links for 2008-11-28
Saturday 29 November 2008-
Merci Ă Jan Krause pour ce tuyeau : “The goal of this project is to provide information about how various pieces of software (e.g. operating systems, DBMS and others) sort textual data, in the form of easy-to-read charts. The project aims to help developers in writing portable applications which have to deal with linguistic sorting, as well as to migrate between various operating systems and DBMSs more easily. We'll also be collecting links to other projects aiming to solve migration or portability problems related to linguistic sorting and searching.[…]”
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“[…] many grandparents find that the Web cam eases the transition during in-person visits, when grandchildren may refuse to sit on their laps or may reject their hugs because they do not recognize them. […]Internet companies are also promoting “video chat” as an enhancement to standard instant-messaging and Internet phone services. Google […]introduced video capability for Gmail this month.[…]Sherry Turkle, a psychologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, worries that ever-more-real virtual encounters (holograms may be next) could make us forget what we are missing in the case of a grandchild: the smell of a grandmother’s cooking, the warmth of an embrace. In interviews, older grandchildren who video chat with grandparents say they visit them less, feeling that they have already “seen” them. “It’s important that we not start to equate what the technology can deliver with what we can deliver to each other without the technology,” Ms. Turkle said[…]”
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“[…]Atlantic, a unit of Warner Music Group, says it has reached a milestone that no other major record label has hit: more than half of its music sales in the United States are now from digital products, like downloads on iTunes and ring tones for cellphones. […]Ever since 1999, when the popular file-swapping service Napster was created, the music industry’s fate has been closely watched by other media companies — television, film and print publications like newspapers — whose traditional businesses are also under siege […] This performance is sharply at odds with the trends in the music industry over all, where data show that sales of compact discs still account for more than two-thirds of music sales. Forrester Research does not expect digital music to reach 50 percent of the overall pie until 2011.[…]”
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