moezilla
YouTube Punishes Copyright Offenders With Animated Pirate Cat
Thursday YouTube announced a new program which requires copyright offenders to watch an animated cartoon starring a pirate cat. “In an adjustment to it’s three-strikes-and-your-banned-for life policy, the site is now requiring alleged offenders to watch a four minute ‘re-education’ movie featuring an animated cat, then complete a four-question multiple choice exam,” YouTube explained on their site. “Only then can the user upload clips again…”
The cartoon — entitled “Happy Tree Friends” — features singing animals who demonstrate the difference between uploading an infringing video and creating original content. (”YouTube has decided the solution is to patronize those users,” jokes one technology blog.) “Because copyright law can be complicated, education is critical to ensure that our users understand the rules and continue to play by them,” YouTube said in Thursday’s announcement. And some users who complete the YouTube “Copyright School” can also have copyright strikes removed from their account.
The Newest Kindle Has Mandatory Ads
Is this the free market at work – or a horrible preview of things to come?
Amazon just announced a new $114 Kindle Wireless Reading Device — $25 cheaper than any other model — but it comes with a big catch.
It’s the Kindle “with special offers,” showing sophisticated advertisements in the screensavers, along with shopping discounts which display at the bottom of the screen.
Tesla Sues BBC Over Rigging Electric Car Test
The makers of a popular electric car sued the British Broadcasting Corporation for libel, alleging that they rigged the results in a recent test.
Tesla Motors says the broadcaster faked the car’s running out of power, with the show’s host then announcing “it’s just a shame that in the real world it doesn’t seem to work.”
Tesla also charges “malicious falsehood” for the reporter’s claim that somehow “while it was being charged its brakes had broken,” and for implying that after it overheated it became immobile. In addition, the BBC also reported the car traveled only 55 miles on a single charge instead of 200 (thus implying that Tesla lied about its mileage).
The text of their lawsuit is available as a PDF, while the BBC has issued a statement that they “stand by the programme and will be vigorously defending this claim.”
The End Of Digg
Digg founder Kevin Rose has reportedly resigned from Digg in order to launch a new startup.
“When I took over as CEO six months ago,” commented Digg’s Matt Williams, “Kevin’s role changed to that of Founder and Board member…” Rose is now reportedly closing over $1 million in financing for a new start-up, and his attention is apparently already focusing on the future. “This comes just a matter of hours after TechCrunch noted that even Kevin Rose doesn’t use Digg any more, with his use of the site having dropped off massively over the last few months…”
Half Of All Tablet Users Transmit Sensitive Data
Evan-Amos (CC)
48% of tablet owners have used their tablet device to transmit sensitive data, according to a new online survey by Harris Interactive.
This compares to just 30% of smartphone users, though it’s younger adults (aged 18-34) who are more likely to than adults.
52% of tablet owners between the ages of 18 and 34 say they’re confident about transmitting sensitive data over their tablet device, versus just 41% between the ages of 35 and 34, and 28% between the ages of 45 and 54. (While just 33% of people over the age of 55 shared the same confidence.)
“There may be an psychological explanation for the main tablet vs smartphone security point,” notes one technology site. “Somebody using a tablet – even though its on a wireless connection – may think of it in the same way as a computer, where it’s well established people are usually happy to transmit sensitive data…With a…
WikiLeaks Opens Gift Shop
WikiLeaks not only leaks government secrets. They’ve also got an online gift shop! (”Keep us strong,” it announces to new visitors.)
“What better way to make a little extra cash than to open an online store selling branded merchandise?” jokes this technology blog, acknowledging that all proceeds go towards running of the site, and that “Assange is facing a hefty legal bill which he’ll need to pay.”
The shop includes t-shirts with appropriate sayings, including “Censorship reveals fear” and “Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.” Interestingly, the shop’s t-shirts are supplied by the same German merchandising company that makes t-shirts for the Spice Girls.
Edgar Allan Poe Vs. Nico
It’s one of Edgar Allan Poe’s spookiest poem’s — and it’s even spookier when it’s recited by Nico.
In a strange 10-minute video, the Velvet Underground singer recites a disturbing poem about walking on a dark October night, on the one-year anniversary of the death of the lost Ulalume. Someone’s spliced together the audio with eerie footage from a Kenneth Anger movie.
And there’s also a lost last verse to the poem. (Poe originally wrote Ulalume as an elocution exercise, then decided it was also a hauntingly beautiful poem!)
Google Would Beat Bing On Jeopardy
In two weeks, IBM’s Watson computer will compete on Jeopardy against two of the show’s all-time human champions. But instead of wondering whether humanity emerge victorious against the rise of the machine, Stephen Wolfram is wondering which machine is better. The physicist behind the Wolfram Alpha “answer engine” just announced the results of his own experiment, which revealed that Google would beat Microsoft’s Bing search engine in any contest based on questions from Jeopardy!
“Wolfram took a sample of Jeopardy clues and fed them into search engines,” explains this technology blog. “When it came to the first page, Google got 69 percent correct, just beating Ask with 68 percent and Bing on 63 percent… To put that into context, the average human contestant gets 60 percent of answers correct, while champion Ken Jennings has a record of 79 percent.” Interestingly, Wikipedia came in last, scoring 23%, though they may have more to…
Ebooks Are Almost Outselling Printed Books
Kindle 2. Photo: Jon 'ShakataGaNai' Davis (CC)
Score one for technology. Amazon’s sales of ebooks have apparently almost doubled since this summer. Amazon just announced that they’re now selling more ebooks than paperback books — and three times as many ebooks as hardcovers!
In July, Amazon had said they were selling 180 ebooks for every 100 hardcovers — though paperbacks traditionally outsell hardcovers by about a 3-to-1 ratio. But if you combine Amazon’s latest statistics into a pie chart, it reveals that 45% of all the books Amazon sells are now ebooks. And Amazon’s statistic doesn’t even include all the free ebooks people are downloading to their Kindles.
If just one user downloads a free ebook for every nine paid ebook purchases — then Amazon is already delivering more digital ebooks than they are print editions!
Climate Change “Already Visible,” Say Insurers
Photo: Mila Zinkova (CC)
In 1980 there were just 60 floods, blizzards, or thunderstorms, but in 2010 there were 247. “It’s likely that the number of strong storms involving rain, snow and hail is also rising because of warming temperatures,” says the head of the Corporate Climate Center at Munich Reinsurance, adding “we believe we have indications that climate change is already, at least to some extent, visible.”
The number of damaging storms rose from 50 reported thirty years ago to 150 in 2010, notes this environmental blog, adding that “While politicians bicker over the reality of climate change, insurance companies are dealing with its reality.” In fact, altogether the past year saw 950 disasters worldwide, where 30 years ago the number was a mere 400.
But wouldn’t it be interesting if the single most powerful lobbyist on the issue of climate legislation became the insurance companies?
Evil Santa’s Crimes Against Humanity
Science fiction writer Robert Anton Wilson once researched all of Santa’s “Crimes Against Humanity.”
Jolly Ol’ St. Nick is guilty of more than just paganism, perjury, and trying to steal Christmas from Christ. “Pope John XXIII threw the suspiciously merry old clown out of the Roman Catholic church back in the late 1960s,” and “The Jehovah’s Witnesses have always denounced Santa for his unsavory pagan past. (They also recognized Christmas trees as phallic symbols long before Freud.)”
Santa also has “a rather criminal family history all around,” since he’s a descendant of the primordial bear-god. And in some rustic parts of Europe “and probably in Kansas, Santa retains traces of his carnivorous past. Children are told that if they are good all year, Santa will reward them, but if they are bad, he will EAT THEM ALL UP.”
Christmas Memories: Bing Crosby Smoked Pot
My favorite part of Christmas is that every time someone plays a Bing Crosby song, I’m thinking about how he used to smoke pot with Louis Armstrong — and that he loved smoking pot his whole life!
He even recommended it to his son as a less-harmful alternative to alcohol. And this song from The Road to Morocco could be seen as a secret testament to how much how loved the mellow, laid-back life:
The Lost Ads of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” Of Yesteryear
The first Peanuts TV special followed six years of animated advertisements selling Ford motor cars, and originally, even “A Charlie Brown Christmas” featured two scenes advertising Coca-Cola!
One of the deleted scenes still appears in a YouTube video, which shows Snoopy tossing Linus into a sign which reads “Danger.” (According to Wikipedia, that sign originally read: “Coca-Cola” — and the hymn at the end of the program was interrupted by a voice-over thanking “the people in your town who bottle Coca Cola.”)
Maybe “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was ultimately the cartoonist’s own silent protest against the commercialization of his work…
The Best 40 Free Movies You Can Download Legally Online
An Australian technology blog has collected a list of 40 of the best free movies that have fallen into the public domain and are available online.
There’s two Christmas classics — a 1935 version of A Christmas Carol and Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe — plus Orson Welles’ “The Stranger,” and four Alfred Hitchcock movies. And you can also watch William Shatner’s legendary anti-racism film for Roger Corman, several Vincent Price classics and the original “Night of the Living Dead.”
These aren’t video clips, but entire movies, including one about a bank robbery that stars Johnny Cash. And if you want something even more offbeat, try the 1970s TV movie “Rescue from Gilligan’s Island” or — for Christmas — “Santa Conquers the Martians.”
Apple Employee Shuts Down “Crapple Store” Website
A former Apple Store employee announced today that he’s ending a critical blog called The Crapple Store. “No one likes a big fuss or legal battle,” he informed readers, “so I’ve decided, unfortunately, to stop blogging before it gets out of hand…”
There’s still a few quotes from his site on other blogs, including an e-mail he published from another disgruntled the Apple Store employee. (”I have never felt so undervalued as an employee or so constantly undermined by useless management…”) But in today’s announcement, he admitted that “it was never really meant to be read by the whole world… it was a place for fed up employees to read the sufferings of another fed up employee, and laugh about all the little things that begin to tick you off whilst working at Apple.”
It’s not clear whether Apple pressured him over the site, but today’s announcement makes clear that he no…
FCC Commissioner Blasts “Bloated Profits” of Verizon/Google Internet Plan
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps just announced that the public shouldn’t stand for deals “that exchange Internet freedom for bloated profits. And he forcefully mocked the tiered-data plans of the “Verizon-Google gaggle,” accusing them of wanting “gated communities for the affluent.”
Instead of letting Verizon create a ghetto of reduced-quality internet service, the commissioner warns the audience against proposals that would “vastly diminish” the internet’s importance, blasting “special interests and gatekeepers and toll-booth collectors who will short-circuit what this great new technology can do for our country.” He concludes by acknowledging that “you can’t blame companies for seeking to protect their own interests. But you can blame policy-makers if we let them get away with it!””
The Worst Thanksgiving Days in History
Author John Marr takes a dark look at a holiday tradition of “good old all-American chaos” on 10 Zen Monkeys:
Founding of the Ku Klux Klan, Atlanta, 1915: At 35, failed preacher William Simmons had found his true calling as a fraternal lodge leader. In addition to commanding five regiments of the Woodmen, he was a heavy in several Masonic orders and a Knight Templar.
But his dream was to have his own personal fraternal organization. And he wanted more than funny hats and secret handshakes — he wanted to revive the Ku Klux Klan. His dream came to fruition Thanksgiving Eve when 40 handpicked men gathered to re-launch the Klan. A group of 15 stalwarts recessed to the top of nearby Stone Mountain for an early morning cross-burning. Simmons tied his first recruitment drive in with D.W. Griffith’s famous film The Birth of a Nation, which opened in Atlanta the following week.…
‘My Opponent Likes Bondage’ – California’s Nastiest Campaign Ads For 2010
In one of the nastiest campaign ads of 2010, one candidate warns that his opponent “wasted tax dollars organizing a bondage and leather festival!”
Other ads catch a politician promising that…
Can Google Predict Election Results?
Google announced they’ve searched for clues about the upcoming U.S. election using their internal tools (as well as its “Insights for Search” tool, which compares search volume patterns for different regions and timeframes.) “Looking at the most popular searches on Google News in October, the issues that stand out are the economy,” their official blog reported, adding “we continue to see many searches for terms like unemployment and foreclosures, as well as immigration and health care.”
But one technology reporter also notes almost perfect correspondence between some candidate’s predicted vote totals from FiveThirtyEight and their current search volume on Google, with only a small margin of error for other candidates. “Oddly enough, the race with a clear link between web interest and expected voting is the unusual three-way contest [in Florida], where the breakdown between candidates should if anything be less clear-cut and predictable.”
And Google adds that also they’re seeing national interest in one…
New Equation = Breakthrough In Solar Research
Organic Semiconductor. Image: Frank Trixler; adapted from LMU/CeNS: Organic Semiconductor Nanostructures (CC)
Researchers at the University of Michigan announced they’ve developed a crucial new equation that can describe “the relationship of current to voltage at the junctions of organic semiconductors,” which could lead to big breakthroughs in solar cells and high-efficiency lighting.
Computer chips only became possible through a 1949 equation developed by William Shockley that accurately described the relationship between voltage and electric current in silicon and other inorganic semiconductors. One technology site notes that this new equation “will lead to better organic semiconductors that could conceivably change the future as much as the computer has changed our lives in the last 61 years.”
“We’re not making complicated circuits with them yet…” explains the school’s Vice President of Research, but “from my perspective, it’s a very significant advance.”
