Comment Re: How long... (Score 1) 33
They are not referencing the telephone. Look up the parts of life involving the teaching of deaf children, especially opinions on lip reading and oralism.
Submission + - Early Mickey Mouse Finally Enters Public Domain (bbc.co.uk)
Hope Thelps writes: A number of films including the earliest ones featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse finally enterd the public domain today.
The BBC reports:
Steamboat Willie, a 1928 short film featuring early non-speaking versions of Mickey and Minnie, is widely seen as the moment that transformed Disney's fortunes and made cinema history.
Their images are now available to the public in the US, after Disney's copyright expired.
It means creatives like cartoonists can now rework and use the earliest versions of Mickey and Minnie.
In fact, anyone can use those versions without permission or cost.
But Disney warned that more modern versions of Mickey are still covered by copyright.
"We will, of course, continue to protect our rights in the more modern versions of Mickey Mouse and other works that remain subject to copyright," the company said.
US copyright law says the rights to characters can be held for 95 years, which means the characters in Steamboat Willie entered the public domain on Monday, 1 January 2024.
Those works can now legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed or sampled.
The early versions of Mickey and Minnie are just two of the works entering the public domain in the US on New Year's Day.
Other famous films, books, music and characters from 1928 are now also available to the American public.
They include Charlie Chaplin's silent romantic comedy The Circus; English author AA Milne's book The House at Pooh Corner, which introduced the character Tigger; Virginia Woolf's Orlando; and DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.
Submission + - AI-Created 'Virtual Influencers' Are Stealing Business From Humans (ft.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Pink-haired Aitana Lopez is followed by more than 200,000 people on social media. She posts selfies from concerts and her bedroom, while tagging brands such as haircare line Olaplex and lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret. Brands have paid about $1,000 a post for her to promote their products on social media — despite the fact that she is entirely fictional. Aitana is a “virtual influencer” created using artificial intelligence tools, one of the hundreds of digital avatars that have broken into the growing $21 billion content creator economy. Their emergence has led to worry from human influencers their income is being cannibalized and under threat from digital rivals. That concern is shared by people in more established professions that their livelihoods are under threat from generative AI — technology that can spew out humanlike text, images and code in seconds. But those behind the hyper-realistic AI creations argue they are merely disrupting an overinflated market.
“We were taken aback by the skyrocketing rates influencers charge nowadays. That got us thinking, ‘What if we just create our own influencer?’” said Diana Nunez, co-founder of the Barcelona-based agency The Clueless, which created Aitana. “The rest is history. We unintentionally created a monster. A beautiful one, though.” Over the past few years, there have been high-profile partnerships between luxury brands and virtual influencers, including Kim Kardashian’s make-up line KKW Beauty with Noonoouri, and Louis Vuitton with Ayayi. Instagram analysis of an H&M advert featuring virtual influencer Kuki found that it reached 11 times more people and resulted in a 91 per cent decrease in cost per person remembering the advert, compared with a traditional ad. “It is not influencing purchase like a human influencer would, but it is driving awareness, favorability and recall for the brand,” said Becky Owen, global chief marketing and innovation officer at Billion Dollar Boy, and former head of Meta’s creator innovations team.
“We were taken aback by the skyrocketing rates influencers charge nowadays. That got us thinking, ‘What if we just create our own influencer?’” said Diana Nunez, co-founder of the Barcelona-based agency The Clueless, which created Aitana. “The rest is history. We unintentionally created a monster. A beautiful one, though.” Over the past few years, there have been high-profile partnerships between luxury brands and virtual influencers, including Kim Kardashian’s make-up line KKW Beauty with Noonoouri, and Louis Vuitton with Ayayi. Instagram analysis of an H&M advert featuring virtual influencer Kuki found that it reached 11 times more people and resulted in a 91 per cent decrease in cost per person remembering the advert, compared with a traditional ad. “It is not influencing purchase like a human influencer would, but it is driving awareness, favorability and recall for the brand,” said Becky Owen, global chief marketing and innovation officer at Billion Dollar Boy, and former head of Meta’s creator innovations team.
Submission + - WikiLove to encourage newbie editors? (i-programmer.info)
mikejuk writes: Wikipedia has a cunning plan to make wikipedians nicer to each other — its all about WikiLove. They can click on the Love button to make each other feel good about contributing anything from an article to an edit. The idea is that this will encourage newbie editors to stay and contribute rather than slink away into the rest of the web because their contributions get deleted and derided.
Perhaps all we need for world peace is a big enough love button.
Perhaps all we need for world peace is a big enough love button.
Comment Re:Due Process? (Score 2, Insightful) 569
Maybe off-topic, or maybe not, but it's not trolling. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8606584.stm
I'm fine with killing al-Awlaki, but targeted assassination, just on the say-so of the National Security Council, is open to abuse. There needs to be judicial review or congressional oversight. If the Whitehouse shuts down your website, at least you're still alive to take it to court.
Comment Huh (Score 2, Interesting) 119
And yet kids who watch violent movies aren't more violent. Weird, eh?
Kids Who Watch Popeye Cartoons Eat More Vegetables 119
markmark57 writes "Popeye cartoons, tasting parties and junior cooking classes can help increase vegetable intake in kindergarten children, according to new research published in the journal Nutrition & Dietetics. Researchers at Mahidol University in Bangkok found the type and amount of vegetables children ate improved after they took part in a program using multimedia and role models to promote healthy food. Twenty six kindergarten children aged four to five participated in the eight-week study. The researchers recorded the kinds and amounts of fruit and vegetables eaten by the children before and after the program."
School District Drops 'D' Grades 617
Students in one New Jersey school district will no longer be able to squeak by in class after the Morris County School Board approved dropping the D grade. Beginning in the fall students who don't get a C or higher will get an F on their report card. "I'm tired of kids coming to school and not learning and getting credit for it," said Superintendent Larrie Reynolds in a Daily Record report.
Comment Shocking... (Score 2, Insightful) 347
that he would betray the confidence of someone who trusted him.
Comment Nausea (Score 1) 122
Reading this upset my stomach.
Comment Re:Engineering not an art? (Score 1) 98
I'm not saying your usage is erroneous. In some contexts it does make sense. This just isn't one of them. When you use language, you need to be sensitive to context, you can't just blinding plug in whatever definition suits you.
Unless you're in politics, of course...
Comment Re:So, your a PC? (Score 1) 460
Never ask any question here that essentially asks: "Am I shit because I use Windows?". You will always get plenty of "yes"'s here.
Fortunately, being a geek has nothing to do with what Slashdotters think of you.
Comment Re:The right way of fighting piracy (Score 1) 188
Actually, the best way to fight piracy is to make a product pirates aren't interested in.
Comment Re:Well, Opera Mini isn't strictly a browser... (Score 3, Insightful) 292
You are running a software built by said commercial 3rd-party company. They don't need that server in the middle to see all of those things.
So there's no increase in capability if they are malicious. There is an increase in risk if they are incompetent - and do something like cache requests/responses containing that data.
Comment Re:They may have won in the courts.... (Score 2, Interesting) 307
now you have steve watching every single thing you do on his computer, you will pay 130$ for service packs, and good luck getting parts or repair on that mac (which has a very high chance of failure within the first year)
Try using Apple HW instead of just bashing it. There are a lot of MB/MBP out there running MS crap because they are so reliable, and actually run software without machinations. Rating a new version of an OS as a service pack is ludicrous. Maybe you ought to actually use a permissions based OS before you run your keys the next time
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