and that means that there are all kinds of internal issues over what gets play. Add into this mix this administration's propensity to 'control the news' (read: lie) and the media just can't be as effective as it should be.

Dangerous times indeed.

It was the pinnacle of a day of pointlessness on both sides of the Capitol. In the Senate, Vice President Cheney rushed to Capitol Hill to cast a tiebreaking procedural vote -- only for his side to lose in the substantive vote that followed.

—Dana Milbank - The Secret Is Out: There Was No Big Secret - washingtonpost.com

Milbank is a favorite reporter of mine at The Post – and this is a great article about the idiocy of Congress when they put their collective [lack of] minds to it.

Yet another story of the MacBook Air: apparently, the TSA employees caused an owner to miss his flight because they didn't know if the Air was a bomb or a laptop

Surprise, surprise, Bush actually was wrong. I'm in shock and awe.

What's really disappointing is that this only got a couple of inches in the Post. It deserves a full exposé in all the major papers. Preferably reporting a study done by journalists as opposed to a government group that is simply doing background research on itself.

Try again.

Here's a great real-life ad for the MacBook Air.

This tech columnist's wife threw his laptop out with the newspaper. That's just funny.

I don't intend to talk about a lot of negative things, but this one really struck my cord. First off: c|net blogs. Some are okay, some are bad, and some are awful. When these started several years ago, the idea was to have experts talk tech to a general audience. The problem is that blogs require 2 things: an opinion, and constant updating. That's a recipe for disaster. The link below should prove my point.

This guy's post not only has nothing to do with tech in the home, but it has no point. Maybe I'm completely missing his point here, but I hardly see how services that are meant to compete with other services are aimed at getting people to navigate away from a google page. He's either wrong or not making his point clearly. A example of why he shouldn't have to come up with new content all the time.

…which brings me to the second thing that's been pissing me off: all of the blogging/talk/whatever about Google. don't get me wrong – I do like me the Google. They're in my opinion, the best at what they do. But Mr. Digital Home, has no place praising them in a random, poorly worded blog post. It's just the latest example of how web culture works – talk about the hot thing just to increase hits (or some similar motivation, like having nothing better to write about).

Right. done.

A very cool dispatch that of the election in Pakistan – uneventful and remarkable for being so.

All professionals have at least four loyalties. First, we have a loyalty to ourselves as human beings and as moral agents. We have personal needs as well as a moral compass that tells us what are the right things and the wrong things to do as human beings. Second, we have a loyalty to our employers. In return for a paycheck, employers have the right to expect us to be loyal to their business practices. Third, journalists have a loyalty to other journalists. When one journalist violates professional standards and practices, other journalists are painted with the same brush. Finally, we have an obligation to society to act in ways that promote the common good.

—Ethics: The High Price of Ethics - The Digital Journalist

It's really good to know that there are still some higher-ups in the journalism business that still care about these four things. A sincere thank you, and a salute to you Glen Mabie. Cheers.

Projections show that by next year or the year after, the annual number of high school graduates in the United States will peak at about 2.9 million after a 15-year climb. The number is then expected to decline until about 2015. Most universities expect this to translate into fewer applications and less selectivity, with most students likely finding it easier to get into college.

—Math Suggests College Frenzy Will Soon Ease - New York Times

Only this to say: "About time."

In a word… bummer.

“Everyone wants to eat like an American on this globe,” said Daniel W. Basse of the AgResource Company, a Chicago consultancy. “But if they do, we’re going to need another two or three globes to grow it all.”

—A Global Need for Grain That Farms Can’t Fill - New York Times

Notice how the price of food has gone up recently – it's all because the price of grain, worldwide has gone up. Third world countries are now able to afford better food (e.g. bread), which leads to increased demand. Supply hasn't compensated; world stockpiles of grain are at an all time low, and prices have doubled. Great if you're a farmer, sucks for the rest of us.

I have personally seen a loaf of bread at the local supermarket go from £0.70 to £0.90 to £1.20 over the past month and a half. That's nearly double for the same loaf of bread.

To North Koreans, the period just before the spring barley harvest is known as "barley hill." In the past, failure to get over the "hill" has meant death by starvation, particularly during the famine years a decade ago, during which some two million North Koreans died. Even though Seoul is now sending 400,000 tons of rice each month to the North, NGOs have reported scattered food shortages.

Hard to believe that we just sent the NY Phil there… and the whole country is still stuck with a sort of autocratic militaristic feudal police state. …and yet the government is seeing to it that it's citizens remain in the country, despite the starvation conditions.

The situation is unlikely to improve. Sources say it was once relatively easy to bribe North Korean border guards to look the other way when people tried to cross over. Not so now. "It appears the North Koreans have increased salaries on the border, or put more senior guards there, over the past year or so, because things are more difficult now," says a Christian activist working under cover in China. This source, whose group claims to have moved hundreds of North Koreans to freedom over the past three years, says the flow is "now down to a trickle." Public executions, he adds, "are meant to ensure that that remains the case."

This is pretty nifty if you're a iPhone user … even better if you're an enterprise client. Apple's got Microsoft Exchange server in a way that's much better than any Blackberry. If you watch the demo, you get to see the nearly instant communication between a laptop and the iPhone. Oh, and they've got PC level games on this thing now too. Really

Sorta cheesy, but inspiring?

Score! IE8 will end the incredible hassle of having to treat Internet Explorer like a retarded child in web development. It's a shame we're gonna have to wait a few years, but still… this is really good news.

We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously.

is there a difference? ;) (source)

This is a fantastic little summary of how to do typography on the web. It's a fast read, and a must if you're inexperienced with type (yes, it really does matter which font you use where) and into web design.

The NY Times has a great interactive view of the Magna Carta that was recently donated to the US National Archives.

A great tutorial for spotlight searching in Leopard – It's graphical which is what I need to make sense of this kind of thing.

This is just a cool site that uses flash in a way I've not seen before. Play the video backwards, you'll see what I mean.

My own wordpress blog on my own server!

I want it!!!

What’s wrong with kids today?

Photos are decent, but common… the content is fantastic.

Rather true I suppose. I am a perfectionist. I do believe my computer is better (and often tell others). Macs are a better product. And we don’t hesitate to brag.