I think it's better to leave MetaTalk to those of us who are so wonky about MetaFilter that we show up here.
posted to MetaTalk by rcade at 1:27 PM on July 25, 2001

So do you run the name of every person who posts a link through NSI as well?

No, but the linked page was so bad I figured it had to be a self-link or something close. jhiggy has posted a lot of good links, but on this one he clearly jumped the rails.



posted to MetaTalk by rcade at 11:36 AM on July 25, 2001

At any rate, I wanted to make an observation not so much about the policies of who gets to link (although its turned into that), but those who seem to enjoy picking out and confronting those that choose to link to themselves(or family member, or associate).

The point of the etiquette forum is to discuss "what should or shouldn't be posted on MetaFilter." Should I be ashamed that I'm using the forum for its stated purpose?
posted to MetaTalk by rcade at 12:27 PM on July 25, 2001

Wake me up when they get a state legislature on board.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 11:29 AM on July 23, 2001

They did their jobs, making a ruling on a point of law as they interpreted it.

Do you believe that the Supreme Court would have made the same ruling if Gore was ahead in Florida?
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 12:57 PM on July 23, 2001

I do -- they ruled that Florida had to use the rules established at the time of the election to count the votes. No changing the rules after the fact. That's a very Republican view of things, and there wouldn't have been a change.

The decision in Bush v. Gore goes against everything Scalia and the other conservative jurists have brought to the court. Assuming that Scalia's well-established court writings are "Republican," the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 2:48 PM on July 23, 2001

I assume you also agree that the liberal judges would have changed theirs, as well.

The liberals on the court haven't built up a record in which they discovered equal protection for the first time in Bush v. Gore.

For this reason, it would be harder to find them guilty of such an obvious effort to subvert their own judicial principles in pursuit of partisan advantage.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 6:29 PM on July 23, 2001

Having seen many of Gore's statements on what he considers parts of the Constitution that are "outdated" it comes as no surprose that his supporters have no respect for it's provisions either.

I'd love to see one of these alleged statements by Gore. It sounds like the kind of laughable accusations that get passed around in e-mail, like the hoax about him calling Christians a "blight on the environment" on page 342 of Earth in the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 5:48 AM on July 25, 2001

You said originally that Gore described parts of the Constitution as "outdated." His comment from the debate doesn't even come close to saying that.

Sorry, machine recounts were required by law in ALL counties and were done.

As the Washington Post reported in June, 18 of the 67 counties in Florida never recounted the ballots. All they did was checked the counting mechanisms on their voting machines to determine whether they... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 12:16 PM on July 25, 2001

Maybe Condit wasn't forthcoming with details- to the police or the media, neither of whom he is under oath to or legally required to assist at this point ...

He deliberately misled police about the nature of his relationship with Levy in the first interview. That made it news -- he richly deserves the ongoing media gangbang.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 12:52 PM on July 23, 2001

You act as if there's some kind of objective truth that journalists can tap into, Catscape. There isn't a journalist in existence who doesn't exercise his judgment in what stories to report and what stories to ignore. That's all Dan Rather and CBS Evening News did, and even if he's wrong about the news value of this story, we should applaud any instance where a member of the media breaks out of the herd. If it happened more often, the media's popularity would soar.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 7:37 AM on July 25, 2001

Willnot: If spam harvesting is a concern, put the address of your homepage up instead of a e-mail address. At this point, so many of MetaFilter's lamest members leave no contact information I'm ready to stop reading the entire crowd.
posted to MetaTalk by rcade at 11:32 AM on July 21, 2001

What would a feature like this be intended to accomplish?

It would encourage people to put some kind of contact information in their profile, which discourages a lot of the worst behavior here.

I haven't suggested killfiles, because I'm hoping at some point Matt offers an XML version of MetaFilter so that killfiles (and the reverse, user-specific highlighting) can be handled as a feature of client-side software that reads... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by rcade at 6:08 PM on July 21, 2001

Requiring an e-addy will assuredly discourage many of the most interesting people in the world from joining.

Two questions:

1) What part of "or home page address" are people not getting?

2) Even if I concede the point that you are one of the most interesting people in the world, what other anonymous raconteurs would be driven off by an e-mail or URL requirement?
posted to MetaTalk by rcade at 7:25 AM on July 22, 2001

Does Opus Dark really have any valid connection to the real-worlder I've just described? I'll tell you this: my avatar master has never used the word 'finikin' in a conversation. Draw your own conclusions.

The conclusion I'm drawing is that "Opus Dark" is some kind of roleplaying game character for you, and we're not cool enough on MetaFilter to deserve a chance to know the real you.

What level and class are you, Opus? Do you have any magic weapons?
posted to MetaTalk by rcade at 6:43 PM on July 23, 2001

Nice touch, Clavdivs. Now I don't need to make the point that total anonymity emboldens some people to make personal attacks.

Are you a roleplaying character too?
posted to MetaTalk by rcade at 7:00 AM on July 24, 2001

I don't think it's a weblog when you only link to yourself.

Then again, maybe it's the perfection of the form.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 11:13 AM on July 23, 2001

The WHOIS records for the company Webe Web show that all of these domains have the same owner:

WEBE WEB Corp.

7020 s.w 22nd court Suite D

Davie, Fl 33317

They also all have subscriptions that allegedly bill through the same entity.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 9:43 AM on July 16, 2001

are they just hosting the sites, or is this the company that owns the actual domains?

The owner of the domains is Webe Web, according to WHOIS.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 11:31 AM on July 16, 2001

Is anyone else even vaguely disturbed to see the otherwise generally liberal and free-speech-loving MeFi crowd suddenly start crying out for prior restraint over content that, while perhaps subjectively "creepy," is clearly not illegal?

You're mischaracterizing the discussion -- no one has expressed any certainty that the material is illegal, and several people have acknowledged that it might be legal.

Even if you're right to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 1:41 PM on July 16, 2001

I was on the fence about this, but I've since been knocked squarely back into the "Tolerable though creepy" category.

So it's OK to exploit children as long as someone's making heavy-handed arguments against pornography?

Therefore, there's nothing we can do about the pedophiles themselves.

Really? There are hundreds of jailed child sex offenders and released, monitored offenders who would dispute that claim.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 5:23 PM on July 16, 2001

There are far more important things to worry about, and since this isn't really directly harming anyone (again, given that there is no exploitation, which there might well be), I'm not sure on what grounds we should complain other than "It possibly supports pedophilia in certain people."

Those kids are clearly being exploited, even if the sites are legal. How fucked up would you be today if your parents sent you off with a pornography photographer once... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 5:46 AM on July 17, 2001

Good detective work, rogers.

Thanks, but I didn't find this originally. It appears that the publisher of Daign.Com first called attention to these sites.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 5:49 AM on July 17, 2001

Wired News has written a story on these sites.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 10:22 AM on July 23, 2001

I mean do you think your e-mail would have any effect on this guy - other than allowing you to get into a flame war outside the context of a MetaFilter thread?

I have found that in almost all cases, people are much more civil after a heated discussion moves to e-mail.

If MetaFilter offered a preference where I could exclude all posts by people without an e-mail or homepage link (ahem), I'd use it.
posted to MetaTalk by rcade at 7:32 AM on July 21, 2001

the mailto links are still correct.

The mailto links also use %40 instead of "@".
posted to MetaTalk by rcade at 11:37 AM on July 21, 2001

Anonymity. if this 'community" cannot handle that concept, then it ceases to be a community.

I'll have to break the news to the people in my neighborhood that we've ceased to be a community.

It's a little difficult for me to explain the concept that we can only come together as long as we don't know how to contact each other.

Maybe you could help me with that, clavdivs. How can I contact you?
posted to MetaTalk by rcade at 10:11 AM on July 22, 2001

You may feel that means I have nothing to say that you want to read.

I do. I know that's obnoxious, but the time spent wading through anonymous postings is a wasted effort that's getting worse with every passing day.
posted to MetaTalk by rcade at 2:25 PM on July 22, 2001

Timeline: When an Italian police car was attacked by protesters and appeared to reach a dead end, a protester jammed a board into the car as others attacked the car and/or the occupants with metal signs and other objects. Carlo Giuliani, one of the protesters, picked up a fire extinguisher and attempted to throw it to throw through a broken rear window at a cop holding a gun. He fell to the ground after being shot and the police car backed up and ran over him then drove back towards more riot... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 8:54 AM on July 21, 2001

However evil the protestors are, however frightened the police were, they could have shot him to wound him. He was a few feet away and he was shot in the face.

They also could have been dragged from the car, seriously injured by the objects protesters were jamming into the vehicle, or harmed in any number of other ways. The fire extinguisher could have exploded.

From the Washington Post: "Demonstrators in black ski masks set... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 11:24 AM on July 21, 2001

How did you hear about it then? I'm sure I heard about it from mainstream media, although I can't recall the exact source.

You might have found out here A previous MetaFilter thread linked to Hatfield's column for Online Journal. He was apparently a regular contributor.

He recently posted online that his source was Karl Rove, but the story received zero, ZERO coverage...... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 12:30 PM on July 20, 2001

The Clinton body count is a ludicrous bit of misinformation spread by maroons.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 12:56 PM on July 20, 2001

Was the number of Napster users really significant compared to the number of CDs sold annually?

A year ago Napster had 20 million users. I think a crowd that large could have a [positive/negative] impact on CD sales, depending on what you think of file sharing.

Personally, I miss the opportunity Napster offered to sample songs from a new album before I decided whether it was worth buying. So I end up spending a lot less on... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 6:54 AM on July 20, 2001

Hey, at least Phil Collins was trying to do some good. Why should that be turned against him?

I hesitate to say this, because I don't want to encourage the idea that comedy must be meaningful, but celebrities like Phil Collins should check out a group before shilling for its cause. If they can't bother, holding them up to ridicule is a legitimate public service.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 7:32 AM on July 19, 2001

I miss the old policy of blowing off steam by taking everything too seriously in MetaTalk. This new policy of contrived wackiness is AOL chatroom without the A/S/L checks.
posted to MetaTalk by rcade at 7:25 AM on July 19, 2001

Maybe you should pry your pasty white scrawny fingers off that keyboard and go try to serve and see what it's like. I did. Got that Ed? Personally I would have fucking tied you to one of the bombs and you could have screamed your pathetic apologies on the way down.

After reading all of the jingoistic "my country right or wrong" tripe from people without a scintilla of doubt about whether we needed to kill 340,000 people to end the war, it's almost a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 7:04 AM on July 19, 2001

This change won't mean much. Most people are using Flash instead of Java applets for interactive programs and animations.

However, it's a shame that Microsoft would turn off the virtual machine that's already included in MSIE, reducing the functionality of its browser simply to punish a rival.

Even if applets disappeared overnight, Java servlets and Java Server Pages are thriving. I'm converting static web sites using JSP and servlets, and it's... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 10:09 AM on July 18, 2001

Java as a cross-platform client side development environment ended several years ago...

People think that because of a few high-profile failures such as the Navigator Java version, but Java's being used all over the place -- especially to provide thin clients that run as part of a browser so they don't require any installation. The current PC Magazine described several different business applications with Java front ends for e-mail... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 10:17 AM on July 18, 2001

They may have access, but they clearly aren't interested.

NPR is on 620 stations in the U.S. and Canada. Plenty of people are interested.

I didn't know being a grossly overweight demagogue preaching to an audience of morons could pay off so well!

You must've missed the news -- Rush started taking better care of himself and has changed from grossly overweight to merely overweight.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 9:59 AM on July 16, 2001

Because as we all know, weight has a lot to do with Rush Limbaugh as a person.

Limbaugh once described a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton as "the family dog." Any abuse he gets as a result of being horizontally disproportionate is well-deserved.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 10:23 AM on July 16, 2001

Matt Drudge was sued by Clinton presidential aide Sidney Blumenthal after Drudge published an unnamed source's statement that Blumenthal had covered up incidents of domestic violence in his marraige. Blumenthal settled the suit a couple of years later.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 10:01 AM on July 16, 2001

From the story:

In a Tallahassee "war room" within the offices of Ms. Harris, veteran Republican political consultants helped shape the post-election instructions to county canvassing boards.

After the election, the Florida Secretary of State let Republican strategists set up shop in her office, crafting the vote-counting instructions for county boards in her place.

A question for the Republican true... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 5:57 AM on July 15, 2001

don't most sunday papers come out on saturday?

A lot of papers produce a Saturday version of the Sunday paper called the bulldog edition that contains everything but the current news. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram sold its bulldog at stores but didn't offer it for delivery.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 5:53 AM on July 16, 2001

I won't be happy until America's anti-missile defense is deployed from Bradley fighting vehicles.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 5:40 AM on July 16, 2001

You know I'm completely right, though.

I know that the last time someone fixated this strongly on Dan Rather, he was called Kenneth and punched in the mouth.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 11:08 AM on July 13, 2001

I'm sure almost zero members of MeFi watch Fox News as well.

Maybe you should spend a little more time reading MetaFilter and a little less time listening for the sound of black helicopters. The O'Reilly Factor and other Fox shows and hosts have been discussed here numerous times.

Even if none of the liberals here watched the network, which is demonstrably false, there are dozens of messages here posted by... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 6:23 AM on July 15, 2001

I don't think three years is excessive. He'll be eligible for parole in one year and one day, if I understand the charge correctly. If anyone had been injured in a car accident caused by his actions, he'd be doing a lot more time.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 6:49 AM on July 14, 2001

Would he have done the time if she'd had a pet RAT on her lap?

There's a difference between killing animals for food, killing animals to stop a disease, and maliciously killing an animal to terrorize its owner -- and endangering drivers on a fast-moving highway in the process.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 6:14 AM on July 15, 2001

Whatever happened to reporting the news?!

Those stories were reported heavily this week and the topics of campaign finance reform and missile defense have been covered in hundreds of stories and news reports since the election. I don't think you can fault the mainstream press for how those stories have been covered this year, in spite of the all-Condit-all-the-time barrage since he admitted to an affair with Levy.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 6:05 AM on July 15, 2001

It doesn't matter if he had information because he was diddling her or because he was helping her study for the LSATs. He had information and he withheld, he obscured and he lied. That is inexcusable, no matter who he is.

I agree completely. I don't care that Condit stonewalled the press or the public. But misleading police in the early days of the investigation is inexcusable.
posted to MetaFilter by rcade at 6:08 AM on July 15, 2001