Month: February 2016
Patreon Moves To Give Users A Chance To Respond To DMCA Notices Before Taking Down Content
Patreon Moves To Give Users A Chance To Respond To DMCA Notices Before Taking Down Content http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~3/d_G4j3_ltXw/story01.htm
The question
The key question isn’t, “what’s the answer?”
The key question is, “what’s the question?”
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/140043972/0/sethsblog~Worth-thinking-about.html
on why I didn’t like /the avengers/
[kad_youtube url=”https://youtu.be/Q_rQbXlmgHI” maxwidth=480 ]
a tale of some meetings
I’ve been increasingly involved in meetings. Often these are productive and necessary fare, but sometimes they reach Dilbert-like levels of banality and un-productivity. As I was reading Winnie the Pooh to my kids tonight I was reminded of such a meeting in CHAPTER VII: IN WHICH KANGA AND BABY ROO COME TO THE FOREST, AND PIGLET HAS A BATH, where Rabbit has a meandering and hilarious PLAN TO CAPTURE BABY ROO.
Armed with a pencil sharper than his wits, Rabbit goes through eleven semi-connected points that are broken into an itemized list without respect for conventions of rational thought (and include frequent asides). His counterparts, Pooh and Piglet, stare blankly. Pooh doesn’t understand what was said at all, and Piglet meekly points out that the plan doesn’t have a conclusion by asking
“And―Afterwards?”.
It’s lovely. Please read it here. I share this because while I was reading Rabbit’s list I started laughing out loud―it reminded me of some of the worst qualities of bad meetings: a collection of loosely organized thoughts without an endpoint presented as a tightly-connected plan tied by a beautiful bow and impenetrable to question due to a lack of rational thought by its creator.
I doubt I’m the first to notice a similarity between the three of these―meetings, Dilbert, and Pooh―but it was too amusing to keep to myself.
(Side note: I’m saddened that Pooh is apparently “new” enough ― Happy *90th Birthday*, Pooh! ― to remain under copyright.)
Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964
The comment section is instructive.
How the internet flips elections…
On the one hand: of course it does. On the other hand: pretty terrifying.
So if Google favours one candidate in an election, its impact on undecided voters could easily decide the election’s outcome.
Source: How the internet flips elections and alters our thou…
some rocks
This is a quick (and ridiculous!) version of a project I’m working on. The final version will be more subdued, but I couldn’t resist quickly creating an animated gif once the thought entered my mind. Thoughts?
In Rainbows, Radiohead, and Copyright
This is an aspect of Radiohead’s In Rainbows release I was not familiar with before reading this otherwise uninteresting (to me) article. In retrospect it makes sense that there was a mini-nightmare with respect to releasing this way and that copyright was a barrier. As the U.S. is finally entering discussions to amend copyright law for the 21st century we’re simultaneously being inundated with things like TPP which seemingly prevent us from making those improvements. Now would be a good time to reach out to you representatives. You can do that here.
[Radiohead] had to ensure no one outside the band contributed any work that might need a writing credit, to contain the rights issues as much as possible. In what was unchartered territory, they had to take the performing rights for In Rainbow away from the Performing Rights Society (PRS), which traditionally owns and administers those rights on behalf of artists – but in a way that did not alert anyone to the plans for In Rainbows’ release. “For online licensing, PRS has rules and rates that you have to abide by,” explains Dyball. “That would have prevented the band from doing their pay-what-you-like model, even though the band wanted to allow for publishing royalties to be paid.”
Dyball went to the society’s board with her pitch, asking that the rights for this one album be taken out of PRS. Although the songs were all written by the band, it was not a guarantee that the PRS board would agree to the band withdrawing their rights. It made it easier that the request came from Radiohead, whose stature was enormous. Consequently, In Rainbows was released as intended.
Source: No surprises: how unexpected album drops became the norm | Music | The Guardian
The Scooter Computer
The Scooter Computer http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-scooter-computer/