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Young people prefer to download film and music illegally because they don’t think that the biz is capable of giving bang for their buck.

An Edelman survey claims that more than a quarter of 18- to 34-year-olds in the U.K. and France would download film and music content illegally due to a lack of trust in the entertainment industry.

While technology companies rated highest in Edelman’s report on levels of consumer trust among opinion elites, defined as educated, affluent and media informed, in France and the U.K., media and entertainment companies ranked behind only insurance companies in terms of the public’s distrust. That distrust helps fuel piracy, argues the report.

Some 41% of 18- to 34-year-olds in the U.K. did not trust entertainment companies to provide them with value for money, compared with an even higher figure of 54% in France. In the U.K., 35% of those asked did not think entertainment companies respected the rights of people who pay for digital entertainment, with that figure rising to 46% in France.

You reap what you sow. If the industry doesn’t trust the customer and uses DRM against them, the customer will have no reason to trust the industry.

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In the wake of Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech in which a student killed 32 people, Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg has limited the use of stage weapons in theatrical productions.

Students involved in this weekend’s production of “Red Noses” said they first learned of the new rules on Thursday morning, the same day the show was slated to open. They were subsequently forced to alter many of the scenes by swapping more realistic-looking stage swords for wooden ones, a change that many students said was neither a necessary nor a useful response to the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

Guess what a little publicity can do:

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Stage weapons will again be allowed in University theatrical productions, in a reversal of last week’s ban, Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said Tuesday morning.

[..]

But over the weekend, Trachtenberg, who is retiring at the end of the academic year, said student criticism of the stage weapons ban had been exaggerated.

“I think people should start thinking about other people rather than trying to feel sorry for themselves and thinking that the administration is trying to thwart their creativity,” Trachtenberg said. “They’re not using their own intelligence. … We have to think of the people who might be affected by seeing real-life weapons.”

And you, Trachtenberg, have yet to show the first glimmer of common sense.

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Because of my recycling, the bomb squad came, then the state police. Because of my recycling, buildings were evacuated, classes were canceled, the campus was closed. No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark body. No. Not even that. Because of his fear. Because of the way he saw me. Because of the culture of fear, mistrust, hatred and suspicion that is carefully cultivated in the media, by the government, by people who claim to want to keep us “safe.”

These are the days of orange alerts, school lock-downs, and endless war. We are preparing for it, training for it, looking for it, and so, of course, in the most innocuous instances — a professor wanting to hurry home, hefting his box of discarded poetry — we find it.

That man in the parking lot didn’t even see me. He saw my darkness. He saw my Middle Eastern descent. This is ironic because though my grandfathers came from Egypt, I am Indian, a South Asian, and could never be mistaken for a Middle Eastern man by anyone who had ever met one.

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n the latest sign that Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system may be destined for less than overwhelming commercial success, a new InformationWeek survey has found that nearly one third of businesses do not plan on upgrading their computers to the much-hyped software.

Tech professionals at the businesses surveyed were asked the following question: “When, if ever, does your company plan to purchase and install Windows Vista?”

One quarter of the 612 survey respondents said they were already using the new OS; 13% said they would do so in the next 12 months, while 27% said their companies would adopt Windows Vista more than one year from now.

But in what will surely be viewed as disappointing news at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA, a full 30% of those surveyed said they had no plans to upgrade their systems to Windows Vista — not ever.

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Transcript of House Resolution 333, followed by the transcript of Rep. Kucinich’s news conference yesterday. Offered for information purposes only. UPDATE, Kucinich’s supporting documents

HRES 333 IH
110th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 333

Impeaching Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

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Pupils are being discouraged from taking A-level maths as schools in England chase higher places in the league tables, scientists have claimed.

The Royal Society of Chemistry said that as maths was a difficult subject, schools feared examination failures which would threaten their standings.

Chief executive Richard Pike also said universities were increasingly having to run remedial classes in maths.

What else would you expect when you give schools this kind of targets?

Give a hospital a target like “the number of wheelchairs in use must be lower than X” and they’ll take the wheels off of chairs to reach the target.