Since this is an art project, the created scent is supposed to evoke something or the other, right? Some kind of intellectual reaction or discussion? It may be a commentary on the ritual of "product unboxing" being taken so far by some people, that they even create "product unboxing videos" on Youtube... It may be a commentary on Apple users being so damn addicted to buying from Apple, that even the "unboxing scent" of the products being opened evokes a sense of "Euphoria" in Apple fans. Since most scents are closely related to fashion (labels), it may be a commentary on Apple's products being so mainstream "fashionable" now, that one might as well create a "fragrance" for Apple, which some people wear like they wear Prada, Hugo Boss or YSL... That last one is probably what they were targeting with this art project. The fact that Apple products have become more "fashion item" than "computer product". And, probably the related fact that many people who buy Apple stuff to be in the "in-crowd", are "fashion-victims" of sorts, who feel compelled to buy that-which-is-fashionable. ---- (Now if only someone made a scent replicating the smell of my latest Samsung laptop being unboxed, then I could become a "fashion-victim" like the Apple geeks, too =)
AFAIK, Windows 7 came in a whopping 6 different "flavours", as well as 32-bit and 64-bit, and it confused the hell out of consumers. (Example: "Should I buy that Dell laptop with Home Edition? Or pay 100 Dollars more for that Samsung notebook with Home Premium? But then there is that bigger Toshiba laptop with Windows Professional. 180 bucks more. But wait, the Dell has X good graphics card, while the Samsung has Y not-so-good graphics card, and the Toshiba has 4 GB memory and 750Gig harddisk, but has a mediocre GFX card.. but the Samsung/Dell doesn't have a BluRay player and only comes in black..." BRAIN EXPLODES. --------- What is the fucking point of doing this to consumers, who often don't understand the differences between the "flavour" when choosing a PC anyway? Its all ONE Operating System to begin with. Why not simply call it "Windows 8", include all the features, and be done with it? Or make a plain "Windows 8" for home users and "Windows 8 Pro" for business/power users. But not 4 - 8 different "flavours". It just screws with people's minds, particularly when shopping for the next PC or laptop.
Imagine a pill you swallow in the morning with your breakfast, that stimulates a few genes and gives you a 10 - 20 Pt IQ-boost for the rest of the day, so you are extra sharp in your work, in meetings & presentations, in an examination, and so on... Or, if you were born IQ challenged (quite a number of people are in every society), a long-term medical treatment that, over the years, boosts your IQ to average level, or perhaps to even above-average level... A medical cure for being under-powered in the brain department, in other words. That could really change some people's changes in life. Being of below-average intelligence is a handicap that lasts a lifetime and often results in low personal-income, and being sidelined/rejected/excluded by the smart people.
1) To lure people who don't really like furniture shopping into a furniture store (because you can go look at tech stuff like LCD TVs, BluRay players and the like now, while your wife shops for lawnchairs, table cloths and garden pottery) 2) To give people who are easily confused by detailed electronics specs (e.g. choosing from 40 different LCD TVs in a big electronics store) a simple option of buying one, pre-selected TV/BluRay/Cabinet combo. You pay-once, transport-once with this deal, instead of getting your stuff from 2 - 3 different stores that may be miles apart. In all likelihood, IKEA will select electronics for this that are cheap, good and durable, so there won't be a product quality problem when you buy your tech from IKEA 3) If the initial strategy of selling TV/BR electronics at IKEA works out profitably, you can follow this strategy up by doing the same with PCs (PC+ColourPrinter+Desk), or Game Consoles, or indeed starting to sell DVDs/BluRays/Games/Software at IKEA. ----------------- Probably most important in all this is goal 1) - bringing new people to IKEA stores, who don't normally like IKEA at all, because it is a pretty boring place unless you are into looking at chairs, tables, couches, lamps, shelves for 2 hours.
That none of the various "anonimizer" services out there, from HotSpotShield to Tor, actually give you any kind of tangible identity protection in the "real world" of the current internet. Hell, maybe these services were even setup expressly to lure people seeking "increased anonimity" for various reasons to make use of one these services, so it becomes that much easier to identify, tag, track & monitor them. Maybe some or all of these services have been electronically monitored 24/7 from the day they were born, but we are still told, over and over, and quite falsely, that these services magically "hide your identity" and give you some "online privacy"... In the increasingly Orwellian online and offline world we live in, precisely that being done by the powers-that-be would make a lot of sense, no? Tell all sorts of gullible internet users that using "Service X" magically "hides your identity on the internet", then monitor precisely that service 24/7, to get your hands on the data of a subgroup of internet users who seek to be "more anonymous" online.... If your organizational mantra consists of "People who try to hide themselves online must have something important to hide, and must be monitored carefully", then you would to precisely that, no? You'd set up a dozen or so "anonimity services" under a variety of different names and front companies, then monitor the f__k out of the people who use those services, on an around-the-clock basis.
Google already collects a huge amount of data on people with its search engine, Youtube (tracking what you watch), Gmail, Maps, Android OS and other services. Now they also want you to store important data on a Google Cloud-Drive? What happens when Google is served with a legal warrant stating that government has a right to access everything of yours that is on Google's servers? Its pretty stunning how much data of yours would become transparent at once: What you search for. What you write in emails. What you watch on Youtube. What you do with your Android tablet. And now also the data you store on Google's cloud-drive... Perhaps this is all by design? You are supposed to trust the Google brand with all your private data, until the day the government comes along, and demands to see years worth of your data, and - crucially - without you even knowing this is happening. For me, Google Cloud-drive is simply too many eggs in one basket. Sure, it could be useful for backing up some not terribly critical data, and then accessing that data from all sorts of different places when you are on the go. My gutfeeling tells me though that Google already knows more than enough about everyone, and that adding your non-internet data to its data collection is a step too far - too far in the wrong direction.
It says in TFA that 8 books were from 1 particular publisher. But it doesn't say how many textbooks the Thai kid sold in total. Probably no more than a few dozen. But it doesn't say how many in the article.
How many textbooks did this Thai student actually sell in America? Was it 8,000 textbooks that normally sell for 75 bucks a piece in the U.S.? Or is this yet another case of someone selling a mere "handful" of copyrighted IP - perhaps 10 - 30 units - and getting slapped with a stupidly large six-digit fine for it? U.S. copyright holders, as well as U.S. courts, don't seem to have any sense of proportion when it comes to these things. How can you fine some 600,000 Dollars for something that damaged you to the tune of - maybe - a few hundred dollars, if at all. I hope the Thai kid wins this case. Whatever he did, it can't be worth a 600K fine. Also, if the kid was struggling so much financially that he needed to resort to selling textbooks to get by, how the hell is this kid going to pay the 600K fine?
I found out using its automated "graph-builder" that the 3 - 4 supposedly "safe" sites I visit most often, actually pass my user data on to Google, Facebook, DoubleClick, Mediaplex, Adroll and other services. Its quite educational to watch the graph go from a blank page to a fairly complex network of interconnections as you continue to browse. Its going to be interesting to see what results from this when the Guardian gets all the aggregate data from Collusion. It does seem indeed that there is such a thing as a "secret world of cookies" out on the internet, and I personally support that this "secret world" be uncovered fully, so we get to see what entities are clandestinely mining our supposedly "private" user information as we surf. --- The whole thing also reminds me of the book "Brandwashed", where the author explains at length how commercial establishments collect all sorts of data on us, and exploit it to sell us more products.
You don't get the crux of my argument. The Entertainment Industry is trying to shut all these pirate sites down, it seems, in the hope that the "Zero Paying" customers using them will have NO OTHER OPTION LEFT after the fact, than to go buy DVDs/BluRays, or shell out on paid Digital Downloads, or get a Cable/Digital/IP TV subscription. What they don't seem to understand at all, however, is that they may seriously ANGER this category of consumer with their agressive legal actions, and that they will thus potentially alienate 10s of millions of potential paying viewers users from consuming Hollywood/MPAA/RIAA content altogether. Think about it logically for a moment: You take someone's casual P2P/Torrents fun/hobby away from them, and they will do what in return? Run to the nearest entertainment store and buy 5 DVDs/BluRays you published? Call up the cable company and say "Quick! Give me a 60 Dollar/month all-included cable package!" --- That's just not going to happen in my view. If you shut even casual (occasional) P2P/Torrent use down, the people using these services won't want to pay you a dime in return, or contribute to you making greater profits. You'll simply create millions of fervently anti-Hollywood, anti-MPAA, anti-RIAA or anti-BREIN types, who really, really, really hate your industry's guts. --- Also, who do you think camps out on the internet all day, looking for any and all tidbits of info on new movies, and spreading all the positive advance-word-of-mouth about them? As far as I can see, it is the same crowd that casually uses P2P/Torrents. Knee that crowd in the balls, and you'll kill perhaps 75% of the internet-buzz about upcoming movies. You'll put your film teasers/trailers out there, and instead of 25 million people watching them and creating free buzz about them, now there's only 3 - 4 million left, and no significant buzz is created at all. Your movie hits the theatres and tanks at the box-office, because you've totally and completely aliented the movie-freaks who would have promoted your movie to others online.
Instead of pioneering new, convenient, usable digital ways to distribute content (like free, ad-supported internet streaming of standard-def content over, say, Youtube or Vimeo), the Entertainment industry seems determined to forcibly shut down any alternative, ad-hoc digital distribution means that has sprung up (like P2P & Torrents). Lets suppose for a moment that the Entertainment Industry manages to shut it all down for good... All of it. Really ALL OF IT. No more ways to get free dl links, free movie streaming, or any other way left to download/view Hollywood content online without paying. Will the industry's sales and profits suddenly go up? Perhaps by a measly few percent (say 2 - 4%), as some of the people who used to get stuff free off the internet now grudgingly head to the entertainment store to buy a DVD or BluRay instead, or buy a few movies/shows on iTunes-like online services. But what about the people who really used to love using Torrents and such? They will very likely stop consuming Hollywood movies/U.S. TV Shows/MPAA-RIAA content altogether. Can you live without consuming this stuff at all? Yes, you very much can. Do you miss out on anything doing this? Only if you are a 14 year old teenager who thinks that to be "hip" or "in the loop", you need to see the latest incarnation of the Hollywood trash all your friends at school are talking about. ---- With its latest actions, the Entertainment Industry has proven once more that it is composed of "9 Parts Business/Industry" and "1 Part Entertainment". It has also proven that it lives decades in the past, business-model wise, and that it simply cannot make effective use of the internet as a means of distribution. The likely result of all this? The generation that grew up with P2P and Torrents will probably hate Hollywood/MPAA/RIAA for the rest of their lives, and likely consume as little Hollywood/U.S. made content as possible.
It will probably do this just to hurt the MPAA/RIAA back.
As I understand it, they take ancient objects from the Forbidden City that are damaged (cracked, parts missing), scan them into a computer with a 3D optical or laser scanner, repair/restore the object/artifact in digital 3D space - using organic modeling tools like ZBrush perhaps - then use a 3D printer to print out the repaired/restored 3D object at 1:1 scale to the original object. It says in TFA, towards the bottom, that the Smithsonian Museum is about to engage in a similar effort of 3D scanning thousands of objects from it collection, and printing 1:1 replicas of them with 3D Printers.
IT Guy: Sir, it would be wise to install abc software on our system, for increased security.
Boss: We can't do that right now. It doesn't fit the budget.
IT Guy: What about installing xyz software then? Its cheaper and could be useful...
Boss: Nope. We can't do that either. Maybe next year.
Boss simply walks away.
Disappointed IT Guy's email language/wording/length changes a bit as a result...
HR Person: Sir, our software is reporting that XX from the IT staff is having a mind-change.
Boss: Really? XX? Well, we'd better look into that. Maybe I should fire the guy outright. You never know with these mind-changes...
Then much kudos/applause to the scientists who make this happen. Its about time that the mega-nastiness that is HIV/AIDS becomes curable, and I hope that the disease/virus will hopefully be eradicated completely from this planet some day. (On a slightly sentimental note, it is too bad that thousands of lab-mice/-rats have had to suffer all kinds of pains in various science-labs over the decades, just so that we humans can overcome common diseases. Maybe some lab-rat/lab-mice statues should be errected in a few town squares somewhere, so that we become conscious of where our medical cures come from...)
The "Eldernet" I had in mind would make use of existing Internet infrastructure. An "Eldernet" certified website, however, would be visually simple, with larger text, easy to understand, and easier to get around (think site-navigation) than a regular webpage. A simplified browser/PC UI on its own wouldn't quite do the trick. The websites themselves would have to be designed for older people as well. The closest thing I've seen to a "Older User Friendly" computer is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1" Android tablet. I've seen older users (aged 70 and above) get along pretty OK with it once the tablet is configured - email client and basic apps are setup and so forth - and the older person using it has had a few hours of basic instruction on how to get things done with it. Its definitely much, much easier to use than a typical Windows PC. The Samsung has a universal "back button" in the bottom-left corner of the screen, that you can simply hammer if you get lost in an application somehow. In 99% of cases, this will throw you back to a clean start screen, from where the task you want to carry out can be re-attempted from scratch.
When queried by multiple governments (incl. France) why Google's Streetview Cars seem to drive around cities collecting all sorts of private data on people's personal/home Wifi setups (like username:password), Google's apparent explanation/excuse was that the collection of Wifi data was "completely accidental", and a "the result of a mistake made by one engineer". The story then gets all weird, because Google refused to hand over requested internal emails to aid the investigation, and also refused to give up the name of the "one engineer" who supposedly "OK'd the Wifi sniffing". The real story seems to be that Google once again "went way too far" in trying to collect "useful data", then made up a seriously silly excuse about some engineer making a "mistake", and personal Wifi data being collected as a result. (How on earth does a "mistake" enable a StreetView Car to suddenly collect detailed Wifi hotspot data? Wouldn't the car need to be purposely equipped with software and antennas capable of this, and also explicitly configured to do so?)
Given that most of the people who are "permanently offline" are people aged 65 or over, who are simply too old the learn the ins & outs of the often times complex & confounding interwebs, maybe there should be a project to create a kind of "Eldernet" for older people? This would be an alternative, simplified internet with bigger text & images, text-to-speech functionality (for those who are vision impaired), much simpler navigation & search (maybe voice-commands like "how much does a lawnchair cost at the local Walmart" or "take me to the Bank of America customer services page"). Also, crucially, no advertising, pop-up windows, and other things that can clutter up the screen and make for mental confusion would be allowed. In short: A sort of easy-to-use Fisher-Price version of the Internet & browser (& maybe OS too), for those too old to deal with the complexity and nagging problems of, say, a Windows 8 Laptop running IE or Firefox. Another nice idea would be to offer free internet-access to people past retirement age, paired with elderly-user-friendly "Eldernet" functionality. It might make the world a more civilized place for all involved...
So the people who feel entitled to intercept everybody else's emails, text messages, instant messaging, social media usage, phonecalls, internet browsing, credit card usage, GPS driving data and much more, preferably without any legal warrants of any sort being required, feel entitled to having "highly secure means of communicating" when it comes to themselves? Doesn't this create a strange division in society, where a small, select group of individuals enjoys complete communication privacy/security in their day to day dealings, while everybody else's supposedly "private" data is one easy keypress or mouseclick away from being fully searchable/viewable? How can there be any "accountability", "fairness" or "balance of power" in a society where a few select people enjoy "total communication privacy" and are completely "untransparent" and "invisible" as a result, while Joe Ordinary, who pays for all of this to happen with his taxes, has his own right to "personal privacy" completely annulled, and is forced to become completely "fully transparent" to the system at press of a key? I don't see how this kind of starkly assymetric "privacy rights inequality" can be good for a society, and least of all for a supposed "free & fair" Western democracy where people are - in theory - supposed to enjoy equal rights, as well as "basic rights", like the simple right to personal privacy.
Back in the day of home-computers (8bit/16bit, 1980s&'90s), computers were very much marketed to a boy/male demographic. Almost all games made for these computers were pretty "guy oriented". So while the boys were learning some BASIC programming and blasting away at jump-and-run & action games all day, the girls were playing with dolls, reading romantic YA books and teen magazines, and swooning over rock singers, or doing whatever it is that girls aged 5 - 16 do growing up. It is only in the last 10 - 15 years or so, with everyone, regardless of gender, starting to use things like email & IM & FaceBook & the internet, that women have started to become regular computer users. Is it really so surprising, given that a lot of women discovered the joys of computing only in the 2000s, while guys were using/playing computers massively back in the 80s and 90s, that there are more male coders and IT specialists than women coders and IT specialists today? The computers and software apps of the 1980s & 1990s were very much "guy oriented". Anyone who's over '30 and comes from that home-computing background is more likely to be male than female.
A postal code is a short numeric sequence that makes it easier for the postman to deliver a package/letter to the right building/apartment. It is really not much different, functionally speaking, from a telephone number, an email address or a room number. Are telephone numbers copyrighted? Don't think so. Are email addresses copyrighted? I've never heard of such a thing. Copyrighting room numbers in a building? Not even technically possible. And who pays for postal codes to be created/used in the first place? The Canadian taxpayer. That should make postal codes a "public good", owned collectively by the taxpaying Canadian public. Creating a free listing of postal codes, where anyone can look up postal codes, is a convenience, and a service rendered to the public. And a good one too, since it is "free", and nobody profits from it. Besides, if search engines can index the entire f___ing Internet, without anyone crying "Oy! That's my copyrighted webpage you are indexing!", how can a simple "Canadian postal code lookup function" be a breach of copyright? If the article is correct, the site in question didn't even copy the Postal Services postal code database. It built its own, from user contributions. I really don't see how "copyright" even figures into this case...
As far as I remember, a proposal to install lockable, steel-reinforced cockpit doors in airliners was floating around well before September 11th ever happened. Because airlines didn't want to pay for these doors (they would have to be custom manufactured), and didn't want the extra weight of these doors added to their planes (profits, profits, profits), there was literally nothing preventing the 9/11 hijackers from taking over 4 different airliners on that day. Instead of making air-travel hell for everybody, why not make airliners themselves more secure, by simple measures like installing lockable, reinforced cockpit doors?
It is my firm belief that Google, Facebook and other "Big Players" who collect user-data for a living have been sharing all sorts of supposedly "private" user data with various governments for years, without ever talking publicly about this happening, or saying/doing anything that would confirm in any way that this - probably - illegal sharing of data is taking place. CISPA to the rescue: Now, when someone using these services complains or sues about their private data being handed to some government or govt agency, they can simply say: "We checked out your data briefly because of suspicion of a security threat. We found nothing, and deleted your data again. This is all perfectly legal under the rights-of-action granted by CISPA." To put it more simply, Google, FB & Others will continue what they have been doing all along - sharing your data with all sorts of other parties without informing you and without having your consent. But now, if a legal problem or challenge arises from doing this, they can simply invoke the relevant section of CISPA, and it all becomes perfectly legal. In no way can Google, FB & Friends be held liable or accountable for passing your private data on to others anymore. What a terrific law this is! Just what Google, FB & Friends have always wanted...
Since the speech-recognition algorithm probably runs on the CPU, and doesn't care much what kind of microphone recorded the speech, couldn't you do this with a normal (headset) microphone on PC?
Slashdot Mirror
Since this is an art project, the created scent is supposed to evoke something or the other, right? Some kind of intellectual reaction or discussion? It may be a commentary on the ritual of "product unboxing" being taken so far by some people, that they even create "product unboxing videos" on Youtube... It may be a commentary on Apple users being so damn addicted to buying from Apple, that even the "unboxing scent" of the products being opened evokes a sense of "Euphoria" in Apple fans. Since most scents are closely related to fashion (labels), it may be a commentary on Apple's products being so mainstream "fashionable" now, that one might as well create a "fragrance" for Apple, which some people wear like they wear Prada, Hugo Boss or YSL... That last one is probably what they were targeting with this art project. The fact that Apple products have become more "fashion item" than "computer product". And, probably the related fact that many people who buy Apple stuff to be in the "in-crowd", are "fashion-victims" of sorts, who feel compelled to buy that-which-is-fashionable. ---- (Now if only someone made a scent replicating the smell of my latest Samsung laptop being unboxed, then I could become a "fashion-victim" like the Apple geeks, too =)
That's pretty funny... And accurate =)
AFAIK, Windows 7 came in a whopping 6 different "flavours", as well as 32-bit and 64-bit, and it confused the hell out of consumers. (Example: "Should I buy that Dell laptop with Home Edition? Or pay 100 Dollars more for that Samsung notebook with Home Premium? But then there is that bigger Toshiba laptop with Windows Professional. 180 bucks more. But wait, the Dell has X good graphics card, while the Samsung has Y not-so-good graphics card, and the Toshiba has 4 GB memory and 750Gig harddisk, but has a mediocre GFX card.. but the Samsung/Dell doesn't have a BluRay player and only comes in black..." BRAIN EXPLODES. --------- What is the fucking point of doing this to consumers, who often don't understand the differences between the "flavour" when choosing a PC anyway? Its all ONE Operating System to begin with. Why not simply call it "Windows 8", include all the features, and be done with it? Or make a plain "Windows 8" for home users and "Windows 8 Pro" for business/power users. But not 4 - 8 different "flavours". It just screws with people's minds, particularly when shopping for the next PC or laptop.
Imagine a pill you swallow in the morning with your breakfast, that stimulates a few genes and gives you a 10 - 20 Pt IQ-boost for the rest of the day, so you are extra sharp in your work, in meetings & presentations, in an examination, and so on... Or, if you were born IQ challenged (quite a number of people are in every society), a long-term medical treatment that, over the years, boosts your IQ to average level, or perhaps to even above-average level... A medical cure for being under-powered in the brain department, in other words. That could really change some people's changes in life. Being of below-average intelligence is a handicap that lasts a lifetime and often results in low personal-income, and being sidelined/rejected/excluded by the smart people.
1) To lure people who don't really like furniture shopping into a furniture store (because you can go look at tech stuff like LCD TVs, BluRay players and the like now, while your wife shops for lawnchairs, table cloths and garden pottery) 2) To give people who are easily confused by detailed electronics specs (e.g. choosing from 40 different LCD TVs in a big electronics store) a simple option of buying one, pre-selected TV/BluRay/Cabinet combo. You pay-once, transport-once with this deal, instead of getting your stuff from 2 - 3 different stores that may be miles apart. In all likelihood, IKEA will select electronics for this that are cheap, good and durable, so there won't be a product quality problem when you buy your tech from IKEA 3) If the initial strategy of selling TV/BR electronics at IKEA works out profitably, you can follow this strategy up by doing the same with PCs (PC+ColourPrinter+Desk), or Game Consoles, or indeed starting to sell DVDs/BluRays/Games/Software at IKEA. ----------------- Probably most important in all this is goal 1) - bringing new people to IKEA stores, who don't normally like IKEA at all, because it is a pretty boring place unless you are into looking at chairs, tables, couches, lamps, shelves for 2 hours.
That none of the various "anonimizer" services out there, from HotSpotShield to Tor, actually give you any kind of tangible identity protection in the "real world" of the current internet. Hell, maybe these services were even setup expressly to lure people seeking "increased anonimity" for various reasons to make use of one these services, so it becomes that much easier to identify, tag, track & monitor them. Maybe some or all of these services have been electronically monitored 24/7 from the day they were born, but we are still told, over and over, and quite falsely, that these services magically "hide your identity" and give you some "online privacy"... In the increasingly Orwellian online and offline world we live in, precisely that being done by the powers-that-be would make a lot of sense, no? Tell all sorts of gullible internet users that using "Service X" magically "hides your identity on the internet", then monitor precisely that service 24/7, to get your hands on the data of a subgroup of internet users who seek to be "more anonymous" online. ... If your organizational mantra consists of "People who try to hide themselves online must have something important to hide, and must be monitored carefully", then you would to precisely that, no? You'd set up a dozen or so "anonimity services" under a variety of different names and front companies, then monitor the f__k out of the people who use those services, on an around-the-clock basis.
Google already collects a huge amount of data on people with its search engine, Youtube (tracking what you watch), Gmail, Maps, Android OS and other services. Now they also want you to store important data on a Google Cloud-Drive? What happens when Google is served with a legal warrant stating that government has a right to access everything of yours that is on Google's servers? Its pretty stunning how much data of yours would become transparent at once: What you search for. What you write in emails. What you watch on Youtube. What you do with your Android tablet. And now also the data you store on Google's cloud-drive... Perhaps this is all by design? You are supposed to trust the Google brand with all your private data, until the day the government comes along, and demands to see years worth of your data, and - crucially - without you even knowing this is happening. For me, Google Cloud-drive is simply too many eggs in one basket. Sure, it could be useful for backing up some not terribly critical data, and then accessing that data from all sorts of different places when you are on the go. My gutfeeling tells me though that Google already knows more than enough about everyone, and that adding your non-internet data to its data collection is a step too far - too far in the wrong direction.
It says in TFA that 8 books were from 1 particular publisher. But it doesn't say how many textbooks the Thai kid sold in total. Probably no more than a few dozen. But it doesn't say how many in the article.
How many textbooks did this Thai student actually sell in America? Was it 8,000 textbooks that normally sell for 75 bucks a piece in the U.S.? Or is this yet another case of someone selling a mere "handful" of copyrighted IP - perhaps 10 - 30 units - and getting slapped with a stupidly large six-digit fine for it? U.S. copyright holders, as well as U.S. courts, don't seem to have any sense of proportion when it comes to these things. How can you fine some 600,000 Dollars for something that damaged you to the tune of - maybe - a few hundred dollars, if at all. I hope the Thai kid wins this case. Whatever he did, it can't be worth a 600K fine. Also, if the kid was struggling so much financially that he needed to resort to selling textbooks to get by, how the hell is this kid going to pay the 600K fine?
--- When will they stop? Ever? --- They won't. Until someone with some guts actually stands up and stops them.
I found out using its automated "graph-builder" that the 3 - 4 supposedly "safe" sites I visit most often, actually pass my user data on to Google, Facebook, DoubleClick, Mediaplex, Adroll and other services. Its quite educational to watch the graph go from a blank page to a fairly complex network of interconnections as you continue to browse. Its going to be interesting to see what results from this when the Guardian gets all the aggregate data from Collusion. It does seem indeed that there is such a thing as a "secret world of cookies" out on the internet, and I personally support that this "secret world" be uncovered fully, so we get to see what entities are clandestinely mining our supposedly "private" user information as we surf. --- The whole thing also reminds me of the book "Brandwashed", where the author explains at length how commercial establishments collect all sorts of data on us, and exploit it to sell us more products.
You don't get the crux of my argument. The Entertainment Industry is trying to shut all these pirate sites down, it seems, in the hope that the "Zero Paying" customers using them will have NO OTHER OPTION LEFT after the fact, than to go buy DVDs/BluRays, or shell out on paid Digital Downloads, or get a Cable/Digital/IP TV subscription. What they don't seem to understand at all, however, is that they may seriously ANGER this category of consumer with their agressive legal actions, and that they will thus potentially alienate 10s of millions of potential paying viewers users from consuming Hollywood/MPAA/RIAA content altogether. Think about it logically for a moment: You take someone's casual P2P/Torrents fun/hobby away from them, and they will do what in return? Run to the nearest entertainment store and buy 5 DVDs/BluRays you published? Call up the cable company and say "Quick! Give me a 60 Dollar/month all-included cable package!" --- That's just not going to happen in my view. If you shut even casual (occasional) P2P/Torrent use down, the people using these services won't want to pay you a dime in return, or contribute to you making greater profits. You'll simply create millions of fervently anti-Hollywood, anti-MPAA, anti-RIAA or anti-BREIN types, who really, really, really hate your industry's guts. --- Also, who do you think camps out on the internet all day, looking for any and all tidbits of info on new movies, and spreading all the positive advance-word-of-mouth about them? As far as I can see, it is the same crowd that casually uses P2P/Torrents. Knee that crowd in the balls, and you'll kill perhaps 75% of the internet-buzz about upcoming movies. You'll put your film teasers/trailers out there, and instead of 25 million people watching them and creating free buzz about them, now there's only 3 - 4 million left, and no significant buzz is created at all. Your movie hits the theatres and tanks at the box-office, because you've totally and completely aliented the movie-freaks who would have promoted your movie to others online.
Instead of pioneering new, convenient, usable digital ways to distribute content (like free, ad-supported internet streaming of standard-def content over, say, Youtube or Vimeo), the Entertainment industry seems determined to forcibly shut down any alternative, ad-hoc digital distribution means that has sprung up (like P2P & Torrents). Lets suppose for a moment that the Entertainment Industry manages to shut it all down for good... All of it. Really ALL OF IT. No more ways to get free dl links, free movie streaming, or any other way left to download/view Hollywood content online without paying. Will the industry's sales and profits suddenly go up? Perhaps by a measly few percent (say 2 - 4%), as some of the people who used to get stuff free off the internet now grudgingly head to the entertainment store to buy a DVD or BluRay instead, or buy a few movies/shows on iTunes-like online services. But what about the people who really used to love using Torrents and such? They will very likely stop consuming Hollywood movies/U.S. TV Shows/MPAA-RIAA content altogether. Can you live without consuming this stuff at all? Yes, you very much can. Do you miss out on anything doing this? Only if you are a 14 year old teenager who thinks that to be "hip" or "in the loop", you need to see the latest incarnation of the Hollywood trash all your friends at school are talking about. ---- With its latest actions, the Entertainment Industry has proven once more that it is composed of "9 Parts Business/Industry" and "1 Part Entertainment". It has also proven that it lives decades in the past, business-model wise, and that it simply cannot make effective use of the internet as a means of distribution. The likely result of all this? The generation that grew up with P2P and Torrents will probably hate Hollywood/MPAA/RIAA for the rest of their lives, and likely consume as little Hollywood/U.S. made content as possible. It will probably do this just to hurt the MPAA/RIAA back.
As I understand it, they take ancient objects from the Forbidden City that are damaged (cracked, parts missing), scan them into a computer with a 3D optical or laser scanner, repair/restore the object/artifact in digital 3D space - using organic modeling tools like ZBrush perhaps - then use a 3D printer to print out the repaired/restored 3D object at 1:1 scale to the original object. It says in TFA, towards the bottom, that the Smithsonian Museum is about to engage in a similar effort of 3D scanning thousands of objects from it collection, and printing 1:1 replicas of them with 3D Printers.
IT Guy: Sir, it would be wise to install abc software on our system, for increased security. Boss: We can't do that right now. It doesn't fit the budget. IT Guy: What about installing xyz software then? Its cheaper and could be useful... Boss: Nope. We can't do that either. Maybe next year. Boss simply walks away. Disappointed IT Guy's email language/wording/length changes a bit as a result... HR Person: Sir, our software is reporting that XX from the IT staff is having a mind-change. Boss: Really? XX? Well, we'd better look into that. Maybe I should fire the guy outright. You never know with these mind-changes...
Then much kudos/applause to the scientists who make this happen. Its about time that the mega-nastiness that is HIV/AIDS becomes curable, and I hope that the disease/virus will hopefully be eradicated completely from this planet some day. (On a slightly sentimental note, it is too bad that thousands of lab-mice/-rats have had to suffer all kinds of pains in various science-labs over the decades, just so that we humans can overcome common diseases. Maybe some lab-rat/lab-mice statues should be errected in a few town squares somewhere, so that we become conscious of where our medical cures come from...)
The "Eldernet" I had in mind would make use of existing Internet infrastructure. An "Eldernet" certified website, however, would be visually simple, with larger text, easy to understand, and easier to get around (think site-navigation) than a regular webpage. A simplified browser/PC UI on its own wouldn't quite do the trick. The websites themselves would have to be designed for older people as well. The closest thing I've seen to a "Older User Friendly" computer is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1" Android tablet. I've seen older users (aged 70 and above) get along pretty OK with it once the tablet is configured - email client and basic apps are setup and so forth - and the older person using it has had a few hours of basic instruction on how to get things done with it. Its definitely much, much easier to use than a typical Windows PC. The Samsung has a universal "back button" in the bottom-left corner of the screen, that you can simply hammer if you get lost in an application somehow. In 99% of cases, this will throw you back to a clean start screen, from where the task you want to carry out can be re-attempted from scratch.
When queried by multiple governments (incl. France) why Google's Streetview Cars seem to drive around cities collecting all sorts of private data on people's personal/home Wifi setups (like username:password), Google's apparent explanation/excuse was that the collection of Wifi data was "completely accidental", and a "the result of a mistake made by one engineer". The story then gets all weird, because Google refused to hand over requested internal emails to aid the investigation, and also refused to give up the name of the "one engineer" who supposedly "OK'd the Wifi sniffing". The real story seems to be that Google once again "went way too far" in trying to collect "useful data", then made up a seriously silly excuse about some engineer making a "mistake", and personal Wifi data being collected as a result. (How on earth does a "mistake" enable a StreetView Car to suddenly collect detailed Wifi hotspot data? Wouldn't the car need to be purposely equipped with software and antennas capable of this, and also explicitly configured to do so?)
Given that most of the people who are "permanently offline" are people aged 65 or over, who are simply too old the learn the ins & outs of the often times complex & confounding interwebs, maybe there should be a project to create a kind of "Eldernet" for older people? This would be an alternative, simplified internet with bigger text & images, text-to-speech functionality (for those who are vision impaired), much simpler navigation & search (maybe voice-commands like "how much does a lawnchair cost at the local Walmart" or "take me to the Bank of America customer services page"). Also, crucially, no advertising, pop-up windows, and other things that can clutter up the screen and make for mental confusion would be allowed. In short: A sort of easy-to-use Fisher-Price version of the Internet & browser (& maybe OS too), for those too old to deal with the complexity and nagging problems of, say, a Windows 8 Laptop running IE or Firefox. Another nice idea would be to offer free internet-access to people past retirement age, paired with elderly-user-friendly "Eldernet" functionality. It might make the world a more civilized place for all involved...
So the people who feel entitled to intercept everybody else's emails, text messages, instant messaging, social media usage, phonecalls, internet browsing, credit card usage, GPS driving data and much more, preferably without any legal warrants of any sort being required, feel entitled to having "highly secure means of communicating" when it comes to themselves? Doesn't this create a strange division in society, where a small, select group of individuals enjoys complete communication privacy/security in their day to day dealings, while everybody else's supposedly "private" data is one easy keypress or mouseclick away from being fully searchable/viewable? How can there be any "accountability", "fairness" or "balance of power" in a society where a few select people enjoy "total communication privacy" and are completely "untransparent" and "invisible" as a result, while Joe Ordinary, who pays for all of this to happen with his taxes, has his own right to "personal privacy" completely annulled, and is forced to become completely "fully transparent" to the system at press of a key? I don't see how this kind of starkly assymetric "privacy rights inequality" can be good for a society, and least of all for a supposed "free & fair" Western democracy where people are - in theory - supposed to enjoy equal rights, as well as "basic rights", like the simple right to personal privacy.
Back in the day of home-computers (8bit/16bit, 1980s&'90s), computers were very much marketed to a boy/male demographic. Almost all games made for these computers were pretty "guy oriented". So while the boys were learning some BASIC programming and blasting away at jump-and-run & action games all day, the girls were playing with dolls, reading romantic YA books and teen magazines, and swooning over rock singers, or doing whatever it is that girls aged 5 - 16 do growing up. It is only in the last 10 - 15 years or so, with everyone, regardless of gender, starting to use things like email & IM & FaceBook & the internet, that women have started to become regular computer users. Is it really so surprising, given that a lot of women discovered the joys of computing only in the 2000s, while guys were using/playing computers massively back in the 80s and 90s, that there are more male coders and IT specialists than women coders and IT specialists today? The computers and software apps of the 1980s & 1990s were very much "guy oriented". Anyone who's over '30 and comes from that home-computing background is more likely to be male than female.
A postal code is a short numeric sequence that makes it easier for the postman to deliver a package/letter to the right building/apartment. It is really not much different, functionally speaking, from a telephone number, an email address or a room number. Are telephone numbers copyrighted? Don't think so. Are email addresses copyrighted? I've never heard of such a thing. Copyrighting room numbers in a building? Not even technically possible. And who pays for postal codes to be created/used in the first place? The Canadian taxpayer. That should make postal codes a "public good", owned collectively by the taxpaying Canadian public. Creating a free listing of postal codes, where anyone can look up postal codes, is a convenience, and a service rendered to the public. And a good one too, since it is "free", and nobody profits from it. Besides, if search engines can index the entire f___ing Internet, without anyone crying "Oy! That's my copyrighted webpage you are indexing!", how can a simple "Canadian postal code lookup function" be a breach of copyright? If the article is correct, the site in question didn't even copy the Postal Services postal code database. It built its own, from user contributions. I really don't see how "copyright" even figures into this case...
As far as I remember, a proposal to install lockable, steel-reinforced cockpit doors in airliners was floating around well before September 11th ever happened. Because airlines didn't want to pay for these doors (they would have to be custom manufactured), and didn't want the extra weight of these doors added to their planes (profits, profits, profits), there was literally nothing preventing the 9/11 hijackers from taking over 4 different airliners on that day. Instead of making air-travel hell for everybody, why not make airliners themselves more secure, by simple measures like installing lockable, reinforced cockpit doors?
It is my firm belief that Google, Facebook and other "Big Players" who collect user-data for a living have been sharing all sorts of supposedly "private" user data with various governments for years, without ever talking publicly about this happening, or saying/doing anything that would confirm in any way that this - probably - illegal sharing of data is taking place. CISPA to the rescue: Now, when someone using these services complains or sues about their private data being handed to some government or govt agency, they can simply say: "We checked out your data briefly because of suspicion of a security threat. We found nothing, and deleted your data again. This is all perfectly legal under the rights-of-action granted by CISPA." To put it more simply, Google, FB & Others will continue what they have been doing all along - sharing your data with all sorts of other parties without informing you and without having your consent. But now, if a legal problem or challenge arises from doing this, they can simply invoke the relevant section of CISPA, and it all becomes perfectly legal. In no way can Google, FB & Friends be held liable or accountable for passing your private data on to others anymore. What a terrific law this is! Just what Google, FB & Friends have always wanted...
Since the speech-recognition algorithm probably runs on the CPU, and doesn't care much what kind of microphone recorded the speech, couldn't you do this with a normal (headset) microphone on PC?