Friday, December 29, 2006

Download your GMail via POP3

Om Malik yesterday:

An increasing number of GMail subscribers are complaining that their emails, accounts and archives are simply vanishing.

For nearly 10 days, a strange sort of bug is simply cleaning out the GMail inboxes. An afflicted soul wrote to us this morning, warning about this bug. Just when we were saying GMail is getting better and better.

Here’s Google’s explanation:

Regretfully, a small number of our users - around 60 - lost some or all of their email received prior to December 18th. Once we found out about this issue, we worked day and night to confirm that only a few accounts were affected and to do whatever we could to restore as much of the users’ accounts as we could. We’ve also reached out to the people who were affected to apologize and to work with them to restore the email from any personal backup they might have. We know how important Gmail is to our users - we use it ourselves for our corporate email. We have extensive safeguards in place to protect email stored with Gmail and we are confident that this is a small and isolated incident.

I’ll be downloading mine.

LATER: And now your GMail contact list is vulnerable to hijacking.

Saddam’s execution

On the occasion of Saddam’s execution, I’ll quote Digby from earlier this evening:

I’m not going to lose any sleep over Saddam Hussein’s death but I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if the US had behaved like a world leader and sent him to be tried in the International Criminal Court instead of having the “Iraqi government” (which clearly has no real legal system) stage a show trial and now execute him in the middle of a civil war.

Call me crazy but it just seems to me that would have shown that we care about the rule of law and removed the festering wound of Saddam from the workings of the current government which was bound to exacerbate the sectarian hatreds.

LATER: The Nation’s John Nichols looks at Human Rights Watch finding Saddam’s “a deeply flawed trial” that “marks a significant step away from respect for human rights and the rule of law in Iraq.”

Wired 2007 predictions

My pics from their predictions:

Internet Traffic Doubles ...

to 5,000 petabits per day by the end of 2007. And 80 percent of it is peer-to-peer file sharing, mostly Skype video and BitTorrent.

BitTorrent on TiVo

Speaking of, digital video recorders get BitTorrent baked in, bringing internet video to the living room.

Spam Doubles

No-brainer—but no one cares because we’re all using IM, especially at work.

Second Life Ends a Life

Skullduggery in Second Life—probably digital adultery—ends in a real-life murder.

Year o’ the Laptop

Half of all new computers sold in 2007 will be laptops and 20 percent of those will be Apple’s MacBooks.

Print to Web

A major newspaper gives up printing on paper to publish exclusively online. [...]

Apple Goes Apple

The entire Beatles catalog is licensed exclusively to iTunes for a year. [...]

Digg Becomes the New Friendster

Digg holds out for a big payday but ends up like Friendster (i.e., no friends). [...]

First AT&T, Then Google

A whistle-blower reveals that the National Security Agency has been wiretapping Google for some time.

Google Goes G-Man

Google gives up search queries to the feds. Likely scenario: The FBI asks who’s been searching for terms like “dirty bomb” and Google hands over all the IP addresses.

Don’t Don’t Be Evil

Google drops “Don’t be evil” as its corporate mantra. Evil has its justifications, but no one likes a hypocrite. [...]

They’re Watching You

Congress passes a law requiring internet service providers to keep logs of all web traffic and e-mail for three years.

NYT Goes Free

The New York Times opens its archives from behind the paid firewall, realizing it’s more lucrative to be the internet’s paper of record than charging readers for individual stories. Thankfully, Thomas Friedman’s clichés and mixed metaphors remain behind the pay firewall for at least two weeks.

MySpace Spaces Out

MySpace splinters as teens head for niche sites. New services that control profiles across multiple social networking sites begin to take off.

Oliver Sipple

What became of the gay man who saved President Ford’s life by grabbing Sara Jane Moore‘s arm and wrestling her to the ground as she tried to shoot?

Sipple had served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, where was wounded twice. Following his discharge in 1970 he moved to San Francisco, living on a veteran’s disability pension.

With the media clamoring for information on the man who saved the presidents life openly gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk told a reporter that Sipple was gay and had worked on the campaign that made Milk the first gay local politician in the US.

But while Milk and Sipple’s friends in San Francisco knew he was gay his family did not.  Following the press report his mother disowned him.

Sipple, shocked by the outing issued a statement: “My sexual orientation has nothing at all to do with saving the President’s life, just as the color of my eyes or my race has nothing to do with what happened in front of the St. Francis Hotel.”

He then sued the San Francisco Chronicle and six other papers for damages, and the mental stress he suffered as a result of his mother’s action. The lawsuit dragged on until it finally was dismissed in court five years later.

The distress that Sipple was going through led him to drink. He was found dead on February 2, 1989 in his apartment. Police at the time said they believed he had been dead for two weeks. [...]

Only 30 people attended Sipple’s funeral.

LATER: Sipple’s story in the Washington Post.

Savion’s Happy Feet

In New York I passed on the opportunity to see Happy Feet. I wasn’t the least bit interested in seeing March of the Penguins, why would I want to see a rip-off? Turns out, the Happy Feet idea was hatched first. But the real reason…

SAVION GLOVER!

I am a big Savion fan. I missed The Tap Dance Kid but saw Bring in ‘da Noise/Bring in ‘da Funk several times. I’d have gone to Happy Feet had I known. Unfortunately, Savion’s buried in the credits:

I went to imdb.com, the Web site for all things cinematic, and printed out the film’s complete cast and crew. There, on Page 13 of 14, between the listing for Lucinda Glenn as production coordinator: animation, and Alexandra Gunter as additional production coordinator, is Savion Glover, motion capture dancer. This is giving tap new recognition? [...]

Mr. Glover himself professes total satisfaction with his credit. “My job was to be a stunt man,” he said yesterday through a spokesman in his office. “I love George Miller, and was happy to be a part of the film. I have no problem at all.”

Maybe a proper credit for Mr. Glover just slipped everybody’s minds, including Mr. Glover’s. Maybe dance, even in a film whose entire plot hinges on dance, is so far from the concerns of most people that Mr. Glover’s credit escaped everyone’s attention. But that omission seems especially worrisome when the dance being slighted is deeply rooted in the black American tradition.

“I was just so excited that someone was putting dance in the movie,” Mr. Glover told Ms. Kaufman. “I didn’t ask any questions. I was just going on the strength of tap-dancing - someone wants tap-dancing.”

Well, someone did, and maybe Mr. Glover is as happy as he says he is with his, and tap’s, new prominence. But if tap is to be respected, its greatest living exponent must be respected too. To win respect, you have to do more than be the best there is. You have to fight, meaning negotiate, for the recognition you deserve.

Maybe Savion’s mellowed; I always thought him to be a fighter. Here a promo for Happy Feet featuring Savion on how the dance sequences were put together:

Ford’s pro-gay post presidency remembered

Condemn me if you will but I supported the pardon of Richard Nixon and voted for Gerald Ford for president. I was young and dumb; always a registered Democrat, that was the last time I voted Republican.

Interesting to remember that Ford would become the first past or current president to join a gay advocacy group:

In a widely read interview in October 2001 with lesbian columnist Deb Price of the Detroit News, Ford called on his fellow Republicans to join him in supporting equal treatment for gay people.

“I have always believed in an inclusive policy, in welcoming gays and others into the party,” Ford said. “I think the party has to have an umbrella philosophy if it expects to win elections.”

When asked by Price if gay couples should receive the same economic benefits as married couples, such as Social Security and tax deductions, Ford said, “I don’t see why they shouldn’t. I think that’s a proper goal…I think they ought to be treated equally. Period.”

Ford’s gay-supportive comments in the Price interview prompted the Republican Unity Coalition, a gay-straight alliance that advocated support for gay issues within the Republican Party, to invite Ford to join its advisory board.

To the amazement and delight of the group’s executive director, Charles Francis, Ford accepted the invitation…

LATER: The original October 21, 2001 Deb Price Detroit News column.