Giancarlo Angulo's Blog
Being on Facebook is like volunteering to receive spam, and the more successful you are at finding friends, the more spam you get! In the end, Facebook is really the emptiest, loneliest place on the whole World Wide Web
Why I’m Quitting Facebook | Newsweek Culture | Newsweek.com.
Damn I haven’t read this part when I liked to the first page, seems we were thinking the sme thing!
Law professor Charles Nesson and John Palfrey, director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society (which Nesson co-founded), made their position clear. “Recently, the president of the Recording Industry Association of America, Cary Sherman, wrote to Harvard to challenge the university administration to stop acting as a ‘passive conduit’ for students downloading music,” they wrote in 2007. “We agree. Harvard and the 22 universities to which the RIAA has sent ‘pre-litigation notices’ ought to take strong, direct action… and tell the RIAA to take a hike.”
Those notices were an attempt by the RIAA to get schools involved in the litigation process. Universities would, in theory, pass RIAA settlement letters on to students after being provided with an IP address suspected of illicit file-sharing. The schools would be “doing their part,” while the recording industry got its missives delivered without needing to bother with courts and judges and subpoenas.
“Universities should have no part in this extraordinary process,” wrote Nesson and Palfrey. “The RIAA’s charter is to promote the financial interests of its corporate members—even if that means preserving an obsolete business model for its members. The university’s charter is quite different… The university strives to create knowledge, to open the minds of students to that knowledge, and to enable students to take best advantage of their educational opportunities. The university has no legal obligation to deliver the RIAA’s messages. It should do so only if it believes that’s consonant with the university’s mission.”
It wasn’t quite a declaration of war, but it did amount to an Army unit trotting out a massive howitzer, oiling it up, and firing off some test shots. Powerful interests at Harvard Law were displeased enough by the RIAA actions to speak out, but they weren’t yet ready to play an active role.
That is, until Boston University graduate student Joel Tenenbaum got in touch with Nesson in 2008. Nesson took the case, acting as Tenenbaum’s attorney, but he outsourced the work of research, strategy, and brief writing to a set of eager Harvard Law students. The students would quickly mount an ambitious defense, not just of Joel Tenenbaum, but of the claim that the RIAA legal campaign was unconstitutionally excessive and improper. Armed with a law library, Twitter, a Web site, and caffeine, the students have already made sure that the upcoming Tenenbaum trial will eclipse the Minnesota Jammie Thomas case for sheer spectacle.<Emphasis Mine>
And, if things go their way, the world will get the chance to see it all live on the Web.
How Harvard Law threw down the gauntlet to the RIAA – Ars Technica.
I’m starting my own meme. I’ll call this the “I wish I was still living in the past-Not” or “Things were better then-Not” meme!
Today, fewer than half of all high school students have had sex: 47.8 percent as of 2007, according to the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, down from 54.1 percent in 1991.
A less recent report suggests that teenagers are also waiting longer to have sex than they did in the past. A 2002 report from the Department of Health and Human Services found that 30 percent of 15- to 17-year-old girls had experienced sex, down from 38 percent in 1995. During the same period, the percentage of sexually experienced boys in that age group dropped to 31 percent from 43 percent.
The rates also went down among younger teenagers. In 1995, about 20 percent said they had had sex before age 15, but by 2002 those numbers had dropped to 13 percent of girls and 15 percent of boys.
“There’s no doubt that the public perception is that things are getting worse, and that kids are having sex younger and are much wilder than they ever were,” said Kathleen A. Bogle, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at La Salle University. “But when you look at the data, that’s not the case.”
Well – The Myth of Rampant Teenage Promiscuity – NYTimes.com.
Got the previous picture from mattew yglessias.
I’ve been battling weight problems all my life, I am not making excuses, Whatever I am before , now and what I will become is in my delusion to be because of the choices I make. As matt said I tend to focus myslef in the things that I can control, this is abias I must live with because there is no reason to worry myslef with the things I have no control over. I think what I have to do is to reevaluate often if the things I previously thought to be beyond my control are now well within it!
Upon hearing the name Abraham Lincoln, many images may come to mind: rail-splitter, country lawyer, young congressman, embattled president, Great Emancipator, assassin’s victim, even the colossal face carved into Mount Rushmore. One aspect of this multidimensional man that probably doesn’t occur to anyone other than avid readers of Lincoln biographies (and Smithsonian) is that of inventor. Yet before he became the 16th president of the United States, Lincoln, who had a long fascination with how things worked, invented a flotation system for lifting riverboats stuck on sandbars.
Though his invention was never manufactured, it serves to give Lincoln yet another honor: he remains the only U.S. president to have a patent in his name. According to Paul Johnston, curator of maritime history at the National Museum of American History (NMAH), Lincoln’s eminence and the historical rarity of his patent make the wooden model he submitted to the Patent Office “one of the half dozen or so most valuable things in our collection.”
Inventive Abe | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine.
Conversely, restrictions on marijuana use should be eased. I think it’s good that we don’t have a “marijuana industry” with slick marketing campaigns and lobbyists on the Hill, but letting people “grow your own” in the basement and smoke it in your house would help undercut serious criminal enterprises and let people have some relatively harmless fun.
Matthew Yglesias » By Request: Your Crime Control Policy On Drugs.
Hmm proofreaders/copy editors ? Damn this is another example of an organization that really doesn’t care much for the web.
GREENPEACE SAYS
BNPP revival based on ‘faulty economics’
By Amy R. Remo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 21:28:00 02/02/2009
Filed Under: Nuclear power, Protest
WB country director Bert Hofman declined to comment directly on the decision of the House of Representatives to clear the Filipino contractors permanently debarred from bidding for bank-financed projects.
“We’re quite confident that due process has taken place,” Hofman said at the sidelines of the yearend assessment of the Kalahi poverty alleviation program, an initiative of the government and the World Bank.
The bank’s internal investigation concluded that the three firms and two Chinese firms engaged in collusive practices to rig the bid.
“In response to questions, I elaborate on the process of investigation and evaluation and the sanctions of the Board,” Hofman said.
Hofman defended their investigation as a “very long and very careful” process, designed by the World Bank staff.
The process was approved by the stakeholders of the World Bank, including the Philippines, Hofman pointed out.
Eduardo de Luna, owner of the E.C. De Luna Construction Corp. which was banned permanently by the World Bank, denied in the two congressional hearings that he colluded with other Filipino and Chinese companies in rigging the bidding for a $33-million road project.
On January 14, the World Bank released a statement, which said it had banned the Filipino and Chinese contractors “for engaging in collusive practices under a major WB-financed roads project in the Philippines.”
Leonard McCarthy, World Bank Integrity vice president, said in the statement that this incident was “one of our most important and far-reaching cases, and it highlights the effectiveness of the World Bank’s investigative and sanctions process.”
“As the World Bank Group continues to ramp up its anti-corruption work, INT (Integrity Vice Presidency) will remain vigilant in investigating allegations and holding wrongdoers accountable,” McCarthy said.
According to the statement, the INT is “responsible for investigating allegations of fraud and corruption in Bank-financed operations.”
BNPP revival based on ‘faulty economics’ – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.
Excellent read
The Winner Stands Alone : My comments on the book by Paulo Coelho
by Paulo Coelho on January 23, 2009
FOLLOW MY DREAM – BUT WHICH ONE?
One of the recurrent themes of my books is the importance of paying the price of your dreams. But to what extent can our dreams be manipulated? For the past decades, we lived in a culture that privileged fame, money, power – and most of the people were led to believe that these were the real values that we should pursue.
We all should be a “winner”. Not in the sense of someone who finally wins what is important to his/her life. Not in the sense that happiness is the most valuable gift on Earth – and it can be attained here and now, when your work fulfills your heart. We should be a winner in the sense that the system portraits a successful person: celebrity, influence, photos in glossy magazines, behaving like the masters of the universe.
Yes, you may reach the goal society has fed you – but will you be satisfied? Will you be whole? Will you be in peace? This cycle of possession never ends – because the moment that you think that you have reached your goal another desire creeps in. And how can you find rest when it is the hunt that moves you?
The Winner Stands Alone : My comments on the book by Paulo Coelho at Paulo Coelho’s Blog.
Wow, Some people do get it. Read the whole thing!
Why I’m Twittering From Davos Even Though I Run Reuters
David Schlesinger | January 30, 2009 1:25 PM
schlesinger.jpgDavid Schlesinger is the Editor in Chief of Reuters News. His Twitter from Davos alerted us to the fact that George Soros had predicted the end of the world. We asked David whether, by live-Twittering, he was concerned about scooping himself. Here, in a post on Reuters, David responds:
Twittering Away Standards…Or Tweeting The Future of Journalism?
I’ve been tweeting from the World Economic Forum, using the microblogging platform Twitter to discuss the mundane (describing crepuscular darkness of the Swiss Alps at 5 a.m.) or the interesting (live tweeting from presentations).
Is it journalism?
Is it dangerous?
Is it embarrassing that my tweets even beat the Reuters newswire?
Why I’m Twittering From Davos Even Though I Run Reuters.
Cool learning resource!
I’m Attending MIT, Stanford & Harvard
January 29th, 2009
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Well, sort of.
Thanks to Academic Earth, a friggin’ gift, you can follow (video) lectures given at universities like Stanford, MIT, Harvard & Yale on some of the most popular subjects. There once was a time when you couldn’t wait to get out of school, I suppose it makes sense to have a time where you’d do anything to learn new things.
Especially things you choose. And only those subjects you really like (did anyone say obligated French?).
The videos include all sort of subjects, such as Computer Science (/love), Mathematics, Engineering, … all explained by well-respected professors.
I’m Attending MIT, Stanford & Harvard ~ Mattias Geniar.