Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Microsoft Patents "Stealthy Audio Watermarking"

from Gizmodo by Matt Buchanan

Microsoft has been granted a patent for "stealthy audio watermarking," which is just a slick way of saying inaudible digital watermarks directly embedded in the audio of a file, allowing the owner to be traced. Apparently, in their version of the tech, the watermark's scattered throughout the file so it's more difficult to pull out or tweak and it's able to be compressed while remaining intact. You'd think they'd worry about actually selling music before trying to tie it down, though.

[PC World, Flickr]

Magicians innovate without IP law

from Boing Boing by David Pescovitz

Jacob Loshin, a law student at Yale, drafter a paper exploring how stage magicians protect the secrets behind their tricks, and continue to come up with great new ideas, without getting caught up in the insanity of intellectual property law. Basically, magicians police themselves based on a set of norms for treating secrets, presentation styles, and techniques of making magic. Violate the norms by, say, stealing a trick or not giving credit where it's due and you'll be shamed and shunned by your fellow magicians. From the abstract:

Intellectual property scholars have begun to explore the curious dynamics of IP's negative spaces, areas in which IP law offers scant protection for innovators, but where innovation nevertheless seems to thrive. Such negative spaces pose a puzzle for the traditional theory of IP, which holds that IP law is necessary to create incentives for innovation. This paper presents a study of one such negative space which has so far garnered some curiosity but little sustained attention - the world of performing magicians. This paper argues that idiosyncratic dynamics among magicians make traditional copyright, patent, and trade secret law ill-suited to protecting magicians' most valuable intellectual property. Yet, the paper further argues that the magic community has developed its own set of unique IP norms which effectively operate in law's absence. The paper details the structure of these informal norms that protect the creation, dissemination, and performance of magic tricks. The paper also discusses broader implications for IP theory, suggesting that a norm-based approach may offer a promising explanation for the puzzling persistence of some of IP's negative spaces.

Link (via TechDirt, thanks Sean Ness!)

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Lego Towers: Architect makes Scale Model of Housing Proposal in Lego

from Gizmodo by Addy Dugdale

This is a 1:50 scale model of Lego Towers, a proposed housing development for Copenhagen &mdash made of Lego. Designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group, this time-lapse video was shot over five weeks. Photos, plus how many bricks were needed to make the model, are after the jump.

Two hundred and fifty thousand. [Bjarke Ingels Group via Dezeen]

Digital Cameras: Unlock RAW Mode on Point and Shoot Canons

from Gizmodo by Jason Chen

Some low-end Canon cameras actually share more than just the name and some internals with their high-end Canon DSLR brothers. They share DIGIC II image processing chips, which can support RAW format and some various other advanced features, and can be unlocked by getting a CHDK firmware onto the camera. The suite shouldn't destroy you phone like replacing a phone's firmware, but it's not going to enhance your pictures to DSLR levels either—most of that comes from the lens. [Linux via Wired via BBG]