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Comment Re:I still don't get it (Score 1) 218

Nice try, Google. Also, poster fails to realize there's a difference between listening to customers and crowdsourcing, namely, most times, people at least want acknowledgement they've given feedback, and sometimes would like an explanation as to why something works the way it does. It's almost impossible to get it out of Google, but it's possible to get it out of a great majority of companies one does business with.

Comment Re:Ad Hominem (Score 1) 575

What part of the criticism are you skeptical about? There are several assertions made, the main ones for me were: 1. The part about defining slope as "rise over run" is a oversimplification 2. That teaching requires preparation and planning (as opposed to Khan's admitted lack of prep and planning) 3. The part about multiplying negative numbers, and how Khan dealt with it ("...Kind of weird people are nitpicking...") And the big one: 4. The combination of lack of planning, incorrectness, and an lack of attention to details and overall correctness yield a low quality educational experience. Ad Hominem isn't bad because you look at arguments with a skeptical / critical eye, it's bad because you generally ignore or marginalize the content of the argument because of the source of the argument.

Comment Re:additional freedom (Score 1) 369

The GPL is more restrictive from the POV of downstream developers. "Open" licenses (BSD et. al.) are more restrictive from the POV of the code itself, and original authors, as it allows downstream developers to insert arbitrary restrictions (arbitrary depending on license). I, for one, am a fan of requiring derivative improved code to be contributed back to the project, so we don't end up with what Stallman was trying to prevent in the first place: proprietary Xerox printer drivers. (

Comment Re:Oh fucking Christ (Score 2) 315

I believe the AC's point is more speaks to the OP's question of the public souring on Apple.. I, for one, am tired of Apple being held to a higher standard than Amazon, Dell, HP & Sony. The fact that Apple is also the one paying for the independant audit shows that Apple's actuallydoing more than the aformentioned companies as well. Why, therefore, should the company doing the most already face the most criticism? It may just be a new thing for the apple-haters to rail on, methinks. I've seen a lot of rational people come to absolutely ridiculous conclusions on this issue because "Apple makes more profits"

Comment Re:Why are archivists worried? (Score 1) 227

I run the digital preservation efforts at a respected museum of photography and film, yet my comments are my own, not theirs. Frankly your assertion is a bit myopic. Digital media provides a key benefit that mitigates the volatility extensively, namely, mathematically provable exact duplicate copies, something you simple cannot do with film transfers, regardless of quality of your equipment. You think the government settled on microfilm because if the world ends and life re-evolves we can hope they'll read it easier? That's a stretch. Plus, I'll take needing to swap a hard drive for vinegar syndrome (which should be rearing its head in the next decades for all the non-polyester microfilm stock) any day of the week.. Right now, we can do 4K transfers easily (read: at many different labs).. and a feature length film is, oh, lets just call it 15TB for arguments sake.. a big hefty chunk.. in 2011. In the next decade, prices should come down to make this 'affordable' to archives, especially with respect to LTO tape libraries, as they can further help mitigate bit rot (by tape rotation) and obsolescence (Oracles support for "any tape any slot" kind of stuff helps out). With cinema being on the brink of a digital turn, digital will soon become an artifice (replacing the projection print).. if we printed it to film, we'd have quality loss from the originals. Considering we're beginning the transition in the field, it means archives need to start DOING this stuff, to gain competency for when we have no choice but to do it. Will there be missteps? There already have been (ask any museum of reasonable size about laser disc). The big shift for activists is that digital preservation isn't a function of archive management and library science, but of information technology.. will they inform IT WRT requirements? Certainly. But IT folks have been tasked with persisting digital data since approximately day 1 of the profession. There are plenty of nay-sayers, and I feel strongly that said nay-sayers are damaging the ability of institutions to deal with digital, because we WILL have to, so we might as well start now with challenge pieces and advancing standard conservation practices to incorporate digital.

Comment Re:Good (Score 1) 131

I didn't mind this until I started seeing Google Chrome ads with increasing frequency. It's obviously been affective, considering the penetration of Chrome vs. other webkit browsers (of which where are many, most notably Safari). While certainly some of the differences can be attributed to Chrome really nice feature set, I have a terribly hard time believing prime placement on search result listings, google analytics, google mail, etc. played a significant role.

Comment Re:But the IMPORTANT question is... (Score 0) 86

This, in fact, is a way of extending copyright, in the UK. The UK recognizes rote copying of copyrighted works to be copyrighted themselves (see: UK NPG vs. Wikimedia commons a year or two ago). The articles al state that these books are to be used for 'non-commercial' uses only. And 'non-comercial' is becoming a smaller slice every day (publishing it? commercial. Website with ads? commercial). Google doesn't go what's good for the World, Google does what's best for Google.. if they overlap, it's merely coincidental.

Comment Re:Kodak: credit where credit is due (Score 1) 140

George Eastman House can be found at

You can also read an essay by about the Sasson camera and more in the book Camera: A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital (Todd Gustavson)

Disclaimer: I work there, but the book really is good!

-Ryan Donahue
Manager of Information Systems, George Eastman House

Logic doesn't apply to the real world. -- Marvin Minsky