Wednesday, May 15, 2002

Link to (ahem) a printer-friendly version of yet another ridiculous article about deep linking, this one courtesy of Wired. Lots of good volleys being tossed back and forth, with lawyers at Rodale Press (publisher of Runner's World) apparently being upset that letsrun.com links to a printer-friendly version of an article at runnersworld.com. You can read the various barbs being tossed back and forth here. Here's a quote from the lawyer: The hyperlink, when clicked on, produced a verbatim copy of an interview with Peter Snell originally published on runnersworld.com. That interview, reproduced in its entirety, was stripped of all Rodale ads and navigational information and aids. Contrary to your assertion, to the extent that the entire article was reproduced by letsrun.com, that republication hardly constitutes fair use.. For the record, and as referenced by the Wired article, here's the link. Scroll to the bottom, and it seems to me that there's still copyright information, as well as navigational links (albeit not nearly as many as on the "normal" view). Even a printed version clearly shows that the article came from Runner's World, with both headers and footers. But I suppose that's beside the point. I've seen this time and again in meetings with users: a lack of understanding about the difference between a link and actual content. This is not a "copy." This is an active reference, no different than a footnote in a book, except that this particular footnote takes the reader directly to the referenced book. Runner's World dictates the content that appears in a "printer-friendly" version. Perhaps they should borrow a clue from Wired, or Yahoo, or Fortune, or countless others. It's possible to keep a provide a printer-friendly version that maintains advertiser and site navigation integrity. And while they're at it, they might think about reading Eric Meyer on using CSS to eliminate the need for a separate printer-friendly page in the first place. 10:53:41 AM

Attack of the Clones is currently tracking at 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. 24 "fresh" reviews to go with 16 "rotten" ones. Right at the edge of fresh. Gotta love some of the quotes so far, though, on the rotten reviews. This thing will have your mind glazed over faster than a glob of dough in a Krispy Kreme plant. The picture looks absolutely gorgeous...but quite simply, it's difficult to decide what's flatter -- Lucas' helming or his writing. All...Lucas appears to be capable of these days is producing enough fireworks in his last act to elicit hope in his audience that his next installment will be better And perhaps my early favorite, from Scott Von Doviak at culturevulture.net: Christensen and Portman couldn't strike a spark with a stack of gasoline-soaked newspapers and a box of waterproof matches. 9:51:31 AM

John Robb points to a Boston Globe article on digital video. In one demonstration, the researchers taped a woman speaking into a camera, and then reprocessed the footage into a new video that showed her speaking entirely new sentences, and even mouthing words to a song in Japanese, a language she does not speak. The results were enough to fool viewers consistently, the researchers report. And, the conclusion that I quickly jumped to: as this and similar technology makes its way out of academic laboratories, even the scientists involved see ways it could be misused: to discredit political dissidents on television, to embarrass people with fabricated video posted on the Web, or to illegally use trusted figures to endorse products. 9:23:31 AM