Month: July 2010

Sony adds to Samsung’s warning about watching 3D TV. http://bit.ly/cMpV58

Funny that Sony should add it’s warning to that of Samsung a while back – More Good News for 3D? back in mid April. Now ArsTechnica reports that both Nintendo and Sony are placing warnings:

“Some people may experience discomfort (such as eye strain, eye fatigue or nausea) while watching 3D video images or playing stereoscopic 3D games on 3D televisions,” the 3D section of the PlayStation 3 Terms of Service reads. “If you experience such discomfort, you should immediately discontinue use of your television until the discomfort subsides.” The other paragraphs consist of standard warnings: if your eyes hurt, stop playing until they stop hurting. Ask your doctor about younger children using 3D devices.

Reggie Fils-Aime, the President and COO of Nintendo of America, issued a similar warning when talking to Kotaku. “We will recommend that very young children not look at 3D images,” he said. “That’s because, [in] young children, the muscles for the eyes are not fully formed… This is the same messaging that the industry is putting out with 3D movies, so it is a standard protocol. We have the same type of messaging for the Virtual Boy, as an example.”

NYC court tosses FCC’s fleeting expletives policy http://bit.ly/9idM78

It’s always been unreasonable to hold the broadcaster responsible for the actions that happen on air that they have no control over – other than never really doing anything live, which kind of kills the last real opportunity for broadcasters.

An essential decision for the future of broadcasting live TV.

FCC spokeswoman Jen Howard had no immediate comment.

“The score for today’s game is First Amendment one, censorship zero,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, policy director of Media Access Project, which joined the case on behalf of musicians, producers, writers and directors.

Carter Phillips, a Washington lawyer who argued the case for Fox Television Stations Inc., called the decision satisfying. He said the court had “sent the FCC back to square one to start over” by not only tossing the FCC’s fleeting expletive policy but also a broader indecency policy as unconstitutionally vague.

 

. http://bit.ly/d8OhWF

The ACTA treaty being negotiated in secret will force countries that sign it to institute even stricter  copyright provisions, criminalizing what are civil disputes. There is no oversight, and the only meeting that get take are with heads of the five major copyright owners.

What’s ironic here is the the World Intellectual Property Organization is complaining because they should be the body where these types of international agreements are thrashed out. WIPO tried to put in place some very draconian, anti-competitive provisions that were beaten down by countries other than the USA and dropped the worst provisions.

This didn’t fit with the demands of “big copyright” to protect their dying business models so the even more onerous ACTA process came into being.

I’d argue that he’s being a bit too hard on himself. It’s not that the WIPO process doesn’t work (though, I do have some problems with the WIPO process as well), but that the copyright holders were upset that they no longer had near unilateral control over the process. It wasn’t that they felt WIPOcouldn’t address the issues, but that it would be much harder to get them addressed in the way industry folks wanted.

All this despite the fact that the US Congressional Budget Office has stated that weak copyright is better for society.

Why Can’t I Pay You? http://bit.ly/9pLIwl

This hits right to the heart of my complaint. I want an on-demand, ad-free service where net revenue to the copyright owner is the same as if it went to broadcast or cable. I want to pay a fair price for the service I want to buy.

Why won’t anyone take my money? Anyway, here’s Palmer’s gripe:

Who gets paid and how is always the number one question in the meetings I attend. With the advent and explosive growth of identifiable broadband devices, it’s really time to work on some systems that will allow us seriously reduce casual piracy. No one wants to be a criminal and most people who can afford smart phones and broadband plans are willing to pay fairly for what they consume … we just need to give them a way

Wow, shrewd of Apple… free 3-day summer moviemaking camp for 8-12 year olds. Get ’em hooked for life… http://bit.ly/14QCIc

Found by David Pogue and tweeted. This is a shrewd move on Apple’s part because if they can get everyone working with their visual storytelling tools when they’re young, they’ll have them for life.

Why People Hate Ads and Love [good] SEO http://bit.ly/9Bw3hk SEO is Search Engine Optimization – making your site more visible to Google and other search engines, and therefore to the world.

Advertising, in general is intrusive and irrelevant. Intrusive because I’m generally on the page or watching the program for reasons other than buying a car, banking, tampons, et al. Ads are so intrusive to me, that I go out of my way to avoid them. On the web it’s Adbock and ClicktoFlash that makes it feasible to surf the web without bleeding eyes. For TV it’s harder. I could buy (that which is available) from iTunes but that’s about 4-8 times more expensive than the revenue networks get from advertising against premium content so I feel ripped off. (Does the word Usury have any meaning to those people?)

So I’m with the author:

I hate ads. I’m not the only one. Most people hate annoying ads. People hate ads on the Web and block them using a plethora of tools. They also hate outdoor ads and TV ads. They hate them

• for the interruption
• for the blatant lies 
  
• for the selling of fake lifestyles

On the other hand I’ll occasonally click on a sponsored link from search advertising because a) it’s relevant to something I’m interested in and b) incredibly unobtrusive. It’s really easy to ignore the text links on a Google results page.

It’s the SEO experts who make the pages as relevant and Google friendly as the search giant needs them to appear on top.

No site matches Google’s expectations by itself. It takes people who work hard to make it relevant. 

That’s why people love SEO. SEO ensures quality of search results in order to fulfill people’s wishes. The people get what they want when they want it because of SEO. Google only responds to what webmasters and SEOs do.