A couple of recent guest posts have discussed the value of 4 year and online degrees as compared to learning on your own. While I’ve added some thoughts to the previous 2 posts, I wanted to clarify some thing in a post of my own.
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Today, January 18th, 2012 sites all over the internet are blacking out to protest SOPA and PIPA, two US bills in Congress aimed at fighting piracy and copyright infringement. Neither bill is written in a way to successfully achieve their goals. Instead the bills will threaten economic prosperity, online security, and freedom of expression.
I had thought of blacking out this site, but as it’s unlikely a site the internet would miss for the day, I thought I could do more by keeping the site up and pointing you to the video and accompanying description below.
You’ve may have seen it already, though please watch it you haven’t. It’s only a few minutes long it will explain better than I can the dangers in the proposed bills.
To learn more and take action please visit Stop American Censorship at americancensorship.org/.
Thanks.
Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa
PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”
The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.
Happy Thanksgiving to all in the U.S. today and happy Thursday to everyone else.
If you’ve been reading here for a few years you know that every year at this time I take a week or so vacation and visit family in New York. You might also remember that we typically take a trip into Manhattan and I take some pictures that I share here.
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We’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, to be able to get the best of both, to make extremely advanced products from a technology point of view, but also have them be intuitive, easy to use, fun to use, so that they really fit the users — the users don’t have to come to them, they come to the user.
— Steve Jobs
As many of you know a couple of weeks ago I purchased a new MacBook Air as a replacement for the MacBook Pro I’ve been using the last few years. Some of you were interested in knowing what I thought of the Air.
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Yesterday I woke up, started the coffee maker, and proceeded to open the lid on my MacBook Pro. Until that moment it was like the start of most every other morning. The fates had a different plan for the day. My laptop decided yesterday was a good day to die.
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Every year around the Thanksgiving holidays I visit my family in New York. While much of the time is the usual visiting family and friends, we do end up taking in a few interesting sights and I always have my camera with me. I don’t claim to be a great photographer, but I sometimes manage to end up with a few decent pictures.
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Once upon a time, the Pony Express was the fastest way to deliver trusted information.
On Tuesday, November 6, 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. The next day a Pony Express rider departed from Fort Kearny, Nebraska with the election results and headed for Fort Churchill, Nevada. The two forts marked endpoints on different telegraph lines.
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Last weekend I finally bought an iPad (at least for me as I write this. 2 weekends ago as you’re reading) and thought I’d share some initial thoughts about using it so far as well as some thoughts about how I can see myself using it a few months down the line.
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You know you have a great product that people will love. Now if you only had a banner ad to attract people to your site. Maybe it’s your logo that needs an update so it speaks more to your market. Perhaps you’re all set online, but when someone asks for your business card you sheepishly admit you don’t have one.
If any of the above fits you then I have good news. Prova.fm is offering a free custom design to two lucky Van SEO Design readers.
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