Discussions

I didn't do it!

Sympathy for Our Wendy. She's the author of a piece she didn't write - and wouldn't, either!

Is that a robot in your pocket, or...?

Here's a little poem which illustrates why it is an elephant:
  
    So oft in theologic wars,
    The disputants, I ween,
    Rail on in utter ignorance
    Of what each other mean,
    And prate about an Elephant
    Not one of them has seen![4]

Edited by author 07-28-2006 12:57 PM

Into the lobby together!

It was even more of a surprise when occasional contributor, Kieren McCarthy, also announced he was standing. And no, the Editor is NOT standing...

Tags: ICANN, ICANN Board, Wendy Grossman, net.wars, Kieren McCarthy

Into the lobby!

It was rather a surprise when Wendy announced that she was going for one of the seven vacant slots on the ICANN board...

Edited by author 07-21-2006 09:36 AM
I think that's right. Take Miles Kington whose humour column has amazed us for years in The Independent. Is that journalism?

By definition, most would say, "yes, because it is part of a daily paper." Ten years ago, we'd have accepted that.

G

I think the differences are ones of action, not of location. I can be a journalist, provide incisive comment and keep a diary all in the one location, but it's the location that gets referred to as a blog (or a journal, or a homepage or a website).

I write. On some days I write about current events. Other days I post links to things I find amusing. Sometimes I let people know what I'm up to. Frequently I do all of these on the same day.

The labels, I think, apply to individual pieces of writing, which in the past would have appeared in different places, organised by type. On the internet they tend to be organised by person, and that's going to take some gettting used to.

Journalism vs blogging...

I think there are important distinctions between journalism (which does not have to include blogging) and real blogging (which doesn't have to exclude journalism) and simply diary keeping.

But the distinction is vague. After all, the keeping of a journal, or diary, was what journal-ism was...

Tags: net.wars, Wendy Grossman, blogs, Free Alaa </p>

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Fully Updated Beyond All Repair

Remember the "regulatory powers" plan (still going through Parliament in the UK) which would allow the Minister to retrospectively "correct" a bug in a Law without bothering the House of Commons? Well, how would you like a technology which automatically updated the Internet to match?

I did this to me?

Of course we want to catch criminals. So we tape their phones.
Then we find that our own phones are tapped...

I think the whole nudity taboo is deeply corrupt. But it's also a given; it is like that. So if there is a problem about being perceived as a "purveyor of nudity" (and there can be) the question is more to do with how effective the response is.

Frankly, I can't see that the Six Apart response is rational. I mean, I really, really doubt that LiveJournal will become a haven for free porn purveyors just because images of mammary glands are permitted. Equally, I think MySpace would be idiotic to yield to pressure to ban entries from known pornsters.

But I bet both of them will persist with their policies.

One has to question the faith of individuals decrying "They banned Jesus" when the images of Jesus were intentionally used knowing that they violated current policies and reported to Livejournal in order to test the abuse team.