You lead, I’ll follow
As a followup to the last post, I’d like to offer the following responses to the responses and the following comments to the comments. I’ve waited until the first of March to post a followup so my bandwidth quota would reset.
- Thanks to bakerm45 of span fame for informing me that the real name for New England is Back East. I really should have known better. My god I’m a moron.
- There is no “The South” in the map for precisely the reasons given by Jersey Girl. Thank you, Jersey Girl, for articulating what I did not.
- I am from Chicago, which, for those of you from the coasts, is located in the state of Illinois. I have also lived in Maine. I do not consider myself Californian, and in the words of Jon Stewart, I am nobody’s “dude”. I am not the Californian to whom the depicted conception of the continental U.S. belongs. It belongs to a Frankenstein-ish Californian, pieced together from conversations I’ve had with geographically-challenged Californians.
- It’s a pity that this needs to be said, but the goal with the map was humor and sarcasm, not maliciousness or verisimilitude. Those of you who took offense (!:#@!) to aspects of the map (and took the time to tell me) really need to get a life. Maybe a life will show up in your Amazon Gold Box, and that way you won’t have to leave your house to get one.
I’m so happy that after reading my post, the Governator has decided to implement a maps-for-guns program in urban and suburban California schools. I’m even happier that my post made so many people laugh at themselves and at the geographic myopia which plagues the world’s fifth largest economy. I have to say, though, that nothing’s more satisfying than seeing a commenter named jack make some friends. It warms the proverbial cockles to know that the League of Extraordinary Misanthropes has found their way to etherfarm. Thanks, Jack!
Lastly, I’d like to offer a brief rant against specific, clueless, Livejournalers who insist on hijacking bandwidth. I’m grateful to my webhost for conveniently providing “hotlink protection”, even though that nomenclature makes such protection seem like some kind of energy shield which prevents gruesome bodily violation from rogue sausages. There’s a function which allows you to direct rogue links to an alternate URL, but I couldn’t seem to get it working. But in the interest of full disclosure, here’s the image I prepared:
If all rules which govern the short-term memory of the blogging world apply to this site as well, all this attention will blow over in a matter of minutes and I can continue my regular stump speeches to the 2.5 regulars which comprise my regular audience. Thanks for visiting etherfarm, y’all.
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9 responses
heisenberg
Comment posted at 09:18 on Monday, March 01, 2004
Res, I am glad you said that. I was about to put in links to the Al-Jazeerzah and whitehouse.gov websites, but I won’t now.
Seriously, what exactly is the etiquette and the problem? I confess ignorance.
I understand the problem of cutting and pasting an entire piece of intellectual property: with or without attribution but without prior authorization, it is both wrong and illegal, should the owner of the material really want to get in a snit. No need to clarify that for me, but others may be uncertain.
However, when you say “bandwidth hijacking” I am uncertain of the term, its meaning and why it is trouble. You have posted about it before and although I did not understand it fully then, what you were saying, I did not respond. Clearly though it becomes a problem when you post something that others seize on, as that is the situation now and on your prior “alert code” posting. So, for my benefit and others ignorant of the scope of things, please give a definition and a bit more of detail.
Also, I got a page display error on the “my webhost” link you have just before the boxed image-text. Is it a dead link, or a browser problem on my end?
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Comment posted at 10:14 on Monday, March 01, 2004
The error your received was, as they say here, “my bad”. Thanks for the the heads-up; it’s been fixed. Also, I’ve incorporated into this post a link to a good description of bandwidth hijacking. For convenience, I also provide that link here.
This is the third time significant bandwidth from my hosting plan has been usurped by other sites. The proper etiquette for citing material on etherfarm (and other sites as well, although one should always check with those sites’ policies) is as follows:
<ol><li>Don’t reproduce whole posts. Take what you need from the post to entice your readers to visit etherfarm to read the post in its entirety.</li><li>Create a text link to http://www.etherfarm.com, giving credit to etherfarm for whatever material you’re citing.</li><li>If you’re using an image from etherfarm (only images from the etherblog are permissable—images from anywhere else on this site and all images from many sites are entirely off-limits), host the image on your server, making sure to accompany it with text which cites etherfarm for the image. The text and/or the image should be linked and credited
to http://www.etherfarm.com.</li><li>If you want to be really safe (and ethical), write the website author(s) to get permission to excerpt material.</li></ol>
That’s it. The above sounds completely reasonable to me, and most people “get it”.
Some sites don’t let you use any material whatsoever, and some sites don’t allow inbound links to specific pages at all (link not provided, for obvious reasons)!
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heisenberg
Comment posted at 11:05 on Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Thanks for the quick response. The altlab.com link was clear and terse. I would add a point 5 to your list:
5. Immediacy is not an excuse. First time you see something somewhere that is interesting, look for a contact us, learn whose site it is and how that person expects others to operate with his/her property. Then, if there is a later desire to link and/or excerpt to a future posting, you’ve already established an identity and learned the other person’s groundrules. Simply - plan ahead.
Finally, I think everyone knows, inherently, that fair use has a place, and reasonable limits. If I critique, I can quote, but I cannot take over almost everything, misquote, or plagiarize (including inadequate attribution).
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Comment posted at 08:19 on Wednesday, March 03, 2004
I went to Amazon and clicked through my Gold Box but I could not find a Life. George Foreman Grill and a Black & Decker Power Can Opener yes, but ‘a Life’, no. It alludes me.
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Comment posted at 20:47 on Saturday, March 06, 2004
lol, Greg! Good to see you’re a frequenter of etherfarm.
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Comment posted at 20:59 on Saturday, March 06, 2004
People frequent this place? I mean—other than Heisenberg?
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flash
Comment posted at 19:29 on Sunday, March 07, 2004
Actually, we take shifts. Rather than burdening all visitors constantly, we’ve banded together to create a sort of Eatherfarm time share.
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misanthropoid
Comment posted at 14:42 on Thursday, March 11, 2004
Er, your average readership has actually increased by one to 3.5. After reading that last post I locked on to the xml feed for a “title only” reminder whenever you update. Then again, I’m one of those livejournal folks and the feed was the only way I could think of to follow your blog. http://www.livejournal.com/users/etherblog_feed
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Comment posted at 10:25 on Friday, March 12, 2004
Misanthropoid, grabbing xml feeds containing full posts isn’t the issue here at all. I have no problems with that—I provide the feeds. I do have issues with bandwidth hijacking, which is described in the link in this post.
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