Dr. Eggman notes an Ars Technica analysis of the firefight that is the current Congressional debate over granting retrospective immunity to telecoms that helped the NSA spy on citizens without warrants. A Republican cloture motion, which would have blocked any further attempts to remove the retroactive immunity provision, has failed. This controversial portion of the Senate intelligence committee surveillance bill may now be examined in full debate. At the same time, a second cloture motion — filed by Congressional Democrats in an effort to force immediate vote on a 30 day extension to the Protect America Act — also failed to pass. The Protect America Act has been criticized for broadly expanding federal surveillance powers while diminishing judicial oversight. While the failure of this second cloture motion means the Protect America Act might expire, a vote tomorrow on a similar motion in the House will likely bring the issue back into the Senate in time. It seems, according to the article, that both parties feel that imminent expiration of the Protect America Act is a disaster for intelligence gathering, and each side blames the other as progress grinds to a halt."
In May of last year Facebook did, at least in my mind, one of the biggest things in web technology in a long time. They opened up their service as a platform for third party developers to build apps that... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 12:30 pm
Eirikso sez, "NRK, the Norwegian state broadcaster, just made one of their most popular TV shows available for free through bittorrent.
Without any DRM or restrictions. Free for the planet to watch.
Because this is a completely legal download people seems to seed it happily. Making the bittorrent technology work exceptionally well, giving the audience very high download speeds.
The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation will keep on with experiments like these and try to make more content available through this technology in addition to the more traditional channels of streaming, podcasts and DVD sales."
The very popular series called “Nordkalotten 365″ has been aired on traditional TV in Norway and is now made available for download. In this series the experienced hiker Lars Monsen has traveled alone through the north of Scandinavia for one year. The first episode is already published and the next episodes will be made available as they are encoded.
The files are MPEG4 H.264, 1024×576 25fps, 3 Mbit/s. No DRM.
In my new Guardian column, "Copyright law should distinguish between commercial and cultural uses," I argue for a new kind of copyright law, one that mirrors the "folk copyright" that individuals have lived by for decades -- the alternative is to try to get kids and fans to participate in the "real" copyright, a system of industrial regulation so complex that it can barely be understood by full-time copyright attorneys.
This is a genuinely radical idea: individuals should hire lawyers to negotiate their personal use of cultural material, or at least refrain from sharing their cultural activities with others (except it's not's really culture if you're not sharing it, is it?).
It's also a dumb idea. People aren't going to hire lawyers to bless the singalong or Timmy's comic book. They're also not going to stop doing culture.
We need to stop shoe-horning cultural use into the little carve-outs in copyright, such as fair dealing and fair use. Instead we need to establish a new copyright regime that reflects the age-old normative consensus about what's fair and what isn't at the small-scale, hand-to-hand end of copying, display, performance and adaptation.
In my new Guardian column, "Copyright law should distinguish between commercial and cultural uses," I argue for a new kind of copyright law, one that mirrors the "folk copyright" that individuals have... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 11:50 am
It’s sadly clear that our current leaders have little understanding of technology and why it’s important to our economy and culture. That has to change. We’ve been interviewing 2008... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 11:45 am
Above is a shot of one of many spam blog comments I’ve received lately with multiple links to pages on Google Groups. Spammers have always targeted Google products, and services such as Blogger have... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 11:40 am
Phil from the UK anti-ID-register group NO2ID sends in this nugget -- note the call to action there. We've got a sensitive government document revealing the British government's plan to trick us into a database state and we need as many copies as possible, as quickly as possible!
If you mirror this document, please add a link to it in the comments for the post.
UK campaigners NO2ID this morning enlisted the help of bloggers across the
world to spread a leaked government document describing how the British
government intends to go about "coercing" its citizens onto a National
Identity Register. The 'ID card' is revealed as little more than a cover to
create a official dossier and trackable ID for every UK resident - creating
what NO2ID calls 'the database state'.
NO2ID's national coordinator, Phil Booth, exhorted bloggers, freedom lovers
and anyone who gives a damn about personal privacy to mirror the annotated
document on their site.
"The charade is over. While ministers try to bamboozle the British public
with fairytales about fingerprints, officials are plotting how to dupe and
bully the population into surrendering control of their own identities."
"Biometric ID cards are a sham; a magician's flourish to cover the biggest
identity fraud there has ever been."
Phil from the UK anti-ID-register group NO2ID sends in this nugget -- note the call to action there. We've got a sensitive government document revealing the British government's plan to trick us into... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 11:03 am
danlor writes "We were all taken aback 4 years ago when someone linked us the history of George Lawrence and his photos of the aftermath of the 1906 San Fransisco earthquake. I personally thought to myself: man, I would love to make one of those cameras. The idea of flying 2,000-pound cameras with kites... Well, someone has actually recreated the feat. They even provide links to get large prints of the original and recreated scenes."
Cory Doctorow: The idea that the same copyright regime should apply to movie studios and kids who photocopy comics is preposterous Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 10:24 am
By Evan Ackerman If you’re the type of gamer who blames your low Counterstrike ROF on your mouse not being enough like a ‘real gun,’ you might be interested in this FPS Gun Mouse, which... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 9:59 am
By Evan Ackerman Why why why can’t I get myself a practical fuel cell yet? They seem like such a good idea: booze = power. Everybody talks about doing it, but it hasn’t been effectively DONE... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 9:32 am
The internet giant hopes the new system will get more people using their phone to search for local data, maps and news Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 9:24 am
By Andrew Liszewski First off, let me say I really hate this trend of including 2.5mm headphone jacks in phones. I know it’s smaller and makes for a thinner device, but having to carry an adapter... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:49 am
By Andrew Liszewski I have a nasty habit of using my hands instead of a scrap piece of paper for jotting down reminders and to-do lists and while I’ve seen people getting blank to-do list tattoos... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:35 am
Singapore based MWg has announced that they will be launching cell phones that feature wireless charging sometime this year, teaming up with Splashpower . [via Gizmo News ] ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:35 am
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese consumer electronics makers Victor Company of Japan Ltd (JVC) and Funai Electric Co Ltd will jointly develop and supply LCD television sets, an industry source... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:16 am
nilbog writes "What's the actual cost of sending SMS messages? This article does the math and concludes that, for example, sending an amount of data that would cost $1 from your ISP would cost over $61 million if you were to send it over SMS. Why has the cost of bandwidth, infrastructure, and technology in general plummeted while the price of SMS messages have risen so egregiously? How can carriers continue to justify the high cost of their apparent super-premium data transmission?"
Co-owner is among 4 killed in explosion JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - The co-owner of a chemical plant was among four people killed when the facility exploded, authorities said Thursday. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
ROANOKE, Va. - Virginia officials decided yesterday to explore whether Dominion Virginia Power can reduce air pollution at its plant proposed in southwest Virginia by using different technology or by burning another type of coal. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
By Steve Cahalan, La Crosse Tribune, Wis. Jan. 29--The state's housing authority is working with other groups to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, its executive director said Monday in La Crosse. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
By J. Scott Trubey Plans to develop a mixed-use community at a site along the Savannah River near the Fifth Street bridge received the North Augusta Planning Commission's blessing Thursday night. L.H. Simkins Jr. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
Nuclear reactors across the Southeast could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year. Drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply the power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
By Valarie Honeycutt Spears, The Lexington Herald-Leader, Ky. Jan. 29--Chief Justice of Kentucky Joseph E. Lambert will announce Wednesday that legislation will be filed that would open child protection courts to the public. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
By Larry Peterson SAVANNAH, Ga. - The U.S. House has approved more than $6.3 million to replenish Tybee Island's severely eroded beach with sand. The money was part of a $516 billion spending measure approved Monday night. The bill was pending late Tuesday in the Senate. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
By REX SPRINGSTON You don't notice it now, but most of Virginia remains in a drought. And the future doesn't look bright. Experts forecast a dryer-than-average winter, which would spell trouble for crops, plants and water supplies when the weather warms again. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
By Steve Cahalan, La Crosse Tribune, Wis. Jan. 29--Trane expects to lay off about 128 employees starting this spring as it closes its La Crosse parts distribution center, the company said in a notice received Monday by the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
By Walmsley, Andrew The rise of Facebook, Google's acquisition of Doubleclick, the continued boom in both online advertising and ecommerce - the sheer pace of growth continued to keep us all on our toes over the past year. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
By CALVIN R TRICE People who've lived in rural areas all their lives or who moved to Goochland County for the pastoral setting are willing to live without curbside garbage pickup. They can put up with spotty cell phone service and lack of cable television. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
By Jones, Gareth O2 is launching a branded Facebook application that will allow users of the social networking site to rate their top 10 friends. Once downloaded, the tool enables users to automatically categorise their Facebook friends based on how often they interact with them online. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
Lijit Networks, Inc., a company that provides revolutionary search tools and statistics for blog publishers, has announced the acquisition of BigSwerve, a leading startup in blog comment discovery. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
By Anonymous Sky has introduced a rich-media advertising format on Skysports. com as part of a strategy intended to increase online advertising inventory across its portfolio of websites. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
By Fleming, Dana L Should Colleges Protect Social Network Users from Themselves and Others? Counting members in the hundreds of millions, online social networking communities such as MySpace and Facebook may prove nearly as transformative as the 1876 invention of the telephone. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
By Anonymous Q + A I HEAR A LOT ABOUT PHISHING SCHEMES. WHAT ARE THEY, AND AM I AT RISK? Phishing is a common online scam designed to trick consumers into disclosing personal or financial information for the purpose of fraud or identity theft. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
MUSIC giants are in talks about backing a digital service which will allow people to download songs for free. Record companies have spent years attempting to fight illegal file-sharing, which has made a dent in their profits, through the courts. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
Google has opened an ad sales office in Washington DC after adapting its targeting techniques to aid political campaigning. By Jemima Kiss Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 7:51 am
A joint Canadian-Chinese study indicates that children learn to tell social lies around age four:
They asked a group of preschool children ages 3 to 6 to rate drawings by children and adults they knew, as well as strangers. The preschoolers judged the artwork both when the artist was present, and when he or she was absent. The three-year-olds were completely honest, and remained consistent in their ratings; it didn’t matter who drew it, or whether the person was in the room. Five- and six-year-olds gave more flattering ratings when the artist was in front of them. They flattered both strangers and those they knew (although familiar people got a higher dose of praise). Among the four-year-olds, half the group displayed flattery while the other half did not. This supports the idea that age four is a key transitional period in children’s social understanding of the world.
Lee suggests adults flatter for two reasons. It can be to show gratitude for some positive action in the past. As well, when they’re meeting someone for first time – someone who may turn out to be important for their advancement down the road – flattery is also used as an investment for future favourable treatment from the person. “We don’t know which the child is doing,” says Lee. However, the fact that the older children flattered strangers as well as familiar people suggests “they are thinking ahead, they are making these little social investments for future benefits.”
Skunk, a bicycle parts sculptor, has turned out a couple of seriously bad-ass rayguns -- one's all steampunky, the other extremely post-apocalyptic. Ideally, you'd wear one on each hip.
Link
(Thanks, Ruuskado!)
Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels over the years, these tentacles at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market, the best excuse I've ever heard for leaving your hotel room at 5AM, and one of the coolest places I've ever been.
Link
Clive Thompson has a long feature in Fast Company about Duncan Watts, a researcher who disputes Malcolm Gladwell's vaunted "Tipping Point" model of how social ideas spread in society. His experiments and computer models suggest that the spread of ideas is a lot less linear than good ideas in the hands of influential people:
Watts wanted to find out whether the success of a hot trend was reproducible. For example, we know that Madonna became a breakout star in 1983. But if you rewound the world back to 1982, would Madonna break out again? To find out, Watts built a world populated with real live music fans picking real music, then hit rewind, over and over again. Working with two colleagues, Watts designed an online music-downloading service. They filled it with 48 songs by new, unknown, and unsigned bands. Then they recruited roughly 14,000 people to log in. Some were asked to rank the songs based on their own personal preference, without regard to what other people thought. They were picking songs purely on each song's merit. But the other participants were put into eight groups that had "social influence": Each could see how other members of the group were ranking the songs.
Watts predicted that word of mouth would take over. And sure enough, that's what happened. In the merit group, the songs were ranked mostly equitably, with a small handful of songs drifting slightly lower or higher in popularity. But in the social worlds, as participants reacted to one another's opinions, huge waves took shape. A small, elite bunch of songs became enormously popular, rising above the pack, while another cluster fell into relative obscurity.
But here's the thing: In each of the eight social worlds, the top songs--and the bottom ones--were completely different. For example, the song "Lockdown," by 52metro, was the No. 1 song in one world, yet finished 40 out of 48 in another. Nor did there seem to be any compelling correlation between merit and success. In fact, Watts explains, only about half of a song's success seemed to be due to merit. "In general, the 'best' songs never do very badly, and the 'worst' songs never do extremely well, but almost any other result is possible," he says. Why? Because the first band to snag a few thumbs-ups in the social world tended overwhelmingly to get many more. Yet who received those crucial first votes seemed to be mostly a matter of luck.
Reading through the piece, it seems to me that Watts is primarily concerned with those ideas that don't "break out" and swamp the mainstream -- if you're going to have a modestly successful idea, how can you increase that modest success two- or three-fold? It may be that the combination of a hugely influential person; a simple, easy-to-communicate idea and a receptive market can go viral and be on everyone's lips in a few days. But what if you've got a hard-to-communicate, subtle idea and you want to maximize its spread?
Link
CJ from Utilikilts writes: "I am responsible for receiving and cataloging all the images customers send in to our web site. We use the images on our web site, in our marketing literature, etc, so we need to inform our customers about this and get a release from them.
So I wrote a release they would WANT to sign! I thought you guys might get a kick out of it, after looking at all the completely asinine legaleze foisted off on unsuspecting customers...
So here is our Release Form boilerplate: (note that it is also editable on our site... unfortunately nobody has edited it yet, but I look forward to someone creative doing so!):"
Disclaimer and Release: By sending this email to the Utilikilts Company LLC, I grant the Utilikilts Company LLC full rights to use the entire contents of this email for any purpose whatsoever, until the end of the universe. I understand that the Utilikilts Company LLC might use the text and images enclosed in this email on their web site, in printed or online marketing materials, or as a target on the dartboard in the executive bathroom, and I am fine with that. I mean it. I am flattered that my image or words might be used by the company in any way, shape or form.
I own a Utilikilt myself -- and cut a fine figure in it, if the strangers who've complimented me on the street about it are to be believed.
Link
(Thanks, CJ!)
US President George W. Bush called Monday for completing an international deal aimed at cutting global-warming greenhouse gases that involves "every major economy and gives none a free... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 6:47 am
Etsy seller Underroos does a fine line of "Sock Zombies" ("Like a sock monkey... only undeader"). These handsome little buggers ooze gorily right into your heart.
Link
(Thanks, Annie!)
President George W. Bush said Monday the US is increasing funds for "ethical" stem cell research that does not involve destroying human embryos. In his annual State of the... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 6:44 am
Security expert Bruce Schneier has a stirring editorial about the "false dichotomy of 'security versus privacy'" -- people who push for reduced privacy don't want more security, they want more control.
The debate isn't security versus privacy. It's liberty versus control.
You can see it in comments by government officials: "Privacy no longer can mean anonymity," says Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence. "Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information." Did you catch that? You're expected to give up control of your privacy to others, who -- presumably -- get to decide how much of it you deserve. That's what loss of liberty looks like.
It should be no surprise that people choose security over privacy: 51 to 29 percent in a recent poll. Even if you don't subscribe to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's obvious that security is more important. Security is vital to survival, not just of people but of every living thing. Privacy is unique to humans, but it's a social need. It's vital to personal dignity, to family life, to society -- to what makes us uniquely human -- but not to survival.
Less than a year after France's decimated bee populations showed signs of recovery, beekeepers here are once again in a panic as their income-generating worker drones are disappearing by... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 6:32 am
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York state employee who had access to government-owned archives has been arrested on suspicion of stealing hundreds of historic documents, many of which he sold... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 6:07 am
SEATTLE, Jan. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- In light of the current economic climate and ongoing credit crunch, Varolii Corporation will host a Webinar discussion around innovative... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 6:00 am
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Permabit Technology Corporation, the industry's leading innovator of scalable, data-reduced storage for enterprise... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 6:00 am
HERNDON, Va., Jan. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- ZeNETeX, LLC announced today that the company has further expanded its public ITIL(C) Training Services to include classes in Sierra Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 6:00 am
SHANGHAI, China, Jan. 29 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- The9 Limited (Nasdaq: NCTY) (''The9''), a leading online game operator in China, announced today that... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 6:00 am
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Net Optics, Inc. announced a new family of Taps that support direct cable connections using LC connectors, for ATM, Gigabit,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 6:00 am
The Register delivers the good news that a US federal judge had slapped down the practice of pretexting and ordered a Wyoming company to pay almost $200,000; AccuSearch was also permanently barred from selling individuals' phone records without their permission. The FTC had filed suit in 2006 against the company and four others. AccuSearch had advertised a service that made phone records of any individual available for a fee. The current article makes no mention of whatever became of the other four accused data brokers.
By Thomas Gnau Staff Writer DAYTON -- Around Paradigm Industrial Inc., there's a saying. "We can fix everything except a broken heart," quipped Chuck Grandin, Paradigm president. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jan 2008 | 5:00 am
HighWizard writes with word from Engadget that the iPhone SDK Key has been leaked early. "We're not exactly sure how this all went down, but we trust Erica Sadun over at TUAW when she says that it appears that the iPhone's SDK key — which will probably be required by all 'official' third-party apps — has been leaked. Two different sites currently have the key posted, but it's all just for show until next month, when the SDK hits for real — and the code is undoubtedly changed."
LOS ANGELES If you missed the red-carpet premiere for the latest American Pie movie, you are not alone. There wasnt one. American Pie Presents: Beta House, the sixth film in the popular comedy series,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 2:37 am
Da Massive writes "Speaking at the linux.conf.au event in Melbourne, Australia, independent open source consultant Ricardo Gonzalez has told of how he has helped bring 23,000 Linux PCs to over 1000 schools in the Philippines: 'Ministers in the Filipino government now understand Linux can do so much for so little outlay.'" The slow process of educating a government that knew only Microsoft is especially well described in this piece.
After years of denying that smoking is harmful, the tobacco industry does an about-face in front of a congressional panel when one of its top executives admits that, yes, smoking is dangerous.
Hans Reiser's defense lawyer demands that Alameda County judge Larry Goodman declare a mistrial, or correct what DuBois termed was a "false statement" by the judge to jurors.
DaMan writes "Here's something that isn't an urban legend — Snopes, the popular urban legends reference site, has been pushing adware, for at least 6 months, to users via ads displayed on its Web site. No one seems to have called them on it until recently."
PASADENA, Calif. The two students in Southern California had just been introduced during an experiment to test their interpersonal chemistry. The man, a graduate student, dutifully asked the undergraduate... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 12:37 am
It may be a little late to the game, but business travel is now the subject of a variety of blogs. In the last two years, companies in the travel business including Starwood Hotels and Resorts, Marriott... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 12:37 am
That old phone cord is tying Verizon down. Verizon Communications said on Monday that its traditional telephone business remained a drag on the bottom line. But the company said it was not yet seeing... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 12:37 am
WASHINGTON The Food and Drug Administration is so understaffed that, at its current pace, the agency would need at least 27 years to inspect every foreign medical device plant that exports to the United... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 12:37 am
You were expecting poetry, perhaps? The secret messages hidden in J. Craig Venters synthetic bacterial genome have now been revealed. They are Dr. Venters name, and that of his research institute and co-workers.... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jan 2008 | 12:37 am
The HD DVD camp purchased a $2.7 million ad for week's Super Bowl that will try to convince viewers that the high-definition format war is still far from over.
Simply announcing that you've got major-label music on your pretty new P2P service doesn't make it so. Listening Post looks at Qtrax's just-launched service, with a few questions about what went wrong.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Raymond Niro of Niro Scavone Haller & Niro is fighting back against criticism from the Patent Troll Tracker blog by offering a $10,000 bounty for the identity of the person behind it. He thinks the blogger might work for Microsoft, Intel, or has connections to a 'serial infringer' and that could 'color' what they say."
aboivin writes "The Songwriters association of Canada has put forward a proposition for collective licensing of music for personal use. The Right to Equitable Remuneration for Music File Sharing would legalize sharing of a copy of a copyrighted musical work without motive of financial gain, for a monthly fee of $5.00 applied to all Canadian internet connections, which would be distributed to creators and rights holders. From the proposal: 'File sharing is both a revolution in music distribution and a very positive phenomenon. The volunteer efforts of millions of music fans creates a much greater choice of repertoire for consumers while allowing songs — both new and old, well known and obscure — to be heard. All that's needed to fulfill this revolution in distribution is a way for Creators and rights holders to be paid.'"
When Yahoo posts fourth-quarter results after closing bell tomorrow, the company is expected to deliver a couple of disappointing announcements, including job cuts and a less profitable agreement with AT&T.
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Stanford has a new website that not only shows you how cool their new 3-d modeling system is, but actually allows you to give it a try with your own photos. The system can take a 2-d still image and estimate a detailed 3-d structure which you can navigate. "For each small homogeneous patch in the image, we use a Markov Random Field (MRF) to infer a set of "plane parameters" that capture both the 3-d location and 3-d orientation of the patch. The MRF, trained via supervised learning, models both image depth cues as well as the relationships between different parts of the image. Other than assuming that the environment is made up of a number of small planes, our model makes no explicit assumptions about the structure of the scene; this enables the algorithm to capture much more detailed 3-d structure than does prior art (such as Saxena et al., 2005, Delage et al., 2005, and Hoiem et el., 2005), and also give a much richer experience in the 3-d flythroughs created using image-based rendering, even for scenes with significant non-vertical structure."
Over 6,700 people are seen downloading thousands of photos purloined from private MySpace profiles on Sunday, making it the ninth most popular download on the Pirate Bay. At least, until people start noticing that most of the photos aren't that exciting.
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee endorses a fire-and-brimstone video site called GodTube, to counter the myth that "Christians ought to keep to themselves in the church, and never get outside." Er, what?
They asked a group of preschool children ages 3 to 6 to rate drawings by children and adults they knew, as well as strangers. The preschoolers judged the artwork both when the artist was present, and when he or she was absent. The three-year-olds were completely honest, and remained consistent in their ratings; it didn’t matter who drew it, or whether the person was in the room. Five- and six-year-olds gave more flattering ratings when the artist was in front of them. They flattered both strangers and those they knew (although familiar people got a higher dose of praise). Among the four-year-olds, half the group displayed flattery while the other half did not. This supports the idea that age four is a key transitional period in children’s social understanding of the world.
Disclaimer and Release: By sending this email to the Utilikilts Company LLC, I grant the Utilikilts Company LLC full rights to use the entire contents of this email for any purpose whatsoever, until the end of the universe. I understand that the Utilikilts Company LLC might use the text and images enclosed in this email on their web site, in printed or online marketing materials, or as a target on the dartboard in the executive bathroom, and I am fine with that. I mean it. I am flattered that my image or words might be used by the company in any way, shape or form.
