Updated: 4/4/06; 6:52:34 PM.
Ted's Radio Weblog
Mission: Interoperable. Competition breeds Innovation. Monopolies breed stagnation. Working Well with Others is Good.
        

Sunday, June 27, 2004

It's traditional in most of the newsgroups and forums go on until one wingnut accuses the other of acting like Hitler. At that point, the fight has degenerated to silliness and is ignore by anyone with common sense. The anti-Bush campaign saw Hitler in a proposed ad and wisely nixed it. If only the President's campaign had the same sense of decency.

Dan Gillmor's eJournal blogs No Shred of Decency:

  • NY Times: Hitler Reappears in '04 Campaign, This Time in Bush Ad. President Bush's campaign Web site is featuring an advertisement casting Senator John Kerry and his allies as a "coalition of the wild-eyed," blending clips of former Vice President Al Gore, former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont and the filmmaker Michael Moore shouting about Mr. Bush. Interspersed twice are images of a shouting Hitler, drawn from a Web spot that MoveOn.org, the Internet advocacy group that runs anti-Bush advertisements, briefly posted months ago in a contest for advertisements about the president.
  • Dan goes on to write: "The clip of Hitler came from an ad submitted to MoveOn.org's "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest -- an ad that MoveOn disavowed as soon as it was noticed and, quite properly, attacked for its inflammatory nature.

    But the Bush campaign has no trouble using the same images (wmv video) to slander political opponents and critics of its radical policies. Just when you imagine they couldn't sink any lower in their tactics, the Bush people find a way. If this slimy ad were to be aired on television -- on the airwaves Bush and so many others are so eager to censor to stop "indecency" -- campaign laws would require him to personally endorse it. He doesn't have to personally vouch for this garbage when it's on the Web. Maybe that's why it's online."
    7:15:03 PM    comment []


    The Future of Free Weather Data on the Internet [Slashdot] Please follow this link and read about the question of whether the NOAA should subsidize business by making their information not freely available to all. There's a link in the article header for you to submit your own comment. Also, take a look here where the NOAA is explaining the issue and seeking comments.

    11:29:43 AM    comment []

    Tomalak's Realm links to InfoWorld: Experts agree on method, not scope of IIS attacks. "We don't have significant reports of Web sites compromised or of people sending us examples of the new Trojans," he said. "I'd rate this a low risk if you're patched and a medium risk if you're not." Still, other security companies reported widespread infections.

    Three exploits took place at once: the IIS 5.0 servers had an SSL flaw (patched in MS04-011) that allowed them to be infected. The Windows PCs had two flaws: an MHTML handling problem in Outlook Express and IE (also patched, in MS04-013) and a cross-site scripting exploit identified last week that remains unpatched.

    If you must use IE (for example, I can't get to the Microsoft KnowledgeBase without it), make sure to do the following:
    1. Set your IE security level to high (Tools, Options, Security: Select 'High' from the drop-down and then 'Reset' - you'll want to note your previous settings and record them somewhere in case you're having problems browsing), and
    2. Make sure your virus scanners up to date. Even though I had upgraded to NAV 2004 on Friday and updated to the most recent files then, I download two updates this morning (Sunday) with 1.2Mb+ of new stuff in them.

    6:07:42 AM    comment []

    New York Times: NYT HomePage reports As Doctors Write Prescriptions, Drug Company Writes a Check. "An investigation has shed light on the system of financial lures that drug companies use to persuade doctors to favor their products."  By Gardiner Harris.

    In many ways, the investigations are a response to the evolution of the pharmaceutical business, which has grown in the last quarter-century from a small group of companies peddling a few antibiotics and antianxiety remedies to a $400 billion bemoth that is among the most profitable industries on earth... Offering treatments for almost any affliction and facing competition in which each percentage point of market share can represent tens of millions of dollars, most drug makers now spend twice as much marketing medicines as they do researching them.

    This sounds like a market out of control. The arangements between the manufacturers and distributors (doctors) leave the patient worried about getting an informed an impartial decision, while the patients are left ignorant of the economics of the arrangement, both between manufacturer and doctor, and in what their insurance ends up paying. This is capitalism with a fatal flaw: deals go on in the back room that the players aren't aware of. When the system is made transparent, products can compete far more fairly.


    5:58:41 AM    comment []

    © Copyright 2006 Ted Roche.   

    Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

      

     

    June 2004
    Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
        1 2 3 4 5
    6 7 8 9 10 11 12
    13 14 15 16 17 18 19
    20 21 22 23 24 25 26
    27 28 29 30      
    May   Jul


    Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website.

    Subscribe to "Ted's Radio Weblog" in Radio UserLand.

    Click to see the XML version of this web page.

    Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.
    Blogroll