For everything from family to computers…
This is OK Go’s latest video, Skyscrapers. It’s not as crazy as their previous stuff, but it is beautiful anyway. I like to watch this couple dance through all the colors of the rainbow—I wish I could dance like that in a never ending night. More »
from Gizmodo
[Via]
France’s three-strikes anti-piracy law is one of the strictest in the world. It employs private companies to scan file-sharing networks for copyright infringement and sends warnings to pirates if they’re caught red-handed. The law, enforced by a French authority called Hadopi, was instated 17 months ago to the applause of music copyright holders and their representatives. Although an early study originally showed piracy had actually increased after the anti-P2P law passed, Hadopi released a report this March saying French ISP users had significantly decreased their illegal file sharing. Despite that announcement, the French music industry still saw a decline in revenue.
Hadopi used the reports of two different companies to ascertain the decrease in pirated traffic. One metric said illegal data sharing on peer-to-peer networks decreased by 43 percent; another survey used a different methodology and saw a 66 percent decrease in illegal P2P traffic. While Hadopi only monitors peer-to-peer networks, its recent study noted there’s “no indication that there has been a massive transfer in forms of use to streaming technologies or direct downloads.”
For all the fanfare in Hadopi’s 14-page report celebrating the crackdown on music and video piracy, the music and video industries in France did not see increased profit in 2011 compared to the year before. The overall recorded music industry saw a 3.9 percent loss, and France’s video market dropped 2.7 percent overall.
The depressed sales likely won’t take copyright holders off the warpath. In fact, both music and video industries saw significant increases in purchases of digital media. In music, download revenues increased by 18.4 percent. Streaming and subscriptions revenue grew by 73 percent, largely due to the rising popularity of Spotify and Deezer. According to a domestic video publisher’s group, video-on-demand sales increased 50 percent.
An article on the French website Numerama also noted that streaming music played a large part in increasing sales of digital music downloads, and surprisingly, concert tickets. Streaming music did not, however, influence a user’s impetus to buy CDs.
These numbers show that despite the hemming and hawing about piracy eating up entertainment industry revenue, the transition from physical discs to digital files is a huge factor in negative growth. No matter what, music industry officials are unlikely to let up on piracy. More than likely, they will adopt the argument that media sales would be even lower without ISP monitoring.
from Ars Technica
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Continue reading Google Maps 8-bit version for NES: April Fools arrives a day early in Mountain View
Google Maps 8-bit version for NES: April Fools arrives a day early in Mountain View originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Mar 2012 13:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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from Engadget
A new exhibition on the art form known as videogames at the Smithsonian Institution is a big leap forward — for the museum.
from Wired Top Stories
from xkcd.com
After a brief(ish) hiatus, Historical Thursday is back! Spring has finally sprung in most places, so what better way to celebrate its and HT’s return than by profiling a device intended to change the very weather above us: the cloud-seeding silver iodide rocket.
Ever get so tired of the rain that you wish you could just make the clouds dump it all out and get it over with? You’re not alone: in July of 1946, Vincent Schaefer, a machinist at General Electric, and Irving Langmuir, a Nobel Laureate, were climbing Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, when they happened upon the conversation topic of weather manipulation. Back at GE’s research lab in Schenectady, New York, Schaefer attempted to test his theory that supercooled water could be converted to ice crystals by filling a small deep freezer chamber with dry ice. Upon breathing on the dry ice mist, the mist turned a rich blue color, and shortly after, the chamber began filling up with microscopic solid crystals.
Building upon Schaefer’s discovery, Dr. Bernard Vonnegut (the older brother of author Kurt Vonnegut) explored ways of chemically converting supercooled water (water that has been cooled to temperatures lower than its typical freezing point of 32 degrees Fahrenheit) into a solid form.
Bernard Vonnegut with his trademark “sunny†disposition
Enter silver iodide, a nifty little inorganic compound with a penchant for turning liquids into solids via a process called heterogeneous nucleation. Nucleation occurs when a given group of ions, atoms, or molecules arrange in the pattern of a crystalline solid. What happens next is the equivalent of molecular peer pressure: a small group of particles acts as a center point for the solid structure formation, and surrounding liquids and gases tend to fall into a similar pattern around said source point. In a process called “cloud seeding,†silver iodide acts as the aforementioned center point. Nearby supercooled water molecules ironically see themselves as “less cool†than silver iodide. So, in trying to conform to silver iodide, who is, like, so totally awesome, water molecules shun their liquid form for a trendier solid look. What results when a ton of small supercooled water particles coalesce together, you ask? Either a raindrop, or a snowflake, depending on the temperature.
One can imagine this occurring on a rather large scale: a cloud stuffed to the gills with moisture suddenly receiving an overdose of cloud laxative is a surefire way to create a rainstorm when and where you want to.
In the coming decades, numerous institutions would capitalize on the usefulness of Schaefer’s and Vonnegut’s research. One such institution was the United States military. In March 1967, the United States Air Force began Operation Popeye during the Vietnam War. Planes bombarded the stratosphere above North Vietnam with silver iodide rockets with the intention of flooding the strategically significant Ho Chi Minh trail and extending the monsoon season. The results were staggering: monsoon seasons from 1967 to 1972 in North Vietnam lasted longer by an average of nearly a month.
Cloud seeding has also been used for far more humanitarian purposes, however. In 1986, Soviet airplanes induced rainfall in weather systems carrying toxic radiation from the Chernobyl disaster toward Moscow. In 2003 and 2004, the appropriately named Weather Modification Inc. conducted cloud seeding operations over drought-affected areas of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Perhaps the most widely publicized occurrence of cloud seeding occurred in 2008, when the Chinese government used silver iodide rockets to release rain outside of Beijing to make for more favorable weather conditions for the Olympics.
Whether it’s being used to combat drought or to waterlog tactical landmarks in warfare, cloud seeding has seen varying uses across the board since its introduction 65 years ago. With a bit of ingenuity, effort, and monetary support, such a technology could be used to dramatically change the climate of communities in need of a good downpour. God knows we’ve got enough of it here in Seattle…
That wraps up the return of Historical Thursday, kludgers and kludgettes! As always, if YOU have an idea for Historical Thursday, drop me a line at thereifixedit@gmail.com!
Check out the entire compendium of Historical Thursday posts here!
Pictures courtesy of Fletcher Boland, Carleton College and SUNY Albany.