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Study Finds That Streaming And Spyware Are Killing Music Piracy - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...yware-are-killing-music-piracy piracy music streaming
shared by wstrahan on 03 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • That report shows that the number of music files being illegally downloaded was 26% less in 2012 than in 2011. What’s more, 40% of the people surveyed in the study who said that they’d illegally downloaded in 2011 did not do so in 2012.
  • So what’s responsible for this massive reduction in piracy? According to the survey, it’s not stepped-up enforcement – it’s the availability of free music via streaming services like Spotify. Nearly half of the people who had stopped or sharply reduced their music downloading cited those services as the reason for stopping.
  • What’s interesting to me is that streaming isn’t just killing downloads. 44% of the survey respondents indicated that they’d also stopped ripping CDs from friends and family.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • n 2012.
  • So what’s responsible for this massive reduction in piracy? According to the survey, it’s not stepped-up enforcement – it’s the availability of free music via streaming services like Spotify. Nearly half of the people who had stopped or sharply reduced their music downloading cited those services as the reason for stopping.
  • So what’s responsible for this massive reduction in piracy? According to the survey, it’s not stepped-up enforcement – it’s the availability of free music via streaming services like Spotify. Nearly half of the people who had stopped or sharply reduced their music downloading cited those services as the reason for stopping.
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Researchers split over NSA hacking : Nature News & Comment - 0 views

www.nature.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/...split-over-nsa-hacking-1.13911 NSAhacking
shared by abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Furthermore, the NSA has designated more than 150 colleges and universities as centres of excellence, which qualifies students and faculty members for extra support. It can also fund research indirectly through other agencies, and so the total amount of support may be much higher. A leaked budget document says that the NSA spends more than $400 million a year on research and technology — although only a fraction of this money might go to research outside the agency itself.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      Shows the sort of investing the NSA goes through in order to receive its top-level of intelligence gathering that it does yearly.
  • Many US researchers, especially those towards the basic-research end of the spectrum, are comfortable with the NSA’s need for their expertise.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      Shows that some are okay with what the NSA is conducting and shows the partnership the US researches have with the NSA. The researches are among many of the processes that paints the full picture of how NSA incorporates their domestic surveillance by using their PRISM program, which is the main focus of this inquiry project.
  • “I understand what’s in the newspapers,” he says, “but the NSA is funding serious long-term fundamental research and I’m happy they’re doing it.”
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      A new view on the NSA issue that Snowden revealed.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • also wants to maintain the relationship.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      It almost seems as if they both need each other. This could be used in the article to illustrate how the NSA is partnered with US researches and need them to function. Another issue that would be covered in the inquiry paper to argue one of the many pieces that the NSA uses to accomplish its goal.
  • When it was revealed that the NSA had inserted a ‘back door’ into the NIST standards to allow snooping, some of them felt betrayed. “We certainly had no idea that they were tampering with products or standards,” says Green.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      A feeling of betrayal from the NSA to a researcher at Johns Hopkins (Mr. Green), can prove to be damaging as more researchers from all over the US find out about this betrayal and start to rethink their partnership with the NSA which then hinders the NSA advancement in intelligence gathering. It would seem that the NSA is hurting itself rather than helping itself at this moment, an interesting view to point out in the inquiry paper.
  • “There was a sense of certain lines that NSA wouldn’t cross,” says Felten, “and now we’re not so sure about that.”
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      More proof of the annotation that was done directly above this one.
  • abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
     
    Source #2 for my Research Nugget #1.
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How the NSA's Domestic Spying Program Works | Electronic Frontier Foundation - 0 views

www.eff.org/...how-it-works NSAspyingprogram
shared by abdulrahmanabdo on 05 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • When the NSA’s spying program was first exposed by the New York Times in 2005, President Bush admitted to a small aspect of the program—what the administration labeled the “Terrorist Surveillance Program”—in which the NSA monitored, without warrants, the communications of between 500-1000 people inside the US with suspected connections to Al Qaeda.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 05 Jul 14
       
      The first time the NSA's spying programs where first exposed and what was chosen to be revealed by the Bush administration.
  • But other aspects of the Program were aimed not just at targeted individuals, but perhaps millions of innocent Americans never suspected of a crime.
  • A person familiar with the matter told USA Today that the agency's goal was "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders. All of this was done without a warrant or any judicial oversight.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 05 Jul 14
       
      The main reason why some Americans are upset by the NSA's recent actions. It was a breach in the balance of power that much of American government is run by, for now hundreds of years.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • This equipment gave the NSA unfettered access to large streams of domestic and international communications in real time—what amounted to at least 1.7 billion emails a day, according to the Washington Post.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 05 Jul 14
       
      The intelligence gathering power of the NSA.
  • First, the government convinced the major telecommunications companies in the US, including AT&T, MCI, and Sprint, to hand over the “call-detail records” of their customers. According to an investigation by USA Today, this included “customers' names, street addresses, and other personal information.” In addition, the government received “detailed records of calls they made—across town or across the country—to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.”
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 05 Jul 14
       
      How the intensive intelligence gathering began for the NSA.
  • It works like this: when you send an email or otherwise use the internet, the data travels from your computer, through telecommunication companies' wires and fiber optics networks, to your intended recipient. To intercept these communications, the government installed devices known as “fiber-optic splitters” in many of the main telecommunication junction points in the United States (like the AT&T facility in San Francisco). These splitters make exact copies of the data passing through them: then, one stream is directed to the government, while the other stream is directed to the intended recipients.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 05 Jul 14
       
      How intelligence gathering works for the NSA.
  • In April 2012, long-time national security author James Bamford reported NSA is spending $2 billion to construct a data center in a remote part of Utah to house the information it has been collecting for the past decade. “Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases,” Bamford wrote, “will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter.’
  • abdulrahmanabdo on 05 Jul 14
     
    The NSA's Domestic Spying Program and how it works.
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Michigan Womyn's Music Festival - 0 views

www.jstor.org/...25794545 #tv008 #ThoughtVectors
shared by peppermara on 05 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • peppermara on 05 Jul 14
     
    This journal was a recap of an All-Woman's (Womyn's) Music Festival in Michigan in 1984. Though it doesn't provide specific instances of a woman's connection of music to building her confidence and self-esteem-it's an interesting insight to understand where woman who were heavily doused with feminism, musicality, community, radicalness. Speaking of woman coming together as one community versus drawing the divides between sexual preferences and ways of identifying oneself. I felt most connected to this article since I had the privilege for two years to attend a festival/conference as open and eclectic as this but definitely not as full of frustration and anger to the anti-feminists.
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The Role of Interest in Learning and Development - Google Books - 0 views

books.google.com/books interest learning development
shared by kahn_artist on 05 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • kahn_artist on 05 Jul 14
     
    What is "interest", how do we study it, and how does it affect us?
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ED532474.pdf - 0 views

files.eric.ed.gov/...ED532474.pdf interest learning development
shared by kahn_artist on 05 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • kahn_artist on 05 Jul 14
     
    Why are GT students motivated and how do we motivate?
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Delphi Survey on the Use of Robot Projector based Augmented Reality in Dramatic Activi... - 1 views

www.aicit.org/...JDCTA_Vol.5%20No.11_35.pdf #ThoughtVectors technology robot projector children education teacher presence
shared by anonymous on 05 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 05 Jul 14
     
    How would the AR and the use of robot in children‟s dramatic activity affect children‟s development and learning and teachers‟ role in the field?
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Development and Utilization of Projector-Robot Service for Children's Dramatic Play Act... - 0 views

www.aicit.org/...AISS5-367029JE(final2).pdf #ThoughtVectors technology robot projector education teacher presence
shared by anonymous on 05 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 05 Jul 14
     
    After interviewing, focused on the three different aspects, such as differences from previous dramatic experiences, interesting points in the play activity, and the role of the media (robot or computer), most interviewees positively evaluated the augmented reality based dramatic play activity. Regarding all three of the categories, we concluded that the robot, as a delivering medium, did a better job than a computer when it came to helping children concentrate on the media and technology, peak their interests and understand the roles of the media.
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Using interactive technology to improve health : is weight loss just a mouse-click away? - 2 views

ir.library.oregonstate.edu/...41773 #ThoughtVectors social media #tv005 technology
shared by bdm1chael on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • bdm1chael on 06 Jul 14
     
    "Since 1980, the prevalence of obesity among U.S. adults has more than doubled, accompanied by increases in chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes. This high prevalence and associated disease burden continues to be a threat to public health. Despite years of efforts to stem the tide of obesity, successful weight loss has proven difficult to achieve and sustain."
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The Power of Social Media to Affect Our Health and Fitness - 3 views

greatist.com/...social-media-affects-fitness #ThoughtVectors social media technology #tv005
shared by bdm1chael on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • bdm1chael on 06 Jul 14
     
    "Did you Instagram it? No, but it is on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest... Social media is the new "social life" but has its proliferation changed our once-healthy habits? One billion people couldn't possibly be wrong, right?"
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HowStuffWorks "How Pandora Radio Works" - 0 views

computer.howstuffworks.com/...pandora.htm technology howstuffworks symbiosis music attributes musical songs humans computers Pandora
shared by perezmv on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Pandora has no concept of genre, user connections or ratings. It doesn't care what other people who like Gomez also like. When you create a radio station on Pandora, it uses a pretty radical approach to delivering your personalized selections: Having analyzed the musical structures present in the songs you like, it plays other songs that possess similar musical traits
  • Pandora relies on a Music Genome that consists of 400 musical attributes covering the qualities of melody, harmony, rhythm, form, composition and lyrics. It's a project that began in January 2000 and took 30 experts in music theory five years to complete. The Genome is based on an intricate analysis by actual humans (about 20 to 30 minutes per four-minute song) of the music of 10,000 artists from the past 100 years. The analysis of new music continues every day since Pandora's online launch in August 2005. As of May 2006, the Genome's music library contains 400,000 analyzed songs from 20,000 contemporary artists. You won't find Latin or classical yet: Pandora is in the process of developing a specialized Latin music Genome and is still deep in thought about how to approach the world of classical composition.
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http://oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2006/08/17/inside-pandora-web-radio.html - 0 views

oreilly.com/...inside-pandora-web-radio.html Pandora howstuffworks music musical technology symbiosis format business model records experiments attributes project company analysts dimensions
shared by perezmv on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Pandora (which is also the name of the company) grew out of the Music Genome Project, which company founder Tim Westergren began six years ago.
  • He became fascinated with the way directors described the music they were looking for, which led to his wondering what made people enjoy certain types of music. He asked himself, "If people haven't found any music that they love since college, and artists are struggling to find an audience, is there a role for technology to help bridge the gap?"
  • Westergren started the Genome Project from the idea of creating a platform for connecting people with music that they'll love based on music they already enjoy. The project uses experts called "music analysts" to deconstruct music into its fundamental parts and capture the results into a database. Pandora has 40 professional musicians who come to the office every day and listen to one song at a time, analyzing each in anywhere from 200 to 400 dimensions. (The dimensions are somewhat different for each genre of music.)
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Pandora chose the dimensions because they are quantitative. For instance, how breathy are the vocals? Is the music diatonic or chromatic? The music analysts are trained to be able to score songs consistently. In fact, one of the test cases is, "Could a group of 10 musicologists listen to a song and agree on one score for a particular element?"
  • vector space.
  • "What is exciting about the Music Genome Project, with respect to Pandora the radio-listening experience, is that by understanding the music on a song-by-song basis we can put together a playlist that has a much more natural ebb and flow than you might be able to do with collaborative filtering data," Conrad says.
  • "I think curator is the right word," Conrad replied. "Of all the financial models that could be leveraged to make Pandora a successful business, the 'play for pay' model runs completely spiritually opposite to the founding of the company.
  • I asked what Pandora was doing to avoid being influenced by big record labels, which have been widely accused of corrupting traditional radio through payola schemes.
  • "Since we use a human analyst to analyze song by song, we've experimented with using a smaller number of elements," he continued. "We've determined that you can't create interesting playlists with only 20 attributes. But we do keep an eye on machine listening as it might provide a way to augment the manual analysis."
  • I ask myself, "What's this song doing in my Bill Evans station? This song should be in my 'Soft Jazz Guitar' station. Why can't I tell Pandora to place this tune in the appropriate station?"
  • "It's fascinating to me that you raise that particular example," Conrad said. "Because the scenario that you just described is--after we evolved the product over five months and took a lot of low-hanging fruit off the table--probably the number-one listener request.
  • Pandora creates playlists with a "matching engine," written in C and Python, for each listener station. This engine builds the low-level linkage to the "source" music (the music that listeners indicate they like) and the music that actually gets played (a mixture of what the listener explicitly indicated, mixed with music that the Pandora service believes listeners will like). The replication system is Slony.
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Pandora Pulls Back the Curtain on Its Magic Music Machine | Fast Company | Business + I... - 0 views

www.fastcompany.com/...urtain-its-magic-music-machine Pandora howstuffworks music people employees company profit listeners components analysts Westergren
shared by perezmv on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • "It’s true that the algorithms mathematically match songs, but the math, all it’s doing is translating what a human being is actually measuring," says Tim Westergren, who founded Pandora in 2000 and now serves as its Chief Strategy Officer. “You need a human ear to discern.”
  • Pandora’s secret sauce is people. Music lovers.
  • "That is the magic bullet for us," Westergren says of the company’s human element. "I can’t overstate it. It’s been the most important part of Pandora. It defines us in so many ways."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • It’s also important, at least in the beginning, for these music analysts to sit, physically, in the same room. That way, they can regularly peel back their headphones and engage with their colleagues about the music they’re categorizing.
  • (Pandora reportedly met with bankers recently about a $100 million offering)
  • "We want Pandora to feel like it’s talking to you," Westergren says. "We also literally talk to people. We have a team of people who are called listener advocates. Their job is just to respond personally to every single email, phone call, or letter we get. The identity of Pandora is forged through those collective interactions."
  • Pandora turned its first profit at the end of that year, earning $50 million in total revenues.
  • Analysts predicted 2010 would end with $100 million in revenues for Pandora--Westergren declined to confirm or deny the number, saying only of revenue, "It’s all going in the right direction."
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HAL :: [hal-00190328, version 1] Literature Review in Learning with Tangible Technologies - 1 views

hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00190328 #ThoughtVectors technology education children learning media
shared by anonymous on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • what would a school look like in which the technology disappeared seamlessly into the everyday objects and artefacts of the classroom? This review is an attempt to explore this question. It maps out the recent technological developments in the field, discusses evidence from educational research and psychology, and provides an overview of a wide range of challenging projects that have attempted to use such 'disappearing computers' (or tangible interfaces) in education
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More NSA revelations: backdoors, snooping tools and worldwide reactions - 0 views

www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/...S1353485814700017 NSArevelations
shared by abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • “I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systemic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analysing it without prior judicial approval,” he wrote
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      US Judge displays his vital view on what the NSA did to the American people, can be important in making an argument in the inquiry paper.
  • A Presidential Task Force set up by Barack Obama to examine the NSA issue has issued its first report and has concluded that: “Excessive surveillance and unjustified secrecy can threaten civil liberties, public trust, and the core processes of democratic self-government.”
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      What the executive branch things of this whole NSA issue. This also states the possible outcomes that may have come with this issue.
  • Many people in the security industry remain unconvinced by RSA's denials.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      Illustrates that the truth isn't always easily obtained, and that this story may dig deeper than anyone once anticipated before.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Some members of the group wanted him to step down following his part
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      This may prove to help shed some light on the big question of, is this issue, making the NSA fall apart.
  • abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
     
    First of my three sources for Nugget Research #1.
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Spotify, YouTube, Streaming Services Are Killing Digital Downloads | TIME.com - 0 views

business.time.com/...st-killing-digital-music-sales youtube spotify digital music sales
shared by wstrahan on 03 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Now, with a deluge of  music streaming services letting fans listen to songs for free, the digital download may be going the way of the CD and the cassette tape before it.
  • U.S. digital track sales decreased for the first time ever in 2013, dropping from 1.34 billion to 1.26 billion, according to Nielsen SoundScan. CD sales also continued their ongoing decline, dropping 14 percent to 165 million. Digital album sales were stable, staying at 118 million sold last year. Meanwhile the number of songs streamed through services like Spotify, YouTube and Rhapsody increased 32 percent to 118.1 billion.
  • Spotify just arrived on U.S. shores in the summer of 2011, but it has become a lightning rod for controversy thanks to a chorus of artists who decry that paying musicians a fraction of a cent per listen is unfair.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Digital downloads were a logical continuation of the business model that generated fat profits for record labels in the heyday of physical music stores. In some cases, with no manufacturing or distribution costs involved, a hit digital album could actually be more lucrative than a physical CD.
  • However, the music industry’s core problem—that lots of fans just don’t want to pay for music—remains an issue. Most people use the free, ad-supported version of Spotify, and the company recently expanded its free offering to mobile devices. The most popular platform for listening to music among young people is YouTube, which is almost entirely free.
  • U.S. digital track sales decreased for the first time ever in 2013, dropping from 1.34
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