Needless to say, a lot of anonymous people are leaving comments.  Contrary to the way these events usually play out, there is actually quite a bit of discussion going, including a comment by a guy who uses the name Nihilator:

[L]et me note one thing that I think you and others are struggling with: to seek to explain or understand seemingly inexplicable behavior is NOT the same thing as forgiving or excusing that behavior.

Nihilator then goes on to explain his sentiments on things, including this bit:

I think we’ve gone too far in the direction of excusing bad behavior on grounds that the bad actor was the “product of a bad environment” and/or a “victim” of negative social influences. After all, EVERYBODY is, in a sense, the “product of their environment,” and EVERYBODY faces difficulties and hardships. However, we still have free will, we still have personal responsibility.

It’s amusing (in a very morbid way), and amazing to see a blog post of this type result in actual discussion, as opposed to degenerating rapidly into flames, name calling, and hate comments.

To view, or participate in the ongoing discussion, see the blog entry in question, or the entire blog.  You can find my contribution to the comments under the name “fyre”.

Technorati Tags: Kevin Underwood, Kevin Ray Underwood, Jamie Rose Bolin, Jamie Bolin Share This ]]> http://www.fyreplace.com/2006/04/18/blogger-kills-child-spawns-discussion/feed/ http://www.fyreplace.com/2006/03/29/google-google-blog-snafu/ http://www.fyreplace.com/2006/03/29/google-google-blog-snafu/#comments Thu, 30 Mar 2006 04:30:28 +0000 Fyre http://www.fyreplace.com/?p=431 I’m sure most of you have heard of the Official Google Blog SNAFU.  On the 27th, the Google Blog went offline for a while.  Google reported the following, once they brought it back online:

The Google Blog was unavailable for a short time tonight. We quickly learned from our initial investigation that there was no systemwide vulnerability for Blogger. We’ll let you know more about what did happen once we finish looking into it.

The truly amusing thing is the update to that post:

Update: We’ve determined the cause of tonight’s outage. The blog was mistakenly deleted by us (d’oh!) which allowed the blog address to be temporarily claimed by another user. This was not a hack, and nobody guessed our password. Our bad.

Oh that’s cute.  Just delete your own blog, Google.

That “other user” that temporarily claimed the blog address was nice enough to give it back to Google.  See, there’s a unique thing in Blogger.  The <em>instant</em> you delete your blog, your .blogspot.com sub domain becomes available to anyone who wants it.  Oh, if you move from hosting at blogspot.com, and go to using Blogger’s FTP publishing, then your blogspot.com domain disappears and it available again, too.  heh.

I just find it amusing that Google would screw up like that.  I wonder how long it took them to re-load everything from the database backups, and how much they actually lost.

Technorati Tags: google, google blog, official google blog, google hacked Share This ]]> http://www.fyreplace.com/2006/03/29/google-google-blog-snafu/feed/ http://www.fyreplace.com/2006/03/20/video-the-future-of-the-internet/ http://www.fyreplace.com/2006/03/20/video-the-future-of-the-internet/#comments Mon, 20 Mar 2006 18:41:34 +0000 Fyre http://www.fyreplace.com/?p=415 The year is 2015, and The Museum of Media History has released a ten minute video presentation detailing the history of the current media style.

Beginning with the invention of the Word Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee in the 1980’s, and culminating in the final face-off betwen Google and Microsoft, the joining of forces between Google and Amazon (to create GoogleZon), and a landmark case heard by the supreme court that - as an eventuality - forces The New York Times to go off line and become solely a print-only media unit, once again, this video shows not only what could happen, but actually provides a very logical possbility of what will happen
in the coming years, as media seeks to re-shape and re-define itsself, and companies like Google and Amazon spend more and more processing time exploring the social make-up and demographics of each individual user’s life and society.

You can watch the ground-breaking video in its entirity at The Blog Herald.

The first list is availible here, for Feb 25th, 2006.  It reads like a Who’s Who of A-List Bloggers (with a couple of B-Listers thrown in for good measure).

The second list, for March 4th appears to be a continuation of that list, with a few new folks.

The Blog 50 is trying to make it seem as if anyone can make it on the the list.  Their "hype" paragraph states:

As of now, there is no A-List. There is no B-List. There is only The Blog 50, and only The Blog 50 matters. Tell your friends. Tell your loved ones. Tell Dave Winer, so he can tell everyone else that he invented it. But, for Peter Rojas sake, tell someone — and keep checking back, because you never know when you’ll make The 50.

I seriously doubt that I will ever make the top 50, based off of their criterion:

We don’t really take things too seriously at The Blog 50. The list, however, isn’t just thrown together haphazardly. There’s a lot of factors that go into any certain blogger placing on the list, and we actually do keep track of these factors and place people accordingly. Quality of writing, audience influence, general coolness, and the ability to write engaging material on a long-term basis are all reasons why someone would or wouldn’t make the list.

The emphasis in the above quote was mine.  The two italicized factors are precisely the ones that will prohibit anyone below a "C-list" status (and likely most C-listers) from getting into the Blog 50.  Why?  Simple.  If audience influence counts for a decent portion of the decision, then those with smaller audiences (it only takes 50 daily unique (on average) to qualify as a C-lister), will not stand a chance.  Audience influence, to me, means one of the following:

1. How large is the audience? - The larger the audience, the more likely they are to jabber on about whatever it is you’re discussing.  For me?  I’m averaging 58 unique/day.  Yeah, my traffic sucks, and I’ve always known this.
2. WHO is the audience?  - Who does your audience consist of?  What influential people read your blog on a daily basis?  How many A or B list bloggers read and participate on your blog?  For me?  One.  Kent Newsome.  Oh, sure, on occasion I’ve had Darren Rowse and Steve Reubel make a comment… but I sincerely doubt they read the blog, daily.

The thing that most amuses me?  The "running commentary on the blogosphere" they promise:

We also maintain a running commentary on the blogosphere. Sure, there are several sites dedicated to this type of thing, but they take themselves far too seriously. We love blogging, and we love people who try and make blogging fun. Like Tara Hunt. Tara is fun. Dave Winer, however, is not fun. These are the types of things we love discussing amongst ourselves, so we figured we’d open up the conversation to the rest of the world and let you discuss it with us.

Let’s take a look at three pages in their blog, and see who they talk about…

• Jason Calcanis (Weblogs, Inc.  A-lister, extraordinaire)
• Michael Arrington (TechCrunch.  A-lister)
• Self-promotion
• One Million Blogs (a million dollar homepage type of thing, for blogs)
• Pulse Media Network (a weekly round-up for their network)
• Several A and B list bloggers, and their current BlogShares pricing.
• Bill Gates, Chris Messina, Michael Arrington (again), and Tara Hunt
• Off-topic post
• God (yes, God now has a blog, and if God’s not an A-lister, yet, she will be, soon)
• Nick from Valleywag
• Self-Promotion
• Engadget

They go on like that.  Their "running commentary on the blogosphere" consists of posts about various A listers, celebrities (and their blogs), general tech things that center (most often) around tech-related blogs, a couple of off-topic posts, and self-promotion posts.

Yep.  That’s a really big cross-section of the blogosphere, isn’t it?  Even the freaking B listers aren’t getting much love from The Blog 50.  Then again, they don’t get love from any other Blogosphere blog… Why should this one be any different?  (I’m not even worried about C-listers.  No one writes about us… Well, at least, no blogosphere blogs.)

So what are we left with, when we examine The Blog 50?  Yet another A-list listing ranking system that will discuss the same old things until we get tired of reading them.  Do we really need another one of these?

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Who the hell cares?  Honestly.  The blogosphere, lately - at least, amongst the geeks and techies - sounds like a bunch of six year olds on the playground.  Get over yourselves, people.

Look, it works like this…  You get a bunch of intelligent, opinionated people into a confined space (yes, the blogosphere is a confined space… think about it), and there will be disagreements, arguments, fights, even threats with small thermonuclear devices (and now the Office of Homeland Security is reading my blog, daily).  It’s a given fact.  How do we get around this?  We get over ourselves, and learn that disagreement is perfectly fine, provided we present our opinions in at least a slightly dignified manner, instead of threatening to smash an egg on Annie’s face at recess.

Personally, I agree with Kent Newsome on this:

I think all this fighting over who knows more about tech, or whose nerd camp is better or whose IQ is only 145 is silly- and I’m a geek. I can’t imagine how it looks to a regular person who happens by.

…First off, if a 145 IQ is required to be a part of the tech-blogging elite, then what the hell am I doing even trying?  I pulled a 120-something on my verbal IQ, but my performance sucks.  Means I’m somewhere above average, but well below genius, on the mean.

Secondly, PTTTHHHHHBBBBTTTTTT!!!

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