A friend of mine had her car stolen recently. Help us find it!
Carmen and her international crime ring have stolen my 1998 white Jeep Cherokee.
As part of the ACME detective team you are responsible for scouring Washington, D.C. to collect evidence and make the collar. This is not a JOKE. Please HELP.
Your reward for helping police locate my car is $150 cash and promotion to the rank of Super Sleuth.
As GumShoes, here are your clues:
ITEM MISSING
# Make/model: 1998 Jeep Cherokee Classic, 4 door
# Plate: Virginia # JNW-1734
# Color: All white
# Distinguishing factors: Syracuse University sticker on the back window, Arlington County zone sticker on the back bumper, slightly tinted windows
DATE/TIME STOLEN
Saturday, March 19th between 11:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.
LOCATION OF THEFT
1800 block of Ingleside Terrace, NW (Mt. Pleasant). Apparently several Jeep Cherokees in Mt Pleasant were stolen on Saturday for joy-riding purposes.
CRACKING THE CASE
If you spot my car, simply call 911 (as per the instructions of the DC police). The case number is: 034625.
You can check out more information and see some pics here.
For those of you who don’t know, the past three months I have been organizing a new kickball league here in DC, aptly named DCKickball. What started out as a lark (filling out an application for a field in Adams Morgan, not really expecting to get it)has turned into a full-fledged sports league. Over 245 people have signed up so far, and we’ll likely end up around 300 players strong. Paperwork (red tape) is being filled out, and bank accounts are being opened. In short, a true (hopefully lasting) organization has been born.
I’m really proud of this, although I hesitate to congratulate myself too soon, seeing as how no money has been collected yet. Once all my loose ends are tied up (tshirts delivered, sponsor bar signed, etc) I’ll be publishing a detailed account of my trials and tribulations. As the title of this post suggests, my biggest hurdle by far was the chicken and egg dilemma. People don’t want to sign-up for a league that isn’t “legitimate”, but a league can’t become legitimate until enough people sign up. It’s a hell of a problem, and I wish I had an easy answer that didn’t involve lost sleep, sweat and blood (and begging).
In any case, I’ll have something up soon. A how-to guide of sorts. Hopefully I can “open-source” as much of the process as possible and de-mystify the process of creating and organizing a non-profit here in DC.
Let’s face it: the World Wide Web has been party to illegal activity since the first web server went up. Digital content (ones and zeros) were simply never accounted for in the original scope of Copyright law. Think about it: every time one machine request data from another machine, a copy is being made! Check out the actually powers and limits that copyright bestows on authors. According to your interpretation of these clauses, I could force Google to stop caching (copying) my website in its Google Cache. Who knows where it ends, should someone choose to raise a stink.
Why bring this up now? Well, for a pretty long time (possibly by blind luck) an peaceful co-existence was had between the producers and consumers of on-line digital content. Millions of people and companies spent time and money gradually creating the incredible and connected ecosystem that billions of people in turn now use on a daily basis. I suppose it’s tempting to think of this situation as a “natural state”, but I don’t think people recongnized how fragile it was.
Today, we are dealing with the uproar over the Google Toolbar and its AutoLink feature. Very intelligent and respected people have chimed in on this topic. I had
Yesterday I went down to my very first ANC meeting in Adams Morgan. My main purpose for attending this meeting was to act as a representative of DCKickball. I had heard through the grapevine that a resolution regarding Walter Pierce Park and the sports teams that have been using it was going to be discussed. Apparently many of the people in the community have complained about the boorish behavior and disrespect that certain leagues have shown to Adams Morgan generally and to Walter Pierce Park specifically. I’ve actually never played on the field before, so I can’t speak first hand so how legitimate these issues are, but it seemed like it was enough to warrant a resolution at the ANC level. I wanted to make myself available to the ANC1C in order to answer any questions that they might have about DCKickball.
The meeting was actually pretty interesting, perhaps since it was my first one. Various issues and resolutions were discussed, primarily about crime, grants, and Harris Teeter. The meeting started at 7pm and we didn’t get around to WPP or kickball-related issues until around 8:45pm. At that time, a resolution was passed by unanimous rollcall that contained the following language:
“Therefore Be It Resolved that ANC1C requests DPR not permit the multi-purpose field at Walter C. Pierce Community Park from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday nights from May through September to allow the multi-purpose field to remain “open” for general community use.
And Be It Further Resolved that DPR not issue any permits to the organization known as the World Adult Kickball Association (WAKA) or any of its subsidiaries, and…”
Wow. That was a pretty big wake-up call to the leagues making use of Walter Pierce Park. Respect the park, or find somewhere else to play. It was a good thing I was at the meeting. I got to say a few words to the commissioners there and answer some questions that they had. I’d like to think that DCKickball has been awarded some benefit of the doubt, and we just need to make sure that be maintain that trust moving forward. I’ll be working with the ANC1C to nail down some specific language that I can put on the website and release to players about conduct.
I’ll go out on a limb here: the current debate over the future of the Google Toolbar’s AutoLink feature is possibly one of the most important debates in the history of the Internet. Two sides have sprung up in this debate. Those who advocate for the right to use a product like the Google Toolbar to rip/mix/burn the content they obtain from the Internet and those who opposethe manipulation of the sanctity of hyperlinks.
Honestly, I came to a very rapid conclusion on this one: I’m against the manipulation (or addition) of links. Why? Think about what the World Wide Web is and what makes it so special.
Is it DIV tags. Is it TABLE structures? Is it IMaGes? No, it’s links. Hyper-links. H</u>yper T</u>ext T</u>ransfer P</u>rotocol. Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). The linked nature of the documents that populate the Internet are what make the Web work. The number of links, and their relevance is what allows Google to earn billions of dollars a year. Besides the plain-text editorial content of a given page, the links are the single most important component.
So, my point is that links are sacrosant in ways that other markup isn’t. Some of the pro-rip/mix/burn crowd might think that this is an illogical stance and that all markup should be considered equal. I think these people are simply getting stuck in the trap of an “all-or-nothing” argument. Either you can modify content (in any way you see fit) or you can’t. Personally, I don’t buy in to that.
This debate is important because it is a slippery slope. Once content modification is blessed by the masses, you’ve broken the web. You’ve snubbed your nose at producers of content in order to grossly over-empower consumers, and an important balance is disrupted. Ask yourself why people/organizations/companies would spend vast amount of time and money to produce content whose inherent message and qualities can be rearranged on the fly? Where does it end?
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