Here we go again...

I couldn't explain it any better than Cory Doctorow, so:

"The UN's World Intellectual Property Organization's Broadcasting Treaty is back. This is the treaty that EFF and its colleagues killed five years ago, but Big Content won't let it die. Under the treaty, broadcasters would have rights over the material they transmitted, separate from copyright, meaning that if you recorded something from TV, the Internet, cable or satellite, you'd need to get permission from the creator and the broadcaster to re-use it. And unlike copyright, the "broadcast right" doesn't expire, so even video that is in the public domain can't be used without permission from the broadcaster who contributed the immense creativity inherent in, you know, pressing the "play" button. Likewise, broadcast rights will have different fair use/fair dealing rules from copyright -- nations get to choose whether their broadcast rights will have any fair dealing at all. That means that even if you want to reuse video is a way that's protected by fair use (such as parody, quotation, commentary or education), the broadcast right version of fair use might prohibit it.

Worst of all: There's no evidence that this is needed. No serious scholarship of any kind has established that creating another layer of property-like rights will add one cent to any country's GDP. Indeed, given that this would make sites like Vimeo and YouTube legally impossible, it would certainly subtract a great deal from nations' GDP -- as well as stifling untold amounts of speech and creativity, by turning broadcasters into rent-seeking gatekeepers who get to charge tax on videos they didn't create and whose copyright they don't hold.

And since the broadcast right is separate from copyright, permissive copyright licenses like Creative Commons would not apply. That means that if you made a CC-licensed video -- as tens of millions of creators have -- that the web-host, the cablecaster, the satellite company or the broadcaster that made it available to the public could essentially strip off the license you provided and go back to an all-rights-reserved model, with them in the driver's seat.

Thanks, WIPO, for showing us once again what a corrupt, anti-creator, anti-free-speech, economically backwards waste of time and space you are."

Read more here.

Start Me Up! - Debut Episode (re-post)

[Re-post] Time for a new contest at White Noise blog. Since music is such a huge part of my life, I assume it's a big part of yours too. So why not test your mettle against my other readers and take a stab at this new contest, which I dub 'Start Me Up!'

In the sound clip you will hear the first 3 seconds of 5 various songs. You just have to correctly guess the 5 songs. Artists too, if you know them. Put your answers in the comments. I will announce the winners of each episode of the contest.

There is no prize, unless you count personal pride. And as always, this is an exhibition, not a competition. Please..... no wagering.

[Update] If you know even a few of the songs, don't be shy about posting your guess. You might still win.

[Hints] People found this hard, so I will offer some hints. The first song is by a guy initials TP. The second song is by a band named after something you get for your birthday. The third song is by The Chamber Brothers. The fourth song is by a band named after royalty and the fifth song is by a elderly lady who still rocks like she was in her twenties.

Hotmail! Where ya goin'?

Microsoft is reinventing Hotmail and rebranding it too. They have a working preview of the new Outlook.com service which will eventually replace Hotmail.

You don't have to do anything right now. You could log into Outlook.com with your Hotmail credentials and access your email through the new interface. You can also take the opportunity to claim your own new Outlook.com address while the getting is good.

When you do so, you'll be given the opportunity to force Hotmail email into its own separate folder, but only if you want to. Once you create the new Outlook.com email address, you'll no longer be able to log into Hotmail, you'll have to use your new address. But any mail coming to your original Hotmail email address will still be forwarded to you. So think of this as an opportunity to weed out who has your address and switch to something new while keeping a connection to the old.

If like me, you are accessing your Hotmail via another email service or email client, you'll have to update everything. I use GMail to access all of my email coming to every email address I own, so I had to add the POP account to GMail to get all my new Outlook.com (and the old Hotmail) email automatically forwarded to GMail. Then I deleted the mention of Hotmail from GMail.

All I have to do now is let anyone who sends email to Hotmail know that my address has changed. But only if I want them to know. I expect that at some point in the future, you'll be able to tell Microsoft that you want to abandon the old Hotmail address completely.

It's a flipping good car

If you catch my meaning. Utterly hilarious segment from UK's Top Gear, in which Jeremy tortures himself driving a Reliant Robin.

Things I learned this week 17 Aug

• It occurs to me that this blog is 8 years old as of 2 weeks ago.
• It's possible that the specific predictions regarding peak oil were wrong. We may have a lot more oil left in the earth than anyone imagined. What remains to be seen is how easy (or cheaply) that oil is to extract.
• Walmart sells a margarine called 'I totally thought it was butter'.
• This year marks the 35th anniversary of one of the best albums ever made - Fleetwood Mac - Rumours.
• Prior to Napster, more than 80% of the total of recorded music wasn’t for sale in stores.
• In Banff National Park, there are 41 wildlife crossing structures (6 overpasses and 35 underpasses) that help wildlife safely cross the busy Trans-Canada Highway. Since 1996, 11 species of large mammals have used the crossing structures 200,000+ times.
• Voyager launched in 1977. Today, Voyager I is 121 AUs away (one AU is equal to the distance from the Sun to the Earth). It takes 16 hours for the radio signals it transmits to reach us. It's speed is about 17 km/sec (38,000 mph).
• Archeologists found 600 year old linen bras in an Austrian castle. People thought that bras were only created just over 100 years ago. 
• The Iridium satellite constellation is a large group of satellites providing voice and data coverage to satellite phones, pagers and integrated transceivers over Earth's entire surface. The reason it's called Iridium is because although it has 66 satellites in the network, it had planned 77 and the atomic number of Iridium is 77.
• The movie Fargo opens with the premise that it's based on a true story. It's not.
• The TV networks are currently tripping over themselves to secure an autobiographical sitcom based on Michael J Fox's life, starring Michael J Fox.

Batwear

Package-free food shopping

An Austin-based start-up called in.gredients  offers a new, package-free stance on the grocery business. Sourcing its 400-plus products from locally based farmers and manufacturers, in.gredients offers organic and natural products in bulk. The shop looks more like an old-fashioned general goods store than a glossy, modern day supermarket.

Customers tote in their own packaging for nearly all the products, which include liquids like syrup, soaps and beer, dry goods like nuts and grains, and of course, shelves packed with organic produce. Meats and other perishables that are restricted to certain packaging guidelines by the U.S. Department of Agriculture are the only packaged items in the shop. Eggs are sorted into recyclable crates in the shop but customers carry them off in their own containers.

For those who forget their own bags and jars, the store offers reusable and recyclable containers on site. The foods lack the list of ingredients and nutrition facts normally found on a package, but smartphone users can scan the QR code on items and find its complete background.

It's just like Friends.......

Great article about the surprises immigrants have when coming to live in the US (but this mostly applies to Canada too). Among the things that surprise them: it's not like on the TV show Freinds; incredulity that everyone obeys traffic laws; well-stocked grocery stores.

Your ego is your enemy

I love this passage from TJ Dawe's TEDxManitoba presentation called "An Experiment in Collective Intelligence":

"Our world is rife with dualistic thinking. This is what our reptilian brain wants us to do. It's a survival mechanism. It's necessary. It's not bad in and of itself. 

We think in opposites. Are you for me or are you against me? Are you my friend or are you my enemy? Are you right or are you wrong? When two people are thinking dualistically, which most of us do, most of the time, and they're engaged in a conversation - not even a fight - not even a debate - not even an argument - if they're just having a conversation and they come up to a point of difference, "I think this is the case". "No, I disagree, I think that is the case", as soon as that happens, the conversation is over. 

Because at that moment, each person's ego becomes invested in their opinion. From that point, to cede an inch is to lose face and that simply cannot happen. So the inner script is to defend my position no matter what facts are actually being exchanged."

2312 book review

So you may recall me saying a few weeks back that I would be cutting back my blogging time to do some reading. I just finished Kim Stanley Robinson's '2312', the sci-fi author who wrote the Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars). It was a great book.

It was like the fantasy I've always dreamed of for our civilization - the complete (practical) colonization of our solar system. The story includes elements of genetic engineering, politics and espionage, amazing technology and stories of the human (in all of its forms) condition. It also addresses the impact of climate change on Earth.

All in all, a great read and if you're a KSR fan, you'll want to add this one to your Kindle app.

Next - to re-read the Mars trilogy.....

Take away from 2012 Olympics Closing Ceremony

So what I took away from last night's closing ceremonies was this: The Brits have a lot of bands with (ex) members too proud to reunite for one bloody performance for the Olympics. Incomplete bands included:

• Take That
• Eurythmics
• Pink Floyd (forgiving the late Richard Wright)
• Oasis
• The Kinks

That's not including the music played where the (still alive) artists weren't even present:

• David Bowie
• ELO
• Kate Bush

Things I learned this week 12 Aug

• Strictly speaking, on an airline, it’s against the law to disobey a crew member's commands. A flight attendant is a crew member.
• Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be told to take any available job – including as a prostitute – or lose much of their unemployment benefit.
• The appendix acted as a safe house for bacteria essential for healthy digestion, it re-booted the digestive system after someone contracted dysentery etc., which kill off helpful germs and purge the gut. This function has been made obsolete by modern society since people pick up essential bacteria from each other.
• You can test your strength by playing a tug of war with a full-grown tiger at the Busch Gardens.
• Smile and you will feel happier. Make the smile as wide as possible, extend your eyebrow muscles slightly upward, and hold the resulting expression for about 20 seconds.Peanut butter was actually invented by Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal in 1884.
• The 6 Walmart heirs have a net worth equal to the bottom 30% of all Americans.
• In September 2011, a Malibu mobile home in Paradise Cove sold for $2 million in cash. That only covered the house, not the land. It's a two-bedroom, two-bathroom 2,330 square foot mobile home.
• The average CEO severance package is $5.38 million.
• You CAN go into the pool right after you eat.
• Run in the rain to get less wet. If you're running with the wind, you'll do even better.
• In Germany, some IKEA stores provide 'dog parking'.
• Only 37 out of 2000 athletes at the 1908 Olympic Games in London were women.

Millenium Falcon made from car parts

How steampunk is that?

Tweets from the Sarcastic (Mars) Rover

Someone set up a Twitter account as the Mars Rover Curiosity. A very funny Mars Rover.

Sample:

"Finally ready to start the day! Looking forward to staring at f--king dirt for the next two years!"

The Mini-golf Open 2012

Improv everywhere were at it again, this time, to turn an ordinary round of mini-golf into something very special for some kids in NYC.

The secret city of London

As opposed to London.

They're not the same.

Here's the video.

Guy steals Bourne e-book then sends cheque to publisher

Why? Because Robert Ludlum’s estate can’t agree on a royalty rate with its publisher for putting the Bourne series into e-book form. An excerpt from the full article:

"There’s no electronic edition of “The Bourne Identity” on Amazon. Nor any of its sequels. Barnes & Noble? Apple iBooks? Kobo? Sony? Nope.

I eventually learned that Robert Ludlum’s estate can’t agree on a royalty rate with its publisher. Dudes: You’re worried about the royalty rate? How about worrying about the thousands of dollars a month you’ve been leaving on the table by not offering the books to the public who’s willing to buy it?

Eventually, I downloaded the book from a BitTorrent site. I know this is wrong. So I sent the publisher a check for $9.99 for the e-book."

Olympic moon

More ice cream? No - frozen yogurt....

Just after filling up with a light lunch on Airdrie's west side, I spied a logo on a storefront that caught my eye. It's shaped like soft ice cream, which isn't a bad thing. I looked closer and discovered that Airdrie is home to a new Frozen Yogurt franchise called Menchie's. I decided to check it out.

Here's the deal. The back wall of the store has about a dozen frozen yogurt dispensers, each dispensing a different flavour of the frozen treat. But the machines serve in pairs, so you can pour single flavours or swirl-mix the pair of flavours (from the same machine). You start with a plain cup or a waffle cup (extra) and pour as much of any flavour(s) of yogurt you want, then head over to the selection of a few dozen toppings. Add as many and as much as you like. Finish it off with some sauce and take your creation to the scale to be weighed. You can easily go overboard at this store - my medium-ish amount with mostly fruit toppings came to almost $6.

But it's so good. I chose a coconut yogurt and topped it with banana chips, maraschino cherries, blueberries and strawberries and caramel sauce. I'm glad I chose a light lunch.

Artistic Phil's

While my sister Heidi and her family were visiting this past weekend, I was navigating Luc (her partner) along the road to get to a favourite (and closeby) restaurant for breakfast. I said "See that yellow sign up ahead, with the Phil's in artistic writing?" They replied "Artistic Phil's?"

And so, that restaurant will now forever be known in our family as "Artistic Phil's".

[shrug]

Things I learned this week 6 Aug

• It would take 8,028,680 LEGO bricks at a cost of $802,868 to build my house.
• According to a 1992 law, women in New York have the right to go topless anywhere a man can, so long as they're not engaged in commerce. Most New Yorkers don't know this is the case.
• Accelerated Christian Education's high school biology textbook, used in some private religions schools, argues Darwin's theory of evolution doesn't hold water if dinosaurs co-exist with man. Apparently they do - to this day. The proof? Nessie.
• One of the factors that led to the deterioration of flavour in commercial tomatoes was the breeding out of green shoulders (the part nearest the stem) of older varieties (pre-1930).
• Liqui-gels are one of the biggest gimmicks to get you to pay more for a simple pain killer.
• The earliest form of printing was woodblock printing, with existing examples from China dating to before 220AD.
• The top 3 complaints business travellers have about hotels are expensive internet; insufficient AC outlets and slow internet.
• Our eyes don't scan smoothly across a scene, they observe a series of images. You can witness this phenomenon in another person by getting them to pan across a scene while watching their eye movement. It will be jerky. However, the eye is capable of panning smoothly if you track a moving object. You can witness this phenomenon too by watching the other person tracking a moving object, like a person walking by.
• The Clock Tower, better known as Big Ben, is to be renamed Elizabeth Tower.
• Calgary will soon have the longest commercial runway in Canada, at 14,000 feet long. It will easily handle the Airbus A380 and could even allow simultaneous takeoffs and landings for smaller aircraft.
• There are Olympics wi-fi police in London, who seek out unauthorized wi-fi signals and shut them down. Why? Because Olympic partner BT runs some 1,500 paid hotspots at the event and doesn't want any free competition.
• It's so hot in Oklahoma, street light globes are melting.

Too much Olympics

A fun commentary on the Olympics by Glove N Boots.

Funny.... I didn't order this

Hilarious video about Amazon's next evolutionary step in shipping services. They're about to introduce same-day shipping (in the US anyway). Well the only thing better would be yesterday shipping.

Watch the video....

Quantum computing in 200 words

"Ordinary computers manipulate "bits" of information, which, like light switches, can be in one of two states (represented by 1 or 0). Quantum computers manipulate "qubits": units of information stored in subatomic particles, which, by the bizarre laws of quantum mechanics, may be in states |1> or |0>, or any "superposition" (linear combination) of the two. As long as the qubit is left unmeasured, it embodies both states at once; measuring it "collapses" it from the superposition to one of its terms. Now, suppose a quantum computer has two qubits. If they were bits, they could be in only one of four possible states (00,01,10,11). A pair of qubits also has four states (|00>, |01>, |01>, |11>), but it can also exist in any combination of all four. As you increase the number of qubits in the system, you exponentially increase the amount of information they can collectively store.

Thus, one can theoretically work with myriad information simultaneously by performing mathematical operations on a system of unmeasured qubits (instead of probing one bit at a time), potentially reducing computing times for complex problems from years to seconds. The difficult task is to efficiently retrieve information stored in qubits — and physicists aren't there yet."

Written by Natalie Wolchover, staff writer at Life's Little Mysteries.

Taking a break

The blog will be silent for a few days while we entertain family in from Quebec. My sister and her family will be here tomorrow. YAY!!

Laters.

Branding's impact on kids

To prove how well branding works, brought Olivia to my computer, which was displaying a number of random brand logos.

She recognized IKEA, WalMart, McDonald's, Starbucks (the coffee store), Google, KFC and Nike (that's on the hockey shirt).

To boldly go where two rovers have gone before

The Shat helped make a video about the soon-to-land Curiosity Mars rover.

P.S.: That rover is scheduled to land on Mars this Monday, 6 August 2012.

Enterprise smackdown

The Enterprise, registry number NCC-1701, was from the original Star Trek TV series. Registry number NCC-1701-A was from the movies Star Trek IV, Star Trek V and Star Trek VI. A panel at Comic-Con (San Diego - 2012) debated the relative merits of 12 spaceships in different science fiction franchises and decided that these two ships were the best. But pick one? Physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson rose to make the case for the NCC-1701.

Jaxon Smith

This 6 year old drummer is intense.

Drumming along to some Foo Fighters and doing a splendid job.

Google search tips from the Google search experts

[abridged version]

Typing “San Antonio Spurs” will show websites containing the phrase “San Antonio Spurs.” If you don’t use the quotes, Google will search for the terms “San,” “Antonio,” and “Spurs” individually and you might miss pages related to the team.

Don’t bother typing AND in your search queries – Google treats it like any other word. But using OR in all caps works. OR is great for finding synonyms and boilerplate language. Typing “Smith denied” OR “Smith claimed” OR “Smith argued” will find more pertinent websites about a controversy involving Smith. Rather than using NOT to exclude a search term, put a hyphen in front of the word. So if you’re visiting San Antonio but don’t want to visit the Alamo, type: “San Antonio” -Alamo. That will search for the phrase “San Antonio” on web pages that don’t have the word “Alamo.” No space between Alamo and the hyphen.

Typing define [space] [search term] in Google will offer dictionary definitions. You even get a definition if you type define pwned and other lingo. Google has words that aren’t in the dictionary.

Sometimes Google tries to be helpful and it uses the word it thinks you’re searching for — not the word you’re actually searching for. And sometimes a website in the results does not include all your search terms. Fix this by typing intext:[keyword]. It forces the search term to be in the body of the website.

If you only want search results for web pages published in the past week, past month, or some other time frame, you can click on that option on the left-hand side of the search results page under Show search tools.

What if you’re curious about search terms that are near each other on a website? [keyword] AROUND(n) [keyword] is incredibly handy for finding related terms. “n” is the number of words near the search terms. Typing “Jerry Brown” AROUND(3) “Tea Party” will show you all the websites where the phrase “Jerry Brown” was mentioned within three words of “Tea Party.”

Let’s say you’re searching Google Maps for a specific hotel in San Antonio and check out one of the results. If you want to know what’s near the hotel, in the Google Maps search bar, type an asterisk. The results will show you every single place Google knows about in that map view (zoom in first). So you can see nearby businesses, stores, and whatever else is around.

The search operator site:[url] restricts your search to that particular website. It’s one of the most useful searches out there.

All these search terms work with Google Alerts. Google will email you whenever it crawls new websites containing terms you’re interested in.