This must be the sign of the times… With all the budget cutbacks in our schools, this cartoon seems to say it all. This is another ramification of the state’s fiscal crisis; since Prop 13 was ‘scared’ through the initiative process, our local districts have been at the mercy of the state’s largess. Add to that the imbalance of power of the school unions, we have very little margin for controlling budget cuts… [TIME Magazine Cartoon]
Now is the time that… you should upgrade your version of WordPress… This upgrade was very easy to install on my blog site and hopefully it will be just as easy for you. This blogging software is easy to use and works great with LiveWriter to streamline my blogging process. Anyway, keep intruders out by upgrading… [If you changed the template's php, the process will be more complicated.] This is not an idle warning…
WordPress Responds to Attack: “Please Upgrade”
Source: mashable.com
WordPress has responded to news today that outdated versions of the popular blogging software are vulnerable to a new attack. The attack affects only self-hosted versions of WordPress, not those at WordPress.com. The organization’s advice is simple: if you aren’t using the most recent version (2.8.4), upgrade now to avoid problems.
This isn’t really a problem with WordPress: those who have been upgrading regularly, as advised, are not affected. And WordPress has made it increasingly easy to upgrade, now just requiring a single click.
WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg writes of the vulnerability:
2.8.4, the current version of WordPress, is immune to this worm. (So was the release before this one.) If you’ve been thinking about upgrading but haven’t gotten around to it yet, now would be a really good time. If you’ve already upgraded your blogs, maybe check out the blogs of your friends or that you read and see if they need any help. A stitch in time saves nine. … [MORE]
Does the phrase: ‘Be sure your sins will find you out’ ring a bell? Well, maybe Amazon, or any other vendor who could retrieve sales material in cyberspace, found out, the customer considers a sale final… We don’t expect the seller to be able, or able, to retrieve the content of a sale via the ether as Amazon did with the books ’1984′ or ‘Animal Farm’. We have a realistic expectation that if a sale is made, it’s final. Now Amazon is trying to settle up with its customers. A good move…
Amazon CEO eats $30 crow over Kindle caper
Source: www.nypost.com
Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos is betting $30 or a free e-book can help him shed his image as Big Brother.
Apparently still smarting from a rash of negative publicity after the company surreptitiously removed electronic copies of George Orwell’s "1984" and "Animal Farm" from Kindles, the company Thursday informed customers it was offering either a $30 Amazon gift certificate or free uploads of the erased books as a way to make it up to them.
The books had been erased from Kindle users’ devices because of a dispute between Amazon and the publisher over whether the online retailer had obtained proper rights to sell an e-book version of the classic novels. Amazon has since secured the rights to the books.
An interesting idea, but will it really work? I love my Kindle 2, but would not abandon my physical library to depend only on the eReader. I find this especially true, at this point in the eReader’s development, for technical books like many of my computer/web design books and Photography books that depend on high-res graphics and/or color. What do you think about abandoning physical books? Shouldn’t we be able to pick and choose? Let us know your thoughts…
Can a School Library Be Replaced by E-Readers? Apparently, it Can
Source: mashable.com
You could say that it’s not a “real” library any more. Or you could say that the smell, look and feel of real books cannot be replaced by e-readers. But the administrators of Cushing Academy, a prep school near Boston, have done exactly that.
Instead of the 20,000 books the school currently has, the students of Cushing Academy will have 18 e-readers at their disposal. The learning centre – the replacement for what was once the school’s library – will also have three large TVs, a coffee shop, and laptop-friendly booths.
The cost of this makeover will be nearly $500,000, but the folks at Cushing think it’ll be worth it. “Instead of a traditional library with 20,000 books, we’re building a virtual library where students will have access to millions of books,’’ says James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing.
What has happened to our work ethic? Has anything? This is an interesting article. Very thought provoking… Read it and think about it; does it apply or is it jousting with a straw man… Share your thoughts with us…
Whatever Happened to the Work Ethic? by Steven Malanga, City Journal Summer 2009
Source: www.city-journal.org
The financial bust reminds us that free markets require a constellation of moral virtues. Summer 2009
In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville worried that free, capitalist societies might develop so great a “taste for physical gratification” that citizens would be “carried away, and lose all self-restraint.” Avidly seeking personal gain, they could “lose sight of the close connection which exists between the private fortune of each of them and the prosperity of all” and ultimately undermine both democracy and prosperity.
The genius of America in the early nineteenth century, Tocqueville thought, was that it pursued “productive industry” without a descent into lethal materialism. Behind America’s balancing act, the pioneering French social thinker noted, lay a common set of civic virtues that celebrated not merely hard work but also thrift, integrity, self-reliance, and modesty—virtues that grew out of the pervasiveness of religion, which Tocqueville called “the first of [America’s] political institutions, . . . imparting morality” to American democracy and free markets. Some 75 years later, sociologist Max Weber dubbed the qualities that Tocqueville observed the “Protestant ethic” and considered them the cornerstone of successful capitalism. Like Tocqueville, Weber saw that ethic most fully realized in America, where it pervaded the society. Preached by luminaries like Benjamin Franklin, taught in public schools, embodied in popular novels, repeated in self-improvement books, and transmitted to immigrants, that ethic undergirded and promoted America’s economic success. … [MORE]
"I think there is a world market for about five computers"
— Remark attributed to Thomas J. Watson, Sr. (Chairman of the Board of International Business Machines), 1943
“Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.”
— Thomas J. Watson, Sr., Chairman of IBM
“If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.”
— Thomas J. Watson, Sr., Chairman of IBM
Bonus: Thought for the Day… "IBM had developed a paper plan for such a machine and took this paper plan across the country to some 20 concerns that we thought could use such a machine. I would like to tell you that the machine rents for between $12,000 and $18,000 a month, so it was not the type of thing that could be sold from place to place. But, as a result of our trip, on which we expected to get orders for five machines, we came home with orders for 18."
— Thomas J. Watson, Sr., Chairman of IBM in reference to the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, 1953
Thomas John Watson, Sr. was the president of International Business Machines (IBM), who oversaw that company’s growth into an international force from the 1920s to the 1950s. Watson developed IBM’s effective management style and turned it into one of the most effective selling organizations yet seen, based largely around punched card tabulating machines. A leading self-made industrialist, he was one of the richest men of his time and was called the world’s greatest salesman when he died in 1956.
Having given up his first job — teaching — after just one day, he took a year’s course in accounting and business at the local Miller School of Commerce; finishing in May 1892. His second job as a US$6 a week bookkeeper was almost as brief as his first, giving way to a career as a peddler. He joined a traveling salesman, George Cornwell, peddling organs and pianos around the farms, for the local hardware store (William Bronsons).
Watson joined the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR) on May 1, 1914. When Watson took over as general manager, the company had fewer than 400 employees. In 1924, he renamed the company International Business Machines. Watson built IBM into such a powerful force that the federal government filed a civil antitrust suit against them in 1952. IBM owned and leased more than 90 percent of all tabulating machines in the United States at the time.
Throughout his life, Watson maintained a deep interest in international relations. He was known as President Roosevelt’s un-official Ambassador in NY and often entertained foreign statesman. In 1937, he was elected president of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and at that year’s biennial congress in Berlin stated the conference keynote to be World Peace Through World Trade. That phrase became the slogan of both the ICC and IBM.
"This word is on the most conspicuous wall of every room in every IBM building. Each employee carries a THINK notebook in which to record inspirations. The company stationery, matches, scratch pads all bear the inscription, THINK. A monthly magazine called ‘Think’ is distributed to the employees."
— Thomas J. Watson, Sr., Chairman of IBM
Watson personally approved and spearheaded IBM’s strategic technological relationship with the Third Reich. In this relationship, IBM helped make Nazi Germany more efficient; as it did its enemies Britain, Soviet Russia, and the United States of America, where IBM did substantial business as well. In 1937, Watson received the Eagle with Star medal from Germany for the help that IBM subsidiary Dehomag (Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft mbH) and its punchcard machines provided the Nazi regime for tabulating census data. After the outbreak of The Second World War, Watson returned the medal, and the German government tried to take ownership of the Dehomag operation.
[Biographical information is from the Wikipedia article on Thomas J. Watson, Sr. that can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson ]
"You press the button, we do the rest."
— George Eastman, Inventor
"[I]t seems a strong, incisive sort of letter"
— George Eastman, Inventor
Bonus: Photographer’s Thought for the Day… “Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.”
— George Eastman, Inventor
Bonus: Photographer’s Thought for the Day… “We were starting out to make photography an everyday affair, to make the camera as convenient as the pencil.”
— George Eastman, Inventor
Bonus: Photographer’s Thought for the Day… “It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary.”
— George Eastman, Inventor
George Eastman founded the Eastman Kodak Company and invented roll film, helping to bring photography to the mainstream. Roll film was also the basis for the invention of motion picture film in 1888 by the world’s first filmmaker and precedent inventor to the digital camera, Louis Le Prince, and a decade later by his followers Léon Bouly, Thomas Edison, the Lumière Brothers and Georges Méliès.
In his final two years, Eastman was in intense pain, caused by a degenerative disorder affecting his spine. He had trouble standing and his walking became a slow shuffle. Today it might be diagnosed as spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal canal caused by calcification in the vertebrae. Eastman grew depressed, as he had seen his mother spend the last two years of her life in a wheelchair from the same condition. On March 14, 1932, Eastman committed suicide by inflicting a single gunshot to the heart, leaving a note which read, "My work is done. Why wait?"
In 1874, Eastman became intrigued with photography, but found the process awkward. It required coating a glass plate with a liquid emulsion, which had to be quickly used before it dried. After three years of experimentation with British gelatin emulsions, Eastman developed a dry photographic plate, and patented it in both Britain and the US. In 1880 he began a photographic business.
In 1884, Eastman patented a photographic medium that replaced fragile glass plates with a photo-emulsion coated on paper rolls. The invention of roll film greatly sped up the process of recording multiple images.
Eastman then received a patent in 1888 for a camera designed to use roll film. He coined the marketing phrase, "You press the button, we do the rest." The phrase entered the public consciousness…
The camera owner could send in the camera with a processing fee of $10. The company would develop the film, print 100 pictures, and also send along a new roll of 100-exposures film. On September 4, 1888, Eastman received US patent #388,850 for his box camera – the first commercially successful box camera for roll film. Eastman also registered the trademark Kodak. The letter "K" had been a favorite of Eastman’s. He said, "[I]t seems a strong, incisive sort of letter".
By 1896, 100 Kodak cameras had been sold. The first Kodak cost USD $25. In an effort to bring photography to the masses, Eastman introduced the Brownie in 1900 at a price of just $1. It became a great success.
“Photography is thus brought within reach of every human being who desires to preserve a record of what he sees. Such a photographic notebook is an enduring record of many things seen only once in a lifetime and enables the fortunate possessor to go back by the light of his own fireside to scenes which would otherwise fade from memory and be lost.”
— George Eastman – 1900 – speaking of the Brownie camera
The LegacyThe Center for the Legacy of Photography (CLP) is a joint partnership initiative of George Eastman House and Image Permanence Institute at Rochester Institute of Technology. The initial funding for the Center for the Legacy of Photography was made possible by a generous grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The Center focuses on collecting and sharing knowledge about photographic materials. The work of the Center—developing reference resources and learning tools and refining the inquiry to deepen the understanding of the photograph through materials-based knowledge—will be shared through this website.
Notes, a project of George Eastman House, is a collaborative website that seeks to deepen understanding of valued photographic prints through adding information and identifying and characterizing key attributes of the work of specific photographers who are recognized as masters of the medium.
The information about this center are from the web page for:
http://www.notesonphotographs.org
An illuminating reference culled from a rare book, a significant passage transcribed from a unique letter, a hidden inscription revealed and documented in a conservation laboratory—such are the fragments of knowledge daily noted by individual students, historians, collectors, curators, conservators, archivists, scholars, who work to understand rare and fine photographs. Although of individual worth, the greater value of these observations goes unrealized if not commonly pooled for the benefit of all.
Notes On Photographs is a dynamically expanding web-based resource for gathering Notes that enhances knowledge about the significant artifacts of the history of photography. Like footnotes and endnotes, Notes On Photographs seeks to deepen the understanding of valued photographic prints through adding information and identifying and characterizing key attributes of the work of specific photographers who are recognized as masters of the medium.
[Biographical information is from the Wikipedia article on George Eastman that can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eastman ]
