RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech - EP55

RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech
Episode 55 - download now - subscribe now - review us on iTunes!

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Due to a real big screw up on my part, yesterday's show notes are irretrievably lost. Here, however, are today's show notes:

George Bush has flip-flopped on the environment, and has decided to create a bumbling government effort to stop global warming, the same day that NASA proclaims it's a stupid idea:

Bush's 'new climate strategy'
Today's headlines are full of the news that President Bush is &; quot;unveiling a new climate strategy.&; quot; If your immediate reaction is cynicism, well ... looks like you learned something over the last seven years. Let's look a little closer....
NASA's Top Official Questions Global Warming

NASA administrator Michael Griffin continues to draw the ire of preeminent climate scientists inside and outside of NASA, as well as members of Congress, after apparently downplaying the need to combat global warming.

In an interview broadcast yesterday on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" program, Griffin was asked by NPR's Steve Inskeep whether he is concerned about global warming.

"I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists," Griffin told Inskeep. "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with."

"To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change," Griffin said. "I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."

Griffin's comments immediately drew stunned reaction from James Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

In other interesting political news, we nominated another guy to the World Bank chief slot:

US nominates new World Bank chief
US President George W Bush has nominated Robert Zoellick, former deputy secretary of state, to be president of the World Bank. — His nomination will be considered by the World Bank's 24-member board of governors, although the US nomination has always been accepted in the past.

Turning to tech news, are we seeing a repeat of the Digg revolt, or is this just a bunch of whiny kids posting their angst-ridden comments?:

Mass Deletion Leads To LiveJournal Revolt
Green Monkey writes "LiveJournal has been suspending accounts suspected of promoting incest — except that many of them were communities for survivors of abuse and people discussing Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Even after being informed of the problem, LiveJournal apparently refuses to reinstate the banned accounts. LiveJournal's official news blog has filled up with hundreds of complaints protesting the decision, so we could have another Digg-style user rebellion brewing." Update: 05/31 11:50 GMT by KD : strredwolf writes to let us know that in their offical blog LiveJournal admits to botching the suspension, saying "We made a mistake and now we are going to try to fix it."

And in breaking news, technology gets better!:

Computers Outperform Humans at Recognizing Faces
seven of five writes "According to the recent Face Recognition Grand Challenge, The match up of face-recognition algorithms showed that machine recognition of human individuals has improved tenfold since 2002 and a hundredfold since 1995. 'Among other advantages, 3-D facial recognition identifies individuals by exploiting distinctive features of a human face's surface--for instance, the curves of the eye sockets, nose, and chin, which are where tissue and bone are most apparent and which don't change over time. Furthermore, Phillips says, "changes in illumination have adversely affected face-recognition performance from still images. But the shape of a face isn't affected by changes in illumination." Hence, 3-D face recognition might even be used in near-dark conditions.'"

Oh, and follow this link for a marketing tool to help you promote your YouTube video content: http://mashable.com/2007/05/31/tellyadder/

Want to be part of the Rizzn-ite army? Indoctrination instructions here.

RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech EP 37

RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech
Episode 37 - download now - subscribe now - iTunes subscribe

• A member of the TechPodcast Network @ techpodcast.com. If it's Tech, it's here.
  
• Remember, if you're listening on the podcast recording, you can call into the show live if you tune in through TalkShoe.com at 2:30 PM EST every weekday.
• If you like the podcast (and you haven't already given us a rating), head over and do so, and don't forget to sign up for the discussion list.
• Other Podcast Plugs:
  
• TalkGirls comes on Tuesday nights. Check out the TalkGirls Podcast ... it's good times!
• Cotolo Chronicles: Frank is a good friend of the show, and an associate of the late great Wolfman Jack. Check out his podcast.
• NewsReal: Good friend to Art and I - has one of the best hours of news podcast each week.
  
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This was a PACKED episode... FULL of news. Art Lindsey is still on Medical Leave. See www.artlindsey.com for more information. On Monday, Bill Grady from You Are The Guest Podcast will be joining as co-host, and Derrick Vann, longtime personal friend, will be joining us on Tuesday. Do not fail to miss these shows, if you can. Hopefully, Art will be re-joining us next week soon.

But now, the news! The big talks today center around re-opening of merger talks between Microsoft and Yahoo!:

Massive: Microsoft, Yahoo Talk Merger
By Nicholas Carlson

Microsoft and Yahoo are talking at the merger table. And this time, Microsoft is said to be willing to pay the heavy price it would cost to acquire Silicon Valley's most successful Web portal. Some wonder whether that's wise.

According to unnamed sources cited by the New York Post, Microsoft broached the merger topic months ago and Yahoo quickly rejected the deal. A Yahoo spokeswoman told internetnews.com the company refused to comment on "rumors or speculation." Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment.

But since, a series of Google successes -- its launch of Web-based applications for small businesses, its outbidding of Microsoft for advertising firm DoubleClick and another quarter of spectacular financial results -- has Microsoft hot for Yahoo's Web presence once more.

ahoo's current market capitalization is $44.75 billion. In morning trading, Yahoo's share price rose five points, or 17 percent, to a near 52-week high of $33.23 per share.

Apparently, merger talks are just the cure for Yahoo after weak first-quarter financial results caused investors to bail on the company in mid-April. The problem then was that Yahoo did not exceed expectations for its new advertising platform, code-named Panama.

When reporting Yahoo's 2006 financial results, CFO Susan Decker said Yahoo did not expect Panama to positively impact its profits until the second quarter of 2007. But early reports of the advertising platform's success raised investor expectations. Despite positive reviews from Yahoo advertiser customers, however, those expectations were not met and the stock tanked. Until today's merger talks.

In other Yahoo! related news:

Yahoo Photos going dark as Flickr shines on (USA Today)

LOS ANGELES — At Yahoo, Web 2.0 has won one battle with stodgy old Web 1.0. — Yahoo is shutting down Yahoo Photos — for years, the No. 1 or No. 2 most-visited photo site on the Web. Its users will be directed to move their pictures to Yahoo's hot upstart, Flickr.

And on the flipside, two interesting Google-related stories:

Google Scholar Added to Google's Homepage
There's a new link to Google Scholar in the list of services from the "more" box. Google's search engines for scholarly papers was available on the homepage only if you visited Google from your school.

Google Scholar includes a big list of scientific publications and some of them aren't available in Google's main index. "Google Scholar covers peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and other scholarly literature from all broad areas of research. You'll find works from a wide variety of academic publishers and professional societies, as well as scholarly articles available across the web."

And the other:

YouTube Users Get Paid. Tomorrow.

On Friday, YouTube will begin revenue sharing with top users including LisaNova, renetto, HappySlip, smosh, and valsartdiary using the same system they’ve used for TV networks. They’ll also be sharing revenue with thousands of medium-sized content content creators like small production houses and universities.

These “top users” have been picked from the “most subscribed” list, and YouTube is spinning this as a way to put ordinary users on a par with professional content. I’m going to guess that this is partially related to the Viacom lawsuit, which alleges that YouTube is almost totally reliant on copyrighted professional content: just like the bizarrely late YouTube Video Awards 2006 (held in March 2007), this may be an attempt to highlight the importance of user generated content. (”Look, we make so much money from Renetto that we can pay him!”).

The top users were plucked from the “most subscribed” list, which may be a little worrying based on the fact that YouTube doesn’t really regulate these numbers. Even more worrying: they still haven’t fixed the bug that allows you to get more views by refreshing the page: when there’s money involved, that trick will be even more enticing (look at all the crappy videos on the Most Viewed list with very low ratings). Nonetheless, we now know that the YouTube rev share program is being tested on many more accounts that just the Afterworld trial we mentioned earlier.

More on the YT blog.

Embedded below: LisaNova, whose good looks almost make up for a lack of talent.

In more reasons to hate the RIAA news:

RIAA Drops Yet Another Case
Given just how many cases the RIAA has had to drop after it was pointed out that it's sued the wrong person, why isn't anyone questioning why the RIAA is allowed to file thousands of cases in a single shot when it's clearly not very careful about the process? The latest is that the RIAA has dropped a case after it was pointed out to the RIAA that the person being sued wasn't actually a subscriber to the ISP in question at the time of the observed file sharing. Oops. At some point, you would think that someone would point out that the RIAA appears to be abusing the legal system as its personal plaything in suing whoever it wants whenever it wants on whatever flimsy evidence it can find.

In EVEN CHEAPER laptop news:

India Hopes to Make $10 Laptops a Reality
sas-dot writes "We all know Nicholas Negroponte's $100 OLPC. India, which was a potential market, rejected it. India's Human Resources Development ministry's idea to make laptops at $10 is firmly taking shape with two designs already in and public sector undertaking Semiconductor Complex evincing interest to be a part of the project. So far, the cost of one laptop, after factoring in labor charges, is coming to $47 but the ministry feels the price will come down dramatically considering the fact that the demand would be for one million laptops."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is quite a big deal... lots of big deals in the news today:

AOL Slips to No. 3 on Internet
After more than a decade connecting more Americans to the Internet than any other company, AOL has given up its title as the leading Internet service provider, a reflection of changing consumer habits and its own strategic shift.

I'm interested to hear what Todd Cochrane will say about this:

THE END OF MILITARY BLOGGING
The most excellent Noah Shachtman of Wired's Danger Room has a great article with lots of milblogger reaction to the new OPSEC regulations that will end military blogging as we know it. Yes, that's right - the end of soldier blogging from the war zones.

In purely political news:

Bush vetoes troop withdrawal bill
WASHINGTON - President Bush vetoed legislation to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq Tuesday night in a historic showdown with Congress over whether the unpopular and costly war should end or escalate. — In only the second veto of his presidency …

Condi, and why it's legal for her, and not Pelosi:

Rice to Meet With Syrian Foreign Minister
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to meet with Syria's foreign minister here later today, United States officials said. The meeting would be the first diplomatic contact at such a high level between the two countries in years.

This story set me off:

Is Virtual Rape a Crime?
cyberianpan writes "Wired is carrying commentary on the story that Brussels police have begun an investigation into a citizen's allegations of rape in Second Life. For reasons of civil liberty & clarity we'd like to confine criminal law to physical offenses rather than thought crimes but already threats, menace & conspiracy count as crimes. Could we see a situation where our laws extend?"

Read mor of this story at Slashdot.

RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech - EP36

RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech
Episode 36 - download now - subscribe now - iTunes subscribe

• A member of the TechPodcast Network @ techpodcast.com. If it's Tech, it's here.
  
• Remember, if you're listening on the podcast recording, you can call into the show live if you tune in through TalkShoe.com at 2:30 PM EST every weekday.
• If you like the podcast (and you haven't already given us a rating), head over and do so, and don't forget to sign up for the discussion list.
• Other Podcast Plugs:
  
• TalkGirls comes on Tuesday nights. Check out the TalkGirls Podcast ... it's good times!
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We had a lot of news to cover today, and no co-host to slow me down. Make sure you tune in to Monday's show, when I'll be accompanied by Bill Grady of You Are the Guest Podcast. But now... the news! This from our ongoing coverage of the Vonage Crap....:

1. Vonage asks for a new trial
Last issue, I alluded to an upcoming Supreme Court case that might have an impact on the Vonage/Verizon appeal. Sure enough, the court on Monday handed down a ruling in KSR vs. Teleflex, finding that the combination of two commonly known elements into something obvious is not patentable. Vonage has seized on the ruling, asking an appellate court to throw out the verdict against it and order a new trial. Verizon, of course, is opposed. Vonage is already appealing its loss at trial; the appellate court has set a June 25 hearing on that appeal. Vonage wants the appeal to be put on hold pending the results of the new trial. If it loses that second trial, Vonage wants the existing appeals process to resume. Even though Vonage was convicted of infringing three patents, the courts are letting the company operate pretty much as normal while the appeals are being heard. If this gets any more complicated, they'll have to hand out copies of Dickens' Bleak House with the appellate briefs.

For more about the Supreme Court, Vonage, Verizon, and the rest of it:

- read this from Internet News
- check out this DailyTechRag report

I tried out Joost this morning. I wasn't incredibly impressed. I'll give it a fairer shake later this weekend and talk about it again on Monday. Meanwhile, Joost should be available for everyone. Want an invite? Anyone present at Friday's TalkCast will get one!.

Joost (almost) Launches
Updated: It won't be for another few days before anyone can join Joost, but the company has officially announced that it is launching commercially. Starting today, existing beta testers can now invite anyone to join Joost. Beta testers visit the "Invite Friends"

In "should-this-really-be-criminal" news:

Student Arrested for Writing Essay
mcgrew writes "The Chicago Tribune reports that an eighteen year old straight-A High School student was arrested for writing an essay that 'disturbed' his teacher. Even though no threats were made to a specific person, 18 year-old Allen Lee's English teacher convened a panel to discuss the work. As a result of that discussion, the police were called in. 'The youth's father said his son was not suspended or expelled but was forced to attend classes elsewhere for now. Today, Cary-Grove students rallied behind the arrested teen by organizing a petition drive to let him back in their school. They posted on walls quotes from the English teacher in which she had encouraged students to express their emotions through writing.'"

No one is really talking about this story, which is amazing considering this is probably the second largest e-currency provider for the American markets:

e-gold® Founder Denies Criminal Charges

In an interview with Kim Zetter of the Wired Blog Network, E-Gold owner Dr. Douglas Jackson stated this morning that the Federal indictments announced by the US Department of Justice last Friday are a "farce".

Associated Content first released the news of the indictments on Saturday in this news story.

Dr. Jackson, E-Gold, and the other owners were charged with:

1. conspiracy to launder monetary instruments,
2. conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business,
3. operating an unlicensed money transmitting business under federal law,
4. money transmission without a license under D.C. law.

According to Jackson, E-Gold is one of the good guys in this crime-fighting saga and its ensuing fiasco. Not only did they cooperate with law enforcement officials regarding suspicious E-Gold accounts, but they also developed software which effectively tracks criminals trying to launder money through E-Gold, and prevents use of the E-Gold system to aid and abet their criminal activities. They were waging their own war against the very things they have been accused of aiding: terrorism, child exploitation, and more.

This is a story that KenRadio has been talking about for a few days. I worked for 5Tribe Marketing as a consulting for more than a year, so I'm more than familiar with these numbers, and have been for a while:

Newspaper circulation continues to fall
Newspaper circulation continued to decline nationwide but many individual publications and a trade group countered with figures showing that the papers' audiences were growing online. Weekday circulation at 745 daily newspapers dropped 2.1% to 45.9 million, and Sunday circulation at 601 newspapers fell 3.1% to 48.1 million, according to the Newspaper Assn. of America. The figures compared the six-month period that ended March 31 with the same period a year earlier. The trade association sought to counter those figures by re- releasing recent research that showed use of newspaper websites increased 5.3%, to 59 million people, in the first quarter of 2007 compared with the same period a year ago. Newspaper owners are so intent on including the broader view of their total audience that they have helped persuade the organization that tracks newspaper performance — the Audit Bureau of Circulations — to incorporate online usage into its figures next year. The Los Angeles Times was like many of its big-city counterparts in continuing to experience circulation losses. The newspaper's daily circulation fell to an average of 815,723, a 4.2% decline, compared with the same period a year earlier. Its Sunday circulation dropped 4.7% to 1,173,000. The Times attributed much of the decline to the continued scaling back of programs that distributed free papers in schools and at hotels. Executives at the paper said they were encouraged that "individually paid" daily circulation — papers delivered at homes and sold at newsstands — increased fractionally to 779,256. The Times hit its print circulation highs in 1991, with more than 1.2 million copies of the paper sold each weekday and nearly 1.6 million on Sundays. The use of latimes.com increased 15%, to 65 million page views, in January over the year before. "Even as we are rapidly growing our online audience, it's clear that great print journalism still plays a big part in the 24/7 multimedia world our advertisers, readers and users want," Times Publisher David D. Hiller said in a statement. Other papers in Southern California suffered even sharper losses. Daily circulation of the San Diego Union-Tribune slumped 6.6% to 296,000. The Orange County Register fell 5.1% to 285,000, the Riverside Press-Enterprise was off 6.7% to 173,000 and the San Fernando Valley-based Daily News dropped 7.3% to 146,000. One of the biggest declines in the region was experienced by the Santa Barbara News-Press, where owner Wendy McCaw and some of her employees have been feuding. They have accused her of meddling in news decisions. News-Press circulation during the week dropped 9.5% to 38,000.

These are amazing statistics... look for similar numbers in America soon:

45% of Europeans watch TV online
A new study from Motorola has found that an amazing 45% of Europeans now watch television online. — The survey covering the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain found that the French lead Europe in terms of online television consumption …

The sociological backlash against positive Google press continues:

Google's Evil NDA
An anonymous reader writes "Google's motto is "Don't Be Evil" — but they sure have an evil non-disclosure agreement! In order to be considered for employment there, you must sign an agreement that forbids you to 'mention or imply the name of Google' in public ever again. Further, you can't tell anyone you interviewed there, or what they offered you, and you possibly sign away your rights to reverse-engineer any of Google's code, ever. And this NDA never expires. Luckily, someone has posted excerpts from the NDA before he signed it and had to say silent forever." At the bottom of the posting are links to a few other comments on the Web about Google's NDA, including a ValleyWag post that reproduces it in its entirety.

One word: Proxies.

Pandora To Shut Out Non-U.S. Users Thursday Evening

If you live outside of the U.S. and enjoy listening to customized radio stations on Pandora, brace yourself for some bad news. The site will be shutting you out starting Thursday evening. Registered users who access the service from outside the U.S. received a warning email yesterday letting them know that this will be happening.

Pandora operates under Section 114 of the DMCA, which gives them a clear process for paying rights holders in the U.S. There is no international equivalent of the DMCA, and so to operate legally in other countries, Pandora must sign deals with rights holders directly. That means separate deals with labels and publishers for each song, an extremely difficult and time consuming task.

Pandora has always made it clear on the site that it is for U.S. users only, and requires a U.S. zip code for registration. That didn’t stop many international users from registering anyway, using “90210″ or another famous zip code to get access to the service. Now, with IP-based filtering, users will be forced to go through proxy servers or other complicated mechanisms for getting to the music.

I spoke with CTO Tom Conrad this evening about the change. He says Pandora has been working on international rights deals for nearly two years now, and they hope to have enough deals done in the UK and Canada to launch in those countries soon. Other markets will take longer, he says.

The email sent to users is below.

This isn’t the only bad news recently for Pandora. Along with other Internet radio companies, they have also been fighting the RIAA over revisions to the fee structure they must pay for playing music online. The rates they pay are significantly more than satellite providers pay, and terrestrial radio stations pay nothing to play music. Two very brave congressmen, Representatives Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Donald Manzullo (R-IL), have proposed legislation that would require Internet radio startups to pay no more than satellite providers, which should allow many Internet radio startups to stay in business. Read more about the legislation on the Pandora blog and SaveNetRadio.

We’ve covered Pandora since their launch in the summer of 2005. Our coverage is here.

In "0wn3d" news:

Internet2 Knocked Out By Homeless Man?

The original purpose of the internet was supposed to be a network that the government could continue to use even after a nuclear attack. The whole point is that it's supposed to figure out ways to route around damage. However, when it came to Internet2, apparently designers didn't pay as much attention to that kind of stability. The news today is that a homeless man in Boston tossed a cigarette on a mattress, setting off a two-alarm fire that happened to knock out the Internet2 connection between New York and Boston. It's true that Internet2 is supposed to be experimenting with different methods of building network infrastructure, but you would think that redundancy would have been considered a feature worth keeping.

RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech - EP35

RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech
Episode 35 - download now - subscribe now - iTunes subscribe

• A member of the TechPodcast Network @ techpodcast.com. If it's Tech, it's here.
  
• Remember, if you're listening on the podcast recording, you can call into the show live if you tune in through TalkShoe.com at 2:30 PM EST every weekday.
• If you like the podcast (and you haven't already given us a rating), head over and do so, and don't forget to sign up for the discussion list.
• Other Podcast Plugs:
  
• TalkGirls comes on Tuesday nights. Check out the TalkGirls Podcast ... it's good times!
• Cotolo Chronicles: Frank is a good friend of the show, and an associate of the late great Wolfman Jack. Check out his podcast.
• NewsReal: Good friend to Art and I - has one of the best hours of news podcast each week.
  
• Sponsors:
  
• Try GoToMeeting for 45 days! Visit www.GoToMeeting.com/podcast to start your free trial today.
  
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This is a story that really cracks the vernier on Obama's plastic smile. Underneath all that shiny new unspoiled politician lies the heart of... just another backbiting politician:

The Battle to Control Obama's Myspace
By Micah L. Sifry, 05/01/2007 - 11:15pm
In November 2004, Joe Anthony, a paralegal living in Los Angeles, started a unofficial fan page for then-newly-elected Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) on MySpace.com. Inspired by Obama's keynote address at that summer's Democratic convention, Anthony had never been politically active before. "I was just blown away," he told me. He put time into the site every day, answering emails from people wanting to "friend" the page, pointing them to voter registration information, and, once Obama threw his hat into the ring, telling them where to find out more detailed positions taken by the candidate.

By the time of Obama's official campaign announcement in late January, Anthony's Obama profile--which had the valuable url of myspace.com/barackobama--already had more than 30,000 friends, well more than the other contenders. Over the following weeks, it continued to grow at a rapid pace, generating lots of headlines about Obama winning the "MySpaceurl has only about 12,000. And it's under new ownership. Joe Anthony, one of the super volunteers of the Connected Age, has lost control of the page he started to the professionals on Obama's staff.

How all this happened is a complicated tale that is still unfolding, and none of the parties involved--Anthony, the Obama online team, and the MySpace political operation--emerge from this story unscathed. Speaking on background, Obama campaign staffers are spreading word that Anthony just wanted a "big payday." Anthony in turn has posted a missive on his blog (that was originally sent to me as an email) accusing the Obama team of "bullying...[and] rotten and dishonest" behavior. However one parses those accusations (more below), the Obama campaign's reputation as the most net-savvy of 2008 has taken a big hit. And MySpace executives have been forced to take extraordinary action to resolve a dispute between two high-profile users of their invaluable site, one a passionate volunteer with a huge network of friends and the other a frontrunning presidential candidate who has helped make MySpace a new factor in the 2008 contest.

primary." Yesterday, the profile had just over 160,000 friends. Today, that This is more politics than tech, but it caught my attention, and I thought it deserved to be addressed:

Top Hamas official: Kill all Americans (Jerusalem Post)
Sheik Ahmad Bahr, acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, declared during a Friday sermon at a Sudan mosque that America and Israel will be annihilated and called upon Allah to kill Jews and Americans "to the very Last One."

In "Advancing-New-Media" news:

Give bloggers Capitol access

This is the first article in a weekly series, exclusively in The Hill, exploring the recommendations of the Sunlight Foundation’s Open House Project, which advocates online transparency in Congress.

Members of Congress are increasingly turning to bloggers as a way to communicate about public policy. Yet these citizen journalists who cover Congress lack what most mainstream reporters in Washington take for granted: access to the U.S. Capitol.

According to the Sunlight Foundation’s Open House Project, a collaborative and bipartisan effort to increase the House of Representatives’ online transparency, Congress can take several simple steps to improve transparency and foster a new spirit of openness. Giving bloggers credentials to cover Congress would be a groundbreaking way to shed light on the inner workings of government.

The debate over bloggers and online journalists on Capitol Hill isn’t a new one. In recent years, they’ve clashed with congressional press galleries as the Internet has grown in popularity and prominence.

And in what is probably the biggest tech/politics story of the day:

Digg Surrenders to Mob

To say what happened today on Digg was a “user revolt” is an understatement. The Digg team deleted a story that linked to the decryption key for HD DVDs after receiving a take down demand and all hell broke loose. More stories appeared and were deleted, and users posting the stories were suspended.

That just got the Digg community fired up, and soon the entire Digg home page was filled with stories containing the decryption key. The users had taken control of the site, and unless Digg went into wholesale deletion mode and suspended a large portion of their users, there was absolutely nothing they could do to stop it.

Digg CEO Jay Adelson responded on the Digg blog earlier this afternoon but it was clear he did not yet understand the chaos that was coming. The post only added fuel to the fire. Just now, co-founder Kevin Rose posted yet again on the Digg blog, effectively capitulating to the mob’s demands: He says

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Until today, it seems, even Digg didn’t fully understand the power of its community to determine what is “news.” I think the community made their point crystal clear.

Vive La Revolution.

RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech - EP34

RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech
Episode 34 - download now - subscribe now

• A member of the TechPodcast Network @ techpodcast.com. If it's Tech, it's here.
  
• Remember, if you're listening on the podcast recording, you can call into the show live if you tune in through TalkShoe.com at 2:30 PM EST every weekday.
• If you like the podcast (and you haven't already given us a rating), head over and do so, and don't forget to sign up for the discussion list.
• Other Podcast Plugs:
  
• TalkGirls comes on Tuesday nights. Check out the TalkGirls Podcast ... it's good times!
• Cotolo Chronicles: Frank is a good friend of the show, and an associate of the late great Wolfman Jack. Check out his podcast.
• NewsReal: Good friend to Art and I - has one of the best hours of news podcast each week.
  
• Sponsors:
  
• Try GoToMeeting for 45 days! Visit www.GoToMeeting.com/podcast to start your free trial today.
  
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Here are the stories for today:

Google denies Viacom copyright charges
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Google responded to Viacom's $1 billion copyright lawsuit on Monday, arguing that it has not infringed on the rights of the media company and that the lawsuit threatens the viability of its popular YouTube video-sharing Web site as well as others like it.

And in counter-Google news:

Panama Not Enough To Battle Google: Yahoo Acquires RightMedia

Yahoo announced today that it will acquire the 80% of advertising network RightMedia that it doesn’t already own for $680 million in cash and Yahoo stock.

Yahoo previously bought 20% of the company in a $45 million Series B round of funding announced in October 2006. The company has raised over $50 million to date.

This move counters Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick earlier this month for $3.1 billion, and signals that Yahoo wants more weapons in its arsenal to fight the ongoing online advertising war beyond their new Panama release.

RightMedia runs an advertising marketplace that allows for much more efficient advertsing pricing than older negotiated models (something still in the planning stages at DoubleClick). See our coverage of their RMX Direct product from August 2005.

RightMedia also tends to work with large intermediate ad brokers and addresses the short tail of the ad market (as does DoubleClick), whereas Overture and Adsense are definitely long tail products with many smaller advertisers and publishers.

In other slightly-related (in terms of acquisition) news:

Akamai Releases FoxTorrent 1.0 - Firefox BitTorrent Add-on

Red Swoosh (acquired by Akamai for $15 million earlier this month) released v1.0 of FoxTorrent today. This is a fully functional BitTorrent client for Firefox that works cross platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) and has a very cool additional feature - the ability to stream files as they are downloading.

This is no Azureus (my BitTorrent client of choice), but it does the job and saves time by allowing you to manage torrents directly from the browser. I tested it on a few (non-copyright infringing, of course) files and it worked great on the standard BitTorrent functionality. Streaming just didn’t work, although with the way the BitTorrent protocol breaks files into pieces and reconstructs them in a non linear way means you may have to wait until the file is mostly complete to even begin streaming. I’ll try it again once the files are nearly complete.

Webcasting Non-RIAA Music In Protest May Only Make The RIAA Wealthier

Following the latest webcasting rates that will likely put many webcasters out of business, one suggestion was that webcasters should simply play non-RIAA music. In theory this would help in multiple ways -- giving those independent musicians more publicity while avoiding the draconian webcasting rates. In practice... however, that won't work. Slashdot points us to an article dissecting the fine print, where you'll discover that SoundExchange, which is the RIAA's collection body, actually gets to collect money for non-RIAA members as well. In other words, even for independent artists who don't want webcasters to have to pay, webcasters will still need to pay up.

The story actually gets even worse. As we noted a few years ago, part of the deal is that SoundExchange and the RIAA get to keep any unclaimed money for themselves. Even better, SoundExchange can simply pretend not to be able to find the musicians (as they've done with a ton of big name musicians in the past). So, chances are, many independent artists have no idea that SoundExchange is hanging onto a bunch of money they didn't even want collected and there's almost no chance they'll claim it -- meaning that if you try to avoid the webcasting rates by playing non-RIAA music, there's a good chance you're actually enriching the RIAA even more.

Just for fun, why don't we compare two situations? The RIAA tells people that simply listening to music without paying for it is a terrible crime that people should be punished for. Yet... the RIAA getting money for non-RIAA music and not paying the deserving artists that money is perfectly legal? Damn, the RIAA lobbyists are good.

A related link to the aforementioned story (http://www3.capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/taf/confirm/?alertid=9631541&style=1&content_dir=). Now, be careful with your MySpace.

Be Careful In MySpace Or You May Get Denied A Degree

We've seen stories of people getting arrested for posting incriminating evidence of themselves on MySpace as well as people losing jobs over info posted to a MySpace profile... but what about losing a degree? techguy83 writes in to let us know of a lawsuit by a woman who was apparently denied an education degree and teaching certificate after school officials found a photo of the woman on her MySpace page from a Halloween party. In the photo (remember, this was a Halloween party), the woman was dressed as a pirate and the photo was captioned "Drunken Pirate." The school claims that the woman was encouraging underage drinking -- but the woman is 27 now and the photo was from 2005, meaning she was 25 (or close to 25) at the time. That's hardly underage. It's not clear why school officials were viewing the woman's MySpace page in determining whether or not she qualified for a degree -- but if other schools start doing the same, I'd imagine we're going to have an awful lot of students who have completed their qualifications, but have no degrees due to incriminating MySpace photos.

In political news:

The US says it has arrested one of al-Qaeda's highest-ranking operatives, as he was on his way home to Iraq to plan future attacks.

The Pentagon said Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi was now in Guantanamo Bay.

He had been going to Iraq to take over al-Qaeda operations and possibly plot attacks on Western interests, it said.

He was accused of commanding attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan, and of involvement in plots to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao described the arrest as a "welcome development".

An Afghan defence ministry spokesman said it was "a major success" that would "help to get to the high-ranking terrorist network figures and... have a deeply negative effect on the network".

According to information about him provided by the Pentagon, Mr Hadi was a key paramilitary commander in Afghanistan during the late 1990s, before taking charge of cross-border attacks against US and coalition troops from 2002 to 2004.

A US intelligence source told the BBC he was arrested late last year in an operation which involved the CIA. It was not clear where he was detained, or where he has been held since.

TagCrowd

Following the meme I picked up from ProNet this morning, here is the TagCloud based off recent posting.

art blog blogosphere citizens com company content create daily enough free friend google hide homepage hopkins links list listen mark media money network news number people person podcast politics radio report rizwords rizzn sarkozy satellite search services sign simply sirius site start story talkgirls tech things today vonage week year

created at TagCrowd.com

RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech - EP33

RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech
Episode 33 - download now - subscribe now

• A member of the TechPodcast Network @ techpodcast.com. If it's Tech, it's here.
  
• Remember, if you're listening on the podcast recording, you can call into the show live if you tune in through TalkShoe.com at 2:30 PM EST every weekday.
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My arch-nemesis Adam Curry parts company with Sirius:

Podshow and Sirius Part:

I’m surprised this hasn’t made Techmeme yet.

Podshow and Sirius have parted ways. Here are some thoughts on the divorce from P Dub and Chris. Let’s not forget American Cliche or Tartan Stories.

We’ll never know the numbers but I’d bet good cash that Podshow on Sirius sold more satellite radios to Podcasters than Sirius knows. People always support what they help create and now that “us Podcasters” are no longer part of the ever-less-important satellite radio scene, I see their numbers further flushing down the toilet.

Of what I read on this topic so far, nobody has suggested that this is because the value of the Podshow content wasn’t “worth it” for Sirius. I’m sure the token PodshowSucksAndAlwaysWill.com crowd will claim it was because Sirius staff wasn’t willing to sacrifice their first born to the altar of CurryBloom, but it sounds like the conversation is heading in the right direction.

There is value in the content. Podshow is showing us that.

There is also great value on the channel - and that channel is watching satellite radio, web radio, and all of her other “competitors” crumbling away.

The future of media, simply, is on demand and anyone who doesn’t provide that opportunity is as vital to our future as is black and white television.

Apple announced 10.5 million plus iPods sold last quarter and I just can’t believe that they were all purchased to listen to more Shakira.

I see blue skies ahead.

The most poignant comment on the blog post was this one, however:

Dana Gardner said.

This is actually quite a nice opportunity now for podcasters to go directly to any of the satellite media providers and make their own deals. What has not changed is the desire of media distributors like Sirius to get good content cheap. Podshow may have failed at proving sufficient value, but the people making the good content should now go direct. Or they should bulk up common content themselves and take a whole channel to Sirius, et al. Or they should create rich media casts and take it to satellite TV providers as a “social media” video channel. This cancellation simply shows the Podshow packaging model is a flop. The model for oher individual shows or aggregated channels to take their content where it is in demand remains undefined and unfulfilled.

In government censorship news:

Iran to Filter 'Immoral' Mobile Messages
b.cancer noted an article running on eweek about plans in Iran to censor phone messages sent within the country. At least it's not quite that bad here yet. But give it a few years!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Is it too little too late to save streaming radio? We discussed this story and get to the bottom of it:

A Virtual Ad Agency for Online Radio (Elizabeth Olson/New York Times)
AS more people listen to the radio over the Internet, radio stations have been looking to generate new advertising revenue from the medium. A start-up company, TargetSpot, is trying to turn this nascent field into a viable business, and CBS Radio is its first customer.

Who's legs are these? Click here! Wanna play Texas Hold'em? Click here!

Free Songs With Built In Ads Is Not The Answer
An idea that's been discussed for years and apparently is now a hot one for various startups is to try to create a legitimate file sharing system, where before you can listen to the music, you have to first pay attention to an advertisement. It's simple for recording industry execs to understand, so they like it -- but they seem to be missing the key point: it's not what music listeners want. Just look at how many people were willing to jump to satellite radio claiming the lack of ads on many satellite music stations was a key driver. Also, these file sharing systems need to recognize that they're still competing with the ad-free versions (also known as unauthorized file sharing programs). The trick to making money in these spaces isn't to saddle the content with some annoyance no one wants -- but to make it more valuable in a way that people are willing to pay.

Art Lindsey Incapacitated

Keep Art in your thoughts and prayers.  Details are sketchy right now, but some mutual friends of ours have informed me that he is in the hospital, and will be in for a few days.

--
/mark "rizzn" hopkins
For my blog, profile, and wikipedia entries, simply Google "rizzn"
--
intelligent discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/rizzncom-v83/
intelligent podcast: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RizWords
--

Has Blogging Reached It's Peak?

There's a lot of things I could talk about today. It's definitely been a hellish week for the ol' Mr. Rizzn here. A lot of my stress has been brought on by this guy, but I've gotten my nerdy revenge, with my smooth SEO skills. Doing a Google Search for who is now, I suppose, a declared nemesis of mine, will yield my account of his atrocious behavior at Rank 5. Go me!

It's not been all bad. I'm also at Rank 6 for this Google Search, which is a good thing (I was, but now I'm at 11 and 12).

At any rate, I picked up this story today from ValleyWag for today's RizWords. It all refers back to the State of the Blogosphere release by Technorati recently that noted the end or at least stall of the growth of the blogosphere. There's been a lot of talk as to why this has happened, but no real concrete theories that set well with me and go towards really hitting towards the heart of the issue.

As you real Rizzn-ites know, it's darn hard to create a viable business model that supports the participants in any Indy-Journalism venture. I've attempted to create several such ventures here .. the most recent of course being the Oblong Box network, ModernOpinion and PoddedMeat. Other similar ventures in the past were things like BlipMedia and even my own blog, Rizzn.com, what you are reading right now.

I've never really publicly discussed why these ventures have failed, but I'll bet the intelligent reader can guess: Money.

It comes down to money, and the inability to properly monetize the production process of producing quality online content. Let's go down my list of ventures, and explore the sticking points.

When I started BlipMedia, arguably one of my most successful projects, I was just in the right place at the right time with a good idea. It was a free podcast hosting company, with the added benefit of having instant updates available to the content producers - they didn't need to be in their studio to create podcasts... they could simply call in from anywhere they could find a telephone. This was a novel idea at the time, and that feature combined with there being free unlimited hosting made for an explosive growth on the site.

Unfortunately, then, as now, there was a real problem finding advertisers willing to speculate with their dollars on monetizing such a bleeding edge media. This fact, combined with a devestating hurricane that destroyed our office in Florida, meant we could no longer keep the service alive. If not for that, we might still be around today, and we might be breaking even - as of current, there isn't that many people willing to venture out in the podcasting market to advertise, although this is quickly changing now, thanks to the efforts of companies like TalkShoe, PodTrac, and Blubrry.

After that, I started Oblong Box - and this was the offer I put out to a bevy of writers: Have a free domain name, free hosting, and free design. All you must do is post to the blog. I had worked out a series of monetization deals with companies like Blogitive and PayPerPost that should have subsidized all my expenses, and put us way out on top. Unfortunately, as in the Blip days, Blogitive and PayPerPost were very slow to sign up new advertisers, additionally they created very complex and restrictive posting policies that more or less strangled our financial growth.

As a result, I was unable to pass the cash down to the writers quickly enough to keep them around, and one by one, they ended up dropping off the network, and consequently, we only have a fraction of the writers on the network who still write - those that write simply for writing's sake.

ModernOpinion was based upon the same principals, but with an optimized website and domain status in an aim to get around the restrictive policies that PayPerPost and Blogitive had instituted. Unfortunately, it was not enough, and despite investing hundreds in promotion and advertising on the site, the money was not enough to pay the writers, and much like OblongBox, they lost interest, and stopped writing.

PoddedMeat is a similar story, although technically the company is not dead, simply on hiatus. We tried another bleeding edge technology - video podcasting, right at the start of the video podcast craze that iTunes was attempting (and continues to) fuel.

Again, though, we could not find advertisers that would keep pace with production costs. Simply put, there are no ad agencies out there that can get enough money to subsidize these types of ventures. At it's peak, PoddedMeat's two shows were recieving in excess of 60,000 views/downloads a week. Unfortunately, this was not enough to entice advertisers into making the leap to the new medium.

There are simply not enough ways for the average blogger and podcaster out there to make enough money to justify their habit. As I have seen, only those with a true passion for writing, podcasting, or video podcasting will continue, regardless of what it pays. And, it would appear, there are only around 15 million of these people in the world.

15 million is a large number, though, isn't it? That's still a lot of people, and with that number, someone should be making money.

That's an excellent point, and several people are making money off this. Just not the people who are doing the bulk of the work (i.e. the content producers).

Digg, Google, PayPerPost, Blogitive - these are the people who make a lot of money off these bloggers. However, when it comes time to reward them, they are handed a pittance. As I've said on the show many times, my blog has been here for around 10 years. I've been monetizing it for about half that time, primarily with AdSense, although I've used PayPerPost, Blogitive, BlogAds, and other smaller services ad various points.

AdSense, on my best month, produced around $24.00, shortly after I broke the Christopher Walken story and posted the pictures I took of Suge Knight being hauled off to the hospital after he was shot in the leg. In total, I've recieved about $200 over three years from AdSense.

Blogitive produced me about $600 over five months.

PayPerPost produced me about $200 over two months.

BlogAds produced me about $24 over one year.

I produce consistent quality content and have a significant audience that reads my words, and many of my ventures have grown to the point where actual percentage points of the internet have been exposed to me (at least that's what Alexa says). I have my own wikipedia page, for cryin' out loud!

Despite this, the blogosphere continues to punish me monetarily. I'm stubborn enough to keep coming back.

If you're looking for your reason why the blogosphere is slow to grow, though, that's it.

/rizzn

RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech - EP 32

RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech
Episode 32 - download now - subscribe now

(For some reason, the system has not yet processed the file. Look for it to appear later this weekend. To make sure you're updated first, subscribe in iTunes - or maybe from now on you should just listen live!)

• A member of the TechPodcast Network @ techpodcast.com. If it's Tech, it's here.
  
• Remember, if you're listening on the podcast recording, you can call into the show live if you tune in through TalkShoe.com at 2:30 PM EST every weekday.
• If you like the podcast (and you haven't already given us a rating), head over and do so, and don't forget to sign up for the discussion list.
• Other Podcast Plugs:
  
• TalkGirls comes on Tuesday nights. Check out the TalkGirls Podcast ... it's good times!
• Cotolo Chronicles: Frank is a good friend of the show, and an associate of the late great Wolfman Jack. Check out his podcast.
• NewsReal: Good friend to Art and I - has one of the best hours of news podcast each week.
  
• Sponsors:
  
• Try GoToMeeting for 45 days! Visit www.GoToMeeting.com/podcast to start your free trial today.
  
• Want $10 for free? Try Google Checkout today! Visit http://oblongbox.net/checkout/ to create your account and start with $10 off your first purchase.

Normally, something like this would be a complete non-story in terms of what we normally cover on the show, but so many of my friends (quite rightly so) decry the worthiness of the mainstream American media, and point to the UK's Guardian as the only bastion of credible American news, of course never forgetting to point out the irony that it's from the UK. Today, Art and I rip apart a very poignant article that best represents the feelings and opinions of the UK Guardian we've ever seen.

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

Tuesday April 24, 2007
The Guardian

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy - September 11th
2. Create a gulag - Guantanamo Bay

3. Develop a thug caste - Security Contractors (Halliburton), Homeland Security

4. Set up an internal surveillance system - Wiretap of Private Citizens

5. Harass citizens' groups - the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents".

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release - People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens.

7. Target key individuals - Various CIA people, Plame incident, Wesley Clark

8. Control the press - You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

9. Dissent equals treason - We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials.

10. Suspend the rule of law - The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.

In more humorous news, Jason Calacanis talks about how to meet Jason Calacanis (We're not sure we do):

Who Wants to Meet a Calacanis?
I've developed some deep relationships over the past couple of years blogging and I realize that those relationships manifest themselves in the links I find when I do my 28x a daily ego search over at Technorati. The quickest way to develop a relationship with me isn't to twitter me, call me, email me, or skype me. Heck, even posting a comment here--the second best way to develop a relationship with me--is weak when compared to the power of the link.

If someone writes anything about me or links to this blog I find out about it instantly with my various RSS alerts, Technorati, Google blog search, Bloglines, etc.

Some folks have figured this out and they get on my radar by writing a critical piece. That's a savvy move--to a point. I'd like to outline the best way to link bait a person like me:

The Blogosphere has stopped it's all encompassing growth. Am I the only one who sees Blobosphere when people write that? I guess the similarities from the blobosphere to the blogosphere end at semantics now:

Blogosphere is Expanding No More
It's the web media equivalent of the central cosmological constant: does the universe of personal sites expand ad infinitum, or else collapse under its own weight? And we may finally have an answer. The number of active blogs tracked by Technorati has stalled at about 15 million. Now that's still a remarkable number, even before one adds in quasi-blogs, such as pages on social network sites such as Myspace. But, compared with the conventional wisdom -- that every human, and household pet, will eventually have a blog -- the reality is sobering. (The irony: these numbers on active blogs were provided by Dave Sifry of Technorati, whose state of the blogosphere reports have created the illusion of limitless growth; and the data emerged because the blog index boss was asked to distinguish between active and inactive sites by a reporter at Business Week, the magazine that has done more than any other to hype up the medium.) After the jump, your take. I have my theories, but, first, why do you think the number of active bloggers is flat?

The $100 Laptop isn't $100 anymore....:

'$100 laptop' to cost $175
The founder of the ambitious "$100 laptop" project, which plans to give inexpensive computers to schoolchildren in developing countries, revealed Thursday that the machine for now costs $175, and it will be able to run Windows in addition to its homegrown, open-source interface.

Get in the Choppah!:

If You Want To Live, Send $40k To This Paypalcom.ru Account
Online extortion scams seem to be a recurring problem, even though script kiddies are killing the margins. The latest scam sees users being spammed with a note from a would-be contract killer, saying he's been paid to kill them, but will let them live for $40,000, then responds to emails with personal information stolen from other sites. The whole thing sounds about as believable as the average 419 spam, but given the number of folks who should have known better that have fallen for them, it's probably worth highlighting for the sake of the wealthy individuals who are being targeted. In particular, heed the last line of the original article, which relays that a security expert "recommended that no one reply to these e-mails" -- unlike all those other scams you keep replying to.

Oh noes! our pages are bl4nk!:

Glitch Has Users Fuming, Google 'Frantic'
netbuzz writes "A problem with Google's Personalized Home Page feature has apparently cost a lot of users their carefully crafted doors to the Internet. And Google, which says it is frantically searching for a fix, also acknowledges that it is not sure if it will be able to recover the lost settings. 'The problem is the latest in what seems a regular stream of technical glitches and availability problems affecting Google's online services. In the past six months, Google services like Blogger, Gmail and Google Apps have all experienced significant technical issues that have left users fuming. The problems highlight one of the risks of relying on hosted applications providers, which offer to house software and its data for individuals and organizations. Google is one of the biggest cheerleaders for this software provisioning model, which many see as a viable option to the traditional approach of having users install applications on their own PCs and servers.'"

And the same story, worded better from Google Operating System (if not a bit more sensationally):

Homeless Internet Citizens
So you open the door, you step inside and you discover that your house is empty: no furniture, no books, no family, no pets. Your home became empty and nobody bothered to explain why.

That's what happened to Google Personalized Homepage for some users today. Says Michael M.:

Today, I logged on at college and all was fine on my homepage. When I got home, I turned on my laptop and my homepage had reverted to the default, with all of the default gadgets and the default theme. I tried to re-add my gadgets, but it keeps going back to the default style. I've tried clearing my cookies/history and signing in/out.

The personalized homepage is the page I visit most on the internet, it tracks all my news and weather and lets me keep track of my schedule and chat to my friends on Google Talk.

My homepage looks the same, but there's a big thread at Google Groups with people who lost their homepages. Google's answer is so endearing:

We're now in frantic-chase-down-this-bug mode here at the Googleplex, and I hope to have more info for you soon. For now, we're not entirely sure of this, but it's possible that changing your homepage theme might cause the problem. SO, if you still have your homepage intact, please avoid changing your theme until further notice. The big question I know you'll all want answered is whether you'll get your homepage back once we sort things out... and the really honest answer is that I hope so, but I just don't know yet.

/rizzn