Umbrella Pine
These umbrella pine trees in Rome look amazing, almost surreal.
These umbrella pine trees in Rome look amazing, almost surreal.
Gizmodo: “Will It Blend: Blending Guitar Hero (Tom Goes Nuts).”
This edition sees our crazy buddy get a Guitar Hero controller into the blender, but not before going completely ape shit at the device, prepping it for the proper blending treatment.
I introduced this concept for selling blenders to Mykala, and she thought it was a funny idea — I think it works!
Update: Preface removed. Reason: it was dumb. Onward…
A favorite topic at Slashdot centers around the music industry, CD sales, and online distribution of music — naturally, the latest coverage of this topic elicited some interesting discussion. Here’s a quote (with slight editing for clarity) from a commenter:
We both agree that there is no feasible business model that aligns with the reality of modern technology, only you seem to be focusing on deriding the people who don’t pay directly for their copies of music (according to our brief custom of the last 70 years).
Why is it so hard to see that it’s ok to let companies with no practical business model die off? I know it becomes a touchy subject when we bring art into the picture, but the spirit of copyright law is to promote the creation of art, not to give business models to musicians. It seems particularly hard for people of the last couple generations to fathom that music (or art in general) can be created without being paid for copies of their work. They can’t see that the true value in art is the process by which it is created, that is what is rare.
Copyright History
Let’s state things right out: copyright law should **not** be used to prop up an industry whose distribution model (selling physical CDs) is rapidly becoming irrelevant. (The digital audio player supplanting CDs is an example of disruptive technology — more on this later.) Rather, understanding the true intent of copyright law necessitates delving into its history. In the 1700s, regulations on the copying of creative works first became necessary when printing costs came down. As printing costs fell, the ability to mass produce popular works rose. This rise in reproduction of the original creative works forced the related laws to evolve. Now, because this is going to get rather complicated, we will enter into (cue clouds and echoes) EXAMPLE TIME (TIME TIME time time)…
It’s the year 1720 — let’s say you, Mr. Literati, publish a play through Lino Printing Press. Lino happily sets the type and chugs out copies. However, Mono Printing Press picks up a your play and begins printing its own copies of the play and makes money off of that! Gasp. At this point, you are getting money through Lino Printing when it sells copies of your play, but Mono Printing pays you nothing, nada, zilch, bupkis. However, thanks to copyright law, your rights are protected. You can get the law to come in on your side and say “hey, Mono, stop printing those illicit copies of Mr. Literati’s play.”
The Link to Music
We can conclude from this example that fast, cheap reproduction forced the law to evolve. Unfortunately, it only gets more complicated from there. First, let’s examine the role that Lino Printing Press played — you see, it did not manage the copyright for Mr. Literati. Certainly, it benefited from having the exclusive privilege of distributing his creative work, but it didn’t make any claims on his copyright. When we fast forward to modern times, an important difference is the fact that the distributor (let’s call them SonyBMGScopeIslandCapitolJive Records) absolutely does legally manage the artist’s copyrights. Therefore (and this is an important therefore), the distributor acts in the interest of the distributor (not the artist) when it comes to copyright… especially copyright gray areas.
And what bigger gray area is there than digital music distribution? (Certainly, you can argue that digital music distribution has been legally ruled on, but some say the most recent victory by the record companies is an exception to the rule… in a law based on precedents, exceptions to the rules are very important indeed. Anyhow. Let’s get out of this parenthetical statement.) It is time to extend the Mr. Literati example.
Distribution Disruption
His legal woes with Mono Printing resolved, Mr. Literati is happy, and so is Lino Printing. But suddenly, over a period of a few years, there arises a method that allows people to transfer books between one another. To make this clearer (and because it is the 1700s), the method of distribution used by this fictional town will be this: telepathy: a fellow (or lass) reads the book, internalizes with perfect fidelity every phrase therein, and then is able to mentally transfer the entirety of the book to anyone he or she wishes. Other people are enjoying the product of Mr. Literati’s mind without having purchased Lino Printing’s product! That is, there is a different route of distribution for Mr. Literati’s ideas. Keep in mind, by any definition, what these people are doing IS NOT STEALING_. Whatever violation of laws that may occur, it is a violation of _intellectual property laws — no physical object is ever “stolen” during this process, contrary to what your friendly media cartel says.
Here’s where it gets exciting.
In order to embrace this new distribution path, what could Lino Printing do? Well, they can grease the wheels of this new distribution system. You see, if you are Joe Sixpack, looking for the newest creative work by X, it might take a while to find a person who can telepathically transmit the creative work to you (remember, this is our fantastical 1700s example). But, if you know you can just get it telepathically (bear with me) from Lino, why not just go there? Lino Printing goes from distributing a physical object to selling convenience, accuracy, and guaranteed availability.
But SonyBMGScopeIslandCapitolJive Records doesn’t want a new distribution medium. A new medium means a lower margin and higher volume business… which changes the rules of the game (just ask Dell). It also allows musicians to function perfectly well in the utter absence of these giant music corporations. Does being an unsigned artist distributing music independently result in the wealth and fame associated with superstar musicians? Not yet — but soon, perhaps.
So. With regard to that recent lawsuit I spoke of — the question is: did the digital sharing of $24 in music to (at most) 50 people, amount to $220,000 in damages? No. This huge number was set to send a message against file sharing. Unfortunately, that message is delivered straight to some of the biggest enthusiasts of music — those who are interested in new artists; thus who are constantly scouring the globe for the next sound/band. Who wins here? Nobody. The game must change. The old business model must change. Our ideas about ownership of music must evolve. In the meantime, at least one thing keeps changing — the music.
Lokesh Dhakar has illustrated a bunch of common coffee drinks. A resource like this is very handy for those who do not know what coffee drinks are (like me).
What happens when you take a lift phenomenon caused by being close to the ground (called the ground effect) and crank out a flying vehicle that takes advantage of it? Well, you get an ekranoplan:
The KM, as the Caspian Sea Monster was known in the top secret Soviet military development program, was over 100 m long (330 ft), weighed 540 tonnes fully loaded, and could travel over 400 km/h (250 mi/h), mere meters above the surface of the water.
That’d really freak you out if you saw it coming towards you over the water’s surface. Oh, and this is a case where a picture really is worth 1000 words.
Recently, there have been foolish comparisons of web design to other design fields. “Where are the canonical, genre defining designs?” was the main question posed. This question necessitated tacit and explicit comparisons of web design to fundamentally different fields, such as static graphic design. The folly of comparing apples to oranges and expecting logical results have been debunked thoroughly and well:
Armin’s point is that while Google seems to be better than Yahoo, it is still plagued with a bad logo. He’s not “moved or inspired” by the design. Therefore, he reasons, it is not canonical design. Canonical design, in his mind, is one that practitioners of the medium look to as exemplary.
But, frankly, I think Armin has missed his own point. He wants to know what web designers see as canonical, but he’s dismissing the obvious answer because it doesn’t fit into his canonical mold of graphic design. In other words, he’s looking at Google from a graphic design perspective, when web designers necessarily have to look at it from an interaction design perspective.
So, we know there’s a problem: how do we define the very field and how do we place ourselves in context amongst related (but very different!) creative fields?
Into this monumental vacuum steps Papa Zeldman. In an epoch defining piece, Zeldman tears down previous foolish comparisons and builds a supremely accurate description of web design, basically from the ground up. His comments on typography are, of course, perfect:
The less sophisticated lament on our behalf that we are stuck with ugly fonts. They wonder aloud how we can enjoy working in a medium that offers us less than absolute control over every atom of the visual experience. What they are secretly asking is whether or not we are real designers. (They suspect that we are not.)
If you’ve been wondering what, exactly, web design is… well this is the article you’ve been looking for. If you already know and “do” web design, well then this article is even more important. It’ll help you avoid losing yourself in the pretty dongles and pointless widgets that inevitably dilute usable design.
I rather doubt the mpg claim, but nevertheless, here’s a good headline: Prius Stretch Limo Achieves 50mpg and Seats 8.
Well folks, we’ve got another Prius modder here that deserves some recognition as well. He did not use solar cells in his modification, but managed to stretch out his Prius and insert a row of seating to accommodate all his children. The result is a Prius SUV Limo contraption.
That poor little motor, grinding away against the weight of extra metal and a bunch of extra people couldn’t achieve 50mpg — at least not consistently. Regardless, the pictures of this thing are worth 1,000+ words. On a related note, Wikipedia hosts a spectacularly geeky descent into nuance and grammar with regard to the Prius name:
Many enthusiasts enjoy using Prii as the plural, which would be correct if prius were a regular second declension Latin noun. The actual Latin plural of the adjective is priora. All of these forms are nominative case and there are several other forms for the other cases. As for the plural of Prius in English, Toyota has said that it is simply Prius and also that owners are welcome to use whatever they like.
What on earth is a regular second declension Latin noun? (And why does the author of that quote start talking about adjectives right after talking about nouns?) One of our own readers (Dan McKeown) took Latin courses, so perhaps he can enlighten us. Declension. Hmm.
When Dan was an RA in Cretin Hall, he used to post funny, inspiring, or interesting news articles. He called them “moments of Zen.” If he were still an RA, I imagine Dan would post this: Cow plunges off cliff onto moving minivan.
A cow plunged from a 200-foot (61-metre) cliff onto the hood of a minivan on a highway in central Washington state, according to police.
…
Middleton estimated the animal weighed 600 lbs (272 kilograms), or the average size of a mature cow.
Amazingly enough, all tags for this entry already exist on tumbledry. I would imagine this is the first time they have all tagged the same item.
St. Thomas recently relaxed their admissions policy. This has resulted in swelling class sizes… but apparently an average reduction in the qualification level of undergraduates. You see, I overheard this today in the weight room at St. Thomas:
Guy 1: Dude, are you going on spring break? Like, Fort Myers or something?
Guy 2: Psh — does the sun set?
Guy 1: What? … … … Oh, right.
The Wikipedia article about sleep talking offers this: “One famous sleep talker is Dion McGregor, a man who became something of an underground celebrity when his roommate Michael Barr recorded his nightly soliloquies (which were often hilariously detailed), which were then released as a series of albums in the 60’s.” With that said, how can you not click to read more about Dion McGregor?
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