ET: Member blog

[Nita]'s diary

1033963 Link to this entry
Written about Thursday 2008-06-05
Written: (6014 days ago)

Next in thread: 1033966

I should print this and pin it to a wall or something: http://totalreadr.livejournal.com/2560.html :P

1031731 Link to this entry
Written about Monday 2008-05-26
Written: (6024 days ago)

Next in thread: 1031733, 1031734, 1031770

"The ONLY purpose of patents and copyrights (trademarks being a different thing altogether) is to maximize the availability of intellectual production in the public domain.
Let me repeat that: their only purpose is to help along the enrichment of the public domain."
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=563921&cid=23542123

"Where IP doesn't make sense, is from a practical point of view. Copyright may have served a purpose 1 or 2 hundred years ago, but times have changed. I have yet to see a convincing proof that the world as a whole has benefited from past IP laws. That technological/cultural progress would have been slower without it. In todays fast-moving society, it serves even less purpose. Countless patents fall in the 'obvious' or 'bound to happen sooner or later' category. Without IP laws, these things would have been thrown onto the world for everyone to use for free. Nor are there any objective standards used to determine IP protections. Protection periods aren't calculated or estimated for optimal effect, but lobbied by greedy corporations for maximum profit. As a result, society as a whole loses."
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=563921&cid=23542377

"artificial scarcity: so called "intellectual property" introduces an artificial scarcity into something that could be useful to all of us without extra costs: information and knowledge. so only kind of "intellectual property" reduces the usefulness of this goods. (this is something that patents, copyright, etc.. have all in common).

so why then do we have IP at all? because capitalism can only deal with scarcity: you can not sell sand in the desert. this shows a principal problem with capitalism. and if you look a bit closer then you see that this does not only happen with intellectual goods but with almost everything that capitalism deals with: it introduces artificial scarcity:

  * advertisement: to create new demand for mostly useless things where there was no demand before.
  * war: the most effective way to create new demand: destroy what was there before, create insecurity and create weapons that "protect", ...
  * crisis: like the bursting housing bubble...
  * ....

my employer pays me to filter out spam for him. other people are being payed by there employer to send out spam. etc..etc..

the capitalist system is fundamentally broken."
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=563921&cid=23542219

1030886 Link to this entry
Written about Thursday 2008-05-22
Written: (6028 days ago)

A science news aggregator in traditional news site format (i.e., an automagically self-updating online newspaper): http://esciencenews.com/

1028700 Link to this entry
Written about Monday 2008-05-12
Written: (6039 days ago)

A bit on community management: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fromlittlethings

1026528 Link to this entry
Written about Tuesday 2008-04-29
Written: (6051 days ago)

The World is Just Awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5Q0CLlFFm0

1025139 Link to this entry
Written about Monday 2008-04-21
Written: (6059 days ago)

Next in thread: 1025157

A rather sweet touchscreen visualisation project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZUaXDm4qik :)

Also: http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/

1024082 Link to this entry
Written about Monday 2008-04-14
Written: (6066 days ago)

Next in thread: 1024129

An oldish, but long and good post on age restrictions, minors and sexual content: http://ataniell93.livejournal.com/868472.html Written to address an LJ policy, but the ideas are of general value.

Added: a summary for [Sunrose] (a "sunmary", perhaps?).

Part I. Age-based access restriction

Livejournal's adult content policy is misguided. Warnings and lj-cuts are good, useful and sometimes necessary. Authors restricting access to their own content for whatever reasons is their own business. Other people restricting access to your content is not OK, and LJ shouldn't have given them tools to do so.

"Then there are the people who with the best of intentions genuinely want to child-proof the entire universe and can easily be stirred up by shit-disturbers.

{..}

"People who suddenly want to child-proof the entire universe after they have kids irritate me, particularly if I knew them before they had kids, but at least you can reason with them--usually.

People who want to make the entire universe hide everything it does that doesn't fit into their personal view of the world in order to keep their children ignorant that anything else exists are, frankly, really dangerous."

(the author explains why)

"{T}he problem with "it's nobody's business but mine how I raise my kids" is that the rest of us have to live in the world with them once they grow up, and people who successfully manage to fill their children's minds with hate and ignorance are creating problems for the rest of us."

Part II. Sex in stories and pornography

"We need a word for things that are not legally pornography that have sexually explicit content, and it needs not to be 'erotica'."

(a discussion of sexual content in different genres and the line between porn and not-porn follows)

1019748 Link to this entry
Written about Sunday 2008-03-23
Written: (6088 days ago)

Greta Christina's review / summary / recommendation of "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts" by Carol Tavris
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2008/01/mistakes-were-1.html

1017921 Link to this entry
Written about Saturday 2008-03-15
Written: (6097 days ago)

Next in thread: 1017952, 1018321, 1019758

A short quiz: http://www.blogthings.com/whatkindofpuzzleareyouquiz/

Apparently, I'm a crossword puzzle :P

1017671 Link to this entry
Written about Thursday 2008-03-13
Written: (6098 days ago)

Great photos of old Russian places in winter: http://obz.org.ru/?p=256

(author's blog: http://qzmn.livejournal.com/ )

1015085 Link to this entry
Written about Friday 2008-02-29
Written: (6111 days ago)

Infrequently Asked Questions by Donald Knuth
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/iaq.html

1014852 Link to this entry
Written about Thursday 2008-02-28
Written: (6112 days ago)

Killing Us Softly 3 - Advertising's Image of Women
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1993368502337678412

Pretty basic stuff, but well narrated and rich with examples. Half an hour.

1005554 Link to this entry
Written about Friday 2008-01-18
Written: (6154 days ago)

Next in thread: 1005593, 1005602

Live action stop motion! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJzU3NjDikY&feature=related

1002685 Link to this entry
Written about Thursday 2008-01-03
Written: (6168 days ago)

Incredibly cute, I think: http://www.cdolivet.net/editarea/editarea/exemples/exemple_full.html

(Er, OK. Maybe I have an unconventional understanding of "cute".)

998082 Link to this entry
Written about Monday 2007-12-10
Written: (6192 days ago)

Next in thread: 998096, 998143, 998177

The Fine Art of Fidgeting by Andrea: http://qw88nb88.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/the-fine-art-of-fidgeting/

And, just for fun and completely unrelated: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9vujyArcG4
(I couldn't believe those were the original lyrics at first)

990031 Link to this entry
Written about Wednesday 2007-11-07
Written: (6226 days ago)

Next in thread: 990102

Information R/evolution http://youtube.com/watch?v=-4CV05HyAbM
A Vision of Students Today http://youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

Brilliant videos. Sound not required.

And their website: http://www.mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/

985610 Link to this entry
Written about Monday 2007-10-22
Written: (6241 days ago)

Next in thread: 985642, 985650, 985679

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

3700 so far... Studying biology and reading dictionaries and Snape-centric fanfiction seems to help quite a bit ;)

984339 Link to this entry
Written about Wednesday 2007-10-17
Written: (6246 days ago)

And another disturbing one: http://www.phillymag.com/articles/features_he_said_they_said/page1

984251 Link to this entry
Written about Tuesday 2007-10-16
Written: (6247 days ago)

Inspiring: http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/other/175

Sad, yet amusing: http://slashdot.org/articles/07/10/16/207205.shtml

Disturbing: http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20071012_Jill_Porter___Hooker_raped_and_robbed_-_by_justice_system_.html

983191 Link to this entry
Written about Friday 2007-10-12
Written: (6251 days ago)

Next in thread: 983220

Allergic folks, rejoice! (Maybe.)

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12765&feedId=online-news_rss20

The logged in version