I have a classical music CD from 1985 or '86 that has had no special treatment other than being kept in its (probably) original case, in the same closet I keep all my other CDs in. It plays perfectly, but I had to check since I made MP3s of it about a decade ago.
I also have photo backup CDs that were authored back when the Nikon D1 was the flagship DSLR (~2001 or so) and they're fine, although they're not really in use as backups anymore.
DVDs that were burned five or so years ago still work.
I think it really comes down to using discs gently, not leaving discs in your car/trunk and, like nearly everything else, limiting UV exposure.
In terms of the new 1,000 year DVD, for the amount of mission critical data I'd need to back up, I'd be looking at tens of thousands of dollars in outlay for the discs. Cheaper, better and more effective to buy an endless stream of the new hard drive of the day and do it that way.
In addition to the BMI hocus-pokery, I really think that we've become too statistically oriented in medicine.
Sure, modern medicine allows us to head-off or cure diseases that even a few decades ago would have been game-enders.
It's good to have an honest, fairly frequent assessment of where you're at physiologically.
But it's probably even more important to maintain a very moderate lifestyle. Eat when you're hungry, drink when you're dry, get a reasonable amount of exercise and spend some time on your ass.
If any of those activities cause problems, you might have a larger, underlying issue; and you definitely need to make some changes.
While I understand that attendance is compulsory at this particular university, the courses I took that required attendance here in the states were, with a few exceptions, generally a complete waste of time.
Funny that none of my major or minor courses required attendance (except for project presentation days; my project and other people's), and nearly all of my general education courses did.
And the gen-ed classes were definitely not college level courses. They seemed designed only to help the DIV I athletes float a passing GPA and to keep students in school longer. Most were taught exclusively from the texts (or a book the instructor wrote), and were often taught exclusively by GAs.
While I believe in educational access for everyone, we really need to stop lowering the bar educationally to make 4 year university available to everyone.
If these gen-ed courses were more interesting and challenging, I would have been much more willing (or at least compelled) to attend. Instead, I generally showed up on the first day along with all the Family Sciences majors and football players, and never returned until midterms and finals.
Public notices are a Good ThingTM, but there is no real journalistic scrutiny as a result of them appearing in a newspaper; or anywhere else for that matter.
Most of the stuff that's required to print as public notice out here is liquor license applications, articles of incorporation, DUI checkpoint locations and open meeting schedules (not even the minutes).
If I did my job based only on what public notices and press releases I received from the government, I'd never get anywhere at all.
As a journalist, you learn pretty early on that the story usually isn't what the government IS telling you, it's what it ISN'T telling you.
That being said, the government should be required to make public notices available somewhere accessible (general rule of thumb is available at the library and beyond) because people might want to know about a new liquor license being issued or the city council meeting schedule.
But that's not really where the stories come from. It's one of the few remaining "easy money" opportunities for the newspapers.
I'm a photojournalist who works in the borderlands quite frequently.
Law enforcement in Mexico is an entrepreneurial exercise. They could have an order of magnitude more cops than they do, and it wouldn't make any difference in the world.
The present prohibition is making a class of narcolords who make Al Capone look like a big pussy.
These narcos have more money, more power and more influence than basically any other crime syndicate presently in existence. And it's moving north. Home invasions, kidnappings and drug rips are becoming the norm in suburbia anywhere within a few hundred miles of the border.
Legalizing marijuana (and possibly cocaine) would solve 96% of the problem overnight. Not to mention creating new revenue streams for the government, and maybe allowing the US to once again step behind Russia in the running to imprison the largest percentage of the population.
To the crowd: Face it. It's illegal. But your kids smoke it, your co-workers smoke it and you/your spouse smokes it. Its illegal status is not a deterrent. Wouldn't you rather know where it's coming from and that people aren't dying over it?
If the tap were turned off tomorrow, yes, people would go back to buying music. Who's to say they're not buying it now? They could be buying an album every few weeks/months in addition to everything else they're downloading for free.
If the tap were turned off, they would continue to buy that same limited number of CDs.
While I don't condone copyright infringement in the least, I accept that a download does not in any way equate to a lost sale.
As a working photojournalist, credit is nice. It's great to know that people can find out who did the work.
But from a credit standpoint, they don't take bylines at the grocery store, the bank my mortgage is though cares only about my name under a photo so long as it generates the cash to pay the bills, and saying, "But don't you know who I am?" at a restaurant won't get you very far.
The credits matter only to prevent works from becoming inadvertantly orphaned.
Other than the money itself, though, part of the reason copyright has been pushed back so long is simply because guys like Eddie Adams don't want their famous war photographs entering the public domain and being used by everyone from rock bands to book jackets to shill products.
Not trying to be argumentative, but those prices are a little out of touch with reality, I'm afraid.
A quality instrument is going to start at around $700 USD these days, with lesser quality products starting at about $300.
Like most other arts, the biggest factor is the artist, but you need an axe that will hold a tune and handle the stress of being played.
I have never seen a $50 strat in a pawn shop or anywhere else. The cheap, Mexi-strats start at a minimum of $300, and a used one (that works) will command 80% of that price.
Worked for me. In the last few months, I cut my cable bill quite dramatically.
By dropping the television and phone service, my bill went from $180 to $50.
I don't miss TV at all. What little I watch tends to be baseball, and I can get every MLB game legally on my computer through a paid service offered by the league.
Additionally, Netflix's streaming and DVD-by-mail service fill in the remainder of what time I have to watch TV.
I can't believe that I was paying $1560 per year for cable TV. What a waste.
And it also lowers the value of having your voice heard to near zero.
Do you want your news coming from individuals so rich that they don't have to make money doing it?
Or maybe you want it from a busboy so busy with his day job that he can't find time to do anything other than rewrite press releases and make shit up?
Finally, maybe you want your news from a business professional who practices journalism as a hobby in spare time and on the weekends? Problem is it's a full time job to do it right AND you have to wonder where his conflicts-of-interest are.
I do the job for the love of the game, and because I believe it genuinely helps keep people informed. But at the end of the day, cameras cost money, food costs money, clothes cost money, etc.
Paid journalists do a greater service because they can dedicate their 40-60 hours (in some cases more) to the job.
Even in print journalism, the staff is much more expensive than the paper and ink. There's a reason for that.
It has nothing to do with the staff; or very, very little anyway.
Walk into the modern newsroom and you'll see that a great many of the 'embittered old dinosaurs' are kids who likely were in high school or younger when the Berlin Wall FELL.
Journalism isn't an old man's game because most people leave to go chase real paychecks outside the industry.
What fucks up the works is the shareholder and the ad-driven model. Stories need to be sexier and sexier to make another buck for the shareholders, and ads need to be sold at any cost to maximize shareholder value.
The problem is that in the loss of the "smaller paper" most of America is desperately lacking in information about what is happening in their communities.
Everything that happens in Washington is supremely important, but it represents only one-half of the government and power that can bend you over. The other half is comprised of the state/local government and the businesses that fund them.
True, there aren't many bloggers embedded in Fallujah, but there are equally few in Tuscaloosa or Tempe. For the most part what exists isn't anything more than regurgitation of something seen somewhere else, or mere opinion presented as fact.
Journalists can't be right all the time, but we sure as hell try to be unprejudiced in our reporting.
The New York Times will be around until we're not. But again, big papers are only half the equation.
Most households can't handle their own budgets. If John and Jane Q. Public can't get their shit together, how can we expect them to get a grip on the actions of two separate governments (state and Fed.)?
Also, the ways in which government uses money are out of the realm of comprehension even to experts, at least in some cases. If John and Jaen don't 'get it,' how can they seek to better regulate it?
According to this site, nova isn't a perfectly acceptable word.
I can't pretend to know every word in every language, but my extensive travels in Mexico have not exposed me to nova at all, let alone meaning new.
In Latin, nova is a first declension feminine meaning 'new' (where 'novus' is the masculine'). In Spanish, the most common word for new is 'nuevo/a' depending on the gender of the word it modifies.
In what countries is 'nova' new? I'm genuinely interested.
Hollywood is shitting itself because videogames are running away with entertainment marketshare.
At $60/game, that doesn't leave a whole lot of disposable income left over to go see a remake of a remake of a remake in a theater packed full of talking kids, ringing cellphones and 30 minutes of pre-movie commercials.
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I have a classical music CD from 1985 or '86 that has had no special treatment other than being kept in its (probably) original case, in the same closet I keep all my other CDs in. It plays perfectly, but I had to check since I made MP3s of it about a decade ago.
I also have photo backup CDs that were authored back when the Nikon D1 was the flagship DSLR (~2001 or so) and they're fine, although they're not really in use as backups anymore.
DVDs that were burned five or so years ago still work.
I think it really comes down to using discs gently, not leaving discs in your car/trunk and, like nearly everything else, limiting UV exposure.
In terms of the new 1,000 year DVD, for the amount of mission critical data I'd need to back up, I'd be looking at tens of thousands of dollars in outlay for the discs. Cheaper, better and more effective to buy an endless stream of the new hard drive of the day and do it that way.
Just wanted to say that I agree with you.
In addition to the BMI hocus-pokery, I really think that we've become too statistically oriented in medicine.
Sure, modern medicine allows us to head-off or cure diseases that even a few decades ago would have been game-enders.
It's good to have an honest, fairly frequent assessment of where you're at physiologically.
But it's probably even more important to maintain a very moderate lifestyle. Eat when you're hungry, drink when you're dry, get a reasonable amount of exercise and spend some time on your ass.
If any of those activities cause problems, you might have a larger, underlying issue; and you definitely need to make some changes.
Listen to your body, above all.
Popplers or tastesicles.
Hopefully, it's popplers.
While I understand that attendance is compulsory at this particular university, the courses I took that required attendance here in the states were, with a few exceptions, generally a complete waste of time.
Funny that none of my major or minor courses required attendance (except for project presentation days; my project and other people's), and nearly all of my general education courses did.
And the gen-ed classes were definitely not college level courses. They seemed designed only to help the DIV I athletes float a passing GPA and to keep students in school longer. Most were taught exclusively from the texts (or a book the instructor wrote), and were often taught exclusively by GAs.
While I believe in educational access for everyone, we really need to stop lowering the bar educationally to make 4 year university available to everyone.
If these gen-ed courses were more interesting and challenging, I would have been much more willing (or at least compelled) to attend. Instead, I generally showed up on the first day along with all the Family Sciences majors and football players, and never returned until midterms and finals.
Working journalist here...
Public notices are a Good ThingTM, but there is no real journalistic scrutiny as a result of them appearing in a newspaper; or anywhere else for that matter.
Most of the stuff that's required to print as public notice out here is liquor license applications, articles of incorporation, DUI checkpoint locations and open meeting schedules (not even the minutes).
If I did my job based only on what public notices and press releases I received from the government, I'd never get anywhere at all.
As a journalist, you learn pretty early on that the story usually isn't what the government IS telling you, it's what it ISN'T telling you.
That being said, the government should be required to make public notices available somewhere accessible (general rule of thumb is available at the library and beyond) because people might want to know about a new liquor license being issued or the city council meeting schedule.
But that's not really where the stories come from. It's one of the few remaining "easy money" opportunities for the newspapers.
Undermanned?
I'm a photojournalist who works in the borderlands quite frequently.
Law enforcement in Mexico is an entrepreneurial exercise. They could have an order of magnitude more cops than they do, and it wouldn't make any difference in the world.
The present prohibition is making a class of narcolords who make Al Capone look like a big pussy.
These narcos have more money, more power and more influence than basically any other crime syndicate presently in existence. And it's moving north. Home invasions, kidnappings and drug rips are becoming the norm in suburbia anywhere within a few hundred miles of the border.
Legalizing marijuana (and possibly cocaine) would solve 96% of the problem overnight. Not to mention creating new revenue streams for the government, and maybe allowing the US to once again step behind Russia in the running to imprison the largest percentage of the population.
To the crowd: Face it. It's illegal. But your kids smoke it, your co-workers smoke it and you/your spouse smokes it. Its illegal status is not a deterrent. Wouldn't you rather know where it's coming from and that people aren't dying over it?
Legalize marijuana.
Actually, they'll be fingerprinting people.
If the tap were turned off tomorrow, yes, people would go back to buying music. Who's to say they're not buying it now? They could be buying an album every few weeks/months in addition to everything else they're downloading for free.
If the tap were turned off, they would continue to buy that same limited number of CDs.
While I don't condone copyright infringement in the least, I accept that a download does not in any way equate to a lost sale.
Yeah totally.
I'll give you unlimited bandwidth, but at 16k during the 'peak' hours of 00:05 until 23:55. See how much you can eat then.
I agree with you on all points but credit.
As a working photojournalist, credit is nice. It's great to know that people can find out who did the work.
But from a credit standpoint, they don't take bylines at the grocery store, the bank my mortgage is though cares only about my name under a photo so long as it generates the cash to pay the bills, and saying, "But don't you know who I am?" at a restaurant won't get you very far.
The credits matter only to prevent works from becoming inadvertantly orphaned.
I just made the plunge into flat-panel land because I couldn't find a widescreen CRT I liked.
I found that, at least on my Sharp set, the sharpness and color are really very, very tweakable.
Just my two cents.
As a photographer, I completely agree.
Other than the money itself, though, part of the reason copyright has been pushed back so long is simply because guys like Eddie Adams don't want their famous war photographs entering the public domain and being used by everyone from rock bands to book jackets to shill products.
It's not always entirely about the money.
Not trying to be argumentative, but those prices are a little out of touch with reality, I'm afraid.
A quality instrument is going to start at around $700 USD these days, with lesser quality products starting at about $300.
Like most other arts, the biggest factor is the artist, but you need an axe that will hold a tune and handle the stress of being played.
I have never seen a $50 strat in a pawn shop or anywhere else. The cheap, Mexi-strats start at a minimum of $300, and a used one (that works) will command 80% of that price.
Worked for me. In the last few months, I cut my cable bill quite dramatically.
By dropping the television and phone service, my bill went from $180 to $50.
I don't miss TV at all. What little I watch tends to be baseball, and I can get every MLB game legally on my computer through a paid service offered by the league.
Additionally, Netflix's streaming and DVD-by-mail service fill in the remainder of what time I have to watch TV.
I can't believe that I was paying $1560 per year for cable TV. What a waste.
And it also lowers the value of having your voice heard to near zero.
Do you want your news coming from individuals so rich that they don't have to make money doing it?
Or maybe you want it from a busboy so busy with his day job that he can't find time to do anything other than rewrite press releases and make shit up?
Finally, maybe you want your news from a business professional who practices journalism as a hobby in spare time and on the weekends? Problem is it's a full time job to do it right AND you have to wonder where his conflicts-of-interest are.
I do the job for the love of the game, and because I believe it genuinely helps keep people informed. But at the end of the day, cameras cost money, food costs money, clothes cost money, etc.
Paid journalists do a greater service because they can dedicate their 40-60 hours (in some cases more) to the job.
Even in print journalism, the staff is much more expensive than the paper and ink. There's a reason for that.
It has nothing to do with the staff; or very, very little anyway.
Walk into the modern newsroom and you'll see that a great many of the 'embittered old dinosaurs' are kids who likely were in high school or younger when the Berlin Wall FELL.
Journalism isn't an old man's game because most people leave to go chase real paychecks outside the industry.
What fucks up the works is the shareholder and the ad-driven model. Stories need to be sexier and sexier to make another buck for the shareholders, and ads need to be sold at any cost to maximize shareholder value.
Public service will come from somewhere else.
The problem is that in the loss of the "smaller paper" most of America is desperately lacking in information about what is happening in their communities.
Everything that happens in Washington is supremely important, but it represents only one-half of the government and power that can bend you over. The other half is comprised of the state/local government and the businesses that fund them.
True, there aren't many bloggers embedded in Fallujah, but there are equally few in Tuscaloosa or Tempe. For the most part what exists isn't anything more than regurgitation of something seen somewhere else, or mere opinion presented as fact.
Journalists can't be right all the time, but we sure as hell try to be unprejudiced in our reporting.
The New York Times will be around until we're not. But again, big papers are only half the equation.
Most households can't handle their own budgets. If John and Jane Q. Public can't get their shit together, how can we expect them to get a grip on the actions of two separate governments (state and Fed.)?
Also, the ways in which government uses money are out of the realm of comprehension even to experts, at least in some cases. If John and Jaen don't 'get it,' how can they seek to better regulate it?
According to this site, nova isn't a perfectly acceptable word.
I can't pretend to know every word in every language, but my extensive travels in Mexico have not exposed me to nova at all, let alone meaning new.
In Latin, nova is a first declension feminine meaning 'new' (where 'novus' is the masculine'). In Spanish, the most common word for new is 'nuevo/a' depending on the gender of the word it modifies.
In what countries is 'nova' new? I'm genuinely interested.
Chevy had some trouble in Mexico and South America with it's 'Nova,' because the name is a play on no va, or it doesn't go.
Funny that Cuba would pick such a name for their new OS.
It keeps an awful lot of cops in business.
It also keeps prices high for traffickers and sellers.
Neither of those parties want to see it legalized. Only the users with no sales interests do.
Check out Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945.
The first two chapters basically deal with the end of the war, and the immediate fallout therefrom.
Dude, I think that's the point.
Hollywood is shitting itself because videogames are running away with entertainment marketshare.
At $60/game, that doesn't leave a whole lot of disposable income left over to go see a remake of a remake of a remake in a theater packed full of talking kids, ringing cellphones and 30 minutes of pre-movie commercials.
Videogames are winning.
Suddenly show up, my ass.
We have two companies in town offering cable broadband. I STILL can't choose who I want to use.
As for DSL choices, it's the phone company or some other company I know nothing about.
It's already a requirement, too, for visa pictures in any country requiring one that I've ever been to.
In fact, Mexico once declined to accept my visa picture since I had an earring in.