Hot Stove Truth &amp; Rumors: Dec. 15, 2004
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Baseball&#39;s Hot Stove is heating up with a flurry of rumors and gossip. To keep you up-to-date, we&#39;ve created a special edition of Hot Stove Truth &amp; Rumors.
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The Republican debate in Columbia, South Carolina on May 15 broached the issue of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' and torture, and whether or not the use of either is legitimate. &nbsp;Ron Paul and John McCain were the only two in the whole field who called 'enhanced interrogation techniques' a euphemism for torture, and they were the only two who expressly rejected the use of these techniques. Ron Paul at one point accused Brit Hume, a Fox News moderator, as well as the other candidates, of engaging in 'newspeak.' &nbsp; This was a big highlight for me, even though I have, for years, resisted the urge to simply compare Fox News or the Bush administration to the societies described by George Orwell in his novels. I always rejected it as overly simplistic, or as breathless left-wing hysteria on par with 'OMG BUSHITLER' and the like. I must admit however that the exchange was getting pretty surreal until Ron Paul pointed it out. But that was hardly the strangest thing that happened. That would be the exchange between Paul and Giuliani, facilitated by moderator and all-around Fox News hack Wendell Goler. Paul comported himself well in spite of the openly hostile treatment by Fox News and some of his opponents, notching 2nd place in the Fox News text message poll. This is notable because Paul's positions on almost every issue stand in stark contrast to those of his opponents. Links, transcript, and some thoughts below the fold, with a poll.
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Speculation spreads that China's biggest computer maker will buy IBM's PC business. Also:  Clinton attends launch of Chinese search engine powered by AI & hellip;.  A new DVD can play on old and new HD technology & hellip;. and more.
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The Aqua Teen Hunger Force guerilla marketers caused chaos, but are they criminals? Plus: Mooninite "explosive" hits eBay (briefly). In Table of Malcontents.
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Analysts&#39; roasting began before Stern&#39;s departure; can congloms fix medium? By Matthew Flamm Published on October 11, 2004.
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Canon G9 review...Photophlow gives Flickr a new face...Mozilla's Weave project...People paparazzi...new SLR rumors...hardware hacking.
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roundup Plus: Push-to-talk wiretaps on feds' speed list...Tellabs scales back AFC buy...Top McAfee exec to step down...IDC says external disk storage up.
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This week: Al Gore interview, wasps' "pepper spray" weapon, pre-Inca tomb discovery, chemical secret of Stradivarius violins, new butterfly species, and more.
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A third company joins the ContentGuard project to try to stop pirates. Also: Apple soars on the stock market.... Internal documents reveal North Korea's attitude toward cell phones.... and more.
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"Saddam &amp; Osama Adopt Shaved Ape Baby!" "Vengeful Frogs Eat French Chef's Legs!" The tabloid that pioneered fake news is dead this week. Or is it? Richard Corliss reflects
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roundup Plus: HP inks deal with energy firm...Holiday Inn welcomes Priceline...More colleges get cheap online music.
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A website goes the extra mile to make sure voters aren & rsquo;t confused this Tuesday.  Also: West Virginia organizes the first public supercomputer & hellip;.  FDA keeps its eye on a new pain relief drug & hellip;. and more.
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In March 2002, I made a bet with Martin Nisenholtz about the relative importance of weblogs and the New York Times. I was and am a blogger, and Martin worked then, as he does now, for the Times. For the actual terms of the bet, read the piece on the LongNow site, and a story I wrote to announce the bet. A few comments.  1. It seems now is the time to decide who won the bet, if either of us did. 2. The world that I hoped would come about did not. While blogs have broken many stories, they have not, in general, turned into the authoritative sources I hoped they would in 2002. When the blogosphere resembles journalism it's often the tabloid kind.  3. I wouldn't mind losing the bet. That is, I wouldn't mind if the Times fully embraced the web, and I suspect Martin wouldn't mind if blogs rose to the quality of the Times. 4. If the bet had been held a year later, it seems there would be a pretty good chance that Martin would have won the bet because they recently took down the firewall at the Times, allowing search engines to index the full content. In the past, articles would remain visible for a couple of weeks then you'd have to pay money to access them. I believe they have a special deal with Google and other crawlers that allow them to get past the membership wall. For most of 2007 the Times articles were behind the firewall, and were less likely to be pointed to (which is how they rise in rank at Google). 5. It certainly is fun to speculate, but the decision about who won belongs exclusively to the Long Now Foundation. They have to decide who determines what the top stories of 2007 are, and imho they should consult with search experts to determine how to do the queries. Apparently it makes a difference how you do it.  But ultimately it's their decision. 6. Whether Wikipedia has more or less results seems to be a sidebar to the bet, which only talks about blogs and the Times. 7. Another interesting sidebar is rich media. In 2002, before podcasting had taken hold, before YouTube existed, it would have been hard to forsee the story of the South Carolina beauty queen, or the Don't Tase Me Bro guy. Questions about the future are always framed in the context of the past. Did the question Martin and I asked have any value in 2007, or did it just say something about the world of 2002?   Update: Paul Boutin who arranged the bet, apparently in conjunction with Google (I didn't know this) in 2002, weighs in.
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7:1 split's gotta be great, right? Yeah, not so much. Flamemaster's trying to avoid delisting, and people are excited!
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Ford will return hundreds of electric cars to Norway after protests about its plans to scrap them. Also: IBM and SCO Group tussle over Unix lawsuit & hellip;. Former Enterasys Networks CEO pleads guilty to fraud conspiracy charge & hellip;. and more.
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roundup Plus: Holiday Inn welcomes Priceline...More colleges get cheap online music...Glitches hit some EarthLink-hosted sites...More money for fuel cells.
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After spending a day with the old keyword page, and getting bored with it, I came up with a new way to look at news, something I've not tried before, that might be fun and/or useful http://nytimesriver.com/keywords.html  Since it's likely to change again soon, here's a screen shot. How it works. Every hour, as usual, it does the nytimesriver scan. Every story is linked to in the database undern all the keywords it references. Then the report, in HTML, is prepared, with the keywords in the left column, and links to all the stories in the right colum. The list is sorted by number of references, the keywords with the most references appear at the top of the list.  So today, baseball is the top item, with 15 references. The teams, the Cleveland Indians and Colorado Rockies, rank high. For some reason (heh) the Boston Red Sox don't appear, even though they're still in it, and the Yankees, even though they've been eliminated (yay!) are near the top at position 10.  It's another leaderboard! (Oh shit.) The stories age, and are removed after 24 hours. After all this is news, not olds.  If you have comments, post them under the screen shot, linked above. PS: Note that since the list just started up today, the initial stories, even though some are already 24 hours old, will remain in the queue until tomorrow morning at this time. So the list will be artificially fat today, it'll thin down tomorrow.