Dickens of a Blog

BLOT: (15 May 2012 - 10:16:32 AM)

Watching the Amazon Kindle Price Weenies Shoot Themselves in Their Own Collective Foot...

One of the most intriguing facets of the ebook anthropology, and hopefully one that will be retained in the annals of ebook-publishing lore, are those tireless men and women who descend upon hundreds and thousands of ebooks on Amazon.com and mark them as being priced over $9.99, the arbitrary price set initially by Amazon and maintained by that faithful core as being the "true" price that ebooks should be, at least ebooks that are brand new and hot off the virtual presses. In other words, they see this as a maximum, not an average nor a special pricing, but the very horizon to which ebook prices must not venture beyond.

Some of the earliest of these brave defenders wrote nasty reviews. You have a brand new ebook coming out, the hardcover being over $30, but you dare charge $12.99 for the ebook? 1-star for your greed and no they did not read it because you, sir, are evil. As the bad reviews started getting tons of "not helpful" votes, they moved on to tags, which Amazon allows people to use to sort of crowd-source book organization. A book that ventured into the "here be dragons" of greater than $9.99 might find tags like these:

Even assuming that each person marked more than one tag, we have 32 accounts going for the tag "overpriced-kindle-version" on that book, as of yesterday. Just picture them all shaking their fist and lighting up a thoughtful cigarette of justice after getting done, staring into the sunset out their living room window, realizing they are mankind's only hope.

Except this isn't an ebook they are attacking, this is a trilogy of ebooks in one bundle. The Mistborn Trilogy, to be precise. Three ebooks priced at $22.99 for the package, which is about a dollar less than buying the ebooks separately. Sure, this is about $8 more than the hardcopy edition, but the hardcopy edition, a box of three massmarket paperbacks, is at a 40% discount, and that's one of those weird bits where ebooks being handled not as commodities but as licenses ends up with physical product being discountable while ebooks are sort of "special license price this week only" -able, and I can see some complaint, there, but in this case I think your $9.99-or-bust watchmen do not care about what is really going on, and since no one seems to care about Amazon tags or about people complaining about prices, I'm pretty sure they are preaching to the choir.

They have effectively marginalized their own argument, or as I call it in the title of the post, they have shot themselves in their own collective foot...

Ebooks

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: May 2012

BLOT: (11 May 2012 - 03:29:10 PM)

The Locked Key Incident (with a bonus happy resolution!) and other recent tidbits

Let's start with an odd pairing of words from an article about something tragic: "Police...are investigating the death of an 8-year-old girl...found hanging from a rope attached to a tree." + "[The coroner] describes the death...as suspicious.". I wonder how a person found drained of blood and covered in dark sigils would be described? Heart Failure?¹.

Now, on to the news of the hour. Well, past 96 hours or whichever. Sarah was out of town last week and came back in for the weekend. Then we went down to Auburn to see Alicia's graduation [she was wrapping up a German degree, summa cum laude style, congrats to her and good luck!] and because Sarah and Alicia were heading back out of town, this time to Boston, the very next morning at a very early time, we had to make the trip down to Auburn, sit through the graduation, and then come immediately back to Huntsville in one extended go. By the time we got back in time, I was exhausted and Sarah moreso...

...and because the fob on my set of the car keys kept setting off the alarm in my pocket, I took them out and put them in the door's side pocket to keep them safe...

...so when we got home I forgot to get the keys out of the car. Sarah got a ride to the airport around 0545. I got up around 0600. By 0700, I was going to start my walk to work and this is when I realized that my keys were locked in a car and the only other set of keys were on their way to Boston. A car that was maybe 10m from the front door. I had two rough options³, I could leave the apartment door unlocked all day while I was at work or I could lock myself out of my own apartment and then, when I got home around 1730, call emergency services and have them let me in since the apartment office would be closed at that time. I choose the second and then texted Sarah to let her know. When I eventually talked to the apartments that afternoon via phone, they were able to make a duplicate key and get it to me so that I could get in when I got off work.

Except, this only put one issue caused by the lost key chain to bed. My mail key was locked up, and it had already been a couple of days since I had checked the box. I had a storage key locked up. All the other keys. Anyone breaking into the car would have a nice set of keys to aid in their larceny. Etc. The solution ended up being both fairly easy and kind of costly: Sarah FedExed me her key fob and I used it to open the door and get my keys out. Technically we have roadside assistance as well, but it's one of those things that if we use it a couple of times, we have to start paying for it and it is possible that one day in the future we will need it a lot more than we needed the FedEx postage.

Well, that's all said and done. Sarah is off to Boston with Alicia and they have been cutting up a right rug except now Sarah is apparently sick [and no doubt exhausted after two weeks of traveling] so their carpet incising might regress to "having a nice lie down on a Friday night". I'll let her yabber about her trip so if you see her around, poke her for details.

And hate to sound like a boring ass but that just about wraps up everything of significance that has happened to me in the past week. I got to eat at a Milo's (i.e. the burger place that made the tea that became the "famous" one, if you live around here anyhow. They have good burgers and even better fries, but that might be the exhaustion talking. The very fresh Milo's Sweet Tea is one of the best sweet teas you can find, though, so give them a try if you are down B'ham way (the one we ate at was in the Inverness area). I'm sure there have been other fun things, I just don't know how much fun I can make it sound. Heh.

I'm brain-tired, World. Lots of "let's look at lots of little URLs to see if the pattern matched link.pattern.one/etc/soforth or if they were an erroneous pattern.two/link/etc/soforth" and there are only so many hundreds of links a man can read off a screen before his eyes cease to function as eyes and start of function as portals to the deep, dark, entropic voice awaiting all of existence at the end of time. In other words, I'm having to take a break.

Sarah's due back in town tomorrow night. And she will probably sleep the whole of Sunday away. Monday we are both off and will do something, which might be "recover".

1: From Laird Barron's The Croning: "So much for the story about a coronary conclusion, though some wit said long ago that the ultimate cause of all death was heart failure."²

2: I'm not sure to who/what the quote refers, so it might be made up or it might be some famous quote paraphrased. Not clicking anything in my brain nor my Google searches.

3: An even rougher one possibly involving breaking into Sarah's car and the calling in an insurance claim.

Me in 2012

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: May 2012

BLOT: (08 May 2012 - 12:42:21 PM)

Huntsville weird news this week: Parent cited for intimidating school board due to an iPad, Fluoride to stay in drinking water [but, the commies and our vital fluids!], and some jackass shot the Saturn V.

When I read of a Huntsville parent being thrown out of a school board meeting for recording a bit of a public meeting on an iPad, I was halfway between bothered by the standard security theater double-speak of non-specified threats and security guards trusting their instincts and higher-ups hand-waving any responsibility while also refusing to look into anyone responsible; and also aware that every story has two sides. In this case, though, I'm pretty sure the fault is not the parent's and even though there is some bad blood—including mention of an incident where question was asked, not answered, and the parent stayed standing awaiting an answer and some of the board said it was uncomfortable—this is exactly the same sort of issue that crops up time and time again when some security guard or police officer, both of which have official access to all sorts of recordings, makes out that photography or recording of traffic stops is either outright illegal, an act of intimidation, or at least some sort of random form of copyright infringement. This situation begs for a flashmob of parents and concerned citizens to show up and record a meeting in unison.

If getting fired up over the right to record versus the right to not-be-recorded isn't your thing, how about a healthy dose of General Ripper quotes as you read this article: Madison Utilities board votes to keep fluoride in city's drinking water supply. Not sure if you know the "fluoride is poison" debate or its "fluoride is mind control" cousin, but this DuckDuckGo search for Fluoride and "Mind Control" should keep you going. In not-surprising news, I am fairly neutral about the whole thing. I would rather the city spend its "fluoride budget" on getting dentistry to kids who need it and keep the additive out of the water, but I'm not really scared of it being there.

And, without too much comment, I'll leave you with this last piece: someone shot at the Saturn V. They must have thought it was a stop sign.¹

1: For those not from the American South, there is a rednecks enjoy the hell out of signs. Presumably this is what happens when you don't spend enough on public education. Here are some photos to help illustrate.

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: May 2012

BLOT: (06 May 2012 - 01:16:07 PM)

The Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight [trademarked buzzword warning!] looks sexy, but...

Want to see the sexy, aka Barnes and Noble's about to hit the market Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight? Click the link! Or, look below for an artist rendering of what glowing light might look like...

When you read the page, though, you see some awesome things. Besides the support for ePubs, that I like, you also get SD card expansion, what seems to be better font control, some built in glare and screen protection to make it even more "paperlike" than the Kindle, and of course the GlowLight technology, which I suppose is kind of like those old IndiGlo watches in that it provides a gentle backlight experience that doesn't require the battery consumption nor the glare of the traditional back-lit screen. I dig it. But then I also see bits like this on the page, and I wonder what's going on...

Not "best" or "best reviewed". but "#1". Not only does that not match sales figures but seems to be unlikely to match them for some time (unless GlowLight becomes the "game changer") and volume of books sold on each device still seems to be heavily in Amazon's favor. Reviews I'm not sure, but I've always seen Nook vs. Kindle reviews to have about the same mix of positives and negatives. Who knows?

Eh, I think I'll just demand one for my birthday and then be done with it.

Ebooks

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: May 2012

BLOT: (02 May 2012 - 03:28:00 PM)

The Ulimate (maybe too powerful) Comment Killer! Bonus: Most Bad-Ass Young Girl With a Violin You Are Likely to See Today...

If you don't care about CSS or getting rid of comments while you casually browse, only look at this first picture and then feel free to bail. It comes from this version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Found when I did a "get album artwork" on a completely different version of that album, but kept because why not. Yes, some of you might notice, she is Asian, because nothing says "violin playing child" like "Asian female". But also note that her facial expression indicates that she is pretty sure she can kick your ass.

On with the show...

I have mentioned, before, my dislike of internet comments. I sometimes feel guilty that I hate them so much, but hate them I do. A bunch of people whose only qualification to talk on a subject is that they know enough, or know people who know enough, to get them briefly online and to hit a device in a controlled enough manner to both type out a "message" [not always stooping to such lowest common denominators as "words" or "syntax" or "meaning" or "cohesion"] and then to hit some sort of "submit" key. Commenting doesn't require reading an article or previous comments. It doesn't require understanding ideas like "jokes" or "references".

How do we make sure we never see comments again? Well, one way to do this is to get up, disconnect yourself from the Internet, and then never log back on. Let's say that is hasty and a bit, but just a bit, overblown.

Another way, and the way I'm about to use, is taking Stylish [an extension I know works for Chrome and Firefox, see: http://www.userstyles.org] and then applying a CSS override [it is what Stylish does] so that we can manipulate and alter the display of a page.

CSS [don't quite have time to go into CSS, but there are some good basic pages on it just a search away] has a built in methods for selecting entire classes of things, so that a paragraph (i.e. p) of class "indented" can be referred to as "p.indented" but you can also use just ".indented" to specify everything marked as of the "indented" class (including divs and uls and such) or you can say just "p" to mark everything in a paragraph tag (including p.monkey and p.bold).

CSS also allows you to use some wildcards. For instance, if you make a Stylish override that just says (sans quotes) "* {color: black !important; background-color: white;}" it will turn every page into just black and white text. Which might be useful if you have an issue with various colors and such.^{1, 2}

One particular set of wildcards is setting up attribute matching. Without going into too much detail, one can set up so that a div of any class containing the string "spoiler" to be set to the background color, or hidden, or some similar. it takes on the form "div[class*="spoiler"]". In this way, div.spoilers and div.spoiler are both affected by the rule, since "spoilers" also contains the string "spoiler".

You probably see where this is going, but a pair of matches along the lines of div[id*="comment"] and div[class*="comment"] will impact any div that has either an id or a class attribute containing the string "comment" (e.g. comment, comments, commentary, userComment, reader-commetns, fb-comments, etc). And you don't have to stop at "div", you can wildcard that into "*" and make a pair along the lines of *[class*="comment"] and *[id*="comment"] to get rid of every span, image, link and and so forth that has the string "comment" in it by setting it to "display:none;". This makes a tool that might be a bit too powerful, in that it is non-discriminating, but if you make a Stylish style, and enter it exactly as below with URL or regexp matching, it will apply to everything:

Some notes. You might be better off to specify "div" and "span" instead of just the wildcard (I use "div" in my own style override). I included "facebook" and "thread" but you can probably leave those out and still get most comments (and if you use Facebook a lot, you might want to leave it out just in case). There are going to some that it doesn't catch (if a page calls them "feedback", for instance) that might be good to add in on a little bit more case-by-case basis. Finally, this is looking for the word "comment", for instance, so it can include other words like "commentary" or "editor-comment" that aren't actually comments. Use carefully and maybe opt for a few not-quite-so-Ultimate solutions if you find it causing collateral damage.

1: Perhaps a more entertaining version would be:
* {color: green !important; background-color: black !important; font-family: courier !important;}
which would roughly turn every page into an approximation of an old terminal shell.

2: Though overarching "*" might be a bit much, there are ways to make them useful. If you wanted a style that show all the links on a page at a glance, setting the "*" to {visibility: hidden !important;} and then "a" back to {visibility: visible !important;} you get a page that is almost entirely blank except for the links. This can have some strange side-effects, but might be fun for the sort who just want to see which links a log is using and such.

Better Ways to Surf the WWW

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: May 2012

BLOT: (30 Apr 2012 - 12:21:03 AM)

The Worst "Meatloaf" Ever, Burning My Mouth So Bad It Depressed Me, and Brief Summations of Panoply

Take a look at this, and make note:

That is the worst "meatloaf" I have ever eaten. It was $2.89 at my local market, which means that a big-box store would sell it, the "family size", for about $2.50. Let that be a warning. Avoid. The number one ingredient is water, followed by machine separated meat from a small menagerie of different animals, followed by soy, followed by a list of ingredients longer than the one on your average multi-vitamin. It emits a smell not unlike a trash can when fully cooked, a heady aroma of poverty and poor life decisions, and it has a texture somewhere between cheap bologna and over-firm tofu. Except worse. Sarah and did the best we could with a couple of servings and tossed the rest.

This was made all the more diabolical in that I have a burn on the roof of my mouth—earned from over-nuking a burrito—that is (a) possibly the worst I have ever had in that it covers half the roof and requires about half-hourly doses of pain killer to keep it from aching and (b) so bad that it had made me depressed about life. Just sitting here, on the edge of pain, for eight hours now has made me feel like an utter screw-up. I do not think I can explain it better than that. I've thought about crying to just get out of the way, but mostly I sit and try to ignore the constant reminder that mistakes were made. Out of the day's pluses and minuses, the meatloaf and mouth burn predominate, making this a poor Sunday, indeed.

Luckily, most of the weekend was better. Friday night, I was Sarah's personal roadie and carried a large drum for her, along with other sundries, as she was on her way to a performance that night at Panoply. Carrying said equipment led me to tweet this, which speaks truth:

The next day, we went back as mere spectators, which was both fun and entertaining. Also, the only time in my life I have ever seen Tahitian dancers forced off a stage by the rules—they were part of a group that had went over in time while getting costumes on and the stage-handlers wouldn't let them finish the last dance, which probably took more time than just letting them do the dance but at least this way a protocol was what wasted time instead of, you know, arts and stuff. After about two or so hours of surfing the Panopliac wave, the heat was getting to us, and the crowd was increasingly filled with people who looked really angry at finding themselves there, and too many baby strollers were being manned by people who were either agoraphobes or stricken with some strange blindness that stopped them from seeing all the people they were shoving against and through. So, we bailed. But, we did buy a couple of pieces of art, one of which looks like this:

Which is going to join my wide mix of art hung up in my library.

And that just about catches us up...

Me in 2012

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: April 2012

BLOT: (29 Apr 2012 - 11:48:06 PM)

Vanishing on 7th Street (Review)

the gist. When the lights go out one night, something in the dark takes nearly everyone in Detroit. Instantly. With barely a sound. Leaving only clothes and effects behind. The next day Luke wakes up to find his girlfriend missing and the city a mass of abandoned cars and empty buildings. He wanders for three days, learning to survive, until he finds a bar with a generator that can keep out the dark. Except it is not for long and the things in the dark want inside. With a small group of survivors, Luke debates a course of action as time runs out, and down, and hope dwindles.

1 paragraph review. The fact that this movie does not appear to be the victim of rewrite hell surprises me, because it has all the signs of a movie whose script suffered a few major whacks and reshuffles. Like pieces of a half dozen different china plates glued together to something that almost, but is nothing like, a functional eating device. It is mired with drifting characterizations, rules only retained for the drama of a couple of scenes, rambling moods and themes, and possible the biggest Chekhov's Herrings¹ I have ever seen. And while I can deal with movies that have no real answer, so many of the thrills and so much of the mystery in this case are a wayward mix of missed chances and gaps of logic meant to help add to a few faux twists. It is survival horror for people who do not bother with with narrative nor common sense but think a three-penny debate between Existentialism and Christianity delivered at the edge of over-acting counts as deep. And a shame, too, because this bird had some potential but nearly really flew. A very Meh piece.

plus some paragraphs. I knew something was going wrong in the movie when Hayden Christensen's Luke completely ignores the pleas of another survivor—in a world where people disappeared but all the canned goods and such didn't so scarcity is suddenly the least of your problems. I knew it was even worse than that when his attitude about letting others die quickly melts in the face of a child and woman. And, by the time they come up with some cock-eyed theory about solar power batteries lasting longer than any other batteries, I knew that this was a patchwork film meant to convey only one idea—that darkness wants in, real bad—and everything else was just meant to hasten that theme.

Let's leave aside the logic of the night being longer than the day, presumably everywhere in the world, the variable amount of light needed to keep the darkness at bay, as befitting a scene's needed tension level, and the disproportionate aspects of the initial attack versus pretty much every other one shown. And, let's go ahead and leave aside the amateurish shoving of the Roanoke Colony half-mystery into making Croat ban into some sort of global keyphrase humming at the base note of the universe.

Instead, let's gut this movie and look at its entrails: darkness is coming, you can't understand the darkness, you can't reason with the darkness, hold your own light and trust it above all else, the darkness will use the past to bring you down, and most importantly, all the plans you've built up to keep the darkness out are just temporary. Eventually all those batteries and generators and whathaveyous will run down, and then you are screwed. Now, look at those things, and squint your eyes, and you have what this movie is about: surrender and its duplicitous meaning, where on one hand it is a glory unto God/love/the Universe to give into fate and on the other it is the worst possible thing. You can skip the movie, you've seen all that it has to offer just by reading this paragraph.

1: I don't know if I made that term up or not, but let's just say: an item/event foreshadowed through a couple of different scenes that ends up meaning absolutely nothing.

Horror

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: April 2012

BLOT: (22 Apr 2012 - 06:35:34 PM)

Eight [relatively quick] ways to get past the 10-articles per month limit for New York Times's nytimes.com

If you view NYTimes regularly, you have probably noticed that (a) they have started to limit how many pages you can view and, just recently, (b) has moved that count from 20 nytimes.com articles per month down to 10. The cost of a subscription is a little variable (there's a student pricing, for instance), but for casual news browsers, the sort who might read 12 news articles on a website in a month but never more than 13, paying about $15 a month is paying more than $1 per news article, and at costs like that you might as well get your [hopefully non-sucky] local newspaper and avoid a national syndicate. You can also—just for looking-at-adverts, which you also do, though to perhaps a smaller degree, on the post-payment Times site—get a wide range of other news sources so unless you are particularly smitten with the NYTimes.com, your first instinct is to probably to mozy on elsewhere.

As something of a thought experiment, I started going through the steps in my head to figure out ways around this limit. I found several within just minutes and realized that for a company like the New York Times, that needs a site that is accessible from search engines and needs to generate buzz to get casual browsers, there are certain assumptions that have to be in place. What's more, the nature of these expose certain underlying problems and assumptions with the web-at-large. But let me show you what I mean.

1. Multiple Browsers

Practicality (100 point scale): variable, Technical Ease: assuming you know enough to know how to install more than the default browser, 90. If not, who knows?

The Gist? Have multiple browsers installed on your computer: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, etc. Unless my underlying assumptions are mistaken, then the website tracks the user with browser-specific cookies. This means that dividing your surfing time up between multiple browsers will double, triple, etc your number of articles to read. Likewise, if you have access to multiple computers—home desktop, laptop, mobile device, work desktop, library lab computers—you can again extend your limit. Though some public access terminals are going to count any user's use against the limit so you might find that already burned up.

Added Value? Various browsers tend to have varying skills at rendering certain elements, so it can be useful to have a grasp of which browser is better at what.

The Downside? Kind of obvious, but you have to try and juggle multiple resources and opening up another browser to read an article can be bothersome (if only mildly so). Also, copy-and-paste the URL directly (up to the .html bit) or you will end up burning up your article limit just getting back to where you were.

Chance they could patch this hole? Mild, unless they want to force everyone to sign in to view any articles. Which is sort the breaking point of most of these techniques.

2. Google (et al) Search - "site:nytimes.com"

Practicality presumed about 80, Technical Ease: eh, how about from 60-90?

The Gist? If you search Google with something like the name of the article in quotes and then include "site:nytimes.com", you should be able to get the article back as a search result, which will not count against you, (well, it counts but you can go past 10). Example, with a made up article name, '"Obama says jobs on the rise" site:nytimes.com' (that would be without the single quotes).

Added Value? Learning how to "site:" search is always, ALWAYS, a good thing.

The Downside? (1) No clue how long until articles actually show up, (2) no clue at how many false hits you'll get, (3) can get kind of tedious. You are essentially trust in Google/Bing/etc to return the article you want, as opposed to other articles with possibly the same name and/or blog posts about the article that don't have direct links back to the article.

Chance they could patch this hole? They could do something like IP tracking, or require a log on, or disallow search results except for so many times, and so forth.

3. Private Browsing

Practicality: 75, Technical Ease: 75.

The Gist? In Firefox, it is called Private Browsing. In Chrome, it is opening an Incognito Window. Others probably have something similar. You open a browser session where your activity will not be retained and your prior activity will be considered hush-hush. By doing this, cookies and history will be deleted when you stop that private/incognito session and so the website will have to assume that you are af fresh visitor.

Added Value? Private/Incognito browsing protects your identity and prevents tracking and so is not a bad habit to cultivate, especially on public computers.

The Downside? First off, it is not going to remember your session and so if you are of the sort that loves to look at your history rather than take notes or make bookmarks, you will not find what you did. Also, different browsers handle the break-out session differently, not to mention that completely trusting the browser and/or website to really protect your identity is always dangerous. Finally, some people have trouble keeping track of tabbed browsing, so keeping track of multiple windows with varying privacy levels might be beyond them to fully juggle. Oh, and a bonus "finally", if you are prone to viewing more than 10 articles at a time, just one private session might not be enough.

Chance they could patch this hole? IP tracking would do it, to a degree (see multiple computers, though), and there are other ways to script server-side handling of perpetual cookie-less accounts (three link clicks with no cookies? assume the worst!).

4. Twitter (see also: Facebook, G+)

Practicality: 60, Technical Ease: 85.

The Gist? Aware of the vital shifts in social media and how much it impacts any online business, NYTimes.com allows you to keep reading if you a follow a link from a blog, Twitter, etc etc (see short FAQ for citation). Therefore, to read links all you first need to do is have some sort of social media set up and then just share it. Follow the link and bam! These count against your 10-per-month, but the difference is that you are not cut off.

Added Value? Most of the added value is for NYTimes.com, actually, since it will share their materials and drive up their overall readership. You also get the bonus benefit of looking like the kind of well-informed person who cares a lot about the news.

The Downside? Well, you have to share all the articles you want to read, and there are bound to be some that you might be a bit nervous about sharing, especially in an Everyone-You-Know environment like Facebook ("I swear, Mom, I only wanted to read that article on breast-feeding fetishism from an anthropological perspective!"). Also, if you read a lot of news it is going to make you look like a spamming dick, not to mention that there is still the idea that links you share are things of which you approve and of which you want to get out there, which is generally at odds with you posting the link just to read it.

Chance they could patch this hole? Low, since they want the buzz. There is a bigger chance that they might change the setting to only give people from social sites something of a short-view for the article with sign-in and or cookies required to get the longer.

5. Google Tasks, Email, HTML jiggery-pokery, etc

Practicality: variable, Technical Ease: variable.

The Gist? The nature of the beast basically means that NYTimes is going to allow off-site links (links anywhere but on nytimes.com) to count against you, but to still go through. This means that techniques like emailing yourself an article, adding a link to a Google Task list, and sending yourself an article through a chat (yes, with yourself) should work. What's more, the sky is the limit with this one since there could be any number of methods to scrape links and repost them. How about a script that wgets the homepage and then uploads all the links and text to a page on a private site? Or a Python script where you can save the links you want to visit in a text file and then run it to spit out an html file you can use to follow through, possibly to a protected blog post?Maybe the wget emails you all the big links on the front page? Have fun tinkering.

Added Value? This one has the major advantage of the previous that it doesn't require you having to fling links into the wild (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, G+, etc) in order to see them [though one could imagine a person making a private, no-one-but-themselves Twitter feed to also avoid this], but then it ranges from fairly simply to fairly difficult to set up. However, difficulties of this sort often require learning valuable life skills to overcome, so it might be thought of as training that could later end up on a resume.

The Downside? Link-at-a-time methods are still tedious. And more advanced versions might be wrecked by a style update to nytimes.com.

Chance they could patch this hole? Most of the previous potential patches are relevant here. Added issue could be if nytimes started allowing preferred domains for proper off-site links and ignored others.

6. Delete all cookies upon close

Practicality: variable [see Downsides], Technical Ease: 70.

The Gist? Tell your browser to delete all cookies (and/or all private data) upon each close. Each time you re-open it, it will seem to be a "fresh" browser and therefore sites that count visits by cookies and such private-data will be unable to keep accurate track of overall usage.

Added Value? If you want to be paranoid, may not be a bad habit to get into. This stops longer reaching data tracking from happening, and can help to prevent sites that do things like use cookies to track your activity on other sites [*cough* Facebook *cough*] from doing that, too, though preventing all cookies is probably better for the latter.

The Downside? You'll have to re-login to everything every time you use the web. Some sites also use cookies to have things like a persistent shopping cart and turning on the option to delete browser history guarantees that you'll have to remember what you have and haven't read, since it won't leave an easily searchable record. If you look at more than 10 articles at a go, you'll have to close and reopen your browser.

Chance they could patch this hole? The standards of IP tracking, requiring log-in, et al, apply.

7. Delete/Block Specifically NYTimes.com Cookies

Practicality: 100, Technical Ease: 60.

The Gist? Browsers allow you to specify exceptions to overall cookie-storage policies. By disallowing ALL third party cookies, and then blocking cookies specifically from nytimes.com, and deleting the ones that have already built up, the site will not able to keep track of how many sites you have seen. One variation would involve not blocking nytimes.com cookies, but going in and searching them and deleting them ever so often as needed.

Added Value? You don't have to worry about logging into all of your other sites or learn how to manage multiple privacy settings at the same time. What's more, you can view more than 10 pages at a time. Of all the tricks in this list, this one is right up there with learning the ins-and-outs of private browsing for practical and relatively easy technical tricks for safer browsing. Dig around in the options until you find the button that shows you how to view cookies and look at all the data websites have stored on your computer, and then using a few searches find out how few of them are actually for sites that you figure would need cookies for your benefit. You can probably find a few that you aren't comfortable with having cookies. Al in all, learning how to manage this on a site-by-site sort of basis is just smart browsing.

The Downside? Essentially none. You aren't blocking other sites from leaving cookies. Until nytimes.com is redesigned to require cookies to click a link from nytimes, you won't find this too bad.

Chance they could patch this hole? If they require a log-in, use IP-tracking, or require cookies to be put upon clicking a nytimes.com link from nytimes.com, then it could patch it up. Outside of that, this one is pretty safe.

8. Pay for it

Practicality: variable, but let's assume 50+, Technical Ease: probably at least 90.

The Gist? It's a website that has a paywall to insure the content gets valued without devolving into a blinking ring of advertisements somewhat more garish than Las Vegas on a bad day. Pay for said service and enjoy the benefits of being a customer (like having to read articles without going through crazy schemes and loops).

Added Value? The content gets paid for and, if you use the site a whole lot, then you get the satisfaction of knowing you support something that is useful to you. What's more, as an actual paying customer, when you do things like scream at them for charging you $15 a month and still make you look at advertisements, it means something.

The Downside? You end up having to pay for it. And while it is not a whole lot of money, relatively, it still is approximately $15 more than any other news-site you might care to read. Also, you end up supporting kind of strange set-ups that lead to all the crazy scenarios that make #'s 1-7 possible. And that's probably a bad thing.

Chance they could patch this hole? Since patching it means getting rid of the paywall, possibly the smallest chance of all.

In conclusion...

If you use nytimes.com sparingly, then none of these are necessary. If you use it a lot, then #8 is your best option [and welcome to the paying-for-things club!], but for those in the middle or with any of a number of other reasons, I'd recommend #7. Learning a little bit more about the backend of your browser is never a bad thing, it's a good lesson about computer safety, and it doesn't require link-at-a-time methods or strange and artificial methods to manage which browser you view which number of links on when.

Screenshots and such, for those that might need them

Adding a website to block/allow as a specific exception for cookie handling on Firefox

Cookies added after only looking at 2-3 pages on nytimes.com

Blocking a specific website from adding cookies on Chrome

Clearing private data upon close in Chrome

Better Ways to Surf the WWW

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: April 2012