November 2, 2010
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work.
In other words, copyleft is a general method for making a program (or other work) free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. It is a a form of licensing and can be used to maintain copyright conditions for works such as computer software, documents, music and art.
Posted in Money, Politics |
Leave a Comment »
November 2, 2010
Works are in the public domain if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all, if the intellectual property rights have expired, and/or if the intellectual property rights are forfeited. Examples include the English language, the formulae of Newtonian physics, as well as the works of Shakespeare and the patents over powered flight.
Public domain is a concept of intellectual property law, which includes copyright, patents and trademarks, and refers to works, ideas, and information which are intangible to private ownership and/or which are available for use by members of the public.
Posted in Money, Politics |
Leave a Comment »
November 2, 2010
Luxottica is the world’s largest eyewear company. Its best known brands include Ray-Ban, Oliver Peoples, Revo, and Oakley. It also makes sunglasses and prescription frames for a multitude of designer brands such as Chanel and Prada, whose designs and trademarks are used under license. Leonardo Del Vecchio started the company in 1961, in Agordo north of Venice, Italy; today the company is headquartered in Milan. Its prime competitor is Safilo, which was founded in 1939 also in northern Italy. Del Vecchio began his career as the apprentice to a tool and die maker in Milan, but decided to turn his metalworking skills to making spectacle parts. So in 1961 he moved to Agordo in the province of Belluno, which is home to most of the Italian eyewear industry.
In 1967 he started selling complete eyeglass frames under the Luxottica brand. Convinced of the need for vertical integration, in 1974 he acquired Scarrone, a distribution company. The company listed in New York in 1990, and in Milan in December 2000, joining the MIB-30 (now S&P/MIB) index in September 2003. The listing enhanced the company’s ability to acquire other brands, starting with Italian brand Vogue in 1990, Persol and US Shoe Corporation (LensCrafters) in 1995, Ray-Ban in 1999 and Sunglass Hut, Inc. in 2001. They went looking for more retail companies, acquiring Sydney-based OPSM in 2003, Pearle Vision in 2004, Surfeyes in 2006, and Cole National in 2004. Most recently, it acquired Oakley in a US$2.1bn deal in November 2007.
Posted in Art, Money, World |
Leave a Comment »
November 2, 2010
In software development, a software project’s bus factor is an irreverent measurement of concentration of information in a single person, or very few people. The bus factor is the total number of key developers who would need to be incapacitated, (as by getting hit by a bus) to send the project into such disarray that it would not be able to proceed. Commentators have noted that the vanilla Linux kernel tree’s bus factor may be as low as one: the project’s founder and chief architect, Linus Torvalds.
Posted in Death, Money, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
October 28, 2010
Dub FX (real name Benjamin Stanford) is a worldwide street performer and studio recording artist from Australia. His trademark is creating live music using only his own voice, Live looping, and effects pedals.
His music is based on hip hop, reggae and drum and bass rhythms. Stanford travels and performs with his fiancée, Flower Fairy (real name Shoshana Sadia).
Posted in Art, Money, Technology |
2 Comments »
October 28, 2010
Phiten is a Japanese company that makes necklaces worn for the purpose of soothing one’s body. The medical and performance-enhancing claims relating to Phiten’s products are considered pseudoscience, and the technology behind the company’s products is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The company claims its products relieve fatigue by balancing the body’s signals that run from brain to the body and thus regulating the body’s ‘bio-electric currents’ through what the company calls the ‘Phild process,’ where titanium is turned into ‘aqua-titanium,’ a water-soluble form of titanium. The company claims to be able to integrate small amounts of the metal directly into the fabric.
Some of the professional athletes in Japan that wear Phiten necklaces include pro golfers, Olympic runners, and pro baseball players. In the USA, the company sponsors MLB players Josh Beckett, Tim Lincecum, Joba Chamberlain, Randy Johnson, Clay Buchholz, Justin Verlander, Justin Morneau, Brandon Webb, C.J. Wilson, and Dustin Pedroia.
Posted in Money, Technology, World |
Leave a Comment »
October 28, 2010
The Hyundai Equus is a full-size high-end luxury car that serves as the flagship model of Hyundai Motor Company. According to Edmunds the 2011 model offers far more space and equipment than other competing luxury sedans, calling it the equivalent of a loaded $104,000 Mercedes-Benz S550 for the price of a lightly equipped Mercedes E550. The Equus comes standard with a 4.6-liter V8 good for 385 horsepower and 333 pound-feet of torque. The Equus is available in Signature ($58,000) and Ultimate ($64,500) trim levels.
read more »
Posted in Money, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
October 28, 2010
Plunderphonics is a term coined by composer John Oswald in 1985 in his essay ‘Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative.’ It has since been applied to any music made by taking one or more existing audio recordings and altering them in some way to make a new composition. Plunderphonic music is known for heavy sampling of educational films of the 1950s, news reports, radio shows, or anything with trained vocal announcers.
The process of sampling other sources is found in various genres (notably hip-hop), but in plunderphonic works the sampled material is often the only sound used. These samples are usually uncleared, and sometimes result in legal action being taken due to copyright infringement. Some plunderphonic artists use their work to protest what they consider to be overly-restrictive copyright laws. Many plunderphonic artists claim their use of other artists’ materials falls under the fair use doctrine.
Posted in Art, Money, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
October 26, 2010
Lukasz Gottwald, better known as Dr. Luke, is an American songwriter, record producer, and remixer. Luke performed with the Saturday Night Live Band band for ten seasons until 2007. He has co-written and co-produced a string of commercially successful songs including Taio Cruz’s ‘Dynamite,’ Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Since U Been Gone,’ Pink’s ‘U + Ur Hand,’ Avril Lavigne’s ‘Girlfriend,’ Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed a Girl,’ Britney Spears’ ‘Circus,’ Miley Cyrus’s ‘Party in the U.S.A.,’ and Ke$ha’s ‘Tik Tok.’
He was named one of the top ten producers of the decade by Billboard in 2009 and the Songwriter of the Year at the 2010 ASCAP Pop Music Awards. He is a frequent collaborator with Swedish music producer and songwriter Martin Karl Sandberg, aka Max Martin.
Posted in Art, Money |
Leave a Comment »
October 26, 2010
Zojirushi is a Japanese multinational manufacturer and marketer of high-quality vacuum flasks, bread machines and consumer electronics including electric water boilers, refrigerators and rice cookers. It has a branch in South Korea and subsidiary companies in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States. Zojirushi is listed on Osaka Securities Exchange.
The company was founded in 1918 as the Ichikawa Brothers Trading Company in Osaka and in 1948 was changed to Kyowa Manufacturing Co., Ltd. In 1961, its name was changed again to the Zojirushi Corporation and its corporate logo, including an elephant (Zōjirushi means ‘elephant mark’) was adopted.
Posted in Money, Technology, World |
Leave a Comment »
October 20, 2010
During World War II in the Philippines, the occupying Japanese government issued fiat currency in several denominations; this is known as the Japanese government-issued Philippine fiat peso, or simply the Japanese peso. The Japanese-sponsored Second Philippine Republic under Jose P. Laurel outlawed possession of guerilla currency, and declared a monopoly on the issuance of money, so that anyone found to possess guerrilla notes could be arrested.
The Filipinos called the fiat peso ‘Mickey Mouse money,’ because it was similar to play money and next to worthless. Many survivors of the war tell stories of going to the market laden with suitcases or ‘bayong’ (native bags made of woven coconut or buri leaf strips) overflowing with the Japanese-issued bills. In 1944, a box of matches cost more than 100 Mickey Mouse pesos.
Posted in Money, Politics, War |
Leave a Comment »
October 18, 2010
Vin Mariani (French: Mariani’s wine) was a tonic and patent medicine created circa 1863 by Angelo Mariani, a chemist who became intrigued with coca and its economic potential after reading Paolo Mantegazza’s paper on coca’s effects. Mariani started marketing a wine called Vin Tonique Mariani (à la Coca du Pérou) which was made from Bordeaux wine treated with coca leaves.
The ethanol in the wine acted as a solvent and extracted the cocaine from the coca leaves, altering the drink’s effect. It originally contained 6 mg of cocaine per fluid ounce of wine, but Vin Mariani which was to be exported contained 7.2 mg per ounce in order to compete with the higher cocaine content of similar drinks in the United States. Ads for Vin Mariani claimed that it would restore health, strength, energy, and vitality.
read more »
Posted in Drugs, Food, Money |
Leave a Comment »
