For a couple of days now, the Wired News feed into my Radio aggregator has been misbehaving.  Several times a day the entire Wired News feed (a dozen headlines) shows up on my aggregator.  This is different from the way it worked last week.  Last week only new (or updated) headlines would show up.  If I deleted a story from my aggregator, it wouldn't show up again unless it had actually been updated.

Either they're updating every story several times a day or somebody's system is broken.  I suspect the latter.

1:16:12 PM   

Blockbuster Takes On Netflix: "Blockbuster claims to have locations within a 10-minute drive of 64 percent of the U.S. population."  [Scripting News]

Err, I'm afraid they're still going to have to deliver it to me.

1:06:01 PM   

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, tell all your friends about the CBDTPA!!  [Scripting News]

This is the funniest thing ever.  It's a Flash animation, so if you're at work, put on your headphones.

They did a good job with the "they're trampling our rights" side of the pitch, but leave out the "new digital markets will mean higher revenues" angle, which I think is more powerful.

And as a happy little bonus, now that I know the song, I can actually pronounce CBDTPA.  <grin/>

10:18:30 AM   

Ted Waitt Takes On Hollywood If he finds himself dining at Spago anytime soon, Gateway CEO Ted Waitt isn't likely to receive any bear hugs from the Hollywood moguls who favor this perennial Los Angeles hot spot. [CNet]

This is a short but decent interview with the CEO of Gateway.

From Ted Waitt: "I think (the music studios) could double their music sales with very targeted solutions, and we're willing to sit down and help them."  Yes.  Yes, yes, yes.  Jeez, isn't this obvious?

Waitt: "[The music industry is] trying to play defense to protect the old way of doing business, which has to evolve."  Exactly.

Waitt: "Last weekend, I was going on a trip and went to two stores looking for CDs. I couldn't find them, so I went to the Web, looking a legal way to download, but it wasn't there."  Yep.

10:03:57 AM   

Documents reveal Carnivore deficiencies. A privacy watchdog group makes public internal FBI documents that discuss failures of the agency's Carnivore online surveillance technology. [CNET News.com]

There are two points to take from this.

First, software development in the Federal government doesn't work any better than in private industry.  The tech community knew what the state-of-the-art in sniffing technology was, and predicted mistakes like this with Carnivore would be common, and guess what?  They were right.

Second, I am a citizen of the United States of America.  Not a consumer.  Contrast these quotes.  From CNet: "...much of how Carnivore works has remained a mystery as well as a perceived threat to consumer privacy."  What?  What do consumers have to do with this?

Now a quote from EPIC: "Carnivore is a powerful but clumsy tool that endangers the privacy of innocent American citizens."  That's right.  I'm a citzen.  Try not to forget that.

9:44:14 AM