People seem to like it, reasoned or not:

The newspaper was investing time and resources generating stories, but these other sites, run mostly as a hobby, were linking to those stories and moving the conversation about the articles elsewhere.

“There was a point at which KnoxViews was really taking off,” McElroy says, “and it concerned me as I thought, ‘Is the nexus of community dialogue going to be shifting away from the News Sentinel to an Internet forum, and what does that mean for our future?’”

KnoxViews had—and continues to have—an openly progressive tilt, so to forfeit the lion’s share of community dialogue to a site driven by a particular set of political and social values could have marginalized a great many other community voices; or it may have run them into their own respective realms, creating echo chambers of like-minded people rather than a Darwinian common ground where the best ideas survive.

So when the Sentinel relaunched its site in 2007, it linked comments to usernames and allowed them for every article. The effect was palpable. Randy Neal, founder of KnoxViews, says he immediately noticed an exodus from his site to the News Sentinel’s; with the help of some contentious local issues, before long knoxnews.com was hosting nearly 50,000 comments a month. The crisis of irrelevance had been averted.

Interesting. A forum was a threat to the local news rag. The local news rag opens comments and that impacts the forum’s traffic. Of course, about two years ago, was also when Knoxviews decided that dissent would not be tolerated. I find that funny.

Ok, thanks to WordTwit, the twitter account is active again.

And I’ll say ignore it. And you’ll make smart ass comments.

Ok, this one works. Thanks to Mike for telling me about WordTwit.

Looks like I have the blog to twitter thing worked out. I’m using twitter tools now. Will let you know how it goes.

ETA: Doesn’t add links to the blog. That’s kinda worthless. So, no twitter-fu for you.

Commissioner Mike Walker has been blogging since Al Gore invented the internets.

In an update to this, Newscoma notes the irony since the press rarely links bloggers even though bloggers have been the source. True. I’ve seen stuff bloggers first wrote about appear in the press sans attribution plenty. But no one cried about it.

And Michael says:

Don’t you just love MSM growing pains?

1 – I’ve decided to upgrade the memory. What chip does the EeePC clamshell take?

2- Microsoft is pimping Windows 7 for netbooks. Anyone try this?

Internet is serious business.

Via ACK, comes some whining about linking and crediting and whatnot. Yes, a blog is complaining that someone dared to draw traffic to it.

BTW, sparky, shouldn’t your post there link to the offending piece? I know these hyperlink thingies are hard for the press sometimes but that seems a bit, err, inconsistent.

Update: Grantham tackles both the hyperlink and the though questions:

How long the breadcrumb trail has to be before you are ripping off other people’s content is a very good question. Kleinheider did the right thing, but the editor of the Nashville City Paper online probably didn’t.

Links and such are an interesting thing. For instance, this morning I was doing some blogiating* and realized I had over 34 tabs open in the browser. So, by the time I had commented on something, I’d forgotten where I read it. As such, I likely didn’t credit one of the members of the breadcrumb trail. And that happens all the time.

* I think I just invented a new word.

I know. I type faster than I proofread.

A look at black market guns. In a video game.

Bill Quick asks help in finding Clayton Cramer a job.

I guess the media is in trouble then:

And in case anyone’s curious, a link from SayUncle generates a LOT more hits than one from the Boston Globe.

Suddenly, my home internet connection will not go to certain sites. All computers and all browsers. I can’t, for example, access Post Politics. The connections time out. Been happening a couple days now. Any ideas?

Update: The internets have apparently unfucked themselves. So, it works now. I guess someone poked Al Gore with a stick.

The Internet’s. On this day, forty years ago, Al Gore created it. In other news, I’m younger than the internet.

GunPal: Like Paypal, only not run by douchebags.

Michael Silence notes:

The FBI has expanded its investigation of reported death threats against the attorneys for the alleged ringleader in the torture slayings of a Knox County couple.

The News Sentinel was served Monday with a federal grand jury subpoena for information related to a comment posted in September on its Web site, knoxnews.com.

On the advice of corporate counsel, the newspaper turned over the information late Monday to FBI Special Agent Gregg Harmon.

For a good cause, Project Valour-IT.

A comparison of anti-gun groups, bloggers, and the NRA on Twitter.

Except that, to some people, it is.

Newscoma notes a councilman used the word blogger as a slur. Well, to people in power, it probably is. After all, when they want a message out, they usually go to the press because they have a cushy relationship with the press. The press, after all, has to play nice if they wish to continue having access. Being a concerned citizen with an audience is threatening to those in power.

On the left, you’ll notice that more gun folks are advertising here. Outdoors Trader, that is.

Yesterday, I mentioned the SRWare Iron web browser. Looks like I’ll be hitting the Firefox again. It crashed twice today, one time even giving me the Blue Screen of Death and requiring a reboot. Also, while it is fast and slick, I like the options for tabs in Firefox better. I really hate that middle click won’t open a closed tab and that closing the last tab closes the whole browser.

to Joe!

Someone took Google Chrome and removed all the nonsense that allowed it to communicate with the mother ship and made a fine browser. SRWare Iron is pretty slick. If I find a decent download manager and a way to make it stop closing the application when I close the last tab, I may switch.

It’s fast. Real fast. And, unlike Firefox, the hotkeys in wordpress work.

From the brand new EeePC. So far, I am digging it.

Defense Review’s RSS feed, that is. Or they really are trying to sell me acai berries and gambling. Which they are not. David is aware of the situation. Careful out there.

Rich is hanging it up. He says:

My mistake has been thinking that liberalism,or more properly, progressivism, is an ideology, as is conservatism. That is, an idea, based on facts and reason, useful for describing te behavior of a society, and the best manner of organizing that society. It isn’t. It has more in common with religion than anything else, complete with hierarchy, a rigid orthodoxy, excommunication for dissenters,and an intolerance for questioning.

True. But substitute Republicanism for conservatism and you have the same thing.

A USB uzi

On Facebook, people hate Mondays, look forward to the weekend, their kids did something funny, they ate something, and like cats. Just so you know.

Also, it seems that I’ve had quite a few people attempt to befriend me. And I didn’t know who they were, so I hit the ignore button. And now it’s occurring to me that they’re bloggers and blog readers. I guess that’s the danger of using internet pseudonyms. Is there a way to un-ignore those requests so I can go back through them?

And if I ignored you, sorry about that. In social media, I assume there’s a high ratio of spam. But seems FB doesn’t have that problem.

Update: from comments, I apparently cannot un-ignore you. So, if you sent a request and did not hear back, re-send it. But let me know you’re a blog reader. Or you can send me an email at:

To tell me about it.

Michael notes our legislators received an award for openness even though they exempted themselves from open records laws.

A look at the FTC ruling and blogs. Meanwhile, Ann Althouse notes some issues with the ruling:

The most absurd part of it is the way the FTC is trying to make it okay by assuring us that they will be selective in deciding which writers on the internet to pursue. That is, they’ve deliberately made a grotesquely overbroad rule, enough to sweep so many of us into technical violations, but we’re supposed to feel soothed by the knowledge that government agents will decide who among us gets fined.

It’s not like they’ll be selective in enforcement, now is it.

It trust my life to a GLOCK. And my wife’s to a ParaUSA. International Cartridge Corporation makes kick ass ammo. Blackhawk makes the finest shirts I’ve ever owned and the excellent SERPA holsters. Crimson Trace makes the best laser sights on the market. I buy ammo from CheaperThanDirt and LuckyGunner.

The FTC can also kiss my ass.

Update: It does occur to me that I pretty much have made all those disclosures anyway because I want readers to know the relationship. Not because I care what the FTC says. So, I guess my civil disobedience isn’t all that hardcore.

Ben tells us about free sounds on the internet. Here’s some gun sounds.

Someone is taking his control of the internets and giving it to foreigners.

ACK asked “Is That Jason Powell In Blackface?”. When I saw it, I thought the oversensitive race warriors would react like they do. And they did. ACK apologizes.

The du Toits are set to return to the internets: The Kim and Connie Show.

I told you they’d be back. Everyone comes back.

Via Bob.

I don’t know who these guys are and am not affiliated with them. But I might need one of these shirts.

Over on the left, you’ll see an ad for Ultmak. Not only are they advertising here, but I endorse their products. I was happy with mine. More here and here.

Burglar leaves his Facebook page on victim’s computer

Someone clipped the wife’s car in a parking lot and took off her passenger side mirror. That’s her story, and she’s sticking to it.

Anyway, she called up Honda and said she needed a new mirror. They were happy to do so for $300. Instead, we ordered one for $30, paid $15 to ship it and I put it on myself in about 30 minutes. You really can Google up directions for almost anything.

Mr. C. reports GBR-IV Raises $8243.80 For Project Valour-IT