W. James Au

Website: nwn.blogs.com/

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Commented on TV vs Web: consumption characteristics
This is way too much web triumphalism for my taste, and a lot of it's not even accurate. Almost all the largest web sites are corporate owned, and the vast majority of web traffic goes to those sites. Not only...
Commented on Murdoch-Microsoft deal in the works
nomnomdom has a very good analysis. I think the big strategy Murdoch and Ballmer have in mind is to iTune-ize the entire Internet, with Bing as the paywall. It worked for Apple, why wouldn't it work for them? And if...
Commented on Murdoch-Microsoft deal in the works
"Unless I use Bing, I'll never be able to find anything from foxnews.com or other Murdoch properties on the web?" Nothing from FOX News... and also, nothing from *The Simpsons, *X-Men*, *Avatar*, the National Geographic Channel, Neal Stephenson (he's with...
Commented on Murdoch-Microsoft deal in the works
> "10%"? Citation needed. Citation below, found by Googling (heh) "Bing search engine share". If you add Yahoo's partnership with Microsoft (and you probably should), Murdoch is buying into a search engine consortium which already has 30% market share. Imagine...
Commented on Murdoch-Microsoft deal in the works
Actually, Murdoch's strategy is starting to make sense, unfortunately. Microsoft's Bing has not even been on the market for a year, and it already has 10% of the search engine market: If Bing gets exclusive Newscorp listings and content (not...
Commented on Hotel proudly proclaims Winston Churchill's displeasure with its service
We shall fight the teethy maggots in our kippers! We shall fight them in our homes! We shall never surrender!...
Commented on The Blue Flash: Nuclear Accidents and the Origins of Superhero Origins
Does radiation poisoning cause film directors extreme paranoia that they'll be lynched by detail-obsessed fanboys of a dated graphic novel, causing them to faithfully depict a nuclear scientist's big blue swinging dick, even if that means it'll look like a...
Commented on Arnold Schwarzenegger's coded F-bomb in veto
Hollywood players have innovated infinite ways of saying "Fuck You" to people higher up the food chain without explicitly saying "Fuck You" to them. I betcha if you Google around, this is one of the techniques....
Commented on Al Franken kicks eleventy-million kinds of ass in health-care hearing
Haha, that shill's deer-in-headlights look at the end is frigging priceless. This video totally needs a Keyboard Cat to play her ass off....
Commented on Rare photos of a North Korea amusement arcade
That's one of the saddest things I've seen today. Especially when *South* Korea arguably has the biggest game industry/cultures in the world....
Commented on Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13.
A lot of Polanski's Hollywood apologists cite his great artistic achievements as a mitigating factor when we judge the man, which is a pathetic to say on its face, and also sort of irrelevant, because his best movies were made...
Commented on American woman marries auto-rickshaw driver
Score dude!...
Commented on Harper's Weekly for September 29, 2009
"If the cow had the cognitive ability to form thought and speak, Would it say, 'Where's the milk? I'm not getting any milk.'" See, if epistemology professors framed their questions on the nature of consciousness around the question of what...
Commented on What if James Dean had lived?
This ad should win an award. And it should go to the ad agency's account executive. For managing to convince a SOUTH AFRICAN INVESTMENT FIRM that they could best advertise their product by spending SEVEN FIGURES producing AN ALTERNATE HISTORY...
Commented on Surveillance video of insurgents in Afghanistan accidentally blowing themselves up while planting a bomb
"Or alternatively, patriots trying to defend their homeland from foreign invaders who have overwhelming technological advantages." The Taliban insurgency was fomented primarily in Pakistan and they have little or no popular support from the Afghan people, especially women, who have...
Commented on Battle of The Billboards in LA: Giant Boozy Ladyparts are OK, Criticizing Insurance Companies Ain't.
I want to live in a world with way less stupid billboards about insurance and way more that enshrine the sacred vag. Is that too much to ask?...
Commented on New book on conspiracies and Shermer's skeptical take on the topic
I believe the main determinative factor is political agency. The less a person feels connected to the mainstream political process, the more likely they are to believe conspiracy theories that indirectly explain their powerlessness. The more connected and invested, the...
Commented on Harvard Crimson runs ad for Holocaust denier
I just Googled "Eisenhower Holocaust" and immediately got this off his own memorial site: http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/stories/death-camps.htm During the camp inspections with his top commanders Eisenhower said that the atrocities were “beyond the American mind to comprehend.” He ordered that every citizen...
Commented on Al Franken talks an anti-healthcare-reform mob down
"Angry mob" is the videographer's own description; read his YouTube text. Apparently they were more riled up before this video started. Whatever the case, I think this is the better way to run those town hall meetings -- much smaller...
Commented on Wife of Japan's prime minister visited Venus in a space ship
Another report says she used to work at a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco. I wonder if I've ordered ramen and crazy from her before....
Commented on Smash-and-grab robbers clean out Apple store in 31 seconds
"If you want to find the closest Apple Store with the least security and the most merchandise... yep, there's an app for that."...
Commented on Court orders Google to ID anon blogger who called model "skank"/"ho", blogger threatens Google with $15 mil suit
Our online civil liberties are being undermined by an insanely hot model! Health reform is about to be defeated by a former beauty queen from Alaska! What's next, a US foreign policy crisis in Turkey is precipitated by Kim Kardashian's...
Commented on Barney Frank pwns crazy lady at "town hall" meeting, effectively invoking Godwin's law.
I do think Rep. Frank did a great disservice to dining room tables....
Commented on Struggled Reagans: casting strange adult movie
That's pretty much the plot of Theodore Sturgeon's classic *More Than Human*: http://www.sfsite.com/08b/mth87.htm Which suggests an interesting corollary to Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap... but the other 10% can still be turned into crap with cum shots....
Commented on Iraq: Honored female soldiers tell their own stories.
Thanks for posting this, Xeni. You were probably expecting this predictable slew of nasty, uninformed, anti-US military hit-and-run comments, so it's a credit you did so all the same. As it happens, these women are in Iraq because they pledged...
Commented on Dara O’Briain on homeopathy from Derren Brown Blog
To play devil's advocate for a bit, actual licensed doctors commonly prescribe placebos to their patients, even though they know them to have no medical efficacy, because they often seem to yield positive results, even though scientists haven't figured out...
Commented on Former French President says Bush invaded Iraq to thwart Gog and Magog's apocalyptic mission
You know, whenever I read about "birthers" touting the latest bogus "evidence" that Obama was born in Kenya and not Hawaii, I start thinking all the intellectually unserious, uninformed ideologues are on the political right. Then I read a Comment...
Commented on Former French President says Bush invaded Iraq to thwart Gog and Magog's apocalyptic mission
Mark, I think iwood's #23 strongly suggests this post needs heavily retitling, for the claim seems to be hearsay of hearsay at best. It does not even make any sense on its face: In evangelical theology, Gog and Magog are...
Commented on Dery and Lecter do Italy
Hannibal Lector is an Italophile because Thomas Harris is an Italophile who wants to write about his Italophilism, but knows that it'll be much more memorable (and marketable) if his Italophilism is expressed through an individual who flambes peoples' brains...
Commented on Van Halen had good reason to ban brown M&Ms in their concert rider.
Wow, Snopes quotes David Lee saying "tertiary, third-level markets". What the fuck does David Lee Roth sound like when he says "tertiary, third-level markets"? And does Xeni hear him saying that clause in her dreams?...

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William C Bonner commented on TV vs Web: consumption characteristics
At first glance I was intrigued. Then I saw that the TV watching experience was so outdated by not using a DVR. (The only time I pick a show and sit back for half an hour, watching all of the commercials, is when I'm working on my laptop, so the TV has less than 50% of my attention already.) Then I saw that the social experience of the web was outdated by not including IM or social media. Then I saw that the modern web experience was outdated by not having any comment space for social interaction. After all that,...
holyalmost commented on TV vs Web: consumption characteristics
Exactly what I thought too when reading the 'passive' user experience thing. As soon as you start imagining extended scenes and your own desired character interactions it's not passive anymore. In front of the tube is practically my drawing studio. This would probably count as Distraction too. The TV column may need some more thought in order to be more accurate. I have to love a show to pay attention to it unwaveringly. The dinner table and the TV room is just the place our family spends time together, it doesn't mean we're really watching what happens to be on...
Tania commented on TV vs Web: consumption characteristics
This is bizarrely out of date. Tivo? Netflix? The list doesn't even take into account the age of cable; everyone watches the same basic channels so the programming is bland? The Daily Show, Lost, the Wire, the X-Files, MST 3K, in fact, the Twilight Zone, these things were bland? I know they lack LOLcats, but still. And as for supposed lack of distractions on TV, the innovation I hate most in TV news is the proliferation of little windows and scrolling text here and there; you have to evolve a kind of tunnel vision to keep your mind on the...
nomnomdom commented on Murdoch-Microsoft deal in the works
Any argument that begins by making observations about the qualities of dedication and bravery and high professional standards displayed by the noble journalists employed at AP, and then goes on to attempt to draw conclusions that relate to the lying sleazy utterly dishonest fantasists and delusional confabulators who work for Murdoch's tabloids and sit safely at home in the office fabricating stories from bare-faced lies and fiction, is utterly fallacious. Um, wow... That's a little harsh. I don't like News Corp's opinion pieces either, but their journalists do very good work. Daniel Pearl worked for the Wall Street Journal....
nomnomdom commented on Murdoch-Microsoft deal in the works
Hurray! No more Newscorp b*llshit on Google is a Thanksgiving gift, is it not? And I've been using Puppy Linux (fast, trouble-free and chock full of goodies, a speed-demon on a 600mhz processor with 256megs of ram, virus free) for the last two years everyday. It does everything Microsucks does and at no cost. Is there a version of Godwin's Law for Microsoft? Any thread about Microsoft, no matter how tangential, will eventually include someone mentioning that their Linux build is better than Windows. ;)...

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