Friday, March 30, 2007

Jobs’ Picasso quote, “great artists steal”

Steve Jobs:

Ultimately it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you’re doing. I mean Picasso had a saying he said good artists copy great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas ehm and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.

That’s from the 1996 documentary Triumph of the Nerds. Written and hosted by Robert X. Cringely, he doesn’t hold the copyright. He tells the story of why that quote is no longer available on YouTube in this week’s I, Cringely column.

Hacking John McCain

John McCain’s campaign recently used Newsvine founder Mike Davidson’s template for a campaign MySpace page without giving credit - even though the template explicitly requested it. Bad enough but when Davidson discovered they were pulling images from his server, “I figured it was time to play a little prank on Johnny Mac.”

Mike tells the tale.

AdSense nonsense

Those of you who read me regularly will know that I am a Google fan; I’ve even waxed on about the appeal of Google ruling the world. I hate to be fickle but yesterday I got this email from the AdSense Team and now I’m having second thoughts about a Google ruler:

Hello,

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as http://atypicaljoe.com/index.php? /site/comments/support_for_gays_in_the_nba/.

Publishers are not permitted to encourage users to click on Google ads or bring excessive attention to ad units. For example, your site cannot contain phrases such as “click the ads,” “support our sponsors,” “visit these recommended links,” or other similar language that could apply to the Google ads on your site. Publishers may not use arrows or other symbols to direct attention to the ads on their sites, and publishers may not label the Google ads with text other than “sponsored links” or “advertisements.”

Please make any necessary changes to your web pages in the next 3 business days. We also suggest that you take the time to review our program policies (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) to ensure that all of your other pages are in compliance.

Once you update your site, we will automatically detect the changes and ad serving will not be affected. If you choose not to make the changes to your account within the next three days, your account will remain active but you will no longer be able to display ads on the site. Please note, however, that we may disable your account if further violations are found in the future.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

I have to say I am taken aback. Click through to the offending post and you’ll find that it simply quotes another blog with very little commentary of my own. I have no idea what the Googlebot found but I have NOT edited the page and there’s certainly nothing that violates the Google policy.

I’m hardly going to bother urging my humble hundred-plus readers to click an ad. What am I stupid? Like I’d think that would make me some money?

Their ads run on this site but they sit there ignored by me. Google owes me one hundred thirty something dollars for a year’s worth of ads; I’ve never bothered doing the tax form necessary in order for them to send a check. I don’t care about their piddly few bucks (if I did I’d want to know something about their payout formula).

So now I stand accused and now I do care. And what recourse do I have? Not much! I wrote back asking for clarification. I’ll let you know if ever I hear back from them.

UPDATE: Two business days later, I heard back. Indeed I had violated the policy:

Hello Joe,

Thanks for following up with us. For clarification, the following language is found on your site in the “Joe’s AdBar” section of your pages that we feel may encourage users to click on the Google ads that you’re displaying on your site:

“Please support my sponsors”

We kindly ask that you remove either the ads from pages with the previously mentioned language or remove the language from your site.

Sincerely,

[name omitted]
The Google AdSense Team

I’ve removed the offending language. While I see now that it clearly was a violation, I thought of it as such benign boilerplate that I really didn’t remember it was there even after rereading their policies to see what I’d done wrong. The request couldn’t have been more polite. I am chastened and contrite.

Pass the ERA

Phyllis Schlafly at Bates College Wednesday:

For nearly two hours, she belittled the feminist movement as “teaching women to be victims,” decried intellectual men as “liberal slobs” and argued that feminism “is incompatible with marriage and motherhood.” [...]

Schlafly asserted women should not be permitted to do jobs traditionally held by men, such as firefighter, soldier or construction worker, because of their “inherent physical inferiority.”

“Women in combat are a hazard to other people around them,” she said. “They aren’t tall enough to see out of the trucks, they’re not strong enough to carry their buddy off the battlefield if he’s wounded, and they can’t bark out orders loudly enough for everyone to hear.”

At one point, Schlafly also contended that married women cannot be sexually assaulted by their husbands.

“By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape,” she said.

Rhetoric like that can only help pass the ERA! More on that here and here.