Another Tax!

According to today's article the Copyright Board of Canada has approved a new fee to be placed on "legally" downloaded music. So, when you buy a song from the iTunes Music Store, Puretracks, etc. 3 cents goes to the recording industry to compensate artists for people downloading music and not paying for it. (I hesitate to call it "illegal" downloading because it's not strictly illegal in Canada.)

How do you like that, gang? You're being taxed to pay for people doing something "illegal" that's not actually illegal. So if you're like me and want to stick it to the record companies, it's a little harder now. So now I can't buy a song by an independent artist from the iTunes Music Store.

Here's the best part. It's retroactive to 1996.

I'm An Artist Too (43)

The Incredible Sulk.

Good Job

Today I have a question for all of this blog's readers, or anyone who happens to stumble across this post.

What would you say makes a job a good job, or a bad job? I'm not talking about performance, like "Good job out there, son!" I'm talking about jobs as in career-type things.

What was your best job? Why?

What was your worst job? Why?

Leave a comment (anonymous or otherwise), email me, or talk to me in person. I'm just interested in how people see a job as being a good job or a bad job.

Turn Your Radio Down

In Today's article a UK auto-body chain is being sued for copyright infringement.

How did they violate copyright law? They played the radio so loud that the public could hear it.

Normally this is where I'd rant about the idiocy and greed of the recording industry, and use that as a reason to incite you to "stick it to the man" and download music using your favourite peer-to-peer file sharing system. But the article speaks for itself. Heck, what I've told you speaks for itself.

I'm An Artist Too (42)

The Scotsman: "The kilt is nice, but the high heels are killing me!"
The Old Man: "Turn up the volume! I can't hear the piano!"

Looking For A Perl Of Wisdom

Learning new technologies can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, lots of free documentation is readily available on the internet. On the other hand, most of it is not written by writers, but by techies. Techies (like myself) tend to make terrible writers.

Right now I'm trying to deepen my knowledge of a programming language called Perl. There's tons of useless documentation on Perl.com. I say it's useless because it's not written very well. It's riddled with spelling mistakes. Spelling mistakes in technical documentation can be bad. The right kind of error in the right spot makes you ask the question "Wait...is that a typo, or does that word actually mean something special I don't know about?"

And you can't find the documentation from the home page. I had to find it by Googling something specific.

It's also not the most clear. I'd wager that it's written by programmers. Technical writing is a special talent. In order to be a good technical writer you need to be able to understand technical concepts. You, then, need to be able to communicate that to the masses in writing. And you need to make it simple and understandable.

I think programmers approach technical writing with certain assumptions of the reader's knowledge. A good writer makes no such assumptions, at least without stating the assumptions.

I find a great divide exists in technical writing. There are three broad levels of expertise. I'll call them "beginner", "intermediate", and "advanced." Documentation written for beginners is necessarily simple. It's aim to get the reader from knowing nothing on a subject to being functional.

Documentation for advanced people seeks to inform of things little known, or advanced tricks. It assumes intermediate knowledge. It assumes more than what basic documentation will give you. It intends to make you a guru.

Documentation for intermediates is to bridge the gap between beginner and advanced. It assumes you're familiar with beginner level concepts.

In my experience, very little intermediate documentation exists. I'm in the unfortunate position of being intermediate on many computer technologies. Books for Dummies and Complete Idiot's Guides don't do much much good. Many other books would require a lot of research effort just to read.

Where's the documentation for intermediate's like me?!

Peer Pressure Increasing

Last week we saw an article dealing with minimum sentences for drug dealing in Canada. Two weeks ago we saw a woman having to pay the RIAA $222 000 for downloading 24 songs.

Last week I promised an example of a deterrent not working.

According to today's article despite all the law suits going on, use of peer-to-peer music sharing is increasing.

Q.E.D.