Archive for the ‘General’ Category
O RLY? And I’m Bill Gates. Har har.
A study published by the Institute for Policy Innovation suggests that piracy has the US economy, not just record labels, a whopping $12.5 billion in lost output and some 70k-odd jobs. As if that wasn’t enough, the study claims that $422 million were lost in tax revenues.
As ArsTechnica rightly points out, the study makes a lot of assumptions and doesn’t take into account surveys that show a lot of P2P users actually going out and buying CDs of music they liked. Maybe the music industry needs to come out with better music at lower rates, rather than put all the blame on the pirates. Oh, and stop screwing artists, please?
ArsTechnica
Popularity: 11% [?]
- By Vivek on Aug 24, 2007
Sony has developed a prototype for an environmentally friendly battery that runs on sugars. The battery measure about 1.5 inches along each edge and uses a sugar solution poured into it. Enzymes inside the battery break down the sugar and produce up to 50 milliwatts of electricity.
The battery’s casing is made from a vegetable-based plastic and the power generated can power a music player and pair of small speakers. But two questions come to mind. Firstly, will is blend? And will it spontaneously combust?
REUTERS
Popularity: 7% [?]
- By Vivek on Aug 24, 2007
So now you can definitely pester those friends who stubbornly refuse to join the wonder of social networking that is Facebook. Basically, just like you can send messages to Facebook members, you can now send them to non-members in the form of an email. Which will inevitably lead to people not using their email accounts because they can send all their email from within Facebook itself. Of course, for professional emails, they will have to stick to regular email.
Also interesting is the fact that you can share stuff with these friends who are not yet members of Facebook. Â The website will also remember email addresses for you so you don’t need to enter them each time.
Facebook Blog
Popularity: 9% [?]
- By Vivek on Aug 21, 2007
In the continuing war for high-def supremacy, HD DVD has garnered the support of Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG. The two announced that they have chosen HD DVD as their next generation optical format for movies. From Yahoo! News,
The move by the two studios will include the upcoming blockbuster “Shrek the Third” and all movies distributed by Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies and MTV Films, as well as movies from DreamWorks Animation, which are distributed exclusively by Paramount Home Entertainment.
Of course, the Blu-ray camp gets 100% of the movies made by Sony including Spiderman 3. This format war just got more exciting drawn-out.
Yahoo! News
Popularity: 11% [?]
- By Vivek on Aug 20, 2007
Hackers managed to deface the United Nations website over the weekend and left messages accusing the US and Israel of killing children. Messages were taken down quickly but the UN had to stop updating its website while systems were being analyzed and assessed. The hackers targeted pages reserved for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Other pages that came under attack were those belonging to the Economic and Social Council and also the Paris website of the U.N. Environment Program.
REUTERS
Popularity: 9% [?]
- By Vivek on Aug 14, 2007
Researchers at the University of California at San Diego have come up with an algorithm to generate realistic fog without having to define every point in the line of vision. The new method utilizes a computational shortcut discovered by Ph. D student Wojciech Jarosz who led the research team. According to the press release
,
With the new approach, when smoke, clouds, fog or other participating media vary smoothly across a scene, you can compute the lighting accurately at a small set of locations and then use that information to interpolate the lighting at nearby points. This approach, which is an extension of “irradiance caching,†cuts the number of computations along the line of sight that need to be done to render an image.
While the method will be quick for rendering still images, it also improves efficiency for moving images where existing computations are re-used. This method could be really useful in CGI animation, video games, and other 3D graphics applications.
Press Release [Via TG Daily]
Popularity: 6% [?]
- By Vivek on Aug 10, 2007
And no, it’s not going to sell the DRM-free tunes via iTunes. Instead, it has chosen stores like Rhapsody, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Google, and some artists’ websites. EMI went DRM-free earlier this year when it started selling DRM-free tracks via iTunes for a 30 cent premium. It seems that Universal will continue to sell the DRM-free tracks for 99 cents.
This move is probably a result of Universal wanting to take some power away from iTunes. If iTunes had control of a smaller chunk of the online music sales market, Apple and Steve Jobs would lose some of their negotiating powers.
The New York Times
Popularity: 6% [?]
- By Vivek on Aug 10, 2007
Sony and Virgin Comics are working a massively multiplayer online game based on Ramayan 3392 A.D., a comic series published by Virgin and based on the original Hindu epic, the
Ramayana. The game will initially be available only for PC gamers.
From Wikipedia,
Ramayan 3392 A.D. (formerly called Ramayana Reborn) is a comic book series based upon the Indian epic called Ramayana. It is written by Shamik Dasgupta and the art is by Abhishek Singh, and it was created based on a story by Deepak Chopra and Shekhar Kapur. It features a re-imagining of the historical classic in a science fiction setting.
There’s no other information regarding the game at this point, but watch this space.
REUTERS
Popularity: 7% [?]
- By Vivek on Aug 9, 2007
In what was described by Pearl Jam as a wake-up call to net neutrality advocates, AT&T decided to silence portions of a webcast of the band’s performance at the Lollapalooza Festival in Chicago. It was possibly done because there were some not-so-nice references to US President George Bush and what he ought to do.
Outraged by the act, the band has put up a strong response on their website and is essentially asking fans to fight for net neutrality and to not believe what ISPs such as AT&T have to say about the benefits of getting rid of net neutrality. The band writes,
This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.
AT&T’s actions strike at the heart of the public’s concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.
Indeed, these actions by AT&T are just a precursor to what would happen if net neutrality would cease to exist. The band and fans definitely deserve credit for ensuring that this matter did not go unnoticed.
Pearl Jam
Popularity: 7% [?]
- By Vivek on Aug 9, 2007
Creative’s losses continued to mount as it posted a loss of $19.3 million for the quarter ending June 30. This represents an increase from a $12 million loss in the same quarter last year.
However, it’s not all bad for Creative. They did post a profit of $28.2 million for the fiscal year although it included the $100 million settlement money that came from Apple over a patent regarding technology used in iPods.
Creative also hinted at new products coming out soon to offset the iPod which has now sold over 110 million units.
Bloomberg
Popularity: 6% [?]
- By Vivek on Aug 9, 2007
