April 08, 2003
Republicans want terrorism law made permanent
Our Republican friends in Congress want to make the repeal of the Bill of Rights -- otherwise known as the Patriot Act -- permanent.
Working with the Bush administration, Congressional Republicans are maneuvering to make permanent the sweeping antiterrorism powers granted to federal law enforcement agents after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said today.The move is likely to touch off strong objections from many Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress who believe that the Patriot Act, as the legislation that grew out of the attacks is known, has already given the government too much power to spy on Americans.
The landmark legislation expanded the government's power to use eavesdropping, surveillance, access to financial and computer records and other tools to track terrorist suspects.
When it passed in October 2001, moderates and civil libertarians in Congress agreed to support it only by making many critical provisions temporary. Those provisions will expire, or "sunset," at the end of 2005 unless Congress re-authorizes them.
But Republicans in the Senate in recent days have discussed a proposal, written by Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, that would repeal the sunset provisions and make the law's new powers permanent ...
Jason Key said:
God Help Us
Surveillance Nation
Read this last night in MIT's Technology Review, the hard-cover magazine. It's an overview of private and governmental surveillance, workplace monitoring, traffic cams, cell phone intercepts and more, by Dan Farmer and Charles Mann. A quick, one-time registration is required on the site.
Best cross-platform media player: Flash6
There's been an interesting discussion on the online-news list about use of Flash6 vs. Windows Media Player, Real, and Quicktime. Mindy McAdams sums it up nicely here:
Not only do Real and WMF cause fatal errors on the Mac OS -- which the Flash 6 player eliminates, because it is truly cross-platform -- but when you author in Flash, you also have complete flexibility in how your player controls appear and operate, and in how the complete object, or "block," appears on the page. The embedded players for Real and even QuickTime sometimes misbehave a bit across browsers and platforms.By using the Flash 6 player as your delivery medium for online video, you get an even better result, because of your ability to get rid of all the proprietary-looking doodads forced on you by the three dominant plug-ins. In other words, you can integrate your own unobtrusive player into your page design (or a pop-up) cleanly.
If you are under the impression that more users have one of the other plug-ins (or players) installed, think again.
While only the newest Flash plug-in/player (6) supports video, previous versions support audio. So if you author in Flash MX and you are not using video, you can save for Flash 5 or even Flash 4 and ensure maximum usability for your audio feature. (The audio file format: MP3. Just import your existing audio file to Flash. It is not difficult.)
Todd said:
FYI, I don't even think QUICKTIME or REAL PLAYER or any other media allows you to "copy" something onto the clipboard and paste it into an email attachment, etc. Sure, JPGs & GIFs and such, but.... quicktime movies? real player files? Good luck, I'd like to see you do that one. Not only that, but let's say you could, no gaurentee that person on the other end has the appropriate player in which they'll still get a broken image, etc.
JD said:
Someone asked how to access or sign up for the online-news list. Here's how to do that:
http://talk.poynter.org/online-news/
Know, however, that the list is non-technical in nature and centers on issues related to online journalism, particularly business models for online news.
There has been one reponse on the list to Marc's post, from Mindy McAdams:
>Marc Canter wrote:
- though it is technically possible to do, most people don't know how to link INTO a Flash doo-hickey - so all links simply go to the "top" of the doo-hickie - which is fine if it's a blog compliant data structure - but more time than not it's NOT a blog data structure.
I'm guessing he means when the Flash object is on a Web page, and it's not at the top of the page. But if that is what he means, the same criticism holds for content in other media players/plug-ins, including Real, WM and QuickTime.
> - it is impossible to copy and paste a Flash doc - at all. Macromedia considers this a feature. "We're the only on-line media
>standard to PREVENT anyone from copying it." Gee, I wonder who thinks this is a good thing? Ever try to take a cool Flash thingie and get it
into a blog? Well it CAN'T be done. Tell me why this is a good format for on-line media...
There are two ways in which this is NOT true:
1) Text in a Flash document can be made selectable. See, for example:
http://www.macloo.com/examples/flash/dynamictext/
The text in the scrolling box (which is Flash) can be right-clicked and (Select All) copied in full.
2) There are a bunch of free capture programs that let you grab Flash content to play offline (I grab it to show in presentations where there is no Net connection). Two examples: Flash Saver; Flash Capture (Google them). The drawback is that you can't get the multiple-SWF packages built by Flash studs at places like The New York Times and USA Today -- you can grab all the pieces, but if you want to show the package as a package, you have to rebuild it yourself.
I am certain that The New York Times and USA Today think IT IS a good thing that people cannot copy their cool Flash packages.
>Until Macromedia allows people to right-click on a Flash thingie - it is NOT the ideal distribution format for media.
I agree with this in principle, but media companies have exactly the opposite view, and I think Marc Canter is being a little naive in not recognizing that. Media companies don't want us to copy their content, even for educational uses! So it makes sense that Macromedia would want to address that.
I recognize that Marc is coming from an open source perspective, and I like that. But the open source community is not going to eliminate copyright protection and creators' rights any time soon.
------------------------
Mindy McAdams
(Teaching online journalism at the
University of Florida)
mailto:mmcadams@well.com
http://mindymcadams.com/
ip address said:
Nice blog
Online news: Plan more, scramble less
New on the American Press Institute site: Online news: Plan more, scramble less, by Rusty Coats.
Radio's digital future
Jon Healey in the LA Times: Radio Tunes In Warily to Its Digital Future. Technology offers better quality, sophisticated services. But only 20 stations use it, amid concerns about making the investment pay off.
Welcome to the wi-fi revolution
Wired News: The wireless Internet has arrived, and the message is clear: Be a part of what moves the technology forward, or get out of the way. By Chris Anderson from Wired magazine.
How a daily college newspaper became independent
Twenty-five years ago today, when I was a young pup, I organized and chaired a major journalism convention at Rutgers University that paved the way for the university's college daily newspaper, the Targum, to become an independent publication. Lesley Stahl, Daniel Schorr and George Gallup were just a few of the speakers who came out to the daylong conference and alumni reunion. The event drew 1,000 people.
Some alums of the 134-year-old newspaper asked me to recount the events that led up to independence and the founding of the Targum Alumni Association. Here's the story.
Disney on the digital frontier
LA Times: Disney Plans to Be on Digital Frontier. Excerpt:
In the future, [Disney Chairman Michael] Eisner said, movie studios will need to be more flexible about the way they distribute movies. He suggested that in place of the current sequence of studio releases -- from theaters to video to pay per view to television -- studios would need to offer faster distribution, directly to consumers."If we don't provide consumers with our product in a timely manner, pirates will," he said.
Also, CNET News.com has a story on Disney's plans to test an on-demand film service later this year that will download recent first-run film releases onto a TV set-top box.
Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointers.
3 journalists die in US air raid
NY Times: At Least 3 Journalists Die in Blast at Baghdad Hotel. The story begins:
At least three journalists, including a reporter for the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera, were killed and several were wounded today during an American air raid and an artillery barrage in Baghdad.The Al Jazeera reporter ó Tariq Ayoub, a Jordanian ó was standing on the roof of the station's office just after dawn, doing a live broadcast of the warfare in Baghdad when the building was hit, by two air to surface missiles, officials at Al Jazeera headquarters said. ...
Reuters reported that one of its television cameramen ó Taras Protsyuk, 35, a Ukrainian national based in Warsaw ó died when a single shell slammed into the Reuters office on the 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel. At least three other employees of the news agency were wounded.
In Madrid, officials of the Telecino Spanish television station said today that same blast fatally injured one of their cameramen, Jose Couso, 37.
Meantime, in Australia's ABC News Online: US denies deliberately targeting Al Jazeera.
And in CNN.com:
An Al-Jazeera reporter on-air said he felt, as did his colleagues, the U.S. strike was a deliberate attack against the network, since two missiles hit the building, not one, and that the raid happened at about the same time Abu Dhabi TV offices were hit. The reporter said he felt this was an attempt to shoot and silence the people who are witnessing crimes against the Iraqi people. However, Pentagon officials adamantly maintain U.S. military forces 'absolutely did not' target Al-Jazeera.
And finally: War Claims Lives of 10 Journalists in 21 Days.
That's about 1 journalist killed for every 9 US combat troops.
