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Comment: Paid, restricted distribution is bad for art (Score 2) 684

by Aviation Pete (#43569435) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Are There <em>Any</em> Good Reasons For DRM?
The consequence of technology has been that a few artists make most of the money. Unfortunately, these are not the best artists, because the winners are picked by the content oligopoly and promoted to the detriment of 99% of all other artists and all of us. When making money from art has an inherent limit on how many people can watch / listen to a performance again, we will see much more variety again and, hopefully, the quality of the art will go up again.

What is necessary for this to happen is that the wide distribution of recorded works of art will not create money for the distributors. Only then will the main source of income be live performances again, and one artist can only entertain so many people at one time. The consequence will be that many more artist will be able to live from their art again, only that any of them won't become a billionaire before turning thirty. A big loss for a lucky few, and an immense win for humanity.

You see, DRM will be one major roadblock on this future of bigger variety and quality in the arts, and therefore is bad. The posts before were all right, and now you know why.

Comment: Re:The Wrights invented flying (Score 2) 267

sorry to rain on your parade, but the Wrights did not know about stability. All their planes were instable in pitch. Without constant corrections by the pilot, all Flyers could not fly in a straight line. What did they do to correct this? Put a ballast weight in the back of the plane! This helped in so far as it increased the pitch inertia, so the pitch motion would be slower and thus more easily controllable, but it also shows that they did not understand the basics of stability. http://authors.library.caltech.edu/21217/1/CULaiaawfp84.pdf

Comment: Re:Earliest powered heavier than air maybe... (Score 2) 267

... and a famous demonstration in Paris in 1908 (maybe 1906)...

It was in Reims, 1908. The Champagne companies sponsored a flight week there. I completely agree with the rest. The Wrights were maybe not the first in powered flight, but certainly the first aviation patent trolls in history.

Comment: Marketing people are best at selling themselves (Score 1) 212

by Aviation Pete (#42926813) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: I Just Need... Marketing?
Keep that in mind when you look for a partner. Better to double check and not to put all your eggs into one basket. Sure, some of that skill will also benefit your product, but we nerds can easily be dazzled by someone good at self-promotion.

Next, it will be important to select the right type of marketing person. Who are your customers? Will it be engineers at other companies, or end consumers? Depending on that you need almost completely different types. For the B2B business your partner needs to have some basic technical competence and must be good at schmoozing, especially with the purchasing department of your customers.
Most of the advice I have read here would better fit with a B2C situation.

Techdirt: Arthur Conan Doyle Estate Sued To Show That Sherlock Holmes Is Public Domain->

From feed by feedfeeder
A little over three years ago, we had a discussion concerning whether or not Sherlock Holmes was in the public domain. By our understanding of the law, the character absolutely is in the public domain. There is one remaining book -- The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes -- which contains a few stories, that are still covered by copyright, but the characters and most of the written works, are in the public domain. However, the legal representatives of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Estate use the fact that one book is still held under copyright to argue that the character is still protected until (at least) 2023. Of course, as with things like Happy Birthday, even if it should be in the public domain, if there's some corporate entity insisting that it's covered by copyright, you'd have to go to court to prove otherwise. And most people don't want to bother.

Thankfully, that just changed when it comes to Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes scholar, Leslie S. Klinger, was working on a book (with Laurie R. King) called In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, detailing "major mystery/sci-fi/fantasy authors inspired by the Holmes tales." However, the Conan Doyle Estate contacted their publisher, Pegasus Books, demanding a license fee, and saying if they weren't paid, they'd make sure that no major distributors would sell the book. Specifically, the estate directly threatened that:

If you proceed instead to bring out Study in Sherlock II unlicensed, do not expect to see it offered for sale by Amazon, Barnes Noble, and similar retailers. We work with those company's routinely to weed out unlicensed uses of Sherlock Holmes from their offerings, and will not hesitate to do so with your book as well.
Like too many publishers, Pegasus freaked out and refused to publish the book at all, so Klinger has taken it upon himself to file for declaratory judgment. You can see the full filing posted here (and embedded it below).

The lawsuit points out that Sherlock Holmes characters have long been in the public domain, and even that remaining book of stories includes two that are clearly in the public domain, as they were published prior to 1923. But, most importantly "none of the Sherlock Holmes Story Elements first appeared in any of the stories that were collected in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes." In other words, the entirety of copyright protected elements in the character were published outside of that one book, and are now in the public domain.

The lawsuit also notes that Klinger and King's publisher on an earlier book, A Study in Sherlock did, in fact, pay a license to the estate, but they did not concede any of the legal arguments. When the estate threatened Klinger, he correctly explained that no license was needed, but he's still dealing with the fallout from his publisher getting cold feet. Thus, he's asking the court to state, definitively, that the character is in the public domain. Kudos for Klinger for taking this on. We need more people willing to stand up for the public domain. Also, jeers to Pegasus for not being the one to take this on and for freaking out over the bogus threat.

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Businesses

+ - Why Apple May Die

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Cromwell Schubarth writes that Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, thinks Apple, Tesla Motors, venture capitalists and most of the nation’s colleges and universities could be killed by less advanced competitors in the same way that many once dominant technology companies have been in the past. Christensen's theory of disruption centers around how dominant industry leaders will react to a newcomer: “It allows you to predict whether you will kill the incumbents or whether the incumbents will kill you.” If a newcomer thinks it can win by competing at the high end, “the incumbents will always kill you.” If they come in at the bottom of the market and offer something that at first is not as good, the legacy companies won’t feel threatened until too late, after the newcomers have gained a foothold in the market. According to Christensen Apple could be on path for a classic disruption because successful innovative products like the iPhone are usually based on proprietary technology because that is how the dominant business carves out, protects and builds its top market position. But at some point as they get better and better, they start to exceed what people actually need or are willing to pay extra for. “When that happens the people who have the proprietary architecture are pushed to the ceiling and the volume goes to the open players. So in smartphones the Android operating system has consummate modularity that now allows hundreds of people in Vietnam and China to assemble these things." As the dominant architecture becomes open and modular, the value of their proprietary design becomes commoditized itself. "It may not be as good, but almost good enough is often good enough.”"

Comment: As always: It depends (Score 2, Insightful) 222

by Aviation Pete (#42469171) Attached to: Are Programmers Responsible For the Actions of Their Clients?
just wait until we have the first fatalities with civilian UAVs or autonomous cars without permanent supervision. The weasels in management and politicians craving recognition will point all the way down to the poor soul who failed to write perfect code in too little time. This discussion is similar to the one about who is responsible for shootings - shooter or gun manufacturer. Only that at some point there will not be an identifiable person holding the gun, and still people get killed.

Comment: Re:Did I miss something? (Score 1) 317

by Aviation Pete (#41876197) Attached to: Boeing 787 Makes US Debut

First American carrier to use an american-built plane made mostly of composite materials. Don't get me wrong, Carbon Fiber is absurdly strong, and computer models help negate design flaws.... but CF's failure mode tends to be sudden and...explosive. Steel bends long before it breaks, and Aluminum is somewhere in the middle, but CF just.... goes when it fails. I think Airbus has been including CF on their tail fins for a while (with some failures) and the technology is supposedly mature... but it's hard to ignore Aluminum's nearly 100 year reputation. Maybe I'm just getting old.

The true beauty of carbon fiber is the behavior in repeated cyclic loads. Cracks in aluminum grow at even the lowest stress levels, reducing the total strength of the part over time, but in CF the cracks do not grow at all. Think of the many fibers as multiple redundant load paths - this makes CF extremely safe if you stay below the maximum possible stress. And reduces the insane inspection overhead which the use of aluminum incurs.

Your aluminum part will have long snapped due to fatigue when that oh so nasty CF failure occurs eventually.

Comment: A terraforming genome would make more sense (Score 1) 142

by Aviation Pete (#41715497) Attached to: Craig Venter Wants To Rebuild Martian Life In Earth Lab
Craig Venter should be close to be able to tailor an organism which can survive on Mars and start terraforming the planet, so in future it has more atmosphere and can help to heat the planet for future colonisation.

Now that would be a worthwhile endeavor. This teleporting thing is just headline-grabbing and has no scientific merit.

Facebook

+ - Facebook Privacy Boosted As Private Message 'Leak' Is Dismissed->

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes "Claims that old private Facebook messages have been leaking onto people's Timelines have been dismissed by the French privacy watchdog, CNIL. Apparently, as many concluded early on, the "leaked" messages were just old Wall-to-Wall posts, that users had mistakenly believed were private. Given the lack of user understanding, now is a good time for Facebook to revamp its privacy help pages. Let's hope users pay attention, and Facebook genuinely resists exploiting their naivety. ."
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Education

+ - BIC announces tablets with handwriting-> 1

Submitted by Aviation Pete
Aviation Pete writes "BIC, the pen, razor and lighter company, announced today their Education tablet and stylus. It is a simple and innovative educational solution for primary school, combining handwriting and digital technology. It includes educational software designed for and with teachers. Teachers can create adapted educational material and at the same time maintain control of their class. The entire solution is made in France."
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United Kingdom

+ - Scottish Scientiests Create World's Smallest Smart Antenna->

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes "each generation of smartphones actually has more dropped calls and worse battery life than the last, because antena design has fallen behind. says Edinburgh-based Sofant Technologies. The firm has made a tunable, steerable RF antenna using micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) which it says will change all that. It's based on research from Edinburgh University and is designed to get the best our of LTE/4G."
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