Nielsen allows stations to "retitle" programs if there is something about the program beyond the station's control that affects viewership. As an example, a sporting event runs long, and the newscast runs an hour and a half late, and viewership drops substantially. That would impact the average ratings of the newscast in its normal time slot when every other station in the market is running its news at the normal time, so the station is right to exclude that aberration from the running average. Think of it as "The Eleven O'Clock News: Special Edition" or something.
Even with retitling programs that fall in this category, Nielsen still reports the ratings, so ad buyers can evaluate for themselves. There are clients who will only buy time in newscasts, and only in newscasts that run on time. They don't want to spend big bucks if the show is an hour late.
As for actual program ratings, Nielsen relies mainly on portable people meters (PPMs) that record viewing in real time by listening to codes embedded in the audio. They just rolled out a new, finer-grained coding system (critical band encoding technology) which delivers better code reading ability in noisy or difficult environments. So there is actually no escaping Nielsen's viewer/listenership gathering mechanism, at least in the larger (top 50) markets.
For a lot of people, discovering something new that they didn't know about is part of the enjoyment of reading. If you know exactly what you want, you can order it from Amazon. If you don't know exactly which title, but you are looking for something in a certain genre that you enjoy, or by an author you like, a real-live bookseller can help you find something interesting. This works better for fiction than it would for reference or technical books, but the decline of the large-scale bookstores means that this sort of personal advice will become unavailable to large segments of the population. You can't exactly go look at the table full of new non-fiction or trade paperbacks, pick one up and leaf through the pages, and if you like it, use your 30% off coupon and take it home with you today, if you're sitting in front of your Mac logged in to Amazon.(OK, I know Amazon has this great algorithm for predicting what you'll like based on what you and others have purchased, and you can download and read an e-book immediately, but see my comment about mom's basement, again, and there's this thing about actual books versus having to read it on a gadget.)
Wal-Mart is the cause of the decline and fall of small town commerce. Time after time it's been shown that when Wal-Mart builds a store on the outskirts of a small town, business in that town dries up, the jobs at these stores go away (to be replaced by part-time employment at said Wal-Mart), and the money that people would have spent at locally-owned and operated shops goes out of town. All to save a few cents on light bulbs or pickles. (Even big cities are seeing the same thing.) When the town dries up and blows away because there's no way to make a living there anymore, Wal-Mart closes up shop too(another article), and moves on to conquer the next small town. Much has been written about the aggressive tactics that Wal-Mart uses to exact the lowest prices from its suppliers, many of which have had to move US jobs overseas in order to meet these demands, or have even gone out of business because they could not continue to sell goods to Wal-Mart at a loss.
To turn the subject back to books, Wal-Mart happens to also be one of the largest book and music retailers, and they are known to censor what they sell, to the point of requiring publishers to provide expurgated versions of books and CDs. (Maybe it's a good thing we have Amazon, then.)
Today, you'd just go pirate the books. Much simpler, actually.
In your mom's basement, no less.
At least Phoenix666 had a Borders to go to. And therein lies part of the problem. Who hasn't gone to Borders or another bookseller, browsed their selection, found just the right book, then gone home and ordered the same title from Amazon? (Or gotten out their smartphone and ordered it right in the store.)
Have you ever attended a book talk by an author? You know, the actual people who really write all those words? They don't just grow on paper while sitting in a big warehouse somewhere, you know. Amazon could never offer you the opportunity to meet, chat with, listen to, shake hands with, and share thoughts with the people who write the books you love to read, and to get out of the house and enjoy the company of others who also do (see earlier comment about mom's basement).
I view it as another consequence of the Wal-Mart problem. Low price is the driving factor - not customer service, a community environment, knowledgable booksellers (Borders used to test prospective employees on their knowledge of books), fairness to workers, or most importantly, keeping your money in circulation locally and not run through some credit card company on its way to Delaware. We have become conditioned to go to almost any length to save a few cents or dollars, even if it costs more to do so (do you drive several miles out of your way to save three cents a gallon on gas?).
Maybe the upside is that the closing of Borders stores will result in the opening of more locally-owned small booksellers who previously couldn't compete well with a company like Borders. A couple have already opened here recently in the shadow of one of the largest and most popular Borders stores.
And how many of us actually read those opt-in agreements when we use software? Opt-in consent to this electronic eavesdropping is, essentially, meaningless. If the agreement contained a provision where you granted them permission to watch over your shoulder when keying in your PIN at the ATM, you'd click it in order to go on using the software. Heck, people will even give up their passwords for chocolate.
So you get the hardware out there and then release incremental software improvements as you develop them, slowly but surely catching up to the cutting edge.
Hey, it worked with the Zune, didn't it? Oh, wait...
Long time ham here too and I love low power (QRP) operation but it isn't for wimps or beginners. Still, I definitely recommend it once you acquire some operating skills. I have a FT-817 and love it - I use it mobile, portable, while camping, and even at home and have worked an amazing array of countries including New Zealand with its 5 watts and a 12 foot whip fastened to a hotel balcony. Small and capable as it is, it's still heavy if you are watching every ounce as you would on a long trek.
The lightweight champ I recommend is the Elecraft KX-1. It's a kit, so electronics assembly skills are required, but the manuals are very clear (think Heathkit) that anyone who knows how to solder to a circuit board can build it. Smaller than a paperback book, it measures 3x5 inches x 1 inch thick, weighs less than a pound (plus 6xAA batteries), will work on 20, 30 40 or 80 meters and has its own built-in antenna tuner and battery pack, so all you need is a key, your iPod earphones and a roll of wire to throw up into a tree for an antenna, and you are on the air. It is a Morse Code-only rig, though, so you'll have to know the code, but if you are serious about it, it isn't difficult. I take mine on campouts as well, and it's nice to kick back in the sleeping bag and have a few contacts before dozing off.
A couple years ago a ham hiked the Pacific Crest Trail and his communications was a KX-1. He kept a schedule with another ham and would check in regularly. His story was featured in one of the ham magazines. If you want to keep in touch with non-ham family members or associates, you could do the same. You'll meet plenty of hams through your local radio club, and it's likely someone would be willing to set up a sked with you. In that case, he is not only a hiker but was a ham already - he didn't get into ham radio solely as a means of communication while hiking. If you do, you might end up enjoying it - it adds another facet to being outdoors, off the grid but still in touch with just what you carry in your pack.
I think I'm going to hold off. I just finished upgrading most of my Linux boxen to Fedora 12. It was several months and 6+ yum updates before all were finally stable and things worked as they should.
Upgrading is inevitable, because the old stuff falls out of "support", but it's not worth it to me any more to jump on a new release just because it's there. Same thing happened to me back at Fedora 5, and 10 disagreed with some of my hardware.
Indeed, this is not news to any parent of a teenager. Mine probably do 5000+ in a month easily. One month he hit close to 10k and has friends who do way more than that.
Frequently happens in most border cities. In downtown Detroit it's common to connect through a cell in Windsor, especially if you're blocked by buildings or inside a parking garage that fronts the river.
I just finished building a fairly complex Ramsey kit and was impressed by their level of detail. They even explain the circuit theory where it's important to understand how the thing works. While it lacks the professional fit and finish of Heathkit, it's a good first-kit experience for adults, and they have a huge variety of applications.
I have also built Ten-Tec and Elecraft kits. I wasn't too impressed with Ten-Tec - the circuit board had a fabrication error that I had to troubleshoot and figure out myself. Elecraft seems to be the new gold standard in ham kits. Their manuals are excellent and the equipment is top-notch. (Can't wait to get my hands on a K3)
The key words here are parental responsibility. Any parent who gives or lets their kids have a laptop with wi-fi and the freedom to roam around with it to the nearest hotspot might as well also give them the keys to the car and to the liquor cabinet. Sad as it seems, there are plenty of parents who just don't care what their kids do as long as they don't use all the hot water in the morning.
It is also only in the LA council and NOT approved anywhere else. In fact the BSA is standing up for you by NOT LETTING IT BE A MERIT BADGE!
Good. From the article it was unclear whether it was an actual merit badge or simply a patch one could earn by learning or doing something useful, like Leave No Trace. I'd be surprised if BSA would allow such an item to be an official merit badge with so little thought. Look how much effort it took to create the Fly Fishing and Composite Materials badges.
Speaking of which, does anyone know if they still use blue cards?
Yes they do. In this electronic age it's still the only way to have a portable, hard copy, universally-readable record of a scout's merit badge work. Even with electronic popcorn ordering, advancement filing and rechartering, blue cards are probably here to stay, or at least for a very long time.
At the end of the week I'd have a stack of two hundred of these things that all needed to be completed sometime after the Friday night campfire
Still a major bottleneck at summer camp. That's probably why our camp sets Friday aside with little or no MB work, so the counselors can finish up the paperwork. You are right about partials. I always like when a boy can finish everything up "in one sitting", hard to do with many badges, or at least do so with one counselor. Keeping track of which items got a partial is a lot more record keeping than just writing "all requirements completed".
we were adamant about not being a "merit badge factory", so I gave out partials all the time.
I agree. While it's sometimes convenient to take certain merit badges at camp, there are some that just should not be able to be completed there, such as Citizenship in the Nation. Still, many of our boys earned that one at camp the year before last. (How in the world can you write a letter to your congressman and report on the response received while at camp? I suppose via e-mail, but how many camps have Internet access other than maybe one computer on a dial-up?) I'm not sure I agree that the requirements were fulfilled, but they have the blue cards to prove that they were.
It's a Merit Badge for taking the time to learn about the laws of the nation in which one resides-- lots of precedence for this in other Scouting Merit Badges.
Then why do we need yet another MB? Wouldn't the subject matter fit nicely under Crime Prevention? The Citizenship in the Nation and Cit in the Community MBs also cover the duties and responsibilities of a citizen, one of which is to obey the law. How about adding a requirement under the various art and performance MBs like Art, Music, Cinematography and Theater? Something like "Explain to your counselor what intellectual property is. Explain why an artist should have a right to be compensated for his work. Learn about copyright laws." That's all that's really needed.
Don't get me wrong -- I believe in respecting copyright laws. I'm not advocating that young people should pirate intellectual works. I just think that the motion picture industry should not be using the Boy Scouts of America as a vehicle to get its agenda across.
I think I'll substitute the "Make a Public Service Announcement" for a 200-word essay on Why the Digital Consumer's Bill of Rights is a good idea"
Since you are already a MBC, you understand that you may not add to, delete or change the requirements. If the requirement were to say "Make a public service announcement", that's exactly what the candidate should do, not write an essay. How you go about it is between the MBC and the scout, but one requirement cannot be substituted for another unless it is specifically allowed.
I was sitting through a product demonstration a while back, and the salesman kept referring to the system he was demonstrating as the "solution", even at times when it sounded unnatural or redundant. It was as if his sales manager had programmed his brain to say "solution" instead of "product" or "system" or "framistam". Drove me nuts. I expected him to say things like "When you type on the keyboard of the solution..." or "the person who operates the solution can..."
since over 97% of hits to my site have been from slashdot that isn't so unusual, I was suprised to see that 98% of visitors used windows.
Well, I read/. at work, mostly, and I have to use a Windows machine.
Re:One Point For Gmail
on
Gmail vs Pine
·
· Score: 1
The version of Pine I am familiar with doesn't do HTML for crap, can't embed images, doesn't do formatting and so on.
This is actually one of its advantages. No image rendering means none of those nasty image tags to provide silent feedback to the spammer^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsender. And if I need to see an attachment, I save it to my public_html directory and pull it up using a web browser.
Best feature yet: No mouse needed...my fingers never leave my hands!
Slashdot Mirror
Nielsen allows stations to "retitle" programs if there is something about the program beyond the station's control that affects viewership. As an example, a sporting event runs long, and the newscast runs an hour and a half late, and viewership drops substantially. That would impact the average ratings of the newscast in its normal time slot when every other station in the market is running its news at the normal time, so the station is right to exclude that aberration from the running average. Think of it as "The Eleven O'Clock News: Special Edition" or something.
Even with retitling programs that fall in this category, Nielsen still reports the ratings, so ad buyers can evaluate for themselves. There are clients who will only buy time in newscasts, and only in newscasts that run on time. They don't want to spend big bucks if the show is an hour late.
As for actual program ratings, Nielsen relies mainly on portable people meters (PPMs) that record viewing in real time by listening to codes embedded in the audio. They just rolled out a new, finer-grained coding system (critical band encoding technology) which delivers better code reading ability in noisy or difficult environments. So there is actually no escaping Nielsen's viewer/listenership gathering mechanism, at least in the larger (top 50) markets.
For a lot of people, discovering something new that they didn't know about is part of the enjoyment of reading. If you know exactly what you want, you can order it from Amazon. If you don't know exactly which title, but you are looking for something in a certain genre that you enjoy, or by an author you like, a real-live bookseller can help you find something interesting. This works better for fiction than it would for reference or technical books, but the decline of the large-scale bookstores means that this sort of personal advice will become unavailable to large segments of the population. You can't exactly go look at the table full of new non-fiction or trade paperbacks, pick one up and leaf through the pages, and if you like it, use your 30% off coupon and take it home with you today, if you're sitting in front of your Mac logged in to Amazon.(OK, I know Amazon has this great algorithm for predicting what you'll like based on what you and others have purchased, and you can download and read an e-book immediately, but see my comment about mom's basement, again, and there's this thing about actual books versus having to read it on a gadget.)
Wal-Mart is the cause of the decline and fall of small town commerce. Time after time it's been shown that when Wal-Mart builds a store on the outskirts of a small town, business in that town dries up, the jobs at these stores go away (to be replaced by part-time employment at said Wal-Mart), and the money that people would have spent at locally-owned and operated shops goes out of town. All to save a few cents on light bulbs or pickles. (Even big cities are seeing the same thing.) When the town dries up and blows away because there's no way to make a living there anymore, Wal-Mart closes up shop too (another article), and moves on to conquer the next small town. Much has been written about the aggressive tactics that Wal-Mart uses to exact the lowest prices from its suppliers, many of which have had to move US jobs overseas in order to meet these demands, or have even gone out of business because they could not continue to sell goods to Wal-Mart at a loss.
To turn the subject back to books, Wal-Mart happens to also be one of the largest book and music retailers, and they are known to censor what they sell, to the point of requiring publishers to provide expurgated versions of books and CDs. (Maybe it's a good thing we have Amazon, then.)
Today, you'd just go pirate the books. Much simpler, actually.
In your mom's basement, no less.
At least Phoenix666 had a Borders to go to. And therein lies part of the problem. Who hasn't gone to Borders or another bookseller, browsed their selection, found just the right book, then gone home and ordered the same title from Amazon? (Or gotten out their smartphone and ordered it right in the store.)
Have you ever attended a book talk by an author? You know, the actual people who really write all those words? They don't just grow on paper while sitting in a big warehouse somewhere, you know. Amazon could never offer you the opportunity to meet, chat with, listen to, shake hands with, and share thoughts with the people who write the books you love to read, and to get out of the house and enjoy the company of others who also do (see earlier comment about mom's basement).
I view it as another consequence of the Wal-Mart problem. Low price is the driving factor - not customer service, a community environment, knowledgable booksellers (Borders used to test prospective employees on their knowledge of books), fairness to workers, or most importantly, keeping your money in circulation locally and not run through some credit card company on its way to Delaware. We have become conditioned to go to almost any length to save a few cents or dollars, even if it costs more to do so (do you drive several miles out of your way to save three cents a gallon on gas?).
Maybe the upside is that the closing of Borders stores will result in the opening of more locally-owned small booksellers who previously couldn't compete well with a company like Borders. A couple have already opened here recently in the shadow of one of the largest and most popular Borders stores.
Yeah, I use vim, but with the -e option.
And how many of us actually read those opt-in agreements when we use software?
Opt-in consent to this electronic eavesdropping is, essentially, meaningless. If the agreement contained a provision where you granted them permission to watch over your shoulder when keying in your PIN at the ATM, you'd click it in order to go on using the software. Heck, people will even give up their passwords for chocolate.
In related news, Microsoft is developing a fruit fly that will attack Apple.
So you get the hardware out there and then release incremental software improvements as you develop them, slowly but surely catching up to the cutting edge.
Hey, it worked with the Zune, didn't it? Oh, wait...
That's it! Define a kilogram in terms of pints. Now, the quandary: ale or lager?
It makes as much sense to define a kilogram as some huge number of moles of banana pudding or something like that.
I wonder if this version will get past 12/100 on the Acid3 test.
Long time ham here too and I love low power (QRP) operation but it isn't for wimps or beginners. Still, I definitely recommend it once you acquire some operating skills. I have a FT-817 and love it - I use it mobile, portable, while camping, and even at home and have worked an amazing array of countries including New Zealand with its 5 watts and a 12 foot whip fastened to a hotel balcony. Small and capable as it is, it's still heavy if you are watching every ounce as you would on a long trek.
The lightweight champ I recommend is the Elecraft KX-1. It's a kit, so electronics assembly skills are required, but the manuals are very clear (think Heathkit) that anyone who knows how to solder to a circuit board can build it. Smaller than a paperback book, it measures 3x5 inches x 1 inch thick, weighs less than a pound (plus 6xAA batteries), will work on 20, 30 40 or 80 meters and has its own built-in antenna tuner and battery pack, so all you need is a key, your iPod earphones and a roll of wire to throw up into a tree for an antenna, and you are on the air. It is a Morse Code-only rig, though, so you'll have to know the code, but if you are serious about it, it isn't difficult. I take mine on campouts as well, and it's nice to kick back in the sleeping bag and have a few contacts before dozing off.
A couple years ago a ham hiked the Pacific Crest Trail and his communications was a KX-1. He kept a schedule with another ham and would check in regularly. His story was featured in one of the ham magazines. If you want to keep in touch with non-ham family members or associates, you could do the same. You'll meet plenty of hams through your local radio club, and it's likely someone would be willing to set up a sked with you. In that case, he is not only a hiker but was a ham already - he didn't get into ham radio solely as a means of communication while hiking. If you do, you might end up enjoying it - it adds another facet to being outdoors, off the grid but still in touch with just what you carry in your pack.
I think I'm going to hold off. I just finished upgrading most of my Linux boxen to Fedora 12. It was several months and 6+ yum updates before all were finally stable and things worked as they should.
Upgrading is inevitable, because the old stuff falls out of "support", but it's not worth it to me any more to jump on a new release just because it's there. Same thing happened to me back at Fedora 5, and 10 disagreed with some of my hardware.
I do wish the software police would quit calling themselves the BSA. It confuses them with a legitimate, worthwhile, morally upstanding organization.
Indeed, this is not news to any parent of a teenager. Mine probably do 5000+ in a month easily. One month he hit close to 10k and has friends who do way more than that.
Frequently happens in most border cities. In downtown Detroit it's common to connect through a cell in Windsor, especially if you're blocked by buildings or inside a parking garage that fronts the river.
I just finished building a fairly complex Ramsey kit and was impressed by their level of detail. They even explain the circuit theory where it's important to understand how the thing works. While it lacks the professional fit and finish of Heathkit, it's a good first-kit experience for adults, and they have a huge variety of applications.
I have also built Ten-Tec and Elecraft kits. I wasn't too impressed with Ten-Tec - the circuit board had a fabrication error that I had to troubleshoot and figure out myself. Elecraft seems to be the new gold standard in ham kits. Their manuals are excellent and the equipment is top-notch. (Can't wait to get my hands on a K3)
The key words here are parental responsibility. Any parent who gives or lets their kids have a laptop with wi-fi and the freedom to roam around with it to the nearest hotspot might as well also give them the keys to the car and to the liquor cabinet. Sad as it seems, there are plenty of parents who just don't care what their kids do as long as they don't use all the hot water in the morning.
Ah, so that's why all the high school kids flock to Panera when the bell rings....
It is also only in the LA council and NOT approved anywhere else. In fact the BSA is standing up for you by NOT LETTING IT BE A MERIT BADGE!
Good. From the article it was unclear whether it was an actual merit badge or simply a patch one could earn by learning or doing something useful, like Leave No Trace. I'd be surprised if BSA would allow such an item to be an official merit badge with so little thought. Look how much effort it took to create the Fly Fishing and Composite Materials badges.
Speaking of which, does anyone know if they still use blue cards?
Yes they do. In this electronic age it's still the only way to have a portable, hard copy, universally-readable record of a scout's merit badge work. Even with electronic popcorn ordering, advancement filing and rechartering, blue cards are probably here to stay, or at least for a very long time.
At the end of the week I'd have a stack of two hundred of these things that all needed to be completed sometime after the Friday night campfire
Still a major bottleneck at summer camp. That's probably why our camp sets Friday aside with little or no MB work, so the counselors can finish up the paperwork. You are right about partials. I always like when a boy can finish everything up "in one sitting", hard to do with many badges, or at least do so with one counselor. Keeping track of which items got a partial is a lot more record keeping than just writing "all requirements completed".
we were adamant about not being a "merit badge factory", so I gave out partials all the time.
I agree. While it's sometimes convenient to take certain merit badges at camp, there are some that just should not be able to be completed there, such as Citizenship in the Nation. Still, many of our boys earned that one at camp the year before last. (How in the world can you write a letter to your congressman and report on the response received while at camp? I suppose via e-mail, but how many camps have Internet access other than maybe one computer on a dial-up?) I'm not sure I agree that the requirements were fulfilled, but they have the blue cards to prove that they were.
It's a Merit Badge for taking the time to learn about the laws of the nation in which one resides-- lots of precedence for this in other Scouting Merit Badges.
Then why do we need yet another MB? Wouldn't the subject matter fit nicely under Crime Prevention? The Citizenship in the Nation and Cit in the Community MBs also cover the duties and responsibilities of a citizen, one of which is to obey the law. How about adding a requirement under the various art and performance MBs like Art, Music, Cinematography and Theater? Something like "Explain to your counselor what intellectual property is. Explain why an artist should have a right to be compensated for his work. Learn about copyright laws." That's all that's really needed.
Don't get me wrong -- I believe in respecting copyright laws. I'm not advocating that young people should pirate intellectual works. I just think that the motion picture industry should not be using the Boy Scouts of America as a vehicle to get its agenda across.
I think I'll substitute the "Make a Public Service Announcement" for a 200-word essay on Why the Digital Consumer's Bill of Rights is a good idea"
Since you are already a MBC, you understand that you may not add to, delete or change the requirements. If the requirement were to say "Make a public service announcement", that's exactly what the candidate should do, not write an essay. How you go about it is between the MBC and the scout, but one requirement cannot be substituted for another unless it is specifically allowed.
You could become a Slashdot subscriber, and get to see the story before it goes live and before TFA gets /.'ed.
I was sitting through a product demonstration a while back, and the salesman kept referring to the system he was demonstrating as the "solution", even at times when it sounded unnatural or redundant. It was as if his sales manager had programmed his brain to say "solution" instead of "product" or "system" or "framistam". Drove me nuts. I expected him to say things like "When you type on the keyboard of the solution..." or "the person who operates the solution can..."
Well, I read
This is actually one of its advantages. No image rendering means none of those nasty image tags to provide silent feedback to the spammer^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsender. And if I need to see an attachment, I save it to my public_html directory and pull it up using a web browser.
Best feature yet: No mouse needed...my fingers never leave my hands!