This (AP) article on CNN.com is exactly the sort that could benefit from being on the web. As it is, it is not much more than an electronic reprint of a newspaper-style article. The only "improvements" made are that it is heavy on cruft, what with the ads, partner tie-ins, subscription offers etc..
There's a little generic warning and associated icon at the bottom: "All external sites will open in a new browser. CNN.com does not endorse external sites." That might be helpful if it referred to a practice that was actually being used somewhere on the page. But the only "external" links seem to be to affiliates and advertisers. I guess the old media paranoia about letting us get away is still pretty strongly in effect.
Sorry, that's enough *vague* bitching. Here are some specifics:
What I really want to complain about is that there quite a few interesting details that were merely summarized, and not further explored; and that there were any number of jumping off points that could have been made active.
How about at least a link to the American Public Power Association, or one of the utilitis mentioned as an example? Or better yet, fill in some of those details. Which eleven states prohibit public power companies from offereing teleco services, or force them to charge artificially high rates. (If I live in one, I want to start writing letters!) How about a list (with links, maybe?) of the "511 publicly owned utilities now provide telecom services" mentioned in the "fact box"?
So much potential in this web medium is still wasted. Most news stories on the web just look like a slightly slicker and more colorful version of 1994, back when "old media" "didn't get it".
[...]
using google to find out that a journalist's "normal american citizen" source is actually an activist, and a history teacher to boot.
Hey, thanks for the warning! Somebody call out the INS and hvae them deport that man to France at once!
We all know that "normal american citizen(s)" would never be caught having an opinion on any issue until asked by a proper journalist or polling organization. Not only does this guy have an opinion already, but he's admitted to online. He's been telling!
Sure, maybe we can forgive knowing a little about history (the war of 1812 happened in 1812, right?). But this guy's actually teaching others about it?!?
He can't possibly be a "normal american citizen". He knows too much!
If printer manufacturers want to make money on services, they can do it honestly like mobile phone telcos do by getting me to sign a contract. Otherwise they can take a hike.
And therein lies the rub. See, toner/ink cartridges are NOT services. What they are is products, and commodity ones at that. This means that they are well known and easily reproducible goods. Forcing the customer into exclusivity in a purchase contract for commodities is impractical. It is probably illegal, and most certainly is unenforcable for individual customers.
Toner police! We need to have a look around. Sir, where did you get that off-brand cartridge?
Um, my son bought it, yeah. See, I'm the one who clicked-through the license, and I swear she is not my agent, so she can't be restricted by MY contract. And besides, he's a minor."
So Lexmark is doing the next-best thing it can figure out how to do. They are introducing artificial incompatibilities and then buttressing them with whatever legal framework they can find. About the only service related leverage they might have is a void on the warranty for using non-"Genuine Lexmark Products". But few people care about a warranty for something they perceive as being inexpensive. Plus, there's a strong trend among computer equipment users (overclockers, etc.) toward disregarding warranties in favor of attempting (ostensible) cost/performance gains.
I hope printer manufacturers get the smackdown over this. Both/either because of the pollution issues (as it has been in the EU) and/or because of the ethical aspects.
Carve and paint it to look like a shoe, and be satisfied for winning "Most Unusual" in the design competition.
Of course, a lot has changed since the mid-70's. Perhaps tricking it out as a ricer might be a more contemporary option. A spoiler and stickers would be easy enough. But how about carving out a place for some button batteries to power some LED "neon" running strips? Cram in one of those boy-band keychains you can find at Toys-R-Us, and it can even be a boomcar. Real riceboys would be pissed at the music choice, but the adult judges will never know the difference.
We in the US take water for granted. It's basically free -- cheaper than all other utilities, our water bill is about $15 a month, tops.
I can tell you that there are an increasingnumber of placeswhere it isn't being taken for granted. Water is worth quite a bit to a few international companies that want to come in and take it all, basically for free, and then sell it for $2+ a bottle.
Perhaps these types of experiments are best relegated to little known, deserted islands far away from the reaches of civilization (or perhaps regulation)
The ethics of of this behavior are not at all altered by removal to a remote location. The sweatshops that produce the clothing for the western world are not made any more humane by our inability to perceive them on a daily basis. Only our *feelings* of guilt are assuaged when we move something "out of sight, out of mind". In fact they may be less humane, as hiding them allows for even greater injustices to be committed, with less fear of public outrage.
If the results of these experiments had some risk of becoming science-fiction-like monsters that were physically dangerous to the world, perhaps export to a remote island might be justified. But it seems that the fear in this case is really about thee potential for full-time, widespread public access to the truth.
No, don't you worry your pretty head about anything. You just go back to sleep. We'll take our troubling little experiment far away. We'll wake you up when we're done. Then we'll have something wonderful to show you, we promise. The ends won't even need to justify the means, because you won't really know what the means were to worry about.
When I'm writing, I don't think "<ital>foo</ital>," I think "
foo."
Ok then. Why should foo be italicized? Is it important? Is it an example some something? A variable? A citation? A proper name? A bit of sarcasm? Maybe you just *like* the way italics look and don't really mean anything more by it. Then, perhaps "<ital>foo</ital>," is something of a win. But if "foo" means more than that, then "<ital>foo</ital>," actually loses that meaning.
Oh, sure you can. The editor doesn't need to display it the exact same way the end-user will display it; it just needs to display it in a way that makes the user feel comfortable. On your machine, chapter titles are 24 point serif type; on mine, they're 18 point italic sans-serif type. I don't care that yours are different from mine; I only care that mine look the way I expect them to.
But that's not really WYSIWYG then, is it? (Unless you want to get all semantic about the Ys in the acronym.) The thing is, if you lobotomize the meta-data so that what you create as a <chapter title> is encoded as <ital>, then you are pretty much forcing the hand of my machine. Your "big win" becomes my loss. Sure, I can remap <ital> so that it renders as 24 point serif, but then everything else that you've flattened down to <ital> for the sake of how it looks (footnotes, dates, marginal commentary, etc.) gets the 24 point serif treatment, too.
WYSIWYG for DocBook? You're gonna need a bigger wrench if you want to pound in that screw.
Re:The site sure isn't
on
Fanwing Planes?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Google's caching of the primary pages wasn't very helpful. Too many frames and redirects to go through to get to a page that had any real information.
Try Google's Images to get at least an idea of what we're talking about.
It is not merely a window of time that has come and gone. Postal mail is still being delayed significantly, and actually it is almost destroyed by the irradiation and other mail handling procedures that have been initiated, post-anthrax incidents. Now, it is citizen input on Desert Storm II: This time it's personal! that isn't getting through.
As I mentioned in another post, I have some friends in a grass-roots group who got some face-time with some state representatives who hear from them that mail from December is still arriving, and that the ink is faded to almost illegible, the paper is brittle and crumbly, and photographs are faded, cracked, blistering and peeling.
The cheapest and most accessible method of citizen input is still being removed from the process.
It will take about three weeks for your letter to be delivered.
That's an extremely optomistic estimate.
I have an associate who was among a group of citizens who managed to scor some face time with a couple of representatives from our state. They were told that some of the mail currently arriving is dated from December. But the worst aspect of it is the condition it arrives in after the irradiation and other special handling it receives because of the new "safety measures". The ink is frequently faded and illegible, the paper is rendered brittle and often already crumbled in pieces, and photographs are blistered. In short it has effectively ceased to be a useful means of communication.
This is attrocious when you consider that it had been the most practical, cheapest, AND most importantly, the most universally available means of communicating citizen opinion to our representatives.
With email being overwhelming to congressional offices as described here, it seems like faxing is the remaining method available for those who can't afford lobbyists. Sure, you can use fax machines at Kinko's, and prepaid phone cards for long-distance charges. But that's definitely a higher barrier than a piece of paper, envelope and $.37 stamp (let alone a postcard & $.23 stamp).
The photog is no more a thief than might a software company who sells multiple copies of their products be a thief.
You want Norton/Photoshop/whatever for every computer in your company/school lab/home, you better pay for the multple copies. If you want to save money or work out a better deal than $50 a pop, you pick up a phone and *negotiate* with Symantec/Adobe/whoever, or a vendor.
I interviewed 3 photogs for our wedding. This was 5+ years ago, so digital really a consideration for us, but ownership of the negs was. In addition to looking for the right mix of professionalism and a personable/casual style, I was very particular about fee structure and deliverables.
To be honest, the photog's manner was the major decision-maker. We wanted someone who would spend more time blending in and taking candids and less time trying to coordinate the usual run of posed shots. But just about as important was that her fees were reasonable. She broke it down into materials, labor, and deliverables. She charged a fair retail price for the film she used, scaled her labor based on the equipment used (EG she used a 35mm shot to back up every posed shot taken on medium-format, just in case of accidents in processing or mechanical failures in the medium-format camera), and included a complete set of prints plus the negatives as the deliverables. She offered a reasonable rate on reproductions (skewed to favor full rolls), good for one year. We opted not to take her up on that. That was okay with her, because it an a-la-carte extension to the original contract.
We knew what we wanted, found a photog who offered something in the range, and negotiated a deal that was satisfactory to all parties.
I personally would like a replacement for the Comic-sans MS font
Me too. Any by that I mean something that will globally (in the very *literal* sense) find and replace every instance of Comic Sans MS in the world. Every memo, every church fair banner, every club membership directory, every goofy personal website, every instance where somebone needed to be official, but without looking so, you know, official.
It's the font equivalent of a winking smiley;-) and it ought to be removed from the face of the earth.
You can theorize all you like about what kind of things will be enabled by this kind of jump in local access speeds. Forecasts about technology and culture are much more likely to predict non-starters like personal household robot servants or flying bubble-cars than they are to hit upon something like ultra-violent FPS games becoming popular or the creation of geocaching as a sport.
But if there's one thing a look backward can tell us it is that the answer to "How will they use it?" is: In ways that you can barely begin to imagine, that will end up seeming glaringly obvious in hindsight.
Slashdot Mirror
Agh! Help! The cognitive dissonance!
Which do I hate more? The RIAA for strangling artists, or ClearChannel for strangling FM?!?!
Hold it. Deep breath. I'll take this slowly.
The enemy of my enemy ... can still also ... be ... an enemy of mine. Even if ... I like something ... they do.
Got it! They're both still bastards.
Okay. All better now.
What kind of bribe will it take to get you to never use ALL CAPITALS and LOTS OF EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!! in your column ever again?
(The parenthetical comments can stay, though.)
No, REALLY, I'm serious!!!!
This (AP) article on CNN.com is exactly the sort that could benefit from being on the web. As it is, it is not much more than an electronic reprint of a newspaper-style article. The only "improvements" made are that it is heavy on cruft, what with the ads, partner tie-ins, subscription offers etc..
There's a little generic warning and associated icon at the bottom: "All external sites will open in a new browser. CNN.com does not endorse external sites." That might be helpful if it referred to a practice that was actually being used somewhere on the page. But the only "external" links seem to be to affiliates and advertisers. I guess the old media paranoia about letting us get away is still pretty strongly in effect.
Sorry, that's enough *vague* bitching. Here are some specifics:
What I really want to complain about is that there quite a few interesting details that were merely summarized, and not further explored; and that there were any number of jumping off points that could have been made active.
How about at least a link to the American Public Power Association, or one of the utilitis mentioned as an example? Or better yet, fill in some of those details. Which eleven states prohibit public power companies from offereing teleco services, or force them to charge artificially high rates. (If I live in one, I want to start writing letters!) How about a list (with links, maybe?) of the "511 publicly owned utilities now provide telecom services" mentioned in the "fact box"?
So much potential in this web medium is still wasted. Most news stories on the web just look like a slightly slicker and more colorful version of 1994, back when "old media" "didn't get it".
Hey, thanks for the warning! Somebody call out the INS and hvae them deport that man to France at once!
We all know that "normal american citizen(s)" would never be caught having an opinion on any issue until asked by a proper journalist or polling organization. Not only does this guy have an opinion already, but he's admitted to online. He's been telling!
Sure, maybe we can forgive knowing a little about history (the war of 1812 happened in 1812, right?). But this guy's actually teaching others about it?!?
He can't possibly be a "normal american citizen". He knows too much!
And therein lies the rub. See, toner/ink cartridges are NOT services. What they are is products, and commodity ones at that. This means that they are well known and easily reproducible goods. Forcing the customer into exclusivity in a purchase contract for commodities is impractical. It is probably illegal, and most certainly is unenforcable for individual customers.
So Lexmark is doing the next-best thing it can figure out how to do. They are introducing artificial incompatibilities and then buttressing them with whatever legal framework they can find. About the only service related leverage they might have is a void on the warranty for using non-"Genuine Lexmark Products". But few people care about a warranty for something they perceive as being inexpensive. Plus, there's a strong trend among computer equipment users (overclockers, etc.) toward disregarding warranties in favor of attempting (ostensible) cost/performance gains.
I hope printer manufacturers get the smackdown over this. Both/either because of the pollution issues (as it has been in the EU) and/or because of the ethical aspects.
Carve and paint it to look like a shoe, and be satisfied for winning "Most Unusual" in the design competition.
Of course, a lot has changed since the mid-70's. Perhaps tricking it out as a ricer might be a more contemporary option. A spoiler and stickers would be easy enough. But how about carving out a place for some button batteries to power some LED "neon" running strips? Cram in one of those boy-band keychains you can find at Toys-R-Us, and it can even be a boomcar. Real riceboys would be pissed at the music choice, but the adult judges will never know the difference.
I can tell you that there are an increasing number of places where it isn't being taken for granted. Water is worth quite a bit to a few international companies that want to come in and take it all, basically for free, and then sell it for $2+ a bottle.
And America is just the tip of the aquifer.
Okay, I'll risk a little bit of Karma on being a vocabluary pedant.
The word is antivenin. Think anti ven(o) (tox)in.
There will follow lots of posts with jokes about overclocking.
Some may actually be funny.
I'm sure if you slip the tour guide a few bucks, he'll show you where Klan rallies took place.
Be sure and ask about their environmental initiatives, while you're at it.
Didn't Columbus, Ohio just top BET's list of best cities for African Americans? Several other midwestern cities made it in the top 20 as well.
Two words:
Chris Elliott
If the results of these experiments had some risk of becoming science-fiction-like monsters that were physically dangerous to the world, perhaps export to a remote island might be justified. But it seems that the fear in this case is really about thee potential for full-time, widespread public access to the truth.
No, don't you worry your pretty head about anything. You just go back to sleep. We'll take our troubling little experiment far away. We'll wake you up when we're done. Then we'll have something wonderful to show you, we promise. The ends won't even need to justify the means, because you won't really know what the means were to worry about.
Ok then. Why should foo be italicized? Is it important? Is it an example some something? A variable? A citation? A proper name? A bit of sarcasm? Maybe you just *like* the way italics look and don't really mean anything more by it. Then, perhaps "<ital>foo</ital>," is something of a win. But if "foo" means more than that, then "<ital>foo</ital>," actually loses that meaning.
But that's not really WYSIWYG then, is it? (Unless you want to get all semantic about the Ys in the acronym.) The thing is, if you lobotomize the meta-data so that what you create as a <chapter title> is encoded as <ital>, then you are pretty much forcing the hand of my machine. Your "big win" becomes my loss. Sure, I can remap <ital> so that it renders as 24 point serif, but then everything else that you've flattened down to <ital> for the sake of how it looks (footnotes, dates, marginal commentary, etc.) gets the 24 point serif treatment, too.WYSIWYG for DocBook? You're gonna need a bigger wrench if you want to pound in that screw.
Google's caching of the primary pages wasn't very helpful. Too many frames and redirects to go through to get to a page that had any real information.
Try Google's Images to get at least an idea of what we're talking about.
It is not merely a window of time that has come and gone. Postal mail is still being delayed significantly, and actually it is almost destroyed by the irradiation and other mail handling procedures that have been initiated, post-anthrax incidents. Now, it is citizen input on Desert Storm II: This time it's personal! that isn't getting through.
As I mentioned in another post, I have some friends in a grass-roots group who got some face-time with some state representatives who hear from them that mail from December is still arriving, and that the ink is faded to almost illegible, the paper is brittle and crumbly, and photographs are faded, cracked, blistering and peeling.
The cheapest and most accessible method of citizen input is still being removed from the process.
-Sporktoast
That's an extremely optomistic estimate.
I have an associate who was among a group of citizens who managed to scor some face time with a couple of representatives from our state. They were told that some of the mail currently arriving is dated from December. But the worst aspect of it is the condition it arrives in after the irradiation and other special handling it receives because of the new "safety measures". The ink is frequently faded and illegible, the paper is rendered brittle and often already crumbled in pieces, and photographs are blistered. In short it has effectively ceased to be a useful means of communication.
This is attrocious when you consider that it had been the most practical, cheapest, AND most importantly, the most universally available means of communicating citizen opinion to our representatives.
With email being overwhelming to congressional offices as described here, it seems like faxing is the remaining method available for those who can't afford lobbyists. Sure, you can use fax machines at Kinko's, and prepaid phone cards for long-distance charges. But that's definitely a higher barrier than a piece of paper, envelope and $.37 stamp (let alone a postcard & $.23 stamp).
-Sporktoast
The photog is no more a thief than might a software company who sells multiple copies of their products be a thief.
You want Norton/Photoshop/whatever for every computer in your company/school lab/home, you better pay for the multple copies. If you want to save money or work out a better deal than $50 a pop, you pick up a phone and *negotiate* with Symantec/Adobe/whoever, or a vendor.
I interviewed 3 photogs for our wedding. This was 5+ years ago, so digital really a consideration for us, but ownership of the negs was. In addition to looking for the right mix of professionalism and a personable/casual style, I was very particular about fee structure and deliverables.
To be honest, the photog's manner was the major decision-maker. We wanted someone who would spend more time blending in and taking candids and less time trying to coordinate the usual run of posed shots. But just about as important was that her fees were reasonable. She broke it down into materials, labor, and deliverables. She charged a fair retail price for the film she used, scaled her labor based on the equipment used (EG she used a 35mm shot to back up every posed shot taken on medium-format, just in case of accidents in processing or mechanical failures in the medium-format camera), and included a complete set of prints plus the negatives as the deliverables. She offered a reasonable rate on reproductions (skewed to favor full rolls), good for one year. We opted not to take her up on that. That was okay with her, because it an a-la-carte extension to the original contract.
We knew what we wanted, found a photog who offered something in the range, and negotiated a deal that was satisfactory to all parties.
-Sporktoast
No! Stop!
It's a cookbook! It's a cookbook!! It's a [mrrrffph]
Me too. Any by that I mean something that will globally (in the very *literal* sense) find and replace every instance of Comic Sans MS in the world. Every memo, every church fair banner, every club membership directory, every goofy personal website, every instance where somebone needed to be official, but without looking so, you know, official
It's the font equivalent of a winking smiley ;-) and it ought to be removed from the face of the earth.
-Sporktoast
Faraday cage.
You can theorize all you like about what kind of things will be enabled by this kind of jump in local access speeds. Forecasts about technology and culture are much more likely to predict non-starters like personal household robot servants or flying bubble-cars than they are to hit upon something like ultra-violent FPS games becoming popular or the creation of geocaching as a sport.
But if there's one thing a look backward can tell us it is that the answer to "How will they use it?" is:
In ways that you can barely begin to imagine, that will end up seeming glaringly obvious in hindsight.
-Sporktoast
I'm sorry, sometimes it takes me a few tries to understand some things.
Are you saying that this is some sort of pipe dream or something?
I never understood why they chose that name for a car.