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One of the more interesting aspects of having an RSS reader is that, assuming you catch the original post, you can see when someone publishes an update to their original post. Take for example this set of postings from Slate magazine, shown in order of most recent publication:

I am not sure why they chose to change the word “jihad” to “war”, especially considering that the article title still uses “jihad” in the title. Either way, I’m curious whether or not major (and minor, for that matter) media publications should disclose when they make changes of any sort, no matter how innocent, after publication. I can see how the argument can go both ways. On the one hand, some weblogs, such as Boing Boing, use the strikeout font to indicate when they’ve made changes after publication, usually to correct for factual errors. As you can imagine, this is perhaps the stupidest way an awkward to achieve such disclosure. On the other hand, the corrections page tends to get buried in the back of a publication, leaving the more attractive space free for errors. Even with the corrections model, though, it is becoming easier to have a permanent space for corrections (the message being “we are always going to make mistakes”).

This particular instance is probably more benign than in other instances, where substantive content is radically changed. I also receive alerts from Reuters, and those articles always contain a summary of the changes that were made as a caption at the beginning, although the specific details are not disclosed. This may be the most reasonable balance on the internet, since the corrections pages will not necessarily be stumbled upon as it would be in a print publication.

My question is this: is it better to have a full disclosure policy (à la Boing Boing), a limited disclosure policy (the Reuters model), or to simply make changes and hope no one notices (the Slate way)?

UPDATE: Ironic, I know, but the entry was edited so the pop-up image would display correctly.

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I’ve just downloaded the alpha release of Adriaan Tijsseling’s ecto blogging software. It’s a revamped version of ecto2, although “ecto3 is not ecto2″.

Among the new features, ecto3 includes a new rich-text editor, as well as support for a number of other blog APIs.

That’s about all I have right now. I’m just posting to test it out.

If you visit my site recently, you might notice the look has changed. This is because the FTP client, Transmit, has deleted all the content of my WordPress directory when I tried to update it today. My content stayed intact (it’s in a database elsewhere), but all my themes, plugins, and add-ons have been destroyed.

Simply put, this is unacceptable. I do not recommend that anyone use this or any other product produced by Panic.com.

UPDATE: I’ve managed to get the theme back up and the important plugins installed again. Thank goodness all my content is located in an isolated database. I guess this teaches the value of making backups, too.

I’ve more or less declared victory in the war on blog spam. Using some nifty filters, I’ve been able to catch automated posts on my site and prevent them from being posted. Like email spam, I’m having a hard time figuring out what the point of it all is.

I have two theories why people write bots to scour the net looking for blogs. The first is pecuniary. If there wasn’t money to be made, I doubt many people would spend the time and effort to write these programs; there certainly would not be the continued battle against filters and other preventive means. The second is for spite. For some reason, there is an entire subset of society that enjoys nothing more than to disrupt normal behavior and functioning. However, given that the links connect to other spam sites, it seems unlikely that disruption is the sole reason for blog spam.

I’m curious about other experiences people have had in dealing with blog spam. Feel free to post. Hopefully, you won’t be caught up in my spam filter.

The BBC is reporting that internet scams from Nigeria are costing the UK billions of pounds. How in the world is it possible that this still works? I’ve never even seen one of scam letters before.

How exactly does all this work?

“Dear Sir:

I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. But if you want to give me unfettered access to your bank account, I’d really, really appreciate it.

Yours,
Some Nigerian Scammer”

Come one, people. Think.

The group Reporters Without Borders [Reporters sans frontières, or RSF] has published their annual list of countries that are ‘enemies of the internet’. RSF states that the countries on this list are openly hostile to free speech on the internet.

The list of countries, in alphabetical order, is as follows:

• Belarus
• Burma
• China
• Cuba
• Egypt
• Iran
• North Korea
• Saudi Arabia
• Syria
• Tunisia
• Turkmenistan
• Uzbekistan
• Vietnam

The big surprise on this list is North Korea; I’m not sure North Korea is even connected to the internet. They don’t have a ccTLD, and I’ve never heard of a North Korean website. I guess that they are at least in principle opposed to the internet.

Removed from this year’s list were Nepal, Maldives, and Libya.

[via BBC News]

This will be the 201st entry on my website since moving to my current hosting company. I’m rather proud of my achievement, since I honestly didn’t expect to write as much as I had. While 200 posts seems like a lot, there were many more entries that were never written. Most of the unwritten posts were related to some news story that I’d seen and thought I would share with my reader(s). A few stories that I never wrote would have been original pieces. Since there are so many stories in my draft pile that I know will never be written, I thought it might be nice to compile a list of all the stories that I would have written into one list.
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There are many conduits by which information travels about the internet. Two of the largest sites on the internet are Slashdot and Digg. Both sites bring news and information about technology. Slashdot is moderated; Digg is not, opting to be run solely by its readership. For this reason alone, I will always prefer Slashdot to Digg.
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