Blog

Back in May, when a court shot down yet another of porn publisher Perfect 10’s lawsuits against web search engines, we wondered if the publisher would finally realize that Google is not liable for what its image search engine finds. Yet, the company doesn’t seem interested in giving up. It’s claiming that Google abused the discovery process and failed to hand over important materials, including its “DMCA log.” At issue is the fact that some people out there had used unauthorized images from Perfect 10 on their own websites, and Google’s image search found them. Perfect 10 first tried to claim Google itself was guilty of copyright infringement for displaying those images, but eventually the courts realized that displaying a thumbnail of an image from another website in a search result is not, nor should it be, considered copyright infringement.

Of course, this particular statement is pretty amusing:

“Google appears to have the view that it is above the law,” says Perfect 10 President, Dr. Norm Zada.

That’s a funny comment for someone who’s been losing pretty much every lawsuit. It seems that the courts have thought all along that Google was very much within the letter and spirit of the law.

In this case, Perfect 10 is now trying to stretch what the DMCA requires of a recipient of a DMCA notice, saying:

“Under the DMCA, a search engine such as Google may receive limited immunity from monetary damages for copyright infringement if it complies with the requirements of the DMCA,” Zada says. “The search engine must act expeditiously to remove or disable access to infringing material upon receiving notice of infringement from the copyright owner, and it must adopt a procedure so that copyright holders will not have to provide the search engine with notices about the same infringing material or the same infringers over and over.”

The first part is true. The latter part is not true. However, it’s the latter part that Perfect 10 seems to be relying on, demanding its “DMCA log” which is apparently “a spreadsheet-type document summarizing DMCA notices received, the identity of the notifying party and the accused infringer, and the actions (if any) taken in response.” Considering Google has a pretty long history of quickly responding to DMCA complaints, it’s difficult to believe that it would somehow not adhere to the DMCA in this case. Once again, it seems likely that Perfect 10 is going to end up on the losing side of a court battle. If only it actually put this much effort into actually building a business.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Everyone has a muse.  “What is a muse?” you ask.
A muse is someone or something that influences you to be creative.  Your muse inspires you to produce a creative work of art.  Whether you’re a writer, poet, musician, painter, or other artist, you have a muse.
What I want to know is :  What does your muse look like?  Do you have a special person that just sparks your creativity?  Or is it an object that you carry with you or interact with for your spark?  Or, do you have a fictional or fantasy muse?
I’m sure you’re wondering what my muse is.  If you’re not, then that’s okay.  But, if you are, then I’ll tell you.
I met my muse today.  She is fantasy based.  It’s actually a little green orb inside my head.  When I get an idea, my muse glows giving my eyes an even greener hue than they already have.  My muse then travels from inside my head, out my ear, and into my hands.  The more my muse grows and glows, the brighter and bigger my idea becomes. 
Okay, I know, you’re thinking that I’m a bit on the strange side.  Well, you’re not thinking anything that I don’t already know.  This is just my fun, creative way to begin a new project.  I sit and think about my little green muse lighting up and floating out of my ear, landing in my hands, and then….
Voila, a new idea is born.  This is the muse that visited me today and gave me a new idea for my novel.  I hope that she stays with me for a very long time!  Won’t you please share your muse with me?

Engineering & Design

> From analysis of your requirements…

Designing a spring washer requires thorough knowledge of the product, acquired through years of experience. Our in-house engineering department builds on this experience through its familiarity with high-performance computational software.
In terms of energy stored per unit volume of material, spring washers are among the most efficient types of spring.
We work with you to consider your needs and draw up requirement specifications in order to determine the most technically and economically suitable solution.
We analyse your environments and adapt the material used to suit even the harshest constraints.
We can very quickly manufacture prototypes which can be subjected to static and dynamic tests.
Forty years of experience guarantees that you can have confidence in our expertise.

Our in-house engineering department works with you to determine the spring washer that best suits your requirements:

• Minimal dimensions
• Special environments
• Cryogenic or very high temperatures
• Static or dynamic fatigue
• Standard spring materials or super-alloys
• Development, testing
• Prototypes and large production runs

> …to custom industrialisation

Our experience enables us to choose the most suitable spring for your needs from our existing range of products.

All phases in the manufacturing of our standard and special products are carried out in our factories:

• Design
• Manufacturing of tooling
• Cutting – stamping
• Heat treatment

… by Walter Brasch

I don’t have a column this week.

You see, I analyze and interpret the news, trying to find something that others haven’t touched. When there’s lots of news, I have a playground of riches. But during the past week, there were only two stories, and every reporter, columnist, commentator, pundit, bloviator, and blogger weighed in on it. There was nothing more I could add—from any perspective.

There was the Tiger Woods story. It led off the TV newscasts and took page 1 newsprint for a couple of days, and then became a featured story the rest of the week. One day, the breaking news about Tiger was that he wasn’t wearing a seat belt.

But, there was also the story of the gate crashers at the White House state dinner. Everyone covered that story. When the pundits finished blaming the Secret Service, they started on the White House staff, somehow making it seem that President Obama himself was guilty of allowing homeland security to deteriorate. Congress, always eager to take the spotlight away from Hollywood celebrities, launched an investigation. Overlooked was that although the gate crashers did get into the State Dinner, they had gone through several security checks, and the only hazard to the President was that he would have to be in the same publicity shot as a bleached blonde.

Now, some may say that the addition of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan is news. They may even claim that a recent report that concluded the Bush-Cheney administration failed to provide requested ground troops to capture a boxed-up bin Laden at the end of 2001 is news. They may claim that neglecting Afghanistan while throwing 170,000 troops into Iraq forced President Obama to beef up the forces in Afghanistan to finish the mission that was supposed to have been finished years ago. But, that’s not news. It’s not even worth commenting upon, especially when all the media resources were devoted to the Tiger Slam and the Tareq and Michaele Salahi invasion.

And that leaves me nothing to say this week. Maybe next week there may be news that 10,000 reporters, columnists, commentators, pundits, bloviators, and bloggers won’t give saturation coverage to. I sure hope so. I need the work.

[Walter M. Brasch, an award-winning former newspaper reporter and editor, is a syndicated social issues columnist, author, writer-producer, and professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University. His latest books are Sex and the Single Beer Can, a probing and humorous look at the nation’s media; and Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush, with a focus upon the shredding of Constitutional protections. Both books are available at amazon.com, and other bookstores. You may contact Dr. Brasch through his website, www.walterbrasch.com.]

Eco Factor: Concept folding bicycle.

Designed by Eric Stoddard of SpeedStudio Design, the Zoomla is a folding bike that is designed to be a better alternative for those looking for quick, portable, around-town transportation. The bicycle features a TorqSteer mechanism that eliminates the conventional steering tube for better looks and performance.

(more…)

I’m a scarf person. I love scarves and wear them three out of four seasons. Wish Wrap is a unique company that allows you to chose a “wish” to give with each gift.

So, let’s say you’ve selected a blanket as a holiday present for someone special. You may choose a wish like ‘warmth’ to go with it. But, that’s just one way to go. Perhaps the blanket represents ‘peace’ or ‘laughter’ to you. Pick your wish based on your relationship and what the gift means to you. Make it personal. When your gift is delivered, the blanket will be specially packaged to send the sentiment of ‘warmth’ or whichever wish you’ve chosen.

Wish Wrap offers many eco-friendly products, like Eco-Chic Bamboo Scarf. I absolutely love the colors of this scarf (my favorite is pistachio), and it is super soft and versatile.

Finally…an earth-friendly fashion accessory that the style-conscious can wrap their arms around! This lightweight, supersoft scarf is made of sustainably-grown bamboo plant fibers. At 30″x74″ its extra-long – wear it like a shawl or around your neck. It travels well, and even works as a cover-up for new moms.

Not only is the bamboo scarf exquisite, the unique eco-friendly packaging used by Wish Wrap is very cool and reusable. In fact, the jute bag is a gift alone!

Our packaging is truly eco-friendly. It’s made of jute – a fiber that grows faster and in less space than bamboo. It’s recyclable and biodegradable. All our gift bags and boxes fold flat to take up less room in shipping and storing. Less space means less energy, another environmental offender.

Disclosure: I was sent a bamboo scarf in order to complete this review. No prior assurances were given as to whether the review would be positive or negative.

Here’s some great releases from homebrew coder Izhido. Available now for download are the new builds of the homebrew ports of Quake 1, Quake 2 and QuakeWorld engine for the Nintendo Wii.
 
 
Download:

Do your youngsters give gifts to their pets at Christmas? This was a tradition in my family, when I was growing up, which my daughter also enjoyed with her dog and cat.  The grandchildren find something for whatever pets they have…a rabbit, two hamsters and a dog. The dog even has her own stocking hung with the rest.

Image: sxc.hu

The gifts are food treats or a toy.  But children in our family throughout the years have enjoyed sharing gifts with their pets.  Seeing the dog, who senses there is something for her, ripping the wrappings and tossing the toys usually provides laughter for the youngsters…and picture taking opportunities.

These occasions create more holiday memories for the family, with photos to share in later years with children and grandchildren.

Do your pets enjoy the holidays with you?

Post from: Blisstree

Kids’ Christmas Gifts for Pets

Eco Factor: Zero-emission car powered by electricity.

Italian electric vehicle manufacturer, Tazzari, has launched a new vehicle at the Bologna Motor Show. Dubbed the ZERO, the all-electric car has a range of 88 miles and can hit a top speed of 56mph. The car’s onboard batteries can be recharged in 10 hours via a 220V wall socket.

(more…)

This competition proved not that easy. On one side, it seemed not that evident to hunt down convincing examples that were exceptional in both the ‘ugly’ as ‘useless’ category. On the other side, the choice between the different entries was not obvious, also because some of my favorites were not submitted according to the guidelines.

At least 2 entries stood out, as they were already broadly popularized in the media: the deliberately useless Health Care Reform Chart and the algorithmically incorrect pie chart by Fox News, highlighting the support for Palin. Both are good examples of how data visualization can be misused, intentionally as well as unintentionally.

But for the winners of this competition, we (= FusionCharts + infosthetics) decided to also award originality. We liked the graph titled “Two circulating beams bring first collisions in the LHC“, as its uncaptioned, unlabeled, unsmooth labels with an unnecessary logo almost in the middle of the data visualization does not really help. What probably makes it a bit worse is how it is part of an official “press release” of an important event, and somehow gives you the impression it aims for some higher scientific purpose which ordinary folks like us do not have the permission or intellect to understand. However, we do note the nice implied data symmetry and warm color choice :)…

We also appreciated the graph titled “In-Chart Encryption“, as a demonstration of how the use of pixels in a data-chart can really mean… not much to nothing. For instance, it is almost impossible to connect the chart to the legend. The slight 3D-like fancy tilt to one side even succeeds in making the trend more obscure than it already is by the strange choice of the two axes. Somehow, this visualization looks more like it is trying to hide or manipulate data than trying to convey a truthful insight.

Thanks to our long-term sponsor FusionCharts, these 2 winners will each receive a FusionCharts Developer Bundle, worth US$499. Fusioncharts specializes in interactive Flash charts, gauges and maps, and is used by companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Dell, HP, GE, and many more. The Developer bundle comprises one license each of FusionCharts (animated Flash charts for web apps), FusionWidgets (data visualization widgets for dashboards), PowerCharts (interactive charts for specialized domains) and FusionMaps (interactive online maps).

Explore all the submitted entries below. Did the right ones win?

Eco Factor: Seawater-cooled buildings will reduce air conditioning electricity usage by up to 75%.

In an effort to relieve stress on Honolulu’s grid and reduce the use of ozone-depleting refrigerants, Honolulu Seawater Air Conditioning LLC is undertaking a $240 million project that estimates to reduce air conditioning energy use by up to 75%.

(more…)

LiveTweeting | Real-Time Crowdsourced Translation

Live Tweeting is a real-time interactive web application for multi-language live coverage, based on the popular micro blogging service twitter.

A group of live tweeters will be covering the event in its Native Language, for example English, and at the same time multi-lingual tweeters will crowdsource translation of the coverage to a second language, for example Arabic. All that will be presented in real-time on LiveTweeting.com.

You can participate by rating both the coverage and translation tweets with stars right on LiveTweeting.com

Anyone can watch and rate; just point your browser to LiveTweeting.com!

Live Tweeting was launched on Dec 9th 2009, just in time to cover Le Web 2009 in English and crowd sourced Arabic! Le Web’s theme for 2009 just happens to be “The Real-Time Web”!

Le Web 2009’s Middle East highlights:

– Speaker: Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah
– Panel: The Middle East Panel

Live Tweeting is a transnational crowdsourced effort. Samer Karam (Beirut, Lebanon) invented the concept as a solution to his impending problem of live tweeting – from Le Web 2009 – in English to a predominantly Arabic speaking audience in the Middle East. Immediately thereafter, Samer Karam stumbled into Beshr Kayali (Damascus, Syria) on Twitter – the brother of a Twitter friend – who offered to co-develop the concept in-time for Le Web. Over Skype and Twitter, and with the help of infamous designer and illustrator Maya Zankoul (Beirut, Lebanon), Live Tweeting was pulled together successfully within the span of one week.

Live Tweeting is the first web application to implement crowdsourced real-time translation. We believe this to be the future of live grassroots multi-language journalism.

Special thanks to:

* Maroun Najm, Omar Christidis, Habib Haddad, Emile Cubeisy, Elie El Khoury, The Meedan Team

tags: live tweeting, le web, real-time, twitter, crowdsource, translation, english, arabic,

This flourless cake recipe calls for only a few ingredients — chocolate, eggs, butter, sugar and the optional black coffee — and the results are a chocoholic’s dream come true. This rich, decadent cake is dense, moist and super-chocolatey. This recipe is part of The Food Channel Christmas Dinner Menu.

Foodie Byte: Although the cake may not appear to be done, remove it from the oven when an instant-read thermometer registers 140 degrees F. It will continue to firm up as it cools.

Fabulous Flourless Chocolate Cake
Serves: 12

Ingredients

• 8 large eggs, cold
• 1 pound high quality bitter sweet chocolate, chopped coarse
• 1 pound high quality semi-sweet chocolate, chopped coarse
• 16 tablespoons (2 sticks) butter, unsalted, cut into 16 pieces
• 1/4 cup strong black coffee or liqueur (optional)
• Confectioners’ sugar or unsweetened cocoa for dusting the cake (optional)

Preparation

1. Position oven rack to the lower-middle part of the oven and heat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Line the bottom of an 8-inch springform pan with parchment paper or waxed paper and grease the sides of the pan.
3. Beat eggs in a bowl of a standing mixer at high speed until the volume doubles, about 5 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, melt the chocolate and butter (adding the coffee, if using) in a large heatproof bowl set over a pan of almost-simmering water until smooth and very warm (about 115 degrees on a instant-read thermometer), stirring once or twice. Fold a third of the egg foam into the chocolate mixture using a large rubber spatula until only a few streaks of egg are visible; fold in half of the remaining foam, then the last of the foam, until the mixture is totally incorporated.
5. Scrape the batter into the prepared springform pan and smooth the surface with a rubber spatula. Set the roasting pan on the oven rack and pour in enough boiling water to come about halfway up the sides of the springform pan. Bake until the cake has risen slightly, the edges are just beginning to set, a thin glazed crust has formed on the surface, and an instant-read thermometer inserted halfway into the center reads 140 degrees F, 22 to 25 minutes.
6. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Recipe and image courtesy of The Food Channel

Post from: Blisstree

Fabulous Flourless Chocolate Cake

Earlier this year, the FTC started going after those annoying and misleading car warranty robocallers, and I’ve noticed that — for the most part — I’ve stopped receiving such calls. Instead, I’ve been getting lots of robocalls about credit card “interest rate reduction” programs. So, it’s nice to see the FTC is cracking down on those as well (noting, in case you didn’t know, that most of those offers are total scams). Now we’ll see what sort of robocallers show up next. Still, it does feel like the FTC is starting to respond to these types of things much more quickly, which is a good thing.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The other day I was talking about my ability to kill off houseplants with ease by forgetting to water them and some ideas I came up with that might help me beat this issue. Then I told an offline pal about this and they mentioned another solution – a terrarium. I’ve seen terrariums but never tried them and had no clue that they’re almost maintenance free because they look involved. However, after a little research I found out that they’re not THAT involved and better yet, if set up correctly, a terrarium can go months without you remembering to water it.

Basically, in case you’re new to the idea, a terrarium is it’s own little ecosystem inside a glass container with plants or a single plant, rocks, pebbles, potting mix, and other nature items. The closed glass system is why it’s low water. Condensation from the water you add when you make it builds up on the glass and cycles back (a little like rain) into the soil over and over so you won’t have to water again for a good long while.

You can make your own homemade terrarium or buy one – see some examples of store-bought ones below…

• Anchor Hocking 1-Gallon Terrarium
• Small Wardian Case
• Glass Dome Bell Jar Cloche Terrarium with Terra Cotta Base
• Coventry Terrarium

Terrarium.com has a bunch of good info about terrariums to get you started. From this site I learned that there are open and closed options plus they’ve got a list of plants that do well in a terrarium; for example Miniature African Violets, Moss, Creeping Charlie, Ardesia and many others.

I looked around for a book about the topic and the most recommended I found is The New Terrarium: Creating Beautiful Displays for Plants and Nature. I haven’t read this book yet, but it looks really nice. There are tons of chapters on all things terrarium and the pictures are lovely.

If you’re interested in creating your own terrarium but don’t want to get a whole book on the topic check out Real Simple’s guide How to Create a No-Fuss Garden which covers various terrarium projects from start to finish and offers care tips and beautiful images.

I think my son might like to make one; since he’s on holiday vacation soon it might be a great holiday project. Have you ever planted a terrarium? How did it turn out?

Post from: Blisstree

The low-water indoor garden