Likeminds Blog

2009-06-12T23:26:00.002-04:00

2009-06-12T23:25:00.005-04:00

2009-06-12T23:25:00.002-04:00

2009-06-12T23:24:00.002-04:00

2009-06-12T23:23:00.002-04:00

2009-06-12T23:22:00.002-04:00

2009-06-12T23:19:00.002-04:00

2009-06-12T23:18:00.006-04:00

2009-06-12T23:18:00.004-04:00

2009-06-12T23:18:00.001-04:00

2009-06-12T23:17:00.002-04:00

2009-06-12T23:14:00.003-04:00

2009-06-12T23:14:00.001-04:00

2009-06-12T23:13:00.002-04:00

2009-06-12T23:10:00.003-04:00

2009-06-05T13:33:00.001-04:00

AP Using the 'hot news' misappropriating doctrine to target scrapers and perhaps bloggers and news agenciesThursday, June 05, 2009

The Associated Press is developing a new tool called a scraper-bot. It plans to scour the web with bots searching for AP content anywhere other than the AP site. The main target it seeks to uncover is so-called scraper sites. A scraper site is one which posts full content verbatim from the original owner violating copyright laws by reprinting without permission and without giving proper credit to the owner. This is stealing, or plagiarism. This very different from bloggers and other content developers who quote from other sources, or reprint sections, but with full attribution and links to the content owner’s site.

This is a valid concern, both ethically and monetarily, yet AP News Editor, Ted Bridis has everyone concerned due to his broad generalization about AP content and cracking down on anyone using it. He says he is not going after bloggers and sources who cite an excerpt properly. There is still concern; however, because he has thus far failed to put clear and adequate definitions to unauthorized use of content, scraping, etc, and any material flagged by the AP scraper bots would immediately go to the legal department. He also leaves unclear the use of headlines, titles and ledes. This is a common practice in reporting; the use of same or similar headlines. Is he going to try to clamp down on that too? That could seriously impede the flow of news on the net. Headlines must be short, concise and on topic. They need to be clear about the content. This needs to be left alone as there are only so many ways to word it without losing meaning and clarity.
AP would also do well to remind itself that AP even borrows excerpts from original stories by local newspapers and crafts its own story around it. This is common practice in news reporting. Indeed summarizing facts, news aggregation, and retelling of stories are a must and yet is he going to try to control that? He has not made his definitions clear, but has taken the steps to implement authority. The industry cannot survive that, and I say it will impede our right to free speech. The "hot news misappropriation" doctrine which grants limited, yet undetermined time-frame rights to breaking news to the originator does not cover the essence or facts, just the representation thereof. Also where does he stand on the common practice of using verbatim headlines and ledes; quoting opening statements before rehashing the story? Many sites like The Drudge Report commonly display the headline and first line of the story.
This action on the part of AP “hot news misappropriation" doctrine and how AP chooses to define the parameters of the hot news misappropriation doctrine and how far they want to take it could change the reporting landscape and forever change the flow of information on the internet. Mark a change in the entire industry.
Dinara SaiahFreelance Writer© Dinara Publishing June 5, 2009

Favorite Quotes

2009-05-17T10:51:00.001-04:00

The big secret in life is to train your mind to think only about what you want to happen and to keep your thoughts off of what you do not want!

Always keep your mind picturing what you really want and THINK ABOUT WHERE YOU WANT TO BE and not where you are. Stress is what happens when you put your attention on the wrong things.

-Peter Murphy

Vista

2009-04-10T18:39:00.004-04:00

OK, I don't want to jump on the bash Vista bandwagon, but . . . it does have some issues. Upon first trying to use Vista, you notice the menu bar is different, the control panel is different and the layout of your workstation is just plain different. This is enough to put off most people who just simply dislike change. Aside from the dislike, practically speaking, it causes a loss of productivity to learn your way around new things and this is a valid reason people tend to put it off.

I immediately found some things about Vista that I really liked and it made me willing to get to know it better. The productive features of Vista include hardware accessibility, maintenance, design features and organization of menus. Among other thing is the array of drivers on Vista. This can make adding hardware a lot easier. If you don't have a current driver, Vista has a lot of updates. Maintenance features make light work of keeping your system optimized. It has a user friendly panel for back-up, restore, and automatically check hardware and system function for you. The design features work together with the new IE7 and MS Office 7 for a visually easy to use display at your fingertips operation and use of graphics, built in syles, tempates, color schemes for desktop and web publishing (more than before and better). Accessibility features give you an eye easy display that allows you to magnify the screen for better vision and less eye strain. The multimedia add in and function s are great on Vista - built in, unlike XP. The tiered menus in Vista and MS Office 7 are what drove users to reject it immediately. It is new nd different and thing are not where you are used to reaching for them. The problem is that there are now so many features and tools that they needed to be grouped into categories, so the new toolbar has more feature, buttons, controls, just under grouped menus. Use it a few times and you will catch on.

So what is crazy making about Vita - when it does not work! The features are great, when the computer is working. The screen often freezes up, it hangs up and gets slow (in psite of tons of registry repair, optimization and maintenance). One of the most frustrating thing is it sucks productivity as it can be so hard to install software on it and there are some key programs, that although Vista compatible, I just cannot get them to install. I even called the company (Quicken) tech support and they just said that it won't install. So I still need the XP because I cannot put all of my software programs on Vista.

If you are a light user and need only MS office with multimedia and internet then Vista is great and you should have no problem. As an office system and development work, you will need to keep an XP around.

Internet Explorer and Browsers

2009-04-10T18:29:00.004-04:00

Has everyone on the board who uses Intenet Explorer upgraded to version 7 or version 8? If so, how do you like it and have you had any problems (MS always has bugs). I really like the tabbed browser in the IE7. It improves time and productivity. I do have some problems with it crashing sometimes, but this may be the Vista (that is another post!). It seems stable enough on the XP. I did download and try the Internet Explorer 8, but immeidately uninstalled it. It uses a third paty web imbedded app (Google Chrome) that has little if any functionality and robs you of all of the functionality of a standard browser.

If you need an alternative to Internet Explorer, I recommend the Mozilla Firefox. If has the same intuitive function as Internet Explorer and good stability. The only reason that I choose one of these over the other is integrating third party plug-ins and compatibility with interactive sites which may require a specific browser (such as online banking).

Welcome LikeMinds World

2009-04-10T18:23:00.002-04:00

We have things to say and topics to explore. LikeMinds (www.likeminds.us) covers a range of topics and I am going to be picking some of them apart over here, so feel free to chime in (as we always do. This board and blog is exploratory, and explore we shall. If there is a topic that you want explored, just let me know. Also you can explore over on the message board (forum) or the LikeMinds Wiki.