...in playing games with comments?

Wasn't a good idea the first time, still isn't.

(LATER:  Patterico's post at Hot Air makes the chronology clearer.)

Via: LGF

Previously: Well, this will certainly help their credibility

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 04:55:42 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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What to do when you have over 3,500 books and can't find the one you're looking for...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 04:08:28 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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As the radio industry undergoes yet another round of layoffs, Richard Factor takes us back to a time when things were quite different:

I was in a union long ago. It was NABET, the union for the people who operate the equipment at major market broadcast stations. Part of my job was to sit opposite the "talent," the deejays, newscasters, etc., whose voices went out over the air. I was responsible for turning the microphone on and off on cue, playing music recordings and commercials, editing news tapes, and interacting with all the technical equipment necessary to broadcast a program... WABC was an important "flagship" and "clear channel" station that ran 24/7 and there were quite a number of NABET "brothers" employed— thirty two is a number that just popped into my mind. Likewise, the talent union, AFTRA, represented a large number of employees. Seven full-time deejays, a handful of part-timers, newscasters, etc...

The AFTRA guys had their territory, but they would no sooner press the start button on a tape recorder than they would curse on the air... And when we NABET guys turned the microphone on, we turned our mouths off, not just to prevent cursing, but because only AFTRA was allowed to vocalize.  Of course there were other employees. Managers, secretaries, directors and schedulers of one sort or another. Together, union and non-union, we managed to keep this small but very successful division of a very large and very successful corporation on the air and raking in money for what we now call "the stakeholders."

But there was an issue, and it needed resolution.

Broadcasting is a thirsty business. If you talk for hours a day, you need to take sips of water frequently. So, on the AFTRA side of the broadcast console, there was a water pitcher for this purpose... Needed was a way to keep the water pitcher enabled for its critical task.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Radio at 22:15:41 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Lileks ponders a mystery:

the face is wrong. The face in the cartoon is from something else. I know that guy.

But from where?

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 17:22:01 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Read the proposed law. It seems obvious. Sure looks like they've been bought:

* Any computer or network hardware used to "facilitate" a copyright crime could be seized by the Justice Department and auctioned off. The proceeds would be funneled to the agency's budget. The process is called civil asset forfeiture, and typically the owner does not need to be found guilty of a crime for his property to be taken.

Probably the most extensive part of the PRO IP Act is its creation of a new federal bureaucracy called the White House Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative, or WHIPER.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 18:11:37 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Call to action for shareholders at Music 2.0:

For charity’s sake, let’s just grant the music label bosses a leave of their senses in 1999 BUT then over a sustained period of at least 8 years , they still haven’t got it - not one out of the sorry parade of major label CEOs...
...if all the budget and energy is being spent protecting their turf... - instead of finding solutions to facilitate this shift to digital - then the obvious suggestion as the first step in this transition is for the Luddite label chiefs to be fired as they have totally lost the plot...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 05:54:55 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Via Daily Pundit, Time's Mark Halperin continues the push:

If Huckabee wins Iowa, then it is easy to imagine Romney losing New Hampshire — which means McCain could win New Hampshire. At which point, the three men who looked most likely to be the GOP nominee only six weeks ago (Romney, Giuliani, and Thompson), would be 0-2 in the first-in-the-nation contests. At which point, we would have have more of a wide-open situation than we have now, which is saying something.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 04:13:39 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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The problem with a report like this is, it's no longer possible to reject it out of hand.  There's more than a suspicion that it might be true.

Tony Palmer, who has won more than 40 awards including Baftas, Emmys and, uniquely, the Prix Italia twice, criticised the director-general after the BBC turned down a documentary of his. The film, about English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, has been produced by Five instead.

Palmer said he received an extraordinary rejection letter from a BBC commissioning editor explaining that, 'having looked at our own activity via the lens of find, play & share', it had been decided the film did not fit with 'the new vision for [BBC] Vision'.

Bizarrely, Palmer said, the letter concluded: 'But good luck with the project, and do let me know if Mr. V. Williams has an important premiere in the future as this findability might allow us to reconsider.'
 -- David Smith and Mary Riddell, The Observer

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 02:30:47 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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A rail buff explains at buzz.mn:

It has always bothered me that the Polar Express is pulled by a steam engine. Santa, being one of the earliest tech junkies, dieselised all trains in and out of the Pole in 1939. The suppiles have to come from somewhere, you know, and they have to get to the pole in some manner. The Polar Express of the era protarayed in the movie shouls have been puled by an A-B-B-A set of General Motors Electro Motive Division F-7 locomotives.

If you want to see what the current diesels on that line look like, go to the Canadian Pacific website, and look up the Holiday Train...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 02:00:17 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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The media's sudden interest in the Mike Huckabee candidacy has dismayed a number of conservative commentators^[1].  All that media attention lends an air of inevatiblity to his nomination, despite the fact that the process hasn't even passed the Iowa caucuses yet.  Are we getting an accurate picture?  What's actually going on here?

Republicans need to keep in mind that Huckabee (or any other "religious" candidate, for that matter) is the kind of candidate that the media believes Republicans would nominate. What's more, he is also the kind of candidate that the media would like Republicans to nominate. But neither of these qualities makes him the kind of candidate that Republicans (necessarily) should nominate.

more...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 21:58:48 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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