The increasingly insular approach of North American media is something that goes beyond Japanese pop songs.
In the book business it has become near impossible to convince publishers to translate non-English authors, making access to some of the planet's finest writers nearly impossible.
Geist magazine out of Vancouver has had a couple of good articles looking at this phenomenon, one by Stephen Henighan in Issue 61, and by acclaimed writer Alberto Manguel in Issue 62.
Henigan's article opens:
Over dinner, I asked the Quebecoise writer Sylvie Desrosiers, the author of successful novels for both adults and younger readers, whether her books had been translated into English. "Non, pas en anglais," she said. "I've been translated into Spanish, Greek, Arabic . .." She listed two or three other languages, then shook her head. "But not into English."
A few weeks after Desrosiers's visit, I was one of the hosts for the Ontario tour of the Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya. The Salvadoran edition of Moya's novel El Asco (1997)--the title is roughly translatable as Revulsion --ran through six printings in a year and earned Moya enough death threats that he moved to Germany. Now in his late forties, Moya is the best-known Salvadoran writer of his generation. His novels come out in Spanish-language editions in San Salvador, Mexico City and Barcelona; in France and Quebec he is considered a significant literary figure (he was a featured guest of the 2005 Salon du Livre in Montreal); his novels are also available in German and Italian. His work has not been translated into English.
Manguel's article this month puts the blame squarely on the publishing houses who are increasingly market driven to publish lowest common denominator works, rather than building a catalog that stands on literary merit.
North America lives in a cultural bubble defined by a narrow range of English language music, writing, and film. It would be a great exercise to see how iTunes handles music from Latino and Mexican artists, or in Canada from Quebec musicians.
I'll wager that both of those groups are also underrepresented despite the considerable popularity of their work.
He copied other people's work and distributed it without permission.
That's copyright infringement. There is nothing the least bit confusing about it.
It is certainly a common practice, and one condoned by many artists, but that does not change the existing copyright law and I'm sure that DJ Drama knew it.
One can debate the definitions of "Fair Use,", and the business model used by the entertainment industry, and even slam the scum that form the RIAA and MPAA, but it helps no one when article authors pretend that existing copyright laws don't exist.
I looked at iTunes but their prices are way too high - basically the same as buying a CD at Amazon.com - and the DRM restrictions were just enough to make me want to stay away.
I've been very happy with emusic.com, which offers a growing catalog of music, prices that are about 1/3 of Apple's, and completely unrestricted MP3 files.
Sure you won't find top 40 dreck at emusic.com, but if your tastes are the least bit adventurous there's a lot of great music at reasonable prices.
Bill Evans, Thelonius Monk, Lucinda Williams, Kirsty MacColl, Tom Waits....
In the year since I moved to an Apple machine I've come to understand how solid and useful Pegasus Mail had become. In twelve months I've moved from Apple Mail (which I found much too limited), to Eudora (what a bizarre interface, at least for me) to Thunderbird, and now to Gyazmail.
Each of these lacks at least a couple of must have features that I used extensively on Pmail. Thunderbird tries hard, but it always seems that the feature that I need most isn't quite finished.
Gyazmail comes close, but still has some gaping weaknesses, like the apparent inability to add addresses to the Addressbook from within the program, and a good Search function.
Ultimately Pegasus was probably best loved by those who live and breathe e-mail, and who need power and flexibility, as well as reliability. yes it was free, but it was one of those programs that I would have paid for because it suited my needs so well.
There really is a need for ideas for the next generation of e-mail.
If reports are to believed we're closing in on a point when nearly 100 percent of messages will be spam. The spam blockers that were effective a year ago are becoming increasingly leaky.
Whitelists may work for some people, but not for anyone running a business. Proposals that require tens of thousands of ISPs to significantly change how they handle mail probably aren't going to fly unless legislated. And legislation will only work within the boundaries of one country.
Besides, ultimately it is only the recipient of an e-mail message that can judge it's legitimacy or usefulness.
So how do you create a an e-mail replacement that's as easy as what exists now, immune to spam, and is an easy upgrade from what we have now?
Brother for some reason has taken to adding ethernet to a number of their low end multifunction printers. Once you've used it you get hooked fast.
I first set one up at my girlfriend's place, an MFC 420CN. Plugged it into the router, added the software to her ancient PII laptop, and she can scan, print fax - everything.
Same from my Powerbook, via WiFi, and the kid's PC upstairs.
Now admittedly the Brother software kind of sucks rocks, and the printer is dead slow, but otherwise this really is the sensible way to do these things. I can't see buying another printer that doesn't have network support built in.
A family who holds a birthday picnic in a place of public entertainment (for example, the grounds of a zoo) and sings 'Happy Birthday' in a manner that can be heard by others, risks an infringement notice carrying a fine of up to $1,320.
I highly doubt that the Australian government will criminalize birthday celebrations.
As is the case in most countries, the use of a song by a business or organization requires that it be licenced and royalties paid. That is hardly a new thing.
Similarly if that song is used in media production such as a video or film there are additional rights that must be obtained and paid for.
To suggest that families will be fined for making a video of themselves singing "Happy Birthday" is just absurd.
There are many, many grounds for fighting copyright changes, and many good cases to be made for reforming or repealing them.
Scare stories like this one just undermine the work being done by thoughtful people.
Let me add that the point in seeing a lawyer is not just to punish the college for what has happened, but to make sure that you cover your bases in case you suffer damage weeks, months or years down the road.
If, a year or two from now, a mortgage default suddenly appears on your credit report you need to be sure that you can take that back to the college, not have them wiggle out of liability because you did something wrong in the interim.
Rather than trying to bludgeon your family into compliance, why not work on finding a security solution that works with them not in spite of them?
One of the biggest obstacles to educating users is the attitude that they are all stupid or lazy, and there is only one solution to security even if it doesn't fit their needs.
On Wordpress you have the option of requiring moderation only the first time an individual posts. Once you have approved one post by them they no longer are moderated.
Sure it still involves trolling though moderated spam to find the genuine posts, but if you don't have massive traffic it works fine.
Presumably, they don't want students stealing electronic copies of their work and training others, as it is a lucrative source of revenue. The downside is that it is often impractical to refer to these training notes after the course is over.
You are not buying a book. The fees paid to trainers are for their knowledge and skills at presentation. Handouts or binders are at best a bonus. Please don't confuse training with shopping at Amazon.com.
I admit to wondering how referring to printed handouts after the fact can be seen as "impractical." Do you have rare paper allergy? Are you illiterate or an individual with a visual impairment that makes reading text difficult?
Maybe try thinking of paper as the Linux of communication tools - universal, almost free (as in beer) and accessible to anyone, anywhere without the use of proprietary tools.
Many years ago, in the days when the one IBM PC was still a novelty, I worked as a janitor for a government project. I was also union shop steward at bargaining time.
Part of our job was to go into the management offices at 6 AM each morning to clean the desks and carpets and empty garbage.
To this day I don't think that the bosses have figured out how we always seemed to know what they had planned next.
It was almost like we had ESP or something.
I guess that lowly syadmins and lowly cleaners have one thing in common - they work under the radar.
The winners, who will have emerged from an initial pool of more than 2,700 entrants, will see their app idea realized as a Mac shareware application and earn royalties on sales. "
Why do I suspect that Apple will calculate those royalties using the same generous provisions favored by the music industry giants that are their partners in iTunes?
Why, the lucky contest winner could wind up owing Apple only a few tens of thousands of dollars!
Despite what the fanboys say, there are just too many things that are irritating or poorly implemented (can you say "Finder?"), and too many places where you're forced into doing things the "Mac way", even if there are better alternatives.
I've given this machine a go for a year as my primary machine, and find it slow, crash prone, and often inefficient in the hoops through which one has to jump to do otherwise simple tasks.
Added to that is the relative lack of quality freeware and open source apps and utilities (compared to Windows or Linux platforms). There are at least a dozen such programs that I relied on on a daily basis on Windows. In almost every case I was boxed into paying what I considered an overly high price for a commercial app on the Mac.
Overall though it's the cumulation of a hundred little things that has convinced me that the Mac is not the machine for me. I just find the whole affair annoying, and I always seem be stopping work to change something that shouldn't have happened. A good example is the Dock, which invariably covers up a scroll bar or other part of what I'm working on, and which honestly is much less efficient than a good old Windows Task bar.
Maybe on a 30" monitor this doesn't happen, but on a 12" Powerbook it's an endless source of irriation. It's just bad design.
Anyone else remember the good old days of C64 games when copy protection was handled by a special page of codes that could only be read by placing a sheet of red plastic over them?
Honestly that seems a lot more sensible than digging though a drawer full of probably identical looking dongles trying to find the one that works with your DVD.
What may cause divorce are your choices in how to deal with each of these things.
If you let technology, or the job, or your boss, take priority over your loved ones and family, that is your decision.
Sadly North American society places the almighty buck ahead of everything, and that translates to a belief that The Job is more important than any other thing in life.
There are people and places who have rejected these attitudes to varying degrees. In Europe, where work weeks are often quite less than the 40 hour minimum common here, and vacations begin at multiple weeks each year. In intentional communities, where a balance between work and life and family is central to the overall design of the environment. Or even with a small number of employers who have realized that happy and healthy employees lead to greater long term productivity and profits.
So don't place the blame on "IT", place it on yourself and take long hard look.
Whether or not the Spam brand name is being diluted, everything I see says that sales of SPAM and other Hormel products are up, up, up. Surely name recognition has increased in the last five years, arguably because the word "spam" has become so commonplace.
The Specialty Foods and All Other segments continued their strong performance from the first quarter and the Grocery Products segment reported impressive growth in microwave tray items, HORMEL bacon bits and the SPAM family of products....
The All Other segment improvement in sales and operating profit was driven by the International operating segment. Export sales of the SPAM family of products were up 37 percent and continued improvement from the China operations were the biggest contributors.
After a quick sampling of the wisdom on the site...
You know, maybe it's just me, but if I was composing a message that would be sent out to the Universe, available to entities on billions upon billions of worlds, I would at least run a spellcheck before hitting "Submit."
Slashdot Mirror
Should we now have to replace the "Save" icons on all out apps?
That depends - do you still "dial" your phone?
In the book business it has become near impossible to convince publishers to translate non-English authors, making access to some of the planet's finest writers nearly impossible.
Geist magazine out of Vancouver has had a couple of good articles looking at this phenomenon, one by Stephen Henighan in Issue 61, and by acclaimed writer Alberto Manguel in Issue 62.
Henigan's article opens:
Manguel's article this month puts the blame squarely on the publishing houses who are increasingly market driven to publish lowest common denominator works, rather than building a catalog that stands on literary merit.
North America lives in a cultural bubble defined by a narrow range of English language music, writing, and film. It would be a great exercise to see how iTunes handles music from Latino and Mexican artists, or in Canada from Quebec musicians.
I'll wager that both of those groups are also underrepresented despite the considerable popularity of their work.
Let me be the first to ask that posters include a couple of words when posting about relatively obscure software.
Like "If you have already followed the release candidates, you know that XFCE, COMMA THE BLAH BLAH SOFTWARE PACKAGE COMMA is really evolving."
I have no clue what it is, or Thunar for that matter, and doubt that most others do.
I most certainly know what a mix tape is, and own more than a couple.
Calling it a "mix tape" doesn't change the legality of copyright infringement
If you can pass legislation that specifically excludes mix tapes from copyright restrictions, then yes it would be legal.
Sampling, a practiced by the Beasties, is a different matter
His arrest is confusing on several levels.
No. It's not.
He copied other people's work and distributed it without permission.
That's copyright infringement. There is nothing the least bit confusing about it.
It is certainly a common practice, and one condoned by many artists, but that does not change the existing copyright law and I'm sure that DJ Drama knew it.
One can debate the definitions of "Fair Use,", and the business model used by the entertainment industry, and even slam the scum that form the RIAA and MPAA, but it helps no one when article authors pretend that existing copyright laws don't exist.
I looked at iTunes but their prices are way too high - basically the same as buying a CD at Amazon.com - and the DRM restrictions were just enough to make me want to stay away.
I've been very happy with emusic.com, which offers a growing catalog of music, prices that are about 1/3 of Apple's, and completely unrestricted MP3 files.
Sure you won't find top 40 dreck at emusic.com, but if your tastes are the least bit adventurous there's a lot of great music at reasonable prices.
Bill Evans, Thelonius Monk, Lucinda Williams, Kirsty MacColl, Tom Waits....
In the year since I moved to an Apple machine I've come to understand how solid and useful Pegasus Mail had become. In twelve months I've moved from Apple Mail (which I found much too limited), to Eudora (what a bizarre interface, at least for me) to Thunderbird, and now to Gyazmail.
Each of these lacks at least a couple of must have features that I used extensively on Pmail. Thunderbird tries hard, but it always seems that the feature that I need most isn't quite finished.
Gyazmail comes close, but still has some gaping weaknesses, like the apparent inability to add addresses to the Addressbook from within the program, and a good Search function.
Ultimately Pegasus was probably best loved by those who live and breathe e-mail, and who need power and flexibility, as well as reliability. yes it was free, but it was one of those programs that I would have paid for because it suited my needs so well.
There really is a need for ideas for the next generation of e-mail.
If reports are to believed we're closing in on a point when nearly 100 percent of messages will be spam. The spam blockers that were effective a year ago are becoming increasingly leaky.
Whitelists may work for some people, but not for anyone running a business. Proposals that require tens of thousands of ISPs to significantly change how they handle mail probably aren't going to fly unless legislated. And legislation will only work within the boundaries of one country.
Besides, ultimately it is only the recipient of an e-mail message that can judge it's legitimacy or usefulness.
So how do you create a an e-mail replacement that's as easy as what exists now, immune to spam, and is an easy upgrade from what we have now?
Brother for some reason has taken to adding ethernet to a number of their low end multifunction printers. Once you've used it you get hooked fast.
I first set one up at my girlfriend's place, an MFC 420CN. Plugged it into the router, added the software to her ancient PII laptop, and she can scan, print fax - everything.
Same from my Powerbook, via WiFi, and the kid's PC upstairs.
Now admittedly the Brother software kind of sucks rocks, and the printer is dead slow, but otherwise this really is the sensible way to do these things. I can't see buying another printer that doesn't have network support built in.
As some of us have found, appearing on Apple's "compatibility" lists does not necessarily mean that hardware is compatible.
Or that it's sorta kinda compatible but only in some cases...
Beware...
A family who holds a birthday picnic in a place of public entertainment (for example, the grounds of a zoo) and sings 'Happy Birthday' in a manner that can be heard by others, risks an infringement notice carrying a fine of up to $1,320.
I highly doubt that the Australian government will criminalize birthday celebrations.
As is the case in most countries, the use of a song by a business or organization requires that it be licenced and royalties paid. That is hardly a new thing.
Similarly if that song is used in media production such as a video or film there are additional rights that must be obtained and paid for.
To suggest that families will be fined for making a video of themselves singing "Happy Birthday" is just absurd.
There are many, many grounds for fighting copyright changes, and many good cases to be made for reforming or repealing them.
Scare stories like this one just undermine the work being done by thoughtful people.
Let me add that the point in seeing a lawyer is not just to punish the college for what has happened, but to make sure that you cover your bases in case you suffer damage weeks, months or years down the road.
If, a year or two from now, a mortgage default suddenly appears on your credit report you need to be sure that you can take that back to the college, not have them wiggle out of liability because you did something wrong in the interim.
... would suggest that you hire a lawyer. You can bet that the college did.
Rather than trying to bludgeon your family into compliance, why not work on finding a security solution that works with them not in spite of them?
One of the biggest obstacles to educating users is the attitude that they are all stupid or lazy, and there is only one solution to security even if it doesn't fit their needs.
On Wordpress you have the option of requiring moderation only the first time an individual posts. Once you have approved one post by them they no longer are moderated.
Sure it still involves trolling though moderated spam to find the genuine posts, but if you don't have massive traffic it works fine.
Where is a decent repository of free sheet music?
Easy - try you local Public Library. Heck, you can probably search their catalog online, just to maintain that required eek element,
Presumably, they don't want students stealing electronic copies of their work and training others, as it is a lucrative source of revenue. The downside is that it is often impractical to refer to these training notes after the course is over.
You are not buying a book. The fees paid to trainers are for their knowledge and skills at presentation. Handouts or binders are at best a bonus. Please don't confuse training with shopping at Amazon.com.
I admit to wondering how referring to printed handouts after the fact can be seen as "impractical." Do you have rare paper allergy? Are you illiterate or an individual with a visual impairment that makes reading text difficult?
Maybe try thinking of paper as the Linux of communication tools - universal, almost free (as in beer) and accessible to anyone, anywhere without the use of proprietary tools.
Many years ago, in the days when the one IBM PC was still a novelty, I worked as a janitor for a government project. I was also union shop steward at bargaining time.
Part of our job was to go into the management offices at 6 AM each morning to clean the desks and carpets and empty garbage.
To this day I don't think that the bosses have figured out how we always seemed to know what they had planned next.
It was almost like we had ESP or something.
I guess that lowly syadmins and lowly cleaners have one thing in common - they work under the radar.
The winners, who will have emerged from an initial pool of more than 2,700 entrants, will see their app idea realized as a Mac shareware application and earn royalties on sales. "
Why do I suspect that Apple will calculate those royalties using the same generous provisions favored by the music industry giants that are their partners in iTunes?
Why, the lucky contest winner could wind up owing Apple only a few tens of thousands of dollars!
I bought my first Mac a year ago, and honestly it will likely be the last.
Despite what the fanboys say, there are just too many things that are irritating or poorly implemented (can you say "Finder?"), and too many places where you're forced into doing things the "Mac way", even if there are better alternatives.
I've given this machine a go for a year as my primary machine, and find it slow, crash prone, and often inefficient in the hoops through which one has to jump to do otherwise simple tasks.
Added to that is the relative lack of quality freeware and open source apps and utilities (compared to Windows or Linux platforms). There are at least a dozen such programs that I relied on on a daily basis on Windows. In almost every case I was boxed into paying what I considered an overly high price for a commercial app on the Mac.
Overall though it's the cumulation of a hundred little things that has convinced me that the Mac is not the machine for me. I just find the whole affair annoying, and I always seem be stopping work to change something that shouldn't have happened. A good example is the Dock, which invariably covers up a scroll bar or other part of what I'm working on, and which honestly is much less efficient than a good old Windows Task bar.
Maybe on a 30" monitor this doesn't happen, but on a 12" Powerbook it's an endless source of irriation. It's just bad design.
Anyone else remember the good old days of C64 games when copy protection was handled by a special page of codes that could only be read by placing a sheet of red plastic over them?
Honestly that seems a lot more sensible than digging though a drawer full of probably identical looking dongles trying to find the one that works with your DVD.
... IT does not "cause divorce."
Neither do trees. Or the weather. Or hockey.
What may cause divorce are your choices in how to deal with each of these things.
If you let technology, or the job, or your boss, take priority over your loved ones and family, that is your decision.
Sadly North American society places the almighty buck ahead of everything, and that translates to a belief that The Job is more important than any other thing in life.
There are people and places who have rejected these attitudes to varying degrees. In Europe, where work weeks are often quite less than the 40 hour minimum common here, and vacations begin at multiple weeks each year. In intentional communities, where a balance between work and life and family is central to the overall design of the environment. Or even with a small number of employers who have realized that happy and healthy employees lead to greater long term productivity and profits.
So don't place the blame on "IT", place it on yourself and take long hard look.
Whether or not the Spam brand name is being diluted, everything I see says that sales of SPAM and other Hormel products are up, up, up. Surely name recognition has increased in the last five years, arguably because the word "spam" has become so commonplace.
The Specialty Foods and All Other segments continued their strong performance from the first quarter and the Grocery Products segment reported impressive growth in microwave tray items, HORMEL bacon bits and the SPAM family of products....
The All Other segment improvement in sales and operating profit was driven by the International operating segment. Export sales of the SPAM family of products were up 37 percent and continued improvement from the China operations were the biggest contributors.
After a quick sampling of the wisdom on the site...
You know, maybe it's just me, but if I was composing a message that would be sent out to the Universe, available to entities on billions upon billions of worlds, I would at least run a spellcheck before hitting "Submit."
Another testimony to how our society refuses to reward those who enrich it... but not if we can help it!"
You posted that on Slashdot, where every third post is a complaint about the tyranny of copyright and payment for the use of intellectual property?
How naive.