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Mar. 28th, 2013 02:59 pmConnected Histories: Sources for Building British History, 1500-1900
ETA: Except that these seem to be all "subscriber only" collections. :*-(
Connected Histories: Sources for Building British History, 1500-1900
ETA: Except that these seem to be all "subscriber only" collections. :*-(
there needs to be a word for...
Feb. 1st, 2013 05:19 pm...that sensation of "I know I saw that on the Internet somewhere, but I have NO memory of how I came across it. And I didn't bookmark it. :-( "
I got a very impassioned email from the Internet music-streaming service Pandora today.
Now, because I can't have a good rant without a digression, let's get that out of the way up front. Pandora like to call themselves "Internet radio", the first thing that, while I like their service, makes me think they are idiots. They stream music online. They allow users to tune what they hear so that it matches their preferences. Neither of these are what radio does. Radio broadcasts over the public airwaves. Radio programs have a variety of formats, but none of them allow individual users to adjust the music being played by a single station immediately according to their preferences. So let's drop the preposterous characterization of this as Internet radio. That's as ridiculous an oxymoron as "protein-free bacon".
But on to the meat of the matter. The owner of Pandora thinks that it is very, very unfair that his service (and others like it, though he likes to pretend his is the only one) are forced to pay much higher rates of royalty to artists than satellite broadcasters, cable providers, or radio stations pay, simply because they use a newer technology (the Internet). I agree; that's quite unfair.
He would like everyone to get behind a bill that pushes Internet purveyors' rates down towards the rates that over-the-air broadcasters pay (next to nothing). I think that stinks. And what I find remarkable about the literature that he provides about the bill doesn't even tell you that that's his proposal. It complains about the unfairness of the current arrangement and asks you to support him, but it doesn't tell you that his solution will substitute screwing artists for screwing Pandora. Only the musicians will tell you that part.
To be frank, I don't give a toss about the financial woes of someone who is reselling other people's work on the Internet. I care about the people who actually create the work. I don't give a damn about the owner of Pandora, but I do give a damn about artists getting paid fair royalties for music they created. Let's *raise* the minimal (often nonexistent) amount that broadcast radio pays for making money off other people's work, instead of giving the owner of Pandora a huge and early Xmas present.
To read a summary of the issues, with links to more information, here's a piece on the debate from The Next Web.
Now, because I can't have a good rant without a digression, let's get that out of the way up front. Pandora like to call themselves "Internet radio", the first thing that, while I like their service, makes me think they are idiots. They stream music online. They allow users to tune what they hear so that it matches their preferences. Neither of these are what radio does. Radio broadcasts over the public airwaves. Radio programs have a variety of formats, but none of them allow individual users to adjust the music being played by a single station immediately according to their preferences. So let's drop the preposterous characterization of this as Internet radio. That's as ridiculous an oxymoron as "protein-free bacon".
But on to the meat of the matter. The owner of Pandora thinks that it is very, very unfair that his service (and others like it, though he likes to pretend his is the only one) are forced to pay much higher rates of royalty to artists than satellite broadcasters, cable providers, or radio stations pay, simply because they use a newer technology (the Internet). I agree; that's quite unfair.
He would like everyone to get behind a bill that pushes Internet purveyors' rates down towards the rates that over-the-air broadcasters pay (next to nothing). I think that stinks. And what I find remarkable about the literature that he provides about the bill doesn't even tell you that that's his proposal. It complains about the unfairness of the current arrangement and asks you to support him, but it doesn't tell you that his solution will substitute screwing artists for screwing Pandora. Only the musicians will tell you that part.
To be frank, I don't give a toss about the financial woes of someone who is reselling other people's work on the Internet. I care about the people who actually create the work. I don't give a damn about the owner of Pandora, but I do give a damn about artists getting paid fair royalties for music they created. Let's *raise* the minimal (often nonexistent) amount that broadcast radio pays for making money off other people's work, instead of giving the owner of Pandora a huge and early Xmas present.
To read a summary of the issues, with links to more information, here's a piece on the debate from The Next Web.
what is this form of sp@m telling me?
Sep. 10th, 2012 06:28 pmI've noticed that several emails that have shown up in my sp@m nets are "headlined" as being from people I know.
In other words, the "name" linked with the sending address is a friend or relative, even though the underlying address is obviously not theirs.
So, it's not that the sp@mmer has hijacked their account so much as they've identified that someone with that name writes, or at least has written, to my address and so the sp@mmer is using that name as a cover to get me to read their emails.
Where would they get that information? From my friend's emails? From my email? Has something been compromised that needs to be fixed?
My brain is just too foggy to figure this one out just now.
In other words, the "name" linked with the sending address is a friend or relative, even though the underlying address is obviously not theirs.
So, it's not that the sp@mmer has hijacked their account so much as they've identified that someone with that name writes, or at least has written, to my address and so the sp@mmer is using that name as a cover to get me to read their emails.
Where would they get that information? From my friend's emails? From my email? Has something been compromised that needs to be fixed?
My brain is just too foggy to figure this one out just now.
I've seen several people frantically posting the latest viral goofiness on Facebook, and instead of stamping on it every single place, I'm just going to post here, once.
People are getting wound up and frantic about the fact that a website, spokeo.com, is selling personal data. The viral message tells everyone to HURRY, HURRY, go to the Spokeo website and opt out of their evul sellin' yur infoz plan!
Now, it's great that Spokeo has given people an opt-out option (assuming that it actually works--has anyone verified that it does?)
But the issue is not that Spokeo is selling this data. It's that YOU are giving it to them! All the data they have is available to them for free on the Internet or is estimated by them based on other available data.
If you want people to stop reselling information *you* provide to the world, publicly, for free--STOP PROVIDING IT!
But, I would suggest, a more rational response would be to STOP FREAKING OUT. Yes, data aggregators exist. Most of us on the Internet use them all the time--by using services that either give us information they've gained from others (have you *never* looked at goods suggested to you by some variation of "people who bought X also bought Y" really? never? have you never used Yelp or Angie's List or Trip Advisor to check reviews?) or providing us with services that are informed and refined by customer usage data. Horrified that people can see your street address? Really? You don't have a telephone, and you never receive mail, then? Shocked that people know your gender, or your favourite ice cream flavour, or where you went to university? Then why did you fill out that quiz that told anyone who uses it those things?
If you seriously want to take your personal info out of the hands of resellers, don't worry about Spokeo; there are dozens, probably hundreds more companies just like it; are you going to go to all their websites? Act at the source--stop posting information you don't want the world to know on the single greatest worldwide communication system in the history of humanity. (As for the stuff you've already posted, well, too late. :-) Data on the Internet is like plastic shopping bags--it sticks around forever.)
But maybe, just maybe, re-examine your mindless terror at people knowing basic information about you. Because if you really want to be invisible, you need to do much, much more than nuke your Facebook or Blogger account. You have to stop earning money, paying taxes, owning property, driving a car, participating in political and civic and professional organizations... and much more. All of those actions generate publicly available data about you. Information that anyone can access.
Think about why you think this is such a terrifying thing.
Then take a deep, deep breath and chill the heck out.
People are getting wound up and frantic about the fact that a website, spokeo.com, is selling personal data. The viral message tells everyone to HURRY, HURRY, go to the Spokeo website and opt out of their evul sellin' yur infoz plan!
Now, it's great that Spokeo has given people an opt-out option (assuming that it actually works--has anyone verified that it does?)
But the issue is not that Spokeo is selling this data. It's that YOU are giving it to them! All the data they have is available to them for free on the Internet or is estimated by them based on other available data.
If you want people to stop reselling information *you* provide to the world, publicly, for free--STOP PROVIDING IT!
But, I would suggest, a more rational response would be to STOP FREAKING OUT. Yes, data aggregators exist. Most of us on the Internet use them all the time--by using services that either give us information they've gained from others (have you *never* looked at goods suggested to you by some variation of "people who bought X also bought Y" really? never? have you never used Yelp or Angie's List or Trip Advisor to check reviews?) or providing us with services that are informed and refined by customer usage data. Horrified that people can see your street address? Really? You don't have a telephone, and you never receive mail, then? Shocked that people know your gender, or your favourite ice cream flavour, or where you went to university? Then why did you fill out that quiz that told anyone who uses it those things?
If you seriously want to take your personal info out of the hands of resellers, don't worry about Spokeo; there are dozens, probably hundreds more companies just like it; are you going to go to all their websites? Act at the source--stop posting information you don't want the world to know on the single greatest worldwide communication system in the history of humanity. (As for the stuff you've already posted, well, too late. :-) Data on the Internet is like plastic shopping bags--it sticks around forever.)
But maybe, just maybe, re-examine your mindless terror at people knowing basic information about you. Because if you really want to be invisible, you need to do much, much more than nuke your Facebook or Blogger account. You have to stop earning money, paying taxes, owning property, driving a car, participating in political and civic and professional organizations... and much more. All of those actions generate publicly available data about you. Information that anyone can access.
Think about why you think this is such a terrifying thing.
Then take a deep, deep breath and chill the heck out.
I'm thankful for eVite.
OK, I told you it was silly. :-) But I like being able to send an electronic invitation to people, configured with goofy images and comic replies, be able to track who's seen it and who's coming, and have it directly link them to my address and phone # so I don't have to compose directions for everyone.
OK, I told you it was silly. :-) But I like being able to send an electronic invitation to people, configured with goofy images and comic replies, be able to track who's seen it and who's coming, and have it directly link them to my address and phone # so I don't have to compose directions for everyone.
GoogleBooks
Sep. 24th, 2010 05:30 pmI know this project has gotten a lot of flak from different quarters, and to some extent I can understand why.
But I am astonished and grateful for the immense amount of (fairly obscure) material it contains. While I'm on this eastern Sudan 1884 kick, I've been delving, and I've come up with some gems.
One is Bennett Burleigh's "Desert Warfare" and his "Kharthoum Campaign, 1898". BB was one of the principal war correspondents of the period, and he was "embedded" (to use modern concepts) with both the Suakin and both the later Khartoum expeditions. Also available is "Days and Nights of Service" by E. A. De Cosson, one of Sir Gerald Graham's staff officers on the Suakin Expedition. Also "Under Crescent and Star", by Andrew Haggard, a British officer in Egpytian service who was stationed at Suakin. "The River Column" by Maj Gen Brackenbury, who commanded part of the relief force sent to rescue Gordon. "The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan" and "With the Camel Corps Up the Nile" by Lord Edward Gleichen. "With the Indian contingent in Egypt: 1882", a war correspondent's memoir of the Arabi Revolt. "The War in Egypt", the Times' account of the same. The US Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence report on the same. Steevens' "With Kitchener to Khartum", a war correspondent on the 1898 expedition. And the anonymous memoir of a British Army officer from the same campaign.
And, finally (so far) the edited letters and diaries of Sir Gerald Graham, whose expedition in 1884 I'm particularly interested in.
If I had credentials, I might be able to get to a university library and get access to copies of these books. If they had them. Or get them at the Library of Congress (especially if they were published in the US). And some are available through Project Gutenberg. But to be able to simply Google and have the book right here in front of me... that is priceless.
I confess when some visionaries early int he public discussion of the possibilities of the Internet suggested that a day like this might come, I was skeptical, perhaps even dismissive. How could people find the time to do all this, much less the data storage? But someone has. All hail Google!
But I am astonished and grateful for the immense amount of (fairly obscure) material it contains. While I'm on this eastern Sudan 1884 kick, I've been delving, and I've come up with some gems.
One is Bennett Burleigh's "Desert Warfare" and his "Kharthoum Campaign, 1898". BB was one of the principal war correspondents of the period, and he was "embedded" (to use modern concepts) with both the Suakin and both the later Khartoum expeditions. Also available is "Days and Nights of Service" by E. A. De Cosson, one of Sir Gerald Graham's staff officers on the Suakin Expedition. Also "Under Crescent and Star", by Andrew Haggard, a British officer in Egpytian service who was stationed at Suakin. "The River Column" by Maj Gen Brackenbury, who commanded part of the relief force sent to rescue Gordon. "The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan" and "With the Camel Corps Up the Nile" by Lord Edward Gleichen. "With the Indian contingent in Egypt: 1882", a war correspondent's memoir of the Arabi Revolt. "The War in Egypt", the Times' account of the same. The US Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence report on the same. Steevens' "With Kitchener to Khartum", a war correspondent on the 1898 expedition. And the anonymous memoir of a British Army officer from the same campaign.
And, finally (so far) the edited letters and diaries of Sir Gerald Graham, whose expedition in 1884 I'm particularly interested in.
If I had credentials, I might be able to get to a university library and get access to copies of these books. If they had them. Or get them at the Library of Congress (especially if they were published in the US). And some are available through Project Gutenberg. But to be able to simply Google and have the book right here in front of me... that is priceless.
I confess when some visionaries early int he public discussion of the possibilities of the Internet suggested that a day like this might come, I was skeptical, perhaps even dismissive. How could people find the time to do all this, much less the data storage? But someone has. All hail Google!
I got into a conversation about broadband with a colleague from the UK who said, in part:
"The USA, however, is frequently held up as an example of a 'cable country', and from what I've read, much of it is carried on telephone poles. Unfortunately, in the UK, the cables have to go
underground, so unsurprisingly, the UK, and indeed Europe in general, is a bit behind on this. Most people in the UK consider themselves lucky if they can get broadband at all - it's only in the last few years that most of the UK has received it. Even so, there's still only about 97% coverage, and even with this, figures from the EU last year showed that less than a quarter of UK households actually *have* broadband."
Is this correct? It seems pretty grim.
Why do all cables have to be buried?
"The USA, however, is frequently held up as an example of a 'cable country', and from what I've read, much of it is carried on telephone poles. Unfortunately, in the UK, the cables have to go
underground, so unsurprisingly, the UK, and indeed Europe in general, is a bit behind on this. Most people in the UK consider themselves lucky if they can get broadband at all - it's only in the last few years that most of the UK has received it. Even so, there's still only about 97% coverage, and even with this, figures from the EU last year showed that less than a quarter of UK households actually *have* broadband."
Is this correct? It seems pretty grim.
Why do all cables have to be buried?
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bad, bad servers!
Jul. 15th, 2006 10:53 pmWell, email seems to be working again, but I never received any reply to my service request, and neither on this occasion nor the previous outage has Dreamhost taken the trouble to apoligize to their customers or offer any compensation for their loss of service.
Does anyone have a suggestion for domain and mail hosting? I'd like to get rid of these rubes ASAP. US or UK, either one, since I have an ISP for the moment who actually provides the connection.
Does anyone have a suggestion for domain and mail hosting? I'd like to get rid of these rubes ASAP. US or UK, either one, since I have an ISP for the moment who actually provides the connection.
