HuffPo/AOL: "A Merger OF Visions"

A huge convergence of the blogosphere, media, and the Web with the announcement that AOL has purchased the Huffington Post.

(As a reminder, JackRabbit Café is priced to move!)

More here.

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I Was Afraid This Internet Thing Wouldn't Last...

From News.CNET.com:

Yesterday marked an important step toward the end of Internet plumbing as we know it.

Specifically, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) allocated two of the last seven blocks of Net eesses that use today's Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). That will trigger the automatic distribution soon of the last five, one each to the five regional Internet registries (RIR) that oversee the distribution of the numbers farther downstream, to the Internet service providers and other companies that actually need the IPv4 addresses.

It looks like the remaining five blocks will be allocated this week, if press invitations involving just about all the central overseers of the Internet are anything to judge by.

IP addresses are required for one computer to send data to another over the Internet. IPv4 allows for 4.3 billion addresses--2 to the 32nd power--but its successor, IPv6, allows 340 undecillion--2 to the 128th power, a vastly higher number. To be precise, 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses.

That new capacity excites network engineers, mobile phone carriers, and others running into IPv4 limits--but unfortunately the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is a difficult one, because the two communication protocols are incompatible.

Experts expect a years-long transition to move fully to IPv6. During that time, Web site operators, Internet service providers, and others will have to gradually shift infrastructure from handling one protocol to handling both.

Or, as Salon.com headlined it:

Internet runs out of IP addresses as devices grow

Internet addresses run low as Asia and smart phones hit the Web. Authorities plan strategy to open up space

Alas, rest easy, downloaders of furry kitten videos and porn! The Bible was wrong (again.) It was the geeks who wound up inheriting the Earth, so we should be good to go.

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Matt Drudge Still Can't Quit Bill Clinton...

Daily Dope: Michael Reagan

(Michael Reagan image above from Salon.com)

Well, lookie here! Dumbass right-winger and forgotten son Michael Reagan is whoring out the family name! Again!

L'il Mikey's selling Reagan.com e-mail addresses (seriously), so now America won't become that Evil Empire sinister liberal taxes have been funding for way too long.
Yup, Ronald Reagan's other son has decided that your Gmail or Yahoo account amounts to a direct contribution to Communist/Socialist/Nazi Black Man Barack Obama, so he's selling out the Gipper, just like he's done for years. But this time, Michael Reagan has gone all Internet-y and stuff, and now you, too, can get yourself a little sliver of the dimmest, most over-rated president ever and prove to the world that you are a total asshole.

Click the video to catch a snippet of today's Daily Dope:

This Is Your Computer On TimeWarner Internet Service.

A long weekend, so my modem fried. Does TimeWarner time these things to be as annoying and inconvenient as possible?

iPad: Not Yet.

It looks pretty sweet, but I think I'll wait for the next generation (and Flash):

From Bloomberg:

Apple Inc.’s iPad touch-screen tablet is a winning product that threatens to replace laptops as the dominant format for personal computers, reviewers said.
The iPad, which will begin selling this weekend, is “wicked fast” and has a battery life that’s longer than Apple’s claim of 10 hours, Walt Mossberg, technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote in a review yesterday. It can be used as a replacement for a laptop for most data communication and content consumption, he wrote.
“The iPad is an advance in making more-sophisticated computing possible via a simple touch interface on a slender, light device,” Mossberg wrote. The tablet “has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop.”
Mossberg, Baig and Pogue all said one of the iPad’s drawbacks is not supporting Adobe Systems Inc.’s Flash software. The iPad also lacks a built-in Web camera and multitasking features that allow more than one application to run at a time, the reviewers said.
“If you’re mainly a Web surfer, note-taker, social- networker and e-mailer, and a consumer of photos, videos, books, periodicals and music -- this could be for you,” Mossberg wrote. “If you need to create or edit giant spreadsheets or long documents, or you have elaborate systems for organizing e-mail, or need to perform video chats, the iPad isn’t going to cut it as your go-to device.”

Apple's New iPad: Sweet.

More here.

The Internet Is Back Up.

Between the meatheads at Time Warner and the dopes at DirecTV, it's amazing my Internet connection ever works.

A couple of months ago, a Time Warner contractor botched my cable TV/Internet by disconnecting my wires so he could hook up a new neighbor's service. Last night I came home to discover I was again without service. Since it's the end of the month, I figured it had happened again.

I called Time Warner and spoke with one of their harried customer service reps. He told me the next appointment for service wasn't until Monday. "Not good enough," I told him. He put me on five-minute hold, and the next voice I heard was that of his supervisor. The supervisor told me he could get someone out today, but that it was an all-day appointment--anywhere between "8AM and the end of the day." I suddenly felt like Kramer when he was playing games with the cable guy as pay-back for his late cable installation. If you remember the episode, the cable guy ultimately acknowledges how all-day appointments just piss people off.

Who wants to hang around their apartment on a beautiful summer Sunday?

Anyway, when I called this morning to follow-up, Time Warner had gotten most of the details wrong. First, the appointments start at 9AM, not 8. Secondly, the numbskull last night scheduled the appointment for Monday--tomorrow--not today.

I, ahem, gently corrected them.

Good thing I called to follow up, eh?

Fast-forward to 4PM. I've waited all day. My mood is much darker than the gleaming sun I am missing. And what does the technician find when he gets here?

He discovers that DirecTV botched my Time Warner connection this time, and they did so by once again disconnecting my wires to hook up some other asshole's satellite.

I, ahem, gently asked him to label my "goddamn" wires so that the next idiot that's screwing around down there knows that they are mine.

I also pointed out that the jumbled morass of tangled cable/Internet and satellite wires reminded me of my stereo set-up in college. It wasn't meant as a compliment.

I will be calling DirecTV tomorrow morning to tell them to keep their "goddamn" hands off my "goddamn" wires.

And how was your day?

Matt Drudge's Fearful America: "First He's Gonna Kill Grandma, Then He's Gonna Steal My Access To Porn!"

Anyway, here's something about the bill from CNET.

Rupert Murdoch's Internet Check-Out Line.

Because I'm a news junkie, I'll read just about anything on the Internet, always mindful to consider the source. That simple pearl of wisdom acts as a wonderful chaperone when I click on any of Rupert Murdoch's slanted and trashy News Corp. properties. Visiting the websites of the New York Post or FOX News is the cyber-equivalent of reading the tabloids in a grocery store check-out line; you know it's bullshit, but it passes the time and it's free.

With newspaper advertising revenues at an all-time low, and with Rupert being Rupert, the Aussie a-hole plans to soon begin charging to read his newspapers online. That's like ponying up for Weekly World News down at the market instead of sneaking a quick peek for nothing.

From Michael Wolff on Newser.com:

Is Rupert Murdoch too old to matter? In the face of the worst downturn in the history of the newspaper business—what everybody except Rupert believes is a structural rather than cyclical decline—he bought the Wall Street Journal, built the world’s largest newspaper printing plant just outside of London, and is still talking about buying the New York Times. Yesterday, his company, News Corp., posted the biggest losses in its history. In response, my Uncle Rupert—who as recently as a year ago, when we last spoke, had yet to go, unassisted, onto the Internet—announced that he would shortly make his newspapers available online only if you paid for them.

Well, I'll say this, he’s swimming against the tide.

His uphill fight is probably even greater than it might appear. Not only is he, among all media executives, the most technically disinclined (actually, totally illiterate), but his company, of all the big media enterprise, is the most technically backward and maladroit. He may now employ more reporters than anyone else in the world, but they use the oldest computers. He may have some of the world’s most trafficked news sites, but they are also the slowest and most inept. Technology, at News Corp., has always been regarded as one of those things, like fancy hotels, or long-form writing, that are not part of the company culture...

What’s more, he believes this new world, like the older one in which he succeeded, is a tabloid world: “When we have a celebrity scoop, the number of hits we get now are astronomical,” he said, unmindful that his scoop, on the Internet, is a second away from being everybody else’s scoop. “We'll be asserting our copyright at every point,” he added, like a man getting ready to go to war (say in Iraq or Vietnam)...

At this point, however, for him to continue to own the news, for the world to go on existing in large measure in Rupert Murdoch’s version of the news, you are going to have to pay him per click.

You might. I won't.

They Haven't Seen Obama's Birth Certificate Because Their Heads Are Up Their Asses.

All you have to do to get a taste of the birther movement's bitter fruit is visit a right-wing website like Free Republic or Human Events and scroll around a little. You'll stumble onto one of these jackal's incoherent utterings soon enough.

AC/DC Viral Video: "Rock 'N Roll Train" Shot In Microsoft Excel.

From Slate's "The Big Money": 

What you see: This one is short by video standards, clocking in at just 1 minute, 25 seconds. Still, AC/DC fans get the full effect of the guitar-heavy music video in a throwback, dot-matrix kind of way. The graphics are little better than a Wall Street Journal ink dot drawing, but if you are a fan of chunky, early-’90s style font awkwardly scrolling down the screen, you are in for a foot-stomping treat.

Take out/take-away: For those about to rock, get out your Excel spreadsheet! … Hmm, maybe not. But there is a reason for this low-fi approach. The creators wanted to produce a video that could be easily shared, one that would evade corporate firewall protection. Even the least permissive firewalls allow Excel spreadsheets, the thinking goes.

Social-media effect: It's six months after the ASCII version of the Black Ice video was launched, and it's still generating a buzz, picking up a dozen new Twitter tweets in multiple languages in the past week alone. Geeks seem to love the retro feel. But, as always, what the suits at the label want to know is, Will it sell any records? It's hard to argue with these stats: The album has hit No. 1 in 29 countries, earning double-platinum honors in the United States. Judging by the comments left on YouTube, even Microsoft's Excel brand looks a bit cooler.

RIP: Seattle Post-Intelligencer Print Edition

From the AP:

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has chronicled the news of the city since logs slid down its steep streets to the harbor and miners caroused in its bars before heading north to Alaska's gold fields, will print its final edition Tuesday.
Hearst Corp., which owns the 146-year-old P-I, said today that it failed to find a buyer for the newspaper, which it put up for a 60-day sale in January after years of losing money. Now the P-I will shift entirely to the Web.

"Tonight will be the final run, so let's do it right," publisher Roger Oglesby told the newsroom.
Hearst's decision to abandon the print product in favor of an Internet-only version is the first for a large American newspaper, raising questions about whether the company can make money in a medium where others have come up short.
David Lonay, 80, a subscriber since 1950, said he'll miss a morning ritual that can't be replaced by a Web-only version.

"The first thing I do every day is get the P-I and read it," Lonay said. "I really feel like an old friend is dying."
Hearst's move to end the print edition leaves the P-I's larger rival, The Seattle Times, as the only mainstream daily in the city.
"It's a really sad day for Seattle," said P-I reporter Angela Galloway. "The P-I has its strengths and weaknesses but it always strove for a noble cause, which was to give voice to those without power and scrutiny of those with power."
Seattle follows Denver in becoming losing a daily newspaper this year. The Rocky Mountain News closed after its owner, E.W. Scripps Co., couldn't find a buyer. In Arizona, Gannett Co.'s Tucson Citizen is set to close Saturday, leaving one newspaper in that city.
And last month Hearst said it would close or sell the San Francisco Chronicle if the newspaper couldn't slash expenses in coming weeks.

I am one of millions of former hard-copy newspaper readers--former paying customers, of course--who now reads newspapers online. I read at minimum the front pages and opinion sections of at least a half-dozen U.S. newspapers each day, sometimes more. I cancelled my own subscription to the local newspaper--the kind delivered by a hard-working early-riser and arriving on the doorstep with a thud!--a couple of years ago. I still miss a real newspaper, I feel guilty that I no longer support this great institution with my monthly subscription money, and--while legal--I still feel like I'm stealing something. The flip-side is the instantaneous online availability of newspapers from around the world, of which I take daily advantage.

Still, I miss unfolding that paper each morning over a cup of coffee to learn about what's changed since yesterday's news. A mouseclick will never be quite as satisfying as turning the pages with my ink-stained hands.  

Once Upon A Time.

And for you youngsters out there--in 1981, your Dad was getting his porn at a video store!

I'm Just Browsing.

I've spent too much time tonight messing around with Firefox 3, the new web browser I downloaded and haven't quite figured out yet.
Sometimes I think my Luddite days were much simpler.