Sometimes it amazes me just how lazy reporters are. I believe that the Clintons did some unseemly things on their way out of the White House, but who knows if those beliefs are founded in fact? It seems that reporters have completely butchered the story in writing about the gifts accepted by the Clintons, making some atrocious errors of fact in their accounts.

In what I would consider to be a natural evolution of the medium, marketers are spamming Napster users with instant messages based on the songs that they’re sharing. If there’s anything that might kill Napster (and Napster clones), this is it. If the cost of sharing music through Napster is not only some of your bandwidth, but also being involuntarily subjected to marketing campaigns, then the number of people who opt to share their MP3s might drop precipitously, thus exacerbating the free rider problem.

Another one bites the dust: IUMA is no longer being funded and is limiting their operations as much as possible. I can remember seeing IUMA when it first launched in 1993, and thinking that it was the first site that really showed what the Web could be.

The LA Times has a hilarious satirical column by Al Franken and Norm Ornstein about Dubya’s penchant for nicknames.

Anyone notice that Bush has decided that the military budget for his first year in office will be basically the same as Clinton’s, despite the fact that he criticized their military spending repeatedly throughout the campaign? I guess the realities of office are quite a tonic for campaign trail overzealousness. I find this to be reminiscent of Clinton’s flip-flop on the issue of Haitian immigrants when he first entered office.

CNet’s Gamecenter site is going to the big colo center in the sky in about a week. I knew they cut off everyone in the Gamecenter Affiliates program, but I didn’t know that they were on the chopping block as well. The utter devastation of the gaming site universe has really come as a shock. What’s particularly interesting is that many gaming sites are victims of their own popularity. The sites are so popular that the people who run them can’t afford the hosting costs, and yet there’s seemingly no way to turn all that traffic into money.

The Register has an interesting take on Microsoft’s product activation scheme.

Following up on an item from the distant past, I finally have my CD ripping situation sorted out. I’m using Exact Audio Copy to rip the CDs. You can save them in MP3 format with EAC if you have an MP3 codec installed, I’m using Radium MP3 codec. This isn’t the easiest way to do it, but I usually prefer doing things the hard way if there’s seemingly some benefit.

Dan Gillmor brings up a very serious privacy concern about Amazon.com’s new Honor System program in his column. When you visit a page that contains a “donate through the Honor System” button that’s served up by Amazon.com, your Amazon.com cookie is sent back to their server, letting them know which sites you’re surfing. If their Honor System program becomes pervasive, they’ll be able to compile a dossier of sites you visit, even if you never donate to any of them. Yuck.

Voter.com has bit the dust. Too bad, they ran a pretty good site.