We Make Money Not Art: Farmers have teamed up with scientists to create a farm where the cows choose when they want to be milked using automated booths. The farmer can even go on holiday and allow the animals to look after themselves. "The cows set their own agenda," said Neil Rowe, manager of Manor Farm in Oxfordshire. "It’s about autonomy, it’s about enrichment, it’s about stepping back and allowing the cows and …
Mossberg Says DRM Reaches Too Far
Walter Mossberg for WSJ: In some quarters of the Internet, the three most hated letters of the alphabet are DRM. They stand for Digital Rights Management, a set of technologies for limiting how people can use the music and video files they've purchased from legal downloading services. DRM is even being used to limit what you can do with the music you buy on physical CDs, or the TV shows you record with a TiVo or …
WiMax Is EZ In Oregon
BBC: Recent figures suggest that since 2000, the US has dropped from third to 16th among nations worldwide in terms of per capita broadband access. Studies suggest that 86% of households with income of more than $75,000 have broadband access. But the share is just 38% for those with an income of less than $30,000. Municipal WiMax hopes to make on-demand information affordable/available to all. Ironically, one of the …
Paranoia Will Destroy Ya
Lifehacker is justifiably concerned about random companies hosting personal, mission-critical information. Call me paranoid, but what if Gmail goes down, or Google decides to stop being “not evil”? What if angry project management trolls hack 37 Signals and record my every to-do, building a too-personal-for-comfort profile of my every day activities? What if del.icio.us disappears? What if Flickr, who has photos of …
Wi-Fi Spigot Opened
The Register: There is some welcome relief today for those people left wading through the remains of New Orleans - T-Mobile has announced it will offer free Wi-Fi access across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama until the end of the week, and "possibly beyond that if the situation warrants it". T-Mobile said in a statement: "The free service is intended for those who have been displaced from their homes or are …
Targeted TV Commercials Explained
BusinessWeek reports on the new wave of testing being done by cable companies to target specific ads to different people. A Q&A with Invidi Technologies CEO and President David Downey explains a little bit about how the technology will work. But I love what he says here: The hope is that consumers will actually want to opt in. If cable companies can earn more ad revenue, cable bills may stay low or even go lower. I'd …
