Did I Miss a Scrabble™ Emergency?
What gives? Over the last two days, forty percent of the hits to this website have been Google searches for the phrase “Scrabble descrambler.” Has there been a crisis in the Scrabble world that I missed?
I’ve always seen that search showing up in the referral logs, and I know that Google loves sites that update frequently, but I’ve only used the word descrambler once (up until today…now I guess I’m going to get more Scrabble traffic because of this post) and, heck, I’m only #5 on the “” Google results.
Sheesh. I try to Googlebomb my way into Sheryl Crow’s life, but noooo. I make one offhand comment about cheating at Scrabble, and now I’m the destination for Scrabble cheaters.
Well, since you appear to be my target audience, see if you can get the bingos out of this one (without cheating!): AEFIRT? There are at least five, dammit! I drew those letters as my first hand on Wednesday night, and missed all of the possible bingos. I played TARIFf instead, like a nincompoop. I may never live it down.
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Open Source Math: ESR > RMS:
An interview in ZDNet with Eric Raymond, “Why open source will rule,” illustrates well the difference between the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and Richard Stallman’s organization, the Free Software Foundation (FSF). In brief, Raymond & OSI are pragmatists while Stallman & FSF are idealists. I don’t believe everything Raymond says, but he makes cogent, practical arguments for open source instead of proselytizing like Stallman.
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I really wish I had…:
ShouldExist is an invention wish list. Post ideas of things that you wish somebody would invent. Maybe someone will invent it.
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Abe Lincoln Thinks Michael Eisner Is a Jackass:
Matt Haughey (Metafilter guru) posted the following response to the aforementioned Eisner essay on his personal site, A Whole Lotta Nothing:
In response to Michael Eisner invoking the name of Abe Lincoln to support his media company’s position, this other Lincoln quote is rather apt:
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
– U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
(letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
Excellent. Thanks, Matt.
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Michael Eisner Is a Jackass:
A few days ago, Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney, wrote an op-ed piece for the Financial Times. It has been linked from blogs better than mine, but I can’t stop thinking about what an utter jackass Eisner is. His pompous article — gratuitously titled “Abe Lincoln and the internet pirates,” though, granted, authors rarely write their own headlines in newspaper publishing — conflates Lincoln freeing the slaves with the DMCA. Sheesh. What’s next? “Napster was run by Nazis”? Is there a more opportunistic, exploitative kind of ad hominem, publicity-mongering than this? I can only hope this so backfires in Eisners pasty face, that it hurts him and Disney in the long run (and the short run).
To contribute to such a backfire here are some excerpts and responses.
Addendum: Roger Ebert has a good article on why fans are not pirates. [link via Scripting News] Everyone needs to email the Ebert article to Eisner.
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Instructional Technology Community (Redux):
InstTech Scoop is a Slashdot-like site (powered by Scoop which is the Kuro5hin engine). It has been started by David Wiley, who is a serious proponent of instructional technology, especially learning objects. Last year, David tried to start a similary community, Slashlearn (based on the Slashdot code, which is the inspiration for the Scoop code), but it didn’t “take.” I hope this one will. [link via SiT]
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Outage:
Well. That was interesting, wasn’t it? My ISP changed its webspace management. Previously all of the email inboxes on an account shared a single webspace. Now each inbox has it’s own webspace. That’s nice — it’s how it should be. Plus, it means my potential web hosting space has just increased eight-fold. But it meant that all of the Ten Reasons Why pages were stored under my primary email inbox (which is not “gritter”), so suddenly this URL’s webspace was empty. A little FTPing, a few changes to Blogger settings and I think I have it all working again. Whew. Unfortunately since Monday was so busy it took me nearly 24 hours to figure out this had happened — a testament to the need for hourly blogging. :-)
UPDATE (12:30 pm): Oops.The archives weren’t re-published. That’s taken care of now. I’m sure I’ve missed something else, but oh well. Damn ISPs.
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Get Out of the Way of the Dancing Elephants:
Michael Fasse, of Arts & Farces, has posted an interesting overview of the currenty challenges to copyright in the form of an essay, “When elephants dance.” [link via Scripting News]
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I’m number one! I’m number one!
Nyah, nyah! I’m the number one “Greg Ritter” on the planet . Not only that, but I dominate all other “Greg Ritters”, capturing twelve out of the first fifteen “Greg Ritter” hits. I rule! Take that, Greg Ritter! Hah!
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eLearning Guild:
“The eLearning Guild is a Community of Practice for designers, developers, and managers of e-Learning. Through this member driven community, we provide high-quality learning opportunities, networking services, resources, and publications.” [link via Online Learning News Blog.]
Interesting. Already a lot of good resources on this site for those of us interested in e-learning (or online education or distributed learning or whatever we’re calling it this week). Will investigate more…
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