Hornswaggled

Bill Gates new think tank BGC3 has been denied trademark for this logo:

You can read the details here but they have appealed as of Jan 14th.  I would be suprised if Bill cant grease the wheels on this one.

Emphasis on Still.

An interesting article on removing work place perks in the startup culture.

My Take:

Any removal of a perk no matter how small may be taken personally and in turn speed up the process where one asks if this work is worth it.

Its too bad that no one mentions these unintended consequences during the meetings as the outcomes seem to usher in the finalization and brings the spark that ignites the exodus.

While keeping the sodas free may not have been a long term solution for turnover removing the sodas (name your perk) allows for the feeling that the company doesn’t care. I cant imagine a scenario where the perceived lack of care towards fellow employees benefits anyone, other than the short term bottom line.

REVOLUTION 9: MINUTE BY MINUTE
© David J. Coyle ( sourced from the web )

Remember, this list applies to “Revolution 9″ as it appears on track 12 of the Capitol “The Beatles” CD (disc 2). It does not include the “Can You Take Me Back?” track or the conversation between [George] Martin and [Derek] Taylor, which are hopefully easy to hear… Some of the sounds recur throughout the piece. I have tried to identify these at their first occurence, and alude to some as reference pointslater in the list. Otherwise, once such bits are depichered they are relatively easy to pick out as they recur. Ellipses (…) are used to mark passages of unintelligible phrases within an otherwise coherent bit of speech.

Revolution 9

Track time 8:13

• 0:00-0:15 Piano intro
• 0:02-0:15 “Number Nine” loop introduced
• 0:15 Sound effects faded in
• 0:21 Backwards mellotron
• 0:28 Orhestral loop (“A Day In The Life” overdubs? Strings going up scale)
• 0:44 Orchestra loop (different, with cymbal crash)
• 0:50 Various reversed orchestra. First audible speech (John, right channel)
• 1:00 Backwards mellotron
• 1:00-1:20 Intelligible speech (John, right): “They found a shortage of grain in Hartfordshire, and every one of them knew that as time went by, they’d get a little bit older and a little bit slower…factory work…five percent in the, in the uh, the district, they were intended to pay for…”
• 1:20 Backwards orchestra loop
• 1:35-1:48 Female laughter (left-to-right channel)
• 1:48 Baby like sounds Choir Intelligible speech (George, right): “Who was to know? Who was to know?”
• 1:58 Backwards Indian instruments (“morphed” from the baby sounds)
• 2:00-2:12 “Number nine” loop
• 2:12-2:20 Orchestra loop (Sibelius, “Symphony No. 7″ final chord)
• 2:14-2:17 Intelligible speech (John, right): “I informed him on the third night, unfortunately he was…”
• 2:22 George Martin: “Geoff [Emerick, Abbey Road engineer]… put the red light on…” (first appearance)
• 2:30-2:54 Miscellaneous crowd sounds (left)
• 2:33-2:50 Shouts by John (“Revolution 1″, take 18?): “Right!” (repeated eight times, last “right” is prolonged)
• 2:55 Glass breaks (right) George: “Foot!” (? or possibly “fook”?)
• 3:00 Audible speech (John/George, left)
• 3:02-3:15 Orchestra loop (Beethoven, “Fantasy for Piano, Orchestra, and Choir: Opus 80″) Car horns, traffic noise
• 3:17-3:20 Intelligible speech (John, right): “…fine(?) hand over his shoulder…”
• 3:25-3:35 Tape spools back
• 3:39-3:45 Intelligible speech (John/George, right): George: “…on heat with the situation…” John: “They are standing still.” George: “I found a telegram (?)”
• 3:50 Noises by John (take 18?) ”Number nine” loop Football loop, first appearance (right): “On the 30…” or ”Number 30…”
• 3:54-4:05 Intelligible speech (John/George, right): George: ”… a bit of farce(?) as the headmaster reported to…” John: “Who could tell what he was saying, his voice was slow and his (?) was high, and his eyes were low…”
• 4:05-4:18 John: “Hold it!”, crowd noises (right)
• 4:13-4:17 Intelligible speech (John): “…on fire, but his glasses were saved…(?)”
• 4:18-4:50 Various effects in a melange
• 4:50 Loud noise across channels
• 4:53-5:14 Intelligible speech (John, right): “So the wife called, and we better go to see a surgeon, but what
• with the prices and all, the prices have snow balled, it’s so absurd, yeah, no wonder they’re closed. So anyhow, he went to see the dentist instead who gave him a pair of teeth, which wasn’t any good at all. So instead of that, he joined the bloody navy and went to sea…”
• 4:56 George, right: “…there were nine of them…”
• 4:59-5:03 Tape spooling back Scream, (John, right)
• 5:04-5:25 Football chant (left-to-right): “Block that kick!” (first appearance)
• 5:30-5:36 Intelligible speech (John, right): “Here I sit in my broken chair, my wings are broken and so is my hair. I am not in the mood for…”
• 5:35-5:42 Crackling paper (fire?) Backwards choir loop
• 5:40-5:50 Orchestra loop (Sibelius) Various noises by John (take 18?)
• 5:46-5:50 Science-fiction effects, gunfire?
• 5:50-5:59 Intelligible speech (john, right): “The dogs were dogging, the cats were catting, the birds were birding, the fish were fishing…”
• 6:00-6:08 Melange of sound effects
• 6:07-6:13 Intelligible speech (George, right): “…only to find the nightwatchman, unaware of his presence in the building…”
• 6:11 John (right): “Onion soup…”
• 6:15-6:23 George Martin loop ”Number nine” loop Orchestra loop (Beethoven, Opus 80) Reversed choir loop
• 6:24-6:40 Intelligible speech (John/George, right): John: “Personality complex…industrial output…financial imbalance…the Watusi…the Twist…” George (left): “Eldorado”
• 6:32 George (right): “…pushing it between his shoulderblades…” Backwards piano loop (intro reversed?)
• 6:42 Marching band (left)
• 6:43-6:44 Intelligible speech (John): “Take this brother, may it serve you well…” Humming by Yoko Ono
• 6:47-7:45 Audible speech by Yoko
• 6:49 John: “What? What? Hmmmm…” (in response to Yoko?)
• 6:50-7:00 Radio static
• 7:00-7:30 Unidentified singing voice (beginning with “good fish in the kettle(?)… “Low mumbling by John
• 7:33-7:42 Backwards piano loop
• 7:43 Intelligible phrase (Yoko): “…if…you become naked.”
• 7:47-8:13 Football chant to fade (left-to-right): “Hold that line… block that kick…” And so, “Good Night”…

[Note: Althought the track is in stereo, it seems that the section between
6:47-7:45 is in mono or center-channel. John's comment at 6:43 seems
to mark this transition, much in the way that "The Wizard of Oz"
changes from black-and-white to color when Dorothy steps out of her house.
All of the sound effects from this section of the piece are audible in
both channels clearly.]

NOTE: This article was written by David J. Coyle.
It first appeared on the news group rec.music.beatles in February 1996 

© David J. Coyle

I am thinking about using Mturk to transcribe a podcast. I wanted to put it down to compe back to it later but if anyone has experience with this and would like to throw out some pointers feel free.

Tags: mturk, transcribing

This is pretty funny. Google Adwords is using a closed business, Wicked Bakery, to promote Google Adwords. You can see from the screen shots below or the live promotion here.

I was thinking about using Woothemes for a small cms project on 3dconstruction. I have not made any decisions yet on the final design or platform but if I end up going with Woo I will update this post with a full review.

If you are in the entertainment business that is.

This is a article worth reading.

Short and Sweet version, Just add this to the end of the video:

#t=0m56s

A bit longer explanation follows. This feature has been put for awhile now but I just recently started using it and is one that will come in handy: YouTube allows you to send visitors through links to a specific point in a video by appending a short tag to the end of a video’s URL. It took YouTube some time to add this functionality, especially when you consider Google Video introduced the same feature over two years ago. 

To specify a time, append a tag to the end of your video link with the following: “#t=1m15s”

Here’s an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47OmzqOnc9Q#t=1m31s 

YouTube also automatically detects when someone mentions a specific time in a video comment and adds a hyperlink to that point within the video. While YouTube is not always popular for the right reasons (see this now-famous comic) the service is still hugely popular. This feature enables users and researchers to specifically pinpoint the areas of interest within the video. 

It would also be nice if they had a feature to allow for the stop of the video at a certain point therefore allowing you to send a complete snip-it of a certain section.

Roughly twenty eight thousand one hundred videos have been silenced. Silence can show a lack of response that reveals something significant, such as disapproval or a lack of enthusiasm. This silence however is the response.

YouTube has had its copyright issues, that is nothing new.  The latest approach to appeasing copyright holders is to turn off the sound on the offending videos. These videos are automatically flagged by the automated systems and the sound is disabled. This automatic flagging that the copyright holders have demanded is creating new issues including recent news including girls singing Christmas carols and music labels ironically  flagging their own material.  This is going to get worse before it gets better. 

Think about the number: twenty eight thousand one hundred videos. That number includes many family birthday videos with music in the background, kids enjoying some snow and people generally celebrating and mourning life itself. 

Regardless of who is at fault here (RIAA & MPAA) the users are the ones that are getting hurt and YouTube is the one that will end up with the bad name.