Category Archives: Culture

the Royal Family’s naked calendar shoot

Posted on by

You might want to get your blindfold for this one. Randy Andy has seen better days.

Bitacle Update: from StopBitacle.org

Posted on by

If your blog has been scraped by Bitacle, they suggest posting this. Looks like a good idea to me: 

Dear reader,

Please look carefully at the web address in the URL field of your browser. It should read ‘https://raincoaster.wordpress.com‘. In case you see a web address containing the word ‘bitacle’ or ‘bitacle.org’, you’re not looking at the original page on which this text was posted. If this is the case, the text you are reading right now might be incorrect or out of date. After I place a post on my weblog, I always try to keep published information up to date, or incorporate additional information, which I receive from readers. You will never find this information on bitacle.org.

Bitacle.org copies the content of weblogs without permission of the author, the holder of copyrights or the licensee. By visiting bitacle.org, you create income for the people who run bitacle.org, at the expense of me and other owners of a weblog, without permission and often without respecting copyrights and/or terms of use as in a license. So please, next time you want to view my posts, do so by using the web address of my weblog, which is ‘https://raincoaster.wordpress.com‘. Please make a bookmark of my weblog’s address, if you would like to visit it again.

Thank you!

Bitacle=poison for bloggers

Posted on by

Respect Mah Authoritah! 

It normally takes a helluva lot to jolt me out of my “information wants to be shared” communal anarchist complacency (and, if communal anarchists haven’t achieved complacency, who can be said to have done so?) but this may just be enough.

TimeThief normally objects to blogs that republish the entire posts of other blogs, but I think in this case she’ll give me a bye.

Silly me, live and learn.

We’ll just work it out in a creamed corn wrestling smackdown live onstage at Limerick Junction for charity. In any case, here’s her post on the subject.

And here is an anti-Bitacle blog that’s got pretty comprehensive coverage of the issue, from pro and anti sides.

Essentially, Bitacle is a for-profit business that steals the contents of blogs from all around the world and publishes it on its own website, on which it sells advertising. In addition, it republishes this information under a “Creative Commons” license, which essentially gives the readerthe right to republish it at will under certain conditions, including the condition they not be making any money from it. Unlike Bitacle. Now, CC licenses are great things allrighty, but Bitacle doesn’t have your permission to relicense them in the first place, so absolutely none of the CC licenses they offer on material they publish are binding.

In other words, all rights belong to the bloggers and Bitacle is breaking the law. As well, its CC claim is encouraging other people to break the law, by pretending to them that it’s legal. It’s not.

If you’ve got a blog, check your RSS feed stats or your IPs and look for Bitacle. They can be IP banned; they may well change their IP (their ISP has been notified, as has Google, whose ads they are running) but until they do, it’s a good idea to starve them.

Pass the word around; since WordPress has put in some “measures” against them, they’ll be all over Blogger, Blogspot, etc.

best. comments. ever.

Posted on by

Bar none. You don’t even have to know who Peter Hitchens is to enjoy this thread. It truly gives one faith for the British school system; they must be doing something right if the amusing and condescending wordplay can continue for 277, that’s 277 comments, most of them golden (including mine, but then I was educated by Boho preppy draft dodgers).

We are all Peter Hitchens now.

We are all Peter Hitchens now

One of the most amusing (and irritating) comment makers on this blog uses the name Peter Hitchens, he writes from a sometimes witty, sometimes demented hard right-wing position. As does the comment maker. The real other Peter Hitchens has been in touch to complain.* So can the impersonator change his user name, so we can avoid getting into a “no, I am Spartacus“ bun fight. In fact Guido would like to invite the impersonator to publicly announce his name change in a post where he can also outline his world-view. Email to sort this out.

UPDATE : Hitchens has a blog! Not a very busy blog, maybe “Peter Hitchens” should go and comment over there….

UPDATE II : Have had second thoughts about getting “Peter Hitchens” to change his user name, can he just put his name in ironic quotation marks at least?

UPDATE III : Peter Hitchens has just emailed from the Mail on Sunday to confirm he really is himself. He thought it all very funny until people began thinking it really was him. Is that clear?

*Presumably from the original Peter Hitchens “Would the person who is abusing my name on this blog please cease doing so? It seems to me to be unoriginal, dishonest and rather cowardly to hide your own opinions behind the name of somebody else. I have written this message because I am beginning to receive messages from people asking if I am connected with the person who calls himself ‘Peter Hitchens‘ on this blog.”

Now, I’m already confused. See, is it Peter Hitchens, “Peter Hitchens,” or ‘Peter Hitchens?’ You’ll note three different possibilities, even leaving Spartacus out for now.

Which the comments have not done. Don’t just sit there, read them! This thread is a thing of beauty and a joy forever; already noted at Fortean Times, fyi, but that’s not going to stop me from posting it here, too, particularly as I’ve been up for 36 hours straight and am far too lazy and woozulated to come up with something of my own at this hour.

asking bin Laden’s permission

Posted on by

This is the story of the 2DTV ad featuring George W. Bush that was banned, along with the whole story of how it happened, who said what to whom, and what they did then. You’ll have to watch to see how it relates to bin Laden, but trust me; these guys owe him bigtime! I bet they’ll be strip-searched in airports for the rest of their lives.