ryan.freebern.org

BugMeNot is a service that stores usernames and passwords for most of the free-registration-required news sites on the web, with the aim to allow anyone to get access to that news without having to go through the process of signing up.

These sites want people to sign up so that they can more accurately target their advertising, and often so they can collate giant lists of customer information which they can then sell to other people, such as junk mailers and credit-card companies. This, frankly, sucks. So BugMeNot lets hundreds or thousands of people access the site with a single account, thereby saving those people from being targeted or sold by the site owners. This sounds good.

However, any time anyone actually goes through a news site’s registration page to get to a story, the site considers it a success. It’s one more person who’s willing to endure the annoyance of typing in a username and password to access content that shouldn’t require one, and it’s just encouraging the practice, even if we use shared credentials. It’d send a much better message if every time we reached an annoying, useless registration page we simply left and found the information we’re looking for elsewhere (if possible), and then emailed the news site’s webmaster and told them why we left.

I am of the opinion that the web is far too inundated with advertising as it is, and I generally do all that I can to reduce it. I use an ad-blocker extension for Firefox, and I’ve never put ads on any of my websites and don’t plan on doing so in the future. Furthermore, I try to avoid engaging in activities that encourage advertisement. That’s why, from now on, I’ve decided not to use BugMeNot anymore, and to instead take my own advice and get my news as much as possible from truly free sites.

Creators Syndicate is trying to bully a blog into removing a link to a Bill O’Reilly column, citing copyright violation. (Here’s the offending column.) This is obviously bunk, as it’s been decided in court that linking does not violate copyright. However, that doesn’t stop people from claiming that it does in order to get their way. This sort of behaviour by huge copyright-holder corporations not only makes a mockery of the whole notion of copyright, but it also threatens the entire structure of the web. If linking to something is violating its copyright, then any time anyone types <a href=”… they need someone’s permission to continue, or else risk facing a lawsuit.

On to the real reason for this post, however. I read O’Reilly’s column, about the Postcards From Buster debacle, and could hardly keep myself from laughing out loud. I thought, does anyone actually buy this sort of reasoning? Do O’Reilly’s arguments actually jive with anyone’s thought processes?

O’Reilly says that “introducing homosexuality into the little kid culture angers many Americans who believe sex in general is an inappropriate topic for small children”. I’m generally of the view that sex, as in the act and ramifications of sexual intercourse, isn’t usually an appropriate topic of discussion with small children. However, O’Reilly (and apparently the “many Americans” he refers to here) ignorantly conflates sexuality with sex. Sexuality is psychological, an ingrained preference for the company of certain other members of the species over others. It’s not the act of intercourse.

Why aren’t these “many Americans” up in arms about children’s toys or movies that show stereotypical princes and princesses getting married, having kids, and living happily ever after? That’s at least as sexual, and probably more, as showing a pair of lesbians in Vermont making maple syrup. Apparently, “many Americans” believe sex is an appropriate topic for small children as long as it’s good old-fashioned heterosexual sex.

O’Reilly asks:

I don’t want to be offensive here, but who in their right mind wants to explain Norma and Barbara’s lifestyle to their 4-year-old?

I do, Bill. How’s this? “Hey, 4-year-old child of mine. See Norma and Barbara? They love each other, just like your mother and I do.” That’s it. Explaining a homosexual relationship is as simple as that. But as long as people like Bill O’Reilly, and those who agree with him, consider homosexuality merely “selfish hedonism” (as O’Reilly’s comrade-in-arms Alan Keyes infamously said) and unworthy of being represented as a valid lifestyle, children everywhere will be taught that love only counts if it’s the “right” kind of love.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I suggested to Google that they add a weather forecast to their maps. Seems they might be heading in that direction: now, you can search for “weather, city, state” and a four-day weather forecast will (probably) show up at the top of your results. Try it out: weather, Providence, RI.