Comments for Niles Gibbs

Comment on Zeitgeist, The Movie by bboysoybean

bboysoybean — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 22:47:40 +0000

There’s many of these vids… but it might be too late to awaken people (but I’m still trying to), rumors have it that the U.S. economy will crash soon… and I expect it to, good luck to us all!

Comment on Moved to WordPress.com by julianwp

julianwp — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 23:12:46 +0000

hi, I think self web hosting is great idea.. I have a web host which performs good and give FREE webhost access forever… wanna check it out ?

Comment on Zeitgeist, The Movie by Brenton

Brenton — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 01:32:17 +0000

Have you seen the new film? Released Oct. 3rd.

Comment on The role of human institutions according to Taoism by John

John — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:11:08 +0000

This is very similar to Descartes’ observations about primary and secondary qualities. The primary qualities are inherent in the existence of the thing itself, and the secondary qualities are inferred upon the thing by our senses.

Comment on Optimism is a policy to be maintained by alexbeuford

alexbeuford — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 10:23:57 +0000

I agree that optimism is harder, but it is definitely more rewarding in the long run and makes you much more happy. I am going to be an optimist for my entire life and try to live to the full potential I guess you could say. Ha well my blog is it at this link if anyone is interested. I have a few posts about optimism in there somewhere.

Comment on Zeitgeist, The Movie by rumgeblogge

rumgeblogge — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:50:39 +0000

thanks for the link! I am curious about the third part. Do you have any idea where I can get an opposing view on that topic. Would be nice to find a counterpart that actually refers to the movie…

Comment on How I lost 105 lbs. with diet, exercise, and a spreadsheet by How getting organized can help you getting in shape

How getting organized can help you getting in shape — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 06:23:56 +0000

[...] am doing it, others have done it and you can do it [...]

Comment on Removing Violet Blue from Boing Boing is compatible with Free Culture by Joel Falconer

Joel Falconer — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:21:32 +0000

I certainly do agree with what you’re saying, and I would have managed it all differently. But as a journalist and site manager I do understand the issues they would’ve struggled with, even if they came to the wrong conclusion.

The thing is that people are indeed making a Big Brother out of a Basement Cat and that even if it’s the wrong conclusion, it’s their conclusion to come too, and they have every right to do as they wish to their property. As you have said

An analogy might best represent how I see it, if a bit crudely. You invite people over for a party, and they love your new punch bowl. Next time they come over, it’s gone because you didn’t like it, so they riot and leave the party. Crude, yeah, ignoring the moral issues of the free culture thing, yes, but it does demonstrate that people are looking past the simple fact that Boing Boing is a privately owned property.

Keep writing—I enjoy reading your work.

Comment on Removing Violet Blue from Boing Boing is compatible with Free Culture by Niles Gibbs

Niles Gibbs — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:47:36 +0000

I agree that there’s the issue about credibility, but I think that it hurts your credibility more to attempt to expunge your record.

The problem is that unlike a static website, a blog is chronological. Though I don’t claim special knowledge of the arcane powers behind search engine page ranking, I suppose that if the algorithms don’t take a page’s age into account, you have problems with old posts lending credibility even if the writer’s minds have changed.

BB has a long history of updating posts as circumstances change (with strikeouts and the like), why couldn’t they have just struck out the links and put new disclaimers (say pointing to their own explanation post)?

Still, people are making a Big Brother out of a Basement Cat.

Comment on Removing Violet Blue from Boing Boing is compatible with Free Culture by Joel Falconer

Joel Falconer — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:08:56 +0000

Good thoughts, Niles. I’m all for free culture and a supporter of Boing Boing and in particular one of my favorite sci-fi authors, Cory Doctorow. And you’re right that there are plenty of copies of BB posts elsewhere; I discovered this when BB published a post in which my site was linked to and got trackbacks from all over the web—directly scraped copies of the original article.

The other issue here, as pointed out in the original article, is that posting about and linking to someone lends them credibility. Who you lend credibility to directly impacts your own credibility. If one where to post about Hitler in positive light, thereby lending credibility to Hitler, I’m sure the writer would suffer in terms of their own credibility. This case might not be on such an extreme end of the spectrum but the principle applies.

Fact is, BB is a privately owned product and the way in which they present that product is totally up to them—and free culture is, IMO, about what others can do with what you produce, not about what the creator does with their own productions.

Thanks for the interesting read, and the thought-provoking comments.