The US Geological Service has reported a large (magnitude 6.4) and shallow (estimated depth 10km) earthquake off the coast of Kyushu, Japan. ABC news is reporting that Tsunami warnings have been issued.
Update: ABC News is now reporting one dead and 400 injured, but no tsunami.
Thanks to those nice folks at Planet Linux Australia for adding my blog to the many that they aggregate there.
Nice work guys. Keep the penguin flying! 🙂
You’ve probably seen this yourself already if you’re running a blog yourself, but the referral spammers are now using referrer URLs that don’t have any DNS records yet, I presume because they think that people can’t check them out first to see if they’re a spammer or not.
Of course, it’s fairly obvious because how on earth do you get a referral from a site that doesn’t exist! They go *plonk* here as soon as I spot them..
AOL have revised their Terms of Service to replace that wording that had everyone in such a kerfuffle, and it’s a lot better.
They’ve replaced the Orwellian "You waive any right to privacy" section with a much more reassuring statement, quoted below:
As explained in detail in the AIM Privacy Policy, AOL does not read your private online communications when you use any of the communication tools on AIM Products. If, however, you use these tools to post Content or other information to public areas on AIM Products (for example, in chat rooms or online message boards), other online users will have access to this information and Content.
Their privacy statement referred to above says (amongst other things):
AOL does not read your private online communications when you use any of the communication tools offered as AIM Products. If, however, you use these tools to disclose information about yourself publicly (for example, in chat rooms or online message boards made available by AIM), other online users may obtain access to any information you provide.
So well done to AOL for clarifying this so quickly, but it’s a shame it happened in the first place.
They do still claim that if you post to a public area then you are allowing them full licensing rights, viz:
You or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to public areas of any AIM Product. However, by submitting or posting Content to public areas of AIM Products (for example, posting a message on a message board or submitting your picture for the “Rate-A-Buddy” feature), you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium.
But that’s easily fixed by not posting to them in the first place!
OK – given that most of the spam referrals talk about "Online Poker", there seems to be a plot about to boost the Wikipedia page by Googlebombing so that those who Google search for things like "Play Online Poker" get the Wikipedia page on playing poker online instead.
Seeing as I get hit by this referral spam a lot, and nobody can see my referral logs anyway, I’m happy to contribute to this!
Here’s an interesting story from the BBC about a BBC Journalist, Sonia Mathur, who is asking for help about why Welsh is similar to Hindi.
This was sent to me (along with the comment of “perhaps this explains why you like curry so much!”) by a friend at work who speaks Hindi and we had a fun time comparing the numbers from one to ten in Welsh and Hindi. Sadly a very quick attempt to find some other words that were similar was not so productive.
There’s an interesting family tree of languages at one of the webpages for the BBC’s "Story of Welsh" series (which I’ve not seen, must see if I can get it on DVD)..
Well, we all know that if you’re not using encryption then it’s a fairly trivial task to capture what someone sends in an email, in an instant message or through a webpage.
However, AOL have recently changed their Terms of “Service” to explicitly state that they are free to record and re-use anything you send via AIM, and that by using their service you are granting them (and anyone they feel like) a world wide license for anything you type with AIM. The text of the relevant section Content You Post says:
Although you or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to any AIM Product, AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating this Content. In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses.
I’ve highlighted in bold the most chilling sections. In case you didn’t spot it, they say really did say:
You waive any right to privacy.
Not nice..
Jabber – The Open Alternative
If you’ve been using AIM and are feeling a little unhappy about all of this, then I suggest that you take a long hard look at using Jabber instead. There are plenty of clients available for practicaly any operating system and plenty of open servers around the world, and you’ll probably want to pick the one closest to you.
The New York Times is reporting that many US government made “news” segments are getting rebroadcast without proper attribution across US news networks. They say:
To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The “reporter” covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department’s office of communications.
Of course Public Information Films have been around for a long time and nothing particularly wrong with them being made in the first place. The problem is when they are used as a substitute for real news reporting and there is nothing to say where it really came from.
As the NYT says, this is a situation where everyone (except the viewing public) benefits:
Local affiliates are spared the expense of digging up original material. Public relations firms secure government contracts worth millions of dollars. The major networks, which help distribute the releases, collect fees from the government agencies that produce segments and the affiliates that show them. The administration, meanwhile, gets out an unfiltered message, delivered in the guise of traditional reporting.
Interestingly the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has handed down a number of decisions describing these as covert propaganda. For example, this is part of what they said regarding some US Office of National Drug Control Policy films:
For the purposes of this opinion, we examined eight VNRs seven that you provided as part of your request, and one more that ONDCP provided to us. Seven of the eight VNRs include prepackaged news stories. As explained below, we conclude that the prepackaged news stories in these VNRs constitute covert propaganda and violated the publicity or propaganda prohibition because ONDCP did not identify itself to the viewing audience as the producer and distributor of these prepackaged news stories.
So, even though it would be better if the news programs identified the segments they showed properly, it doesn’t let the agencies off the hook because they don’t identify themselves in the segment.
If you’re interested in what else the GAO has to say about this then here’s a ready made search.
Got an email from Rich Boakes today saying:
I can’t bear the white box around your masthead any more. See attached !
Well, the attached is now the new masthead – thanks Rich!
My good friend Alec Muffett has blogged an excellent idea, the UK National Loyalty Card.
His thesis is that at present there are no tangible rewards for being good. However, if the government introduced a national loyalty card and said that you got points for being good and that you could redeem them for various nice things then (a) almost everyone would want them and (b) you provide a carrot to go with the stick.
It’s an interesting idea, and I’ve had an idea of extending it. Alec mentions:
These Citizenship Points could then be redeemed for positive benefits: […] or, at the extreme end, honours, peerages […]
Now, how about replacing the House of Lords with a group of 200 people who have the highest Citizenship Points from such a card ? Maybe a randomly drawn 200 from the top 500 ?
Then, if people are rewarded for being nice (not just toeing the line) then you could end up with a fairly decent bunch of folks overlooking legislation.
Of course, I’m making a lot of assumptions here, but then again it makes more sense to me than having people in power because their great^5 grandfather saved the king at the battle of somewhere-obscure.