If you've already hooked up a Web server to your garage door opener you're waaaaay down the path to madness, so you know, why the hell not build a mobile app to control it?

Sippey should be aware of just how far down the path to madness Fitzpatrick is; the two worked together until last year, when Fitzpatrick left to join Google and Six Apart sold LiveJournal to the Russians.

Many popular blog services offer "bookmarklets" — software tools, installed in browsers, which allow users to quickly post an article they're reading online. The "Share OnSugar" bookmarklet's source code appears identical to the code Tumblr founder David Karp and engineer Marco Arment wrote for the "Share on Tumblr" bookmarklet. Compare the two, above: Sugar hasn't bothered to do much more to the user interface besided adding tags and categories, which are hidden "advanced options" in Tumblr's bookmarklet. The code is an even closer copy.

Here's the problem for Karp: Though popular with a certain crowd, Tumblr is far from mainstream. So users who fall in love with OnSugar blogs may never learn about the original.

We'd point out that Tumblr itself is just a happily dumbed-down ripoff of LiveJournal, which predates it by nearly a decade and offers all the privacy features Tumblr users have been begging Karp for, but after OnSugar's more blatant blow, that seems cruel.

Six Apart, the previous owner of LiveJournal before selling it to Russian Internet startup Sup, looks wiser by the day for abdicating the company's iron-fisted rule over what sounds to a non-LiveJournal user like the democratic turmoil in some post-Soviet Central Asian country. Except with more homoerotic Harry Potter fan fiction.

Founder Brad Fitzpatrick, who returned to the advisory board in December after leaving the company in the wake of another user-generated fracas last year, has to be regretting the decision. Not to leave the company, that is, but to agree to rejoin it on the advisory board, which was recently proved toothless by a ham-handed change to LiveJournal's account types. (Users, unbelievably, complained about the elimination of an option for completely advertising-free, unpaid accounts; only in the bizarro financial world of LiveJournal users does this option make economic sense.)

While the affair amounts to bad publicity for LiveJournal — even the developer who wrote the poll code managing the election has called into question voting practices — it's got to be great for pageviews.

Which makes us wonder: Why just let one LiveJournal user onto the advisory board? Sup execs should just turn the asylum over to the inmates, sign an ad-network contract, and step away. Far, far away. Moscow has never been so conveniently distant.

Previously:

• A is for Adelson, who cofounded Digg
• 
  
• B is for Botha, who sold YouTube big
• 
  

Shellen's going back to his first plan: Running a startup incubator called The Secret Agency. His model: Blogger founder Evan Williams's Obvious, which recently spun off Twitter as its own company.

They endlessly, during the entire existence of LJ promote initiatives, whose only purpouse is to bring harm to LJ, its founders, their goal is to criticize, destablilize and ruin our reputation.

On whether threats to harass advertisers by incensed emos are serious:

Of course not. Where will you find such idiots that will call serious companies? It's one thing to call a newspaper in hope that they will give you 15 minutes of fame on their page. But a proper firm? The first thing you'll get asked is "so who exactly are you trying to reach? What is this about and why the hell should we care?"

Izbrannoe: Let's say I want to start a blog in LJ, but I hate advertising as a concept in our lives and I have no money for a paid account. I can't?

Nosik: Today you will not be able to start a blog in LJ. As you would not, for example, on mail.ru, google, yahoo... There no longer exists an entity on the web, which, without specifically being a charity, would refise to make money - be it from users or from advertising. This is normal, you don't walk into a store and ask for free products.

Let's say, I say to you, mr. Journalist, "I think you put an extra comma here". Your natural reaction is "Oh, you're right" or "Let's ask the editor". But if I come to you and say "Take away the comma or I will beat you." Will you really go checking your spelling after that?

In a situation where people are trying to scare and blackmail us, threatening to destroy our business, there are business reasons for not rewarding such behaviour. This is not just human psychology, which retaliates more the more it is pressed. Problem is that there's never been a successful company whose success was based on bowing to collective resistant forces. No decision — no matter how correct — should be based on pressure.

I keep different people on different social networks, and prefer them safely cordoned off. Have you ever been at a party where two of your exes meet up? Fitzpatrick wants to turn the Web into a 24/7 version of that nightmare scenario. Thanks but no thanks, Brad. Sometimes sharing isn't caring.

I did find it adorable, however, that he included a shoutout to his pals Dave Recordon, a former LiveJournal colleague working on similar projects at Six Apart, and Mischa Spiegelmock, a LiveJournal engineer Fitzpatrick reportedly recruited to Google. In a continuation of their mock feud, Fitzpatrick hacked his friend-finder app to ridicule Recordon's LiveJournal username.

Here's Fitzpatrick's video. I especially love the intro where, like a washed-up actor in an infomercial, Fitzpatrick says, "You may remember me from ...":

Most of those people know how to use Tumblr responsibly and only post when they have something worthwhile to say. Others don't. First execution: Julia Allison. 40 posts a day? Are you f—-ing kidding?

Just three easy steps and it's off with their head. Click where the arrow points.


And now they're dead! Yay!

1. Facebook stays independent and private, strikes a meaningful deal that legitimizes its business plan, and buys a startup.
2. Born out of the writers' strike, at least one "Funny or Die" style site gets big buzz and maybe even gets bought, but it fails to produce any videos near the quality of FoD or Super Deluxe.
3. Google releases some limited version of voice search beyond GOOG 411. During the year, the company's stock tops $800.
4. Digg sells to a major media company for at least $200 million, and founder Kevin Rose starts a non-web-based company.
5. YouTube announces it's adding HD video, but the feature doesn't arrive until 2009.
6. Gawker Media, publisher of this site, starts a men's site and a Web show.
7. Yahoo suffers major layoffs, leading the press to dub it the next AOL.
8. Yet AOL is spun off and reframes itself. At the end of 2008, the company's future is still uncertain.
9. Apple releases a second-generation iPhone, and at least one New York Times article tries to draw a "middle class/rich" line between those who upgrade and those who stick with the first generation.
10. A new videoblogger emerges as the go-to example for slick independent daily vlogging, following Amanda Congdon and Ze Frank.
11. Tumblr, the pared down blogging service, enjoys the popularity that 2007 brought Twitter.
12. Twitter remains independent and spins off a new service.
13. The Internet again fails to drive one presidential candidate to success. So does Chuck Norris.
14. Jason Calacanis, still running his online directory Mahalo, starts another project.
15. A new meme started in a geeky part of the web infiltrates the "normal" population even more deeply than LOLcats.
16. Yet another e-book reader comes out and no one cares.
17. Blog search engine Technorati collapses after failing to get enough funding to stay afloat.
18. The Wall Street Journal announces it will soon be free online.
19. Blog platform maker Six Apart, having spun off LiveJournal and rearranged its exec staff, gets bought.
20. Dell screws up the good will it won in 2007 with another customer-service or bad-parts scandal.
21. Net Neutrality takes another hit from a telco-friendly Congressional bill.
22. Second Life plods along.
23. The TechCrunch blog network lands a regular TV appearance, if not a show.
24. The country tires of the last round of famous-for-being-famous celebs, and gossip blogger Perez Hilton's TV show gets cancelled.
25. A minor medical incident renews the "can Apple survive without Steve Jobs" argument.

Anker, LiveJournal founder Fitzpatrick, Sup CEO Andrew Paulson and some of his Russian engineers, a passel of Six Aparters, and one slightly bewildered goat held a bash at 111 Minna to celebrate the split. Also there: Fitzpatrick's omnipresent ex, Pownce engineer Leah Culver. Culver was in good spirits, though, despite the rumor Fitzpatrick's seeing someone in Russia. She too has a new beau, Justin.tv's Kyle Vogt. We're just waiting for the inevitable Leahcast.

Culver wasn't the only camera-friendly type there. Natali Del Conte, CNET's newly hired TV personality, stole the spotlight with a sparkling appearance just as I was leaving 111 Minna.

One explanation is simply Fitzpatrick's fickle nature: In his brief career at Six Apart, he vacillated between wanting to retain control of LiveJournal and disclaim responsibility for it — typical if less than noble behavior for a founder after a sale.

There's another reason for Fitzpatrick's new interest that also has to do with his fleeting passions. Before he even knew of Sup's interest in LiveJournal, Fitzpatrick had booked a ticket to fly to Moscow this month. Who travels to Moscow in December? Why, a young man who quickly found a Russian girlfriend to replace Leah Culver, that's who. Now, presented with an advisory gig that gets him tax-deductible booty calls, it's no wonder Fitzpatrick signed right up. (Photoillustration by valiskeogh from Brad's Life)

• Robert Scoble does something useful and brings together a bunch of Irish tech entrepreneurs for a drinkfest tonight at 8 p.m. at the Buena Vista Bar at Hyde and Beach in San Francisco. [Scobelizer]
• It's Spontaneous Drinking Night tonight at 7 p.m. at Whiskey Thieves on Geary Street. Join a bunch of tech gadflies who have no other plans for tonight. [Facebook]
• Mediabistro is hosting a holiday party at 111 Minna at 6:30 p.m. Freelance writers unite! [Mediabistro].
• Six Apart throws an "OMG we got rid of LiveJournal!1!!one!!!!"-themed celebration at 6 p.m., also at 111 Minna. Sharing space with Mediabistro's filthy hacks? Talk about your overlapping social graphs. [Facebook

(Photo by Lane Hartwell/Fetching.net)

LiveJournal's boisterous users taxed Six Apart's already stretched management. Fan-fiction writers, whose output was often not for the squeamish, made the site a home. So-called "griefers," apparently dissatisfied with a tightening of site policies, published executives' Social Security numbers. Founder Brad Fitzpatrick noisily quit the company to join Google. Users mocked an ill-conceived advertising campaign by sending then-CEO Barak Berkowitz 527 virtual "gifts" of Diet Pepsi Max icons, defacing his profile.

Berkowitz stepped down in September, replaced by Chris Alden, an executive who ran the company's money- and sense-making business, the paid blogging products TypePad and Movable Type. With the sale of LiveJournal, Alden's reign looks likely to be far less entertaining than Berkowitz's. That's a good thing for Six Apart, if not for gossips.

As for LiveJournal, Sup has made grand promises about respecting the community and appointing an editorial advisory board. Sup already operates the Russian-language version of the site, and is run by Andrew Paulson, an American entrepreneur. But let's be real: This is a company operating in Vladimir Putin's Russia, where the media increasingly is falling under state control, either explicitly or tacitly. One does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to find this prospect discomfiting.

Whatever happens to LiveJournal and its users won't be Six Apart's problem. Ben and Mena Trott, Six Apart's founders, are far too polite to say this about their LiveJournal adventure. But they should: "Goodbye, and good riddance."

A spinoff would have had financial appeal, of course, given the fad for social networks these days and Facebook's lofty mooted valuation. That is, of course, assuming Six Apart could have come to terms with a deep-pocketed buyer. But taking money off the table is the only aspect of this rumored deal that would have made sense.

First, there's technology. Six Apart executives have long maintained that the company's enterprise and consumer blog businesses complement each other, and share a lot of their core software. (An upcoming version of TypePad, the Web-based blog software popular with small businesses, will have new community features based largely on Vox, we hear.)

Then there's the founders' pride. Would Ben and Mena Trott have supported Movable Type and TypePad, the businesses they built up from scratch? Or would they have thrown their attentions to LiveJournal, the fractious personal-blogging service Six Apart acquired a couple of years ago, and Vox, the newer blog-cum-social network that's especially close to Mena's heart?

And then there's the IPO factor. With its combined businesses, Six Apart's revenue streams are nicely diversified between subscription fees, software licenses, and advertising. And even so, the company is barely big enough to draw investment banks' interest. Separately, its consumer and enterprise arms would have been more acquisition bait than anything.

So for now, a spinoff, having been considered and apparently dismissed some months ago, seems unlikely. But we do know that at least one member of the board is meeting with Alden, the new CEO, tomorrow. We can only wonder what they'll chat about. Anyone heard anything else? Please share. (Illustration by Tim Faulkner)

Brad is not working on social graph problems at Google. He came here to work on technology to insert ads into web pages being viewed via Google's municipal Wi-Fi hotspots. Very hush-hush; the only thing publicly available on this is the patent applications. We've been working on it for a while and Brad is working on making it more palatable to the privacy crowd (mostly marketing, actually).

1. Make Yahoo cooler for teens and young people
Yahoo is this portal site that used to be a search site. Now I think only people like my mom use it for maybe recipes, and a game that is totally a ripoff of Scrabble (but they call it Literati). Now Facebook has Scrabble (only they call it Scrabulous which is closer I guess), so I bet all those moms will go play it there because it's realer Scrabble. So if Yahoo wants to really be a big site, they should have things that people my age might like, such as some Kanye West music and Transformers. (Sorry Yahoo, Transformers is already out so maybe ask Michael Bay what his next movie will be and link to that.)

2. Put something under the stuff on the Google homepage
When I go to Google, there's all this white space under the logo and the search bar. My idea is to put something else there, like a game or a funny quote. Then people will reload the page to see another funny quote (I have some on my MySpace that they can borrow, but most of mine are from Mind of Mencia). So Google will have like five viewers for every viewer it has now! But to make money from that they should put an ad on the front page too.

3. Add commercials to YouTube
Duh guys. I can't believe they haven't thought of this. I watch all the Family Guy on this site, so why does YouTube take out the commercials? It would be okay to keep just the good ones in, like ones from Geico (LOL caveman!).

4. Make MySpace faster
Get on this guys!!

5. Put happy faces on every page of LiveJournal
I hear a lot of people on LiveJournal are goths and other sad people, and they kill themselves. Maybe not every page needs a happy face, but if the user writes "Current mood: depressed" the page could show a smiley face, and the face could be saying "Don't be!" Well, it would have to say "Don't be depressed!" so no one thought it was saying "Don't be!" meaning "Don't live!"

6. Let people add themselves on IMDb
This one is pretty clever if I do say so myself. FACT: I like looking at my friends and how they're connected on Facebook. FACT: I like looking at actors (and actresses! Don't worry Mom just ones with clothes on) and how they're connected on IMDb. THEREFORE: If I can add my friends to IMDb, it's like they were in movies with stars! It makes them feel special and no one is confused because people know "Oh that's not really an actor in this movie, it's just someone's friend. They probably feel special."

7. Put a Flickr logo on photos from Flickr
Then when someone uses a Flickr photo somewhere else, they'll know it was from Flickr, so it's free advertising! The people who use Flickr won't mind because they all seem to love that site, so they'll be like "Awesome, Flickr likes me back! BFF, Flickr!"

8. Turn Go.com into a site for the board game
Maybe Yahoo will buy it and put it next to Scrab— OOPS Literati.

9. Add porn to Vimeo
Then it's better than YouTube and will take over! Vimeo has a beautiful design which will go well with the beautiful women of porn.

10. By simply advancing iterations of its current filtering technologies coupled with rudimentary grammatical AI, Google News ought to provide truly customized news in a more user-friendly "recap" form.
It is not out of the question that the Google News system could detect a regular user's news browsing patterns and apply machine learning to find articles most relevant to said user, then use TF-IDF to whittle down the day's news into a single paragraph customized to them. This of course may threaten news publishers in a scenario foreshadowed in the short film "EPIC 2014," but Google has shown skill in defusing such standoffs in the past, as demonstrated in its deft maneuvers over Viacom. The move would certainly impress the media and provide publicity to a currently ignored product.

Nick Douglas writes at Valleywag, Too Much Nick, and Look Shiny. Like such as South Africa and the Iraq.

Socialstream, a Google-backed research project at Carnegie Mellon University, fits right in with Fitzpatrick's and Recordon's interests. For Google, the notion of linking networks together, rather than trying to swim upstream and compete with MySpace and Facebook, makes perfect sense. Rather than trying to resurrect Google's failing Orkut network, Fitzpatrick could be joining Google to help it disrupt existing social networks' business models.

That's the likeliest plan for Fitzpatrick. But what to make of Recordon's rumored return to Six Apart? It seems strange on the surface for Recordon to be going back to the company just as Fitzpatrick, his good friend, is leaving. But good friends aren't always good coworkers. Recordon, by voting with his paycheck, seems to be signaling that Six Apart is not the truly troubled party here. It's Fitzpatrick.

What we hear, very quietly, from employees at Six Apart, where Fitzpatrick plans to work his last day on Friday, is that they're not at all sad to see Fitzpatrick go. Even LiveJournal loyalists, while showering the founder with praise, make a point of saying how little Fitzpatrick has contributed to the site he created since he sold it to Six Apart.

It all makes sense. "I'm not convinced I couldn't be just as helpful to Six Apart outside of Six Apart," he wrote recently in his LiveJournal. Practically speaking, technology that opens up social networks could benefit Six Apart's second-tier communities, LiveJournal and Vox, more than it helps the dominant players.

Then there's Fitzpatrick himself, a decidedly difficult employee. Coddled at Google by its lavish benefits and engineers-rule culture, the brilliant programmer will likely do fine. Faced with grown-up responsibilities at Six Apart, he veered between retreating and lashing out. Between business trips to Russia and a two-month sabbatical, he's spent relatively little time in the office this year, and what time he did spend wasn't pleasant, from all accounts, including Fitzpatrick's own.

Six Apart faces all sorts of challenges — not least of which is managing the mess of LiveJournal with which Fitzpatrick saddled the company. And, oddly enough for a blogging company, it struggles with coming right out and talking about its problems. But Fitzpatrick's departure, laced as it was with thinly veiled insults to his coworkers, we're now concluding, says more about him than the company he worked for. Leaving Six Apart, it seems, really is the best thing he could do for the company.

Six Apart is in two separate businesses — selling blog software and services to big companies, and managing social networks LiveJournal and Vox. The two don't mesh well, and it shows. CEO Barak Berkowitz's corporate-running-dog background has not prepared him at all for dealing with feisty online users, and his ineptness was on display in the recent fan-fiction censorship scandal.

Mena Trott, Six Apart's president and cofounder, is normally the company's most effective spokesperson. When she can be prevented from swearing, that is. But we haven't seen much from her recently.

And Andrew Anker is still listed as being in charge of the company's consumer business on its website. But I know that he's moved into a corporate-development role — which I think is Silicon Valley code for "trying to find someone to buy the company."

On top of that, there's last month's 365 Main outage, which knocked the company's sites offline — not Six Apart's fault, except in that it didn't bother to get a backup data center, as most high-traffic websites do. And the rushed release of Movable Type 4.0, the company's cash-cow blog software line.

Not that Six Apart's problems, copious as they are, and difficult as they are to fess up to, are much of a reason for Fitzpatrick to stay. Teaching Berkowitz how not to sound like a n00b when talking to LiveJournal members? Likely impossible. Fixing Movable Type's bugs? Booooring. Listening to Trott's swearing fits? Exciting, from a distance.

As Fitzpatrick put it himself in late June:

In the short term, I'm going to see what's possible here, but this boredom can't go on much longer before I snap. I need to be in a team of excited, fast-moving people stressing the fuck out (in a fun way) on challenging and important problems. I miss that.

Assuming his plan to join Google proceeds as planned, Fitzpatrick's likely to become both a respected engineer and an effective liaison to open-source developers. Google has, despite its efforts, a mixed reputation in the open-source world. Fitzpatrick, by contrast, is almost universally beloved by geeks for releasing the open-source components that make LiveJournal run. When he reveals that he wrote memcached, they squeal about as readily as 14-year-old girls do when they learn he's the creator of LiveJournal. Google has considerably more code for Fitzpatrick to play with — and a bigger stage for him to play on.

And for Six Apart? Expect more drama, nonstop, and less-than-transparent explanations of it from company management. Fitzpatrick did this favor for them, at least: Six Aparters can always whine about it to their friends on LiveJournal.

Of course, 365 Main's generators failed. The company blames a memory chip in a piece of electronics used to start the generators automatically. But aren't these generators tested monthly? 365 Main notes that the component in question is only used in two of its datacenters. No word on whether the faulty testing procedures are also common to all of its facilities, or just present in San Francisco.

And the kicker? 365 Main brags about the fact that it has "delivered 99.9942 percent uptime to customers," which sounds impressive until you do the math and realize that means the 365/7/24 facility is actually out of service, routinely, for nearly half an hour every year. Last month's outage, in other words, was all in a day's work for 365 Main. On top of that, consider this: It's a failure rate six times as high as the "five nines" standard 365 Main promised when it launched. 365? More like 364.98.

Here's the press release. I recommend you trust it as much as you do the "365" in 365 Main's name.

365 MAIN REPORTS ON ROOT CAUSE OF GENERATOR FAILURE

Company Implements Fix for All Affected Generators and Makes Information
about the Fix Available to Data Center Industry

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Aug. 1, 2007 - Data center developer and operator 365
Main Inc. is issuing information today that details the root cause behind
why back-up power generators in the company's San Francisco facility failed
to start during a PG&E power outage last week, resulting in approximately 40
percent of customers in the facility losing power to their equipment for up
to 45 minutes.

The Problem

At 1:47 p.m. on Tuesday, July 24, 365 Main's San Francisco data center was
impacted by a power surge caused when transformer breakers at a local PG&E
power station unexpectedly opened. PG&E has still not determined what caused
the breakers to open.

Typically when a power outage occurs, the outage triggers 365 Main's
rigorously maintained and tested back-up diesel generators to start-up and
take over providing power supply to customers. 365 Main's San Francisco
facility has ten 2.1 megawatt back-up generators to be used in the event of
a loss of utility power. Eight primary generators can successfully power the
building, with two generators available on stand-by in case there are any
failures with the primary eight.

However, following the power outage last week, three of 365 Main's 10
back-up power generators, manufactured by Hitec, failed to complete their
start sequence. A complete investigation of the incident began immediately.

Within hours of the incident, an international team of specialists was
deployed to 365 Main's San Francisco data center facility to join on-site
technicians and begin systematically testing the generators in search of a
root cause. After days of thorough testing around the clock, the team
discovered a weakness in an essential component of the back-up generator
system known as a DDEC (Detroit Diesel Electronic Controller).

The team discovered a setting in the DDEC that was not allowing the
component to correctly reset its memory. Erroneous data left in the DDEC's
memory subsequently caused misfiring or engine start failures when the
generators were called on to start during the power outage on July 24.

The Fix

The investigation team discovered DDEC issues on each of the failed Hitec
units and were able to successfully simulate failure. A fix was introduced
by altering the timing of a command to the DDEC component, allowing more
time between the engine shut-down command and the DDEC reset command. Once
this fix was introduced, the Hitec generators successfully passed more than
50 consecutive start-up sequence tests without incident.

The testing methodology was performed by Hitec specialists along with 365
Main's chief technician and staff. Specialists from Cupertino Electric were
present during all testing, and EYP Mission Critical Facilities will provide
independent verification of the findings the week of 8/6/07.

365 Main has implemented the DDEC fix in its San Francisco and El Segundo
facilities. Of the five data centers in 365 Main's portfolio, the San
Francisco and El Segundo facilities are the only ones with Hitec generators
containing DDECs. All other facilities feature other brands of generators
or have different models of Hitecs.

365 Main is sharing the discoveries of its investigation with other Hitec
customers. In addition, Hitec has expanded its preventative maintenance
procedures as a direct result of discoveries made during the 365 Main
investigation.

In the wake of the outage, 365 Main published an apology to customers and
daily updates directly from the investigation team meeting minutes, allowing
customers and the public at large to track progress. A complete archive of
these updates and more details about today's update are available at:
http://www.365main.com/status_update.html

Chris Dolan, president and CEO of 365 Main, said, "365 Main has a track
record of providing customers with data centers that are considered to be
among the world's finest. We extend our sincere apologies to customers who
were impacted by this incident. Addressing customer concerns is our top
priority. In the days since the incident occurred, we have identified and
corrected the root source of the problem and are taking steps to prevent
this type of problem from happening again. We are also making our
comprehensive findings available to other data centers to try to prevent the
same problem from recurring elsewhere."

Glenn Ellis, president and CEO of Hitec USA, also commented: "Our top
priority is taking steps to prevent this type of unforeseen incident from
occurring again. We sincerely apologize to 365 Main and its customers that
our generators failed to deliver the continuous power as designed."

365 Main's Track Record

Since its inception over five years ago, 365 Main has delivered 99.9967
percent power uptime to customers across its five-data-center portfolio.
This includes the outage experienced in San Francisco last week. 365 Main's
San Francisco facility has delivered 99.9942 percent uptime to customers
during the last five years, inclusive of last week's outage.

As part of their service level agreements with 365 Main, 365 Main customers
receive rent abatements (refunds) in the event that electrical power is
dropped in the section(s) of the data center where their servers are
located. 365 Main is honoring all service level agreements with affected
customers.

Valleywag heard rumors about the Livejournal love triangle months ago, and forgot about them, until yesterday's other Six Apart news. Topic number one at the party, at the 111 Minna gallery, for a new Six Apart partnership: the recent exposure of confidential personal information, including social security numbers, of Fitzpatrick and other key execs, as well as the blog publishing company's investors. It was inevitable that some in the gossipy Livejournal community would assume a connection between the leak, which the company has blamed on internet "griefers", and Bergman, who has many hacker friends.

The Swedish engineer denies any involvement in the breach. And Barak Berkowitz, Six Apart's chief executive, describes the company's relationship with Bergmann — who is on disability after an operation to remove a benign tumor from his ribcage — as "amicable". Which is the point that I presume yesterday's public show for the cameras, however strained, was intended to underline.

[Photograph by Jeremy Pepper.]

Yes, the pictures would be fine if nipples weren't showing. Yes, this is all rather silly. No, that didn't stop Breastfeedingisnormal.org from issuing a press release and going through with the nurse-in. So, says the 6A tipster, company members bought them lunch.

Meanwhile, the lactivists plan a "Step apart from Six Apart on 6/6/6" day, which will probably get lost tomorrow in the shuffle of the goth community's "Draw pentagrams on our wrists, post pics on LJ, and bitch about our controlling parents on 6/6/6" day. But the urgent tone — someone, somewhere, apparently called anti-breastfeeding discrimination equal to racism — is earning backlash.

Nurse-In [Breastfeedingisnormal.org]
Photo: Banned breastfeeding icons [ProMoM]

• Thursday night: The bigshots and crackpots of consumer tech journalism wish Register journalist Andrew Orlowski a warm goodbye at the Edinburgh Castle Pub. Mosey up to the NYT's John Markoff and order Mac fanboy-baiter John C. Dvorak a drink — when he's really drunk, Dvorak gets totally coherent. [Dvorak.org/Orlowski]
• Thursday night: Attendees at tonight's wine tasting in Redwood City include Brad the LiveJournal founder, Hugh the business card cartoonist, and Niniane the Google blogger. I'm cancelling (gotta wish Orlowski goodbye, right?), so e-mail Kai Chang to try for my spot on the guest list. [Evite]
• Friday through Sunday: As previously pimped here, it's Winecamp! Register for 60 bucks, and that's just to pay for the food. The business plan: After the crowd gets drunk on free wine, organizer Chris Messina converts everyone to Scientology. [Winecamp]

Enter programming legend Jamie Zawinski (pictured). Jamie (or jwz) used his fortune from the sale of Netscape to buy the San Francisco nightclub DNA Lounge, but he never stopped coding. Or snarking. Jwz left this beautifully over-the-top comment for Brad:

I think all of those sound boring.

I think you ought to figure out what to do to make people stop defecting from LJ to Myspace, because I hate having to ever look at that piece of crap.

He may not be classy, but the man knows how to trash-talk like a true hacker.

How should I hack? [Brad's LiveJournal]

• San Francisco PR firm Bite interviews the San Jose Mercury News senior web editor about the Merc's new media offerings. Sez the editor about the popularity of the Merc's American Idol blog, "Compelling content still rules the day." And by "compelling content," he means "celebrity trash." (Gawker Media heartily agrees.) [Bitemarks]
• A reader responds to the Apple shared bathroom incident: "SCO (a.k.a. Santa Cruz Operation), when it was still in Santa Cruz, posted similar signs after customers on a late tour of the facility suprised a group of nude hot-tubers. good times."
• USA Today manages to sound like it reads books, and it gives tepid approval to Douglas Coupland's JPod, a novel about game developers that outclasses his '95 novel Microserfs. [USA Today]
• SF Chron tech blogger Alan Saracevic asks about the $100 laptop (meant to put a computer in the hands of every child), "Why does everyone need a laptop?" So we can get more blog traffic, Alan. Geez, catch up with everyone, okay? [SF Gate]
• The Boob Nazi battle on LiveJournal — where militant breastfeeders fight LJ's abuse team — gets attention on the LJ Abuse Blog, which calls the affair "Nipplegate." [Exposing LJ Abuse — NSFW]

The advocates (who call themselves Boob Nazis) started fighting when abuse team member Eric told one member:

We have recently been made aware that your default userpic is inappropriate....We must request that you discontinue using it as your default by no later than 00:01 (midnight) EST 23 May 2006. If at that time, you have not made the change requested, your journal will be suspended.

After the jump, a taste of the breastfeeder's response.

In what way do you classify a photograph of an infant nursing, the single most natural act between a mother and child, as graphically sexual or violent in nature — or indeed, as sexual at all? Breastfeeding is not a sexual act. It is not a violent act. This icon in no way violates your state Terms of Service.

And back to the abuse team:

Finally, please be aware that write-in campaigns are never effective in swaying the opinion of the Abuse Team or LiveJournal administrators, or in focusing attention on a particular issue.

Oh snap. And the boob-bearers are protesting with some sort of sit-in. Pick sides, people — either the baby-breeding breast-feeding Boob Nazis or the play-safe-now-kids boob-blocking abuse team is going down.

Battle round 1 [LiveJournal]
Battle round 2 [LiveJournal]

• The Guardian confirms: Bloggers are loudmouths, and Glenn Reynolds has an opinion. [Guardian]
• Blog platform Automattic bypasses the usual startup interview question: "But how will you make any money?" [Business 2.0]
• Sick of dumb corporate names? Salon is old-school sick of dumb corporate names. [Salon, 90s]
• Slate performs a mental autopsy of Stefan Eriksson's crashed Ferrari (half-pictured). [Slate]
• Use Firefox, get banned from LiveJournal: The site's new terms of service give them the right to kill your account if you use a pop-up an ad blocker. UPDATE: The lawyers snuck that in, and LiveJournal's gonna fix it. [Slashdot and LiveJournal Support]

April 2004:

We stand firm in saying that we will:
Stay advertisement free
It may be because it's one of our biggest pet peeves, or it may be because they don't garner a lot of money, but nonetheless, we promise to never offer advertising space in our service or on our pages.

February 2005:

We operate the LiveJournal service with the following goals:
Avoid banner advertisements
As it's one of our larger pet peeves, we have avoided putting banner advertisements on the site. Although our Terms of Service permits us to change our policy in the future, we've found throughout the past few years that our "paid accounts" business model has, so far, made banners ads unnecessary.

Now:

[...]

Not that the new Sponsored+ account level is evil or anything

Social contract, April 2004 [LiveJournal]
Guiding principles, February 2005 [LiveJournal]
Guiding principles, current [LiveJournal]