By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American.
Newt Gingrich, in Florida, to applause.
“Does that mean I’m visionary? You betcha,” he said.
You know, if he doesn’t win the nomination, he could always be Space Czar in a Romney or Santorum administration. You know whose administration definitely wouldn’t have a Space Czar?
This guy:
So … if not colonizing the moon is important to you, you should really think seriously about Ron Paul’s candidacy. Right now, he’s only one out there who definitely doesn’t want the federal government establishing a moon base.
(via kohenari)
“Hey guys, government is too big, it wastes too much money, let’s colonize the moon!”
(via kohenari)
Source: politico.com
Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.
MPAA head (and former U.S. Senator) Chris Dodd speaking to Fox News (as noted by Hillicon Valley).
I mean, he actually said this.
In one soundbite, he’s both threatening any and all U.S. politicians and implying that they’re corruptible. It’s a statement that so egregious, it’s hard to think of anything worse he could have said. Maybe: “if these guys don’t start supporting whatever we say, I’m going to hire some goons to fucking kneecap the bastards”.
But actually, that’s not worse. Because that doesn’t imply the politicians accept bribes (in the form of lobbying money) to support issues.
This is much, much worse than Dodd’s assclownish statement the other day. And it also shows that Dodd really, truly does not understand what’s going on — why people are so upset about these bills and the subsequent reaction to them, as Mike Masnick lays out perfectly.
Amazingly, this discussion is morphing beyond the destruction of the fabric of the Internet and into the underlying notion that our political system is fundamentally corrupt.
The MPAA should fire Chris Dodd immediately. Of course, they won’t — because in a year (when he’ll be far enough removed from his Senate term to officially lobby) he’ll be the best lobbyist ever. At that point, he’ll be able to do it behind the scenes (with people he served alongsides for decades), and not with fucked up statements like this.
(via parislemon)
Chris Dodd is so charming…..
(via parislemon)
Source: thehill.com
The next SOPA
The MPAA studios hate us. They hate us with region locks and unskippable screens and encryption and criminalization of fair use. They see us as stupid eyeballs with wallets, and they are entitled to a constant stream of our money. They despise us, and they certainly don’t respect us.
Yet when we watch their movies, we support them.
Even if we don’t watch their movies in a theater or buy their plastic discs of hostility, we’re still supporting them. If we watch their movies on Netflix or other flat-rate streaming or rental services, the service effectively pays them on our behalf next time they negotiate the rights or buy another disc. And if we pirate their movies, we’re contributing to the statistics that help them convince Congress that these destructive laws are necessary.
They use our support to buy these laws.
So maybe, instead of waiting for the MPAA’s next law and changing our Twitter avatars for a few days in protest, it would be more productive to significantly reduce or eliminate our support of the MPAA member companies starting today, and start supporting campaign finance reform.
Great read from Marco.org.
I don’t realistically see the boycott of Hollywood taking place, but the support for campaign finance reform could.
(via azspot)
Source: marco.org
In short, the iBooks Author app is a huge breakthrough for the independent writer and publisher. In this author’s humble opinion, this new and free app from Apple was the primary announcement of Apple’s education event today.
Apple and the Democratization of Education
For those of you that don’t know, Apple had an education themed event today at the Guggenheim in New York City. They introduced some things that I thought were pretty interesting. They are as follows:
- A new app for iTunes U - I’m putting this one first because it’s the one I’m arguably the least excited about, even though it probably applies the most to where I am in my education. It’s a neat app for distributing course material and syllabuses, as well as the audio and video of lectures. I might be more excited about this if I thought any of my professors would use it during my last semester in undergrad, but as it stands right now, my university isn’t even in iTunes U.
- iBooks 2 with textbooks - It’s just like the old iBooks, as best as I can tell, except it has support for Apple’s new format of multimedia textbooks. There are 3rd party companies that have been working on something like this, such as Kno and Inkling. These implementations are interesting but have yet to really catch on. From my (albeit, limited) experience with these apps, their textbooks seem to be cheaper than their paper cousins, but fail to compete with what makes me really excited about Apple’s new textbook format, the maximum price of $14.99.
- iBooks author - This is perhaps what’s most exciting. Apple is releasing iBooks Author for free. It’s a publishing tool that anyone can download and start making their own textbooks that can then be sold in the iBook store. Apple’s early partners in this are the traditional textbook publishers, and it’s clear that they will continue to have a role in this. However, what I find really exciting is that smaller publishers will now have the tools they need to compete with the big publishers and disrupt the textbook industry by creating more competition, and hopefully cheaper and better books. Apple’s maximum price of $14.99 seems extremely low compared to what most students are used to paying for textbooks, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s going to seem high in a couple of years.
Today Apple has begun what I think could be a major positive disruption in the education system as we know it. Hopefully, Google and Microsoft will see what Apple is doing here and introduce competing platforms and further drive down prices. These tools Apple has introduced have made it possible for anyone to author their own textbooks, and if they’re good enough, hopefully make a ton of profit while simultaneously helping to educate the masses and disrupt a stagnant and badly in need of reform textbook industry. I’m sure Apple, like any other company, intends to make a profit off of this. I’m also sure that the costs will still be too expensive for most public schools for the next few years, but what they’ve done is they’ve begun a process that will hopefully drive down the costs of education while simultaneously empowering educators and students alike with the tools they need to teach and learn. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see the iPad 2 sold for a significantly reduced price alongside the iPad 3, which would be the final piece of the puzzle and make these tools cheap enough for any school to use. Apple has set the technology and publishing industries on a path that will help to democratize our systems of education.
My Verizon DSL connection is literally 10 TIMES slower than my AT&T 3G data connection right now.
I want to punch a wall or something.
My home WiFi:
My 3G:
Admittedly its not always this slow, but it’s still usually slower than my 3G. I had a faster internet connection in Kyrgyzstan……
What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success
Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity.
“When President Kennedy was making his appeal for advancing American science and technology by putting a man on the moon by the end of the 1960’s, many said it couldn’t be done,” Sahlberg said during his visit to New York. “But he had a dream. Just like Martin Luther King a few years later had a dream. Those dreams came true. Finland’s dream was that we want to have a good public education for every child regardless of where they go to school or what kind of families they come from, and many even in Finland said it couldn’t be done.”
Clearly, many were wrong. It is possible to create equality. And perhaps even more important — as a challenge to the American way of thinking about education reform — Finland’s experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.
The problem facing education in America isn’t the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad.
Source: petitchou
When Wikipedia Takes a Stance
Canadian poet and novelist John Degen, on Wikipedia’s stance on SOPA:
Tomorrow, when Wikipedia turns the lights back on, and folks look up SOPA and PIPA to find out what happened, does anyone believe there will be a balanced, unbiased Wikipedia entry on the subject? How unbelievably sad.
I had failed, through all the blackout buzz today, to even consider the implications of Wikipedia publicly taking a stance on a newsworthy and important event. It’s already caused one Wikipedian to resign.
This also hadn’t occurred to me.
Source: smarterbits
Inside Little Kyrgyzstan's Big Rap Scene
Kyrgyzstan got some love in The Atlantic.
Under SOPA, streaming copyrighted content would be a felony. Anyone who posts/downloads copyrighted work faces up to five years in jail.
So to recap, “you could get five years in jail for uploading a Michael Jackson song, one more than the doctor who killed him.”
Source: kateoplis
