links for 2009-06-24

"Force ad networks to have editorial integrity. Make small gray text with reverse billing fraud terms of service illegal. Make the networks run a clean show. If they do that there will be little to no incentive for scamming consumers. And it is easier to force self-policing onto 200 ad networks than it is to try to police millions of bloggers".

A classic. "What Phillip did was *soooooooooooooooo* boring that we have to go over every bit of it in great detail, and use all of the photos without credit or permission".

"Journalism has been crowdsourced before, but it’s the scale of the Guardian’s project — 170,000 documents reviewed in the first 80 hours, thanks to a visitor participation rate of 56 percent — that’s breathtaking. We wanted the details, so I rang up the developer, Simon Willison, for his tips about deadline-driven software, the future of public records requests, and how a well-placed mugshot can make a blacked-out PDF feel like a detective story".

Amusing diagram [via News From The Herd]

"Labour MPs have behaved in a disgracefully partisan way by voting for a Conservative MP with a history of support for extreme right wing causes. It is this sort of refusal to reach out which leads many to believe that the only way to re-establish the independence of the House of Commons is for a future Conservative majority to elect a loyalist Conservative MP as speaker. Only the election of a Speaker with the whole hearted support of the Conservative Front bench will end the bitter partisan divisiveness which has led to the sorry sight of hundreds of Labour MPs voting for a Conservative". [via Clive Davis on The Spectator's blogs]