Comment Re:long-form reporting...deep investigative report (Score 1) 96
The last thing that I want to do when I get home is stare at a screen for the 40 minute it takes to read an article that is as long as this one.
I found this earlier today:
http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/8uffa/online_journalism_a_few_years_ago_vs_today_pic/
The real gems are the comments on how to improve your online readability with bookmarklets that change font & backgrounds.
Submission + - What a Texas town can teach us about health care. (newyorker.com)
rs79 writes: "From The New Yorker:
The greatest threat to Americas fiscal health is not Social Security, President Barack Obama said in a March speech at the White House. Its not the investments that weve made to rescue our economy during this crisis. By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nations balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. Its not even close.
"Our countrys health care is by far the most expensive in the world."
"McAllen (texas) calls itself the Square Dance Capital of the World. Lonesome Dove was set around here.
"McAllen has another distinction, too: it is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. Only Miamiwhich has much higher labor and living costsspends more per person on health care. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns.""
"McAllen (texas) calls itself the Square Dance Capital of the World. Lonesome Dove was set around here.
"McAllen has another distinction, too: it is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. Only Miamiwhich has much higher labor and living costsspends more per person on health care. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns.""
Submission + - Passenger Uses iPhone to Tape TSA Harassment 2
crypTeX writes: Ron Paul supporter and Campaign for Liberty staffer Steve Bierfeldt used an iPhone to record the TSA interrogation that arose from having just under $5000 in his carry-on bag. His responses to their questions are a textbook example of how to respond when the TSA takes you in for an unwarranted conversation.
Comment Re:Pictures? (Score 1) 54
Comment Re:The ultimate irony (Score 1) 399
I thought the post was insightful. However it leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
I took the overall message as "You reap what you sow."
There's folks who carefully sort and organize their photo albums, print hard copies, and spend a lot of time & money doing so.
And others who don't...
It's the same story for other important data backups and security. The number of times there's a front page story on some huge database theft/loss/etc is scary.
He could've also meant that photography is generally a pointless waste of time.
Well, the demand exists, at least.
However on a personal note, I do enjoy digital cameras simply because I no longer worry about "wasting film". I take more shots (extra angles, playing around) and have the luxury of deleting them later if they turn out poor.
I took the overall message as "You reap what you sow."
There's folks who carefully sort and organize their photo albums, print hard copies, and spend a lot of time & money doing so.
And others who don't...
It's the same story for other important data backups and security. The number of times there's a front page story on some huge database theft/loss/etc is scary.
He could've also meant that photography is generally a pointless waste of time.
Well, the demand exists, at least.
However on a personal note, I do enjoy digital cameras simply because I no longer worry about "wasting film". I take more shots (extra angles, playing around) and have the luxury of deleting them later if they turn out poor.
Submission + - Scientists to scale up quantum data breakthrough (itnews.com.au)
bfire writes: Researchers have found a way to simplify the manipulation of light for quantum computing applications and say they will develop the concept further to show it can scale. The research letter, published in Nature Photonics, "experimentally" proved the use of quantum or optical entanglement to convey larger amounts of data. Until now, the amount of information that could be conveyed was limited by levels of complexity — you needed to increase the number of nonclassical light sources, splitters and receivers each time you wanted to add another channel of information. The breakthrough means optical entanglement can be more simply scaled up to convey information across multiple channels.
Submission + - Blogger Arraigned on Incitement Charge
Hugh Pickens writes: "Associated Press reports that a judge has arraigned Harold "Hal" Turner in Hartford Superior Court on a felony charge of inciting injury to persons after the 47-year-old former radio talk show host urged his blog readers to "take up arms" against Connecticut lawmakers and suggested government officials should "obey the Constitution or die." Turner was angry over legislation that would have given lay members of Roman Catholic churches more control over their parishes' finances and promised readers he would release state officials' home addresses. Turner also wrote that Catholics should "put down this tyranny by force" and "I suspect we have enough bullets" to stop any prosecutors, police officers or court officials. The crime Turner is charged with, inciting injury to persons or property, carries a maximum prison sentence of up to 10 years. Turner defended himself on his web site by saying that he "is not a citizen of Connecticut and he was not in Connecticut when he published his opinions on his blog" and that he may "find himself jailed literally for years, waiting to win under the clearly established federal case law." Turner's views have drawn scrutiny before. Two years ago, police in New Jersey beefed up security for four state Supreme Court justices whose addresses Turner revealed "to show they can be gotten to" after the court ruled that gay couples were entitled to the same rights as married couples. According to Turner's entry in Wikipedia, Turner is a white nationalist and white supremacist who promotes antisemitism, opposes the existence of the state of Israel, and denies the Holocaust."
Submission + - US city's right to build own network upheld
BcNexus writes: Here's the latest development in a fight pitting a telecommunication company against government competition. The telco TDS took its fight all the way to the state supreme court because it thought he city had no right to serve people's internet, voice and television needs with its own network, but has failed.
Submission + - Watch TV on your satnav? (pcpro.co.uk) 2
Barence writes: "Satnav firm Mio is launching a device with an integrated TV tuner. The Mio Spirit range includes a digital television tuner that is intended to be used "during breaks in the journey or at their final destination." However, safety campaigners fear there's little to stop the television being used at the wheel. When the system is first turned on a warning message is displayed, telling the user not to watch television while driving. If this is ignored, a secondary warning message kicks in if the GPS chip detects the vehicle is moving at more than 5mph. But that's it!"
Submission + - Concrete Comparisons of Theora vs. Mpeg-4 (stanford.edu)
icknay writes: "With the upcoming Firefox 3.5 and HTML5 video, there's natural interest in Theora vs. Mpeg-4, but without much evidence either way. Here's clips encoded at various rates to provide concrete comparison between Theora and Mpeg-4. Theora performs decently, but requires more bandwidth than Mpeg-4 (although this is an 1.1alpha release of Theora and Theora has a much better license than Mpeg-4). The quality comparisons are very subjective, but you can try the clips yourself and see how it breaks down. There was an earlier discussion about this but which lacked much concrete evidence. (disclosure: it's my page)"
Submission + - NYT claims Wikipedia steals its content (nytimes.com)
David Gerard writes: "Noam Cohen of the New York Times, who regularly covers the Wikipedia beat, writing about Wikipedia links in Google News results, slips in a note from his employer: "So, in essence, many Wikipedia articles are another way that the work of news publications is quickly condensed and reused without compensation." I do press for Wikipedia in the UK, and every journalist I've spoken to in the past four years uses Wikipedia as their handy universal backgrounder. But there's a curious lack of donations from the NYT to Wikimedia for their use of Wikipedia. And look at the Maurice Jarre example. So what does the NYT expect to gain from this? Sympathy? Buckets of cash? A large bill from WMF?"
Submission + - Wiki to get and share cable pin-outs and connector (allpinouts.com)
Nicola Asuni writes: "Created with the same MediaWiki software that was developed for the Wikipedia project, AllPinouts.org (http://www.allpinouts.org) is a wiki that allows users to get and share information about hardware interfaces of modern and obsolete hardware, including pinouts of ports, expansion slots, and other connectors of computers and different electronic devices (i.e. Cellular Phones, GPS, PDA, Game Consoles, etc.). All text is available under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) and may be distributed or linked accordingly.
Pinout or pin-out is a term used in electronics to describe how an electrical cable is wired, or the function of each wire (pin) in a connector. Due to the wide variety of applications and manufacturers, a wide selection of electrical connectors exists with different types and numbers of contacts or pins. The pinout of a connector identifies each individual pin, which is critical when creating, repairing or hacking cable assemblies and adapters.
For more information: http://www.allpinouts.org/"
Pinout or pin-out is a term used in electronics to describe how an electrical cable is wired, or the function of each wire (pin) in a connector. Due to the wide variety of applications and manufacturers, a wide selection of electrical connectors exists with different types and numbers of contacts or pins. The pinout of a connector identifies each individual pin, which is critical when creating, repairing or hacking cable assemblies and adapters.
For more information: http://www.allpinouts.org/"
Submission + - Planning Begins for World's Largest Solar Plant (inhabitat.com)
lilbridge writes: "This next month 20 German Blue Chip companies will gather to discuss plans and investment needs for what would be the world's largest solar plant. Because solar radiation in Northern Africa is so much higher than in Europe, investors are seriously considering a massive long-term investment to pipe in clean renewable energy with high voltage DC lines. In fact if just 0.3% of Northern Africa was covered in concentrating solar power, all of Europe could be powered off solar energy."
Submission + - WP's Online Exclusive Angers Print Readers
Hugh Pickens writes: "The decision by the Washington Post to publish an article exclusively online has angered many readers who still pay for the print edition of the newspaper and highlighted the thorny issues newspaper editors still face in serving both print and online audiences. The 7,000 word story about the slaying in 2006 of Robert Wone, a young lawyer who was found stabbed to death in a luxurious townhouse in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington where a "polyamorous family" of three men lived, is the sort of long-form reporting that newspaper editors say still justifies print in the digital age and many editors agree that print is still the place to publish deep investigative reporting, in part to give certain readers a reason to keep paying for news. "If you're doing long form, you should do it in print," said newspaper consultant Mark Potts. "This just felt like a nice two-part series that they didn't have the room to put in the paper, so they just threw it on the Web." Editors at The Post say they considered publishing the article in print, but they concluded it was too long at a time when the paper, like most others, was in dire financial straits and trying to scale back newsprint costs. "Newspapers are going broke in part because news can be read, free of charge, on the Internet.," wrote one reader in a letter to the editor. "As a nearly lifelong reader of The Post, I could not read this article in the paper I pay for and subscribe to; instead I came on it accidentally while scrolling online for business reasons.""
