Onlineability news feed

3 Count: Skype This

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:11 GMT

Got any suggestions for the 3 Count. Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Skype Founders Set to Get 10 Percent, Option to Buy Three Percent More and Two Board Seats

First off today, Skype users can rejoice as it appears the Skype lawsuit has been settled. The case, which saw the two original founders of the company sue their buyer, eBay, alleging that the company did not have a license to manipulate or alter the code to the Skype software itself. That software, according to the founders, is owned by Joltid, a company they own. Though it seemed odd that eBay would buy the company but not the rights to its core product, the suit hit at a time when eBay was looking to resell Skype to other investors and the lawsuit threatened the future of the company.

Well, today we have word that a settlement has been reached. The former founders of Skype will be given a 10% stake in the company and an option to buy an additional 3% for $84 million. They will also be given two seats on the company's 23-person board.

This puts to bed one of tech's ugliest and most vindictive copyright lawsuits in recent years and clears eBay, Skype and its new owners to move forward with the company's future.

2: E.U. Leaders Bolster Internet Access Protections

Next up today, the EU has reached an agreement that it hopes will serve as a compromise between various nations and companies that wish to disconnect file sharers from the Web and activists who view the Web as an inalienable right. The EU has agreed that any action resulting in the disconnection of a file sharer must be subject to some form or legal review and can not be done simply on the say so of copyright holders.

This follows closely a similar deal in France, where an initial bill to disconnect repeat file sharers was shot down after it failed to provide judicial oversight to the process. A revised bill, one with such oversight, is making its way through the legislature now.

With this agreement comes an end to over 6 months of negotiation on the issue that will finally allow for the passage of the related telecommunications act, which will overhaul many aspects of the EU communications systems.

3: Judge Halts Online Sale of Beatles Songs

Finally today, I think we all saw this one coming. A judge has ordered BlueBeat to stop selling Beatles tracks on its site, rejecting its famous “psycho-acoustic simulation” argument. The company had been selling Beatles tracks for just 25 cents, even though Beatles music is not available for legal download anywhere on the Web. They had claimed that their tracks were not copies, but rather, were legal covers created using their “psycho-acoustic simulation” technology.

The judge, however, found that argument less than compelling and, despite a registration certificate for the works, has issued a temporary retraining order barring BlueBeat from selling the tracks while the lawsuit against them, filed by EMI, moves forward.

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Suggestions

That's it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

jonb1324cdr

What Are the Most Notable Quotes From 2009?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:43 GMT

Yale Book of Quotations editor Fred solicits your nominations for most notable quote of 2009.

A Different Kind of Organ Market?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:00 GMT

Who gets bumped to the front of UCLA medical center's liver-transplant line? The godfather of the Japanese mafia, according to this 60 Minutes video...

Play.com hit by ordering glitch

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:32 GMT

Customers of online shop Play.com contact the BBC to report problems with its ordering system.

Charity Won't Contain This Secondary Market

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:20 GMT

Each year I receive about 10 introductory economics textbooks from publishers. The purpose is to induce me to adopt the book in my 500-student principles class...

Do Earmarks Matter?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:31 GMT

Making fun of earmarked Congressional spending is easy, feel-good entertainment. But is it a distraction from the bigger problem?

SuperFreakonomics Book Club: Emily Oster Answers Your Questions

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:34 GMT

Our first guest was University of Chicago economist Emily Oster, whose research, co-authored with Robert Jensen, formed the basis of the section where we discuss how the introduction of television turned out to be an unlikely boon for rural Indian women. (I should have also mentioned that we cite Emily's fascinating research on how women were regularly put to death for centuries on charges of witchcraft.)

London Calling

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:05 GMT

Just announced: Levitt and Dubner's sold-out lecture at London's Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) will be webcast live on Tuesday, November 10, 2009, at 13:00 GMT (that's 8 a.m. Eastern -- or use this handy calculator to find the time where you live). One day earlier, they are also speaking at the London School of Economics; negotiations are still underway to temporarily rename it LSF.

Gadget problems divide the sexes

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:14 GMT

A technology helpline claims that there are significant differences between the types of calls it receives from men and women.

11 Ways to Think Outside the Box

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:00 GMT

Thinking outside the box is more than just a business cliché. It means approaching problems in new, innovative ways; conceptualizing problems differently; and understanding your position in relation to any particular situation in a way you’d never thought of before. Ironically, its a cliché that means to think of clichéd situations in ways that aren’t clichéd.

We’re told to “think outside the box” all the time, but how exactly do we do that? How do we develop the ability to confront problems in ways other than the ways we normally confront problems? How do we cultivate the ability to look at things differently from the way we typically look at things?

Thinking outside the box starts well before we’re “boxed in” – that is, well before we confront a unique situation and start forcing it into a familiar “box” that we already know how to deal with. Or at least think we know how to deal with.

Here are 11 ways to beef up your out-of-the-box thinking skills. Make an effort to push your thinking up to and beyond its limit every now and again – the talents you develop may come in handy the next time you face a situation that “everybody knows” how to solve.

1. Study another industry.

I’ve learned as much about teaching from learning about marketing as I have from studying pedagogy – maybe more. Go to the library and pick up a trade magazine in an industry other than your own, or grab a few books from the library, and learn about how things are done in other industries. You might find that many of the problems people in other industries face are similar to the problems in your own, but that they’ve developed really quite different ways of dealing with them. Or you might well find new linkages between your own industry and the new one, linkages that might well be the basis of innovative partnerships in the future.

2. Learn about another religion.

Religions are the way that humans organize and understand their relationships not only with the supernatural or divine but with each other. Learning about how such relations are structured can teach you a lot about how people relate to each other and the world around them. Starting to see the reason in another religion can also help you develop mental flexibility – when you really look at all the different ways people comprehend the same mysteries, and the fact that they generally manage to survive regardless of what they believe, you start to see the limitations of whatever dogma or doxy you follow, a revelation that will transfer quite a bit into the non-religious parts of your life.

3. Take a class.

Learning a new topic will not only teach you a new set of facts and figures, it will teach you a new way of looking at and making sense of aspects of your everyday life or of the society or natural world you live in. This in turn will help expand both how you look at problems and the breadth of possible solutions you can come up with.

4. Read a novel in an unfamiliar genre.

Reading is one of the great mental stimulators in our society, but it’s easy to get into a rut. Try reading something you’d never have touched otherwise – if you read literary fiction, try a mystery or science fiction novel; if you read a lot of hard-boiled detective novels, try a romance; and so on. Pay attention not only to the story but to the particular problems the author has to deal with. For instance, how does the fantasy author bypass your normal skepticism about magic and pull you into their story? Try to connect those problems to problems you face in your own field. For example, how might your marketing team overcome your audiences normal reticence about a new “miracle” product?

5. Write a poem.

While most problem-solving leans heavily on our brain’s logical centers, poetry neatly bridges our more rational left-brain though processes and our more creative right-brain processes. Though it may feel foolish (and getting comfortable with feeling foolish might be another way to think outside the box), try writing a poem about the problem you’re working on. Your poem doesn’t necessarily have to propose a solution – the idea is to shift your thinking away from your brain’s logic centers and into a more creative part of the brain, where it can be mulled over in a non-rational way. Remember, nobody has to ever see your poem…

6. Draw a picture.

Drawing a picture is even more right-brained, and can help break your logical left-brain’s hold on a problem the same way a poem can. Also, visualizing a problem engages other modes of thinking that we don’t normally use, bringing you another creative boost.

7. Turn it upside down.

Turning something upside-down, whether physically by flipping a piece of paper around or metaphorically by re-imagining it can help you see patterns that wouldn’t otherwise be apparent. The brain has a bunch of pattern-making habits that often obscure other, more subtle patterns at work; changing the orientation of things can hide the more obvious patterns and make other patterns emerge. For example, you might ask what a problem would look like if the least important outcome were the most important, and how you’d then try to solve it.

8. Work backwards.

Just like turning a thing upside down, working backwards breaks the brain’s normal conception of causality. This is the key to backwards planning, for example, where you start with a goal and think back through the steps needed to reach it until you get to where you are right now.

9. Ask a child for advice.

I don’t buy into the notion that children are inherently ore creative before society “ruins” them, but I do know that children think and speak with a n ignorance of convention that is often helpful. Ask a child how they might tackle a problem, or if you don’t have a child around think about how you might reformulate a problem so that a child could understand it if one was available. Don’t run out and build a boat made out of cookies because a child told you to, though – the idea isn’t to do what the child says, necessarily, but to jog your own thinking into a more unconventional path.

10. Invite randomness.

If you’ve ever seen video of Jackson Pollock painting, you have seen a masterful painter consciously inviting randomness into his work. Pollock exercises a great deal of control over his brushes and paddles, in the service of capturing the stray drips and splashes of paint that make up his work. Embracing mistakes and incorporating them into your projects, developing strategies that allow for random input, working amid chaotic juxtapositions of sound and form – all of these can help to move beyond everyday patterns of thinking into the sublime.

11. Take a shower.

There’s some kind of weird psychic link between showering and creativity. Who knows why? Maybe it’s because your mind is on other things, maybe it’s because you’re naked, maybe it’s the warm water relaxing you – it’s a mystery. But a lot of people swear by it. So maybe when the status quo response to some circumstance just isn’t working, try taking a shower and see if something remarkable doesn’t occur to you!

Do you have strategies for thinking differently? Share your tips with us in the comments.

Dustin M. Wax is a freelance writer and project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of Don't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.

Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.