How Cute: NY Times, WaPo & Gannett Build Their Own Walled Garden Most People Will Ignore

This is just a bit bizarre. As the NY Times and others keep moving towards a paywall, it and the Washington Post and Gannett have apparently funded a bizarrely pointless operation called OnGo, which appears to be an excessively limited, high priced, walled garden aggregator. For a mere $7 per month, you can get access to content from those three companies along with a few other big newspapers. Of course, there are limits. You only get the top 20 stories from the NY Times, for example.

Or, you know, you could just use an RSS reader. Or Twitter. Or Facebook. And not pay the monthly fee.

I'm reading through the various details and stories on this project, and the one question I keep asking which isn't answered anywhere is what is the additional value this brings to the table. When the very best that the operation's boss man can do to explain his value proposition is to say "this is another option," you're in trouble. This isn't providing any more value for the (much higher) price. It seems to be targeted at fools, which is no way to build a business these days.

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Source: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110126/04012412832/how-cute-ny-times-wapo-gannett-build-their-own-walled-garden-most-people-will-ignore.shtml

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How to Create a Membership Program that Rocks

This is a guest post by Mary Jaksch of A-List Blogging Bootcamps. Many bloggers dream of adding a membership program to their blog. And with good reason. A membership program can create raving fans, will make your blog stand out, and can even create a great revenue stream. But most membership programs fizzle out because [...]

Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/-bmHuLZnL5E/

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Ask a VC: John O?Farrell Gives Tips on Deal Making, Advice to Would-Be VCs (TCTV)

This week's Ask a VC has a different twist, since we had a different kind of VC on the show, John O'Farrell Andressen Horowitz's guru on business development and deal-making. The questions you asked O'Farrell are below. As usual, feel free to watch the whole show or use the links to skip ahead to your question. "Have you ever invested in a single employee startup? Would this be a situation in which you guys would make a deal?"

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Do7_8_lKHL4/

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Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week

Unlike last week, where we had one user dominate the favorite comments of the week (for both funny and insightful), this week it's back to a bit more normal, with the tops in each being separate. Leading the "insightful" crew (by a wide margin) was The Infamous Joe, whose comment on the story of Phil Mocek winning his legal battle against the TSA (where he was arrested for not showing ID and for filming his interactions) really seemed to strike a nerve with people. He was responding to someone who asked why the officers doing the arresting get in some sort of trouble for what turned out to be a bogus arrest. The Infamous Joe responded:

The forgiving part of me wants to say that these TSA officers and Law Enforcement Officers were simply ignorant of the law, or confused at what the law really says-- I mean, they can't know the ins and outs of every law. Then, I recall what *every* cop and lawyer and judge will tell you if you break a law you didn't realize you were breaking: Ignorance of the law is no defense. If I, as a non-lawyer, non-law enforcement functionary, am expected to know the laws that bind me such that *not* knowing is a fault on my part, then surely we can hold the very people who are binding us to these laws to the same standard.

I say they should be held accountable, to the maximum extent of the law. They'd do the same to me.

Apparently folks around here agree and have a problem with double standards in law enforcement officials. Coming in second was Rekrul's post concerning his experience with the drug companies, in our post on how patents are holding back cures for various health problems:

I have both psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. For about two years, I took part in a drug trial using Orencia. My arthritis improved to the point where it no longer bothered me and my psoriasis was somewhat improved. Then the company dumped all the trials because they weren't getting the results that they wanted. Even if I wanted to continue taking that drug, I wouldn't be able to because it's not approved for PA. If it was, it would cost me over $4,000 a month!

Now I'm on a new study aimed at psoriasis, which also seems to be helping the arthritis. I'm sure that once this study eventually ends, this drug won't be available for years and will be outrageously expensive as well.

Healthcare in the US isn't about helping people, it's about making the drug companies richer.

On the "funny" front, we had two comments that came in way above the next tier, and both came from Techdirt regulars. Dark Helmet took the gold with his comment about the new bill to put warning labels on videos games, which made him wonder something:

I'm still wondering why my enjoyment of Nintendo games as a youngster didn't immediately result in my growing a ridiculous mustache (by cracky) followed by a murderous attitude towards small shell-backed quadripeds.

It did, however, teach me that no matter how impressive someone's castle, the princess is always elsewhere....

And right behind him with the silver was Marcus Carab's comment in response to the legal ruling that playing Dungeons and Dragons in jail represented "gang activity." Apparently, Marcus plays a mean game of D&D:

Well I don't know about you, but all the D&D players I know are some of the hardest gangbangers around. You think Gary Gygax died of an aneurysm? No, he was quietly taken out to put an end to his massive organized crime empire. Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, MS13 - those are all small time. They don't hold a candle to the Wizards of the Coast.

Thanks for another great week of interesting (and funny) discussions.

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Source: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110128/22182912881/funniestmost-insightful-comments-week.shtml

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What Could Possibly Go Wrong: Genetically-Modified Mosquitoes

Fever Dream Critics worry that genetically engineering mosquitoes and releasing them into the wild-one proposed method for controlling the spread of malaria and other diseases -could cause those diseases to become more virulent Jamie Sneddon

Genetically engineered mosquitoes could even spread genes to other insects

As carriers for diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever, mosquitoes are the deadliest creatures on the planet, responsible for millions of human deaths every year. And as the planet warms, the insects are broadly expanding their turf and bringing their diseases with them; thousands of cases of dengue, a tropical disease, have appeared in the U.S. in the past five years. DDT was long used to control the mosquito population, but it is now widely banned, and in any case, many scientists believe that mosquitoes quickly build up a resistance to the insecticide. That, in part, is why the battle against mosquitoes has gone genetic.

Generally speaking, the goal of gene-based mosquito-control projects is either to kill the insects or make them benign. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, for example, are studying mosquitoes that were made malaria-resistant through the activation of a gene responsible for a protein that blocks the infection. And the British company Oxitec has engineered a strain of mosquito that cannot survive without regular doses of tetracycline; in the wild, these mosquitoes would survive just long enough to mate and pass on their tetracycline-junkie genes to their doomed offspring. In a trial in the Cayman Islands last year, Oxitec-modified mosquitoes were able to cut the overall population by 80 percent in just six months.

But the problem is that we don't fully understand how mosquitoes and the diseases they carry would adapt in response to such experiments. New strains of malaria and other diseases could emerge. Jo Lines, a malaria expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has described the process as "a series of arms races that the [malaria] parasite has consistently won." Three percent of the offspring from Oxitec's tetracycline-dependent mosquitoes survive-what happens if those bugs breed with wild mosquitoes?

It's even possible that the changes we induce in mosquitoes could move into other animals. Horizontal gene transfer could result in midges, gnats and black flies developing the same mutations, including the unfortunate characteristic of dying shortly after hatching-and a mass die-off of insects that provide sustenance to birds, bats, frogs and fish would be a food-chain disaster.

How We Can Do Better

Joe Conlon, a technical adviser for the American Mosquito Control Association, favors using a variety of techniques all at once-dispersing larvicide, which is less environmentally harmful than pesticides that kill adults; planting Ovitraps, which attract egg-laying females; and, where possible, getting rid of the water impoundments where the insects breed.

Also, What Could Possibly Go Wrong with

• Flying Hummers
• Blotting Out the Sun
• Industrial Cyber-Sabotage
• Deep-Drilling a Supervolcano
• An Internet "Off" Switch
• Immortal Micro-Organisms

Source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-01/what-could-possibly-go-wrong-genetically-modified-mosquitoes

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The certainty premium

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/zRB-zOIPSPY/the-certainty-premium.html

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Government Putting Quite A Lot Of Effort Into Tracking Down 'Anonymous'

With UK police arresting five guys accused of participating in the Anonymous cyberattacks to make a statement about efforts to block Wikileaks, as well as the FBI saying that it has executed more than 40 search warrants in the US in trying to track down those responsible, I'm curious if anyone has stopped to realize just how much this misses the point. I agree that the Anonymous attacks were childish and probably counterproductive, but, in the end, are they really much more than an online sit in?

By spending so much time, effort and resources in trying to track down some people who were making a statement online, all that officials have done is to give them that much more attention -- which is exactly what they wanted. As warned, these law enforcement agencies are misunderstanding the situation. Arresting these folks just gives the whole effort more attention, and attracts more interest in it. And, given that Anonymous is almost entirely unstructured and not at all dependent on any sort of "leadership," it's not as if these arrests cut off any head of an organization. There is no organization, let alone a head to cut off. But by doing this, it makes effective martyrs out of those involved, and likely attracts even more people to "join the cause."

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Source: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110127/16034212860/government-putting-quite-lot-effort-into-tracking-down-anonymous.shtml

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