24 Feb 2009
Contrasting faith

Encouraging? Perhaps. Time will tell. But in any case, it's worth remembering that's there's more than two types of Islam, just as there are more than two kinds of Christianity and so many heathen/pagan variants I've lost count. The world is not nearly as monolithic as it sometimes appears.

Can Sufi Islam counter the Taleban?

(link) [BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition]

07:45 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

AP Considers Making Content Require Payment

Hey! If your competitors won't shoot you in the head, do it yourself!

TechDirt is reporting that the Associated Press is poised to be the next in a long line of news organizations to completely bungle their online distribution methods by making their content require payment. While this wouldn't happen for a while due to deals with others, like Google, to distribute AP content for free, even considering this is a massive step in the wrong direction. "Also, I know we point this out every time some clueless news exec claims that users need to pay, but it's worth mentioning again: nowhere do they discuss why people should want to pay. Nowhere do they explain what extra value they're adding that will make people pay. Instead, they think that if they put up a paywall, people will magically pay -- even though the paywall itself is what takes away much of the value by making it harder for people to do what they want with the news: to spread it, to comment on it, to participate in the story. Until newspaper execs figure this out, they're only going to keep making things worse."

(link) [Slashdot]

07:40 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link