This has been an interesting day for me for no reason at all, and because of that, I'll be posting two news articles that has no relation to each other whatsoever. The first one might be sad to hear about this news especially those people who have made this technology a part of their memories. Here is the article, and I suggest you to check the link of the original article as well for citation purposes:
Sony Walkman bows out to the iPod after 31 years
JAKE COYLE AP Entertainment Writer10/26/2010 | 02:40 PM
NEW YORK (AP) — The Walkman, the Sony cassette device that forever changed music listening before becoming outdated by digital MP3 players and iPods, has died. It was 31 years old.
Sony announced Monday that it has ceased production of the classic, cassette tape Walkman in Japan, effectively sounding the death knell of the once iconic, now obsolete device.
The Walkman is survived by the Discman (still clinging to life) and ironic music listeners who think using a Walkman in this day-and-age is charmingly out-of-touch.
It will continue to be produced in China and distributed in the U.S., Europe and some Asian countries. Digital Walkmans are also being made with models that display lyrics and have improved digital noise-canceling technology.
Still, if you're looking to chisel a date in the Walkman's tombstone, then Oct. 25, 2010, is as good as any. For many, that it's taken this long is surprising: "They were still making those?" Perhaps Oct. 23, 2001, the day the iPod was launched, is the better date of expiration.
But none of the success of Apple's portable music players would have ever happened without the cassette Walkman. Some 220 million have been sold since the first model, the TPS-L2, debuted in July 1979. (It retailed for $200.) At the time, transistor radios were portable, but there was nothing widely available like the Walkman.
It was developed under the stewardship of Sony founders Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka. Morita insisted the device not be focused on recording but playback, a relatively odd notion at the time.
Originally called the "Soundabout" in the U.S., the Walkman was an immediate sensation and a revolution in music listening.
Foremost, it was portable. Music no longer needed to be something that one experienced sitting in a room, but could be blasted on the bus, pumped while jogging on a beach or played softly while studying.
By turning the volume up, anyone could be tuned out.
The detached teenager with foam earphones slouched in the back seat or bobbing his head in the elevator became an indelible image of the '80s. (The first Walkman did have an orange "hot line" button to lower the music and increase the microphone so you could hear someone talking to you.)
Music, previously listened to in a room with shag carpeting and a stereo, was cast into the world, made a part of daily life. Pink Floyd could join a walk in the park, Public Enemy could soundtrack a commute.
More than portability, it fostered a personalization to music, a theme the iPod would also highlight in those early dancing silhouette ads. A big reason there's so much nostalgia for the Walkman today is because it eliminated any separation from music. It felt like an appendage, which is perhaps why some (with questionable fashion instincts) clipped theirs to their belt.
The Walkman was also the father of the mixtape, an offspring that nearly trumps the progenitor. For the first time, music was something you could make yours by arranging it and swapping it.
For those young and unfamiliar with this process, making a mixtape typically entailed gathering songs by the Cure and Depeche Mode, labeling the tape with care and awkwardly giving it to a love interest.
The Walkman didn't disappear so much as it was improved upon. Sony continues to use it as a brand, but the company long ago ceded hipness and style to Apple. The iPod will likely one day befall a similar fate, and another generation will gasp in joined wistfulness.
When it comes to music and how we hear it, we're all romantics. -AP
It's sad, really, if you think about it; that the once famous and innovative technology has now become obsolete. The scary fact is, it only took 31 years. It may seem like a long time for an average human being, but if you think about it, it's not really that long, for it's not even less than half a century, which means that a lot can happen in 30 years, and there is still more to happen in the next 30. It didn't take 30 years for another World War to take place. It took Korea about 50 years to recover from the war to be the most technologically-advanced countries in the world today. It took more than 30 years for Copernicus to prove that the Earth is the centre of the universe after Aristarchus discovered it a few years after Aristotle's time. So really, I wouldn't be surprised when a new technology rises after Apple's takeover for we never know what will happen, say, after 3 years, knowing what the modern world can do.
Now here's the second article I wanted to share with everyone too, and I find it embarrassing and funny to be real. I feel like this post is still pulling my leg everytime I read it. Please visit the original site of where I got this from too.
License to plagiarize
CALIFORNIA, United States—Thanks to the Philippine Supreme Court of Midnight Chief Justice Renato Corona, Filipinos now enjoy a "right" unlike any bestowed anywhere else in the world.
Filipinos are now free to copy the words and thoughts of other authors without attribution and without fear of being charged with plagiarism unless the accuser can prove “malicious intent.”
This new “right” was promulgated by the Supreme Court on October 15, 2010 in the Matter of the Charges of Plagiarism against Associate Justice Mariano C. Del Castillo where the court majority voted to absolve their colleague of plagiarism charges for including in his ruling entire paragraphs lifted directly from foreign sources without attribution.
The charges of plagiarism arose when Del Castillo wrote the majority decision in the case of Vinuya et al vs. Executive Secretary, issued on April 28, 2010, where he denied the petition of the Philippine comfort women for a writ of mandate to compel the Philippine government to ask Tokyo to provide compensation to those who were victims of sexual slavery by Japanese occupation forces during World War II.
After reviewing Del Castillo's ruling, the lawyers of the comfort women discovered that "Ponente" (decision author) Del Castillo had lifted entire paragraphs of his decision from three sources: “A Fiduciary of Theory of Jus Cogens" by Evan Criddle and Evan Fox-Descent, "Breaking the Silence on Rape as an International Crime" by Mark Ellis, and "Enforcing Erga Omnes Obligations in International Law" by Christian Tams.
While using those foreign sources, Del Castillo drew the opposite conclusion and ruled that sexual slavery during WW II was not a “Jus Cogens,” a "higher law," like prohibiting genocide or the slave trade, which may not be violated by any country.
Perhaps it was precisely this contraposition that explains why Del Castillo chose not to cite the foreign sources.
In its October 15, 2010 decision, the Court dismissed “for lack of merit… the charges of plagiarism, twisting of cited materials and gross neglect against [Del Castillo]" because the Court found that their colleague did not have “malicious intent” when he copied the passages from foreign sources
The Court accepted Del Castillo’s feeble excuse that his legal researcher had inadvertently dropped off two citations in the footnotes. Two may be a little understandable but Del Castillo blatantly lifted 22 distinct passages from the foreign sources without attribution.
The Justices also accepted Del Castillo’s lame argument that his computer was not equipped with a software program that would warn him that he was plagiarizing. (Students, take note of this creative “it’s Microsoft’s fault” excuse).
In her separate dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales, Associate Justice Lourdes Sereno (the lone Aquino appointee on the Court) declared that Del Castillo had indeed committed plagiarism in drafting and passing the decision in the Vinuya case. “The majority decision will thus stand against the overwhelming conventions on what constitutes plagiarism. In doing so, the decision has created unimaginable problems for Philippine academia, which will from now on have to find a disciplinary response to plagiarism committed by students and researchers on the justification of the majority decision.”
Justice Sereno further added: “It has also undermined the protection of copyrighted work by making available to plagiarists ‘lack of malicious intent’ as a defense to a charge of violation of copy or economic rights of the copyright owner committed through lack of attribution.”
Justice Sereno expressed her regret that the effect of the majority decision was to render Philippine intellectual property laws virtually “meaningless."
The faculty of the University of the Philippines College of Law immediately expressed its outrage at the majority decision of the Court. “In common parlance, ‘plagiarism’ is the appropriation and misrepresentation of another person’s work as one’s own," the faculty statement read. "In the field of writing, it is cheating at best, and stealing at worst. It constitutes a taking of someone else’s ideas and expressions, including all the effort and creativity that went into committing such ideas and expressions into writing, and then making it appear that such ideas and expressions were originally created by the taker. It is dishonesty, pure and simple."
"A judicial system that allows plagiarism in any form is one that allows dishonesty. Since all judicial decisions form part of the law of the land, to allow plagiarism in the Supreme Court is to allow the production of laws by dishonest means. Evidently, this is a complete perversion and falsification of the ends of justice.”
In response to this denunciation, the Supreme Court threatened to cite the UP Faculty for contempt for making a “sub judice” comment as Philippine lawyers are prohibited from commenting on active cases before the court.
As I am not a Philippine-licensed attorney, the Philippine Supreme Court cannot cite me for contempt so I can freely declare what my “companeros” in the Philippines may not dare say. The majority members of this Court, all GMA appointees, are contemptible for making “a complete perversion and falsification of the ends of justice.”
There you go. Can't say I'm proud of it, because I think that this is a failure in the Philippine judicial system. Pardon me for not giving my reasons on why I posted these two articles, for sleep deprivation has been getting to me for the past couple of days. For now, this is the best that I can do.
However, this is just a reminder particularly for post-secondary students to not forget their citations and references when they do an academic paper either in MLA or APA style format. This is what I've been learning in one of my courses, and it's useful information especially for aspiring book or magazine editors. And I admit that this post does not show how I should have used the two articles for references, and I apologize for that as well. But at least you got these two articles to chew on.
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