Category Archives: Uncategorized
think you’re keeping little sally or joey unsullied from violent episodes by only letting them watch the latest animated disney film? think again:
“All 74 films reviewed contained at least 1 act of violence (mean duration, 9.5 minutes per film; range, 6 seconds–24 minutes). Analysis of time trends showed a statistically significant increase in
the duration of violence in the films with time (P=.001). The study found a total of 125 injuries (including 62 fatal injuries) in 46 (62%) of the films. Characters portrayed as “bad” were much more likely to die
of an injury than other characters (odds ratio, 23.2; 95% confidence interval, 8.5-63.4). A majority of the violence (55%) was associated with good or neutral characters dueling with bad characters (ie, using
violence as a means of reaching resolution of conflict), and characters used a wide range of weapons in violent acts.”“Our content analysis suggests that a significant amount of violence exists in animated G-rated feature films. Physicians and parents should not overlook videocassettes as a source of exposure to violence for children.”
this is not to say that i’m exactly sure there’s any sort of direct causal link between exposure to violence and standing in a crowd with automatic weapons. at the same time i’m not saying that there isn’t some-sort of complicated relationship between exposure and action.
i do know that it makes me pretty uneasy to see ten-year-olds in “gladiator” [ which sucks – trust salon on this one]
for some reason reading about this lawsuit forced me to hum a few bars from salad days [ oh c’mon you remember irrirating your parents by looking sullen and playing minor threat >loudly<]. anyway - i think it was because both parties in the lawsuit claimed to be fighting for the mom, apple pie and the punk rock diy attitude...[which incidently, officially died after henry started showing up regularly on mtv]
“The original ideals of the band — that’s what Klaus, D.H. and myself were fighting for,” said East Bay Ray (born Ray Pepperell) after the decision.
Biafra (born Eric Boucher) claimed the suit was brought in part because he refused to license “Holiday in Cambodia” to Levi’s for an advertisement.
“They’re punishing me for sticking to the principles of the band and underground, independent culture,” he said.”
sing along with me…”do you remember when/yeah, so do i/you called those the, ah, salad days/i call them a lie”
i’m trying to think of a witty komodo comment, but i can’t – no matter, this komodo demands respect:
“ActiveState, a leading supplier of products and services supporting open source software, announced today that the company will use Mozilla software code as a cross platform development framework for Komodo, its Perl and Python integrated development environment (IDE).”
“ActiveState is building a Perl, Python and JavaScript integrated development environment (IDE) called Komodo. Komodo will use the Mozilla application framework and thus will have the benefit of being cross-platform and fully supportive of Windows and Linux amongst others. The IDE will offer features familiar to users of any modern IDE such as a rich language-aware editor, an interactive debugger and an interactive shell. The Komodo IDE source code will be freely available and will leverage Internet standards such as XML, CSS, RDF, FTP, WebDAV, and HTTP. This will make it easy for users to extend the IDE as well as learn how a complex Mozilla application is built.”
[via captain cursor]
many other sites have complained about the salon redesign [which has extracted an apology of sorts]. at nearly the same time, but with much less visibility, biomednet redesigned and managed to break any links to archived stories in their popular [o.k. popular is a relative term, it’s popular among biology types, honest.] web mag, hms beagle. this is a supreme drag, since i have quite a few articles archived in the informatics section. aaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhhh – i would like to have a few words with whoever designed the redesign about respect for your ‘customers’.
the latest risks digest points out that netzero proves that being free always costs something:
“The “Terms and Conditions” you must accept to use the “free” NetZero service
include giving up your privacy among other “minor” things:1) obligation on your part to fill out with real information all
questionnaires and survey forms they send;2) allowing NetZero to learn your browsing habits by tracking all the websites
you visit and compile, sell and USE that information.
They say personal identifying info won’t be disclosed but just the simple
fact that they store it on their system where is available to anybody who
could lawfully or not access it, is a problem. Let alone they don’t exclude
themselves from using it so it is possible for them to target you directly.3) you cannot disable cookies, bypass their ad program (meaning that you can’t
install firewalling software that would block the ad stream)4) you allow them to alter your e-mail messages by adding advertising which
you cannot remove or obscure (not unusual);5) the most ridiculous note is that the whole agreement can be changed at any
time by posting them on their website, and require you to check them every
time before you “use the service”, and not use it if you don’t agree. Let
alone the impossibility of this (how can you browse their website without
already being connected, thus using the service), it puts an unreasonable
burden on the user. How many will remember the original contract and check
the new one for differences, I doubt they would post a “diff” file there :-)”
oreillynet has added a mozilla section to it’s vast empire. if it’s not new, it’s new to me. i’m posting this article on mozilla as an ‘application virtual machine’ so i’ll perhaps, possibly, maybe remember to read it later. while i’m at it i’ll put up another virtual post-it note to this one on building skins for mozilla. someday there will be a ‘snowdeal’ skin available with a ‘no money back’ guarantee.