Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote up Flickrfan, Dave Winer’s new half-assed TV screensaver, on Read/Write Web:
Chronic inventor Dave Winer has released an early version of his new Mac software flickrfan tonight. …
Instead of being grateful for the publicity, Winer had a cow over the term “chronic.”
Winer: “… I’m a veteran developer (a term I prefer to “chronic” — what exactly does that mean?)”
Winer (one hour later): “… And please don’t use the word chronic — that’s a word that’s used for sickness. It’s a bit of s curse man. Not very nice, and not likely to work too well for you if you recall that what goes around comes around. I thought we had a cordial relationship. 
”
Kirkpatrick changed “chronic” to “long-time,” an entirely unnecessary capitulation to a completely ridiculous complaint. Two months ago Winer declared the word hate off-limits because his relatives fled the Nazis. Now the word chronic’s out of bounds because it makes him feel frail and vulnerable.
Am I still allowed to use the word assclown?
Since Dave doesn’t know what chronic means:
I’ll use it in a sentence:
Dave Winer is a chronic asshole.
It doesn’t mean he’s a sick asshole. It means he’s had a habit of being an asshole for a long time. Capice?
Dave practicing “reverse-vendor relationship management” (rVRM) by using comments to fix reviews of his new “product” that bother him.
The new review should say something about Dave bringing the internet to your HDTV… as long as you have a computer with internet (wireless or wired), an HDMI output option and running OS X.
It’s another UserLand “OPML Editor” script.
Having a Flickr account is also required.
It does not require batteries.
Google Screensaver does something similar for PC’s too (use RSS feeds to get fresh images).
Lane Hartwell (protector of jpg image rights) has twitter’ed Dave Winer:
@davewiner: perhaps you could just respect those with ARR on their images and just opt them out. Isn’t that why CC licenses were invented?
Her request my be possible if the RSS feed has metadata that discloses the “All Rights Reserved” status of the image.
Let’s see how Dave responds… There’s only ONE Dave on this “product” and he’s got hundreds of new users to support. It’s going to get ugly. He can’t change RSS, it’s frozen and Flickr controls what’s in the feed… yada, yada.
Dave replies:
@lanehartwell, let me have a few days to get educated on these issues. though i’m sure there’s no obvious answer.
Dave will use the Richter Scales argument for copyright infringement: he’s not making any money and Flickr is giving him the photos. Go after Flickr. Lane already pulled (or blocked all her content anyway).
This will be another Food Fight, I wager.