How to Compete With a Computer in the Online News Media Game

It seems every day we turn around and a computer or a robot is taking the job of the human. Certainly, it’s helped our civilization and many industries create incredible productivity, but those jobs may never be coming back. As we complain about jobs being outsourced to other countries overseas, we also should be concerned with the jobs being replaced in our own country by robots. Okay so, let’s talk about this for second shall we?

Let’s say you are a news reporter, or you are producing news content for the Internet, or a local newspaper. How on earth can you compete with computers to generate news stories? Oh you hadn’t heard, you didn’t know that many of the articles you read online were actually created by a computer program rather than human, did you – it’s true. In fact, there are now computer programs which scan the Internet for various events, and when they see similar stories popping up in various places they create a unique title using derivative algorithmic tricks, and then go online and find the;

Who
What
When
Where
Why
How

And then they take that information and put it into a paragraph format just as any news story might read. Of course, the whole thing is plagiarized, but it’s plagiarized from so many different sources, that no one would ever know the difference. And this is what’s going on today. But how can a news reporter keep up with that? Interestingly enough, many news reporters rather than doing actual reporting do the same thing. They go onto the Internet read 4 or 5 articles on the same news event, and a rewrite it and make their own story.

This is unfortunate because no one knows if the original information from the very first article or the first few articles is even correct? Because of computers, humans trying to compete have cheated just as the computers are cheating. And because of this, we are getting lousy news stories and content online, much of it may not even be correct. Further, who is to say someone didn’t plant 4 or 5 stories in the media that they just made up, creating a news event that never happened in the first place, how would we ever know?

If you want to compete against computers when you create news articles, then you need to go to the source of the article, get personal interviews of people who were actually there, talk to them on the phone, and then use their first-hand account and their own words, quoting them in your article. Otherwise, you’re just putting more garbage on top of garbage, and as a news junkie, I’m tired of reading it. This is how you can do it right and create great news content and still compete. Please consider all this and think on it.

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Termination of Employment

Day in day out, issues crop up on employers’ terminating the employment of workers at anytime and any day. This issue has really become a talk of the town in recent times. Whilst evidence and studies prove that this happens most at times because workers are partially or absolutely ignorant about their right at the workplace, many employers also fail to recognize or do not know the limit of their authority at the workplace.Both the employer and the employee should know that if their rights are seen as protecting an individual’s interests from the actions of others, responsibilities can be seen as establishing limits on one’s actions. Most employees who are ignorant of this, see themselves fired every now and then from work. Employers who also ignore them find themselves from one court room to another, wasting valuable resources.The time has now come for both the employer and the employee to know the grounds on which the termination of employment is considered fair and unfair. It was only some years past that workers who enter “employment at will” (EAW) see themselves fired now and then. However, due to the recent modifications to even the employment at will doctrine, no employer can just terminate the employment of a worker and go scout free. The following are the modifications to the employment at will doctrine.Public policy exceptions: This exception states that no employees’ employment should be terminated if his action which leads to the termination is to protect public policy. This was because the courts have found out that the dismissal of an at will employee, while not a violation of any explicit statute, nonetheless undermines the states’ ability to pursue public policies and for that reason will not be accepted.Judicial exceptions: This is where the termination will not be accepted in cases where the courts have found explicit contracts on the basis of representations that were made to employees either in their employees’ handbook or through a statement made during the hiring process (i.e. express and implied contracts).Implied covenant of good faith exceptions: This also highlights that the termination of an employee’s employment will not be accepted few days before they were due to receive annual bonuses for yearly sales performance.In addition, all employers should know that any employer who terminates the employment of an employee based on the following grounds have violated the laws of the land and should therefore guard against them except otherwise stated in the contract note.A worker’s employment is terminated unfairly if the termination is due to his joining or intention to join or ceasing to join or taking part in the activities of a trade union. It is also unfair if the termination is on the grounds of a worker seeking office as or is acting or has acted as a workers’ representative. If the ground is that the employee has filed a complaint or participated in proceedings against the employer for alleged violations. Also, if the termination is based on pregnancy, the worker’s disability, that the worker has taken part in a lawful strike or the level of qualification required now is different from the one he/she has when employed. To sum up, any termination on the grounds of the worker’s gender, race, color, ethnic background, origin, religion, and creed, social, political or economic status is also unfair.Any worker, who claims that his /her employment has been unfairly terminated by the worker’s employer, may present a complaint to the National Labor Commission for redress. Such an employee’s employment when found to be unfairly terminated, the employee would either be re-instated or re-employed.Despite the above, there are grounds on which an employer can fairly terminate the employment of an employee. Termination is fair on the grounds that the worker is incompetent in the field in which he/she has been employed or because of proven misconduct. Death or incapacitation can also be a fair ground for terminating the employment of an employee. Redundancy is also a fair ground for terminating the employment of an employee just that the employer has to pay a redundancy pay to the employee. Termination is also fair if it is due to legal restrictions imposed on the worker prohibiting him/her from performing the work.In conclusion, ignorance is no excuse before the law. As such, both the employer and the employee should know their rights and limitations in order to prevent the long arms of the law from catching them.By: Bernard Amexo

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The Importance of Walking on a Regular Basis to Your Health and Fitness

When you actually take the time to look at the benefits of walking as a form of exercise, they almost seem to be too good to be true. Lower blood pressure, increased lung capacity, reduced risk of depression, less probability of heart problems and stroke and even a reduced probability of certain forms of cancer. Add increased energy, weight loss and feeling better in general and the benefits are very impressive.Bear in mind the fact that you can fit walking into your daily schedule as and when it suits you and also that you won’t be incurring any expensive monthly gym or fitness club fees – and you have to wonder why more people don’t make walking an integral part of their fitness program? It’s also worth remembering that, apart from a pair of comfortable shoes, you don’t need any special equipment, training or expertise to get a regular walking workout.One reason why people don’t include walking as an integral part of their exercise routine might be that they simply don’t realise the potential benefits. There is still something of a “no pain no gain” mentality – first developed some years ago – which might make it difficult for some people to believe that a relatively low level exercise like walking could truly deliver such impressive benefits.However, the evidence is clear. Walking has the potential to provide some very significant benefits to your health. Consistency is the important thing – taking regular exercise is always much more effective. Ideally, it should be part of your daily routine.And there are plenty of opportunities to do this. Maybe you could leave the car at work and walk to the office now and again? Or how about taking the stairs instead of the elevator from time to time? Possibly you could stretch your legs with a brief 10 or 15 minute stroll round the block during your lunch break. Small, almost unnoticeable changes can make a big difference.Part of the problem could well be that the effort required is so small. Many people may find it hard to believe that they will achieve such a high value of benefits based upon such a small investment of time and effort. One possible way to overcome this, should you find yourself in this category, would be to use a pedometer. Use this every day to record the number of steps you take, the distance you cover and the number of calories you burn.It should soon become obvious that small changes to your daily routine – walking instead of taking the car from time to time – can have a major impact on your fitness and health. Increasing the visibility of your walking exercise benefits might be all the encouragement you need to ensure that you take regular exercise and reap the rewards on offer to you as far as fitness, health and general wellbeing go.

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