[Libre] Etude : « Le piratage ne doit pas être une inquiétude pour les ayants droits »

Une étude d'un centre de recherches lié à la Commission européenne démontre que le piratage n'est pas néfaste à l'industrie musicale. Les offres de streaming légales parfois décriées seraient, elles aussi, bénéfiques.

Origine : 01net. Actualités http://www.01net.com/editorial/589223/etude-le-piratage-ne-doit-pas-etre-une-inquietude-pour-les-ayants-droits/#?xtor=RSS-16

[Intéressant] It's Time To Focus On Creating Value, Not Profit

"Since the late 1970s, when American companies were fat and complacent, the focus of American capitalism has been on the bottom line.
Spurred on by activist shareholders, private-equity firms, and bonuses based on stock prices, corporate managers have become obsessed with maximizing quarterly profits.
This new focus has produced remarkable results.



Over the past three decades, big American companies have gone from having below-average profit margins to the highest profit margins in history
Unfortunately, this obsession with profit maximization has come at a cost.
By focusing their entire effort on the bottom line, many American companies have reduced their value to the other constituencies that great companies serve, namely:

• customers,
• employees, and
• society.

One result of the profit obsession, for example, is that big American companies are now paying the lowest wages as a percent of the economy in history. (See chart).



This means that a record-low percentage of the vast wealth these companies have is being shared with the people who help earn it. [...]

[...]We need to stop maximizing profit and start maximizing value."

Lire la suite...

Origine : SAI http://www.businessinsider.com/companies-focus-on-value-not-profit-2013-3

[Intéressant] These Computer-Generated Women Look Real

Over at 3D graphics blog CGTrader, they've rounded up an eclectic collection of computer-generated images of women for International Women's Day.
Some are humorous and cartoony, but some are borderline photorealistic.
We've gathered some of the most impressive displays 3D graphics for you here.

The artist packed so much detail into this picture, even adding reflections to the eyes.

This artist wanted to represent a different idea of beauty.

This is a portrait of a Hakkan woman.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Origine : SAI http://www.businessinsider.com/computer-generated-women-2013-3

[Intéressant] How the Best Fake UFO Video Ever Was Made

Special effects have become so good that digital media artists can now create entire videos on their computers and make them look completely real, even if it's a UFO sighting. That's what filmmaker Aristomenis "Meni" Tsirbas has done with his stunning 39-second UFO video of a driver supposedly spotting alien spacecraft over the skies of California.

YouTube viewers were quick to point out that the alien ships were fake, and they were right. But as it turned out, everything else was fake, too. The entire video was CGI (computer-generated imagery). There was no driver, there was no car and there was no road or landscape

Origine : Mashable! http://mashable.com/2013/03/07/fake-ufo-video/

[Utile] SoundGecko Reads Articles Out Loud to You, Almost Sounds Like a Real Person

If you're having trouble getting through all those blogs you want to read, SoundGecko makes it easier by reading them out loud to you—without sounding like a robot.

We've talked about SoundGecko before, but if you haven't given it a shot yet, the new version is worth a download. It's got a new set of "stations" that'll serve you content based on your interests, push notifications when an article is ready for listening, a speed boost, and the ability to add articles right from the SoundGecko app itself.

It's not the only app of its kind, but it's definitely the most natural sounding—while it won't fool anyone into thinking there's a person on the other end of your phone, it makes the articles much more listenable than any article-to-text program we've come across yet. Hit the link below to check out version 2.0 for iOS, or, if you're an Android user, you can check out version 1.2 while we wait for the next update to drop there.

SoundGecko (Free) | iTunes App Store via Lifehacker Australia


Origine: Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5988298/soundgecko-reads-articles-out-loud-to-you-almost-sounds-like-a-real-person

[Intéressant] A School in the Cloud and the Future of Learning

Professor Sugata Mitra is developing an entirely new approach to education, one that could dismantle a centuries-old way of teaching.

Origine : Wired Top Stories http://www.wired.com/business/2013/02/a-school-in-the-cloud-and-the-future-of-learning

[Intéressant] Amanda Palmer Wins TED

Ask attendees what they most remember about the TED 2013 conference, wrapping up Friday in Long Beach, and here's one of the most frequent answers you'll get: Amanda Palmer.

The former Dresden Dolls singer is the first to admit, as she does in her TED talk, above, that her punk cabaret music isn't for everyone. But Palmer did pluck some universally applicable lessons from her performance art career -- about encountering strangers, dealing with commercially-minded managers, and how to get people to pay for something they can get for nothing.

In short: don't make them, ask them.

The Dresden Doll's first album for a major label was considered a failure by the music business because…

Continue reading...

Origine : Mashable! http://mashable.com/2013/03/01/amanda-palmer-wins-ted/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

[Intéressant] Keen On… The Cloud: How Digital Technology Is Making Us More Human

The Pulitzer Prize winning technology journalist Matt Richtel is one of the New York Times’ crown jewels. But while Richtel works his Silicon Valley beat during the day, he has a much darker night-time profession. Richtel is also a fiction writer, the author of fantastically seductive techno-fictional novels such as Hooked and his latest book, The Cloud, released earlier this month.

In real life, Richtel is equally seductive – an impish guy who combines a tall wit with a highly sophisticated understanding of how technology, and particularly the Internet, is changing human beings. “I love telling stories,” he explains his passion for techno-fiction. And, as the illustrious New York Times journalist confessed to me, technology is making us more human by revealing what we really want (pornography over apple pie, he rightly points out). Matt Richtel is, of course, right. And I suspect that his novels, especially The Cloud, are far more profound explorations of technology’s impact on us than all the non-fictional books in Gladwell-land.

Origine : TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/26/keen-on-the-cloud-how-digital-technology-is-making-us-more-human/