Saturday, April 11th, 2009
I have a terrible habit of opening tabs in my browser with the intention of reading them in the evening and perhaps commenting on them if I have something to contribute to the discussion or wish to pass on a tip or trick. Well, it’s been pretty busy this week and I haven’t had a chance to blog. Currently, there are 18 open tabs, some related to each other, that I intended to blog about.
For now, I’m just going to post some quick comments for I fear I won’t get back to this list soon.
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Tags: Easter, EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, iFolder, law, Maine, Medal of Honor, Misc, navy, Obama, open source, Pirates, Radical Parenting, Russel Dunham, Security, Snowe, Somalia, USA, Vanessa Van Petten
Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments »
Saturday, April 4th, 2009
The questionable “fair use” of Common Craft‘s video, “Twitter in Plain English“, by the mainstream media is an interesting discussion. Common Craft raises some interesting questions in their blog post Our Twitter Video Used in Mainstream Media – Thoughts.
Common Craft is a company that makes educational videos for a living. They offer a number of great videos for free viewing on their website. One of their most popular is “Twitter in Plain English“, to describe why someone might want to try out Twitter.com. Apparently, ABC Nightline, ABC Good Morning America, NPR Unger Report, CNN International, CBS Sunday Morning, and KOMO News all used the video. ABC with permission. The rest without it.
Lee Lefever, one of the owners at Common Craft, takes a very intellectual and mature view of this in his blog post questioning the use. It does seem to be “Fair Use” by the media to me. In most cases, excerpts were used in conjunction with a news story, some used more than others.
Ok, fine, no laws broken. Common Craft doesn’t seem to feel harmed and does not appear to be harmed commercially. All is good.
But wait? Where is the common courtesy? A simple email and follow on phone call to ask permission would have been easy? I understand a clear mention and link in a news show is not always “good television”. But all of these pieces are now online? Why not a link and citation of sources on the web page with the video of the news broadcast? That’s not hard at all, is it?
As a frequent internet user, I often see something on TV or hear on the radio and go to the World Wide Web for more information. I consume more news online than offline. And I consider myself an amateur historian as well. Original sources, citations and attributions are a big deal to me. They allow me to determine if the information is any good. They allow me to get more information and to delve in deeper to an issue or topic. And I have a greater respect for and return more often to sites that provide me with good references and valuable links to more info.
I certainly try to provide enough links when I write on a subject. And I encourage others to cite their sources as well. While this particular case looks like “fair use” was met, common courtesy could have been done better. All these agancies would prefer links from me, I’m sure!
Tags: ABC, CBS, CNN, Common Craft, copyright, creative commons, fair use, law, media, Twitter, video
Posted in Communication | No Comments »
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
Computer World is reporting that “Texas state Senate bans Vista from use in government agencies“.
“We are not in any way, shape or form trying to pick on Microsoft, but the problems with this particular [operating] system are known nationwide,” Sen. Juan Hinojosa said during a Senate session debating the rider Wednesday evening. “And the XP operating system is working very well.”
Wow, I can’t believe I am going to defend Microsoft, but is Senator Hinojosa using the same Vista I am? Since upgrading to Service Pack 1 of Vista, it’s been as reliable as Windows XP.
The article from Computer World goes on to say that some agencies and state offices have already upgraded to Vista. But doesn’t answer the question as to how those migrations went? Did something go terribly wrong that influenced this decision? Or is it just these “known nationwide” problems that Senator Hinojosa speaks of? Which problems are those exactly?
I’m an Apple fan-boy. But even I confess that Vista is an okay operating system. If installed on new hardware and used with new peripherals to avoid driver problems, it’s fine. As fine as XP is. If the Texas State Legislature wants to really make some improvements, have an impact on their budget and not outlaw a single product from one company then why didn’t they pass a law to promote open source solutions? Linux is a perfect solution for many office uses. I’m sure some agencies have some Windows-only software on the client side for server side databases. But they should be moving away from such a proprietary model anyway. That is what is really tieing them to Microsoft.
In 2007, Texas considered a bill to require state agencies to adopt the Open Document Format but that failed. Seems like they should consider that again. Embrass something good, but don’t hate on the misunderstood.
Read the whole article at Computer World:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Operating+Systems&articleId=9130992&taxonomyId=89&pageNumber=2
Tags: Computer World, law, Linux, Microsoft, open source, Texas, Vista
Posted in Operating System | No Comments »
