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Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Don?t Be Paralyzed By Media Consumption in 2011
“I will be a producer, not a consumer.” Late last year a friend shared this resolution on Facebook. It caught my attention as being a great resolution that I think every entrepreneurial blogger could do well to have. Have you ever been paralyzed by consumption? As I write this post, it’s 11.49 a.m. on Monday [...]
Sony Trying To Play Whac-A-Mole Over PS3 Hack
You would think that Sony, of all companies, would know better than to overreact to a DRM issue -- given its experience with the infamous CD rootkit a few years back. However, the company can't seem to resist making itself look foolish. Beyond seeking to gag the guy who figured out how to get around Sony's digital locks on the PS3 to re-enable the "Other OS" functionality that Sony remotely disabled, it's now sending DMCA takedowns to GitHub (and possibly others) ordering them to remove repositories of code around such cracks (found via Slashdot). I'm really curious how Sony and its lawyers could possibly think all of this is a good idea. It's not like any of these efforts will actually slow down or stop these cracks getting out there and used. In fact, all it does is call that much more attention to these hacks, and convince more people to either get involved or just to use them.
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Al Jazeera Offers Up Egypt Coverage To Anyone Who Wants To Use It Under Creative Commons License
If you've been following the goings on in Egypt over the past week, it's likely that you at least saw some of Al Jazeera's rather comprehensive coverage. The Egyptian government was so annoyed by the coverage that it "shut down" Al Jazeera's Egyptian offices (and Egyptian politicians are calling for trying Al Jazeera correspondents as "traitors"). Of course, it's worth pointing out that most of us in the US have no options for watching Al Jazeera via a regular TV channel either, since almost no US TV companies are willing to carry the channel.
However, Al Jazeera has embarked on a fascinating way to deal with all of this: it's released a lot of its reporting under a Creative Commons license. In fact, the media operation has set up a CC specific site, that archives and aggregates all of the Al Jazeera content that is free for anyone to use, with just an attribution. Thankfully, it's not even using a "non-commercial" license. Instead, the license just requires attribution for anyone to use the content in question.
This is pretty interesting for a variety of reasons. If you listen to the classic arguments concerning scarcity, some would probably argue that Al Jazeera should be keeping a tight leash on all this great content. It's in high demand right now, and given its extensive coverage and knowledgeable reporters on the ground, some might argue that now is the perfect time for Al Jazeera to be as restrictive as possible with its content. But the media operation seems to be thinking much longer term, recognizing that its coverage is being relied on by more and more people around the globe (with a huge influx of interest from the US). This is actually a chance for the company to grow its brand quite a bit, and maybe even push past some of the stereotypes and attacks from the US and a few other western countries. And the way to do that is to get more people seeing its content and recognizing that the content is worthwhile. Given all that, going Creative Commons (or something like it) makes perfect sense.
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However, Al Jazeera has embarked on a fascinating way to deal with all of this: it's released a lot of its reporting under a Creative Commons license. In fact, the media operation has set up a CC specific site, that archives and aggregates all of the Al Jazeera content that is free for anyone to use, with just an attribution. Thankfully, it's not even using a "non-commercial" license. Instead, the license just requires attribution for anyone to use the content in question.
This is pretty interesting for a variety of reasons. If you listen to the classic arguments concerning scarcity, some would probably argue that Al Jazeera should be keeping a tight leash on all this great content. It's in high demand right now, and given its extensive coverage and knowledgeable reporters on the ground, some might argue that now is the perfect time for Al Jazeera to be as restrictive as possible with its content. But the media operation seems to be thinking much longer term, recognizing that its coverage is being relied on by more and more people around the globe (with a huge influx of interest from the US). This is actually a chance for the company to grow its brand quite a bit, and maybe even push past some of the stereotypes and attacks from the US and a few other western countries. And the way to do that is to get more people seeing its content and recognizing that the content is worthwhile. Given all that, going Creative Commons (or something like it) makes perfect sense.
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To Improve Astronomic Measurements, Scientists Want To Launch A Light Bulb Into Space
Light Bulb in Darkness Wikimedia Commons
Before you can peer back in time 13.2 billion years, your telescope needs to be calibrated correctly, so you can be sure objects in your mirror are really as bright (and therefore as distant) as they appear. Astronomers have a few tricks to help them do this, including using light bulbs and distant stars. Now one astronomer has a simple calibration solution: put a light bulb in space.
For both ground-based and space-based telescopes, the atmosphere adds some uncertainty, because it absorbs some light and can affect telescopes' measurements. (Orbiting telescopes don't look through the atmosphere, of course, but you can't cross-check their calibrations from Earth without its effects.)
When you want to get really precise data, you would want to know how much light is absorbed. To solve this problem, Justin Albert at the University of Victoria in Canada proposes putting a light bulb in orbit. Astronomers would know how much light the bulb emits, and by studying it from the ground, they could work out how much of that light is absorbed by the atmosphere, and therefore how it affects their deep-space studies.
Albert says you could use a standard 25-watt bulb, which would be as bright as a magnitude 12.5 star, a pretty dim object but one that would be easily identifiable by most telescopes. You would have to account for extra brightness from moonshine and earthshine, but this can be done by painting part of the light bulb black or by performing some basic calculations, he says.
Or you could use a tunable laser, but this would be more complex because you would have to move it around to shine at each telescope you want to calibrate. There's actually just such a laser on the CALIPSO satellite, which studies clouds and aerosols by measuring the reflection of a green laser beam pointed at Earth. Albert has been photographing the laser light to prove his theory, as Technology Review's arXiv blog points out.
Light bulbs in space is not that odd an idea - many earth-observing satellites carry tungsten-filament bulbs, just like the energy-inefficient one in your reading lamp, to help them properly measure light. The Hubble Space Telescope has tungsten and heavy-hydrogen bulbs on board. The problem is their brightness can change with temperature fluctuations, and there's no way to cross-check Hubble's results by comparing its light bulbs with ground observations. A light bulb in space would help solve that problem.
It may be most important for measuring the universe's expansion. Astronomers have long used distant Cepheid variable stars as "standard candles," because they pulsate with a beat that is related to how bright it is. Astronomers can essentially take the stars' pulse and figure out how bright it would look if they were standing next to it. By measuring how bright it actually looks from Earth, you can figure out how far away it is. Cosmology studies rely upon these observations. But a new study published this month shows that these Cepheid variables can lose mass, which affects how bright they look. Astronomers will need to correct for this effect in their calculations.
Better measurements of this phenomenon will require better calibration, Tech Review notes. A light bulb in orbit could be a simple way to do it. Along with some colleagues, Albert is developing a high-altitude balloon to carry a light bulb aloft so he can study his theory.
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Understanding the Difference Between ?Want? and ?Want to Buy?
This guest post is by Ryan Barton of The Smart Marketing Blog. As I was sitting at a caf� over breakfast, the couple nearby flipped through their Sunday paper. As I tend to do, I eavesdropped on their conversation. “Will you look at that bedding? That’s wonderful!” “Oh my God, I?d die for those shoes.” [...]
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EMS TECHNOLOGIES EMC ELECTRONICS FOR IMAGING ELECTRONIC DATA SYSTEMS
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