Buzzwords

From the “Yeah, Its-Mindless-Banter, I-know!” Department
One of the things I dislike the most about working for a not-so-small-Corporation is the Corporate Buzzwords. It seems that everytime the Executives or the Management of these companies want to get a new idea across to their employees they use some corporate buzzphrase that makes no sense in the real world, but somehow encapsulates their new message.

Have you noticed the use of Political Buzzwords? I have.

(Un)Civil War

There is a lot of talk about whether Iraq is in the midst of a “civil war”. As far as I can tell it seems like nothing more than a semantic debate. Are there actually repercussions to the label? Does it change our involvement? Or is just a war for the hearts and minds of American voters?

Websters defines Civil War as “a war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country”. Seems pretty apt so far with two caveats… war hasn’t officially been declared (as if that matters) and not all the combatants are citizens of Iraq.

Short one today… I’m just curious if there is any actual meaning here or just a another mindlessly uncivil war between Bush and the media.

Internet Killed the Video Star

When I was coming of age musically, cassettes were the most common media. Records were still big, but the ability to copy tapes, make “mix” tapes, and play music in your car made tapes the medium of choice for all but the musical purists. Cassettes were my first introduction into the world of piracy (arrrr!), though it certainly wasn’t called that at the time or even thought of as such. It was common practice to copy a tape, copy a record to a tape, or copy a custom collection of songs to tape and pass it around to your friends. It certainly didn’t curtail my buying of music. In fact it probably enhanced it because I was exposed to more music than I would be otherwise.

It only now become an issue of piracy for two reasons: The ability to make these copies is much easier, and there is no degradation of quality when the copy is made. So now we have an industry built around Digital Rights Management and the music industry is in a panic over the loss of revenue that a free distribution of music equates to. As someone who grew up in the age of cassettes though, I’m finding it hard to make this shift in perspective.

Most small artists are probably more than happy to have their music distributed around freely. It gives them the exposure they likely crave, and if 5% of those people buy it or go to a concert because of it, that’s 5% more money in their pockets than they would have had otherwise. On the other hand, big artists see it as theft. They already have the exposure, but any giving away of music is money out of their pockets.

So if I buy a CD and listen to it, that is legal of course.
If I buy a CD and listen to it with friends, that is legal.
If I buy a CD and loan it to a friend that is legal too.

I’m pretty comfortable with that.

Playing music at a party is ok, but playing music at a dance club is not (unless you have paid to license the songs to be played publicly). This is because you would be using the music to make money (cover charge) or enhance your ability to make money (drinks, etc.)

Reselling an old CD is ok, but copying it and selling the copy is not (I presume copying it and selling the original while keeping the copy would not be legal either).

So the real fuzzy area for me is copying and giving the copy to someone. No money has changed hands. You could technically say that when the CD and/or file was originally sold, only one copy was intended to exist, but that’s unrealistic with current technology. With I-tunes you can legally listen to anyone’s music collection as long as the two computers are both connected via a network somehow. But why should I be limited to listen to your collection only when logged on to my computer and only with the evil I-tunes? I personally like to listen to music in my car and pretty much nowhere else. If (and when) networking technology advances to the point where my car stereo is connected to the same web that your computer is connected to, what will the difference be between my being able to listen to you music collection whenever and from wherever I want vs. you giving me a file that I can listen at my convenience?

Sticky wicket eh? Because with that logic, one person could conceivably buy the CD and then everyone could just listen to it for free.

A Laptop In Every Lap

Jeremy talked about Democrat’s plans to provide free broadband access to all Americans. How short sighted of them. Now several companies are proposing low cost laptops for developing nations including MIT, Intel, and others. The MIT project will have a small screen, hand crack (as well as battery and standard AC plug), wireless networking, cell phone adapter, no hard drive, a Linux OS, and sell for about $100. It’s designed for schoolchildren of developing nations and uses a “meshnet” technology essentially using all the computers within range as relay points in order to get to any nearby internet hotspots. The idea being that a school in a small village might have internet access, if one kid is close enough to that access point, then any kid within range of that kid also has internet access and so on.

One key use I’ve heard mentioned is books and educational materials. Instead of being limited to a few outdated books, they can potentially have access to an unlimited amount of books and such. The co-founder of the project did a similar project in Cambodia and mentioned that some of the kids first words were “google”. I got news for you… that was just a burp.

So now I’m picturing Sally Struthers strolling through a devastated Nairobi village with dozens of doe-eyed kids in the background frantically downloading porn and blogging about having nothing to eat.

Needless to say Bill Gates stopped reading when he saw “Linux” and thinks something in $700 -$1000 range would be better “for the kids”. Apple is probably not far behind trying to figure out how to get I-pods stuck in the ears of millions of new and pliable young heads.

Targeted customers so far are Brazil, China, Egypt, South Africa, Thailand… and Massachusetts. There’s six places you don’t see listed together often. The project hopes to start producing between 5 and 15 million of these babies by the end of 2006 (that’s this year for those keeping score at home).

What say you all to this news? Jeremy’s ultimate nightmare of the dumbing down of the internet? A great tool for education? The mother of all culture shocks? Is this a good idea? The pop-culturalist in me loves the idea of a generation of kids winding their laptops up before using them.

The War On Immigration

AP has this story on the Netherlands new test for immigrants. Included in the test is a video showing, among other things, a naked woman on a beach, drug use, and two gay men kissing. It is designed to demonstrate that the Netherlands is a very liberal society and to basically say that if this is not your cup of tea, then bugger off. Western countries are specifically exempt from the test since apparently the Dutch are having trouble with immigrants from highly conservative cultures (specifically Morocco and Turkey) which are coming and then causing a culture clash with native born Netherlanders. The tipping point was the murder of a Dutch filmmaker by a Moroccan immigrant a couple of years ago.

Sounds a lot like the problems the French are having as well. And how about the US? We have less of a culture clash and more of economic drain, but still an immigration problem exists. But we do seem to be nearing new legislation in this area. The big question seems to be what to do about those that are here already.

So what are your views? Is “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” a sentiment that has soured in our current political and economic climate? If it is purely economic reasons, how can we legitimately justify that being the third richest country per capita in the world (far outpacing most other modern nations)? How about national security? Is that a legitimate reason to bar immigration or a scapegoat? And how about American culture? Is that something that now exists and is worth preserving?