linguish

An Interesting Interpretation Of The Printed Word

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 00:33:32 -0500

An Interesting Interpretation Of The Printed Word

little-idiosyncracies: No problem.

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 00:39:00 -0500

little-idiosyncracies:

No problem.

infoneer-pulse: This Vintage-Looking Vending Machine Dispenses...

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:54:51 -0500

infoneer-pulse:

This Vintage-Looking Vending Machine Dispenses Rare Books For Just $2

A Toronto bookstore has come up with a creative way to add value to old, discount books that otherwise may clutter its storage: an antique-seeming “book dispenser” that randomly spits out old books for $2 a pop.

The Biblio-Mat combines the charm of a gumball machine with the surprise element of a raffle. The machine jumps to life once money’s inserted. With a bit of overt drama—cranking and whirring and ringing that invoke old machinery—the dispenser then releases a used title from its stock, dropping it into a slot for a happy reader to walk away with.

» via Fast Company

Court: Yes, Verizon, you do have to abide by FCC roaming rules

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:44:15 -0500

Court: Yes, Verizon, you do have to abide by FCC roaming rules:

infoneer-pulse:

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., unanimously upheld Federal Communications Commission rules adopted last year that requires larger phone companies, such as AT&T and Verizon Wireless, to strike roaming deals with smaller operators on their wireless data networks.

Verizon Communications had challenged the FCC rule, which was adopted last year. But today, the three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., rejected Verizon’s argument that the FCC had overstepped its authority by adopting such a rule.

The court unanimously found that the FCC was well within its jurisdiction to require operators to offer roaming agreements to competitors on “commercially reasonable” terms. If Verizon is unhappy with the rule, the court said, the company “may choose not to provide mobile-Internet service.”

» via CNET

the-absolute-best-gifs: (via/follow The Absolute Best...

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 02:37:37 -0500

the-absolute-best-gifs:

(via/follow The Absolute Best GIFs)

Via/Follow The Absolute Best GIFs Blog

Songwriters oppose Pandora-backed Internet royalty bill

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 18:12:31 -0500

Songwriters oppose Pandora-backed Internet royalty bill:

infoneer-pulse:

Songwriters and music publishers are entering the battle over royalty payments that has pitted Pandora against recording artists and musicians.

The heads of the National Music Publishers’ Association, Nashville Songwriters Association International and the Church Music Publishers Association on Friday came out against a bill backed by Pandora that would place Internet radio services on the same royalty-setting standard as satellite and cable radio stations.

» via The Hill’s Hillicon Valley

Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 01:20:23 -0400

Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Voices of History: Old-Time Radio Shows (mp3 downloads)

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 19:14:15 -0400

Voices of History: Old-Time Radio Shows (mp3 downloads):

Japan Surrenders Sep 02, 1945 .85 MB Hiroshima News Bulletin Aug 06, 1945 .36 MB Eleanor Roosevelt Dec 07, 1941 .30 MB Hitler Opens The Olympics Aug 01, 1936 .56 MB Hitler Reoccupies The Rhineland Mar 07, 1936 .14 MB Goebbels Oct 02, 1934 .85 MB Hitler Reichstag Speech Jan 30, 1934 .61 MB 1st Pearl Harbor Bulletin .07 MB 1st Service At Belson Conentration Camp .13 MB President Reagan - Tear Down That Wall .15 MB President JFK - Ask Not .04 MB President Eisenhower On Korea .20 MB President Bush - Desert Storm .12 MB Mussolini Speech .06 MB Lou Gehrig Farewell Speech .05 MB London Air Raid 1940 .16 MB Lee Harvey Oswald In Hallway .05 MB Lee Harvey Oswald Did You Kill The President .13 MB Howard Carter On Opening King Tuts Tomb .29 MB Hitlers Death Announced .14 MB Hitler Youth Song .04 MB Hitler What, Me Intolerant .20 MB HG Wells On Economics & Politics .14 MB Hank Aaron Speech To Congress .05 MB George MCohan My Father Thanks You .04 MB George Bernanrd Shaw On The Pacifist Movement .11 MB Albert Einstein on Ghandi

New Philippine law outlaws cybersex

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 23:49:45 -0400

New Philippine law outlaws cybersex:

infoneer-pulse:

In a new legislation recently signed into law by the country’s president, the Philippines has outlawed cybersex and online sex video chat (you might know them as “cam girls”) as part of a comprehensive new anti-cybercrime and libel law.

The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 defines cybersex as “the willful engagement, maintenance, control, or operation, directly or indirectly, of any lascivious exhibition of sexual organs or sexual activity, with the aid of a computer system, for favor or consideration.”

According to the law, the maximum penalty for those convicted is a fine of 250,000 Phillippine pesos ($6,000) and prison time of up to six months.

» via ars technica

Google brings new 'e-mail via text message' service to Africa

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:28:34 -0400

Google brings new 'e-mail via text message' service to Africa:

infoneer-pulse:

While a huge percentage of Africa’s more than 1 billion residents have cell phones, far fewer have access to e-mail. Google is trying to change that.

According to the Associated Press, the Web giant is embarking on an ambitious endeavor that will let people receive e-mails via text messages. In effect, Google will be giving people access to the Internet with feature handsets. Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya are the first countries to get the service.

» via CNET

kqedscience: Today, the Emoticon Turns 30 :-) “On this...

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:24:09 -0400

kqedscience:

Today, the Emoticon Turns 30 :-)

“On this auspicious day, it’s worth stepping back for a moment to consider the birth of the symbol that is, in every possible way, iconic. The emoticon was born on the Internet. And, like many things that sprang to life during the early days of the World Wide Web, it emerged as the result of much deliberation. It emerged, actually, as the result of an extremely nerdy joke about elevators. “

Read more here.

"The textbook in question is a required purchase for a course entitled “Global Visual and Material..."

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 01:41:31 -0400

“The textbook in question is a required purchase for a course entitled “Global Visual and Material Culture, Prehistory to 1800.” Any art that would appear in that book would be public domain — it’s all over 212 years old at this point, after all. Still, since the book’s publisher could not get clearance to use the pictures from Stokstad and Drucker Images, a decision was made to print the incredibly expensive art book without pictures of any kind. Students who purchase the book are instead given access to a web resource for viewing the art that should have appeared on the book’s pages.”

- This $180 art textbook is devoid of pictures thanks to absurd copyright standards | Technology News Blog - Yahoo! News (via infoneer-pulse)

Music Text Composition Generator

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 23:43:15 -0400

Music Text Composition Generator

Texting That Saves Lives

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:09:43 -0400

Texting That Saves Lives

magnolius: “Sound Wave” sculpture by Jean Shin - made out of...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 22:08:46 -0400

magnolius:

“Sound Wave” sculpture by Jean Shin - made out of melted records on wooden armature.

Records were melted and sculpted to form a cascading wave, dotted with bursts of colorful labels. The resulting structure speaks to the inevitable waves of technology that render each successive generation of recordable media obsolete.

Culturomics Looks at the Birth and Death of Words

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 16:10:06 -0400

Culturomics Looks at the Birth and Death of Words:

infoneer-pulse:

Can physicists produce insights about language that have eluded linguists and English professors? That possibility was put to the test this week when a team of physicists published a paper drawing on Google’s massive collection of scanned books. They claim to have identified universal laws governing the birth, life course and death of words.

The paper marks an advance in a new field dubbed “Culturomics”: the application of data-crunching to subjects typically considered part of the humanities. Last year a group of social scientists and evolutionary theorists, plus the Google Books team, showed off the kinds of things that could be done with Google’s data, which include the contents of five-million-plus books, dating back to 1800.

Published in Science, that paper gave the best-yet estimate of the true number of words in English—a million, far more than any dictionary has recorded (the 2002 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary has 348,000). More than half of the language, the authors wrote, is “dark matter” that has evaded standard dictionaries.

The paper also tracked word usage through time (each year, for instance, 1% of the world’s English-speaking population switches from “sneaked” to “snuck”). It also showed that we seem to be putting history behind us more quickly, judging by the speed with which terms fall out of use. References to the year “1880” dropped by half in the 32 years after that date, while the half-life of “1973” was a mere decade.

» via The Wall Street Journal (Subscription may be required for some content)

Photo

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 15:55:05 -0400

Photo

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 09:54:49 -0400

Photo

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 04:00:20 -0400

infoneer-pulse: Five hundred new fairytales discovered in...

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:01:39 -0500

infoneer-pulse:

Five hundred new fairytales discovered in Germany

A whole new world of magic animals, brave young princes and evil witches has come to light with the discovery of 500 new fairytales, which were locked away in an archive in Regensburg, Germany for over 150 years. The tales are part of a collection of myths, legends and fairytales, gathered by the local historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth (1810–1886) in the Bavarian region of Oberpfalz at about the same time as the Grimm brothers were collecting the fairytales that have since charmed adults and children around the world.

Last year, the Oberpfalz cultural curator Erika Eichenseer published a selection of fairytales from Von Schönwerth’s collection, calling the book Prinz Roßzwifl. This is local dialect for “scarab beetle”. The scarab, also known as the “dung beetle”, buries its most valuable possession, its eggs, in dung, which it then rolls into a ball using its back legs. Eichenseer sees this as symbolic for fairytales, which she says hold the most valuable treasure known to man: ancient knowledge and wisdom to do with human development, testing our limits and salvation.

» via The Guardian