Monday, November 30, 2009

We May Be Born With an Urge to Help

“Warfare is ultimately not a denial of the human capacity for cooperation, but merely the most destructive expression of it.”

The roots of human cooperation may lie in human aggression. We are selfish by nature, yet also follow rules requiring us to be nice to others.

“That’s why we have moral dilemmas,” Dr. Tomasello said, “because we are both selfish and altruistic at the same time.”

in reference to:

"We May Be Born With an Urge to Help"
- Some Biologists Find an Urge in Human Nature to Help - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Job Hunting Guide for the 50 Year Old

"Because of your age and experience, you have many more options and a much better network of colleagues than younger workers. Needless to say, it's much better to look for a new job when you have one. But, whether or not you are currently employed, your age is still an advantage. Really!"

in reference to:

"Your advantage is that you already have a network of people who know and respect you"
- Interns Over 40: Job Hunting Guide for the 50 Year Old (view on Google Sidewiki)

DCC's free internet plan poses legal risk

" The claim was made by Dunedin businessman Stu Fleming, the managing director and chief technical officer of the Dunedin-based internet service provider WIC NZ Ltd, former InternetNZ councillor and current member.

He said the council's wireless (Wi-Fi) internet proposal had some merit, but warned it would establish the council as the customer of an internet service provider, rather than "anonymous" end-users making use of the free service.

That in turn could see the council carrying legal liability for any copyright infringements by those using the network to download music, movies or games illegally, he warned."

Which is more of a criticism of a stupid law than an error on the part of DCC. There's of course nothing that could be done on the free Wi-Fi network that couldn't be done from the Koru Lounge, but...

in reference to:

"DCC's free internet plan poses legal risk"
- DCC's free internet plan poses legal risk | Otago Daily Times Online News (view on Google Sidewiki)

Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement

"It turns out there are two different ways people respond to challenges. Some people see them as opportunities to perform - to demonstrate their talent or intellect. Others see them as opportunities to master - to improve their skill or knowledge.

Say you take a person with a performance orientation ("Paul") and a person with a mastery orientation ("Matt"). Give them each an easy puzzle, and they will both do well. Paul will complete it quickly and smile proudly at how well he performed. Matt will complete it quickly and be satisfied that he has mastered the skill involved.

Now give them each a difficult puzzle. Paul will jump in gamely, but it will soon become clear he cannot overcome it as impressively as he did the last one. The opportunity to show off has disappeared, and Paul will lose interest and give up. Matt, on the other hand, when stymied, will push harder. His early failure means there's still something to be learned here, and he will persevere until he does so and solves the puzzle.

While a performance orientation improves motivation for easy challenges, it drastically reduces it for difficult ones. And since most work worth doing is difficult, it is the mastery orientation that is correlated with academic and professional success, as well as self-esteem and long-term happiness."

Via Tim O'Reilly & Slashdot.

in reference to:

"Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement"
- Pixel Poppers: Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement (view on Google Sidewiki)

Women Who Want to Want

"She regularly wires the genitals of her patients to a photoplethysmograph to measure whether the women respond with surges of vaginal blood flow while they watch a pornographic video. Almost always, they do.

Brotto is dealing in the domain of the mind, or in the mind’s relationship to the body, not in a problem with the body itself."

in reference to:

"She is now one of the world’s leading specialists in what is known as hypoactive sexual desire disorder in women."
- Women Who Want to Want - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Friday, November 27, 2009

Roger de Salis rides again with Opto Network

“The Opto proposition for farmers within two kilometres of the cable will cost $2000 for the fibre, which they plough in themselves, then $500 for the installation.

in reference to:

"“Once you set a ship on its course it is hard to turn. I wanted to go to a different part of the market,” de Salis says."
- Computerworld > Roger de Salis rides again with Opto Network (view on Google Sidewiki)

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Brain-Like Chip May Solve Computers' Big Problem: Energy

"It sounds cockamamy, but it is true. Scientists have found that the brain’s 100 billion neurons are surprisingly unreliable. Their synapses fail to fire 30 percent to 90 percent of the time. Yet somehow the brain works. Some scientists even see neural noise as the key to human creativity. Boahen and a small group of scientists around the world hope to copy the brain’s noisy calculations and spawn a new era of energy-efficient, intelligent computing. Neurogrid is the test to see if this approach can succeed."

in reference to:

"The human brain runs on only about 20 watts of power, equal to the dim light behind the pickle jar in your refrigerator. By contrast, the computer on your desk consumes a million times as much energy per calculation. If you wanted to build a robot with a processor as smart as the human brain, it would require 10 to 20 megawatts of electricity. “Ten megawatts is a small hydroelectric plant,” Boahen says dismissively"
- Brain-Like Chip May Solve Computers' Big Problem: Energy | Computers | DISCOVER Magazine (view on Google Sidewiki)

A Glimpse of Google without News Corp.: No Big Loss

"The media world is in a (relative) uproar over what the implications of News Corp. pulling its content off Google would be. But! A three-part Gawker investigation-type thing indicates the impact might be quite minimal for you, the consumer. Observe:"

Exactly, if you want news, you will still get it from Google, if you want the WSJ, you'll go to their site. There is no monopoly on news that needs a rent, only on brands.

in reference to: A Glimpse of Google without News Corp.: No Big Loss (view on Google Sidewiki)

Saturday, November 21, 2009

[FCC] Workshop: Future Fiber Architectures and Local Deployment Choices

"The goal of the Broadband Workshop on Future Fiber Architectures and Local Deployment Choices is to understand post-100-megabit/s fiber and partial-fiber solutions for the middle mile, public institutions, small to medium enterprises and homes. It will cover:

* Fiber distribution topology (point-to-point, star)
* Fiber distribution technology (active Ethernet, Passive Optical Network), and
* Hybrid fiber solutions (advanced DSL, fiber-coax, fiber-radio) where fiber to the neighborhood is delivered to the end-user by non-fiber methods.

It will cover not only how network designers weigh economic and policy factors, but also how their choices of network topology and technology facilitate and inhibit future policy options. It will delve into the upgrade paths of the various alternatives along the way to explore where future barriers lie. It will highlight creative and exploratory thinking about upgrading today's technology, e.g., GPON, HFC and radio technology."

in reference to: Workshop: Future Fiber Architectures and Local Deployment Choices - Broadband.gov (view on Google Sidewiki)

Chorus split costs prohibitive - Yeah, Right

Auckland-based Craigs Investment Partners analyst Geoff Zame says spinning off Chorus would be expensive, but not $2b. "If that's the songbook [Telecom] want to sing to, then clearly they'll talk about the prohibitive costs."

in reference to:

"Australian-based Craigs Investment Partners analyst Ian Martin says Telecom faces three levels of cost in a structural split: operating separate premises and systems; loss of synergy in operations; and loss of economies of scale."
- Chorus split costs prohibitive - business | Stuff.co.nz (view on Google Sidewiki)

Friday, November 20, 2009

The Day After: Harlequin Blinks

"MWA:

It is common for disreputable publishers to try to profit from aspiring writers by steering them to their own for-pay editorial, marketing, and publishing services. The implication is that by paying for those services, the writer is more likely to sell his manuscript to the publisher. Harlequin recommends the “eHarlequin Manuscript Critique Service” in the text of its manuscript submission guidelines for all of its imprints and include a link to “Harlequin Horizons,” its new self-publishing arm, without any indication that these are advertisements….If MWA and Harlequin are unable to reach an agreement, MWA will take appropriate action which may include removing Harlequin from the list of MWA approved publishers, declining future membership applications from authors published by Harlequin and declaring that books published by Harlequin will not be eligible for the Edgar Awards."

Publishers, caring for authors like ranchers care for cattle.

in reference to:

"HARLEQUIN: Heck, no! You keep only 50% of the net. We need something for our trouble of lending our brand name to Horizons and steering you toward it, through our website and our rejection letter."
- Jackie Kessler - Insert Witty Title Here (view on Google Sidewiki)

Kineto Announces Combined VoLGA / IMS Client for Voice Over LTE

"Kineto’s combined VoLGA/IMS voice client is compliant with the VoLGA Forum’s release 1.0 specifications and is planned to support the recently announced “One Voice” IMS telephony profile.

VoLGA is defined specifically to pave a smooth migration path to IMS voice. It utilizes many of the same connection protocols defined in IMS voice, including RFC 4867 and RoHC (robust header compression).

VoLGA works with IMS data services, like the Rich Communications Suite (RCS) over LTE, enabling operators to begin their IMS deployments with new revenue-generating applications while laying the foundation for IMS voice."

OMG, could it be any more complex, fragile and costly?

in reference to:

"An important requirement for any LTE handset is concurrent support for both the interim VoLGA and longer-term IMS voice solutions. Operators around the world will adopt IMS voice on different timelines, so LTE handsets must support the interim approach along with IMS to provide an effective roaming solution."
- Kineto Announces Combined VoLGA / IMS Client for Voice Over LTE :: VoIP.BIZ-NEWS.COM (view on Google Sidewiki)

Thursday, November 19, 2009

The Accessibility Paradox

"The book world has been harrumphing about a battle among big box stores to sell the season's biggest books at the cheapest price. In order to draw customer into their stores, Target and Wal-Mart are making ten bestselling author's books available for under ten bucks"

in reference to:

"I'm also taken aback by the horrified response of the book industry. I thought the big crisis was that nobody reads. Now it turns out the problem is that books are so popular with the masses they're being used as bait to draw in shoppers."
- The Accessibility Paradox | Peer to Peer Review - 10/29/2009 - Library Journal (view on Google Sidewiki)

Are The Record Labels Using Bluebeat's Bogus Copyright Defense To Avoid Having To Give Copyrights Back To Artists?

"As you hopefully know, back in 1999, the RIAA had a Congressional staffer named Mitch Glazier slip four words into a totally unrelated bill on satellite retransmission of broadcast TV, literally in the middle of the night, that effectively changed the way copyrights worked on songs by major label artists. It effectively took much of the control out of the hands of the artists and handed it right to the labels. Remember that the next time the record labels claim they're representing the best interests of artists."

in reference to:

"The use of four simple words, buried deep within the bill, which no one other than the RIAA knew about (seriously, those who voted on it later said they had no idea), turned songs recorded by artists signed to record deals to works made for hire. That meant that those artists could not reclaim the copyrights to their songs later on via a "termination" right, as any other content creator could."
- Are The Record Labels Using Bluebeat's Bogus Copyright Defense To Avoid Having To Give Copyrights Back To Artists? | Techdirt (view on Google Sidewiki)

Losing Fatherhood

“I pay child support to a biologically intact family,” Mike told me, his voice cracking with incredulity. “A father and mother, married, who live with their own child. And I pay support for that child. How ridiculous is that?”

in reference to:

"Yet as troubled as many of them might be by that news, they are even more stunned to discover that many judges find it irrelevant. State statutes and case law vary widely, but most judges conclude that these men must continue to raise their children — or at least pay support — no matter what their DNA says."
- How DNA Testing Is Changing Fatherhood - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Big response to broadband partner plan

"A string of local and international groups have expressed interest in partnering the Government in its $1.5 billion internet broadband roll-out.

Communications and Information Technology Minister Steven Joyce said 38 groups had expressed an interest, and the Government was getting close to selecting private sector partners to build the infrastructure and get the roll-out under way."

in reference to:

"The invitation to participate was issued last month, providing terms and conditions of the Government's investment, including technical specifications and its preferred commercial model for co-investing with partners in a local fibre company."
- Big response to broadband partner plan - Telecommunications - NZ Herald News (view on Google Sidewiki)

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Inventing a Better Patent System

"The best way forward is for Congress to sidestep the damages question and instead add five amendments to existing statutes that would improve the processing of patents, reduce lawsuits and speed up the arrival of innovations on the market."

in reference to:

"Congress shouldn’t make the best the enemy of the good. If it avoids the tricky question of damages measurement and adopts these five amendments, it would weed out low-quality patent claims, reduce the number of expensive lawsuits and reward our best innovators."
- Op-Ed Contributor - Inventing a Better Patent System - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Reality Check: 80% Won't Pay for Online Content (And the Other 20% Are Probably Lying)

"Forrester Research has a new study out that Rupert Murdoch should probably download: Of 4,000 people polled, 80 percent will not pay for online newspapers or magazines, and the rest are divided on how they want to pay."

Abolutely not surprised, nor by the continued sabre rattling at Google.

in reference to:

"Times of London reader Robin Stack: "It will reduce your wealth and influence; please do it.""
- Reality Check: 80% Won't Pay for Online Content (And the Other 20% Are Probably Lying) - News Corporation - Gawker (view on Google Sidewiki)

Big Content: Using "moral panics" to change copyright law

"Copyright owners' problems are market problems, and they can only be solved by responding to market demands: strong copyright protection cannot make consumers buy things they do not want to buy and, as RIAA's ill-conceived, ill-executed, and ill-fated campaign of suing individuals demonstrates, laws cannot stop individuals from filesharing. Laws can, though, stifle innovation, and in this respect the copyright industries have been successful, and tragically so, for the public and for authors. Innovation leads to greater consumer demand and therefore greater profits for copyright owners."

in reference to:

""The DMCA is the 21st-century equivalent of letting copyright owners put a chastity belt on someone else's wife.""
- Big Content: Using "moral panics" to change copyright law - Ars Technica (view on Google Sidewiki)

If You Believe in IP, How Do You Teach Others?

"Some Harvard professors are taking very seriously their "intellectual property rights" and have claimed copyright to the ideas that they spread in their classrooms. What prompted this was a website in which students posted their notes to help other students.

The professors have cracked down. It might have been enough to legislate against this behavior in particular. Instead, they wrapped their objection in the great fallacy of our age: the professor owns his ideas and they may not be spread without his permission."

in reference to:

"This action has opened up a can of worms, and now other universities have taken up the puzzling question: how do you at once enforce intellectual property and uphold the ideal of a university, which is, after all, about teaching and spreading ideas to others? The problem is a serious one that highlights the absurdity of the notion that an idea — infinitely reproducible and thereby not scarce, and also taught with the overt purpose of gaining adherents among students — can be somehow contained and restrained once it is unleashed."
- If You Believe in IP, How Do You Teach Others? - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Institute (view on Google Sidewiki)

Malcolm Gladwell, Eclectic Detective

"The reasoning in “Outliers,” which consists of cherry-picked anecdotes, post-hoc sophistry and false dichotomies, had me gnawing on my Kindle. Fortunately for “What the Dog Saw,” the essay format is a better showcase for Gladwell’s talents, because the constraints of length and editors yield a higher ratio of fact to fancy. Readers have much to learn from Gladwell the journalist and essayist. But when it comes to Gladwell the social scientist, they should watch out for those igon values."

in reference to:

"Malcolm Gladwell, Eclectic Detective"
- Book Review - 'What the Dog Saw - And Other Adventures,' by Malcolm Gladwell - Review - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Missing the point: It’s time to talk about software freedom

"To conclude, I’d like to pose some broader questions for members of the library profession. Should libraries purchase ebooks that come with DRM, which limits what the user can do with the information? Should they purchase digital information sources that can only be used on certain types of devices? This is particularly true for digital audio ebooks, but it also applies to other types of information. Why are so few librarians visible in the Free Software Foundations’s campaign against DRM (http://www.defectivebydesign.org/amazon1984)? How are members of the profession promoting the free circulation of information if they don’t ensure that this is true not only in the print world, but also in the digital one? Finally, if members of the library profession, with its commitment to free access to information, don’t take action to preserve our own and our users’ digital freedoms, who will do it for us? What is the future of libraries if we don’t?"

in reference to:

"What is the opposite of software freedom? Some people might say software slavery, but I prefer to call it software imprisonment. By choosing to use non-free (or proprietary) software, users become metaphorical prisoners of their software vendor, and a common phrase for this is ‘vendor lock-in’ (which is nicely connected to the notion of imprisonment). This means that the vendor, and only the vendor, has the power to decide what features the software will have, which bugs to fix and which to call ‘features’, when to require users to upgrade to a newer version, and when to discontinue support for a software package."
- reflections » Missing the point: It’s time to talk about software freedom (view on Google Sidewiki)

Telecom explores its options with partnership talks

Analysts say Telecom's latest quarterly result shows just how dependent the company is on the profits of network arm Chorus, and how vulnerable it would be to competing fibre access networks built as a result of the ultrafast broadband plan.

JBWere Goldman Sachs analyst Tristan Joll says Chorus is contributing a significant part of Telecom's earnings.

"Therefore, if there is something out there that exposes those earnings to competition, it creates a challenge and an imperative for them to try and defend it."

in reference to:

"Reynolds says discussions are taking place through the Telecommunications Industry Group, of which Vodafone, Kordia and Vector are also members, and one-on-one."
- Computerworld > Telecom broadens ultrafast broadband talks (view on Google Sidewiki)

Friday, November 13, 2009

Beyond Security Theater

"Security is both a feeling and a reality. The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders. When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense."

in reference to:

"Unfortunately for politicians, the security measures that work are largely invisible."
- Schneier on Security: Beyond Security Theater (view on Google Sidewiki)

Photoshop Disasters recently featured a wonderfully horrible image from Victoria's Secret.

"I have a theory that I call the "Just One Principle". Simply put, when someone modifies an image, they never change "just one thing". Since the artist at Victoria's Secret erased the handbag, they must have changed something else. What else was modified?"

in reference to:

"Although the dress appears to have a random noise pattern, there is actually one area where there is a well-defined pattern: her chest. Between her breast the dots form a well-organized "stretch" pattern. The modification also appears in a demosaic analysis as a diamond-shape distortion in the middle of her chest, and in the 2nd principal component as a minor color variation. Digital enhancements usually appear in multiple image analysis tests, and this appears in min/max, PCA, and demosaic analysis, among other tests."
- Body By Victoria - Secure Computing: Sec-C (view on Google Sidewiki)

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Colin Jackson stands up for your rights

"I can't accept how New Zealand politicians can let this just happen. How dare they take more notice of secret overseas treaty negotiations and industry lobbyists than they do of their constituents? The last government passed S92A and paid for it, although I doubt that was the only reason for its demise. The current government is still permitting its officials to take part in a secret process designed to curtail the rights of New Zealanders. How DARE they sell ordinary New Zealanders down the river?"

in reference to:

"Colin Jackson stands up for your rights"
- Public Address | Speaker (view on Google Sidewiki)

Telecom 3G network to be wholesaled

"Telecom is to wholesale its 3G network from next year, a year earlier than originally planned."

Excellent.

in reference to:

"Move comes early after successful trial of CDMA product"
- Computerworld > Telecom 3G network to be wholesaled (view on Google Sidewiki)

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Google Offers A 16 Terabyte Cloud Drive For $4,096 A Year

"Google tonight announced that it was drastically slashing prices while at the same time offering more storage pricing options for users of its services. Specifically, while Gmail users currently get about 7 gigabytes for free and Picasa users get about 1 gigabyte for free, both can now upgrade to 20 GB for just $5 a year. Previously, it cost $20 to get just 10 GB of additional service.

But what’s really pretty incredible is that Google has an option for you to buy up to 16 terabytes, yes, terabytes, of storage from them. As Google notes, that enough to store 8 million very high resolution photos. Considering that most consumers probably still have south of 500 gigabytes of storage in their home, that’s pretty massive."

in reference to:

"Google is only officially offering this storage for use with Gmail and Picasa. It’s not a complete online backup/storage system,"
- Google Offers A 16 Terabyte Cloud Drive For $4,096 A Year (view on Google Sidewiki)

Einstein's Blunder Undone

1. Given there was a time when expansion was decelerating, and now its accelerating, that sounds like something thrown up, falling down.

2. Looking at 7 billion year old light and working out what was happening then, an acceleration of expansion, begs the question "where are those galaxies now?"

in reference to:

"the 2009 Royal Society of New ZealandDistinguished Speaker"
- index page for November 2009 Royal Society Lecture (view on Google Sidewiki)

Consider the possibility that “social media” is a crock.

"Today in the digital world we still have very few personal tools that work only for us, are under personal control, are NEA, and are not provided as a grace of some company or other. (If you can only get it from somebody else’s site, it ain’t personal.) That’s why I bring up email, blogging, podcasting and instant messaging. Yes, there are plenty of impersonal services involved in all of them, but those services don’t own the category. We can swap them out. They are, as the economists say, substitutable."

in reference to:

"The frame here is real estate. Or, more precisely, private real estate"
- Doc Searls Weblog · Beyond Social Media (view on Google Sidewiki)

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Change 74: Telecommunications Structures

Contents
Further Submissions

* Further Public Notice (66Kb PDF)
* Summary of Submissions (146Kb PDF)
* Further Submission Form (71Kb PDF)

Further submissions close at 5.00pm on 4 December 2009.
Original Documents

* Public Notice (64Kb PDF)
* Plan Change Document (281Kb PDF)
* Section 32 Report (151Kb PDF)
* Submission Form (60Kb PDF)

Submissions closed on 30 October 2009.

in reference to:

"Contents Further Submissions Further Public Notice (66Kb PDF) Summary of Submissions (146Kb PDF) Further Submission Form (71Kb PDF) Further submissions close at 5.00pm on 4 December 2009. Original Documents Public Notice (64Kb PDF) Plan Change Document (281Kb PDF) Section 32 Report (151Kb PDF) Submission Form (60Kb PDF) Submissions closed on 30 October 2009."
- District Plan - Plan Changes - Wellington - New Zealand (view on Google Sidewiki)

Findings from a six]country study of Teleuse at the Bottom of the Pyramid

"Largest benefits perceived in emergency
communication and relationship maintenance"

in reference to: coai-tabop3-mumbai-10feb09_final2.pdf (application/pdf Object) (view on Google Sidewiki)

R v the Internet Seminar Is the Internet in contempt of court, and if so what should be done about it?

"A seminar for legal, media and Internet professionals to discuss the issues around suppression orders, contempt of court and the Internet."

in reference to:

"Venue: Rangimarie RoomTe Papa, Museum of NewZealand55 Cable St, WellingtonWhen:Thurs, 3 December 20099.00am – 5.00pmCocktails to follow Seminar(registration from 8.30am)Fully catered event"
- R v the Internet Seminar — InternetNZ (view on Google Sidewiki)

Blu-ray discs get Managed Copy

"The genius of the whole scheme is that these very same rights, which are free and easy to exert on non-encrypted digital media like CDs, is that rightsholders can then sell these very rights back to consumers for extra cash. Want to put a copy of your legally-purchased new film on your iPhone or laptop for that flight to LA? You can't—but you might soon be able to purchase the right.

This isn't the sort of change that could work in the marketplace—consumers don't like it and would simply bypass the encryption if the tools were easy and legal. Thanks to the DMCA, they are not, and the companies that traffic in them are usually located offshore.

The argument that this is about "stopping piracy" might have held water a decade ago, but it's now sinking like a leaky yacht. All of these films remain widely available online to anyone motivated to seek them out. Not that DRM has ever done much to stop piracy anyway, since all it takes is a single cracked copy to make a mockery of absurdly complicated technical lockdown attempts."

in reference to:

"After four years in the oven, "managed copy" is done—and boy, is it a stinker."
- Blu-ray discs get Managed Copy; hardware support nonexistent - Ars Technica (view on Google Sidewiki)

Sunday, November 8, 2009

What DNS Is Not

"What DNS is not is a mapping service or a mechanism for delivering policy-based information. DNS was designed to express facts, not policies. Because it works so well and is ubiquitous, however, it's all too common for entrepreneurs to see it as a greenfield opportunity. Those of us who work to implement, enhance, and deploy DNS and to keep the global system of name servers operating will continue to find ways to keep the thing alive even with all these innovators taking their little bites out of it.

These are unhappy observations and there is no solution within reach because of the extraordinary size of the installed base. The tasks where DNS falls short, but that people nevertheless want it to be able to do, are in most cases fundamental to the current design. What will play out now will be an information war in which innovators who muscle in early enough and gain enough market share will prevent others from doing likewise—DNS lies vs. DNS security is only one example."

in reference to:

"Paul Vixie, Internet Systems Consortium DNS is many things to many people—perhaps too many things to too many people."
- What DNS Is Not - ACM Queue (view on Google Sidewiki)

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Real Copyright Reform

"A copyright system is designed to produce an ecology that nurtures the creation, dissemination and enjoyment of works of authorship. When it works well, it encourages creators to generate new works, assists intermediaries in disseminating them widely, and supports readers, listeners and viewers in enjoying them. If the system poses difficult entry barriers to creators, imposes demanding impediments on intermediaries, or inflicts burdensome conditions and hurdles on readers, then the system fails to achieve at least some of its purposes. The current U.S. copyright statute is flawed in all three respects. In this article, I explore how the current copyright system is failing its intended beneficiaries. The foundation of copyright law’s legitimacy, I argue, derives from its evident benefits for creators and for readers. That foundation is badly cracked, in large part because of the perception that modern copyright law is not especially kind to either creators or to readers; instead, it concentrates power in the hands of the intermediaries who control the conduits between creators and their audience. Those intermediaries have recently used their influence and their copyright rights to obstruct one another’s exploitation of copyrighted works. I argue that the concentration of copyright rights in the hands of intermediaries made more economic sense in earlier eras than it does today."

Reminiscent of Jane Ginsberg's "Author-centric Copyright," but with recognition of the importance of the audience.

in reference to:

"The key to real copyright reform, I suggest, is to reallocate copyright’s benefits to give more rights to creators, greater liberty to readers, and less control to copyright intermediaries."
- SSRN-Real Copyright Reform by Jessica Litman (view on Google Sidewiki)

Free Content

"Take our content, please!

All content on this site is available for republishing under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license.

We want you to copy and distribute this stuff as widely as possible. That's what we're here for!

You don't have to ask our permission. That's what the Creative Commons licensing is for. Everybody has permission already. Just do it.

If you want to be nice, you can include a link back to us, but the only requirement is to provide attribution to the author and C4SS."

in reference to:

"Patent Twit of the Week"
- Gene Quinn: Patent Twit of the Week (view on Google Sidewiki)

Friday, November 6, 2009

Taking Walks, Delivering Mail: An Introduction to Graph Theory

"Video Summary: This learning video presents an introduction to graph theory through two fun, puzzle-like problems: “The Seven Bridges of Königsberg” and “The Chinese Postman Problem”

Via: Education and Services Innovation

in reference to:

"Use of the MIT BLOSSOMS website and Learning Video Repository is subject to our Creative Commons License and other Terms of Use."
- BLOSSOMS-Video Library (view on Google Sidewiki)

Robots could mimic human forgetfulness to filter out less useful information.

"Forgetting is a critical capability when operating in dynamic environments," says PhD student Sanford Freedman, who presented the group's data filtering-software, called ActSimple, in a paper published at the IASTED Robotics and Applications conference held this week in Cambridge, MA.

ActSimple draws on two facets of human memory: time-based decay, or the way that memories disappear over time, and interference, which is the failure to recall information due to other memories competing for attention. ActSimple assigns different pieces of data values depending on how often they are used, and how similar it is to other pieces of information."

in reference to:

"The Team found that on average, ActSimple created the most reliable estimated WiFi map. Interestingly, when the robot "remembered" everything--that is, used all of its gathered information (errors and all)--it generated the least accurate map overall."
- Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors' blog: Absent-minded Robots Remember What Matters (view on Google Sidewiki)

Thursday, November 5, 2009

The Future of Markets

"Among practical people, the simple message that government should go away and leave business alone has wide appeal to business: and the simple message that greed can serve a constructive social role also has wide appeal to greedy people. The claim that profitability demonstrates, is even the measure of, public benefit relieves people of any worries they might have harboured about the utility of their profitable activities. These worries are not common, but one does encounter them from time to time."

John Kay - Wincott Lecture 2009

in reference to:

"Wincott Lecture"
- The Future of Markets (view on Google Sidewiki)

Executive summary: Android is a screwed, hard-coded, non-portable abomination.

"The presentation explains in detail why Android is not what most people refer to when they say Linux. What most people mean when they say Linux is the GNU/Linux system with it's standard userspace tools, not only the kernel.

The presentation shows how Google has simply thrown 5-10 years of Linux userspace evolution into the trashcan and re-implemented it partially for no reason."

in reference to:

"The presentation explains in detail why Android is not what most people refer to when they say Linux. What most people mean when they say Linux is the GNU/Linux system with it's standard userspace tools, not only the kernel. The presentation shows how Google has simply thrown 5-10 years of Linux userspace evolution into the trashcan and re-implemented it partially for no reason."
- Harald Welte's blog (view on Google Sidewiki)

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Yahoo Open Sources Traffic Server

"Traffic Server enables the session management, authentication, configuration management, load balancing, and routing for an entire cloud computing stack. Yahoo says that with the open source version of Traffic Server, organizations can benefit from access to cached online content. In addition, Traffic Server enables faster responses to requests for stored Web objects, such as files, news articles or images.

The company’s global network of data centers allows Traffic Server to choose the closest servers to store and access cached content for increased speed. Traffic Server is capable of handling more than 30,000 requests per second per server and it currently serves more than 400 terabytes of data per day."

in reference to: Yahoo Open Sources Traffic Server (view on Google Sidewiki)

'Embrace the beauty of ageing': Sarah Murdoch appears on un[re]touched magazine cover

"On the cover Ms Murdoch looks bright and fresh-faced with just a couple of small lines near her eyes.

Ms Murdoch said she doesn't like airbrushed photographs of herself.

"I think when I'm retouched in photographs it's worse, because when people see me in real life, they go, 'Oh, God, isn't she old?," she told the magazine."

in reference to: Sarah Murdoch's Untouched Magazine Cover Photo | Women's Weekly (view on Google Sidewiki)

Open Access

"We find that in countries where an engaged regulator enforced open access obligations, competitors that entered using these open access facilities provided an important catalyst for the development of robust competition which, in most cases, contributed to strong broadband performance across a range of metrics. Today these competitors continue to play, directly or through successor companies, a central role in the competitiveness of the markets they inhabit. Incumbents almost always resist this regulation, and the degree to which a regulator is professional, engaged, and effective appears to play a role in the extent to which open access is successfully implemented with positive effects."

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski

in reference to:

"FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski"
- Line sharing best solution for slow, expensive US broadband - Ars Technica (view on Google Sidewiki)

Cellphones, Texts and Lovers

"Over the past few decades, these social scripts became obsolete. They didn’t fit the post-feminist era. So the search was on for more enlightened courtship rules. You would expect a dynamic society to come up with appropriate scripts. But technology has made this extremely difficult. Etiquette is all about obstacles and restraint. But technology, especially cellphone and texting technology, dissolves obstacles. Suitors now contact each other in an instantaneous, frictionless sphere separated from larger social institutions and commitments."

in reference to: Op-Ed Columnist - Cellphones, Texts and Lovers - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Hold the phone, reality is calling

"Welcome to augmented reality, the digital revolution that integrates location and data.

I'm standing at the corner of King and La Trobe streets in central Melbourne, facing the Flagstaff Gardens across the road. I've been here many times but today I'm looking at the gardens in a new way — through my phone.

When I point the phone's camera at the gardens, a flotilla of text bubbles pops up and bobs across the screen. Point the camera in a new direction and some bubbles drift out of view as new ones drift in.

Click on any bubble and an information box comes up."

in reference to: Augmented Reality iPhone Apps In Australia (view on Google Sidewiki)

Monday, November 2, 2009

* About Bill Gurley Google Redefines Disruption: The “Less Than Free” Business Model

"Google’s free navigation feature announcement dealt a crushing blow to the GPS stocks. Garmin fell 16%. TomTom fell 21%. Imagine trying to maintain high royalty rates against this strategic move by Google. Android is not only a phone OS, it’s a CE OS. If Ford or BMW want to build an in-dash Android GPS, guess what? Google will give it to them for free. As we noted in our take on the free business model, “if a disruptive competitor can offer a product or service similar to yours for ‘free,’ and if they can make enough money to keep the lights on, then you likely have a problem.”

Nice to find Bill Gurley again, somewhere in the past he fell off my radar.

in reference to: Google Redefines Disruption: The “Less Than Free” Business Model « abovethecrowd.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Save outrage for times that really warrant it

"Yes, it's been a great few weeks for the national pastime of taking offence. A bunch of Auckland Grammar pupils on a class trip to Auckland Museum mock worship the swastika, post the photographs online, and ... well, World War II breaks out all over again.

Publicly shamed, the offenders are even filmed, jerseys pulled over their heads, doing the equivalent of a perp walk into the museum to offer their apologies ... We cross now to our reporter outside who can tell us that, apparently, there were tears. This was the lead item of that evening's bulletin.

What a pack of pious, bullying scolds sections of our news media have become. And what a lot of purse-lipped professional offence-takers there are to enable this culture of complaint, creating supposed victims out of nothing more than loose talk and crass behaviour."

Via: http://publicaddress.net/default,6255,standing-up-and-calling-bullshit.sm#post6255

in reference to:

"Save outrage for times that really warrant it"
- Save outrage for times that really warrant it | Stuff.co.nz (view on Google Sidewiki)

Telecom offers unlimited uploading, but downloading still capped

"New Zealand broadband users are used to heavy limits on the amount of data they can download, but there will be no limit on uploading data for Telecom Broadband customers for the next three months."

Why only three months? But congratulations on recognising we don't just suck content down.

in reference to:

"Telecom offers unlimited uploading, but downloading still capped"
- Telecom offers unlimited uploading, but downloading still capped | The National Business Review - New Zealand - business, markets, finance, politics, property, technology and more (view on Google Sidewiki)