rantlust

Posted by Suman on January 15th 2008 in Blogs, Humor, Photography, Raves
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I like this blogger’s/photographer’s sense of humor. My favorite is “Ending a Dysfunctional Relationship” (Nov. 1, 2007).

Hat tip to my cousin Tarit for the link.

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Posted by wolfgang amadeus on March 09th 2007 in Blogs, Comics
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Wolfman is not too impressed with the Super Blogger.

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Posted by anupcs on December 20th 2006 in Blogs, Internet, Journalism
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Joseph Rago, an assistant editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal today writes an entertaining editorial on blogging and how it has supplanted mainstream media (MSM) albeit in a bad way. He makes the point for the relevancy of MSMs even though he concedes that it collapsed itself “by playing on its reputed accuracy and disinterest to pursue adversarial agendas.”

Most memorably, Rago quotes Joseph Conrad’s famous take on newspapering, “written by fools to be read by imbeciles,” while saying that bloggers are filling out this role themselves. The article is a scathing rebuttal on behalf of a dying breed: journalists of the MSM. Rago signs off with this:

Of course, once a technosocial force like the blog is loosed on the world, it does not go away because some find it undesirable. So grieving over the lost establishment is pointless, and kind of sad. But democracy does not work well, so to speak, without checks and balances. And in acceding so easily to the imperatives of the Internet, we’ve allowed decay to pass for progress.

This is one of the best editorials I have read on the blogging phenomenon. You can read the whole piece here.

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Posted by renéejo on December 15th 2006 in Blogs, Internet, Language, Society
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David Pogue writes in the NYT about the lack of courtesy in online forums. Luckily for us at rantlust, we are not big enough for the morons with bad grammar and bad etiquette to comment frequently. The disagreements have been mostly civil and polite even if heated. Some theories that Pogue has about the lack of etiquette (quoting verbatim):

• On the Internet, you’re anonymous. Since you don’t have to face the person you’re dumping on, you don’t see any reason to display courtesy.
• On the Internet, you’re anonymous. You worry that your comments might get lost in the shuffle, so you lay it on thick to enhance your noticeability.
• Young people who spend lots of time online are, in essence, replacing in-person social interactions with these online exchanges. With so much less experience conversing in the real world, they haven’t picked up on the value of treating people civilly. That is, they haven’t yet hit the stage of life when getting things like friends, a spouse and a job depend on what kind of person you are.

Sarcasm in posts/comments are okay but let’s hope that unnecessary personal attacks and hostile comments don’t cloud our enjoyment of this blog.

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Posted by anupcs on September 21st 2006 in Blogs, Business
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Pogue has done some digging for the Times and come up with an interesting post. It’s titled “When Apple Hit Bottom” though as he himself states, it’s not really about the company but more about journalists and other commentators who predict the future of everything from toasters to hedge-funds. A little bit of refreshing self-flagellation there. Some quotes that he dug up about Apple in the mid-90s:

• Nathan Myhrvold (Microsoft’s chief technology officer, 6/97: “The NeXT purchase is too little too late. Apple is already dead.”
• Wired, “101 Ways to Save Apple,” 6/97: “1. Admit it. You’re out of the hardware game.”

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Posted by crewcut on August 23rd 2006 in Blogs, Business, Rants
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This is Broken is a blog which lists really dumb things that companies do. Here’s an example of something that’s broken: in Microsoft Outlook (and probably in other email clients) if you Reply to a email in the Sent folder, it puts only your name in the To line. Logical but useless and very annoying.

Seth Godin gives a really nice talk (20 mins), at the Gel Conference 2006, with lots of illustrations about things that are “broken.” How can anyone make a signboard that reads, “SOCCER MAY ONLY BE PLAYED IN ARCHERY RANGE”?

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Posted by renéejo on August 15th 2006 in Blogs, Rants
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Thanks to the media’s overblown portrayal of the recent arrests, almost everyone in the western world is scared of even drinking a sports drink now-a-days. We shouldn’t let the terrorist bastards get away with this mental terrorising. Be aware… not scared. That’s what Kung Fu Monkey advises us in one of the better blog entries I have read in recent times. Well said. Fuck Osama and his fellow shitheads!

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Posted by anupcs on July 18th 2006 in Blogs, India
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Whatever happened to freedom of the press in the world’s biggest democracy? The “democratic” government of India just banned a number of blog sites after the Mumbai bombings. This is ridiculous. As the world press is reporting most of the blogspot and typepad sites are banned now in India either advertently or inadvertently. No word on whether our little site is still banned. Are we trying to emulate China a tad too much?

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