Dan Rather Actually Lets Guests Speak

In the ad for Dan Rather Reports, he lists the major selling point of his program: he lets his guests finish sentences.

The nerve.

Who will protect us from the experts?

We common folk need help to understand complex ideas. It is the correspondent's job to help us filter the statements of experts into simpler ideas, often by shouting over any nuanced points the guest is trying to make.

Correspondents level the playing field. If we saw smart people talking on TV uninterrupted, since they are smart, we might be fooled into thinking they are right. Not so. The correspondent helps us realize this by cherry picking arguments and cutting off a mic whenever a guest becomes dangerously persuasive.

Without the bullying correspondent, we would all suddenly have to make our own straw men out of the opinions of others. Faced with such a task, we'd probably all just abandon thinking forever.

I'm sticking MSNBC and FOX at full volume on opposite sides of the room for my election night coverage. The louder correspondent wins my attention. It will be a triumph of democracy if I wake on Wednesday with tinnitus.

AltDrag: Drag Windows More Easily

Ask a hardcore Linux user why they prefer the OSS OS, and they might go on about the core principles of Linux's design, or the basic philosophy of open source software. Only occasionally will they remember that both GNOME and KDE implement a few hundred things better than other Windows. None of these improvements are particularly earth shattering, but in aggregate, they are pretty remarkable.

Take window movement for example. If you want to drag a window in Ubuntu, you can drag the titlebar, like in Windows, or you can hold down the Alt key to click and drag any part of the window. If the titlebar is way off the screen, no problem.

AltDrag emulates this behavior for Windows.

I have a taskbar at the top of my screen (the bottom quarter inch of my display is broken, and I haven't gotten around to replacing it). Window tops stretch out of reach on me all the time, so AltDrag's a godsend.

Now I just need to find a clock like the one GNOME uses. Oh, here. Thanks, Google.

I suppose that's the one upside to Windows: if you can think of it, someone's probably already coded it.

McDonald's: Safer Investment Than U.S. Government

Investments in McDonald's and Finland are currently easier to insure than investments in the U.S. Government.

This might just be market noise, both institutions are looking fine for the long haul.

On the other hand, Washington has been known to spend beyond its means. If I had to bet on who would stay solvent longer, my money would be on the clown.

Wikifights: Wikipedia Articles that Read Like Debates

Many of the obvious worries about Wikipedia have been dismissed over time.

However, Wikipedia does have some really odd stylistic flaws. Awkwardly, many Wikipedia articles read like debates. Here's a wikifight from Boxing the Compass:

Despite the name of the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock movie, North by Northwest, there is no such direction. However, old-timers allow three letter directions to have a 'by' inserted beween the first and second letter. Hence, NNW becomes North by Northwest, per Hitchcock's title.

You tell me, is "North by Northwest" a direction or not? (And who are these "old-timers?" Are they Hitchcock fans?)

Buckley Endorses Obama

The appeal here is not primarily that Christopher Buckley's endorsement of Obama bears his famous name. It's a genuinely well thought out and occasionally funny libertarian-for-Obama piece.

Wick Allison wrote a libertarian-for-Obama piece a few months back that focused on Obama's qualities. There's a bit of that here. Buckley mentions Obama's intellect (but half dismisses it). Buckley's piece is more interesting for his discussion of McCain. It's a completely tragic depiction. McCain has been a paragon of qualities that should be in all of our leaders.

But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain.

It should be noted that the National Review has since accepted Buckley's resignation.

(Right after this story broke, he appeared on the Daily Show in an interview worth checking out.)

UPDATE 10/23: Touched up, added links.

The Catholic Vote & Barack Obama

The question has been asked, can a pro-Life Catholic (the question "is there another kind" will be left for another day) support Barack Obama? The columnist summarizes the three main points thusly:

1. The abortion fight has been lost by the pro-Life groups.
2. There are evils other than abortion that Republicans tend to ignore.
3. Obama supports government actions that would reduce the number of abortions.

Of the three arguments, the first argument seems to be flat wrong. Abortion appears to be a hotly contested issue still. The third argument appears to me to be unconvincing, as the columnist adds that Obama, from a big-picture perspective, views abortion as a right of all women (viewed through the lens of Roe v. Wade). This being said, it is unlikely for him to lead the country in a direction of fewer abortions.

It is the second argument that holds the most substance (and not inconsequentially, the one I thought the columnist failed to counter effectively).

DMCA and Politics

Fred von Lohmann, my Cyberlaw idol, blogged today about the way the DMCA is chilling political speech. McCain has asked for special fair use rules so his supporters can post clips of the debates, but von Lohmann argues that we don't need special rules for politics, we just need to fix the rules we've got.

The DMCA had a neat provision when it was enacted that makes sure YouTube can't be held accountable if one of its users uploads something subject to copyright. That's a good idea, because it lets services like YouTube exist. They can run a user-contribution heavy site without having giant safeguards in play on the front end. More innovation, more sharing, everyone's happy so far.

To keep the immunity, sites like YouTube simply need to respond by taking down any video when a rightsholder asks them to in a "DMCA Takedown Request." So far, sounds reasonable. You want some provision to protect rightsholders, certainly.

At least, this seemed like a good idea for the last few years, while NBC stuck to getting all the SNL skits removed, and there were only a few problems. But now folks are getting really savvy about takedown requests, and realized they can submit bogus requests or massive requests for thousands of videos pretty easily. There's no real way to vet the requests, or to just keep people from simply requesting takedowns of any videos they just don't like, claiming to be a rightsholder.

The last big scary example was when the Church of Scientology sent out DMCA takedown requests for thousands (4000) of videos made by critics of scientology.

Now, the original poster can protest the takedown notice, but here's the catch: to contest a DMCA takedown, you have to allow your personal information to be handed over to the group who requested the takedown. Many of the critical scientology videos were posted anonymously precisely because Scientology employs a rule called "Fair Game," which encourages Scientology adherents to silence their detractors by any means necessary.

Anonymity has its place in political speech as well, and it can play a vital role in protecting other controversial speech and works.

Currently, the DMCA makes sites like YouTube into a deletion friendly wiki: people who don't like certain videos can have them taken down, but it's much harder to get those videos back up. I'm glad McCain understands some of the problems with the DMCA, and I hope he soon realizes that we don't need special rules for politics, but we need to fix the system as a whole.

UPDATE: More coverage from CNet.