July 01, 2003
Williams vs. Williams
Hate to say this, but is there anything more boring in all of professional sports than another Venus vs. Serena Williams tennis final? I'll be rooting for at least one of the Belgians in the semis.
JD said:
Agree with that!
Rafat said:
Or, if you were watching the games on BBC, as I am doing here in London, you would have to endure Boris Becker's commentary...man, he was a great player, but a horrible commentator, with those blase german jokes...cliche, yet sadly true in his case...
Once in a while, John McEnroe drops by from NBC box, and that the only thing to watch/hear about Wimbledon, sadly again...
Jason said:
Considering their matches in the past year, I find the Williams/Williams final more compelling than just about everything else out there (Well Serena/Capriati is always enjoyable) and the added intrigue of Venus' abdominal strain should make it more interesting. Does Serena go easy on her injured sis or does she take advantage? Hmmm...
I'm more curious though with this phrase "I hate to say this..." why do you hate to say it? Do you feel like you should like a Williams final but don't?
Looking for a stable photo viewing program
For the past few years I've been using Moon Software Multimedia Xplorer (v. 2.09) on my PC for organizing and viewing photos. I also use Picasa and FlipAlbum 5. (And then there's iPhoto for our Macs.)
Multimedia Xplorer has been crashing badly lately, the victim of my upgrade to Photoshop 7.01, Windows XP, or both.
I hear there are dozens of good photo/slide-show programs for PCs. Anyone have any favorites you'd like to recommend? Mostly want to be able to view collections of family photos at a glance, play a slide show, and be able to call them up for editing in Photoshop 7 without Photoshop or the photo program crashing on me.
Buzz Bruggeman said:
JD:
Try www.preclick.com
I have been impressed with it, easy to work mith allows for meta taging of images. Good stuff, solid team.
Any quesions, let me know.
Buzz
Dani said:
Have you tried Irfanview? I've been using it for a while and it has done the work.
http://www.irfanview.com/
Clean, easy and free. :)
Tom said:
I don't know if another Adobe product will help you with Photoshop 7.01, but I really love the Adobe Photoshop Album.
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopalbum/main.html
It has a great tagging system, and there's a timeline bar at the top of the screen showing your pictures in chronological format. It's not free ($50), but it's getting great reviews from PC Magazine and PC World.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,895113,00.asp
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,109093,00.asp
MetaJournalism site launched
A new website is born: MetaJournalism, which looks at media, journalism and the power of web communities.
Adobe Finds Its True Colors
New in Business 2.0: Adobe Finds Its True Colors
It took an entire company makeover for Adobe Systems CEO Bruce Chizen to rally his company around its next killer app, Acrobat.
Corbis sues Amazon over celebrity images
Corbis, the image licensing agency owned by Bill Gates, is suing Amazon for selling celebrity images without permission.
Here's the AP story. Here's an Internetnews.com story about Corbis invoking the DMCA. And here's an excerpt from the WSJ story (subscription required):
In May, Matthew Rolston paid $24.95 on the Internet for a photo taken by a famous photographer, Matthew Rolston.The photographer was surprised he was able to buy the picture -- of actress Meg Ryan -- since he had authorized its use only once, for an issue of Detour magazine three years ago. Mr. Rolston had never permitted the picture to be sold over the Web.
Now the company that distributes Mr. Rolston's pictures and those of other photographers is fighting back against what it sees as a rising problem of illegal Internet sales.
Monday Corbis Corp., the Seattle photo-licensing company owned by Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, filed a suit against online retailer Amazon.com Inc. and 15 poster and picture stores for allegedly selling unauthorized copies of hundreds of images. Included among the movie, music, sports and television celebrities are images of Cameron Diaz and Vin Diesel.
The suit appeared to have an immediate impact. Late Monday, Amazon spokesman Bill Curry said the Internet merchant would remove the images in question from its site, possibly by the end of the day. ...
Corbis's lawsuits raise a fundamental question for Internet companies such as Amazon: How much responsibility does a company have to monitor and weed out misbehavior by users of its Web site?
The answer is somewhat murky. The best-known ruling on a case of this type involved Amazon rival eBay Inc., which in 2001 successfully argued it wasn't liable for the sale of unauthorized copies of a documentary movie about serial killer Charles Manson through the eBay site. In its defense, eBay successfully used a 1998 law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. that law generally favors copyright holders, but exempts certain "Internet service providers" from liability for material that passes through their networks or Web sites.
But the same defense may not work for Amazon, because, Corbis executives say, Amazon is more directly involved in transactions on its site than eBay. In their complaint, Corbis attorneys argue Amazon plays a central role in reproducing, displaying and distributing the allegedly misused material. Amazon bills customers when an image is sold, receives a portion of the proceeds and allows customers to track their shipments through its site, Corbis alleges.
A New Declaration for Independence Day
Ed Cone offers a New Declaration for Independence Day. Thanks to Doc for the pointer.
Breakfast with Bill Gates
USA Today: Bill Gates' take on subjects from spam to Mozambique, including Linux and other threats and why you should care about Longhorn.
P2P programmers promise to fight RIAA
Wired News: In the wake of the recording industry's threats to sue heavy users of peer-to-peer file-sharing systems, developers are fighting back, promising to implement features that will hide sharers' identities.
Ben Franklin and a free press
Time magazine has a well-done package on the Amazing Adventures of Ben Franklin. Here's the entry on Citizen Ben and a free press.
Thanks to Hylton for the pointer.
Liberties lost in music pirate hunt
Sonia K. Katyal in the Los Angeles Times: A War on CD Piracy, a War on Our Rights.
