[Via Stellar Interesting's faves]

A couple of his selections are spurious, I think. For example, it's true that referring to a group of options of which you can only activate one as 'radio buttons' may be archaic, but how many end users even use that term for those controls? I think they mostly know what control behaviour they signify, which is far more important for all of us, young and old alike.

Similarly with some of the others: it may be that an icon of a screen with 'rabbit ears' is referring to a dying bit of technology, but the form still distinguishes it nicely from an icon for a computer display. I don't think that replacing the TV set icon with, say, the letters 'TV' would be much of a step forward.

I'm sure that 30 years from now several of the icons listed will have been transformed or shifted in their meaning, but I wouldn't like to bet which ones. I think a number of them will stick around until the underlying concepts have been rendered obsolete. Perhaps one day we won't ever cut/copy/paste so we won't need all those clipboard-and-scissors icon sets. Not any time soon, though.

[Via delicious.com/Qwghlm]

We all break laws. Every day, millions of people jaywalk, download music, and drive above the speed limit. Some laws are obscure, others are inconvenient, and others are just fun to break.

There are millions of cover songs on YouTube, with around 12,000 new covers uploaded in the last 24 hours. Nearly 40,000 people covered "Rolling in the Deep," 11,000 took on "Pumped Up Kicks," 6,000 were inspired by "Somebody That I Used to Know."

Until recently, all but a sliver were illegal, considered infringement under current copyright law. Nearly all were non-commercial, created out of love by fans of the source material, with no negative impact on the market value of the original.

This is creativity criminalized, quite possibly the most popular creative act that's against the law. [...]

Baio reports that YouTube negotiated a blanket license with the National Music Publishers Association last year that potentially covers the rights held by thousands of publishers. Unfortunately, as the NMPA doesn't publish a list of which publishers and songs are covered the existence of the agreement it is of no real help to an amateur musician who would like to protect themselves by ensuring that they stick to tracks covered by the agreement.¹

Basically, a user has to decide if they're willing to upload their performance and risk losing their YouTube account if they're branded a copyright infringer once too often. Which is ridiculous, but (IMHO) not just the fault of the music industry. Presumably YouTube know which publishers and songs are covered by the NMPA agreement: once their software identifies an upload as a cover version, presumably it could flag up for the user that their track doesn't appear to be covered by the NMPA license and give them a chance to take it down immediately or confirm that they hold some form of license. But that would put YouTube in a position where they might share liability with the user if it turned out they didn't hold a license, so it's much better not to ask too closely about the tracks being uploaded, keep everyone in the dark and leave it all on the user if the publishers take exception to what's been uploaded.

Ridiculous.

1. If they even know the agreement exists. Had you ever heard of it before Andy Baio mentioned it? I know I hadn't.

[Via MetaFilter]

1. Though not as much as I did a certain distinctly cartoonish Loki/Hulk meetup in the film. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about.

[Via More Words, Deeper Hole]

1. Yes, they are part of LucasFilm.
2. Be sure to keep an eye on the figure recording the speed the booster is going at. Not so much for the rather impressive peak figure it reaches, but for how suddenly the SRB sheds speed on the way down at around the 6 minute mark.

[Via jwz]

[Via Waxy.org/links]

The important thing to take away from the Avengers is that the studios have an example to point to that shows that having five movie prologues that lead up to the eventual Big group movie totally works as an approach.

Roll on the Machine Man, Captain Marvel, Elsa Bloodstone: Monster Hunter, Boom Boom and Captain ☠☠☠☠ movies that lead into the inevitable Nextwave movie.

1. It's not that I think this will ever happen. Not even that I think it would work out very well for Marvel Disney if ever it did come to pass. But I'd dearly love to live in a reality where someone would be willing to give that project a try.