The audio archives for the Accelerating Change 2005 are now available from IT Conversations (all 25 sessions for $25 via PayPal), and will be published for free on the site at a rate of about one per week.. (They also have an RSS feed).
Update 10/30/2005: Podcasts for the Accelerating Change 2005 talks by both Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge are now available as free Podcast downloads.
Accelerating Change 2005 audio files are up Read More »
Wondering why your daughter, wife or girlfriend stays out so late? Wonder no more with new forget-me-not panties, the underwear that gives her comfort and you peace of mind:
These panties will monitor the location of your daughter, wife or girlfriend 24 hours a day, and can even monitor their heart rate and body temperature…
These “panties” can trace the exact location of your woman and send the information, via satellite, to your cell phone, PDA, and PC simultaneously! Use our patented mapping system, pantyMap®, to find the exact location of your loved one 24 hours a day.
Brought to you by The Contagious Media Project, the brilliant minds that also created the Black People Love Us site and the Fundrace Neighbor Search.
(Thanks to Dan on the wearables list for the link.)
Forget-Me-Not Panties Read More »
Siemens is showing off a paper-thin electrochromic display that they hope will eventually lead to an all-in-one device that uses printing technology to lay down the display, circuits and even the battery. According to the New Scientist:
The display is controlled by a printed circuit and can be powered by a very thin printable battery or a photovoltaic cell. The goal is to be able to create the entire device – the display and its power source – using the same printing method, so that manufacturing costs would be as low as possible. Siemens expects to achieve this by 2007.
Also impressive is that the display cost about £30 (just over $50) per square meter of materials.
Update 5pm: added link to Siemens announcement.
Siemens shows off electrochromic paper-thin display Read More »
Looks like JHymn is not able to strip the DRM off of any music or video purchased through iTunes 6.0, and that the new videos purchasable from the iTunes Music Store can only be played using iTunes 6. (Also note that you can’t easily revert to iTunes 5 after upgrading to iTunes 6.) Music that has already had the DRM stripped by JHymn will still play in iTunes 6.
It could be a bit of a wait before they reverse-engineer the new iTunes protocol. and until then I think I’ll pass on making purchases from their music store. If I’m going to give my hard-earned money for music, it’ll be a form where I can play it where I want, loan it to a friend or sell it to a used record store when I’m tired of it. The iTunes Music Store is great for convenience, but it’s short-term convenience in exchange for long-term pain.
JHymn unable to strip DRM from iTunes 6.0 purchases Read More »
To the surprise of few, today Steve Jobs announced a Video iPod at his “One More Thing” press conference today. The main iPod now supports H.264 and MPEG-4 video formats, with a capacity of around 150 hours worth on the 60GB. You can also download movie trailers and purchase music videos at the iTunes Music Store for $1.99 each, and it looks like ad-free episodes of shows from ABC and Disney television are coming soon.
(As is traditional after Apple announcements (regardless of how good the news), AAPL is down five and a half percent so far today.)
Update 3:09pm: TV-show purchase is now up, with episodes for $1.99 and a full season for $34.99. And they’ve got Pixar shorts up for only $1.99 too! (Not sure if JHymn will work with video like it does with audio — I’ll try it out tonight.)
There’s been a lot of buzz about Yahooo!’s new Podcast search engine, and what it means for the “new medium” to have a major search engine buy in like this.
Ignore the fact that podcasting isn’t a new medium (it’s called audio guys, it’s been around a while). It’s also not that different from seven years ago when people just linked to MP3s on their webpages, and search engines like Scour.net and Lycos MP3 Search would find them for you. Technologically the only difference is a little bit of XML to help machines know what’s being linked, plus a few tweaks (like RSS subscription) that make the experience more user-friendly.
What I think has changed in the past 7 years is the number of people producing and distributing their own amateur and semi-pro content, and the accompanying infrastructure to support them. In 1998 almost all the MP3s available on the web were copyrighted songs people had ripped from their CD collection, and so the RIAA and other members of the content cartel could squash whatever infrastructure cropped up in the name of stamping out piracy. Today there’re countless MP3s online that are completely legal to download, and that primes the pump for for inventing the infrastructure to make it even easier. Moreover, piracy has largely gone to the P2P networks, so now MP3s on the web are harder to paint with the sweeping “it’s all piracy” brush.
And that all leads to podcasting, which I’m hearing the media describe as “making your own radio programs for broadcast over the net.” This is, of course, the big long-term competition for the content cartel — their big-advertising, mass-produced one-size-fits-all model will have trouble competing with thousands of niche narrowcasts that each have a small personal audience. More importantly, podcasting is online audio that finally isn’t being linked with piracy — it’s good, happy audio on the web, not at all like those nasty pirated MP3s in the previous decade.
And just think, it only took us seven years to get here…
Rebranding the MP3 Read More »
I don’t get it. With all the credentials Karen Hughes has, including managing Bush’s already stellar communications, ghost-writing his autobiography and of course her Bachelors in Journalism and 7 years as a local TV-news reporter, how could she be having such trouble mastering the subtle diplomacy and cultural differences involved in Middle-Eastern politics?
Maybe if she had more experience with Arabian horses…
(Thanks to Dorothy for the link.)
Report card on Karen Hughes Read More »
There’s a myth I keep hearing that downloading copyrighted music without permission is perfectly legal under US law, and that only uploading is illegal. (I just got an anonymous comment on an old post to that effect, which is why I bring it up now.) I gather the myth spread after the RIAA decided to go after big uploaders but not big downloaders in their jihad, and was bolstered by a NYTimes piece that starts with the line “Downloading music from the Internet is not illegal.”
Unfortunately for would-be downloaders, this is just a myth, as the 9th Circuit’s ruling in A&M Records v. Napster makes clear:
We agree that plaintiffs have shown that Napster users infringe at least two of the copyright holders’ exclusive rights: the rights of reproduction, § 106(1); and distribution, § 106(3). Napster users who upload file names to the search index for others to copy violate plaintiffs’ distribution rights. Napster users who download files containing copyrighted music violate plaintiffs’ reproduction rights.
The US Copyright Office’s FAQ also puts it quite plainly:
Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution.
So what did that old NYTimes article mean when it said downloading is legal? Simply that there is plenty of music available where the copyright holders have already given permission for you to download, share and enjoy. And that, Virginia, is why there is a Santa Claus.
Yes, Virginia, downloading copyrighted material without permission is illegal… Read More »
Here’s what Alexander Hamilton had to say on the purpose of Senate confirmations:
To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.
It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entier branch of the legislature. The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism, or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity, to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other. He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.
Of course, if the president has no shame then all bets are off…
(Thanks to Jay for the quote.)
Why have the Senate confirm Supreme Court nominations? Read More »
This sounds fun: The ROBO CAFE [jp→en] has just opened up in Osaka, Japan, where customers can watch Nuvo dance, view a Segway of course have their crumbs cleaned by a Roomba. Sounds like a perfect place to unwind after a day at the wearable-computing conference I’ll be attending there in a couple of weeks :).
My Japanese is non-existant and Google’s isn’t much better, but here are links to a map and more details here [jp→en] and here [jp→en].
(Thanks to Rebecca for the link!)
Robot Cafe in Osaka, Japan Read More »