A dog likes to pretend to control his people, herding them to the places the dog wants to go. Then again, people only pretend to control their dogs, as sometimes getting a dog to do something can be an exercise in frustration!
AP to police itself into nonexistence
While I don’t condone stealing copyrighted works, I’ve long recognized the Associated Press’s outright hostility to the Internet. While it could’ve raked in plenty of online advertising dollars, the AP has never played well with the Internet. Never.
Now word comes down that the AP will be going after bloggers who post AP stories.
“We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under some very misguided, unfounded legal theories,” said Dean Singleton, the AP’s chairman and the chief executive of newspaper publisher MediaNews Group at AP’s annual meeting.
(gosh, I hope I can use that quote safely!)
The AP has never provided proper links to its stories, thus anyone discussing an AP story has to cut-and-paste the desired excerpts because AP stories disappear into the ether so quickly.
Again, I don’t have a problem with the AP trying to make money on its product – some of my closest friends have been quoted in AP stories, after all. When the company shows such evident disdain for its online audience, however, perhaps that audience should rightfully go elsewhere.
Time Warner becomes more evil
Just when you thought you couldn’t possibly hate the cable company any more than you do, they raise the bar on suckiness. Time Warner Cable will soon be implementing bandwidth caps on their high-speed internet users in what looks to be an effort to kill streaming media companies like Netflix. Watching a handful of Netflix-streamed movies each month like my friend Greg Brown does would be enough to push you over the bandwidth cap.
I found out tonight that I’m not immune for being an Earthlink customer and not a Time Warner customer. According to the advocacy website StopTheCap.Com, Time Warner plans to cap Earthlink customers as well. So much for the illusion of competition!
All of this makes me wish we had municipal Internet like down the road in Wilson.
Rainy return to winter
We’ve really enjoyed the balmy days we’ve had this past weekend.I watched in disbelief as my outdoor thermometer topped 86 degrees on Sunday! And while rain hasn’t been my favorite thing this year, today’s rain did wash away a mountain of pollen. It’s been very, very dusty the past few days.
Tonight cold weather makes a brief reappearance. Wednesday morning will be sub-freezing. What a crazy week we’re having, weather wise!
Delayed
Well, the fun week at work alluded to in my last post hasn’t happened yet. I’m still stuck with one ticket that is proving difficult to resolve. My fun project has had to wait in the meantime.
I hope to work more on it tomorrow so that I can show it off this week.
Busy weekend
Where to start about our weekend?
Saturday morning the family and I met 14 other neighbors to pick up trash all around the neighborhood. We collected over a dozen trash bags of litter and cleaned out creeks that feed eventually into the Neuse river. I got doughnuts and coffee for participants and vests and tools loaned from the city. It was a great turnout and a great way to make an immediate difference in our neighborhood. I’m happy to say that we did not have nearly as much trash as last time. I don’t know if that’s because the last trash clean-up kept recurring trash from collecting, or if the recent non-stop rain simply washed it all downstream. I’m thinking the rain just cleaned things out for us. Ah well.
Continue reading
Good way to keep your readership
I’ve enjoyed reading New Raleigh for a while now but lately it seems to have taken to insulting its audience.
Some might call this “edgy” but I call it rude. If this is the new Raleigh, bring back the old!
“Hold off on any big purchases”
Some managers will assure their employees that their jobs are safe. Then in the next breath, they’ll add “but … hold off on any big purchases you might be thinking of making.” The implication is that what’s safe now may not be safe later.
While that seems like prudent advice in this type of economy, it’s also the reason the economy is in the funk that it’s in. By telling employees to hold off on those car or home purchases, the very spending that is America’s economic engine is not being spent. Those jobs that weren’t initially in jeopardy eventually are in jeopardy.
While it might not be prudent to tell employees “go spend like there’s no tomorrow!” the irony is that might be what it takes to truly save their jobs.
A look at Google’s hardware
Google for the first time gave the public a look at its server hardware. It uses custom-made motherboards, 12-volt-only power supplies, and each server has its own built-in UPS battery. Also, Google datacenters consist of standard shipping containers – containing thousands of these custom-made servers. Very interesting!
DVDs that ignore your remote control
Dear DVD producers,
The more junk advertisements and previews you put on your DVD that won’t let me skip to get to the DVD menu, the more likely your DVD will wind up on The Pirate Bay. Just sayin’.
Disregards,
Mark