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Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Unfiltered 
| | It's time you to have the facts from me, in my own words, about what I saw -- without imposing on that Marine -- guilt or innocence or anything in between. I want you to read my account and make up your own minds about whether you think what I did was right or wrong. All the other armchair analysts don't mean a damn to me.... |
| | When NBC aired the story 48-hours later, we did so in a way that attempted to highlight every possible mitigating issue for that Marine's actions. We wanted viewers to have a very clear understanding of the circumstances surrounding the fighting on that frontline. Many of our colleagues were just as responsible. Other foreign networks made different decisions, and because of that, I have become the conflicted conduit who has brought this to the world. |
| | The Marines have built their proud reputation on fighting for freedoms like the one that allows me to do my job, a job that in some cases may appear to discredit them. But both the leaders and the grunts in the field like you understand that if you lower your standards, if you accept less, than less is what you'll become. |
| | It's wrenching. Read the whole thing. |
Shoot
| | A magazine photography crew is here this afternoon to shoot me working in my Natural Habitat. Which includes: a) my terminally messy office; b) by the pool overlooking the Pacific; c) on the toilet. Guess which one they'll use — which is where I most like to work while I get the least done? |
A new, good-smelling blog
Which sucks
Retry
Ouch, cont'd
| | The conversation turned to the notion of ebaY as an open marketplace; is it or isn't it open? ebaY as an open market? That's more horseshi*. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that this sort of thinking is dangerous. ebaY goes to great lengths to ensure that it is CLOSED. Just ask any seller who has been contacted by the company for behaving in a way ebaY discourages or prohibits. Add to that the idea that besides the requirement to comply with state and federal laws, fees and regulations as a retailer, the seller must also comply with ebaY's regulations and fees. Granted, ebaY might well be among the most perfect uses of the Internet, but as marketplaces go, I contend that ebaY's reputation is on the path to challenging Microsoft's for being and acting hideously. But I digress. ebaY is not an open marketplace. End of conversation, people. |
| | At one point the speed of ebaY came up. It was suggested by Doc Searls that he doesn't use ebaY because it's invariably too slow. McManus's response? We'll, let's just say that when he did respond seriously I laughed out loud. At one point McManus blurted out, "Welcome to November." Not satisfied, Doc pressed on about how slow ebaY is, "This has been true for a long time." McManus stopped the conversation when he suggested that,"[he's] never heard that feedback from anyone about ebaY ever." LOL. Ok. . . .Mission Accomplished, if you know what I mean. |
| | Before the show, when we were joking around, Jeff was funny and interesting. I was really looking forward to talking with him during the show. But alas, the show went sideways into eBay Does No Wrong vs. We Wouldn't Know 'Cuz We Hardly Use It. Like Matthew said: |
| | What struck me most during the hour long podcast was how openly unqualified The Gillmor Gang were to talk about the nontechnical side of ebaY. All of the Gang admitted to using ebaY very little or not at all. This might be well and fine if the conversation was held to the technical aspects of ebaY, but The Gillmor Gang's inexperience allowed McManus to snow them repeatedly with his evangelistic zeal; I found myself yelling "that's horseshit" at my Mac on a number of occasions. |
| | So anyway, on the subject of sloth, eBay takes 12 seconds to finish loading all its DoubleClick items (among other stuff) on my IBM T-40 Linux Laptop using Firefox 1.0. On my OS X latpop using Firefox 1.0, it gives up loading after 8 seconds and leaves an unusable page filled with colored shapes and blank white spaces. In Safari it comes up faster and loads the whole page, but I'm pretty sure it's working from cache, and it was slow the first time. When I search for a "Sony DCR-PC120BT" camcorder on the Linux box (in Firefox), it takes 23 seconds, but at least it finds something. On the OS X box, in Safari, I get "There was one error opening the page" etc. In other words, failure. No way to try in Firefox. |
| | YMMV, of course. Mine certainly does. |
| | Perhaps it all works fine in Windows, but I don't feel like looking, since I hardly ever use the platform, and I'd have to reboot the Linux machine to get there. Like the rest of you, I have better things to do. And I'm not alone. |
| | By the way, eBay does have great bargains on the Sony mentioned above, plus the older and somewhat better DCR-PC110. Credit where due. |
| | Also, in the first iteration of this post I erroneously said Steve Gillmor was the author of Welcome to the Poop Kitchen. It had Steve's pic up top, and a bit of his cranky tone, and ... I have other excuses, but mostly I just didn't read carefully and screwed up. Happens. |
| | Thanks to Gang member Jon Udell for setting me straight. |
| | [Later...] A reader points me to this. |
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