Printing & Copying

My roommate is trying to steal my entire life! I understand that when you spend a lot of time together – as roommates do – you end up picking up some of each other’s habits… But seriously? It’s becoming everything.  I started to think it would be really cool to wear multiple silver necklaces – like an insane amount.  2 weeks later my roommate is doing the same thing. I cut my hair short – so does she.  I start wearing hooded scarves – so does she. She’s even started to talk like me and has picked up a lot of my mannerisms.  It has gotten to the point that my friends are noticing, commenting and thinking she’s obsessed. People are telling me they think she is in love with me. I mean, if people are saying this, she has clearly gone too far.. right? These things may sound trivial – but this is my style and when you live in  a small town, individual style is really important. So when your roommate starts copying all your steeze it’s really upsetting. And needs to stop. Right?!  

-Kate, 26.

Aaron Blumer at Sharper Iron has part 2 of his series on preservation up.  In this post he interacts specifically with Kent Brandenburg’s book Thou Shalt Keep Them (TSKT), and it’s assertions.  His post is well written and hones in on some major flaws in the reasoning of TSKT.   I provide an excerpt below, but be sure to read the whole post.

2. The fallibility of Israel and the churches

The writers of Thou Shalt Keep Them claim that God has used two key institutions to maintain word perfect copies of His word. Thomas Strouse summarizes their view as follows.

[T]he Biblical writers clearly delineated the means for the preservation of God’s OT and NT words in Scripture. That the Lord used His NT congregation, as He did His OT saints, to be the agency through which His Words were preserved, is irrefragible [sic]. (109)

Chapters 11-14 focus on making a biblical case for this view. But weighing the biblical evidence for the idea of perfect preservation through the community of true believers requires that we first recognize what the Bible teaches about the character of these institutions.

Scripture reveals that, when it comes to wickedness and weakness, what is true of individual believers is also true of the body of believers. The epistles were all written to address problems in local churches, and some of these problems were severe. Though the church is described as “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15), these words describe the responsibility given to the church, not the church’s inherent character (cf. Brandenberg, 117-121). Paul does not assert that the church will perform its role as pillar and ground perfectly.

In the Bible, only one local church receives an evaluation free of criticism for failures. Christ commends the church of Philadelphia (Rev. 3:7-13) on every point. However, even this church receives the solemn warning to “hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown” (3:11, KJV). Even this church was capable of slipping and failing to do its work properly.

The body of true believers in the Old Testament was certainly no better! That they were given the responsibility of keeping and declaring the words of God (Brandenberg, 100) is not in dispute. But they were given many other responsibilities as well, and ultimately failed to execute any of them perfectly.

Prior to the reign of Josiah, idolatrous kings even managed to lose a vitally important copy of “the book of the law” for years, until Hilkiah accidentally rediscovered it (2 Kings 22:8). Opinions vary regarding whether this “book” was Deuteronomy or the entire Pentateuch, or whether any other copies of “the Law” were then available. Josiah’s reaction (22:10-13) suggests this “book” was, at best, one of very few surviving copies at the time. Some might object that these Israelite kings do not represent the true people of God during this time. However, if the leadership in Judah was not the chosen agency for preservation during that era, who could have been? It was certainly not the consistently idolatrous kings of the northern tribes.

In both the OT and the NT, the community of faithful believers is revealed to be one prone to error, and our doctrines of inspiration and preservation must take this clear biblical truth into account.

Over Christmas vacation, my cousin and I drove to Charlotte to visit the Mint Museum.  By sheer coincidence, the primary exhibit at the time was an haute couture exhibit, entitled The Art of Affluence: Haute Couture and Luxury Fashions.

While the entire exhibit was fascinating (as was the footwear exhibit downstairs), for me, the most interesting part was a small glass case in the center of the room.

The exhibit-within-an-exhibit displayed a series of three different black-and-white spectator shoes, all strikingly similar.  Spectator shoes are shoes that are made of two contrasting fabrics (they were originally constructed of willow calf leather and white buck or reverse calf suede).  The first pair of spectator shoes was designed by John Lobb, the famous British boot-maker, in 1868 as a cricket shoe. In previous generations, spectator shoes functioned primarily as a casual summer shoe.  When the Duke of Windsor adopted them, in the 1940s, they became a pop culture phenomenon and became the men’s go-to shoe for “sports dressy” occasions (sports jacket attire).  Women’s spectator shoes have always been extremely popular in Britain, often considered the epitome of high class fashion (not be be confused with progressive fashion), but have experienced surges of popularity in the 1950s (prior to the invention, and subsequent popularity, of the sling-back), and then again in the 1980s, when the two-tone shoes matched the popular polka dot ensembles of the decade.  You might recognize spectator shoes from Julia Robert’s polo match outfit in Pretty Woman. I recognize them from the stacks of Ferragamo’s in my grandmother’s closet.

The mini-exhibit was sort of a brief example of the trickle-down effect, from haute couture to department store racks.

“Knock, knock,” the exhibit asks. “Hoodia? Hoodia who? Who do ya think designed which shoe first?”

“Couture designs inspire imitation, and this is often the case with fashionable footwear,” the exhibit continues. The exhibit then exhorted the viewer to determine which shoe came first (without reading the descriptions, I’m assuming.)

The exhibit is based around an Yves St. Laurent black-and-white stiletto spectator shoe, with cut-outs (below).  While the exhibit says this shoe is from circa fall, 2002, this is incorrect.  The shoe actually is from his Spring 2004 ready-to-wear collection. (I’m not a huge nerd, promise.  This can very easily be discovered by going to Vogue’s website, where they have a photograph for every look from all the collections of the main designers for the past 10 years. If you are a fashion buff, but cannot afford a ticket to Fashion Week, this is, I suppose, an adequate replacement.)

Here is the shoe, in action at the show. Also, okay, not to be a stickler, but prête-à-porter does not equal haute couture. This is a ready-to-wear shoe, distributed to all of Yves St. Laurent’s Rive Gauche boutiques.  So, it isn’t exactly a one-of-a-kind haute couture masterpiece that the museum is claiming.

I do find it interesting, however, that the museum labels this shoe as being a full two years (decades in the fashion industry) older than it actually is. Especially in an exhibit on which shoe came first! I’m surprised the museum didn’t just do a little bit of research…since it took me all of 5 seconds to find the correct collection.  (But then, I did know where to go.)

The next two shoes are “knock-offs.”  The first is an Anne Michelle shoe, that does have a somewhat different toe (with the white cut-outs).  Anne Michelle is known for blatant replication of the products of others.  Example: they produced a zippered bootie, for $53, when the original, a Giuseppe Zanotti for Balmain zippered bootie, was retailing for $1,685.  And this is just one instance.

Now, this shoe says, circa 2002-2003. My guess is, the museum didn’t bother to look up the shoes at all (or just call up the manufacturer and ask what year the shoe began production), because this would mean that this shoe actually was on the market prior to the Yves St. Laurent shoe.

And here we have the Pleaser “Seduce” Spectator Shoe, retailing at about $30, depending on where you get it.  Pleaser makes shoes that appear in stores like Charlotte Russe or Wet Seal. (Do they even have either of those stores in Florida?)  This shoe costs about 1/20th the price of the Yves St. Laurent version.

The exhibit points out, “Compare how the Saint Laurent differs from the knock-offs. Can you identify how the lesser-priced shoes reduce the attention to quality of materials, attention to detail, and the originality of the design?” My question would be, did the St. Laurent shoe cost 20 times as much to make?

While I understand the point that exhibit is trying to make, in my own, personal, humble opinion, they completely failed in execution and delivery.  The exhibit makes it sound as though reproducing high fashions for the masses is merely promoting lower quality, less original, hastily produced versions of what a true artiste has already produced. And while this may indeed be the case – spoken by someone who has ripped many a blistering wound in my feet from those $30 knock-offs – it also fails to explain the big picture.  It doesn’t even implicate the role that this trickle-down, or “knock-off,” effect has on the industry, and the economy in general.

The reason I finally put these pictures up is because I was reading Perez Hilton’s fashion blog, Coco Perez, and he recently posted this photograph of Kim Kardashian, wearing a dress from her new collection for Bebe, and a model walking the runway in a Fendi show, from 2 seasons prior.  Hilton was expressing outrage over the obvious  “ripping off” of Fendi’s designs, and then also proceeded to trash talk Kim’s (not-so-eloquent) response that said, basically, it was ok to rip off couture garments because “that is what all retailers do.”

I think that Mr. Perezzers has spent too much time marking on celebrity photos when he could have been taking an economics class. Or at the very least, a fashion merchandising class! If he doesn’t want to do that, he could always just go watch The Devil Wears Prada, again.

I think Meryl Streep’s character says it best. “You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean. You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.”

The fact of the matter is, American law does not protect fashion designs.  Counterfeit experts/law professors Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman explained on Coco Perez that copyright law views fashion designs not primarily as artistic works, but rather as “useful articles,” and useful things are not granted copyright protection. As a useful article, this would fall under the jurisdiction of patent law (not copyright). But clothing designs virtually never qualify for patent protection, because they are rarely, rarely ever “novel” in the way that patent law requires.  (This is why I think it is funny the exhibit is entitled, The Art of Affluence…apparently the law doesn’t consider it an art, after all!) Take these spectator shoes, below, for example.  While the Yves St. Laurent originals may incorporate newer trends (laces, cut-outs, etc.), his shoes clearly owe some amount of inspiration to shoes such as these vintage Lady Maguire spectator pumps (1960).  His shoes themselves are hardly “novel.”

Raustiala and Sprigman continue to explain that replicating fashions is beneficial, if not necessary, to the fashion industry. “Copying helps to create trends. It then helps to destroy them: as more and more designers hop on to a trend, the look becomes overdone, and the most fashion-forward consumers hop off. Copying, in other words, accelerates the fashion cycle.” I’m confused as to why this comes as a surprise to people, especially someone like Perez Hilton, who considers himself a fashion connoisseur.  All fashion is cyclical. Why do you think our parents laughed when bell-bottoms came back into style in the ’90s?  But this phenomenon is hardly limited to the fashion world.  Take baby names from the early 1900s, for example.  The upper class named their children certain names, until the middle, then lower classes adopted those names for their own children, in an attempt to emulate the upper class and gain status by association, until the upper class moved on to a new collection of names, because they did not want to give their children “lower-class” names.  The same concept applies to fashion.  Too much of the same over-saturates the market. (Somewhere, Pat Kuzyk, my beloved economics professor, is clapping her hands with jubiliation…) Every time there is a new fad, a new “color,” a new “It” shoe or bag, that item creates, or at the very least maintains, design jobs, color forecasting jobs (no joke, color forecasting agencies exist as well as wield considerable influence), manufacturing jobs, fabric production jobs. It’s all about the moulah, folks.

Disclaimer: this post really has nothing to do with my life in Florida. I just found those pictures earlier this week on my external hard drive, and then read the article on Coco Perez. I find the whole debate fascinating, particularly the arguments from designers who create extreme avant-garde looks that perhaps are novel.  Or, what about the lawsuits (that often win) from X chain store suing Y chain store for copying designs? Aren’t they both imitating the patterns from higher up the food chain, anyway? Where does the law draw the line?

P.S. Sorry to everyone who just wanted more pretty pictures of the beach…

Keep One Step Ahead of Website Content Plagiarism

If someone copies your website content and uses this in their own website, did you know that this can lead to both your website and the website containing the plagiarised content being ‘black listed’ by Search Engines such as Google?  It would seem that Google for instance, does not differentiate between which website first had the content – seems a little unfair doesn’t it?  It’s also your responsibility to check whether anyone has plagiarised your website content, so being forewarned as they say, is being forearmed.

Help is at hand however and you may well want to check out the Copyscape site (www.copyscape.com) where you can carry out a free plagiarism check on your website’s content.  Copyscape also provides guides on the threat, detection, prevention and also, response to any website content plagiarism that you find as a result of this check.  They also offer help on understanding your rights and provide a Forum so that you can gain advice and learn from others.

Additionally, you can opt to sign up for Copyscape’s charged services such as CopySentry, which actively monitors the web for instances of plagiarism of your website content and then updates you, or Copyscape Premium, that allows you to check your content prior to publishing on the web for instance.  You can even download an anti-plagiarism banner from the Copyscape site to display on your website pages, warning those that might be thinking of stealing your website copy, to think again.

Another tool that you might find useful (should you discover that someone has plagiarised your content), is the Wayback Machine, which allows you to insert a website URL and brings up a list of archived website content going back for quite a number of years (to 1996 currently), enabling you to identify when the content was inserted into the offending site : http://www.archive.org/web/web.php.  Many thanks to Keith Cleverley at Imex Technical for the contribution of this particular gem.

After all the hard work, thought and effort that goes into putting a website together and, coming up with original, engaging, keyword rich content, it seems a pity that we have to protect ourselves against content thieves, but by using simple tools such as the above, we can all keep one step ahead of website content plagiarism.

Ever heard of Game Copy Monster? Want to copy Xbox 360 games? Which among the many game copying software will you ever try? The Xbox 360 game console is a favorite amongst many people all over the world and that may be the main reason for the sky rocketing prices of the original disks of the Xbox 360 games. It is one of the biggest disadvantage of using this amazing gaming console is that the disks on which some of the most fantastic Xbox 360 games are present come at a fairly high price and that’s why many people resist from playing these games forever.

I am sure that almost all users of the Xbox 360 have at least tried to copy the games, and backup copies of them but of course, not everyone has to make success with it. The reason why you're not in a position to copy Xbox 360 games is that these games come with a floppy disk copy protection on them that each device off to read the game and make their copies. There is a special security code that is encoded in different parts of the original CDs, and that's the main code that can not be broken and thus the disks can not be copied. Although there is now a solution for this situation is very sticky.
There are a number of game copy software’s that are easily available these days. These game copy software’s have an amazing ability to copy your Xbox 360 games in a matter of minutes. There is a? wide choice available for you on the internet all you have to do is choose the software that you find most appealing to you ,although I must warn you that some of theses software’s may project features that are too good to be true and are just gimmicks and hence they should be avoided at all cost ,also you will come across some free software’s ,I suggest that you should keep away from them because they may load your computer with some very deadly viruses that and leave your computer irreparable.

But if you go to a more reliable brand, it would not encounter any problems. When you install the game on the computer copy of the software you will see that it gives you a step by step what you have to do to make the original copies of Xbox 360 games guide. Once you have successfully saved on your computer, you can burn as many copies of the original game you want.
So now to get one of these amazing game copy software and burn unlimited copies of their favorite games of Xbox 360. I would recommend you to try, Game Copy monster! It will give you the safest way to copy any Xbox 360 games you want! Take Monster Game Copy here!

Do you take difficulty about your PS3 games have destroy? All of gamers have this problem after they play the PS3 games a lot. The game disk will be marked quickly and a lot of gamers must pay twice for buying the duplicate game. However, do not worry because I will give you some advice about how to burn ps3 games and play them yourself. And you can play your hot game by using the PS3 backup disk instead of the original. First, you need understand something that I want to explain you is to gain legal copies. You are unable to copy game for selling that is illegal. But you can copy PS3 backup disk to play in your personal house, it is legal. These are tips of how to burn ps3 games and play them , that is very easy and you are able to do it yourself in a few hours. Eventually, you already recognize about how to burn ps3 games and play them, do not wait until the new scratch occurs on your beloved games, you should have the PS3 burning software now, it is just $30-$40, it is very cheaper than PS3 original game. Misplacing your favorite PlayStation 3 Game is very bad. However, if you have the PS3 backup disc, the original disc will be with you forever. You can take the backup of your wanted game disc with the Ps3 Games Burning Software Program that is the responsible burning software program you are able to use simply. And then you find it easy with how to burn ps3 games and play them.

You are going to learn:

• Motion editor and what it’s all about
• Changing our tween path on the stage
• Copying and reversing animations

In our last tutorial we have made our first animation – a ball (circle) going from one side of the stage to the other. If you’ve missed that, check it out here.

Otherwise, you can continue reading this article to learn some new Flash tricks.

The motion editor

In the motion editor you can change various fancy animation properties like, for instance, the alpha value of your symbol and some non-fancy ones like its rotation. So, let’s say we wanted to change our ball’s X or Y position.

First we’d call up the motion editor by clicking on Window –> Motion editor in Flash. Then, we would click on our symbol (circle) so the editor knows what to edit.

Feel free to expand the editor to make your work with it a lot easier. You should now have you interface looking something like this:

This might look confusing if you’re, like me, in the last frame of the animation (notice that on top of the red line you can see “30″ written). To change that, simply drag the scrollbar on the bottom of the screen to the left. That should get you to the frame number 1.

Also, I suggest you expand the number of viewable frames in the down left corner of the motion editor to 30 so you can see you entire animation without the need of scrolling every time.

From frame one to thirty under “Basic motion” X and Y you should see a line going upwards or downwards, depending on the changes in X and Y motion of your circle. You will also notice there is a little square where the start of the line is and one at the end. These are keyframes. As you’ll notice, only keyframes can individually change a symbol’s position.

Go ahead and try to move any part of the line that’s not a black square. You’ll see that you move the entire x/y position of the animation. If you’d like to change the symbol’s position in, let’s say, frame 19, you need to select the 19th frame, right click and select “Add keyframe”.

Drag the square to some other position in the Motion Editor and then drop.

That way you can individually change the X and Y position of the symbol. The same goes for any other Motion editable property (and so you can tell I’m not lying, check the upper image again – I’ve changed the circle’s alpha value! Try to do it yourself).

Changing the path on the stage

You’ve probably noticed that, when you make a “Motion Tween” in flash a line appears on the stage showing the path of your object. Now, if you roll over it while nothing is selected, you’ll notice that a little curved line appears next to your mouse.

Try to drag&dropping with the selection tool. You’ll notice that the line curves the way you want it to.

If you release it, the curve stays that way. This means you successfully changed your animation path. Go ahead and hit Enter to see what you’ve made. It’s a curved animation!

You can then fine-tune it using the subselection tool and drag&dropping on either one of the keyframes (green squares with a white fill) on the stage.

Copy and reverse

You can rather simply copy the animation. Just right-click in the timeline and left-click on “Copy Motion”.

That puts your motion onto the clipboard. What you need to do now is insert a layer which you want to copy the motion to. Do that by right-clicking on the left side of the timeline and choosing “Insert Layer”.

You can change its name from the usual by double-clicking on it and writing the desired name.

After doing that, go ahead and draw a square on the stage (in the second layer!). Then, right-click on the timeline-span of “Layer 2″ and choose “Paste motion”. You’ll probably be asked if you want to convert the selected object to a symbol since only symbols can have Motion Tweens applied to them. Hit OK, and voila. Your square has the same animation as the circle.

If you wanted to reverse the animation, just right-click on it and choose “Reverse keyframes”. It’s THAT simple!

Image : http://www.flickr.com

The DVDs are pretty expensive, and are actually very fragile. Computer hard drives are relatively cheap and very durable.

Would not it be great if you could rip your DVDs and save them as files on the hard drive of your computer.

Well, actually you can, but you have a moment to reflect on why on earth would you:

You do not have to fiddle with DVD player, when in.
You can use the DVD, all in one place.
YouYou can search your collection of DVDs on your computer.
It would be a fantastic home entertainment system.
Networked PCs can access all the DVDs!.

There are several ways that you copy to your hard drive of your computer DVD that is easier just to rip the VOB files from the DVD. You can do this with a number of different instruments.

One example is the Smart Ripper, this tool may already be installed on your computer if not then it can become quite difficult. Trya Google search for the links, but many people have removed.

To rip the VOB files and play them on your computer:

Insert the DVD you rip to your computer DVD drive.
Open Smart Ripper.
Smart DVD Ripper automatically scans and displays the results.
Select the "File" option on the left side of the screen.
At the bottom of the window to "All Files" checkbox.
In the area of destination for the "Select Folder" and select a folder to store the DVDa.
Wait until you receive a message indicating the completion RIP.
Open your favorite DVD software.
Click to open media.
Navigate to the VOB file that was created by Smart Ripper.
Take care of your movies directly on your hard drive!.

This method works well, but the problem is that the VOB files are huge! For films, most of this result in file sizes 5 GB! So if you have installed a 200 GB hard drive dedicated only film (had) with the operating system, you canYou can store about 40 movies, not that sound really bad. But you have a separate hard drive just for movies?

An alternative would be to rip DVD to another format. MPEG or AVI are very popular. Use the free to do so, DVD2AVI, this software will convert already ripped the VOB files to MPEG or AVI that can be saved on your hard disk or convert to VCD. Another tool called TMPGEnc may be out of a convertFormat that can be written into a VCD.

DivX is a format for the popular DivX video provides an electronic video quality very good, but not by the majority of DVD players to read. This is not a problem if you want to save and play on your computer, but if you make a video CD then I suggest you keep DVD2AVI and then with an AVI file normal.

If your AVI file is too large to fit on a CD, then you need to share, you can do with a split –instrument more.

Download a tool called Virtual Dub from the Internet.
Select File -> Open Video File.
Looking for AVI file you want to share and click Open.
Click Video, then select "Direct Stream Copy".
Hold down the Shift key and drag the timeline to which you want to divide.
Press the end of your keyboard.
Save the first part by clicking on "File" "Save as AVI".
Press Home on your keyboard.
Move the timeline until the end of the runway.
Press the endkeyboard.
Click File, Save as AVI again, and save the second part of the video.

Note: will only be distributed file, if you want to VCD, if you do not, then just to see on your computer's hard disk can store want to use. You can place your favorite Media Player to play files that are stored on the hard drive of your computer.

Gas Grills Review Winter Coats

I feel like crap. I don’t want to study. I hate studying. I hate midterms. I hate finals. I’m sick of reading boring material.

Oh.

Some ass stole my video on Youtube and posted it as his own. One of my Christianity/Assyrian videos. Go figure. I’m so effin’ pissed.

People suck.

FUCKING THIEF.