I’ve keeping my eye on newspapers and online commenting for a while. Letting people comment on the newspaper like a blog seemed like an interesting idea. My interest was that I thought that newspapers wouldn’t stay on top of controlling spam comments. I was wrong. Where they lost control was with the actual commenters. Without some sort of accountability, apparently people feel free to say anything they want in this sort of forum. Threatening and abusive language, insults, random and profane comments… Apparently it’s all OK, as long as nobody knows who you are. It’s time somebody with a brain took control. This sort of thing doesn’t help anything. You need a moderator, and you need some accountability.

My first thought was that requiring accounts would be my first suggestion. Putting a name to that filth would stamp most of it out pretty quickly. While I came up with one idea, Derek Powazek has has come up with 10 Ways Newspapers Can Improve Comments.

Here are ten things newspapers could do, right now, to improve the quality of the comments on their sites. (There are lots more, but you know how newspaper editors can’t resist a top ten list.)

How long before newspapers start taking these sort of measures? I’m betting it’s going to go downhill quite a bit further at most papers before it gets better. I don’t think the newspapers grasp the negative effects of this sort of thing. Sure their site numbers are going up, but is this the sort of traffic that’s going to make you money? I don’t think so.

Do you live in a rough neighborhood? Instead of getting a dog for you backyard have a look at this Paintball Sentry Gun.

Sure, I have no reason to own one of these, but I want one none the less. Having a bad day, set it up on the front porch and order a pizza… delivered. I’d likely get arrested, and I doubt I’d ever get pizza delivered again, but you have to admit it would be funny. Nice solution to that annoying neighbor’s dog too.

The results of a fascinating study of the design of the top 50 blogs is available at Smashing Magazine. Some interesting results, but I was most interested in the ratio of fluid to fixed width layouts. 92% used fixed width. That seemed a little high to me, but I have noticed a strong trend that way in design lately. I was even more surprised to note that the writer describes the other 8% as “uses fluid elements”, but none used “used an elastic layout”.

I’ve always thought that a fluid width layout was a better design solution for most websites. Defining a minimum width for a site isn’t a bad thing, but a full fixed width layout is just too rigid. It doesn’t take the viewer’s preferences into account. You’ll also note that 56% of blogs surveyed used a site width of 951-1000 pixels. I don’t know about you, but that means if I’m viewing the site with my feed reader open, then I have to scroll left and right. Annoying! I’m sure I’m not the only person who dedicates less than 1000 pixels of screen width to their main browser window.

My favorite statisctic though was about the percentage of the layout used for main content.

“on average, 58% of the overall site layout is used to display the main content.”

The most important part of thelayout only deserves 58%? That’s the best you could do? That’s just sad, it really is.

A Small Design Study Of Big Blogs | How-To | Smashing Magazine

It is truly remarkable that among 50 top blogs not a single one used an elastic layout (width of layout grows with the growing font size) and only a small fraction uses fluid elements (layout changes depending on the size of the browser window). Here are the exact findings:

* 92% of top blogs used a fixed layout,
* 8% used a fluid layout or a hybrid layout with fluid layout elements
(Engadget, Smashing Magazine, Gigazine, Coorks and Liars).

Larry Godwin and the City of Memphis have issued AOL with a subpoena to reveal the owners of the blog MPD Enforcer 2.0. This police whistle-blower blog is of course making plans to fight this subpoena.

In what could be a landmark case of privacy and the 1st Amendment, GODwin has illegally used his position and the City of Memphis as a ram to ruin the Constitution of the United States! Some members of the Enforcer 2.0 have contacted their attorneys and we are in the process of filing a lawsuit against Larry and the City of Memphis.

A quick look at comments on a local news story suggest, that Mr. Godwin isn’t getting much public sympathy. I somehow doubt the increase in the traffic at MPD Enforcer 2.0 due to this subpoena is going to put him in a better mood.

h/t Instapundit.com

With a review like this, I might have to go to a theater to see this. While I’m a big fan of movies in general, and Batman in particular, I haven’t seen a movie in the last decade that I’ve felt worth going to a theater for. There’s been a few movies that I’ve regretted missing on the big screen sure, but there been so many I’m happy to have missed that it makes up for it.

Before the movie I thought Heath would be the sentimental favorite to win an Oscar. Now I don’t see how you can logically choose anyone else. The man owns this film in the same way De Niro owned Raging Bull. He devours the part and the part IS the film, full and complete. Ledger’s Joker is terrifying because he makes decent points upon occasion and you never know his true motivation for wanting to tear everything down. He’s smart, driven, and fully lethal.

I always thought Ledger was one of those actors who screamed potential. He was fun to watch in a movie, but you always wondered how much better he was going to get. Tragically, we’ll never know, but it looks like at least some of that potential came out in this movie.

I just want Christopher Nolan to keep making movies. I’m willing to start some sort of fund if necessary.

Can’t get a much better review than that can you?

Now this is just weird, but very funny. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Put together by Joss Whedon and starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, and Nathan Fillion among others. Harris’ maniacal laugh at the beginning of Act 1 is hilarious. It’s a strange comic book story filmed as a musical. If I understand it correctly, all three acts will go offline in a few days. A short term project.

Update: Episode III just came out. An unexpected ending. I shouldn’t have been surprised because it’s from Joss Whedon, and he’s known for going in unexpected directions. Is it actually possible to be unsurprised by a surpise ending you didn’t see coming?

I would recommend reading Baekdal.com on a regular basis, but there have been two posts lately that are especially interesting to me. He posted about had GINA last month, this month you need to go take a look at the BMW Museum’s Kinetic Sculpture. I’m not normally a big fan of BMW, but both of these concepts are fascinating. Great design mixed with clever uses of technology.

What exactly is the point of the game Guitar Hero? Spending tens or even  hundreds of hours learning to play a fake guitar? Why don’t they actually  learn to play the guitar? With the time commitment some of these people make for the game, learning the actual guitar isn’t really out of line. They won’t play like Bonnie Raitt or anything, but they’d be learning something real.

It’s not going to happen of course. They’ll continue to flock to stores to buy fake guitars so that they can spend hundreds of hours learning to pretend to play the guitar. I just don’t get it.

D.C. on verge of new gun law

The District, rebuffed by the Supreme Court last month in a landmark decision on its 32-year-old gun ban, could soon be headed back to court over a new gun law that could take effect as early as Wednesday.

I’m actually a little surprised they waited this long. I expected them to immediately try something like this, but apparently the Supreme Court loss took them by surprise.

City officials said the legislation will “clarify that firearms in the home must be stored unloaded and either disassembled (or) secured with a trigger lock, gun safe or similar device,” with an exception made for a firearm used against a “reasonably-perceived threat” of immediate harm to a person within a registered gun owner’s home.

That has got to be about the stupidest things I’ve read lately. Am I understanding that to say that you should wait until the threat is reasonable, and within your home, then assemble your firearm? Mind boggling. Pretty much what I expected from DC.

Laptop Thieves Outfoxed by Savvy Apple User

Kait Duplaga used Apple’s Back to My Mac application to access her missing laptop from another Leopard-based machine. She was then able to run her Apple PhotoBooth software installed on the stolen laptop to photograph one of the thieves while he was using her machine.

D.C. Officials Weigh Keeping Semiautomatic Pistols Illegal After Blanket Handgun Ban is Struck Down

The court ruled that a blanket ban on handguns is unconstitutional, but D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and other Washington officials want to keep in place a prohibition on semiautomatic handguns — those in which a bullet clip is inserted into the gun’s grip.

What part of handgun are they not understanding? They seem to be confused by the fact that they have redefined a semiautomatic as an “machine gun”.

Current city law defines a “machine gun” to mean “any firearm which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily converted or restored to shoot: a) Automatically, more than one shot by a single function of the trigger; b) Semiautomatically, more than 12 shots without manual reloading.”

Makes me curious what I could redefine… How about money as “any pretty rock I find in my yard”? How many rocks would it take to buy myself a new “machine gun”?

h/t Instapundit.com – Make sure to follow his link to “Because, you know, revolvers don’t shoot quickly.”