hypebot: P2P Hits All Time High Despite Lawsuits

month to month comparisons of P2P use

Ubicomp | MetaFilter

Ubicomp has been discussed here a few times before (in fact a MeFite went on to write a book about it)...but with a flood of manufacturers racing to offer up their versions of the so-called digital home, is Weiser's vision moving closer to reality?

MiniStore in iTunes 6.0.2 comes with privacy concerns

Sounds like a nice feature, except for one thing: the license for iTunes 6.0.2 nowhere mentions that the software is sending information about your listening habits back to Apple. That's how the MiniStore comes up with clever recommendations.

Users overwhelmingly prefer on demand to online downloads

If the option is between spending US$1.99 on a commercial-less show, or sitting through that same show with ads for no additional cost, then the freebie option is the clear favorite, pulling in 62 percent of the vote.

In India, it's IKEA without the assembly | csmonitor.com

"Whenever we think of doing something for the house, one of the things we always hope we can get our hands on are a few IKEA catalogs," says Arundhati Ray, a consultant who works with nongovernmental organizations in Calcutta. "It's shameless pirating," Ms. Ray adds, showing off an elegant wrought-iron chandelier she commissioned from a local artisan, based on an IKEA picture.

The Big Picture - Gigantic TVs, high-capacity DVDs, and hi-def video at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show. By Paul Boutin

The Gigabeat costs the same as an iPod—$300 for a 30-gigabyte model or $400 for 60 gigabytes. What makes it a bargain is the all-you-can-watch movie service. For $9.99 a month, you can download and watch as many titles as you want from Vongo.

Le Monde.fr : La science, c'est aussi de la culture

L'artillerie lourde contre la liberté des échanges risque de provoquer des dommages collatéraux dans d'autres secteurs, qui n'ont pas pris part au combat. [...] La production scientifique est un processus continu, jamais achevé, qui se construit sur des résultats ou des hypothèses déjà formulés, pour les confirmer, les compléter ou les réfuter. Il diffère en cela de la production artistique, où la diffusion d'une oeuvre se fait à son achèvement.

Somehow it sounds better in French. Anyway, the last two sentences here, roughly (very roughly...haven't really spoken in four years) translated, "Scientific production is a continual one, never achieved, which builds on results or hypotheses already formulated in order to confirm, complete, or refute them. It thus differs from artistic production, where the dissemination of a work completes it." While I think the distinction is largely correct in today's world, I'm not sure the is as much of a natural law as the phrasing makes out. Artistic efforts like the Animatrix or online DVD extras certainly inch towards "continual production," as do TV series, etc. Moreover, viewed as one episode in an argument, scientific production may be continual, but viewed one paper at a time, it is certainly fixed and in some sense is completed by its publication. In fact, just like movies/music/etc., papers can and are monetized to a very large degree by publishers, it just isn't the researchers profiting directly (some would say the starving creator part is similar to the music industry as well...). So the distinction seems a little arbitrary. I'm not sure this is the approach I'd use in promoting OA.

--Ari