Silver Adept (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silveradept) wrote2007-10-03 11:07 pm
silveradept) wrote2007-10-03 11:07 pm
Got to get up early tomorrow - 03 October 2007
Going to get some more baptism by fire experience tomorrow - I’m learning about all the stuff that they don’t tell you about when they hire you, after spending a session brainstorming how to carve out a teen-friendly space in my tiny library and attract people to it. Tomorrow I get to see and do some of the presentations that happen to inform the populace of the stuff that the library system is doing for them. And then drop off information in other places. And go weed. The good part is that my day ends a little earlier tomorrow, because it begins a little earlier.
Be wary of suspicious media files, including video material or malicious MySpace code - since there’s a growing shell against spam phishing and blind attachment-opening of obvious executable files, those who want to do harm or hijack computers are embedding their code in other places, perhaps in spots that could be tripped just be going to a rogue MySpace page.
The music industry does not like you. In fact, they want to squeeze as much money out of you as possible. The latest tactic is that the chief Sony BMG anti-piracy lawyer said in court that ripping CDs you legally own is stealing music. That’s right - transforming data that you own into another format so that it can be used on a different player is stealing a copy of that song. Under that logic, every time you changed a component of your stereo, or bought a new CD player, you would need to rebuy your entire CD collection, since playing your current CD in the new equipment would be stealing a copy of the music. (Right? Or is that just a good exaggeration?) While there’s obviously some portion of ripped or downloaded tracks that then become freely available on file-sharing networks, I still thought that CDs and the data contained therein were subject to First Sale Doctrine. Apparently, according to that lawyer, they are not.
Better, admittedly, that what might have happened to the people in the wrong place at the wrong time if a Bosnian who entered the United States embassy with explosives and nails had not been thwarted by the metal detector. The article also makes it a point to mention that he was carrying Islamic literature. What significance the literature, or its presence, has to the facts and/or narrative of the story, I do not know. The aborted attack is better than the killing of African Union peacekeepers by rebel forces in the Darfur region. That particular massacre could stop at any time, along with the one going on in Burma. Anyone? And with the CIA and the United States Army being designated a terrorist organization by Iran, does that mean the U.S. can finally admit that we’ve been training people who then commit terror attacks against their country and other countries?
Without shots being fired or any threats to invade, North Korea has agreed to shut down its nuclear reactor in exchange for several millions of tons of fuel oil, basically making up for the energy that would have been generated by the nuclear plant. So people can rest easier about nuclear North Korea, at the cost of some fuel oil.
The cost of equipping a soldier has increased a hundredfold, going by adjusted dollars, since World War II. The weapons used have become better, the armor to protect the soldiers have become stronger. All of this is more expensive. Perhaps in spite of this, or because all this gear is supposed to help soldiers return home safely, the Army says that it has met its 2007 goal of 80,000 new recruits. They will probably need all of them, considering that the United Kingdom plans on reducing its Iraq force by 1,000, even as the United States continues the “surge” idea. Some of those soldiers may not be fully focused on their tasks in Iraq, as spouses of military personnel that do not have legal resident status may be deported while their spouse is away on duty. Which is just fine with Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, saying that granting stays for the spouses would be “amnesty for illegal immigrants...letting lawbreakers get away with their actions just because they have a relative in the armed forces”. Wow. Nothing stops true love like a hostile government.
Mr. Bush reaffirmed that he has little care for the people in his own country in addition to having little care for people in another country by vetoing the expansion of the S-CHIP program, that would have insured several million more children under a government insurance plan, following through with his promise. This is the fourth veto exercised over six years of government, and there’s a strong push to over-ride the veto and pass the legislation anyway. Mr. Bush is unwilling to spend a fraction of his Iraq War appropriations on something that is arguably more helpful than fighting in the Middle East.
Despite all the signals that things are going to go their way, the Democrats still look like a party afraid to step up and hit the ball, assuming that the voters will throw one at their head. There are a few ways that this election beanball could happen, and we’re still thirteen months away from the general election. Still, could you do a little less cowering now so that later, you might remember what having a spine is like? And thus actually pass a bill requiring some sort of troop withdrawal, rahter than just demanding that Mr. Bush tell you how he would do it, if he had to. And just possibly decide not to continue funding the war by proposing additional taxation? That sounds like a matter of “Well, we think we can’t stop him, so we’ll at least try to limit his damage.”
The current and traditional method of financing things such as schools and libraries is to assess a certain taxation on the value of each parcel of land, and then collect the tax from the owner of the land. A farm and land owner protested his tax bill of nearly eighteen thousand USD by paying the tax in $1 bills, and perhaps next year, will decide to pay the taxation in coinage that values at less than $1 USD. People protesting the existence of the Untied States and its governing system in a bigger way are meeting in Tennessee to discuss the possibility of secession from the Union. Representatives from Southern states and Vermont are both discussing the same thing - whether it would be possible to separate themselves from the federal government. Good luck on that.
Something that looks cool, but it probably very much a “no touch” experiment - water in two beakers charged with a high electric current forms a bridge between the beakers. Something even cooler, and that may be touchable, albeit with the assistance of space vehicles, is that an asteroid has been named by the International Astronomical Union after George Takei.
Something cool that could potentially suck - hybrid cars are too quiet for the blind to hear, which could lead to dangers in street crossing.
Something that sucks and will continue to do so, most likely, Wally World is suffering from bad customer service and bad employee service - which is nothing new for most of us, but hey, those low, low prices! Better customer service has come from a store that refused to sell a man alcohol because he would not show his identification. The man was 72 years old. Some part of me says, “Well, he probably didn’t look under 30, unless he’s got really good skin for his age, so they probably could have sold him the booze” and some other part of me says, “Well, if the policy says everyone gets carded, regardless of age, then they were doing their job to the nines, and should be respected. That gentleman can just shop elsewhere.” What do you think?
The BBC gives us a choice over-reaction in the United Kingdom, where the smell and smoke from burning chillies was sufficient to shut down an entire neighborhood because someone feared it was the scent or smoke from a chemical attack. Well, I suppose it was a good test for hazmat response teams, if nothing else. And they’re probably glad that it was a false alarm in the end.
Cranking Widgets offers up a list of ten ways people change when they become parents. On the other end of the spectrum, the Globe and Mail describes a French mother who wrote a wildly popular book about forty reasons not to have children. I might say about the first that working with children in general starts imparting to you those ten things, and possibly cementing in your mind some of the forty reasons from the second list.
I sigh, disappointed at the following - the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal to the state of Alabama's ban on sex toys. Is this another side effect of a conservative stacking of the Court? But by banning sex toys, they’re encouraging the women to go out and have sex with men (or women), aren’t they? Wouldn’t the best abstinence campaign be the one that promises a Battery Operated (or not) Boyfriend to every woman who wanted it, in the size, shape, and colours that she wants it? Would certainly be less expensive that those ineffective abstinence campaigns that suggest that all women should just sublimate those feelings and do nothing about them.
But by far and away the winning item for tonight is the Ohio legislator who had a topless woman appear when he put his flash drive into a computer to give a lecture on how a bill becomes law. The punchline I was waiting for, and that never materialized, is that the topless woman was the statue of Justice. In this case, however, there appears to have been a folder of similar pictures on the drive, which the legislator received as a gift. I still think the story would have been better if the topless woman was the statue of Justice that got shrouded.
And that’s all I have tonight. Hopefully I’m not too square in front of the middle school crowd tomorrow, telling them about the wonderful services that we have here at the library. One of those things that comes with being the one of the two librarians who’s probably better suited to being able to read and react to the teen pulse and talk with them. In some sense, I may have become the teen librarian that also happens to tell stories to the kids and work with them. Eh. If this strange mishmash of duties works out and I like it, then tally ho, d00d.
Be wary of suspicious media files, including video material or malicious MySpace code - since there’s a growing shell against spam phishing and blind attachment-opening of obvious executable files, those who want to do harm or hijack computers are embedding their code in other places, perhaps in spots that could be tripped just be going to a rogue MySpace page.
The music industry does not like you. In fact, they want to squeeze as much money out of you as possible. The latest tactic is that the chief Sony BMG anti-piracy lawyer said in court that ripping CDs you legally own is stealing music. That’s right - transforming data that you own into another format so that it can be used on a different player is stealing a copy of that song. Under that logic, every time you changed a component of your stereo, or bought a new CD player, you would need to rebuy your entire CD collection, since playing your current CD in the new equipment would be stealing a copy of the music. (Right? Or is that just a good exaggeration?) While there’s obviously some portion of ripped or downloaded tracks that then become freely available on file-sharing networks, I still thought that CDs and the data contained therein were subject to First Sale Doctrine. Apparently, according to that lawyer, they are not.
Better, admittedly, that what might have happened to the people in the wrong place at the wrong time if a Bosnian who entered the United States embassy with explosives and nails had not been thwarted by the metal detector. The article also makes it a point to mention that he was carrying Islamic literature. What significance the literature, or its presence, has to the facts and/or narrative of the story, I do not know. The aborted attack is better than the killing of African Union peacekeepers by rebel forces in the Darfur region. That particular massacre could stop at any time, along with the one going on in Burma. Anyone? And with the CIA and the United States Army being designated a terrorist organization by Iran, does that mean the U.S. can finally admit that we’ve been training people who then commit terror attacks against their country and other countries?
Without shots being fired or any threats to invade, North Korea has agreed to shut down its nuclear reactor in exchange for several millions of tons of fuel oil, basically making up for the energy that would have been generated by the nuclear plant. So people can rest easier about nuclear North Korea, at the cost of some fuel oil.
The cost of equipping a soldier has increased a hundredfold, going by adjusted dollars, since World War II. The weapons used have become better, the armor to protect the soldiers have become stronger. All of this is more expensive. Perhaps in spite of this, or because all this gear is supposed to help soldiers return home safely, the Army says that it has met its 2007 goal of 80,000 new recruits. They will probably need all of them, considering that the United Kingdom plans on reducing its Iraq force by 1,000, even as the United States continues the “surge” idea. Some of those soldiers may not be fully focused on their tasks in Iraq, as spouses of military personnel that do not have legal resident status may be deported while their spouse is away on duty. Which is just fine with Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, saying that granting stays for the spouses would be “amnesty for illegal immigrants...letting lawbreakers get away with their actions just because they have a relative in the armed forces”. Wow. Nothing stops true love like a hostile government.
Mr. Bush reaffirmed that he has little care for the people in his own country in addition to having little care for people in another country by vetoing the expansion of the S-CHIP program, that would have insured several million more children under a government insurance plan, following through with his promise. This is the fourth veto exercised over six years of government, and there’s a strong push to over-ride the veto and pass the legislation anyway. Mr. Bush is unwilling to spend a fraction of his Iraq War appropriations on something that is arguably more helpful than fighting in the Middle East.
Despite all the signals that things are going to go their way, the Democrats still look like a party afraid to step up and hit the ball, assuming that the voters will throw one at their head. There are a few ways that this election beanball could happen, and we’re still thirteen months away from the general election. Still, could you do a little less cowering now so that later, you might remember what having a spine is like? And thus actually pass a bill requiring some sort of troop withdrawal, rahter than just demanding that Mr. Bush tell you how he would do it, if he had to. And just possibly decide not to continue funding the war by proposing additional taxation? That sounds like a matter of “Well, we think we can’t stop him, so we’ll at least try to limit his damage.”
The current and traditional method of financing things such as schools and libraries is to assess a certain taxation on the value of each parcel of land, and then collect the tax from the owner of the land. A farm and land owner protested his tax bill of nearly eighteen thousand USD by paying the tax in $1 bills, and perhaps next year, will decide to pay the taxation in coinage that values at less than $1 USD. People protesting the existence of the Untied States and its governing system in a bigger way are meeting in Tennessee to discuss the possibility of secession from the Union. Representatives from Southern states and Vermont are both discussing the same thing - whether it would be possible to separate themselves from the federal government. Good luck on that.
Something that looks cool, but it probably very much a “no touch” experiment - water in two beakers charged with a high electric current forms a bridge between the beakers. Something even cooler, and that may be touchable, albeit with the assistance of space vehicles, is that an asteroid has been named by the International Astronomical Union after George Takei.
Something cool that could potentially suck - hybrid cars are too quiet for the blind to hear, which could lead to dangers in street crossing.
Something that sucks and will continue to do so, most likely, Wally World is suffering from bad customer service and bad employee service - which is nothing new for most of us, but hey, those low, low prices! Better customer service has come from a store that refused to sell a man alcohol because he would not show his identification. The man was 72 years old. Some part of me says, “Well, he probably didn’t look under 30, unless he’s got really good skin for his age, so they probably could have sold him the booze” and some other part of me says, “Well, if the policy says everyone gets carded, regardless of age, then they were doing their job to the nines, and should be respected. That gentleman can just shop elsewhere.” What do you think?
The BBC gives us a choice over-reaction in the United Kingdom, where the smell and smoke from burning chillies was sufficient to shut down an entire neighborhood because someone feared it was the scent or smoke from a chemical attack. Well, I suppose it was a good test for hazmat response teams, if nothing else. And they’re probably glad that it was a false alarm in the end.
Cranking Widgets offers up a list of ten ways people change when they become parents. On the other end of the spectrum, the Globe and Mail describes a French mother who wrote a wildly popular book about forty reasons not to have children. I might say about the first that working with children in general starts imparting to you those ten things, and possibly cementing in your mind some of the forty reasons from the second list.
I sigh, disappointed at the following - the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal to the state of Alabama's ban on sex toys. Is this another side effect of a conservative stacking of the Court? But by banning sex toys, they’re encouraging the women to go out and have sex with men (or women), aren’t they? Wouldn’t the best abstinence campaign be the one that promises a Battery Operated (or not) Boyfriend to every woman who wanted it, in the size, shape, and colours that she wants it? Would certainly be less expensive that those ineffective abstinence campaigns that suggest that all women should just sublimate those feelings and do nothing about them.
But by far and away the winning item for tonight is the Ohio legislator who had a topless woman appear when he put his flash drive into a computer to give a lecture on how a bill becomes law. The punchline I was waiting for, and that never materialized, is that the topless woman was the statue of Justice. In this case, however, there appears to have been a folder of similar pictures on the drive, which the legislator received as a gift. I still think the story would have been better if the topless woman was the statue of Justice that got shrouded.
And that’s all I have tonight. Hopefully I’m not too square in front of the middle school crowd tomorrow, telling them about the wonderful services that we have here at the library. One of those things that comes with being the one of the two librarians who’s probably better suited to being able to read and react to the teen pulse and talk with them. In some sense, I may have become the teen librarian that also happens to tell stories to the kids and work with them. Eh. If this strange mishmash of duties works out and I like it, then tally ho, d00d.
no subject
Most stores are fanatical with regards to their liquor policies, and with good reason. If an employee were to be caught selling to a minor, he and the store both get large fines. With enough incidents, the store's liquor license gets taken away. So stores come up with strict ID policies in order to cover their own butts. Some stores have their cash registers programmed so that if the cashier does not type in the driver's license number (and thus proving that the employee has looked at the identification), it will not complete the sale.
I look at this from the perspective of one who worked in a retail store for 5+ years: you are supposed to carry ID on you at all times anyway. If you don't have it, then no booze for you. Sorry if this is an inconvenience; feel free to take it up with my manager. Or someone else who is being paid enough to care.
no subject
PA has some bizarre liqueur laws, the least of them being that we have to buy everything in a state store. The people that work in the state store are required to card anyone who walks in the door and through the check out, and won't even sell you anything if you walk into the store with someone under age. Small children they don't have a problem with, but if you've got anyone between 16-20 walking around with you, the store will refuse to sell to you. They card everyone, including my 75-yr-old aunt who goes in once every few years to buy rum for a rum cake. But for us, we're used to it, as there are huge signs as you walk in that say "everyone will be carded". I can understand someone being put off by it if they're not used to it, but at the same time I also think he should have just sucked it up and dealt with it. It's not like they were going to announce over the PA system how old he was or anything like that.
no subject
no subject
I'm also not quite understanding how if I own a CD and want to listen to it elsewhere, it's "stealing". What? Am I stealing from myself?
If states try to secede, won't the same thing happened like when Quebec wanted to secede from Canada? They wound up not being able to because they still wanted to use Canadian Currency, and I forget what else. I think if all 50 states decide to be independent, then we should have some type of union similar to the EU, but look how long that took to establish. I'd really rather we not have another civil war, thanks.
I pretty much follow along the 10 things, even without children of my own. The only thing I think I really have problem with is older children who throw tantrums in public. Babies can't really control their crying, becaue for them it's the only way they can tell their parents they need changed or fed, so babies crying in public don't really bother me. It's just when it's the older children who are primarily doing it to gain their parent's attention (I've literally watched a kid scream about once a minute in the grocery store to get his mom's attention because she was talking to a friend she ran into). But on the flip side, you also have parents who don't seem to really do anything about the kids screaming, so the kids continue to do it, so I guess it's more of a peeve with parents than the kids themselves.
As for the not having kids thing...some people just aren't designed to be parents. Sadly, they learn it the hard way.
So, is the senator trying to say that the Library of Ohio put pr0n on his stick? I just wonder though if they really can't put the blame on him for the image. I mean, wouldn't you check out what was on your stick before putting a presentation on it? Especially if you figured it to be blank and then saw files on it.
Hope your day went well with the teens, I'm sure you were fine though :)
no subject
According to the Sony-BMG lawayer, you're stealing from the record companies because you didn't pay to make that copy of the music you own. They want us to believe that music and such are licensed to us in the same way that software is - we think we own it, but we really don't. And thus, if they want to impose on us the requirement that we have to pay for every copy of every song we ever have or make, then they think we'll just pony up the money.
At the moment, a unified United States is a stronger unit than separate states or confederations. When that changes, you'll suddenly see a lot more pushes to dissolve the union. There still may be another bloody war fought between those who want to leave and those who want to stay, but I don't think that day is coming for a very long time.