Saturday, April 14, 2007
Friday, April 13, 2007
Kites fly in jet stream to generate electricity
Here's another interesting proposal: Meanwhile, Wubbo Ockels of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has been developing another approach to airborne wind generation at lower altitude, with backing from Royal Dutch Shell and Nederlandse Gasunie, a natural-gas company. Dr Ockels’s idea is that a kite (without rotor blades) be launched from a ground station, turning a generator as it rises to an altitude of several hundred metres. When it reaches its full height, it alters its shape to catch less wind, and can thus be reeled back in using much less power than it produced when it was being paid out.Mr Shepard’s flying generator looks like a cross between a kite and a helicopter. It has four rotors at the points of an H-shaped frame that is tethered to the ground by a long cable. The rotors act like the surface of a kite, providing the lift needed to keep the platform in the air. As they do so, they also turn dynamos that generate electricity. This power is transmitted to the ground through aluminium cables. Should there be a lull in the wind, the dynamos can be used in reverse as electric motors, to keep the generator airborne.
more: http://economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8952080
Sotheby's/Mastercard debut yuppycard to mixed reviews
from Blogging Stocks by Zac Bissonnette Sotheby's (NYSE: BID) and GE Money have teamed up to launch a Sotheby's MasterCard (NYSE: MA). Predictably, the card is aimed at wealthier consumers, and even gives them a chance to earn donations to their favorite museums. From the Wall Street Journal: A cardholder who has charged $10,000, for example, can convert the 10,000 earned points into a $100 donation to one of 17 U.S. partner museums [...] Anyone accumulating 2.5 million points can book a Sotheby's specialist to conduct an auction for a charity event. The piece goes on to note that some museums have been slow to sign on, preferring to go with relationships they already have. I'm really happy to see the consumer credit industry focusing some energy on higher net worth individuals (you need an income of 100k+ to qualify for the card). As you will learn from reading the book Maxed Out, the industry seems to relentlessly target those customers who can least afford it. Perhaps Sotheby's and MasterCard will show that there is money to be made providing credit to customers who can afford it, while also supporting the arts.
Violinist in the subway
from Seth's Blog by Seth Godin I got more mail about this story in the Washington Post than any other non-blog topic ever. I saw it when it first came out, but didn't blog it because I thought the lesson was pretty obvious to my readers. [World-class violinist plays for hours in a subway station, almost no one stops to listen]. The experiment just proved what we already know about context, permission and worldview. If your worldview is that music in the subway isn't worth your time, you're not going to notice when the music is better than usual (or when a famous violinist is playing). It doesn't match the story you tell yourself, so you ignore it. Without permission to get through to you, the marketer/violinist is invisible. But why all the mail? (And the Post got plenty too). Answer: I think it's because people realized that if they had been there, they would have done the same thing. And it bothers us. It bothers us that we're so overwhelmed by the din of our lives that we've created a worldview that requires us to ignore the outside world, most of the time, even when we suffer because of it. It made me feel a little smaller, knowing that something so beautiful was ignored because the marketers among us have created so much noise and so little trust. I don't think the answer is to yell louder. Instead, I think we have an opportunity to create beauty and genius and insight and offer it in ways that train people to maybe, just maybe, loosen up those worldviews and begin the trust.
"The Intruder". A Stunning Mobile Phone Concept
from textually.org by emily
Spotted on SCIFI.com, the most stunning concept phone designed by Dennis Hopkins, called The Intruder.
Perfect 10 v. CCBill: “direct financial benefit” means infringing material must draw users, says Ninth Circuit
(Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howell/?p=119) Posted by Denise Howell @ 1:51 am April 13th, 2007 Late last month, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals came out with an important decision, Perfect 10 v. CCBill (PDF), that required it to interpret and apply both the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — two of the most important U.S. provisions governing conduct on the Live Web. Jason Schultz, Professor Goldman, and Joe Gratz all have good summaries of the details. First, see Jason's rundown of the parties and facts of the case: Background: Perfect 10 publishes adult entertainment magazines and websites. Many third-party websites post Perfect 10 images without permission. CCBill et al provide hosting and credit card services to those sites. Perfect 10 sued CCBill et al. for assisting in the infringement of their copyrights and associated state claims, such as violating the rights of publicity of Perfect 10 models. CCBill raised, among other defenses, the DMCA Safe Harbors and Section 230 of the CDA. Next, there's a lot of meat to the opinion and I encourage you to check out all three of the discussions linked above. But the most interesting part of the decision to me, particularly in the context of the pending Viacom v. YouTube suit, is the court's take on what constitutes a "direct financial benefit" sufficient to preclude a defendant's successful invocation of the DMCA's safe harbor language. Once again from Jason: The Court held that a provider falls outside the protections of 512(c) if they receive "direct financial benefit" from infringing conduct, and that this term should be interpreted consistent with the "similarly-worded common law standard for vicarious copyright liability." The Court then went on to state that the relevant inquiry was "whether the infringing activity constitutes a draw for subscribers, not just an added benefit." Since CWIE (the hosting co-defendant) hosted sites for a fee unrelated to the amount of infringing material, the court found this did not qualify as a direct financial benefit. The "direct financial benefit" exemption is one of the most crucial legal points at issue in Viacom v. YouTube, and here we have the Ninth Circuit saying that if the presence of infringing material is merely an "added benefit" and not a primary draw, a defendant should be immune under the DMCA from liability for the infringing acts of others. As a practical matter, this requires parties and courts to classify and quantify the role of the infringing material, and thus imports a Sony v. Universal/substantial noninfringing use-esque anlaysis into interpreting and applying the DMCA. Advantage YouTube/Google — though the Second Circuit (where Viacom v. YouTube is pending) is well known for departing from the reasoning of the Ninth. There's much more to tease out of the decision. Professor Goldman wraps it up as follows: This Ninth Circuit panel clearly understood the dangers that copyright and publicity rights lawsuits pose to Internet intermediaries, and they took a number of useful steps to push back on a very aggressive plaintiff's novel but expansive theories. Kudos to them. But with two other Perfect 10 cases pending with the Ninth Circuit, I strongly suspect that the most interesting and powerful aspects of this ruling soon will be reshaped by the subsequent opinions. http://lawgeek.typepad.com/lawgeek/2007/03/perfect_10_v_cc.html http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2007/03/ninth_circuit_o.htm http://www.joegratz.net/archives/2007/03/30/more-on-perfect-10-v-ccbill/ http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000512----000-.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._v._Universal_City_Studios
More Research Shows How The Fashion Industry Is Helped By The Lack Of Intellectual Property Rights
from Techdirt by Mike Back in 2003, we mentioned an article that compared the entertainment industry to the fashion industry, noting that even though there was no intellectual property protections over clothing design and copying was rampant, the fashion industry was thriving. This shouldn't come as a surprise, really. After all, without the artificial protectionism, the fashion designers are forced to continually compete by continually innovating and always trying to come out with the latest and greatest design. Even though others copy, there's tremendous value in being the first, or being the "big name" in the industry. The article included this fantastic quote: "Ideas arise, evolve through collaboration, gain currency through exposure, mutate in new directions, and diffuse through imitation. The constant borrowing, repurposing, and transformation of prior work are as integral to creativity in music and film as they are to fashion." In 2005, the NY Times wrote a similar article, but warned that the fashion industry was moving in the wrong direction, as lazy designers who didn't want to compete and wanted to rest on their laurels had started pushing for new intellectual property over their designs. Late last year, the calls for such protectionism grew even stronger -- though, the reasoning doesn't make any sense. The entire point of intellectual property protections is to create incentives for a market. If that market is already thriving, why do you need to add new incentives? The real reason is that it's not to provide incentives. It's a way for successful players to keep making money without continuing to innovate -- which is simply bad for society. The NY Times is taking another look at this issue, this time in a piece written by well-known economist Hal Varian, who points to a recent study that doesn't just note that the fashion industry has thrived without intellectual property protection, but notes that a big part of the reason it has thrived is because of the lack of IP. In other words, if those pushing for those new IP rights get them, the end result will likely be harmful to the overall fashion industry. Again, this shouldn't be surprising, as removing protectionist policies tends to increase competition and the size of the addressable market, but it's certainly a good example to point to when people insist that things like the music industry wouldn't exist without copyright protection.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Buffalo joins Hitachi in the 1TB HDD club
from Engadget by Evan Blass
Perpendicular magnetic recording has brought us storage densities beyond our wildest dreams (well, anything above 640KB is pretty amazing, actually), with Buffalo today joining Hitachi in the exclusive, highly-sought after 1TB 3.5-inch hard drive club. Besides the now-legendary 7K1000, consumers will soon have the chance to pick up a nearly-1,024GB platter known as the almost-impossible-to-remember HD-H1.0TFBS2/3G, which features the same 7200 RPM / 3.0Gbps speeds that we've become accustomed to. Japan will see this one first -- sometime around the end of the month -- for about ¥60,165, so expect an eventual street price of under $500 when these finally spin their way stateside. As for us, we're gonna hold off for the time being, because surely this flood of terabytes means that 1PB models are right around the corner.
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