Well, this is a simple problem with a simple solution: Don't save it in lossless high def!
One of my plans is to archive every shot from the documentary I'm currently making, shot in 1080/24f progressive. Of course, the files are going to be huge, but with H.264 compression at 10Mbps, you can archive -great- quality material, and still store 60 minutes of data on one 4.5GB disc. To me, that's one disc per tape; tedious work, but for educational purposes.
Yes, you can talk about how newspapers are dying because of bad reporting, but I think that it has more to do with the fact that people are less likely to be interested in the news.
If you actually look at trends in news consumption, they've remained in a rather steady downward trend - even when you add in news consumption among ALL media. Which means that the Internet is taking another slice of an already shrinking pie for newspapers.
There are a number of complicated and interrelated reasons for this.
Let me run down my theories:
Theory One: People are not seeing the utility of the news.
If you believe that being well informed about current events is important to your job, your society, or your family, you will be well informed. Fewer people, however, believe this is so. The biggest culprit here is the insulation of public officials from public pressure. It seems that the elected officials can get away with just about anything and there "ain't a damn thing we can do about it." This leads to decreased news consumption. In previous environments, if you didn't like what was going on in politics, you could protest and at the very least, have a chance for those protests to be heard. If you didn't like what was going on in business you could ask your congressman to start an investigation. But people now feel that these actions are non-productive and at best counterproductive because both politicians and business owners have insulated themselves from public pressure. I won't go into how - that's a discussion in and of itself - but between safe seats, redistricting, partisan media sources, gullible reporters, and the broken labor movement, people feel that because there is nothing they can do about the bad stuff they learn about in the newspaper, then learning about the bad stuff would just make them miserable.
Theory Two: People are not connected to their communities.
Can you name your neighbors? Most people can't. America's sense of community - local community - is broken. This is the subject of Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" - for the past 30 years, we've been less likely to make friends, and to do things in groups. This is true of everything from political organization to bowling leagues. We have little "social capital" and we simply care less about what happens to our neighbors because we don't know our neighbors faces.
Putnam said there were many factors but the clearest correlation that he could see was the amount of television consumption.
Theory Three: The commerce clause...
One of the reasons for saying that people are insulated from public opinion is because more and more of the important decisions are being made in federal, not state, governments. Granted, I agree that without a strong federal government we wouldn't have things like desegregation, but it's a double-edged sword. The people of California want medical marijuana decriminalization, the federal government wants to interfere with that. People, quite rightly, believe they have more of an influence over the state governments than they do over the local governments - but if the state governments themselves have less influence...
Theory Four: The news just sucks
The idea is that if the news were better at reporting, their would be less insulation of public officials from public opinion. Instead, Britany Spears' sister being pregnant knocks out stories on the CIA withholding information from the 9/11 commission.
This is mostly because, as the original author noted, good reporting costs money, but advertising brings in the same amount of money no matter what you put on the page. Fluff is cheap.
I don't disagree with it, but I do think there's more to it than that. If good, investigative reporting was salable, Harpers and the New Yorker would be in everyone's mailbox; not in the mailbox of the few people who seem to crave hard-hitting reporting.
So, it's a complicated problem.
-- Brian Boyko -- M.A. Journalism, U.Texas-Austin, 2005
Actually, here's a real-world example (and I was praying for something like this...)
I'm making a documentary that I may as well plug now, www.followingalexiswest.com. (In fact, I'm making this post from LAX, having just returned from on-location filming.)
Now, in any documentary, you typically get about 20-25:1 shooting ratio. What that means is that for every hour of actual documentary, you've filmed about 20-25 hours of raw footage. In my case, much of that is interviews - educational, important interviews.
That would normally end up on the cutting-room floor - but there's so much educational, important information there. Once I get the stuff digitized, I'm taking a copy of all the raw footage and giving it to the New Zealand Film Archive, and uploading it online on Google Video. And I want people to use this raw footage in their own documentary projects - especially if they're students.
But there are still "commercial" uses - indie documentarians like me - who could also use the footage. I don't want them to take it without negotiating a fair price, but I do want to let them know that it's within the realm of possibility to licence the footage without breaking the bank.
Now, I could release it under a CC licence and sell it to commercial interests, but a CC+ licence makes it explicit that I'm looking to make money - but if you just want to muck around with it for a student project, you'll get no hassle.
Only a complete (and disingenuous) cynic would say that Paul is the same as Huckabee is the same as Giuliani, or Kucinich is the same as Obama is the same as H. Clinton.
Right, but those are the -primaries.- By the time they get to me here in Texas, I won't get a choice of who to vote for. That will have been decided long before.
Election day, the choice is going to be Giuliani vs. Clinton and on my issues - civil liberties - they're the same.
A really interesting experiment would be if we allowed US citizens to sell their citizenship to someone else. The deal is once you sell it, you can never get it back. How much would you take to give up your US citizenship forever?
I'd trade my American Citizenship for 96% of Canadian Citizenship in a heartbeat.
Looking a gift horse in the mouth anyone? anyone? I don't think you fully appreciate the value of such an opportunity provided to you by our government at ridiculously low long term interest rates.
It's not the interest rate - it's the declining wage and increasing tuition. Even a public school education will run you $10,000 a year when you're not otherwise making any "real" money - and after you graduate, the jobs are few, far between, and don't pay well - across all fields, the value of the dollar is declining, too, so cost of living expense is going up while wages are going down, meaning it's harder to pay off any loans.
In other words, it's not the principle of the thing, it's the principal of the thing!
Loan slavery? Strange twist in generation perception. No one says you have to buy this new car, when saving $200 for a tune-up on the old car will do just fine, or you fix it yourself. No one says you have to buy this new house, when the kids can double bunk in one room. And, no one says college is a right. Moreover, work 2 jobs and reap the benefits of serving in the Army to finance your way through college, like I did.
Used cars are still damn expensive and you need one to commute to work in most places. Oh, and that $200 for a tune-up? That's 1978 money. Think $1000 if something goes wrong - more if it's something like the transmission.
Owning your own house is also 1978 thinking - our generation can't afford kids.
People often say "Work another job" as if it's an option. People are already working two jobs to make ends meet - what's the answer to that? Work a third job? A fourth? It doesn't matter how many jobs you work if the pay's so bad that you can't pay your bills.
And at 0 to 8% on car to home loans, respectively, your complaining? No. The problem is you expect to have everything else everyone else has. Yes, the X and millenial gen kids never had it so good. It's unfortunate they never realized just how hard it can be, financing your way through life by their own sweat and blood. You think student loans are your shackle and chains? If you take the time, you might see yourself in the mirror wielding the whip in your own hand.
Look, I'm on the X/Millenial cusp. I'm 28. I've got a good paying job. I can't say how much it is, but it's more than most of my graduating class is getting and less than what most of 1978's graduating class is getting. I've gone only to state schools, not private schools. But it took a damn long time to find this job. I'm one of the lucky ones and I'm still saddled with over $15,000 in debt - and I did everything -right- by your standards.
Our generation is getting screwed because of people like you thinking that we have it easy. We're not. We're the first generation that's likely to earn less than our parents over the course of our lifetime. We're the first generation to inherit the massive trade deficit and debt. We're the first generation with broken manufacturing unions and outsourcing. And we're not going to join the army where we can get paid less and shot at for no good reason other than to make the people who are screwing us richer!
I don't think you realized how inflammatory your comments are, but they certainly hit a nerve with me. Maybe you should actually talk to some of those Millenials and Xs that you complain about. Maybe then you'll know why we complain about you.
I'll absolutely agree with some of the points - mainly that cheaper videocameras have made amateur videographers more numerous and producing more professional looking shots.
I'm not so sure AVCHD is going to replace HDV anytime soon - maybe for true amateurs. But I digress.
The raving about the Canon HV20 being the best consumer HD camera today, is, in my opinion correct. Now, I'm one of those new breed of "amateur" videographers, but instead of making nature shots, I'm filming feature indie documentaries with the tech - the fact that my footage is pretty damn good and I'm hoping to sell my work - but haven't yet (first one's still in editing, I've got about 12 hours of footage and some pick-up editing to do.)
But honestly, I don't think it's because of HD cameras that videography as a hobby is getting started. I've always been into videography but unfortunately, they haven't been making good consumer video cameras until the HV20. Even the HV10 was a major disappointment. Why? No audio input. C'mon guys, you had mic jacks standard back in the days we were all recording to VHS in these big bulky boxes. Why did you take them out, screwing those of us who bought cameras and wanted to use them for more than home movies? That's why amateur videography never really took off - never mind YouTube and Vimeo.
To give you the idea of the impact of good sound on a production - I'm spending $10000 on an indie documentary in New Zealand coming up soon. But before I learned about the HV20 and it's mic jack, I was going to go with a much lower-video quality camcorder because it had a mic jack for about twice the price. The mic jack is that important.
That said - I will now take the opportunity to shamelessly plug my projects.
"Makers" - A short subject documentary that asks the question: If American do-it-yourself ingenuity has become a counter-cultural movement, what does that say about our culture?
"Following Alexis West" - A feature documentary that follows the spirit of "Democracy in America" writer, Alexis de Tocqueville into the 21st century. An American travels to New Zealand to figure out the secret behind New Zealand's peaceful 1993 switch from a two-party, American-style system to a European-style proportional multi-party system, and the effects it's had on the country 15 years later.
Now, I like Cory Doctorow. I think that he's written some great books - I have three of them myself. And I think the story's a good one.
But Slashdot is about -news- for nerds...
My only problem with this is that real life is scary enough. We don't need to be thinking about what -could- happen -if- Google got even deeper into bed with DHS. I don't need those nightmares. I have enough nightmares of my own, traveling internationally for the first time in Novemeber in order to film a documentary. I'm not looking forward to explaining that the $500 Sennheiser wireless microphone is NOT a bomb trigger, or that the pipes that are in my carry-on bags are part of a homemade stabilizer and NOT a "pipe-bomb."
I'm very scared of what this country is coming to. I don't need more "what-if" conspiracy scenarios, my mind is more than capable of coming up with them on my own.
This story would undoubtedly be linked to from BoingBoing, which is also a top blog where it fits in. I think Slashdot should stick to news - that's all.
Yeah, I know - I wanted to go to college at 14 too... I'm all in favor of letting people take the GED at any age and being college eligible at that time.
Hey, guess what? Over on the right, there are a whole bunch of "sponsored links" which are clearly labeled "sponsored links" and are not part of the main text. There's also a section which appears above the search results. This is also labeled "Sponsored Links." Is it differentiated any other ways? Well, yes, it's highlighted in yellow. AND it's indented.
Here's what I'd ask whoever is doing the suing: "How more OBVIOUS do you want Google to be?"
Not that "To Entrap A Predator" was good, but this hidden camera, secret registration bull goes against just about every ethical journalistic rule I can think of. They should be charged with violations against wiretap laws for pulling this stunt.
Indeed; I only go to the Alamo Drafthouse now - and never to watch hollywood blockbusters. Only to watch their "combined film and live theatre" shows like "3, 2, 1, Kill!" (a full-length feature film is improvised right on the streets of Austin and the tapes are run to the booth every 10 minutes,) "Master Pancake Theatre," (Like MST3K, but live,) and my favorite, "Foleyvision" (a foreign film is redubbed, with music, dialogue and sound-effects reproduced faithfully inside the theatre.)
Seriously. $500 gets you a projector. $100 gets you a screen. $200 gets you a computer capable of playing the same. If you get five of your friends together, microwave some popcorn, and the thing pays for itself by the 10th movie.
Dell's three biggest competitive advantages are Microsoft's discount, purchasing power on components, brand name recognition, and surprise. Dell's *four* biggest competitive advantages are Microsoft's discount, purchasing power, brand, surprise, fear, and ruthless efficiency. Dell's *five* biggest advantages are the discount, purchasing power, brand, surprise, fear and ruthless efficiency... and an almost fanatical devotion to Michael Dell... Our *six*... no... *Amongst* Dell's competitive advantages... are such elements as the discount, purchasing power... I'll come in again...
Or in other words, the money that the Iowan pays to keep the beaches clean makes up for the money that the New Jerseyan pays to keep corn subsidies flowing.
Sometimes it's not fair, but most of the time, it evens out.
"If I purchase an ad in a newspaper would the newspaper be liable if I used a competitors name?"
Actually, yes. A publisher/editor is liable for all the content that appears in the newspaper. (I'm assuming of course, that you're using the competitor's name in a way that is injurious to reputation.)
"Does the newspaper have to personaly verify every address and phone number to ensure I am using only my information?"
Most good news papers have their fact checkers doing EXACTLY that. Again, a publisher/editor is liable for all the content that appears in the newspaper.
"What if I visit a printing company and have scam flyers printed up. Is it up to the printing company to verify?"
No, because unlike the newspaper, the printing company does not -distribute- the flyers. You could print scam stuff till you're blue in the face, you are just not allowed to distribute it.
-- Brian Boyko -- Former Associate Editor, Daily Texan Newspaper, Austin, TX. -- M.A. Journalism, University of Texas.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, this is a simple problem with a simple solution: Don't save it in lossless high def!
One of my plans is to archive every shot from the documentary I'm currently making, shot in 1080/24f progressive. Of course, the files are going to be huge, but with H.264 compression at 10Mbps, you can archive -great- quality material, and still store 60 minutes of data on one 4.5GB disc. To me, that's one disc per tape; tedious work, but for educational purposes.
Of course, if I had Spiderman's budget...
Yes, you can talk about how newspapers are dying because of bad reporting, but I think that it has more to do with the fact that people are less likely to be interested in the news.
If you actually look at trends in news consumption, they've remained in a rather steady downward trend - even when you add in news consumption among ALL media. Which means that the Internet is taking another slice of an already shrinking pie for newspapers.
There are a number of complicated and interrelated reasons for this.
Let me run down my theories:
Theory One: People are not seeing the utility of the news.
If you believe that being well informed about current events is important to your job, your society, or your family, you will be well informed. Fewer people, however, believe this is so. The biggest culprit here is the insulation of public officials from public pressure. It seems that the elected officials can get away with just about anything and there "ain't a damn thing we can do about it." This leads to decreased news consumption. In previous environments, if you didn't like what was going on in politics, you could protest and at the very least, have a chance for those protests to be heard. If you didn't like what was going on in business you could ask your congressman to start an investigation. But people now feel that these actions are non-productive and at best counterproductive because both politicians and business owners have insulated themselves from public pressure. I won't go into how - that's a discussion in and of itself - but between safe seats, redistricting, partisan media sources, gullible reporters, and the broken labor movement, people feel that because there is nothing they can do about the bad stuff they learn about in the newspaper, then learning about the bad stuff would just make them miserable.
Theory Two: People are not connected to their communities.
Can you name your neighbors? Most people can't. America's sense of community - local community - is broken. This is the subject of Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" - for the past 30 years, we've been less likely to make friends, and to do things in groups. This is true of everything from political organization to bowling leagues. We have little "social capital" and we simply care less about what happens to our neighbors because we don't know our neighbors faces.
Putnam said there were many factors but the clearest correlation that he could see was the amount of television consumption.
Theory Three: The commerce clause...
One of the reasons for saying that people are insulated from public opinion is because more and more of the important decisions are being made in federal, not state, governments. Granted, I agree that without a strong federal government we wouldn't have things like desegregation, but it's a double-edged sword. The people of California want medical marijuana decriminalization, the federal government wants to interfere with that. People, quite rightly, believe they have more of an influence over the state governments than they do over the local governments - but if the state governments themselves have less influence...
Theory Four: The news just sucks
The idea is that if the news were better at reporting, their would be less insulation of public officials from public opinion. Instead, Britany Spears' sister being pregnant knocks out stories on the CIA withholding information from the 9/11 commission.
This is mostly because, as the original author noted, good reporting costs money, but advertising brings in the same amount of money no matter what you put on the page. Fluff is cheap.
I don't disagree with it, but I do think there's more to it than that. If good, investigative reporting was salable, Harpers and the New Yorker would be in everyone's mailbox; not in the mailbox of the few people who seem to crave hard-hitting reporting.
So, it's a complicated problem.
-- Brian Boyko
-- M.A. Journalism, U.Texas-Austin, 2005
Actually, here's a real-world example (and I was praying for something like this...)
I'm making a documentary that I may as well plug now, www.followingalexiswest.com. (In fact, I'm making this post from LAX, having just returned from on-location filming.)
Now, in any documentary, you typically get about 20-25:1 shooting ratio. What that means is that for every hour of actual documentary, you've filmed about 20-25 hours of raw footage. In my case, much of that is interviews - educational, important interviews.
That would normally end up on the cutting-room floor - but there's so much educational, important information there. Once I get the stuff digitized, I'm taking a copy of all the raw footage and giving it to the New Zealand Film Archive, and uploading it online on Google Video. And I want people to use this raw footage in their own documentary projects - especially if they're students.
But there are still "commercial" uses - indie documentarians like me - who could also use the footage. I don't want them to take it without negotiating a fair price, but I do want to let them know that it's within the realm of possibility to licence the footage without breaking the bank.
Now, I could release it under a CC licence and sell it to commercial interests, but a CC+ licence makes it explicit that I'm looking to make money - but if you just want to muck around with it for a student project, you'll get no hassle.
You know, I'd love to see an evolutionary biologist's detailed take on why this isn't so.
Would they take a million dollars in exchange for becoming a slave for about 40 years, until they turned 65 years old? Ten million?
That's still a better deal than what we have now. How many people slave away for 40 years and DON'T have a million dollars?
Only a complete (and disingenuous) cynic would say that Paul is the same as Huckabee is the same as Giuliani, or Kucinich is the same as Obama is the same as H. Clinton.
Right, but those are the -primaries.- By the time they get to me here in Texas, I won't get a choice of who to vote for. That will have been decided long before.
Election day, the choice is going to be Giuliani vs. Clinton and on my issues - civil liberties - they're the same.
A really interesting experiment would be if we allowed US citizens to sell their citizenship to someone else. The deal is once you sell it, you can never get it back. How much would you take to give up your US citizenship forever? I'd trade my American Citizenship for 96% of Canadian Citizenship in a heartbeat.
I'm astounded that you can think this.
Looking a gift horse in the mouth anyone? anyone? I don't think you fully appreciate the value of such an opportunity provided to you by our government at ridiculously low long term interest rates.
It's not the interest rate - it's the declining wage and increasing tuition. Even a public school education will run you $10,000 a year when you're not otherwise making any "real" money - and after you graduate, the jobs are few, far between, and don't pay well - across all fields, the value of the dollar is declining, too, so cost of living expense is going up while wages are going down, meaning it's harder to pay off any loans.
In other words, it's not the principle of the thing, it's the principal of the thing!
Loan slavery? Strange twist in generation perception. No one says you have to buy this new car, when saving $200 for a tune-up on the old car will do just fine, or you fix it yourself. No one says you have to buy this new house, when the kids can double bunk in one room. And, no one says college is a right. Moreover, work 2 jobs and reap the benefits of serving in the Army to finance your way through college, like I did.
Used cars are still damn expensive and you need one to commute to work in most places. Oh, and that $200 for a tune-up? That's 1978 money. Think $1000 if something goes wrong - more if it's something like the transmission.
Owning your own house is also 1978 thinking - our generation can't afford kids.
People often say "Work another job" as if it's an option. People are already working two jobs to make ends meet - what's the answer to that? Work a third job? A fourth? It doesn't matter how many jobs you work if the pay's so bad that you can't pay your bills.
And at 0 to 8% on car to home loans, respectively, your complaining? No. The problem is you expect to have everything else everyone else has. Yes, the X and millenial gen kids never had it so good. It's unfortunate they never realized just how hard it can be, financing your way through life by their own sweat and blood. You think student loans are your shackle and chains? If you take the time, you might see yourself in the mirror wielding the whip in your own hand.
Look, I'm on the X/Millenial cusp. I'm 28. I've got a good paying job. I can't say how much it is, but it's more than most of my graduating class is getting and less than what most of 1978's graduating class is getting. I've gone only to state schools, not private schools. But it took a damn long time to find this job. I'm one of the lucky ones and I'm still saddled with over $15,000 in debt - and I did everything -right- by your standards.
Our generation is getting screwed because of people like you thinking that we have it easy. We're not. We're the first generation that's likely to earn less than our parents over the course of our lifetime. We're the first generation to inherit the massive trade deficit and debt. We're the first generation with broken manufacturing unions and outsourcing. And we're not going to join the army where we can get paid less and shot at for no good reason other than to make the people who are screwing us richer!
I don't think you realized how inflammatory your comments are, but they certainly hit a nerve with me. Maybe you should actually talk to some of those Millenials and Xs that you complain about. Maybe then you'll know why we complain about you.
Yes - not like India or Ireland.
So wait, judging from the comments here, Frank Gehry is the Rob Liefeld of architecture?
I'll absolutely agree with some of the points - mainly that cheaper videocameras have made amateur videographers more numerous and producing more professional looking shots.
I'm not so sure AVCHD is going to replace HDV anytime soon - maybe for true amateurs. But I digress.
The raving about the Canon HV20 being the best consumer HD camera today, is, in my opinion correct. Now, I'm one of those new breed of "amateur" videographers, but instead of making nature shots, I'm filming feature indie documentaries with the tech - the fact that my footage is pretty damn good and I'm hoping to sell my work - but haven't yet (first one's still in editing, I've got about 12 hours of footage and some pick-up editing to do.)
But honestly, I don't think it's because of HD cameras that videography as a hobby is getting started. I've always been into videography but unfortunately, they haven't been making good consumer video cameras until the HV20. Even the HV10 was a major disappointment. Why? No audio input. C'mon guys, you had mic jacks standard back in the days we were all recording to VHS in these big bulky boxes. Why did you take them out, screwing those of us who bought cameras and wanted to use them for more than home movies? That's why amateur videography never really took off - never mind YouTube and Vimeo.
To give you the idea of the impact of good sound on a production - I'm spending $10000 on an indie documentary in New Zealand coming up soon. But before I learned about the HV20 and it's mic jack, I was going to go with a much lower-video quality camcorder because it had a mic jack for about twice the price. The mic jack is that important.
That said - I will now take the opportunity to shamelessly plug my projects.
"Makers" - A short subject documentary that asks the question: If American do-it-yourself ingenuity has become a counter-cultural movement, what does that say about our culture?
Preview Video up at Vimeo.
"Following Alexis West" - A feature documentary that follows the spirit of "Democracy in America" writer, Alexis de Tocqueville into the 21st century. An American travels to New Zealand to figure out the secret behind New Zealand's peaceful 1993 switch from a two-party, American-style system to a European-style proportional multi-party system, and the effects it's had on the country 15 years later.
I don't agree with this.
For one, I've bought used music and had to deal with scratches on CD.
Secondly, selling out of the used albums may indicate to record owners that there's demand for the full albums.
I haven't bought an album from the RIAA since 2001 - and I make -damn sure- to check RIAA radar before I go out and buy.
But that's not the only place I hurt them.
See, right now I'm about to film a documentary. And to do that, I need a camera, a recording device for audio, and a laptop computer to take with me.
I COULD have gotten the Sony camera, but instead I went with the Canon HV20.
I COULD have gone with an Sony MD recorder, but instead I'm going with a Zoom H2
I COULD have gone with a Sony Vaio, but instead I'm going to be buying from ANYBODY ELSE.
And the background music will be licensed from Magnatune.
I have no idea why that made me laugh - but it was hilarious. Thanks.
Now, I like Cory Doctorow. I think that he's written some great books - I have three of them myself. And I think the story's a good one.
But Slashdot is about -news- for nerds...
My only problem with this is that real life is scary enough. We don't need to be thinking about what -could- happen -if- Google got even deeper into bed with DHS. I don't need those nightmares. I have enough nightmares of my own, traveling internationally for the first time in Novemeber in order to film a documentary. I'm not looking forward to explaining that the $500 Sennheiser wireless microphone is NOT a bomb trigger, or that the pipes that are in my carry-on bags are part of a homemade stabilizer and NOT a "pipe-bomb."
I'm very scared of what this country is coming to. I don't need more "what-if" conspiracy scenarios, my mind is more than capable of coming up with them on my own.
This story would undoubtedly be linked to from BoingBoing, which is also a top blog where it fits in. I think Slashdot should stick to news - that's all.
Yeah, I know - I wanted to go to college at 14 too... I'm all in favor of letting people take the GED at any age and being college eligible at that time.
Okay, I just did a search for "cars."
Hey, guess what? Over on the right, there are a whole bunch of "sponsored links" which are clearly labeled "sponsored links" and are not part of the main text. There's also a section which appears above the search results. This is also labeled "Sponsored Links." Is it differentiated any other ways? Well, yes, it's highlighted in yellow. AND it's indented.
Here's what I'd ask whoever is doing the suing: "How more OBVIOUS do you want Google to be?"
Here's an interview with Dr. Moller that we did at NetworkPerformanceDaily.com, which includes an audio podcast.
Interview & Podcast
That is simultaneously the most brilliant and stupid thing I've read on Slashdot.
Not that "To Entrap A Predator" was good, but this hidden camera, secret registration bull goes against just about every ethical journalistic rule I can think of. They should be charged with violations against wiretap laws for pulling this stunt.
Indeed; I only go to the Alamo Drafthouse now - and never to watch hollywood blockbusters. Only to watch their "combined film and live theatre" shows like "3, 2, 1, Kill!" (a full-length feature film is improvised right on the streets of Austin and the tapes are run to the booth every 10 minutes,) "Master Pancake Theatre," (Like MST3K, but live,) and my favorite, "Foleyvision" (a foreign film is redubbed, with music, dialogue and sound-effects reproduced faithfully inside the theatre.)
Seriously. $500 gets you a projector. $100 gets you a screen. $200 gets you a computer capable of playing the same. If you get five of your friends together, microwave some popcorn, and the thing pays for itself by the 10th movie.
Dell's three biggest competitive advantages are Microsoft's discount, purchasing power on components, brand name recognition, and surprise. Dell's *four* biggest competitive advantages are Microsoft's discount, purchasing power, brand, surprise, fear, and ruthless efficiency. Dell's *five* biggest advantages are the discount, purchasing power, brand, surprise, fear and ruthless efficiency... and an almost fanatical devotion to Michael Dell... Our *six*... no... *Amongst* Dell's competitive advantages... are such elements as the discount, purchasing power... I'll come in again...
Or in other words, the money that the Iowan pays to keep the beaches clean makes up for the money that the New Jerseyan pays to keep corn subsidies flowing. Sometimes it's not fair, but most of the time, it evens out.
"If I purchase an ad in a newspaper would the newspaper be liable if I used a competitors name?"
Actually, yes. A publisher/editor is liable for all the content that appears in the newspaper. (I'm assuming of course, that you're using the competitor's name in a way that is injurious to reputation.)
"Does the newspaper have to personaly verify every address and phone number to ensure I am using only my information?"
Most good news papers have their fact checkers doing EXACTLY that. Again, a publisher/editor is liable for all the content that appears in the newspaper.
"What if I visit a printing company and have scam flyers printed up. Is it up to the printing company to verify?"
No, because unlike the newspaper, the printing company does not -distribute- the flyers. You could print scam stuff till you're blue in the face, you are just not allowed to distribute it.
-- Brian Boyko
-- Former Associate Editor, Daily Texan Newspaper, Austin, TX.
-- M.A. Journalism, University of Texas.
No, he meant Union vs. Rebel.
Glad you remembered us!
-- Brian Boyko
-- Gramma's HardOCP Contributor