AAC files and the arcane don’t have much in common on the surface. After some digging, however, PBS’ Idea Channel has found that magic is an uncannily good analogy for digital music rights and explaining the thorny ethical issues that come with them. Both music and spells stem from grassroots cultures that give away their content for free, but (at least until an anti-magic clampdown at eBay) have since become businesses. That nature poses a key ethical question: when we’re used to a free experience and can copy songs or spells as much as we like, what does it take to keep us as honest customers? As show host Mike Rugnetta suggests, it’s a matter of personal responsibility — if we want more of either, we have to think of the commerce as showing support for future work. You can catch Mike’s clever train of thought after the break, and ponder what constitutes DRM for a potion while you’re at it.
Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, Internet, Alt
PBS draws link between digital music ethics and magic spells, somehow makes it look simple (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 22:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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“Freemium” mobile broadband outfit FreedomPop has pulled back the curtain on how it plans to make money while giving away 4G internet. In an interview with GigaOm, Marketing VP Tony Miller revealed that once it has got enough consumers hooked on the gratis data, his company will start selling premium features, potentially including a VoIP solution for the network, now supplied by Clearwire after the collapse of LightSquared. The company will also charge a penny for every megabyte used over the free monthly allowance (currently pegged at 1GB) and build a social network where more data can be earned and traded between friends. Alongside the WiMAX shell for the iPhone, we can also expect to see an iPod Touch edition, USB dongle and mobile hotspot arrive before the network’s launch. The company doesn’t have too long to iron out the kinks in the business plan however, as it’ll go live in the third quarter of 2012.
FreedomPop plans to give away mobile internet, still make money somehow originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Yesterday’s colorful-yet-gothic poster and this first trailer’s eagerness to boast of coming “from the producer of Alice in Wonderland” really makes it seem like Universal would love for us to believe Snow White and the Huntsman is a fanciful morsel left dangling off Tim Burton’s ass after he crapped out his Lewis Carroll adaptation. And it’s a shame, that, because the actual visuals contained in this trailer are astoundingly better than the studio’s cowardly, Burton-dingleberry scenario imply.
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Because I’m slower than Artax in the Swamp of Sadness (my bad) a turtle in quicksand, this is the latest Symphony of Science that came out earlier this week. It’s by far one of my favorites and features Morgan Freeman (who may or may yes have known a man who crawled to freedom through 500-yards of shit-smelling foulness) and some of the better lyric/beat mashups. It’s a shame these things never make it on the radio. Also: me when I’m trying to win concert tickets. CURSE YOU, CALLER 19!
A musical investigation into the nature of atoms and subatomic particles, the jiggly things that make up everything we see. Featuring Morgan Freeman, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Brian Cox, Richard Feynman, and Frank Close.
Also included after the jump is the Symphony of Science from before this one, ‘Children of Africa’, that I somehow missed, which is all about humanity’s origins, our similarity to primates, and our species’ environmentally destructive tendencies. Like, for example, all the methane we produce by farting. *BUUUUUURP* Remember folks: better out the attic than the basement.
Hit the jump and get your learn on.
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There are certainly more sophisticated ways of doing UI heat mapping and click tracking, but this lo-fi version is easier to relate to, and what’s more, you can do it at home! All George Kokkinidis at Design Language News did was clean the iPad’s screen carefully, use an app for a little while, and then photograph the screen in such a way that the fingerprints caught the light. Voila, instant heat map.
It’d be interesting to try this backwards: look at a fingerprint pattern and try to reconstruct the usage scenario from there.
[via Waxy]
