Now that the tweets and chatter has digested former Senator Chris Dodd's statements about SOPA and PIPA, the response was crowdsourced and the result, a whitehouse petition to invetigate Chris Dodd for bribery. You too can sign it at this link. I did, for the simple reason that on page 18 of yesterdays New York Times there was this gem of an article:
Soon after he retired last year as one of the leading liberals in Congress, former Representative William D. Delahunt of Massachusetts started his own lobbying firm with an office on the 16th floor of a Boston skyscraper. One of his first clients was a small coastal town that has agreed to pay him $15,000 a month for help in developing a wind energy project.
Amid the revolving door of congressmen-turned-lobbyists, there is nothing particularly remarkable about Mr. Delahunt’s transition, except for one thing. While in Congress, he personally earmarked $1.7 million for the same energy project.
So today, his firm, the Delahunt Group, stands to collect $90,000 or more for six months of work from the town of Hull, on Massachusetts Bay, with 80 percent of it coming from the pot of money he created through a pair of Energy Department grants in his final term in office, records and interviews show.
It's time to stop the revolving door of politicians who abuse the trust of the American people to do the right thing for the public good. Dodd's implied bribery is just another form the the same old self-serving thing.
Word tricking accross the tuebs is that Harry Reid is pulling the vote on SOPA. But our former Senator Chris Dodd is showing temper tantrum on of all places foxnews.
"Candidly, those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake," Dodd told Fox News. "Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake."
Dodd, who became CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America after leaving the Senate in 2011, noted the movie "Avatar" was stolen by online pirates 21 million times. Such acts, he said, threaten to decimate his industry.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/
If you think you understand what the copyright law is all about, you might want to review the concepts in this delightful video produced by Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University. How did we get endless copyright terms? Why the folks who contriuted the clips used below.
Because Connecticut Innovations, that quasi public agency self-charged with leading um, innovation in Connecticut has done such a great job creating tech jobs, Governor Malloy and the DECD are throwing more money at them. From the Hartford Business Journal:
Connecticut Innovations Inc. announced the ambitious business-development program Wednesday, one it says aims to build jobs.
The $125 million in new funding from the state was included in Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's jobs bill, which was signed into law in October, CI said.
CI says its plan is to match this state funding for each of the next five years with its existing cash and funding from its investment returns.
"CI's capabilities are essential to the success of the technology sector in Connecticut," Malloy said in a statement announcing the initiative. "Adding to their tool kit and providing more funding will allow the organization to accelerate its success in creating jobs and growing Connecticut's economy."
Included in the plan is:
• $4 million per year for CI's pre-seed program, which offers loans to support the formation of new Connecticut technology companies.• $22 million per year for seed stage and Series A investments, which help entrepreneurs grow existing businesses, and for follow-on investments in CI portfolio companies.
• $6.5 million per year for a newly developed loan program, which provides growth and working capital for technology companies.
• $7 million per year for the aggressive recruitment of emerging technology companies nationally and internationally. CI plans to work with the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) and other state agencies to design a relocation incentive package, similar to the governor's "First Five" initiative.
• $4 million per year to help Connecticut companies capture more of the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funds each year, as well as increase industry partnerships and the state's technology talent pipeline.
• $4.8 million per year to establish technology business accelerator hubs, which will provide support services to startups, and to create a corporate technology transfer initiative.
Arrrghhh Pirates. Let's think about piracy for a moment, as in classic piracy on the high seas, not Johnny Depp's Pirates of the Caribbean. You see in the olden days, pirates used ships to sail the high seas and then find other ships carrying valuable cargo, and commence an intricate battle that may or may not involve swashbucking swordfights. They boarded those ships and pillaged and plundered and stole the cargo. Let's be clear here, they removed the cargo, depriving the rightful owner of the cargo the rights of ownership. So chests of pieces of eight, and baubles of gemstones etc. were taken. That is piracy.
Flash forward to the days of Yahoo! instead of yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum, and we get the label piracy attached to just about anything. But in the case of the Internet, or as former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens once said, the tubes, piracy has morphed from an action that deprives ownership to one that simply deprives profit. That's a whole lot of important distinction.
You see, making a copy of something doesn't deprive ownership. The original is safe in the hands of whomever owns it. But now another replica exists. So instead of one person enjoying the use of let's say, a post card of a bottle of rum, two or more people can enjoy the same postcard. There is no loss of ownership.
But wait, you say, what about if the original owner wanted to sell that postcard. If there are all these copies that you can get for free, no one will buy the original. Well that's an interesting philosophy there. But we already know what happens when massive amounts of copies get made that are free. What happens is that more people become aware of the original and not surprisingly, want to buy it. We know this because of the lowly VHS tape. Remember those?
In this video clip Steve jobs is talking about libraries, computer games and interactive learning.
This is a wonderful short film about two old skool businesses. If you are into paper and letterpress printing then you will enjoy this.
ink&paper from Ben Proudfoot on Vimeo.
Directed by Ben Proudfoot
Original Music by Kyle Malkin
Sound Design & Mix by David Bolen
Show your support:
Aardvark Letterpress
2500 West 7th Street
Los Angeles, CA
(213) 388-2271
www.aardvarkletterpress.com/
McManus & Morgan Paper
2506 West 7th Street
Los Angeles, CA
(213) 387-4433
www.mcmanusmorgan.com
October 2011.
ben@benproudfoot.com
www.benproudfoot.com
www.dinnerwithfred.com
All I can say is wow. I’m not that much of a morning person, but I have a healthy appreciation for spectacular sunrises, usually on transatlantic flights. But this video of Norway’s mountain range at sunrise is just mindblowing. Enjoy:
Cineflex – Norwegian sunrise from Fuglefjellet on Vimeo.
WIth the holiday travel days fast approaching, here's a reminder of what could have been if we realized that the TSA and the airline industry are just killing all the fun and joy out of travelling by air.
Click the link: http://www.markfiore.com/political-cartoons/watch-xeth-air-travel-animated-video-mark-fiore-animation
This is a kickstart project worth checking out. Beautifully filmed documentary which also shows that the pressures of real estate development are indeed global.
