Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,524 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 75 of 153).

Cable TV Cord Cutters And Net Subscription Losses – Business Insider

Wow, what a shame. Couldn’t have happened to a better industry!

The cable TV business just had its worst year ever, according to Wall Street media analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson. Providers of TV, broadband and phone communications lost 687,000 subscribers during Q3, they wrote in a recent note to investors. They gained 574,000 new ones, for a net loss of 113,000, according to the LA Times:

Let that sink in:

“The cable TV business just had its worst year ever.”

Wow.

via Cable TV Cord Cutters And Net Subscription Losses – Business Insider.

The Open-Office Trap : The New Yorker

Interesting. I’m not a fan of open offices.

The open office was originally conceived by a team from Hamburg, Germany, in the nineteen-fifties, to facilitate communication and idea flow. But a growing body of evidence suggests that the open office undermines the very things that it was designed to achieve. In June, 1997, a large oil and gas company in western Canada asked a group of psychologists at the University of Calgary to monitor workers as they transitioned from a traditional office arrangement to an open one. The psychologists assessed the employees’ satisfaction with their surroundings, as well as their stress level, job performance, and interpersonal relationships before the transition, four weeks after the transition, and, finally, six months afterward. The employees suffered according to every measure: the new space was disruptive, stressful, and cumbersome, and, instead of feeling closer, coworkers felt distant, dissatisfied, and resentful. Productivity fell.

via The Open-Office Trap : The New Yorker.

Amazon.com coming to Raleigh?

AmazonI noted with interest the announcement that Amazon would begin collecting sales taxes in North Carolina. This seemed curious since the Constitution’s Commerce Clause means Congress is the only entity that can regulate interstate commerce and thus the state can’t impose taxes on Amazon. As far as I knew, Amazon doesn’t have a physical presence in North Carolina. It seemed strange to me that Amazon would willingly start paying taxes. Who does that?

Well, looks like I found the reason. This job ad from Amazon ran on Craigslist yesterday and there are plenty more on other job sites. Amazon.com is interviewing for software developers and says they’re coming to Raleigh!

Software Engineer, Digital Products (coming to Raleigh) (Seattle, WA)
We will be in the Raleigh area conducting interviews February 20th-21st!!
Continue reading →

Obama, Who Evidently Has Not Read the Controlled Substances Act, Denies That He Has the Power to Reclassify Marijuana – Hit & Run : Reason.com

Wow.

Apparently Obama forgot too. Obama often speaks as if he is an outside observer of his own administration—condemning excessively long prison sentences while hardly ever using his clemency power to shorten them, sounding the alarm about his own abuses of executive power in the name of fighting terrorism, worrying about the threat to privacy posed by surveillance programs he authorized. Now here he is, trying to distance himself from his own administration’s refusal to reclassify marijuana.

via Obama, Who Evidently Has Not Read the Controlled Substances Act, Denies That He Has the Power to Reclassify Marijuana – Hit & Run : Reason.com.

H1N-What? Wading Through the Alphabet Soup of Flu Names | Molecules to Medicine, Scientific American Blog Network

Judy Stone of SciAm explains the alphabet soup that describes flu viruses.

Muddled about all the new flu viruses?

It’s hard to keep up with the changing names in the news. H1Nwhat? Bird flu. Pig flu. MERS. SARS. Here is a quick overview of this dizzying, dyslexia inducing array, with what you need to worry about, even if some aren’t yet in your backyard.

via H1N-What? Wading Through the Alphabet Soup of Flu Names | Molecules to Medicine, Scientific American Blog Network.

Davos to Detention: Why I Hate Coming Home to America

‘Murrica is broken, folks. Our lovely little security state has gotten out of control.

After a 14-hour trip, I wanted to stretch my legs. So I stood up, anxious to find myself back in the room, especially after having written to the DHS. “Take a seat,” the officer at the door sternly said to me. I told him I wanted to stretch my legs after the long flight. He told me I wasn’t allowed to stand up. You are also not allowed to use your phone or electronic equipment. I was also slightly surprised to find as many children in the room as there were cameras.

“Sir, I’m a U.S. citizen who wants to stand while being detained. Am I not allowed to stand?” I said, pointing to the Asian man and Pakistani woman standing with their toddler strapped to the man’s chest. Anyway, there were only two empty seats in the room with a capacity of 60.

“Sit down!” he repeated for the sixth time, and came and confiscated my phone, which I was using to try to text my coworkers who were waiting to share a car home.

via Davos to Detention: Why I Hate Coming Home to America | Ahmed Shihab-Eldin.

Atlanta Snow Storm – POLITICO Magazine

Two inches of snow caused massive gridlock and laid bare the governmental fault lines of the Atlanta region. It was Raleigh 2005 all over again. I know I took a dig at the Wake County Public School System for its Tuesday closure but it’s certainly better than gridlock.

As an Atlantan, I’m concerned that this storm revealed just how unprepared we are in case of real disaster. If Atlanta, the region, wants to get serious about public safety, its mayors, county officials, and state officials will need to start practicing regionalism instead of paying lip service to it. And whether threatened by a dangerous pandemic, a major catastrophe, or just two inches of snow, we need to have ways to get around—and out of—the city other than by car.

via Atlanta Snow Storm – POLITICO Magazine.

Kevin Smith describes Prince World

In my reading about Prince’s latest lawsuit faux pas, I found a hilarious video from filmmaker Kevin Smith from his appearance at Kent State University last year in which he describes a week he spent with Prince working on a documentary. Smith spices his talk with plenty of profanity but the story he tells is hilariously funny and quite bizarre.

Smith is an unparalleled storyteller. It’s thirty minutes long but well worth the time!

Prince Sues 22 Fans For $1 Million Each For Linking To Bootlegs In Laughably Confused Complaint

Is it safe to say that Prince is pretty much the music world’s version of Dennis Rodman?

There was a time, not even that long ago, when it seemed like Prince might have been the first musician to actually "get" the internet. He had done a few things that seemed really focused on embracing the internet, spreading his music more widely, and making revenue from alternate streams, such as concerts, sponsorships and fan clubs. But… it quickly became apparent that he was going in the other direction, and in an extreme manner — in part, because it seemed like for all of his ideas, he failed at following through on most of them. Then, rather than blaming his own lack of execution, he seemed to lash out at the internet in almost every way possible. He insisted that the internet was over and that he’d never put any of his music online. He even claimed that digital music was bad for your brain.

via Prince Sues 22 Fans For $1 Million Each For Linking To Bootlegs In Laughably Confused Complaint | Techdirt.

Update: The lawsuit has been dismissed.