Gotlanning.se

We keep hearing stories of how copyright is getting in the way of preserving or archiving cultural works. The latest is video games, which face a double whammy of obsolete proprietary hardware and restrictive copyright laws, making it quite difficult to legally preserve those games: Even if preservationists had the resources to develop the kind of emulators that can stand the test of time, their task would be made all the more difficult by the tendency of game companies to worry more about piracy than preservation. This means that documentation on how their machines work is either non-existent (if the company goes out of business or fails to preserve it) or secret, so makers of emulators must laboriously reverse-engineer existing hardware.

Finally, there's the copyright issue. Getting permission to preserve a game requires signoff by everyone with a stake in it--its creator, publisher, etc. Given the current legal situation concerning emulation, it is not possible to preserve video games digitally using emulators and copy media to different physical layers without the manufacturer's agreement. Establishing responsibility for the preservation of digital data must be seen as a priority. Awareness has to be raised among the manufacturers of console video game systems and console video games to reach agreements about how to preserve their work. The article also notes that there probably needs to be a legal change, such as exempting such archival activity in the DMCA rulemaking process that just concluded -- but so far it doesn't seem like such changes are likely.

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schliz writes "Physicists have observed 'bizarre' behaviour in graphene electrons that they say could make the material even more suitable to replace silicon in future electronic devices. When strained in a particular manner, nanobubbles formed on a sheet of graphene, within which electrons came to occupy particular, quantum energy levels rather than the usual, continuous range of energies in unstrained graphene. By controlling electrons' energy levels, researchers could control how easily they moved through graphene — in effect, controlling their conductivity, optical, or microwave properties."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung slår vinstrekord och det är komponentdelen av företaget som drar det tyngsta lasset.

Vid midnatt började Apples nya Iphone 4 säljas officiellt i Sverige. Flera butiker hade nattöppet med långa köer som följd.

Är man ute efter en riktigt snabb ssd-disk är modeller baserade på sandforce-kontrollern ett hett tips.

This is a guest post from regular commenter, Ima Fish, and is cross posted from his own blog:

Marion Maneker over at the Big Money website wrote a piece entitled "The Weird Logic of Paywall Challengers."  He attempts to show that the arguments used by those against paywalls are illogical.  He also attempts to show that paywalls are not only a good idea but a necessity for news websites.

First, a little background.  Some internet news sites are making people pay to view content.  That's called a paywall.  You can't view the content without paying.  So far the attempts to implement paywalls have been complete failures.  For example, when Newsday set up a paywall, only 35 people paid.  After the Times instituted a paywall, its readership dropped by 2/3rds.  And because those articles are not being indexed by Google (or Bing or Yahoo), they're essentially invisible to people on the web.

So what's Maneker arguments in favor of paywalls? What errors in logic have those against paywalls made? Let's go through his points.

His first point is that even if ad revenues are back, news outlets should diversify by charging anyway.  He doesn't seem to get this, but as I explained above, paywalls kill off advertising by driving viewers and readers away.  So Maneker's argument that news outlets should diversify by relying on both advertising and paywalls fails as it is self contradictory. 

His second point is that news outlets charging "for content has always been part of its long-term strategy."  He's absolutely right that newspapers have tended to charge for content. However, that was never done for profit. Profits always came from advertising, classifieds, and obituaries. 

There were two reasons newspapers did charge.  The first was to cover the costs of publishing.  However, those costs no longer exist in the digital realm. 

The second reason newspapers charged was to show advertisers how many actual readers they had.  If a newspaper publisher simply gave away its papers, it could claim that millions of people are reading when in fact no one is reading.  People paying for newspapers is a pretty good indication to advertisers that people are in fact reading.  But in the digital realm news outlets do not need paying customers to tell advertisers how many unique people are reading.  All that information can be tracked automatically in real time.  Heck, in the digital realm news outlets can give specific information about page views and what ads are working and what ads are not.

His third point is that "central to any media strategy should be the idea of charging for some content."  Has he never listened to broadcast radio?  Has he never watched broadcast TV?  Has he never used Google, Facebook, or Twitter?  And despite being contradicted by legitimate business models, his third argument is circular.  He's essentially arguing that news outlets should charge for content because they should charge for content.  It only concludes its premise without telling us why.

Along with his third point he pulls the following assertion out of his ass, "Digital distribution should make content much cheaper--but it shouldn't make it free."  Why shouldn't it be free?  He never explains.

Hundreds of years ago the most efficient means to distribute news was to print it on paper and deliver it locally.  Times changed.  Radio came along and made delivering news in real time more efficient.  But it still lacked the newspaper's depth.  TV news had the same problem.  But the internet does not.  It has the efficiency, the immediacy, and the depth.  Because the distribution costs are essentially zero, economically speaking, there is no reason why the cost of the content should not also be free.

If Maneker's piece is any indication, the pro-paywallers' dream of making us pay for news is a lost cause.

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Många användare med gamla Iphone 3G har klagat över extremt dålig prestanda i  Ios 4. Enligt Wall Street Journal undersöker Apple nu fenomenet.

astroengine writes "Sure, we're looking 172 years into the future, but an international collaboration of scientists have developed two mathematical models to help predict when a potentially hazardous asteroid (or PHA) may hit us, not in this century, but the next. The rationale is that to stand any hope in deflecting a civilization-ending or extinction-level impact, we need as much time as possible to deal with the threatening space rock. (Asteroid deflection can be a time-consuming venture, after all.) Enter '(101955) 1999 RQ36' — an Apollo class, Earth-crossing, 500 meter-wide space rock. The prediction is that 1999 RQ36 has a 1-in-1,000 chance of hitting us in the future, and according to one of the study's scientists, María Eugenia Sansaturio, half of those odds fall squarely on the year 2182."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Se vilken av de fem operatörerna som passar just dig.

Se vilken av de fem operatörerna som passar just dig.

EMC har släppt sin hittills snabbaste Data Domain-enhet för komprimerad backup.

Back in 2007, musician Kristin Hersh was one of the first musicians we wrote about who had put in place a "tiered" support offering, which these days are becoming quite common. It looks like she's continuing to break new ground with experimental business models as well. Her latest album is actually going to be released as a book via Harper Collins' The Friday Project. The book/album, called Crooked, will basically be a really nice book, including full color artwork, lyrics, essays by Kristin about each song on the album and (of course) download codes to get all sorts of additional content, including stems for remixing and track-by-track audio commentary. This seems like a good way to give her fans an actual reason to buy the scarce good (the book), rather than just demanding they pick up a piece of obsolete plastic, like some artists.

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suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: "If you need a reminder of just how big China is—and just how important the Internet has become there—consider this stat: between them, two Chinese ISPs serve 20 percent of all broadband subscribers in the entire world and both companies continue to grow, even as growth slows significantly in more developed markets. Every other ISP trails dramatically. Japan's NTT comes in third with 17 million subscribers, and all US providers are smaller still. 'The gap between the top two operators and the world's remaining broadband service providers will continue to grow rapidly,' said TeleGeography Research Director Tania Harvey. 'Aside from the two Chinese companies, all of the top ten broadband ISPs operate in mature markets, with high levels of broadband penetration and rapidly slowing subscriber growth.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hoping to energize the electric car industry and make the Bay Area the electric car capital of the United States, San Jose, Calif., installs the first of hundreds of electric vehicle charging stations.

De minsta företagen är de som använder molntjänster flitigast, enligt en ny undersökning.

Nearly two years ago, we wrote about a company, called Leader Technologies with an incredibly broad patent (7,139,761) that covered associating a piece of data with multiple categories, that was suing Facebook for infringement. Our usual group of patent system defenders rushed to the comments to quickly declare that I was an idiot for daring to question this patent. The case took a weird turn when the court actually ordered Facebook to hand over its source code. We were confused as to how this made sense. Since the lawsuit was about patents, not copyright, the specific source code shouldn't really matter.

Either way, it looks like the jury in the case seemed to agree with me about the quality of the patent. The jury has declared the patent invalid. Clearly, the only explanation is that the jury was also made up of idiots. Next time, Leader Technologies should file the lawsuit in East Texas where they know how to make juries, rather than Delaware.

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A bunch of folks have sent over the story from TechCrunch, based on a tweet from Chris Dixon that patent hoarding giant Intellectual Ventures isn't doing so hot for those who invested in it. Now, it's no secret that I'm no fan of Intellectual Ventures. I believe the company represents a huge tax on innovation and has a variety of very questionable business practices. I would be very happy to hear that it was doing poorly. But, unfortunately, the numbers being revealed are mostly meaningless. To understand why this information is even out there, you have to go back to 2002. Historically, the internal rate of return (IRR) for venture capital funds was kept secret from the outside world. However, many big public universities invest in such funds and get the usual reports about those funds' performance. Back in 2002 (I believe, due to a reporter's request), the University of Texas was the first of a few public institutions to realize that, being public, they probably should publish that information. Venture capitalists freaked out that people would misinterpret the results.

That's because the IRR for a venture fund, especially in the early years, is pretty meaningless. A typical venture fund lasts ten years, and the first few years is when all that money is being invested, and there's no real returns. On top of that (and, more importantly), the IRR is usually reported based on a totally made up number, which is what the VCs believe their portfolio is valued at, since it doesn't involve a liquid market. VCs were afraid that publishing such numbers would freak people out, and lead VCs to focus on more short-term investments. I don't think that's really happened, but it does appear that the Intellectual Ventures funds represented here (showing IRRs of -73% and -10%) might not really mean anything.

Without knowing the details of what those funds represent, or how long the timeframe is for those funds, it's difficult to assess what's really going on. It does look like IV isn't valuing its first fund very highly any more, and considering it's Intellectual Ventures I, perhaps you can assume it's further along in the process. But, in a game where a sudden "home run" can change things quickly (even if we're talking about patent infringement lawsuits or licensing demands, rather than true venture investments), it's difficult to make any serious call on the performance just yet.

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thecarchik writes "The Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid supercar, first shown as a concept at this spring's Geneva Motor Show, got official approval as a production model today from the company's board of directors. Just consider the specs: a 500-horsepower, 3.6-liter V-8 engine with a 9200-rpm redline, 0-to-62-mph acceleration of 3.2 seconds, and top speed of 198 miles per hour. Oh, and did we mention it gets 78 miles per gallon on the European cycle? The astounding fuel efficiency comes courtesy of an E-Drive mode that lets the 918 Spyder drive up to 16 miles on pure electric power, though [ahem] not at 198 mph."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNET Car Tech spent some time with the Mitsubishi i-Miev in San Francisco.

Get schooled by CNET editor Jasmine France. This week she gives tips on how you can use technology to do good things for fellow humans.