Posted by Geeknews on Feb 11, 2010 in
Geek News,
Science I’ve always had a fascination with Time. I enjoy reading and hearing about advancements in Time tracking technologies over the centuries. So this article from New Scientist piqued my interest:
The new record-holder for the most precise timekeeper could tick off the 13.7-billion-year age of the universe to within 4 seconds.
If you want the technical details you can find it in this paper (PDF) from Cornell’s Quantum Physics section of their library.
What I want to know is whether entropy will set in across the universe within 13 billion years and if so, will the clock maintain its accuracy as it count backwards? 
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- Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple
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Tags: across the universe, age of the universe, alarm clock, Geek, new scientist, News, quantum physics, time, universe
Posted by Geeknews on Feb 9, 2010 in
Computers,
Geek News the guys over at TechDirt have pointed out an issue where a comedian was required to re-tape a joke due to Comedy Central not having the licensing for the song “We Are The World”.
The issue here is not really a matter of copyright, but IP protectionism gone wrong.
There is a clear case of fair use under parody with this and such issues have previously been held by the Supreme Court as a first amendment issue when the parody has been intended as a criticism as was the case in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music.
Now, to be fair, in that case the criticism was of the original work. But looking at the specifics of that case, the court deemed that the work was transformative which using a song in a joke would certainly be, provided social benefit by making use of the earlier work which this appears to do as well as the effect upon the the potential market of the original work which in this case I can only imagine would be nil.
The remaining factor is the amount of the original work used in the transformative work. In this case, its four words sung by a comedian… not a singer doing a cover of the song, just singing the four words and that’s it.
The Supreme Court sent that issue back to a trial court to determine if the use of the original work was excessive, but I have to believe that a non-singer using four words to frame a joke about the overuse of the word love with no music from that song to accompany him certainly would not fall under excessive.
My own personal viewpoint is that Comedy Central’s parent company Viacom is in a rather no win situation on this type of issue. If they stand by the fair use principal that opens them up to others claiming fair use on IP that they own the rights to undermining any future attempts to maximize control and the ability to monetize the works they own the rights to. It would be good if they could see the unreasonableness of taking such action, but I doubt they will.
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Tags: amendment issue, Campbell, case, comedy central, Geek, News, personal viewpoint, Rose Music, social benefit, transformative work, work
Posted by Jeff on Jan 4, 2010 in
Husband,
News,
Opinion With the latest attempt at terrorism on Christmas day everyone is talking about what will happen to them on their next flight. TSA is currently evaluating several changes and I’m sure they’ll be implementing them soon. I found one fellow nerd speaking his mind about the whole situation. You can read his entire rant by following the link below. I will warn you he does get a little carried away with explicits.
http://www.nerdist.com/2009/12/one-nerds-note-to-the-tsa/
Tags: attempt, blog, christmas day, Husband, Nerd, nerds, rant, Terrorism, tsa, Website
Its become fairly commonplace to see Internet Explorer taking yet another small step towards a smaller market share with its browser. While it is still the predominant browser being used out there, the competition in that area is has heated up a bit more with Google’s Chrome Browser who has reciently taken over third place from Safari.
As pointed out by our friends at Endgaget, taking a deeper look at the numbers can reveal some interesting information.
- Google Chrome made the largest gains while most others stayed flat
- IE6 remains the top browser by version.
- By version split, Firefox 3.5 is only about 6% lower than IE 6 or 8.
- No one really uses the built in browser on the PS3 (so much for convergence in that arena)
Its no surprise to anyone really that the browser which comes packaged with the operating system that has the largest market share would also have the highest share, but this is sure to be good news to Google with its upcoming launch of the G1, rumors of a Google tablet surfacing and the attention Android is getting from everyone.
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- Chrome Stealing Ground from IE?
- GOOG Continues To Amaze, Release The Chart API
- Bank of Beijing Drops Firefox Support For Their Online Bank
Tags: Beijing, browser, endgaget, Geek, goog, Google, internet explorer, launch, News
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