I finally connected with my brother
back in New Jersey. He is estimating that electricity should be back
on by the end of the week – maybe...
His house in Cape May was undamaged and
all city services there are working, and the house on the Delaware
River (clear across the state) is undamaged but was inaccessible for
a few days due to downed trees.
A cousin is still trying to reach his
house at the shore. He was turned back because of two houses (not
just random debris) on the highway.
On the “silver lining” side,
another homeowner asked my cousin to check his house. After
reporting that the house looked largely undamaged except for the
deck in front which seemed to have become detached, a tool shed that
was tilted at a bit of an angle and a jet ski on it's side, he
commented that it looked like the homeowner was lucky. “Real
lucky,” was the reply. “Before the hurricane, I didn't have any
of that stuff!”
It's good to know nerds in high
places... “Where does it say we have to be fair?”
Google
has customized results for Obama, but not Romney
Google isn't treating searches related
to Presidential candidates fairly, a new report charges.
The Wall Street Journal reported
yesterday that it commissioned a study on the way in which search
results related to President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are
displayed on Google. The study found that when users search for
"Obama" or "Romney," Google displays standard
results. Future searches, however, are treated differently.
For example, the Journal tried search
for topics ranging from Iran to Medicare. Those folks that had
already searched for "Obama" found that their results were
customized to relate in some way to the president. Searches on those
topics yielded no such customizations for Romney seekers.
Is this a mere upgrade from DRM
(Digital Rights Management) or are we looking at the birth of URM
(Ubiquitous Rights Management)?
"Just when you think the cable
TV viewing experience couldn't get any worse, GeekWire reports on the
Microsoft Xbox Incubation team's patent-pending Consumer Detector,
which uses cameras and sensors
like those in the Xbox 360 Kinect controller to
monitor, count and in some cases identify the people in a room
watching television, movies and other content. Should the number of
viewers detected exceed the limits of a particular content license,
the system would halt playback unless additional viewing rights were
purchased."
[“No tickee, no TV!”
Bob]
“It's less work for us.”
Twitter has
prompted user confusion by implementing a new copyright policy that
censors contentious tweets rather than deleting them altogether, a
shift that the microblogging service argues is more transparent.
According to Twitter’s legal policy chief, Jeremy
Kessel, the change offers “more transparency by processing
copyright reports by withholding Tweets, not removing,” though some
users have still criticized the approach for potentially censoring
first and investigating second.
According to
Twitter’s official
DMCA policy, the company reserves the right to restrict access to
a contentious tweet before a final decision on whether copyright
infringement has actually taken place...
… A
Twitter spokesperson claims that the blocking system is preferable to
the old approach, which saw the company manually
recreating tweets that had been deleted but then deemed
not to infringe...
So far, only Federal legislation, but
that's better than nothing. Perhaps they could add a section for
seminars like those of the Privacy Foundation, where we debate the
pros and cons of issues impacting Privacy.
TechCrunch’s
tech policy platform, CrunchGov
Welcome
to TechCrunch’s tech policy platform, CrunchGov,
a portal for sourcing the most thoughtful people and ideas to
facilitate more informed policymaking. Currently, it
consists of three areas: a congressional report card, a
database of technology legislation, and a crowdsourced
legislative utility for contributing ideas to pending bills.
In the wake of mass online protests
against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), officials were eager to
learn more about the concerns of those who work in technology and
find ways to craft more informed policy. CrunchGov is our attempt at
helping policymakers become better listeners, and technologists to be
more effective citizens.
To learn more about our CrunchGov, read
our launch blog
post, or our methodology FAQ
page.
“de l'audace, encore de
l'audace, et toujours de l'audace” George C, Scott in Patton
quoting Napoleon(?)
"So it
turns out that Me.ga is only part of Kim Dotcom's resolution for
2013. Even though he's still facing extradition to the U.S. for
alleged piracy, Dotcom has plans to resurrect Pacific Fibre's failed
project to
construct a fiber optic cable across the Pacific to the U.S. The
new line will bring free high-speed broadband to New Zealanders and
double the nation's Internet bandwidth, setting Dotcom back about
$400m."
Some of that funding is based on
optimism: "Dotcom plans on getting the majority
of his funds by suing Hollywood studios and the US government for
their 'unlawful and political destruction of [Megaupload].'"
Click on a word and hear it pronounced.
Might be useful for lawyers who deliberately confuse chauffeur
with shofar – you know who you are.
November 03, 2012
Pronouncing
Dictionary of the Supreme Court of the United States
Pronouncing
Dictionary of the Supreme Court of the United States: "Although
the United States is famously a nation of immigrants, Americans often
struggle with the pronunciation of foreign words and names.
Mispronunciation of even common foreign words is ubiquitous (Eye-rack
and Eye-ran spring to mind). Foreign names in legal matters present
a particular challenge for legal professionals. The purpose of the
Pronouncing
Dictionary of United States Supreme Court cases, compiled by YLS
students Usha Chilukuri, Megan Corrarino, Brigid Davis, Kate Hadley,
Daniel Jang, Sally Pei, and Yale University Linguistics Department
students Diallo Spears and Jason Zentz, working with Florence Rogatz
Visiting Lecturer in Law Eugene Fidell, is to help
conscientious lawyers, judges, teachers, students, and journalists
correctly pronounce often-perplexing case names. Drawing
on textbooks, recordings, accounts by litigants or counsel,
pronunciation guides, journalism, and surveys, we identified those
Supreme Court cases that are most susceptible of mispronunciation and
determined the proper pronunciation. To be sure, several
factors—including the passage of time, idiosyncratic pronunciation,
and Anglicization—make this an inexact process. Where possible, we
have ascertained and followed the litigant’s preferred
pronunciation. Failing this information, we employed two methods.
Where possible, we discerned the etymology of the name, consulted a
native speaker of the pertinent language, and Anglicized the
pronunciation during the process of transcribing the name.
Otherwise, we surveyed five individuals with the surname in question
and, where at least four used the same pronunciation, that
pronunciation was controlling. The Dictionary is, inevitably,
incomplete, but we hope it will be a useful tool for those seeking
accuracy and authenticity. Special thanks go to Jason Eiseman of the
Lillian Goldman Law Library for technical assistance and advice."
Was it the business model or the
managers?
"In a surprising blow to the
movement to create free textbooks online, an upstart company called
Flat World Knowledge is dumping
its freemium model. The upstart publisher had made its textbooks
free online and charged for print versions or related study guides,
but company officials now say that isn't bringing in enough money to
work long-term."
(Related) Perhaps they should have
considered...
Should
Your Startup Go Freemium?
Over the last several months, there has
been an intense debate about the viability of freemium business
models. For some, freemium is a costly
trap, a business model that sacrifices revenues and forces a
startup to support freeloaders who will never become paying
customers. For others, freemium is the future
of business, the logical conclusion of a world in
which the cost of bandwidth, storage, and information processing
approaches zero. Both sides agree that the model is
extremely powerful. As Rob Walling of HitTail notes in a recent Wall
Street Journal article,
freemium is like a Samurai sword: “unless you’re a master at
using it, you can cut your arm off.”
… we’ve put together the
following six lessons for freemium software businesses. Use them
wisely!
More from the guy whose motto is “Too
much is not enough!”
November 04, 2012
New
on LLRX - Employment Resources on the Internet
Via LLRX.com,
Employment
Resources on the Internet - Web research guru Marcus
P. Zillman's guide is a comprehensive listing of employment
resources available on the Internet. Zillman identifies links,
search engines and resume writing sources from across many
professional sectors which will help you discover, review, leverage
and incorporate actionable information into a successful job search
strategy.
Dilbert suggest a use for 3D
Printers that I had never considered!
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