Disqus - Latest Comments for Scott Carpenter

Re: What do you think of this ad? (Scripting News)

Scott Carpenter — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:15:27 -0000

Typically dumb commercial. I can't bring myself to analyze any more in depth than that. Thank god for TiVo and freedom from this kind of tyranny. Anyway, Oat Cluster Cheerios is the way to go.

Re: Bathtime in Clerkenwell (Scripting News)

Scott Carpenter — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:10:39 -0000

Just awesome. Thank you so much.

Re: Who Can Film Video Clips at a Pro Football Stadium?

Scott Carpenter — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 16:56:07 -0000

Ah, a subject of interest to me since lately the area I live in, Hennepin County, Minnesota, is gearing up to "tax and spend" to build stadiums for our professional baseball and football teams.

The Twins already have gotten approval for their stadium in Minneapolis, having circumvented a law that is supposed to require a referendum on tax hikes for projects like this. The Vikings I'm sure will get their's next year.

So now you've just given me something more to be annoyed at when the MLB and NFL inevitably try milking their monopolies. We're paying for these toys but they derive most of the benefits. (I know, we can discuss how much the city benefits, but I would have liked to allow the people to decide on this one. I think we'll get to vote on a tax increase for transportation spending soon, which I think would have a good chance of passing. So nice that we're allowed to vote on things that people will approve. Yes, I'm bitter.)

Aside from my personal annoyance at not getting to vote against paying for stadiums, good comments above on where this is leading. People need to start seeing the importance of having a free culture. It might sound unrealistically science fictionish now to talk about cameras that can't take pictures of certain physical objects, but that day might arrive if things go badly for freedom.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Remember $80 Movies?

Scott Carpenter — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 15:31:05 -0000

I think price the songs even lower yet and you'd see people treating them more disposably. At a quarter, people might not bother keeping track of their songs as closely, and the music industry might see multiple sales to the same person.

Of course, the RIAA would ultimately like a solution where you pay every time you listen, but I'm talking about an outright sale without DRM.

I suppose there's a chance that if someone lost a song they'd just copy it for free the next time, reasoning that they already paid for it, but if music was cheap and easy to get legally, I don't think the illegal file-sharing networks would be so robust for providing a replacement. It's a lot of work to get free music today, what with the searching and the verifying of quality and the labelling and all.

Re: Alas, a Sleazy Decision

Scott Carpenter — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 15:44:58 -0000

I just ran in to a discussion about this in an SEO* forum. Many people are angry at Google for penalizing paid links. A common rant is that there were paid links before Google, there are still paid links, and there will always be paid links, and that it's somehow hypocritical for Google to penalize them when they are a big advertising company themselves. As if Google is mucking things up by trying to change the rules and enforce some kind of onerous restriction on how web sites link and do business.

But it seems that Google became so big so fast by providing better results, and better results includes giving users relevant pages that are influenced more by "votes of confidence" as mentioned above. If the old way was working so great, there wouldn't have been as much opportunity for an upstart like Google. It makes sense that they should continue trying to provide better results by avoiding shady manipulations whether paid or not.

I think paid links and other kinds of sponsorship are fine as long as people mark advertising/sponsorship links and use available mechanisms (the "nofollow" anchor attribute, as used in blogs like this to nullify links from commenters) to advise search engines that these links are not a vote of confidence. Then we can more easily enjoy relevant search results and also the benefits of advertising. This still isn't going to make the people happy who want to buy better search engine results, but these are often the same people who want all searches to lead to them, no matter what the relevance.

(*Search Engine Optimization, for those that may not have run in to the acronym. I'm not a huge SEO guy although I'm interested in that area. Don't want to assume everyone knows or cares about it.)

Re: GPL v.3 - I Care Because Markets Care

Scott Carpenter — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 21:56:36 -0000

I think many of the people who are so concerned about GPLv3 today would have laughed at v2 when it first came out, if they had heard of it. It's funny how seriously it is taken now, given how absurd its terms are.

Maybe it has come such a long way because the market can't escape its irresistible logic, that we're better off if information and knowledge are shared freely.

It could be that a lot of people are annoyed because they don't understand why it works, or they haven't been able to co-opt it successfully so far. They're afraid that GPLv3 might close some loopholes.

And for those that really think GPLv3 is a loser, then what's the worry? That enterprise has so much invested now and a lot of money is on the line? That investment and value was built on the original principles of v2 and the goals of the FSF, which are still at work here.

Crosbie is right -- copyrights and patents (software patents, at least) have no place in the digital world, and this will be self-evident some day.

Re: A Few Thoughts on ICANN’s Rejection of “.xxx” TLD

Scott Carpenter — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 12:47:43 -0000

I'm most persuaded by Seth Finkelstein's argument that the whole thing is just a boondoggle for the xxx registrar as a good reason not to allow this domain.

Re: Stepping on the Toes of Giants

Scott Carpenter — Mon, 07 May 2007 23:37:57 -0000

Honeypot. Yes. When I first discovered this site through links from various places to Tim's posts, I thought it was quite tasty. I gradually learned of this strange web between TLF and PFF/IPCentral and it has spoiled the flavor a bit.

I still enjoy many posts by Tim, and am always happy to see contributions from Crosbie, Enigma, and others. In this case, thank you for your interstitial observation, Crosbie.

Re: A Brief Note on Ad Hominem Attacks on the TLF

Scott Carpenter — Tue, 08 May 2007 13:09:37 -0000

I think people are a little careless with the ad hominem label, and as Enigma has pointed out, it doesn't seem to get leveled at others who make them here. (I'm thinking in particular of a certain red-baiting commenter.)

I'm not sure how my comment qualified as ad hominem. I thought Crosbie was just being silly and having fun with the association between this site and some others, and I just picked up on that. So flame me for goofing off. I enjoy discussions here on positions I agree with and disagree with. I don't seriously think this is a honeypot site or there is some kind of control conspiracy involved, but there's no doubt a relationship between this site and the others, and I think it's fair game for speculation, tongue-in-cheek or otherwise.

Re: Me on Japan’s Google Killer at Techdirt

Scott Carpenter — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:52:52 -0000

Congratulations, Tim. I look forward to reading your posts there. Since I'm not subscribed here anymore I miss a lot of your entries. I noticed that post the other day on techdirt and suspected it might be you, but didn't look further. (There are all these Tim Lees running around, after all.)

Re: Introducing, EdinburghPets.com - a pet health center in Brooklyn Park

Scott Carpenter — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:21:00 -0000

Looks great here on Firefox 3 in Ubuntu 8.10. I'm Lisa's brother -- I was very happy to see you used Drupal and that you take so much care to make your sites look good across browsers and platforms. I see it isn't completely valid XHTML on the front page, but looks like fairly minor infractions. :-)

Re: Introducing, EdinburghPets.com - a pet health center in Brooklyn Park

Scott Carpenter — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:52:55 -0000

Yeah -- I've decided to compromise myself on XHTML validation by using the embed tag for YouTube so videos will show up properly in Firefox and in Google Reader, so I know how it is.

Once more: great job -- the site is very impressive!