Sunday, March 25, 2012

Crazy Daisey's apple picking.

This american life created a show called retraction. Their most popular episode ever:Mr. Daisey and the apple factory, contained lots of lies.

Better than the retracted episode.

In this episode, Ira glass confronts Daisey with the lies he has told. If you have no clue what all this is about, I encourage you to go listen to the retractions episode, and if you really want the full story, listen to the apple factory episode too. Don't just read the transcript, because there's a lot of weight in the way things are said.

This retraction episode, is more worth to me, than Daisey's episode, even without considering the lies in there, it's journalism at it's best. You se people really wanting to get to the truth. This makes for a very awkward episode, as you can nearly hear Daisey's brain going in overdrive, trying to come up with an answer to Glass's questions.

A play outside the theatre.

In the retraction episode, Daisey states the following:p> I am agreeing it is not up to the standards of journalism. And that's why it was completely wrong for me to have it on your show. And that's something I deeply regret. And I regret that the people who are listening, the audience of This American Life, who know that it is a journalistic enterprise-- if they feel misled or betrayed, I regret to them as well.

He states that what he said was not up to the standards of journalism, but only seems to regret what he said on This American Life. Does that mean he does not consider the dozens of other programs he has been on: TechCrunch, CNET, Real Time with Bill Maher,c-span..., to be journalism? I find that very hard to believe.

Daisey admits that he has 'taken shortcuts' in his monologue. He gives the following explanation why: Everything I have done in making this monologue for the theater has been toward that end – to make people care. I'm not going to say that I didn't take a few shortcuts in my passion to be heard. But I stand behind the work. I get that he wants people's attention, that he aggregated information from other stories into the story about his own story, and made some facts seem a little worse then they were, to make people aware of the problems in China. As I said, he indeed shouldn't have brought it as news, but I'd go as far, that this should never have beeen part of a play. He tells the story in such a way, that appears to be truth. If you don't explicitly tell them, you shouldn't expect the audience to just know that it's partly/mostly fiction, they're listening to.

If you think, you'll only get heard by telling lies, I think you'll be wrong in any situation. I think Daisey should have either told the story, as it really was. You can get enough drama by telling about people getting poisoned while making an ipad, if you have just red it, it's not necessary to make it seem as if you talked to the man in question. And if you don't have enough information to tell a good story, either you'll have to look further and dig deeper, or there's really no story there, and you'll have to admit it to yourself. I'm afraid that that's Daisey's biggest problem. He came there, and the conditions he discovered weren't as bad as he was expecting. Not bad enough to make a show that would shock people.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Data caps should be a thing of the past

Many ISP's are often setting data caps, specifying how much you may download/upload in a certain ammount of time. These caps are more and more slowing down the increas in usefulness of the internet, as the web takes over many of the tasks that we used to perform locally.

The network can handle the load.

Often ISP's will claim that the caps are set to manage the load on their network, so that the excessive load that one person puts on a network, dos not degrade the user experience for other users. But the truth is, that the network should be able to handle traffic ammounts, higher than the caps that ISP's ae creating. ISP's usually don't give adequate information about why their imposing a certain data cap, their just putting the cap there, without backing up their moves with data. You notice that as soon as people start asking questions about the reasons for data caps ISP's start contradicting their own statements. As this article by Public Knowledge shows. The example they give is comcast, and a story of Andre Vignaud. His internet was blocked for a year because he exceeded the cap twice.

The internet is becoming our desktop.

The reason Andre's internet usage was so high, was because of the data he uploaded. Wanting to keep his pictures and other data safe, he created a backup vortex, relying heavily on data stored, in different losless forms, causing him to upload a lot of data. But the internet is also starting to become a place for multimedia entertainment. Flash games have been around for ages, but the last couple of years, we've started to watch HD video on Netflix Instant watch, listened to streaming movies on spotify,... And then there's our still growing quest for finding information online. Not only through google, but also services that send more than just a text query to the cloud, like siri, which sends surprising ammounts of data to North Carolina.

They just can't keep up

Ju@st like the music industry complayning about copyright infringements, and Television companies refusing to let netflix stream their content, their just not adapting their data models to the evolving technology. If people can't access the data they want in the way they want via your service, they will find another way wether you like it or not.

Instead of imposing crazy limits, and running to the government asking for laws, like a bullied kid running to the teacher, these businesses should act like adults, dealing with the situation in a way that is beneficial to as many people as possible, for as long as possible.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

7 Songs that will help you prepare for a quiz

Our family has always enjoyed quizzes. Playing trivial persuit at every family gathering, and shouting at our televisio s during quiz shows. The 31th of March, our family will participate in a quiz, and our inboxes are being flooded with mails to arrange teams. Often, hidden within these mails are songs and movie clips that help you remember trivia better. Here is some of the material that has popped up in my gmail account lately.

1. Kings and queens of England

2. Chemical elements

3. countries of the world

4. U.S. presidents

5. All 50 U.S. states and their capitals

6. Atomic model

7. the history of the soviet union arranged to the tetris tune

8. ???

As I'm preparing for this quiz, I'm looking for more of these songs. I'll add more as I find them. If you know of a good one, leave a comment below.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

5 videos that express my views on copyright.

I think copyright lasts too long. People should get paid for the content they create, but not after their death. I don't know enough about the law, especially international laws, to adequately explain and defend my views, but these videos will show you what I think.