Author Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself

I remember seeing HST when I was at UCLA, studying journalism, more than 30 years ago. It was just after Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail had come out. The book, and Hunter’s amazing voice, had a huge impact on me.

Many, many years later, I was on a Ziff-Davis junket in Aspen and our small group ran into Hunter while we were out snowmobiling. He was driving a convertible Cadillac, with a gorgeous woman sitting next to him. When he saw us, he pulled out a rifle and waved it around, muttering all the while about needing to get down a bet on that day’s NFL playoff game. We retreated, quietly, and someone in our group called 911.

A couple days later, I was at a hotel in New York when my publisher’s assistant called and told me that a deputy from the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office wanted to speak with me about the incident. He asked if I had ever felt threatened. I said no, I honestly didn’t. He wasn’t pointing the gun at us, just waving it around.

I asked the deputy if he had to investigate cases like this very often. He paused for almost a minute and finally said, “Well, Hunter is Hunter.”

Indeed.

Hunter, you’ll be missed.

Here are some additional remembrances for your reading pleasure:

Continue reading “Hunter S. Thompson, R.I.P.” →

The esteemed Professor Froomkin calls this “the ultimate contract of adhesion.” Heh. This is worse than any license agreement I’ve ever seen:

People Will Sign Anything

 

Scoble and me at DEMO 2005.

(Thanks to Renee Blodgett.)

I’ll be at the DEMO 2005 conference in Scottsdale, Arizona for the next few days. If you’re planning to be there, look me up.

I hope to have lots of cool new stuff to write about.

I’ve got 50 invitations for Google Mail accounts. If you want one, send an e-mail to edbott AT gmail DOT com. First come, first served.

Make sure you use your real address. My privacy policy is simple: I don’t keep these addresses and I don’t use them for any other purpose or give them to anyone else.

Update: It’s Monday morning and I still have more than 25 left. If you want one, send me a note.

Leander Kahney, who wrote the silly Wired News story about iPods in Redmond that has gotten way more than its 15 minutes of deserved fame, decided to speak up in his The Cult of Mac Blog. Kahney, who writes almost exclusively about Apple and the Mac, says my post that criticized his reporting “was so furious, it reminded me of defensive, paranoid Mac fans.”

Wow, those are pretty strong words. I’d suggest that you Mac fans reading this let Leander know how much you appreciate being called defensive and paranoid. I wouldn’t blame you for being furious. Oh, wait. Leander doesn’t allow comments on his blog.

Please note that comments are still open on my original post and I haven’t censored a single word, even those from people who might reasonably be considered furious, defensive, or just overly passionate. So if you have a message for Leander, I guess you can leave it here.

If you said “virii,”  bzzzzzzzzt!

The correct answer is “viruses.”

I’ve won several rounds of drinks and at least one dinner with this one. Here’s a tip for those who like to make bets: People who insist on saying “virii” are often wine geeks as well, so this is a good topic to bring up when perusing the wine list. If you can get the person across the table to pay for an $80 bottle of wine by winning this bet, it will taste even better.

In the comments to another post, a new visitor named Spider writes:

While here reading you good information about spyware, protection, and the need for running several products, I was not sure if I should be amused or upset that your google ad’s linked me to five sites that wanted to sell me spyware removal software that are all contained on [the Rogue Anti-Spyware list] at Spyware Warrior’s site.  Ironically it was Spyware Warriors blog that led me to this page.

I wrote about this last September, shortly after I added Google ads to this site, in a post entitled Help me clean up sleazy ads. Since that time, I have blocked 42 URLs from the list of sites that I will allow to advertise here. Unfortunately, it’s a never-ending battle, because these people continually register new domains and change the names of their products to work around filters.

Most of the ads that appear here are legitimate and useful. Unfortunately, a handful of keywords have been taken over by companies that are less than honest. That’s a big problem when I write about the MP3 format as well, with ads suddenly appearing that offer unlimited downloads of music and movies but are actually links to suspect software and untrustworthy file-sharing networks.

The problem is not unique to this site. In fact, anyone who searches for anti-spyware software or MP3s or song lyrics is almost certain to run into this problem head-on. I’m considering adding a disclaimer above the ad strip with advice on how to avoid being scammed by these sleaze artists. If anyone has any additional suggestions, please leave them in the comments section here.

Update: Eric L. Howes has an excellent, concise description of the Google problem here. He also links to an ad-filter list at the Short-Media Forums. I’ve incorporated that filter list into this site.

Oops.

(Via Mitch Ratcliffe)

Every author dreams of something like this:

A few months ago, 28-year-old Dean Carter was a small cog in a very big machine. Hidden away in the basement at the grand old publisher Random House, he spent his days sorting mail sent by fans to such eminent writers A S Byatt and Tom Wolfe.

Now, after a series of lucky encounters, he is the recipient of a five-figure, two-book deal, has senior publishers saving his emails as collectors’ items and could soon be considering film deals from the likes of Brad Pitt and Robert De Niro.

And believe it or not, he still works in the mail room.

(Via The Elegant Variation by way of Ezra Klein)