So I’m so busy trying to not pay attention to Karl Rove on Meet The Press yesterday morning, that I don’t bother to watch the rest of the show…
Where as, luck, or in this case, NBC, would have it, Matt Cooper apparently let the cat out o’ the bag about Rove leaking Valerie Plame’s identity. All casual and shit.
Then Gregory moves on to another topic…like nothing important was even said.
I wouldn’t have even have known to go back and look at my recording if my trusty t r u t h o u t newsletter hadn’t have informed me.
Gregory: Matt Cooper, let’s pick up on an aspect of the interview with, with Karl Rove having to do with the leak case, the CIA leak case, that you were part of as well. And something that’s very interesting, he, he went out of his way to say, “I would not have been a confirming source on this kind of information” and taking issue with, with Novak’s testimony in his column that he knew who Valerie Plame was. He said he would never confirm that information. That’s different from your experience with him.
Cooper: Yeah, I, I think he was dissembling, to put it charitably. Look, Karl Rove told me about Valerie Plame’s identity on July 11th, 2003. I called him because Ambassador Wilson was in the news that week. I didn’t know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD. I mean, to imply that he didn’t know about it or that this was all a leak by someone else…
Gregory: Or that he had heard it from somebody else…
Cooper: or that he heard it as some rumor out in the hallway is, is nonsense.
Gregory: But he makes no apologies to Valerie Plame.
Cooper: Karl Rove never apologizes. That’s not what he does.
Then Gregory just changes the subject…”Back to politics…”
I thought they were talking about politics…
Riddle You This: Great Riddle Site A Friend Recommended
Hey I’m not much of a riddler, but I know a lot of you are, and a friend of mine recommended
this riddle site to me last night. So I thought I’d pass it on to you…
It’s a riddle wrapped in a website (wrapped in a floury tortilla 🙂
Weffriddles.com.
Watch the latest NASA Shuttle Mission: Endeavor
Update: 8/14/07 – 7:53am – They’re attaching new pieces to the International Space Station, right now with a robotic arm/claw! Woo woo!
It’s so much fun:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
Omega-3 Chocolate is the Bomb
I’ve taken to eating BIJA’s
Omega-3 Truffles. It tastes just like awesome chocolate. But it’s also a fun way to get your badly needed Omega-3 fatty acids…
Google Gets Smart And Puts Google Video Out Of Its Misery
Google Video R.I.P.
Google Video service to go black
By Dawn C. Chmielewski and Alex Pham, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
“Google Video was a failure,” said Charlene Li, an analyst with Forrester Research. “They focused on video while YouTube focused on the community around video.”
That’s why Google is doubling down on YouTube, the free video-sharing site it acquired in November for $1.65 billion. YouTube is exploring ways to generate advertising revenue without driving away viewers.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Google alerted customers by e-mail Friday that it would stop selling and renting movie downloads Wednesday. It will offer refunds or online shopping vouchers for previously purchased videos, which won’t be viewable anymore.
Google sought to portray the move not as a failure but rather as an experiment that revealed how best to approach online video.
In the months after its YouTube acquisition, Google said its two video offerings would coexist — Google Video would become a tool to search for video across the Web, while YouTube would be the place people would go to post videos, watch them and talk about them.
Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said the effort to sell and rent videos was “an important test” for Google Video, which is still in beta mode — geek speak for “not finished yet” — long after it launched at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2006.
“The current change is a reaffirmation of our commitment to building out our ad-supported monetization models for video,” Stricker said.
Back From Vancouver and LA
Wow. That was a long trip. Two weeks of good friends, incredible technology, and serious soul searching.
So good to be home now – but so much to do!
Lots to tell you about everything.
talk soon,
lisa
How To Teleport Friends To Your Location
Summary: This post explains how to send Friends teleport requests. So they can easily transport to your location with one click from wherever they are.
Second Life A-Z |
Second Life Step by Step |
Second Life Utilities (SLUTS) A-Z |
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Click on the “Friends” button (Now “Communication” in the latest version) on the lower left third of your SL window.
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Select the friend who is currently online that you wish to send the teleport request to. (The friends online will be bolded and at the top of the list.)
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After selecting the friend, click on “Teleport.”
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A window will pop up asking you “Offer to teleport to your location with the following message? And then a form box where you can type something in. The default is “Join me in location X” — Click OK.
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Your friend will receive your teleport invitation and can click on it to teleport to your exact location.
(I emphasize this because, as my friend noted last night, if you are flying around, and floating when you send your teleport request, your friend will be teleported to that location in the sky, and if their “fly” isn’t on, will fall to the ground! 🙂
Let me know that these instructions work for you! (Or not 🙂
Game Over for Gambling: The Scoop On The Second Life Gambling Ban
Summary: This post’s video and articles attempt to explain the sequence of events leading up to Lindens’ ban on gambling that occurred last week.
Second Life A-Z |
Second Life Step by Step |
Second Life Utilities (SLUTS) A-Z |
Protesters On Orientation Island
Last Wednesday night, the Lindens sort of quietly made an announcement that basically banned any form of wagering on chance in Second LIfe. Period.
Some casino owners are crying foul, complaining that they weren’t even given a hint of warning.
But as I mentioned when summarizing a Findlaw article last April (which analyzes gambling in second life within the context of the recently passed Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA)), you’d have to have not been paying attention in the slightest to have not seen this coming.
This awesome video report from SL-Bernhard Drax on “Metaversed” summarizes the situation beautifully.
Even though the lindens deny it in a post from April 5, everyone else seemed have the general understanding that the Feds were inworld and the jig was up. Soon.
We all knew it wasn’t going to last, but I don’t think anybody thought it was going to all end so quickly.
Here’s another pretty good article on it from Information Week about the Casino owners (different ones than mentioned in the video above) who say Linden kept taking their cash up till the very end:
Second Life Casino Owner Left Scrambling After Gambling Ban
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The Second Life entrepreneur complains that Linden Lab was happy to take his money for months after the U.S. banned Internet gambling. And then Linden Lab shut the casinos down abruptly Wednesday.
By Mitch Wagner
Linden Lab, which develops and operates Second Life, announced a ban on gambling Wednesday. Until then, gambling had been one of the most popular activities in Second Life.
Smith, of Brighton, U.K., feels Linden Lab dealt with him unfairly. He notes that U.S. law banning Internet gambling went into effect in October.
“If this law was made in October, 2006, I think it is wrong of Linden Lab to take my money,” said Smith, a mortgage broker in real life. He noted that the name of the business — Casino World — made it obvious what kind of business he was running.
Smith, 34, who goes by the name “Anthonymark Alcott” in Second Life, operates a full server on Second Life — known in SL jargon as a “sim.”
We interviewed Smith in-world Thursday. He teleported in with his avatar still wearing signs and a mask from a protest that he’d been attending immediately prior to the interview.
He said he spent 1 million Linden Dollars — about US$3,800 — on the sim and virtual gambling equipment and furnishings, since launching in February.
And that’s not counting staff or his own sweat equity — he said he’s been working 12-14 hours per day on building Casino World. He said he invested all revenues from the clubs back into the business, to pay for new equipment and entertainment.
Fooling Around With Hoverpods With Losta Hax
Summary: In this post, Losta Hax throws down a hoverpod object and I hop in and take it for a spin.
Second Life A-Z |
Second Life Step by Step |
Second Life Utilities (SLUTS) A-Z |
Losta Hax (Losta Hax’s Pad) and I have been messing around with vehicles a lot this past week. Originally, I didn’t understand the value of vehicles in Second Life. It seemed like, hell, if you could fly, what else would you need?
But as I first learned when Eric Rice (SL – Eric Rice) first took me on a helicopter ride a few weeks ago, vehicles are fun dammit!
Here’s a little movie of us trying out some hoverpods.
You can see Losta floating in the hovercraft while I watch as he throws down another copy of it for me and I apple/click on it, and touch “ride,” and hop in.
Grid Down Again
Update! – This turned out to be a billing confusion issue, and all was well with a few clicks this afternoon — I was getting different errors last night, but I don’t think there was any real outage this morning. Many apo-poly-logies for the false scare! (and to the Lindens that be 🙂
Second Life blog is pretending it isn’t happening, I guess…
Oh well, lots of backlogged Second Life stuff to blog about….