Scientology Writes; Gawker Rises
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At Scientologyâs request, several Web sites took down a  video of Tom Cruise talking passionately about the church, but Gawker isnât budging.
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Also: Chevy Volt: GM's 'moon shot'. See what people are saying on News.com Extra.
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In a Chroncle editorial titled "The Jews", Trinity senior Philip Kurian has created a global uproar.  The editorial complains that Jews are, as a community of special interest, stifling free speech.  The response of the Jewish community to this oped has been to stifle free speech.
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The Importance of writes &quot;The INDUCE Act, which has been discussed many times previously, will likely be getting a lot more attention thanks to the recent Grokster decision.
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Splogs are the latest thing in online scams -- and they could smother the internet like a pestilence. By Charles C. Mann from Wired magazine.
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Andrew Morton, author of "Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography," published by St. Martin's Press, alleges that the 45-year-old actor ranks second in command in the Church of Scientology.
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Outages put a crimp in access at PayPal, Gawker. Also: Microsoft's latest security warnings.
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Gawker Media will now pay its bloggers based on the number of times each post they write is read.
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Plus: File sharing growing like a Weed. [News.com Extra]
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This week we have seen numerous reports (a href=&quot;http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=352&quot;&gt;see here) in the trade press referring to Gartner UK analyst Annette Jump claiming that pre-installing Linux on PCs encourages piracy of Windows.
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Search Engine Watch gains a blog, as a new method of better speading news and information about search engines to readers.
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Also: New modular Hummer 'more animalistic,' 'eco-friendlier'. See what people are saying on News.com Extra.
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In a Dec. 9 story about the Church of Scientology International in Germany, The Associated Press erroneously reported that German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told Bild am Sonntag newspaper that intelligence agencies were moving to ban the group and that he called it an unconstitutional organization.
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But Tom doesn't proselytise, insists Goldenballs David Beckham has admitted that while he respects the Scientological beliefs of new chums Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, they have not attempted to convert him and missus Posh to the word of L Ron Hubbard.â¦
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It must be the season for big announcements, because they seem to be flying right now.  I'd like to point out two of them from the Ruby community.
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Pass us the coffee, would you? Letters Want to be in complete control of your computer? Put your hands in the air and wave 'em around a bit. That'll do the trick. Well, maybe it is a bit more complex than that. But really, as Microsoft proposes a hand waving, Minority Report-style computer interface, all we care about is that Tom Cruise stays in the Scientology celebrity centre, and away from our sofa:â¦
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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.