Latest edition of a classic YouTube video by Karl Finch, Scott McLeod and Jeff Brennan.
Thanks to Gerard for the link.
Daily Archives: January 8, 2009
Amazing — a really neat application from Microsoft
Microsoft Research has come up with an ingenious PC application called Songsmith.
Just open up Songsmith, choose from one of thirty different musical styles, and press record. Sing whatever you like – a birthday song for Mom, a love song for that special someone (they’ll be impressed that you wrote a song for them!), or maybe just try playing with your favorite pop songs. As soon as you press “stop”, Songsmith will generate musical accompaniment to match your voice, and play back your song for you. It’s that simple.
Robert Scoble was given a demo by the developers in his Vegas hotel room.
The economics of phishing
Conventional wisdom is that phishing represents easy money. In this paper we examine the economics that underly the phenomenon, and find a very different picture. Phishing is a classic example of tragedy of the commons, where there is open access to a resource that has limited ability to regenerate. Since each phisher independently seeks to maximize his return, the resource is over-grazed and yields far less than it is capable of. The situation stabilizes only when the average phisher is making only as much as he gives up in opportunity cost.
From “A Profitless Endeavor: Phishing as Tragedy of the Commons” by Cormac Herley and Dinei Florencio of Microsoft Research.