Some Palin weirdness

As I often do during my day, I checked my Google Reader to see what was going on with my favorite blogs. Tech-Ex included an entry with the heading "Hackers Break into Palin’s Yahoo! Email."

In case you can’t read it, the post says:

Quote:
Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running-mate, has come under fire for using her private Yahoo! email address for state business. The reason? As a public official she’s supposed to use her official email address (which is, of course, subject to laws requiring the retention of government records). She even has a Blackberry, so why would she even need to use Yahoo! mail?

At any rate, the hacker group Anonymous, famous for taking on the Church of Scientology, said Wednesday it had hacked into a second Palin Yahoo! account, and shipped off screenshots and emails to Wikileaks, the web site started with the intention of allowing whistleblowers to anonymously release government and corporate documents, "an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. "

Sounds like a good place to send them, if in fact Palin was hiding anything.

Here’s the announcement from Wikileaks (someone seems to be firing back at Wikileaks as it is unreachable at the time of this writing).

Circa midnight Tuesday the 16th of September (EST) Wikileaks’ sources loosely affiliated with the activist group ‘anonymous’ gained access to U.S. Republican Party Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account gov.palin@yahoo.com. Governor Palin has come under criticism for using private email accounts to avoid government transparency mechanisms. The zip archive made available by Wikileaks contains screen shots of Palin’s inbox, example emails, address book and two family photos. The list of correspondence, together with the account name, appears to re-enforce the criticism.

That was enough to send me to Tech-Ex and read more.

Strange. The page is missing, but was yet to be deleted from Google Reader. I decided to click on the link within the Google Reader entry for the Wikileaks info.

Similar to as reported in the Tech-Ex entry, Wikileaks is still unresponsive. I got the same results after attempting to reload the page several times. I also go the same results when I tried to load the main Wikileaks page.

I’m not saying she nor the Republican Party had anything to do with this, but what the hell?

And for those who can’t read the final bit of small type at the end of the first image, here’s what else Tech-Ex had to say:

Quote:
While, of course, it would be easy to fake an email address like this, the quantity of emails, the contacts list, and the fact that Wired got a response confirming at least one email leads me to believe it’s not a fake.

Amy McCorkell, whom Palin appointed to the Governor’s Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in 2007, confirmed to Wired that one of the emails was legitimate.

The e-mail, a message of support to Palin, tells her not to let negative press get to her and asks Palin to pray for McCorkell, who writes that "I need strength to 1. keep employment, 2. not have to choose."

Be sure to check out the Wired article while you still can!

Some Palin weirdness

As I often do during my day, I checked my Google Reader to see what was going on with my favorite blogs. Tech-Ex included an entry with the heading “Hackers Break into Palin’s Yahoo! Email.”

In case you can’t read it, the post says:

Quote:
Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running-mate, has come under fire for using her private Yahoo! email address for state business. The reason? As a public official she’s supposed to use her official email address (which is, of course, subject to laws requiring the retention of government records). She even has a Blackberry, so why would she even need to use Yahoo! mail?

At any rate, the hacker group Anonymous, famous for taking on the Church of Scientology, said Wednesday it had hacked into a second Palin Yahoo! account, and shipped off screenshots and emails to Wikileaks, the web site started with the intention of allowing whistleblowers to anonymously release government and corporate documents, “an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. ”

Sounds like a good place to send them, if in fact Palin was hiding anything.

Here’s the announcement from Wikileaks (someone seems to be firing back at Wikileaks as it is unreachable at the time of this writing).

Circa midnight Tuesday the 16th of September (EST) Wikileaks’ sources loosely affiliated with the activist group ‘anonymous’ gained access to U.S. Republican Party Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account gov.palin@yahoo.com. Governor Palin has come under criticism for using private email accounts to avoid government transparency mechanisms. The zip archive made available by Wikileaks contains screen shots of Palin’s inbox, example emails, address book and two family photos. The list of correspondence, together with the account name, appears to re-enforce the criticism.

That was enough to send me to Tech-Ex and read more.

Strange. The page is missing, but was yet to be deleted from Google Reader. I decided to click on the link within the Google Reader entry for the Wikileaks info.

Similar to as reported in the Tech-Ex entry, Wikileaks is still unresponsive. I got the same results after attempting to reload the page several times. I also go the same results when I tried to load the main Wikileaks page.

I’m not saying she nor the Republican Party had anything to do with this, but what the hell?

And for those who can’t read the final bit of small type at the end of the first image, here’s what else Tech-Ex had to say:

Quote:
While, of course, it would be easy to fake an email address like this, the quantity of emails, the contacts list, and the fact that Wired got a response confirming at least one email leads me to believe it’s not a fake.

Amy McCorkell, whom Palin appointed to the Governor’s Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in 2007, confirmed to Wired that one of the emails was legitimate.

The e-mail, a message of support to Palin, tells her not to let negative press get to her and asks Palin to pray for McCorkell, who writes that “I need strength to 1. keep employment, 2. not have to choose.”

Be sure to check out the Wired article while you still can!

Some Palin weirdness was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon

Snapshot of a planet beyond the solar system

How cool is this…

Quote:
After years of searching, astronomers may finally have recorded the first image of a planet orbiting a sunlike star beyond the solar system. The body, about eight times Jupiter’s mass, lies exceptionally far from its presumed parent star — roughly 11 times Neptune’s average distance from the sun.


Quote:
The faint dot in the upper left could be the first snapshot of a planet orbiting a sunlike star (central object) beyond the solar system. The planet’s unusually wide separation from the star may challenge planet formation models.

Snapshot of a planet beyond the solar system

How cool is this…

Quote:
After years of searching, astronomers may finally have recorded the first image of a planet orbiting a sunlike star beyond the solar system. The body, about eight times Jupiter’s mass, lies exceptionally far from its presumed parent star — roughly 11 times Neptune’s average distance from the sun.

Quote:
The faint dot in the upper left could be the first snapshot of a planet orbiting a sunlike star (central object) beyond the solar system. The planet’s unusually wide separation from the star may challenge planet formation models.

Snapshot of a planet beyond the solar system was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon

The End?

It’s sad when what you know-to-be-true is painfully documented in an lengthy, well-written article from a prestigious magazine.

Quote:
The demise of publishing has been predicted since the days of Gutenberg. But for most of the past century—through wars and depressions—the business of books has jogged along at a steady pace. It’s one of the main (some would say only) advantages of working in a “mature” industry: no unsustainable highs, no devastating lows. A stoic calm, peppered with a bit of gallows humor, prevailed in the industry.

Survey New York’s oldest culture industry this season, however, and you won’t find many stoics. What you will find are prophets of doom, Cassandras in blazers and black dresses arguing at elegant lunches over What Is to Be Done. Even best-selling publishers and agents fresh from seven-figure deals worry about what’s coming next. Two, five years from now—who knows? Life moves fast in the waning era of print; publishing doesn’t.

Since my Mojo Press days in the mid-1990s, I’ve argued that the entire dinosaur-like publishing industry needed to change or be eaten alive by the newer mammalian media. I’m not saying that books will disappear, just the major publishers with their archaic methods.

I’ve long been concerned that Amazon will simultaneously save the industry and destroy it. Now others agree…

Quote:
The ultimate fear is that the Kindle could be a Trojan horse. Right now, Amazon is making little or nothing on Kindle books. Lay down your $359 and you can get most books for $9.99. Publishers list that same Kindle version for about $17.99, though, and—as with all retailers—charge Amazon roughly half that price for it. Which means that Amazon keeps only a dollar on each book, while the publishers make $9.

But Amazon may be offering a sweet deal now in order to undercut publishers later. If their low, low prices succeed in making e-books the dominant medium, they can pay publishers whatever they want. “The concern is they want to corner the market,” explains one books executive, and then force publishers to accept a genuine 50 percent discount. “If they took over as little as 10 to 20 percent of the market,” says an agent, “publishers simply would not be able to exist.”

This anonymous quote near the end of the article sums up my long-running feelings over publisher reactions to the changing world.

Quote:
“We’re an industry more willing to watch the boat sink than rock it a wee bit.” —ONE FRUSTRATED PUBLISHER

It does seem to be an industry bent on suicide. Possible solutions exist out there, but will only happen if the authors, publishers, and booksellers work together and stop pointing fingers of blame. I’m tired of hearing how things use to be and how bad they are now. The "good old days" of publishing are gone and ain’t coming back. It’s time to re-invent the wheel, to figure the new publishing dynamic.

With "The End," New York writer Boris Kachka produced an excellent eulogy to the way things use to be.

(Thanks to Mark London Williams for the link.)

The End?

It’s sad when what you know-to-be-true is painfully documented in an lengthy, well-written article from a prestigious magazine.

Quote:
The demise of publishing has been predicted since the days of Gutenberg. But for most of the past century—through wars and depressions—the business of books has jogged along at a steady pace. It’s one of the main (some would say only) advantages of working in a “mature” industry: no unsustainable highs, no devastating lows. A stoic calm, peppered with a bit of gallows humor, prevailed in the industry.

Survey New York’s oldest culture industry this season, however, and you won’t find many stoics. What you will find are prophets of doom, Cassandras in blazers and black dresses arguing at elegant lunches over What Is to Be Done. Even best-selling publishers and agents fresh from seven-figure deals worry about what’s coming next. Two, five years from now—who knows? Life moves fast in the waning era of print; publishing doesn’t.

Since my Mojo Press days in the mid-1990s, I’ve argued that the entire dinosaur-like publishing industry needed to change or be eaten alive by the newer mammalian media. I’m not saying that books will disappear, just the major publishers with their archaic methods.

I’ve long been concerned that Amazon will simultaneously save the industry and destroy it. Now others agree…

Quote:
The ultimate fear is that the Kindle could be a Trojan horse. Right now, Amazon is making little or nothing on Kindle books. Lay down your $359 and you can get most books for $9.99. Publishers list that same Kindle version for about $17.99, though, and—as with all retailers—charge Amazon roughly half that price for it. Which means that Amazon keeps only a dollar on each book, while the publishers make $9.

But Amazon may be offering a sweet deal now in order to undercut publishers later. If their low, low prices succeed in making e-books the dominant medium, they can pay publishers whatever they want. “The concern is they want to corner the market,” explains one books executive, and then force publishers to accept a genuine 50 percent discount. “If they took over as little as 10 to 20 percent of the market,” says an agent, “publishers simply would not be able to exist.”

This anonymous quote near the end of the article sums up my long-running feelings over publisher reactions to the changing world.

Quote:
“We’re an industry more willing to watch the boat sink than rock it a wee bit.” —ONE FRUSTRATED PUBLISHER

It does seem to be an industry bent on suicide. Possible solutions exist out there, but will only happen if the authors, publishers, and booksellers work together and stop pointing fingers of blame. I’m tired of hearing how things use to be and how bad they are now. The “good old days” of publishing are gone and ain’t coming back. It’s time to re-invent the wheel, to figure the new publishing dynamic.

With “The End,” New York writer Boris Kachka produced an excellent eulogy to the way things use to be.

(Thanks to Mark London Williams for the link.)

The End? was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon

Burn After Reading review

My review of the latest Coen Bros film, Burn After Reading, appears at Moving Pictures.

Quote:
Similar in tone to the Danny DeVito/Bette Midler vehicle Ruthless People (1986), except with a superior cast and script, Burn After Reading relies on the humor inherent in stupid, unlikable people in untenable situations behaving badly. The characters engage in one moronic action after another, often inducing groans and eye-rolling in the helpless viewer.

Continued…

Burn After Reading review

My review of the latest Coen Bros film, Burn After Reading, appears at Moving Pictures.

Quote:
Similar in tone to the Danny DeVito/Bette Midler vehicle Ruthless People (1986), except with a superior cast and script, Burn After Reading relies on the humor inherent in stupid, unlikable people in untenable situations behaving badly. The characters engage in one moronic action after another, often inducing groans and eye-rolling in the helpless viewer.

Continued…

Burn After Reading review was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon