Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: A handful of battling billionaires, in reply to David Hood,
In the sale the other day of of the Boston Globe by the New York Times for $70 million, the Times keep the Globe’s pension obligations (effectively making it a sale for -$40 million, or so I’ve read).
Interesting. The Tribune Company entered bankruptcy (from which it just emerged) with something like $13 billion in debt -- quite a lot more than its assets were worth.
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Up Front: Everyone is Wrong. And Right. Whatever., in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I take your point, Russell and it’s a fair one. OTOH, telling someone on Twitter they’re an uptight cunt who deserves to go get raped?
You're right, of course. And in the end, the problem isn't one company's processes, but the legion of men who do this. It's six years since we discussed the call for a bloggers' code of conduct after Kathy Sierra's appalling experience, and only five months since Adria Richards was -- and I cannot work this out -- fired after receiving hideous threats and abuse.
Women who work in the free software community are well used to this kind of conduct too. It's often minimised as "trolling". It's all very well chuckle about 4Chan, but the source of Anonymous is also the source of a lot of this shit.
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On different views of language ... Moran herself is now apologising for every language crime she's ever committed on Twitter including using the the words "tranny", "retard and "spazz".
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Up Front: Everyone is Wrong. And Right. Whatever., in reply to Deborah,
But it’s worth noting that twitter doesn’t make a profit, employing a bunch of people to clean up the service they provide from the worst is yet another cost on a business that doesn’t turn a profit.
Then perhaps it’s not a viable business.
I think implying it should shut down is even less useful than calling for it to be paid-only. It's not going to happen. But I don't see what's to stop a clearly-written policy being applied in a similar way to its spam-reporting functions.
It'll have to be very clear and focused on threat rather than language. I don't think distant third-parties parsing abusive language is necessarily going to work out well.
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Hard News: Our man in Afghanistan, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Can anyone explain how much is added, and how different the theatrical release is from the television broadcast?
It's nearly twice as long, and most of the additional material was shot in Afghanistan. It makes it clear why both the directors have been raving about Jacob Bryant's cinematography -- to get a film looking that good in such difficult circumstances is quite an achievement. I'm told the way he related to the locals was also very impressive.
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Hard News: It's worse than you think, in reply to Brent Jackson,
Yet not noticing that National government has introduced plenty of “nanny-state” policy of its own.
It is sometimes hard to believe that the people waving through the GCSB bill are the ones who totally lost their shit over energy-efficiency standards for lightbulbs in 2008.
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Hard News: It's worse than you think, in reply to Jeremy Andrew,
If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from Russell
I suppose maintaining an imperious silence would be more scary, but ... nah.
The whole"link-whoring" thing puzzles me a bit. I have no problem with people linking to useful and relevant things they've written themselves.
There is the odd case where someone exploits the forum, but I can deal with that as I see fit, via my Almighty Powers of Moderation.
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Hard News: Our man in Afghanistan, in reply to Peter Calder,
So Jon has something to learn about the definition of futility, then …
In Jon's case, it's persistence :-)
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Hard News: Friday Music: Reinventing Beatles, in reply to Renee Jones,
Thanks Ren. If someone texts me I can update the post.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Reinventing Beatles, in reply to Thrash Cardiom,
I’ve always enjoyed a good Beatles re-interpretation / remix. Here’s Leftside Wobble’s remix of Tomorrow Never Knows:
That one's a fave. Although not actually all that different to the original, which underlines how nek-level the original was.