A reader sent me a correction about NPR’s funding. As it turns out, they do not receive any government funding other than through grants that they apply for, rather they sell their programs to public radio stations, which do receive government support (although, as any public radio person will tell you, that support is rather thin. In any case, this is all stated explicitly on the NPR Financials page (oops, linked to NPR again). ...
The latest site that’s going to be heavily flogged for general cluelessness is NPR. They have one of those laughable linking policies that demands that people request permission before linking to their site. All such policies should be mocked outrageously, but NPR’s policy is particularly laughable given that NPR is at least partially supported by our tax dollars. Anyway, the thing that I find particularly interesting is that some of those tax dollars were spent on consulting from the excessively savvy folks at Adaptive Path. I guess they didn’t bother to ask the guys from AP about how stupid they’d look if they prohibited links that they don’t explicitly approve. ...
I held my review of Aggie for a day because as it turns out, I was invited yesterday to lunch with Joe Gregorio and some other RTP bloggers today and I figured I may as well meet Joe before I wrote the review. Anyway, we wound up talking about other stuff and just glossed over Aggie, and I only have good things to say about it anyway, so there was really no reason to delay the review. In any case, I have nothing but unreserved praise for Aggie. The only catch is that in order to use it, you have to install Microsoft’s .NET runtime, which is huge. The Aggie download is around 30k. The .NET download, which Aggie requires, is about 20 megs. And then you have to download the first service pack for .NET. That said, Aggie does a great job of showcasing the power of the .NET class library. You guys know that I’m no Microsoft fan, but after trying out Aggie, I wanted to buy a book on programming in C#. Basically, Aggie has a simple GUI that lists your subscriptions, fetches RSS files from the ’net, parses them, and opens a window that shows you the new items from each of the feeds you subscribe to. All of this functionality seems to be built into the .NET class library, hence the small size of the actual application (Joe confirmed that the .NET class library is amazingly powerful at lunch today). Anyway, Aggie does what it’s designed to do extremely well. In fact, it is the essence of simplicity itself. The skin that it uses for rendering the list of items in your browser is a nice bit of CSS hackery, and works perfectly in both Mozilla and IE as far as I can tell. Ultimately, the simplicity is the thing I love about Aggie. It just works. And it’s multithreaded, fetching the RSS files from more than one site at a time, which means that it works rather quickly. The major downside of the application (which I’ve gotten over) is that it’s called “Aggie,” evoking my feelings of ill will toward Texas A&M University every time I see it. I’d recommend Aggie to anybody who knows what they’re doing and just wants to follow RSS feeds without a lot of overhead or things getting in their way. ...
Rogers has already collected enough cash to buy the iPod for Dave Winer. Embarrassingly enough, I didn’t even get to donate. I tried to send money via Paypal when I posted the item originally yesterday, and found that Paypal’s credit card validator was down so I couldn’t register my ATM card with them. Oh well, I’m glad it’s getting done anyway.
Given Rusty’s ideals and objectives, his decision to apply for non-profit status for Kuro5hin seems like a wise one. By formalizing the site’s non-profit approach, Rusty can avoid the usual conflict of interest problems that arise when someone who really wants to make a buck is canvassing for voluntary contributions. K5 readers came through with $10k in donations to the site yesterday, which is pretty darn amazing.
Howard J Bashman recaps another exciting day at the Supreme Court. Five decisions in argued cases were handed down yesterday. The only one that was of real interest to me is the ruling that it’s OK for the IRS to bill restaurants for FICA taxes based on estimated tips for the waitstaff (as opposed to basing them solely upon the amount reported). The decision seems fair to me, but I certainly hope that it doesn’t put any of the restaurants that I like into financial trouble. ...
There certainly is a lot of speculation these days that “Deep Throat” is none other than Pat Buchanan. John Dean believes he’s narrowed the field of possible Deep Throats to four, and one of his suspects is Pat Buchanan. A University of Illinois journalism class is pointing at the old xenophobe as well, and Josh Marshall thinks that the way everyone is acting confirms the identity of Deep Throat. Of course, that begs the question: Why, Pat, why? I never would have thought of Pat Buchanan as the sort who would roll over on the President … did his conscience actually get to him? I’m dying to know. ...
Rogers Cadenhead has a nice idea for a get well present for Dave Winer, who is in the hospital for reasons as yet undisclosed.
Salon Premium has a story today on the allegations of a massacre uncovered by Irish documentarian Jamie Doran. He claims to have evidence that up to 5,000 of the prisoners taken after the surrender of the Taliban at Kunduz were killed in one way or another and dumped in mass graves somewhere in the deserts of Afghanistan. Whether the allegations turn out to be accurate or not, it’s pretty clear that some sort of inquiry needs to be made into what happened to those prisoners. Personally, I have no idea what transpired, but I doubt that any of the people who would dismiss the allegations out of hand (or accept them uncritically) do either. ...
Things are looking pretty bleak at Kuro5hin, which, despite enjoying free hosting and free server hardware, can’t make it on its current (pathetically low) level of income. The fundamental problem is that maintaining the site is a full time job, and nobody is paying Rusty to do it. He’s trying to figure out what to do next. I really appreciated his brief but accurate explanation of the media business: Many people are under the mistaken impression that the business of media is collecting information or creating entertainment and selling it to the public. This is not true. Information and entertainment is the bait, the "loss leader," which is used to lure large numbers of people into looking at a magazine, newspaper, television show or what have you. The "product" that media sells is you, the audience. Your attention, gained through information or programming, is sold to advertisers whose ultimate aim is to convince you to buy their product.