Toronto the Good: City reaches 'tentative deal' (not an actual contract) with outside workers, but not even that with insidees

Update: Toronto's striking inside and outside workers reached tentative agreements with the city Monday, deals that could end a lengthy garbage strike in Canada's largest city.

Officials with CUPE Local 79 and TCEU (CUPE) Local 416 have confirmed ratification votes will take place on Wednesday, said Toronto Mayor David Miller. Union officials said pickets would remain in place until the deals are approved. ["Toronto's striking workers reach tentative agreements, says CBC News.ca]

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[Earlier today, I wrote and quoted as follows: The latest from the adversarial labour-relations that has stunk up Toronto, having left us to stew in our health-hazard city once again.

Allison Hanes, Canwest News Service (Jul 27,2k9) via canada.com, says:

An end may be close for Toronto's 36-day civic strike after the president of the union for striking outdoor workers announced early Monday morning that a tentative deal has been struck with the city. ...

However, Mark Ferguson, president of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 416, said the strike for 6,000 outdoor members will not end until a contract is reached for its sister union representing indoor workers.

He urged the city to "shift its focus" and get down to business with Local 79.

Toronto civic workers walked off the job on June 22.

One of the most noticeable disruptions caused by the strike has been the halting of garbage service. Mountains of garbage piled up all around the city with city dump sites being picketed by union workers.

Elsewhere in southern Ontario, the city of Windsor on Friday ended a 101-day strike of 1,800 unionized city workers, ratifying a four-year deal. Windsor had also had their garbage service suspended during the strike.

National Post
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

Not all public employees shoud be permitted to strike, they shoud have special arbitration boards assigned to decide on issue of wages and benefits, but not on health and safety which is provided for at law outside the Labour Relations Act, in the Health and Safety Act.

Toronto the Good: Garbage stinkpot: "Union sets deadline for deal"

Toronto Star--largest daily-newspaper circulation in town, but always struggling to keep its eroding subscription circulation and its ad revenues up--carries an article, "Union sets deadline for deal" (Jul 24,2k9) by Donovan Vincent. Of course, if you've followed the Toronto the Good series on this rW Backpage, you're aware perhaps that, after working since January with no contract, city workers went on strike. The employees are in a legal-strike period, and are witholding their human labor in order to hike up wages and benefits.

In the Canadian nomenklatura of union establishments, there are two unions on strike. One, is CUPE Local 416, whose president is Mark Ferguson; the other is CUPE Local 79.

416 is "The union representing city of Toronto outside workers," and it "says a settlement in the five-week-old strike must be achieved by midnight Sunday or negotiations will be over."

416's ultimatum woud mean that our city's garbage-removers woud be removing their negotiators from the table, ceasing to meet faces-to-faces the team that negotiates for city management and, ultimately, for the mayor.

79 groups over 20,000 City of Toronto inside workers -- 11,600 full-time inside and 12,750 part-time.

This difference between working inside and outside is so relative, that it pales into something conceptually weak when compared with the differences among these very workers regarding life-philosophy, and sometimes work-philosophy. Why not let workers freely nominate such qualified representation as they want (freedom of assocation and representation), so that each kind of viewpoint among workers on union representation can vote for the union of one's choice.

The adversarial system of labor-relations has produced a stinking city (rat-infested, I'm sure). At the same time, warnings have been issued of diseases like Swine Flu and H1N1 becoming decidely chancier with the garbage build-up, undisposed of.

Adversary anti-pluralist union/employer conflict has resulted in 33 days of plague-encouraging desperation by the citizenry not parties to their side, or this way of settling issue of public employment, paid for by taxpayers who have to live in the filth and cantagion that the unions and city management are toying with. A shame on all!

Technics: Microsoft: The software manufacturer at last blinks in the glare of Europe's exam of its products there

In an ongoing battle with Europe's sales regulators, Microsoft has made a gesture toward internal relaxation of its self-established proprietary r+ts.

Microsoft proposed including a "ballot screen" that would make it easy for Windows 7 users to install a competing Web browser, set it as the default and disable Internet Explorer, the European Commission said in a statement. PC makers would also be able to install competing Web browsers and disable IE.

"The Commission welcomes this proposal, and will now investigate its practical effectiveness in terms of ensuring genuine consumer choice," it said.

This particular infobit (perhaps even factoid) has been revealed by James Niccolai of IDG News Service via PCWorld, "Microsoft offers choice of browsers to satisfy EU."

Technotes, by Technowlb

If Microsoft (MS) makes a serious accomodation to the European market for personal computers, the consumers of said market who woud want MS Windows operating system/s but don't want to take on any version of the failed browser series Internet Explorer (a browser-bias that Microsoft has traditionally imposed), it woud seem a major precedent is about to be set that coud result in backflare demand for the same freedom of choice among MS products in the USA.

Retrospect: Obit: Michael Jackson, RIP

Who stole the soul of the boy from Indiana?

Michael Jackson has gone from boy wonder to circus freak in his 40-year career, with stints en route as 'king of pop', messiah figure and public enemy. How did it happen, and can we expect yet another incarnation when he takes to the stage in London for his comeback concerts next month? Peter Conrad revisits the life and times of pop's Peter Pan (The Observer, Jun14,2k9).

rW has chosen to point to an evaluation of Michael's life and career, on the eve of his planned appearance in London UK, before the artist's death. The circumstances surrounding the death are presently being investigated.

In the mercies and grace of God, may the aging star now Rest in Peace.

Toronto the Good: Toronto the Fair: Oh, the stink of the garbage, City garbage workers on strike

CTV.ca reports on the deplorable strike that is backing up garbage everywhere in Toronto at present. Maybe the strike is valid, but I doubt it. Nevertheless, the law (based on the adversary system of industrial relations, a holdover from the bad old days) almost requires these periodic strikes, in this case especially because the workers have gone without a contract of any kind for some months. Bad practice by the city, to which the union has responded by waiting for the heat of the summer when the immediate consequences of backed-up garbage affects not just residents alone, but visitors and tourists too.

Some city residents angry over how the city has made Christie Pits park a temporary dumping ground say they've obtained a document that shows the city will be expanding such dumps elsewhere.

Govind Rao of the Friends of Christie Pits told ctvtoronto.ca on Monday that his group sent an inquiry about what chemicals are being used to control insects and vermin at the temporary dump sites, one of which is in a hockey rink at Christie Pits, which is north of Bloor Street West and west of Christie Street.

The response came from the pest control company. "In their response, by mistake, they sent us ... a list of all the different dumpsites," he said.

It's time for the province of Ontario which controls labour relations, to dispose of the obsolescent adversary worldview in industrial relations. The province should pluralize the government-related unions, and put the Christian Labour Association of Canada on the secret ballot for garbage workers to elect representation based on labour-relations values (workview), elect representation proportionately from all the union centrals the variously-minded workers choose.

Further Research:

Will strike save city money?

Entertainment: TV: Gossip news targetting celebrities had source in hospital where Michael Jackson died

Television scooped the Jackson-decease story, beating the actual pronouncing of the death by the officiating medical doctor/s. A n+tly gossip TV program apparently had a 6-minute lead, and when TMZ.com went public with its obit announcement, their report dominated the the rest of TV, the newswire services, and the print media. (In the USA, at least.)TMZ.com is now the hottest Hollywood celebrity gossip website on the planet. So hot, in fact, that when it broke the news of Michael Jackson's death last week, its world exclusive popped up online six minutes before the singer actually died.

For its many critics this was confirmation that the website, which, amid endless surveillance videos of minor celebs parking their cars and walking to their front doors, brought you exclusives on Mel Gibson's antisemitic ravings at a traffic cop, Alec Baldwin's brutal mobile phone rant at his 11-year-old daughter and the contents of Anna Nicole Smith's bedside table the night she died (Slim Fast and chewing gum), plays fast and loose with the truth.

But for TMZ, the explanation was simple. By the time Jackson was officially declared dead, at 2.26pm Los Angeles time last Thursday, one of the site's sources within the corridors of the UCLA Medical Centre (it has a vast network that blankets the city) had already tipped it off.

Michael Jackson dead was the scoop of a lifetime for any media outlet, and the apogee of the four-year-old celebrity-obsessed site that boasts its snippets are "even more fascinating than the hype". In that time, TMZ (the name stands for thirty-mile zone, the area of central LA thickly populated with stars), which is as voyeristic as it is speedy, has become one of the world's most quoted sources of entertainment news, with rival sites, TV channels and traditional gossip columns, such as the New York Post's infamous Page Six, quoting it regularly./blockquote>Many folks are taking the singer / dancer's death hard.

Jackson's death finalizes his appetite for scandal. May he rest in peace. The surveys and evaluations of his contribution to American pop music, the rise of music videos, and the history of scandal in Hollywood will continue for a long time, as the population shakes his iconic function from its appreciation.

Celebrations: Gay Pride Day: Display of power by a minority still scared by memories of painful past treatment

Today is "Gay Pride Day." I'm homo but don't include myself within the Gay movement, nor do I use its dubious term to identify myself. After all, Christopher Isherwood said, so many decades ago, that ascribing to oneself the ascription "Gay" makes us all sound like "Bliss ninnies."

Internet: Semantics: 'ReadWriteWeb' explains semantic tagging service

Semantic Tagging Service Zigtag (Finally!) Launches

by Sarah Perez (ReadWriteWeb,Dec29,2k8)

It was two years ago that we first heard of Zigtag, a service that promised to "transform how people search, save and share knowledge & information." Now, after a nine-month private beta, this semantic tagging service has finally launched. But is Zigtag's bookmarking tool intelligent enough for 2009?

About Zigtag

For those of you who don't know, Zigtag is another entry in the social bookmarking collection of tools. Like delicious, Diigo, and Ma.gnolia, Zigtag helps you categorize your bookmarks and share them with others. When Zigtag went into development, bookmarking was all the rage. The company's goal was to make bookmarking easier by adding a layer of semantics to the tags themselves.

Zigtag, you see, understands the meaning of the words you assign to a tag. When you tag to a page, Zigtag actually assigns it meaning rather than just a simple word. If that sounds revolutionary...well, that's because it is. Sort of.

Not the Only Semantic Tagging Service

Because of Zigtag's slow progress, they can no longer claim to be the only semantic tagging application available today. Another, Faviki, also offers an intelligent tagging service based on structured data. Both services attempt to address the problem of user-generated tags. That is, even though what you tag "NY" may be the same link that I tagged "New York," no bookmarking service ever knew the tags were related.

Technotes, by Technowlb

Zigtag and Faviki attack this problem in different ways. Faviki suggests tags for you to use, not from a community of users and their tagging history, but from structured information extracted from DBpedia, a community-maintained database created by extracting information from Wikipedia.

Zigtag, however, eschews suggestions and lets you tag items as you wish. It doesn't matter what personal system you use for tagging (one word, two words, underscores, plus signs, etc.) because Zigtag understands the meaning of the tags. In Zigtag, a link tagged "New York" is returned along with other links tagged "New_York." Zigtag also understands that one tag may have different meanings and groups those items accordingly. For example, there's a New York and Company clothing store and a New York in England that may have been tagged "new york." That level of understanding is something that's unique to Zigtag and sets it apart from other bookmarking services.

Thanks to the service's ability to understand meaning, Zigtag users can join groups related a shared interest. Since Zigtag knows what you mean by your tags, it is, in theory, easier to find links you would be interested in on Zigtag than with other bookmarking services.

This blog has experimented with numerous tagging schemes, but always on the fly and without a full review of past schemes, which m+t have harvested more consistency. The idea of Zigtag, however, comes into its own around a given community of users within the general community of Zigtaggers, the more narrow community able to stabilize protocols and usages, even using an in-group's jargon, technical terms, and coinages--NuSpels, if you cawt the kind uv thing I have in mind.

Technics: MicroSoft's concession to Interoperability and its failure to provide in IE8

<>span style="font-weight:bold;">PressPass interviewed MS's Bob Muglia, senior vice president, Server and Tools Division, MicroSoft Corporation. "New Microsoft Interoperability Principles Ensure Open Connections and Promote Data Portability" Feb21,2k8.

Q&A: Bob Muglia, senior vice president, Server and Tools Division, discusses Microsoft’s new interoperability principles and the steps the company is taking to increase the openness of its products.

Asking the questions (only the first Q of the interview is included here) PressPass: Can you start by providing a high-level overview of today’s announcement?

Technotes, by Technowlb

Muglia: Sure. The announcement covers broad and important changes to our technology and business practices designed to increase the openness of our high-volume products to make it easier to develop highly-interoperable information systems. The changes are embodied in

Four interoperability principles to which we have committed [ourselves as a corporation].

First, to provide an open connection to our high-volume enterprise products;

second, promote data portability;

third, continue to enhance our support for industry standards;

and finally, to create more opportunities to strengthen dialogue and engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.

Together, these principles significantly change the way we share information about our technologies and products. These changes help increase choice and opportunity for developers, partners, customers and competitors, which is one of our top long-term goals.

In this general context, IE Blog offers an extremely engaging article on IE Interoperability. Discussing "Quirks mode" and "Stamdards mode, this source offers a pithhy remark worthy of reflection: "Each version of each browser has its own Standards mode, because each version of each browser improves on its web standards support. There’s Safari 3’s Standards mode, Firefox 2’s Standards mode, IE6’s Standards mode, and IE7’s Standards mode, and they’re all different. We want to make IE8’s Standards mode much, much better than IE7’s Standards mode."

I finally found the actual webpage for MicroSoft's Interoperability Principles: Interoperability Principles -- Open Connections, Standards Support, Data Portability Published: February 21, 2008 | Updated: February 21, 2008a>.

Arts Profile: Music: Singer/rapper/poet who makes an artform of cursing and 'talkin' dirty' ...

A protégé of Dr. Dre, rapper Eminem emerged in 1999 as one of the most controversial rappers to ever grace the genre. Using his biting wit and incredible skills to vent on everything from his unhappy childhood to his contempt for the mainstream media, his success became the biggest crossover success the genre had seen since Dre's solo debut seven years earlier. The controversy over his lyrics was the best publicity any musician could afford, and being the first Caucasian rapper to make a significant impact in years may have given him a platform not afforded to equally talented African-American rappers. A gifted producer as well, his talents always seemed overshadowed by his media presence, which was a mix between misunderstood genius and misogynistic homophobe. Both may be true, but his message spoke to legions of disaffected youth who had few role models in the rap world who could relate to the white lower-class experience.

Pop Music, by Earfix

He was born Marshall Mathers in St. Joseph, Missouri, USA

Read More of this splendid bio at Amazon MP3 ("music downloads for any device"), plus a complete discography of E's recorded albums, and an online marketplace with shopping cart for purchase of his MP3 Amazon releases, no doubt a lead for attracting buyers to the new Amazon website that's directly in competition with Apple's iTunes -- my past first choice for buying music downloads hitherto. Here on Amazon MP3, Eminem is a 'spotl+t artist for May' and he's #4 on the list of "25 artists to watch in May," says the Amazon MP3 merchandising text, the whole page indeed and many linked to it on this website in the season of its initial marketing.

Did I buy, you ask, a US$8.99-priced version of E's recently-released new hip-hop curse-fest, Release? -- No, but I did go for the cheapest version, that option being one of three; my cheapo option I later noticed (in a post-purchase insite) was the only one not labelled "Explicit" (these two versions or purchase-portals cost a buck more ... so, I began to wonder whether my version is full of blips or instead of that something like, let's say, sound-emptied dead moments, excisions, but even without such distortions to cover up or erase out precisely the over-the-line words of Eminem's vocabulary and metaphory, I ask, can you actually achieve a mature appreciation/critque without experiencing explicitly the way (and with the words he chose in performance and recording, all the words before the blips or cuts removed them, those words...)--can you attain as good an aesthetic experience of what Eminem has to offer?, his art such as it be.

But I should not shy away from my inability to make an online purchase of Release due to the fact as I belatedly noticed--only USA residents can buy online at Amazon MP3. Hrrrumpppffft!

Principium Consumers Hub

On purchase matters, you (residents in the USA) can buy individual songs and slowly collect the songs of the tracks of a given album, single by single, if you want. Just to give you a picture of how Amazon MP3 is competing with iTunes.

Technotes, by Technowlb

Sports: Soccer: Chicago Fire trashes Toronto Football Club

. "Toronto FC midfielder Amado Guevara and Chicago Fire midfielder Mike Banner battle for the ball during the second half in Toronto on Saturday. (Pix: Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press)." Paul Attfield in Globe & Mail

Sports: Basketball: LA's Lakers vs. Houston Rockets

Kobe Bryant, star and guard for the Lakers' basketball team, in unguarded moment chewing his game-shirt while team heads into a fall -- Houston Rockets 99 - Lakers 87 (May16,2k9, L A Times). One fan called it a "fiasco."

This was the sixth game in a seven-game series of the SemiFinals for the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association.

The winner of this physical, sometimes-testy series will advance to the conference finals to face the Denver Nuggets, who've been resting since eliminating Dallas on Wednesday night.

Kobe Bryant admits it's a mystery why the Lakers have been so wildly inconsistent against a team few expected would reach the second round, let alone push the top seed in the West to a Game 7.

So, it's onward to the finals against the Denver Nuggets, who won entry to the Finals by defeating Dallas.

Arts: Poetry: Poetry Out Loud awards national winners of competition

"Poetry Spoken Out Loud Gaining Popularity in US," by Deborah Block (May14,2k9, Voice of America).

On Tuesday evening at the White House, President Obama hosted an event celebrating poetry, music and the spoken word. In the United States, there has been a resurgence of interest in poetry, especially poems that are recited out loud. For the past several years, thousands of high school students have been learning about poetry through memorization and performance in a program called Poetry Out Loud. The top performer from each state competes in a national championship. It took place recently in Washington DC.

Wiyaka wins competition

This is the Poetry Out Loud champion from the western state of South Dakota who recently competed in the 2009 national competition in Washington. Wiyaka is a Native American whose family name is His Horse is Thunder. Her father is an Indian chief and she is related to Sitting Bull, a famous chief in the 19th century who fought to protect his tribe's land. Native American tribes are known for storytelling, and Wiyaka says she is keeping that tradition alive, in her own way, by reciting poetry to audiences.

"I just want them to feel something when they hear it," she said.

Rebirth of art form

John Barr, head of the Poetry Foundation says much of the poetry written during the past 25 years was difficult to understand, and the public lost interest.

"Fine poems were being written but they were not the kind you would read in a newspaper," he said. "We're trying to get good poetry back in front of the general public."

The resurgence of recited poetry was influenced by two modern trends, beginning with poetry slams that started in the late 1980s. They are usually held in music clubs, where people can recite their own poems. The other influence is rap in hip-hop music.

More than reciting a poem

Students who compete in Poetry Out Loud do not recite their own poetry. They choose from a long list of poems.

Kareem Sayegh from the midwestern state of Illinois came in third in the national competition. His parents are from Egypt and he says he has been influenced by Egyptian poetry.

Kareem says he makes subtle gestures when he recites poems, since the contestants lose points if they are overly dramatic. "I just use my hand lightly and and then it becomes somewhat clearer," Kareem said.

Will Farley from Virginia recited a poem by one of his favorite poets, Langston Hughes, a well known African-American poet in the last century. When he was a university student in New York, Hughes wrote, "Theme for English B."

Will's interpretation of that poem helped him take the top prize. "Before Poetry Out Loud, poetry didn't mean much to me and Poetry Out Loud changed that," Farley said. "For me, poetry is alive, something I can connect with and feel, and express myself with."

Will won a $20,000 college scholarship, which he says will help him with his future ambitions. In the words of Langston Hughes, "Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly."

Words: Meanings: A contentious word, that "factoid," to be sure, Bernie ...what's that you say?

As entitled, I'm repeating my immediately preceding blog-entry, but only its lower half (whereas the upper half, the actual factoid in review has since been posted to topleft [sidebar top] on refWrite frontpage). Now, I'm floating-up (Frye) the lower half of the previous entry, and I shall say why after quoting myself, even at the risk of repetitiousness:

I developed a little tidbit now on the frontpage at the top of the r+ts+d s+dbar, where I repristinate the word "factoid." Why bother? I bother because I heard the word defamed on TV--the Fox worldwide cablenews show that recently carried Bernard Goldberg, media critic, former CBS reporter, a serious guy I otherwise respect for his analysis and opinions ... he made "factoid" to mean a fake "fact," a fact so weak or sickly or so fuzzy in meaning that it just did not qualify as a genuine fact (at least, I guess, in the professional journalistic way that said defamer claims to represent). Ah well, I think and use the word otherwise in an otherwise world he can't discern, apparently. Thus, I've already copied the refWrite factoid presented above, to the spot where the former, usual pen&ink image has been pushed below the new factoid spot. I'm sorry that the reader must put up with the lack of proper aligment of all the items on my little list.

The point being, what is a fact?, and what possible constructive meanings could "factoid" have?

I shall have to find a visual semiote (other than speech-bound typography) for this new series on fact, factoids, and manufacting.

Technics: Blogging refWrite: a factoid is not necessarily a bad thing

Factoid refWrite

Here's a complex decontextualized ("floated" when dissociatively quoted, litcrit Northop Frye, The Anatomy of Criticism, or for that matter Paul Ricoeur's Metaphor) but that takes me far afield from this list of computing systems with which refWrite readers connected to us:

MicroSoft Window .... 1078.... 70.05%
Apple .............................. 326.... 21.18%
Linux/Unix ...................... 89.... 5.78%
Other Systems ................ 35.... 2.27%
Mobile Systems .............. 11.... 0.71%

May9,2k9

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I developed the little tidbit above, where I repristinate the word "factoid," because I heard it defamed on TV--the Fox worldwide cable news show that recently carried Bernard Goldberg, media critic, former CBS reporter ... he made "factoid" to mean a fake "fact," a fact so weak or sickly or so fuzzy in meaning that it just did not qualify as a genuine fact (at least, I guess, in the professional journalistic way that said defamer claims to represent). Ah well, I think and use the word otherwise in an otherwise world he can't discern, apparently. Thus, I've already copied the refWrite factoid presented above, to the spot where the usual pen&ink image has been pushed below the new factoid spot. I'm sorry that the reader must put up with the lack of proper aligment of all the items on my little list.

Movies: Box Office: new Star Trek movie whammos the box office this weekend. But here, it's raining

I've never viewed a Star Trek flick in a movie theatre, or in the last several years, any other film either. I've come to enjoy several of the space-trekking series of episodes on TV as well replays of the movies, but not the early one/s where William Shatner stars. I like/d Spock, but he's wearing thin in the reruns (TV series) and replays (movies on TV) especially. For some unknown reason, Star Wars movies seem far more durable to me; that flick is scheduled to be "episoded" in 2010, but these will be built around minor characters that appeared in the story of the movies. So much for the chief theme-competition between Treks and Wars.

Back on the main track:

J.J. Abrams' Star Trek is on its way to boldly going where no Star Trek movie has gone before: to a huge opening weekend. The film bowed at 7 p.m. Thursday night and grossed an impressive $7 million in 3,849 locations. Sure, those numbers were boosted by the geeky fanboys who were salivating to catch the movie as soon as possible. Still, such a great start should help propel Star Trek's weekend gross to as high as $75 million. Quite impressive for a franchise that was considered dead a few years ago.

Nicole Smith so reports on Hollywood Insider (May8,2k9).

Movies, by FlickSleuth

Another report forecasts a weekend take even larger than what Smith forecasts.

If early comments (there are lots on the cited webpage) are a good indication, the new movie takes the brand into another dimension.

In passing, I should add that on TV I've found the series Andromeda often engaging, but onot always. I could stand only so much of the series The Battlestar Galactica but it mercifully substituted the old-stock f-words and derivatives to the neologism "frikkin'," which was a good move (a substitution word I want to discuss further later in regard to ths Galactica TV context). It's released its finale episode, its finale. Good riddance. I'm hoping for a lot more from the new trekkie flick, but of course it could be years before, presumably, it moves from the theatres to DVD rentals or TV.

Update:

Star Trek starts off fast.... -- Laremy Legel "Movie Review: JJ Abrams gets it right with new 'Star Trek'" (Film.com via seattlepi.com)

slows down a bit for a few laughs, and then furiously culminates ... but not before setting up the franchise for the next decade. At its Treky heart, this is an origin story: how Captain Kirk got to the Enterprise, and how his good pals Scotty, Spock, Uhura, "Bones" McCoy, Sulu, and Chekov came to join him on that iconic vessel. We're transported to a time before the entire Shatner mythologies, with Chris Pine taking the helm as the new Kirk. He's very, very good in this film, far better than I've seen him, and his performance here gives me a lot of hope for the compulsory sequels.

Sports: Baseball: Drug penalty of suspension and 7 millions fine hit LA Dodger's superbatter, Manny Rodriques

Dave Sheinin, Washington Post Staff Writer, (May 7, 2K9), "Dodger's Ramirez Suspended 50 Games."

The riveting, uplifting story of Manny Ramirez's transformation from cancerous malcontent in Boston to dreadlocked, beloved eccentric in Los Angeles was derailed today by the news that the Dodgers slugger has been suspended 50 games for violating baseball's policy against performance-enhancing drugs.

Sports / Major League Baseball, by Sportikos

The Sheinin artcle is a good read about a sad story. But the wealthy baseball player will payback 7 million, from a $25 million contract.

The Dodgers are in the lead with a record 13-game winning streak. "I'm sorry about this whole situation," the slugger said.

Music: Classical: I got an ad email from iTunes and impulse-bawt 27 Mozart Piano Concertos and am in heaven on earth

I'm listening to Piano Concerto #6 in B-Flat which has three movements (Allegro Aperto, Andante un Poco Adagio, and the final one to which I'm listening now Rondeau (Allegro), performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy & Philharmonia Orchestra, disk Mozart: The Piano Concertos. There are 27 concertos overall, most have 3 movements. These so far don't bolster the fictional image of Mozart in the movie Amadeus, so far these concertos are less frenetic by far than what the movie conveys--from enthusiastic young prodigy to driven old man writing masses for the dead, anticipating his own...perhaps.

These concertos are a different world, with an over-riding gentleness (how's that for a rather self-contradictory phrase).

Classical Music, by Museaos

Movies: Review: Questions to readers who've seen this film

A. O. Scott's movie-review article in New York Times (Feb18,2k9) discourses captivatingly on "Katyn" (2007). The director is Andrzek Wajda. Says reviewer Scott:

The first scene in “Katyn,” Andrzej Wajda’s solemn and searing new film, takes place on a bridge somewhere in Poland in mid-September 1939. The bridge is aswarm with people fleeing in opposite directions. Panicked families trying to escape the Germans, who invaded on the first of the month, collide with equally terrified compatriots coming from the eastern part of the country, scene of a recent Soviet intervention.

Scott has a wonderful write-up of an apparently-exemplary movie that reconstructs history to cast l+t on a horrible moment in a horrible war and crosscurrents of wars in Poland 1939. I was born a year later in July in the USA.

If you've seen the movie already, use the comment facility below to convey your impression of Wajda's Katyn (2007), briefly.

Had you heard of the Katyn Forest Massacre before you saw the movie?

Cinema, by Kinematographikos

Does the Polish Jewish minority population receive any focus in the movie?

Has the movie been released in DVD for rental?

Is the tone unrelenting? Is there any agreeable comic relief?

Make a comment in answer, please -- as O. A. Scott's movie review is so well written and so in awe of Wajda's cinematic achievement that he certainly leads me to seek more info. Where better to comment on recent movie, than here in refWrite Backpage?

Sports: Golf: Tiger Woods still struggling to get back to form after his knee-surgery

Mike Cranston AP Sports Writer (May3,2k9) gives us a glimpse of Tiger Woods' slow recovery:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When Tiger Woods shot a 30 on the front nine in a seven-under 65 in the opening round of the Quail Hollow Championship, he appeared poised to dominate on a tough course with a major-like feel.

But Woods was still working out the kinks in his fifth tournament back from knee surgery. Entering Sunday two shots out of the lead, Woods wasted several birdie chances and one eagle opportunity, closing with 10 straight pars for a 72.

He finished at 9-under 286, good for fourth place, two shots behind winner and buddy Sean O'Hair.

"I've been very pleased with some of my progress. I'm also not so pleased with some of it," Woods said. "It's been spotty, streaky. I just need to get a little more consistent."

Sports Note, by Sportikos

The gentleman sports hero may well turn out to be the all-time king of golf. At least, he's got a sporting chance.

Semiotics: Earth Day: photo set on a digital-page, juxtaposed to a text of Earth piety and politix

REALTORS.com photo (above, of course) and text (below)
for a particular Earth Day piety & politics.

The ad's message in textual form (alphabetized, fontized, written!--Roland Barthes); but, so texted, is precisely juxtapositioned to a quite different semiotic-medium (the medium being in this second case the digitization-driven graphics where a specific electrodigitally-designed picture in colours and occupying a specific number of pixels, to attract, "captivate" (Strauss), "shimmer" (Seerveld), "shiver" (Dorothy Day), to stimulate however fleetingly the human perceiver's imagination

Established in 1970 by then Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day began as a nationwide environmental protest against the abuses common with major industries at the time. The concerted effort rallied 20 million people, and led to the organization of the Environmental Protection Agency [USA Federal EPA]. Today, the focus of the Earth Day campaign centers around finding clean sources of energy to help create a healthy and diverse world for generations to come. As a homeowner, making a difference on Earth Day is easy and cost effective.

Keeping in line with the Earth Day campaign’s clean energy iniatitives, take a look at Nicole Maxwell’s list of energy-saving tips to see if there are ways you can cut down on your household energy waste and on your energy bill:

“Happy Earth Day! Today I will be sharing some tips on how to green your home on a budget. If every American home replaced just one incandescent light bulb with an Energy Star bulb, like a compact fluorescent, by some estimates we would save enough energy to light up more than 3 million homes for a year. In the average home, 75 percent of all electricity used to power appliances is used while those appliances are turned off, according to Matt Golden at San Francisco home performance consultant Sustainable Spaces. Think phone chargers, laptops and DVD players. If you’re not using it, unplug it.”

Semiote Analytics, by SeMiOtIkOs

Energy waste can take its toll on the environment and your wallet. Taking a closer look at how energy efficient your home is will undoubtedly save you money over time. What’s better than helping the environment and saving money? Getting paid to do both, of course. The Obama stimulus plan provides credit and incentives for homeowners making green upgrades to their homes. With so many reasons to act now, doing your part is easier than ever.

Next to an Earth Day rhetoric-and-discourse that cites passionately and compassionately the grandeur of the Creator/Creation relation (yes, the spine and underbelly of an ad-worthy rhetoric), including on Earth Day the modally-different law-structures for creation and all creatures, including us humans of course--sphere by sphere, each relation in each societal sphere recognized in its due ("due recognition").

Calendar: April 22, 2009

Back to the digital graphics quoted from REALTORS.com at the top of this page. With this particular ambiguous, fuzzy, hazy near-picturation, but with a blue blue-green sl+tly neon-lit optimism, overlapping near-spheres, even good-cheer, this superb graphic rings true as a vision for an environment-loving society. Yet, it is not just neonlit eye-candy, with its full shine-thru of the sun (or, is it the moon?) as in . One m+t read it as actually a graphics case of "troubled cosmos" format (Seerveld says there are basically only 8 or a dozen of these formats in the whole history of Western art painting).

Lingering a moment, you notice below all its br+t optimism, you notice its troubled sea darkening down where it drains full-darkly into the solid black colour of the bottom sector the graphic, the bottom sector also handsomely (so-aesthetically-sweet electrodigitally) doubles as the background for the poster-label text which reads in two simple lines: Earth Day, and in a second line with a smaller font-type saying, April 22.

Humour: Dirty Talk: TV anchors use faggotry to mock Anti-Tax Tea Parties, says homo

In an article on Fox News reporting mistakenly that the coded obscenity played with at length by TV anchors and their guests in hatred against the Anti-Tax rallies, those expressions Fox Politics says originated in Frat Houses (implying the terms arose at the universities, not today's internet-porn version of "frat houses"). Actually, the tea-metaphor was used "humourously" for faggot-conversation in gay bars as long as forty years ago; the deed itself took place in "tea houses" (gay-sex bath houses), so I was led to believe. "Cable Anchors, Guests Use Tea Parties as Platform for Frat House Humor: Cable anchors and guests covered the anti-tax tea party protests by cracking a litany of barely concealed sexual references" (Apr16,2k9). Make that faggot-sexual references. And think consumption of the butch's urine by the nellie tea-drinker (different from a "Golden Shower" where the urine is not necessarily ingested). A number of websites viciously speak of "the Homosexual Agenda" and insultingly use homo as tho it were synonomous with "Gay," faggot, etc. Bullsh-t! It's dishonest to confuse the Gay Agenda (which is real) with simply being homo or even with wanting legal recognition of a 2woman or a 2man intimate union. But that's not marriage, in this homo's thawtful opinion. Anyway, here's the generally informative article from Fox:

For thousands of Americans, Tax Day was a moment to protest what they see as bloated budgets and a pile of debt being passed on to their children.

For CNN, MSNBC and other media outlets, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use the word "teabagging" in a sentence.

Teabagging, for those who don't live in a frat [or gay-sex bath] house, refers to a sexual act involving part of the male genitalia and a second person's face or mouth.

So when the anti-tax "tea party" protests were held Wednesday across the country, cable anchors and guests -- who for weeks had all but ignored the story -- covered the protests by cracking a litany of barely concealed sexual references.

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper interspersed "teabagging" references with analyst David Gergen's more staid commentary on how Republicans are still "searching for their voice."

"It's hard to talk when you're teabagging," Cooper explained. Gergen laughed, but Cooper kept a straight face. [Gergen was Cooper's "straight man".]

MSNBC's David Shuster weaved a tapestry of "Animal House" humor Monday as he filled in for Countdown host Keith Olbermann.

The protests, he explained, amount to "Teabagging day for the right wing and they are going nuts for it."

He described the parties as simultaneously "full-throated" and "toothless," and continued: "They want to give President Obama a strong tongue-lashing and lick government spending." Shuster also noted how the protesters "whipped out" the demonstrations this past weekend. ...

Tea Party participants were not amused. The events were held in dozens of cities across the country, and while some demonstrators were criticized for wielding off-topic and sometimes insensitive protest signs, most took to the streets to speak out against government spending.

Dirty Humour, by Homo

Andy Cobban on YouTube

Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center, said the media coverage was "insulting," reacting specifically to CNN reporter Susan Roesgen's combative interviews with Illinois demonstrators in which she declared that the protests were "anti-CNN" and supported by FOX News. She left the teabagging jokes to her colleagues, though.

"I've never seen anything like it," Bozell said. "The oral sex jokes on (CNN) and particularly MSNBC on teabagging ... they had them by the dozens. That's how insulting they were toward people who believe they're being taxed too highly."

Max Pappas, public policy vice president at FreedomWorks -- a small-government group which promoted the tea parties -- said it's a "shame" media outlets cracked jokes at a genuine "grassroots uprising."

"I think what that reveals is how worried they are that this might actually be something serious. You make fun of things you're afraid of, I'd say," Pappas said.

If anyone thinks the orally charged remarks on mainstream cable were just a coincidence, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow's segments over the past week with guest, Air America's Ana Marie Cox, would dissolve all doubt. Their on-air gymnastics, dancing around the double entendre of the week, looked like live-action Beavis and Butthead.

By one count, the two of them used the word "teabag" more than 50 times on one show. And on Monday, Cox even let the viewers in on their joke -- referencing Urbandictionary.com, a site which offers a number of colorful definitions for the term "teabagging." [Not really, the term is hedged and "fratted" and insufficiently a urine analysis.]

"Well, there is a lot of love in teabagging," Cox said. "It is curious, though, as you point out, they do not use the verb 'teabag.' It might be because they're less enthusiastic about teabagging than some of the more corporate conservatives who seem to have taken to it quite easily."

Jenny Beth Martin, a Republican activist who helped organize one protest in Atlanta, said she's not too worried about the protests being dismissed by some media outlets. She estimated 750,000 people attended more than 800 protests in all 50 states, and that at the very least the local media and community newspapers documented it.

"Our message definitely got out where it needed to get," she said.

And what of those of us who went to no public assembly but had cups of Red Rose tea together in a kitchen or living room, watching the telecasts? Add a million.

On the other side, there was a mention of the Gay Tea Party in Boston Harbour. Now, there you m+t have seen some lowdown dirty "teabagging" of the metaphorical kind, because aggressive Gay agendistas promote public sex.

-- Homo Christian

Arts: Architecture: Top prize in discipline goes to Swiss, Peter Zumthor

Lawrence Pollard of the BBC reports "Swiss architect wins top honour" (Apr13,2k9):

The most prestigious award for architecture, the Pritzker Prize, has been awarded to ... Peter Zumthor [most of whose works are located in his home country of Switzerland].

The prize, worth $100,000, is given for a body of work across a career, and is mainly valued for the prestige and commissions it can bring.

Zumthor's works are found mainly in his native Switzerland, as well as elsewhere in Europe and the US.

His most famous commission is the thermal baths in Vals in France.

Architecture, by Archibald

Here an artist--who is not celebratarian, so to speak--is recognized for his craftsmanship and creativity. He was trained as a cabinet-maker and has attended to his interiors and materials with special care over some 30 years.

He says he doesn't ally himself to an ideology or school of architecture, but aims above all at creating an interior suited to place and use, simple principles aimed at producing human architecture.

One extraordinary recent building is a chapel built by wrapping concrete round a wigwam structure of tree trunks.

Zumthor then burnt away the trunks, leaving the imprint of the wood as the texture of the interior, which retains the smell of charred wood.

Congratulations to the artist and to the Prize judges. Refreshing!

Technics: Google wants to become a corporate Pontiff of Books

A projected "Book Rights Registry" (which seems more like a proprietary "Google Books registry") is being orchestrated to control the registration of books worldwide, the English-language books being my keenest zone of interest (even to the point of longterm interest in orthography, semiotics > calligraphy, text design, text/imagery interlacements, perhaps intertwined with English or another/s language, perhaps random or novel alphabets like the Owlbirdbet). I love homemade books deploying graphic-imagery skills and text, even on interpenetrating aesthetic levels, nuancing from level to level, row by row (the perichoretic aesthetics of Vollenhoven [see Kuyvenhoven on the role that a trinitarian aesthetics had in V's thawt, and, I would add, in Seerveld's).

It matters if Google even nominally controls the books registry.

Indeed, "a registry can tell you who owns the content you found," in the first place.

Indeed, the finder has feelings of aborginality in this matter: s/he found! It! Perhaps, a ramifying sense of almost-creation of the found something, even as intangible as an insite mayhaps it be. But in the coming computer-driven age (that age is still in its youth, I would say) everything becomes totally paperized digitally (to coin an oxymoronic expression of my own). The thawt I am embellishing, as it may be expressed more clearly by Chris Castle, in the UK tech mag The Register, traceable back to his original post in the Music and Media section, Dec31,2k8: Castle's report is well worth the delve.

"As such a dominant player in the online world, Google will now occupy a unique gateway position that, if abused, could easily create a de facto monopoly. A situation where competition is removed from the market place by placing the keys in the hands of one company cannot, ultimately, be good for the consumer. This is a bridge too far," the British Booksellers Association noted.

Technotes, by Technowlb

The Castle article, apparently quite a newsbreaking report, dissect the Gooogle project:

If a competitor tried building a competing book registry by negotiating licenses for in-copyright works, that competitor would have to bear the startup costs — and the cost of licensing. If the competitor is rewarded for respecting authors’ rights by obtaining favorable terms, that advantage can be taken away by Google. Why? Because one of Google’s goodies from its dominant position in the settlement negotiation is “most favored nations” price protection.

The registry is contractually required to offer Google any better terms it would give to anyone using any data or resources that Google provides the registry, or that is of the type that Google provides. So even if a competitor wants to build a parallel infrastructure from scratch, and wasn’t using any of Google’s data—any reward for their legitimacy would be trumped by Google’s MFN. There is no advantage in “doing it right” except a clear conscience—an MFN inhibits competition.

I love Google, I blog on Blogger--nowadays owned by Google. I avail myself of other Google services and features, free! But, dear Sirs and Madames, Messiers et Mesdames toutes che`res, please Google take a more neutral stance than "Most Favored Nation" (MFV).

There's a juridics angle too.

There's also the market pressures of competition. Castle asks rhetorically and then answers:

"How about Yahoo!’s Open Content Alliance? Google leads OCA in scanning [books, other textual materials], and then there’s Google’s MFN. Now that may be kind of interesting to regulators. As one commentator noted, "[a]s a condition of settlement approval, the Registry should be required to negotiate and sign an antitrust consent decree with the Department of Justice.” Since ASCAP and BMI each already operate under consent decrees, there is a predicate for Justice Department scrutiny and "rate court" oversight of the registry, particularly given Google's market domination. Why should societies have to suffer the rate court burden when Google does not?

For this blog-entry, we have to leave the matter somewhat dangling, as we watch for further developments.

Movies: A Christmas flick list--what's yours?

Michael Nielsen, writing in Ezine Articles, presents his "Top Ten Christmas Films of All Time" --

1. It's a Wonderful Life
2. A Christmas Story
3. A Christmas Carol (adopted from Charles Dickens)
4. Miracle on 34th Street
5. The Santa Clause
6. A Charlie Brown Christmas (animated)
7. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
8. Love Actually
9. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
10. White Christmas

Nielsen supplements his main list with a few citations flicks that are more "classic, Disney, and animated":

Mickey's Christmas Carol
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Frosty the Snowman
Elf
Nighmare before Christmas
A Walt Disney Christmas

Nielsen's write-ups are rather supine, and he fails to give us his criteria of selection. But, as he notes, many people are trying to decide what they'll watch on TV or on DVD at home during the hastening season. He also notes that, even without a Christmas thematic, first-run movies in the theatres and newly-released DVDS of all worldviews and genres get attention from viewers and theatre-goers this time of year.

Arts: Fred Astaire, a consummate dancer of the Movie Age

There's a new book out, being a biography of Fred Astaire the dance work of whom, in the comic vein mostly, set a dance-aesthetics standard that still holds. His dances, a body of artistic work from one dance routine to the next in a given movie, and from film to film, these choreographic accomplishments remain somehow normative today because of old movies that still dazzle us with his showmanship. His work was slanted by the mass-communications medium of the cinematographic camera's angle. He danced to the camera's eye for the future ticket-purchasing audience of each movie, and often gently deconstructed himself in his role, larger than any role in a movie, as big as life. Leading male dancer in the early movies which were viewed in movie theatres, Fred Astaire is an entertainer par excellence; and he became a bon vivant.

A fine boildown of an important theme of Jason Epstein's new book, Fred Astaire (Yale University Press), was recently recently posted on the American Heritage website. Jason Epstein, "Like kissing your sister: the sibling partnership that launched Fred Astaire into stardom" (posted Oct28,2k8).

In noting how important Adele Astaire was, we underscore an axiom of dance aesthetics -- at least of the dancer business and profession -- that we have to say male dancer or female dancer when we indulge ourselves in ranking the stars of movie dance and dance movies. The instant I think of Astaire's female partners, once he got into the movies, it's Ginger Rodgers who stands out, to my mind. She played with Fred in several memorable storyline dance-movies (really a form of "musical," carried over the top by fancy footwork).

Technics: I just discovered Gmail's voice and video chat

It only works with Firefox 2.0, InternetExplorer 6.0 (ugh!), Safari 3.0+, and Google Chrome. It uses YouTube, and requires dowloading the Gmail voice and video chat plug-in

Voice and video chat plug-in info page for Gmail.

I haven't yet discovered the relationship to this Gmail v&v chat with the Applebased iChat.app.

Technotes, by Technowlb

I'm looking forward to gettingh this set up properly.

Technowlb

Technics: Web 2.0's downside opens way for spyware and other vulnerabilities via the Internet

Jason King is CEO of LavaSoft, a pioneer company that produces adware and software, labouring to chase down spyware, producing anti-virus services. Sheeraj Shah of Net-Square wrote a famous article "10 Web 2.0 Attack Vectors," putting forth something of an overall vector analysis on Help Net Security website, Oct9,2k6. You can visit them both at this Help Net Security website page.

First, let's have entrepreneur King speak to us for 2:50 minutes on video from YouTube:

LavaSoft and the antispyware industry

Sheeraj Shah explains how Web 2.0 advances have also opened vulnerabilities that hadn't existed before its arrival, not least of all the new vulnerability to spyware:

Web 2.0 is the novel term coined for new generation Web applications. start.com, Google maps, Writely and MySpace.com are a few examples. The shifting technological landscape is the driving force behind these Web 2.0 applications. On the one hand are Web services that are empowering server-side core technology components and on the other hand are AJAX and Rich Internet Application (RIA) clients that are enhancing client-end interfaces in the browser itself.

XML is making a significant impact at both presentation and transport (HTTP/HTTPS) layers. To some extent XML is replacing HTML at the presentation layer while SOAP is becoming the XML-based transport mechanism of choice.

Now, let's garner the points web-thinker Shah presents as headers, the result being a bit abstract for those, like me, who are still novices in these territories:

Web 2.0 security concerns are reshaping the whole industry of security-measures for websites, internet, and home computers.

Technotes, by Technowlb

Shah introduces his vector-theory of new web2.0 vulnerablities:

On the “server-side”, XML based Web services are replacing some of the key functionalities and providing distributed application access through Web services interfaces. These remote capabilities to invoke methods over GET, POST or SOAP from the Web browser itself provide new openings to applications. On other side, RIA frameworks running on XML, XUL, Flash, Applets and JavaScripts are adding new possible sets of vectors. RIA, AJAX and Web services are adding new dimensions to Web application security.

On the “server-side”, XML based Web services are replacing some of the key functionalities and providing distributed application access through Web services interfaces. These remote capabilities to invoke methods over GET, POST or SOAP from the Web browser itself provide new openings to applications.

On other side, RIA frameworks running on XML, XUL, Flash, Applets and JavaScripts are adding new possible sets of vectors. RIA, AJAX and Web services are adding new dimensions to Web application security.

So, here's his analytic list of 10 attack vectors, Shah providing us with a thick explanatory paragraph for each:

1. Cross-scripting in AJAX.
2. XML poisoning.
3. Malicious AJAX code execution.
4. RSS/Atom injection.
5. WSDL scanning and enumeration.
6. Client-side validation in AJAX routines.
7. Web-services routing issues.
8. Parameter manipulation with SOAP.
9. XPATH injection in SOAP message.
10. Rich Internet Applications (RIA) thick client binary manipulation.

Shah concludes:

AJAX, RIA and Web services are three important technological vectors for the WEB 2.0 application space. These technologies are promising and bring new equations to the table, empowering overall effectiveness and efficiency of Web applications. With these new technologies come new security issues, and ignoring them can lead to big disasters for the corporate world. [And what about us "end-user" consumers with our home computers?] In this article, the discussion was restricted to only ten attacks but there are several other attack vectors as well. Increased WEB 2.0 security awareness, secure coding practices and secure deployments offer the best defense against these new attack vectors.

Music: Digital downloads may drop DRM restrictions

The Distorted-Loop website carries a breathless up-to-the-minute
post by Jonny on what may be a price revolution for digitally-downloaded music, especially from iTunes Music Store. Not just that, but the entire Digital Rights Management (what newspeak the DRM expression is!) promises to unscrew and in the process unscrew us, truly a gain for weary consumers.

H+-level negotiations have been taking place in the present financial climate, where a Depression hangs over everything like a thick smog. Will the music industry go down, taking iTunes and confrères with it ...? Steve Jobs is reported to have lost billions in his stock portfolio already, and we may expect that many of the negotiators for the other companies involved have likewise undoubtedly "dropped a bundle."

Steve Jobs--recently lost 2.3 billions
Uploaded by Anaximaximumphotographics

Steve Jobs of Apple, tho he lost a fortune, is negotiating with the DRM kingpins of the digital music industry to ease the financial load on music lovers.
The photo appeared as #15 in the set "The Biggest Losers: 20 global moguls who have gotten creamed in the recent economic collapse"--the set accompanies the article of that title by Hilary Lewis, Nov26,2k8, Business Sheet (none of the photographers are mentioned).

Maybe the downturn has forced new thinking to jell in the fetid money-brains of the digital music industry. Suddenly, with Mr Jobs' leverage, perhaps the music tycoons and their customers may together benefit from this possible move.

The long-standing duel between Apple and three major labels, Universal, Warners and Sony BMG may be coming to an end, with tracks from these majors now showing up within the iTunes Plus music upgrade service.

There’s been strong rumours claiming negotiations between Apple and the labels to offer music at high quality free of restrictive DRM have intensified in recent weeks. Sony BMG is already thought to be uploading tracks to make available through iTunes Plus.

Overnight sundry spies have spotted tracks from the three hold-out majors popping up in the ‘Upgrade My Library’ section of iTunes, where users can upgrade their purchases from DRM’d to DRM-free tracks.

For example, Rakim’s rather special ‘The 18th Letter/The Book of Life’ is currently available to upgrade to iTunes Plus. The major label behind this release is, of course, Universal.

Music Biz, by AudioViz

iTunes Plus was introduced in April 2007 with DRM-free tracks from EMI. The catalogue later grew to include music from many independent labels. While songs cost slightly more, they ship in higher-quality 256k bitrates. You can upgrade existing purchases for 20-pence.

Apple’s move to offer its full catalogue in DRM-free format opens the doors for a level playing field in digital music, with services including Amazon MP3 in the US and 7digital in the UK already offering tracks free of DRM in MP3 format for sale at the same price as an ordinary iTunes track.

Open to question at time of writing is whether Apple will compete on price by lowering iTunes Plus track prices to match existing standard downloads, and whether the company will make a major announcement on its plans later today. (Customarily, watch for an announcement around 1.30pm, well, if an announcement is to be made at all).

** Well, the day’s moving on and no official news yet - we’ve dropped an enquiry to Apple, and their lack of a response suggests at present these moves belong in the official ‘rumour and speculation’ department, it may be helpful if readers have a check to see what songs/artists from the three majors they can dig out using the ‘Upgrade’ feature in iTunes, and note them here. Hang in there.

We owe Distorted-Loop'a Jonny a huge tip of the hat. (The underlines in the quoted text above are added by yours truly.)

Aesthetics: Citizens' architectural renewal of rundown historic Buffalo

Nicolai Ouroussoff writes charmingly, "Saving Buffalo’s Untold Beauty," Nov14,2k8, NYT:

One of the most cynical clichés in architecture is that poverty is good for preservation. The poor don’t bulldoze historic neighborhoods to make way for fancy new high-rises.

That assumption came to mind when I stepped off a plane here recently. Buffalo is home to some of the greatest American architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with major architects like Henry Hobson Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright building marvels here. Together they shaped one of the grandest early visions of the democratic American city.

Yet Buffalo is more commonly identified with the crumbling infrastructure, abandoned homes and dwindling jobs that have defined the Rust Belt for the past 50 years. And for decades its architecture has seemed strangely frozen in time.

Now the city is reaching a crossroads.

That's how Ouroussoff begins his study tour of the restoration of areas of the northern USA city that had fallen victim to the scourge of the infamous Rust Belt. Several of the recent reversals of bad fortune warm the heart, and suggest a new future for this urban center that has lost its formerly lucrative connection to the once-upon-a-time Eire Canal system. Once a thriving hubway for goods coming in from Lake Ontario and then streaming out again, along with the products of Buffalo's own manufactories, the largely-Black populated city now seems poised on brink of a new age and perhaps even a new prosperity.

Archibald

Technics: Google launching personal-edit searches minus garbage subtopics

Google has outdone itself with the launch of the new Google SearchWiki. The idea is to allow a marginal unorganized set of users who intensely dislike wading thru the now-inevitable garbage that swells search results for a given keyword, allows users now to avoid that recurrent mishap by submitting a truer listing of results -- minus the garbage links. Not that this involves a separate search result in every case of WikiSearch editing by an individual wiki user for the purpose.

Rather, individual edits for a keyword are combined with the edits of others for the same word, and a composite result becomes available to all the marginals who use the Google SearchWiki to obtain hopefully cleaner results for the set. But one wonders whether a new censoriousness could set in.

Technotes, by Technowlb

I wouldn't mind seeing Philosophy the cosmetic line disappear from the wiki's search results for Philosophy; but would the various competing sects of view try to take out results giving links to competitor websites that define, say, the keyword Reformational other than as approved by various sites of the competition?

My rather arcane examples may or may not amuse you, dear reader, but I'm sure you can extrapolate to examples for poignant to your own interests and concerns to help make the point more clear for your own purposes.

Updates:
*Reports conflict over Microsoft buying Yahoo search (MarketWatch Nov30,2k8)
*Is Apple building a search engine? Does Apple plan to take on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft? (MacWorld [UK], Nov14,2k8)

Literature: France's Le Clézio won the Nobel Prize for literature

French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio won the Nobel Prize for literature a few weeks back. Sarah Lyall, "French Writer Wins Nobel Prize," http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/books/10nobel.html, Oct19,2k8, New York Times.

The French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, whose work reflects a seemingly insatiable restlessness and sense of wonder about other places and other cultures, won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. In its citation, the Swedish Academy praised Mr. Le Clézio, 68, as the “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.”

The works of Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio reflect a sense of wonder about other cultures. ...

Mr. Le Clézio’s work defies easy characterization, but in more than 40 essays, novels and children’s books, he has written of exile and self-discovery, of cultural dislocation and globalization, of the clash between modern civilization and traditional cultures. Having lived and taught in many parts of the world, he writes as fluently about North African immigrants in France, native Indians in Mexico and islanders in the Indian Ocean as he does about his own past.

I had read his first in my halting French (with many dictionaries at my elbows!), but then had lost track of Le Clézio over the decades. That first novel of his was too much full of self-loathing. I had too much of my own to expend my reading energies with his work. Maybe now with his "mature" novels being celebrated so, I should look again.

Owlb

Summer Fun: Opera: At the Spoleto Festival USA, early June offers the Weil-Brecht 'Rise and Fall of Mahoganny City' and more

Thanks to New York Times, music reviewer and ArtsBeat blogger, James R. Oestereich proses in English, "Strange, Faraway Fantasies of Hell and Paradise" (Jun1,2k7) from Charleston, South Carolina where the Italian Spoleta Festival spins off a week of performances to the delectation of connoisseurs.

Two more disparate works could hardly be imagined. And yet they have odd similarities.

As two of its three operas this year, the Spoleto Festival USA here is offering Kurt Weill’s collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny); and Christoph Williband Gluck’s Île de Merlin, ou le Monde Renversé (Merlin’s Island, or the World Turned Upside Down). Both send peculiar creatures to faraway places, and both deal, in contrasting ways, with social issues.

(The third opera is Pascal Dusapin’s Faustus, the Last Night, which has its last performance on June 9.)

Summer Fun > Spoleto Opera Festival

In Mahagonny three fugitives establish a fantastical city in some realm far from civilization, but, as it turns out, within hurricane’s distance of Pensacola, Fla. In Merlin two Parisian wastrels wash up on a remote Arcadian island.

Mahagonny, a morality play awash in cynicism and pessimism, depicts a hellish world in which there is no such thing as peace and harmony, a world of greed and grasping ambition, a world in which you must do whatever you want before others do unto you what they want. The courts are “no worse than anywhere else.” It can only end badly.

Live Opera Music, by Audiosvisiotor

Merlin, a Panglossian comic effusion, offers a paradise in which the rich must marry the poor, artists earn more than businessmen or lawyers, and love is lasting and faithful. The courts know no corruption. It is, in short, the opposite of Paris. And all that is before Merlin appears to fine-tune the outcome.

Of musical genres there is no end, and opera is music with quasi-actorial qualities. Opera is a bouquet of arts with music the leading edge. I wish I could be in in Charleston for these, now that I've updated my US passport. But probably my only Opera-fun this summer will be found in reading NYT reviewers.

Sports: Major League Baseball: Toronto Blue Jays win 9 to White Sox 3; full MLB schedule in progress thru the evening

I'm proud to say Toronto's Blue Jays won their game today, and by a wide margin. You can read up on the game at CBS Sportsline.com's MLB page, "Jays' Hill, Rios team up to send ChiSox back to losing ways" (Jun2,2k7). Here's today's schedule, with several games just beginning or opening later across the continent.

Braves 5
Cubs 3

White Sox 3
Blue Jays 9

Diamondbacks 1
Mets 7

Yankees 1
Red Sox 3 Top of the 5th inning
...but Yanks rallied and the revised score is
Yankees 6
Red Sox 5 Top of the 7th inning

Cardinals 3
Astros 8 Game over.

Tigers
Indians
7:05pm

Dodgers
Pirates
7:05pm

Sports, by Sportikos

Padres
Nationals
7:05pm

Marlins
Brewers
7:05pm

Giants
Phillies
7:05pm

Royals
Devil Rays
7:10pm

Reds
Rockies
8:05pm

Twins
Athletics
9:05pm

Orioles
Angels
9:05pm

Rangers
Mariners
10:05pm

Sport: NHL Hockey: Ottawa Senators take on Anaheim Ducks for cross-continent Stanley Cup championships Game 3

The Stanley Cup play-offs for the National Hockey League's season-ending championships of all North America will enter Game 3 (of 7) tonite in Kanata, Ontario, with the Eastern Conference champs, the Senators, facing off against the Western Conf's Ducks.

The Sens are in a tite spot. They've already lost the first 2 games of the Stanley Cup finals series. They need a win, and the promises from coaches and players are thick that win it will be.

Technics: Internet: MySpace refuses to turn over sex-offenders names, cites Fed privacy law vs States attorneys genral

CNN.com email newsletter informs us informs us in "MySpace won't turn over names of sex offenders" (May16,2k7).

Story Highlights
• NEW: MySpace not turning over names of sex offenders
• NEW: MySpace attorney: Privacy act requires subpoenas
• Thousands of offenders might be MySpace members
• MySpace prevents children under 14 from setting up profiles

RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- Citing federal privacy law, MySpace.com said Tuesday it won't comply with a request by attorneys general from eight states to hand over the names of registered sex offenders who use the social networking Web site.

MySpace's chief security officer said the company regularly discloses information to law enforcement officials but the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act says it can only do so when proper legal processes are followed.

Technotes, by Technowlb

"We're truly disheartened that the AGs chose to send out a letter ... when there was an existing legal process that could have been followed," the security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, said in an interview.

In a letter Monday, attorneys general from North Carolina, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania asked MySpace to provide information about registered sex offenders using the site and where they live.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on Tuesday blasted MySpace for refusing to share the information and said no subpoena is needed for MySpace to tell the attorneys general how many registered sex offenders use the site "or other information relating to possible parole violations."

The whole article is well worth clicking up and reading in its entirety. Sad that MySpace can't find a way to comply.

Natural justice so prioritizes the children who will be victimized, above federal claims to its own h+er jurisdictional status over states in regard to such an offender's privacy r+ts, that the fed law seems to be an impediment in the real world of chat-room chickenhawks who apparently gravitate to MySpace in quest of little girls and boys. But now we find our topic has shifted from a technics focus to juridics and segzetics (yes, coined word).

Technics: Internet: MicroSoft, Yahoo to join in online search services, compete with Google

Bloomberg.com published with updates a report by Jonathan Thaw and Jason Kelly that relates to major changes coming to the battle of titans on the Internet, particularly the search services. Yahoo and Google are the major two, with Google far in the lead but not that far. "Microsoft, Yahoo May Partner to Challenge Google in Web Search" (May5,2k7).

MicroSoft has been unable to break effectively into the field, but wants part of the ad revenues that the search services routinely place on their pages. What is being presented to the public at the moment is called a "partnership," but the relation being explored seems to have in its background MS's intent to buy and swallow ("merge") Yahoo in six months time.

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo! Inc. have held talks about a partnership designed to boost their share of the Web search and advertising market and catch up with Google Inc., people briefed on the discussions said.

The discussions are in the early stages and focus on a partnership rather than a merger, said one of the people, who asked to remain anonymous because the negotiations are private. Shares of Yahoo jumped the most in three years yesterday after the New York Post said Microsoft wants to buy the company.

Yahoo and Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, have struggled to dent Google's dominance in searching the Web and in the booming market for advertising spots next to search results. A combination would triple Microsoft's share of the U.S. search market to 38.4 percent, rivaling Google's 48.3 percent, according to ComScore Inc.

``It gets them enough economies of scale to be a viable force in search,'' said Walter Price, who oversees about $2 billion including Microsoft shares at RCM Capital Management in San Francisco. ``You have to ratchet up your capital expenditure to compete with Google.''

What this will mean for consumers (web users) hopefully will be more and better services, in the first instance, by Google. I could make some recommendations in that regard, as I don't think the ads I obstruded onto other's webpages when I search are sufficiently compensated by the time-consuming awkwardnesses I have to crawl thru when using Google. The Google ads on refWrite are not at all those I would select from their stable, tho usually they are tolerable, at other times downr+t obnoxious. But that's another story.

Technics: Juridics: Internet news-aggregator of content-URLs 'Digg' treated as pirate for code hack HD DVDs

CNet blogger Steven Musil reports "Unhappy Digg users bury site in protest" (May2,2k7).

Digg.com users, very upset at the news aggregate site for deleting articles containing an encryption key that could be used to crack the digital rights management on HD DVDs [H+Density DVDs], have inundated the site with thousands of recommendations to pages that contain the code. The protest was apparently heard by Digg administrators, who later reversed the ban.

On Tuesday night, the "All topics" category contained several pages of the most popular articles recommended by Digg readers populated only by links to sites that contained the code, as well as messages deriding the Motion Picture Association of America, a proponent of digital rights management and antipiracy measures. Many of the articles had upward of 4,000 recommendations from users.

A message purporting to be from Digg co-founder and CEO Jay Adelson posted to the site early Tuesday explained the rationale behind the site's former stance.

"We've been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights," the posting reads. "In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention."

Later, a message headlined with the code and credited to Digg co-founder Kevin Rose called Tuesday "a difficult day for us" and explained that site had reversed its earlier stance and would reluctantly allow articles containing the code to be referenced from the site.

"We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code," according to the posting. "...[Digg website users ha]ve made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."

"Living by the wisdom of the crowd is what made Digg popular, said CEO Jay Adelson in a telephone interview Wednesday, reports Chris Gaylord of Christian Science Monitor in "Digg's online crowd flexes its muscle--Backlash over the site administrators' attempt to squelch postings of a secret encryption code shows power of free-speech-minded Web users" (May4,2k7).

"Digg is supposed to be the opposite of censorship," he said. "Our attorneys were advising us that it is always better to be safe than sorry and continue removing the stories. But the users clearly wanted it … and this was something we didn't want to suppress anymore."

What could have been an unraveling for Digg and other social websites – that peek behind the curtain to discover that the online community is not truly in control – turned into a solidifying event for the idea that the Internet is as much a tool for participating as it is for publishing. For many users, the code wasn't the point. The Digg deluge was about reclaiming the reins.

"This had the possibility of being a very dark moment, and it's turned out to be quite a strong statement about what it means to have socially driven websites," says John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. "It was civil disobedience on restriction of free speech – but in an Internet fashion."

Technotes, by Technowlb

Two days later, the story but not the code (!) made its way to a science blog in the field of physics. PhysOrg.com updates the early reports. The blog-entry's content goes so beyond my "Technics" category that probably I should re-designate my headline "Juridics" in the first cat. Come to think of it, the slant to legal actions in tech articles, seems to be something like a trend at the moment. Or, perhaps I should retitle the first slot "Social Networking" which also played a huge role in Digg's removal of the orginal post. Article: "Has Digg Dug a Legal Hole for Itself?" (May4,2k7). From the aritcle itself you can navigate to the site's PhysOrgForum, where you can discuss the whole phenom with many others who are keeping up with this development.

Call it the Internet's version of a bloodless coup. A revolt by users of Digg.com led the administrators of the Web site to reverse a decision to remove stories containing code used to circumvent digital rights management for HD-DVDs [H+Density Digital Video something or other].

But the change of course by Digg.com has not settled anything; instead the latest flare up regarding the now-infamous code highlights both legal and security issues facing HD-DVD technology and the Internet itself.

Digg.com's initial decision to take down the stories was spurred by a cease and desist letter earlier this week from the AACS LA (Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator).

The AACS LA licenses the encryption technology meant to protect HD-DVDs from illegal copying.
But the decision [by Digg to restore the offending code] could open it up to legal action by the AACS LA for a possible violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a series of provisions that prohibit the production or distribution of technology that circumvents DRM.

Copyright 2007 by Ziff Davis Media

By the way, I found the following ad text on the Phys.Org.com website: "How To Copy A DVD Movie Burn & Copy Your Home DVD Movies to Blank CD. Play Copy Anywhere $24."

As CSM's Chris Gaylord has noted, the Digg Episode (or Epiphany, as some Diggers mite regard it) is not an isolated case:

Other successful social sites have hit similar power struggles. In September, the popular college networking site Facebook.com thought they would further connect users by rolling out a "news feed" feature that would update everyone on nearly every change occurring on friends' profiles, right down to who rejected whose party invitation. This perceived invasion of privacy launched boycotts and rumors of a National Don't Log Into Facebook Day. Site administrators changed the feature after only two days.

The HD-DVD key was not the first story Digg administrators yanked. They regularly pull down links to pornography and hate speech, says Mr. Adelson. But with more than 7,000 articles submitted to Digg every day, he acknowledges the process is very reactive. Digg's most relied-on filter is its users – for sniffing out both the good and the bad.

Digg's crowd is a tech-savvy set, so when the movie-code posting sneaked past administrators, the readers dug it. Before anyone at the Digg office noticed that the story had slipped through the cracks, 15,000 users had recommended it – making its sudden disappearance all the more noticeable, Adelson says.

So the Episode takes its place among many, and surely will not be the last of them either.

Music: Gospel: Oldtime music revival in NYC with Bluegrass Gospel's 'Diane McKoy and a Small Few"

Veteran entertainer Diane McKoy combines her love of God with her love of music and forms Bluegrass Gospel band in the Big Apple. She's a veteran entertainer who's combining her love of God and Scripture, with her love of music, by forming a new Bluegrass Gospel band in the Big Apple in her second try in her home city. As far as she knows, hers is again the only one in that northern metropolis where the grass is scarce, green not really blue.

New York, Apr28,2k7 /Christian Newswire/ -- New York City may be famed for Broadway and Wall Street, but Diane McKoy hopes America's largest city becomes known as home to her Bluegrass Gospel band, Diane McKoy and a Small Few.

"New York City may not be the first place that comes to mind when you hear about a Bluegrass Gospel band," says McKoy, the band's leader, "but God put A Small Few in my heart and I live in New York." Although there are many Gospel music groups in the Big Apple, Bluegrass Gospel bands are otherwise nonexistent. There was one other. McKoy started it. It lasted 13 years before it disbanded.

Music, by Audiovisiotor

The newly formed band features McKoy and two musician/singer friends: Steven Antonelli and Daniel Marcus. Together they produce Bluegrass Gospel and Country Gospel, music that mixes the Good Book with strings and harmonizing.

Like many indie musicians Diane McKoy and a Small Few has a My Space page. Presently, the group is playing at various venues throughout New York City. The trio is making fans out of big city dwellers wherever the band plays.

I can think of other cities, further North, that may welcome authentic Bluegrass, especially of the key Gospel variety. Fascinating too is the the fact that Gospel has differentiated into three at least subgenres: traditional, country, and bluegrass. I wonder whether I could find these different varieties online at a digital music store.

Technics: Intenet: Law suit by UK football club tries to stop circulation of video clips on YouTube/Google

Techdirt's Mike Masnick, "Premier League, Jealous Of Viacom, Sues YouTube As Well" (May5,2k7)

Nick writes in to let us know that the Premier League, in the UK (football/soccer, depending on where you are) has decided to sue Google/YouTube for copyright infringement. Nick has his own analysis, but there are a number of interesting (or silly, depending on your perspective) things about the case. First off, it was almost exactly two years ago that we were surprised to hear the Premier League suggest that it needed to sue fans who were streaming its games online (pre-YouTube days). Here were fans who were so interested in following what was going on that they'd watch games online and help promote it to others who had no way of watching the games, and the best the Premier League could do was threaten to sue? That seemed backwards. Last year, the Premier League popped up again, complaining about videos on YouTube. However, while again it seemed like bad marketing to go after fans who are promoting your sport, we figured it was at least a positive that the Premier League wasn't so silly as to blame YouTube for the actions of its users. Apparently, we spoke too soon.

Technotes, by Technowlb

If anything, this is probably a reaction to Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit against Google/YouTube. The Premier League figured it might get a piece of that, or at least hope that Google would be willing to settle. Of course, Google's defense should be the same as it was for Viacom. The Premier League makes one different argument -- which is that it tried to use the anti-piracy tools provided by Google, and they didn't work. It's hard to see how the fact that the tools don't work very well is illegal. There is no magic bullet that can stop unauthorized copies -- so every "anti-piracy" tool won't work entirely. That's hardly something to sue over. The other difference is that the Premier League is looking to have the case declared as a class action suit, so that all copyright holders can get at Google in one shot. If this succeeds, then it seems likely that it will shut down YouTube, destroying one of the most effective promotional vehicles the Premier League has had in years. It's hard to see how that's beneficial for anyone.

More need to be said here, but I'll say it tomorrow. G'nite!

Sports: English Football: Ashton Villa wallops 3-0 Sheffield United in Barclays' Premier League game

Most of the game saw Sheffield struggle to hold the Villans down, as the tide just swept these Ashtonauts forward, while Sheffield gradually fell apart. They kept their faces brave thru-out the disaster in Barclay's English Premier League, in a game which I viewed live across the Pond in Toronto on Saturday afternoon our time. The crowd kept roaring thru-out, so the lads had all the encouragement they could use.

Sports / UK Football, by Sportikos

As the stats show, Ashton Villa is no paragon of football excellency, yet it soars 5 slots above Sheffield United in the standings. On the other hand, the Villa itself has to look 10 strata above itself to discern the august Machester United team at the top of Barclay's Premiership, with Chelsea breathing down their necks.

Technics: Internet: Whose counting your online clicks? and how!

When you go surfing the WordWideWeb and even the larger Internet of which www. is only the most prominent component, there are many technical means to monitor your moves or, lacking that thoroness, to sample a survey group of sizeable proportions that is most likely to be able to project/predict your most likely moves, statistically speaking. Obviously, if your own internet demographic profile is multiply-marginal, your own choices may not register in the prevailing samples.

Or, your Internet Service Provider (ISP, IP) may be selling your click habits to firms that buy them en masse. Otherwise, your obscurity would then be, perhaps mercifully, preserved--unless you are host to some other means ensconced on your own computer in the form of click-counters' cookies that send out signals as to what you are doing each time you make a move, check an ad, whatever. This is not necessarily bad, depending on your own concerns and privacy values.

MSNBC carries a report by Catherine Holshan, "Who's Counting Clicks, and How -- There are lots of ways to measure Web traffic. Here's a glance at some of the more common approaches " (Apr30,2k7).

A host of companies are doing their level best to keep tabs on how many people are visiting a given Web site, and what those users do while they are there. Some use tags installed on a user's Web browser, while others extrapolate surfing habits from a sample audience. A handful use a combination of several methods. Here's a glance at a range of approaches, with a look at what each has to say about one popular online video site, Metacafe.

Technotes, by Technowlb

Here's the varied list of click-counters and analysts, that Ms. Halshan evaluates as to What, How, Strengths, Weaknesses. Dare I advise readers to click-up her article?

Alexa Internet, owned by Amazon (AMZN)
Compete Inc.
comScore
Google Analytics (GOOG)
Hitwise
Omnitecture (OMTR)
Nielsen//NetRatings (NTRT)
Qantcast

generic - internal server logs
used by individual net companies
to track the traffic that click
onto their own sites