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December 31, 2005

Typical & Boring

It didn’t properly register that there was a comments section on the blog and it didn’t occur to me that anyone would actually want to comment. When it did finally register I had a look.

One in particular stood out:

This site is so typical and boring.
Have a good life.

First of all I’d like to thank the reader for commenting.

You’ve doubled my readership at a stroke - because now I know that someone else apart from me is reading this blog.

Secondly, I’d like to address the comment.

After all it’s what they are for, and if I can improve the blog in any way then I ought to pay attention to reader feedback.

i) “Typical”. What is “typical” in a blog?

If I look at “typical” blogs they seem like they are mostly written by self-obsessed internet marketing wonks, techno geeks revelling in their geekery, and mid-life crisis types trying to convince the world they are still interesting.

Not to mention the much slicker blogs that are all about making money.

They are typical & boring.

Worse than that are the bloggers talking about bloggers talking about bloggers talking about bloggers etc.

The blogsopshere has been described as a “virtuous circle” – but from the outside it looks more like a daisy chain of butt-kissing, trackbacks and link-swapping in an attempt to build search engine prominence.

There is no advertising in this blog. I haven’t taken the opportunity to “monetise my blog”.

That would be typical & boring.

I leave that for my other 10,000 blogs and my army of underpaid and exploited workers back in my Indian “click farm”.

i) “Boring”.

I’m sorry you find this blog boring, I only write about stuff that I find interesting. If you don’t find it interesting then read a different blog I’m sure that there are many more that you prefer much more than this one.

Talking of links - if you have many links to blogs that are as typical & boring as this one then please send them to me.

For one thing I would have more to read and for another I wouldn’t have to write this blog – using RSS I could get someone else to do it for me.

I’d never have to write another blog entry again.

That would be typical & boring.

Finally, I’d like to thank you for your constructive comments on how I can make my blog less typical & boring.

Not.

You could have included suggestions for things to write about, links to blogs that you found less typical & boring than mine, a blog-writers style guide or a list of “10 things you should never do in a blog”, “how not to write a typical & boring blog”, you know the kind of thing.

I mean, come on, not one helpful suggestion - not even a link to Squidoo – how hard would that have been??

I don’t hear any suggestions how to “keep relevant” & “save work” by including huge amounts of RSS feeds into the blog.

If I did that I’d never have to write another blog entry again. Great!! A fully monetised automated blogging machine!!

That would be typical & boring.

Best of all you could have linked to your personal blog – which I am sure is excellent, concise, witty, well-designed and riding high in the Technorati lists – but for some reason you seem to have omitted a link.

I wonder why.

I wonder if your blog is as typical & boring as mine.

Anyway “ape” – I like to say “thanks” once again for all your constructive comments - I’m sure you’re going to have a great life trolling around the Internet.


December 17, 2005

against DRM ... again

So I bought a copy of the latest album by "Instituto Mexicano de Sonido" and it had this tiny little freebie promo CD with it.

I love promo freebies because you normally get all sorts of odd outtakes, tracks that almost made it onto the album and material that can best be described as "non-commercial" i.e. plenty of material for a chill out dj.

IMS01.jpg

I wanted to mix a track of this promo CD with something else so I popped it into the CD player.

That was a big mistake.

My CD players are cheap ones - I didn't know whether I'd take to CD DJ'ing so I dipped my toe in the water first - and although these players have nice big wheels on top to manipulate the CD the load mechanism is a pinch-roller front-loading kind-of thing.

When I stuck the little CD into the player it went in off-centre - the player didn't recognise that it had a CD in it and it refused to eject the non-existent CD.

Eventually I persuaded the CD to come out, but not after many minutes of cursing - I thought I'd have to dismantle the whole thing - and it didn't help that I'd had to dismantle the DVD player the day before to get a stuck rental DVD out of the player - the sticker on top had worked loose and jammed the DVD.

So I cursed and fumed and cursed some more for a (long) while amd eventually got the CD to eject by pressing another CD into the slot and triggering the mechanism. There was no pin-hole - so a paperclip would not have helped.

To get round the problem I popped the promo mini CD into my computer, popped a CDR into the other drive and made a copy of it - 20 minutes later I could mix the CD all I wanted.

A natural reaction in the circumstances - after all I wanted to play my music on my CD player but the format was wrong.

But - of course - I then considered what would have happened if the CD had been copy or DRM protected?

At best I might have not been able to copy the CD and listen to the music I had purchased on the CD player of my choice, but at worst I could have installed nasty spyware type DRM onto my computer which opened it up to all kinds of malware.

Luckily "Love Monk" records don't use DRM but the story could have ended quite differently.

Let's give a big hand to Love Monk records .. they might be small but they don't foist unwanted spyware onto their customers.

My major concern is that if DRM slowly spreads - eventually even the smaller companies will be forced to use it - and it's a small step from a-hole legislation that governs hardware to even more rules that govern content.

Imagine it being illegal to deliver content without DRM? Sounds crazy? Sure .... but so does the whole of the rest of the DRM story.

All I know is - if I buy a DRM protected product that I cannot play because my player doesn't support it - and I can't copy it - then someone has effectively stolen that content from me.

Today it didn't happen - but what about tomorrow?



The Mexican Wave

I've been listening to the fusion music coming out of Mexico for some time now.

I think it was that Fussible track "Odyssea" that first alerted me to the fact that something was going on.



Fussible - Odyssea



After that I discovered the NorTec Collective and eventually managed to get my hands on of a copy of "The Tijuana Sessions" - now known as "The Tijuana Sessions: Volume One".

That was quite a while ago - these days the Nortec Collective have been going for long enough that I have just had ordered "Tijuana Sessions Volume 3".

I think the NorTec website sums up their approach nicely:


Sampling intstrumental parts from dusty tapes of tambora and norteno band rehearsals & combining the use of electronics and dance music aesthetics with the hard driving sounds and rhythms of traditional mexican street music

It didn't hurt that Craig Richards & Lee Burridge put a copy of Panoptica's "And-L" on their Tyrant triple pack either ....

Oh yeah, there's been a buzz going around about the NorTec sound ....

Now, just arrived, the latest manifestation of the "Mexican Wave" is an album from Instituto Mexicano de Sonido" called "Mejico Magico" which has just been handed to me by my friendly postman.

One thing I do know, the Spanish custom of sending items "contra reembolso" - against renumeration - or what used to be called C.O.D. in my childhood - is vital if you live in the sticks.

I ordered mine from Pop Madrid and it arrived promptly. I paid the postman on the door - so quick and convenient - I have to travel miles to find a decent CD shop and I haven't bought a record in Spain in all the time I've been here ...

Imagine a album somewhere between big beat and hip-hop - more Freddy Fresh than Fatboy Slim - with a distinctly Mexican feel to it.

This interesting album comes with a nice freebie promo CD featuring a tune that sounds like a cross between "Rock Around the Clock" and "Norwegian Wood" along with a house-style dance stomper "Cha-Cha-Cha" that I decided I wanted to play out when I DJ.

It's one of those tiny little CD's - and what happened next leads to my next entry ....

December 15, 2005

Crazy Registration Verification

What is this? Can you read it? It's designed to stop automated robots registering on the site but this human being can't make head nor tail of it ....


mad_yahoo_rv.jpg

xnxa - xnka - xrlnka - wtf????

Who knows ... I even stood on my head and looked at it upside down to see if the programmers had got it wrong.

Remixing & Copyright

This, from Flickr made me LOL.

It reminded me of the time I wrote my first book and tried to "quote" something.

Everytime I did the lawyers said "oh no .. you have to get each excerpt licensed from the author or publishers"

What about "the 5%" rule I asked (all I wanted to do was start each chapter with a quote from a book I liked) - "oh no .. you have to get each excerpt licensed from the author or publishers" the lawyers said.

Right now I have an ongoing copyright violation complaint where someone on the net has re-formatted pieces of my work witthout permission or license and then used it as part of an "on-line training course".

I asked the lawyers whether there was a copyright violation and they said "oh no - it doesn't look like they have broken the 5% rule"

It's still ongoing .. there will be much more on this later .. the lawyers have only just started exchanging letters ...




Data Retention

From Spy Blog .. more on ISP Data Retention.

Guess what - they are going to keep our data for longer now - even if you are not a hacker, criminal or terrorist.

Who checks the integrity of the data? Who will be able to access it?

They should put the database on the web with SDK's and API's to allow anyone to query it.

Public information should be public knowledge.

No I don't think they will do it - unless there was a NuLabour rebranding ..

I know - lets call it Web 2.0 Open Government!!!

NEW GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCEMENT!!
Blair 2.0 - the next generation - coming to a p2p, blog-served, xml-enabled, rss-feeded, technorati-tagged webserver somewhere near you. (Unless we outsource it)

Just don't bother writing to your MP - OpenGov 2.0 will even VOTE for you by aggregating your personal tags - before telling you what YOU really think.

REGISTER YOUR VOTE!!
Fill in your name and address and we will decide how you will vote based on your (a) credit card rating, (b) your current folksonomy rating, (c) criminal record, (d) whether you are on any "watch list" or not, (e) whether someone arbitrary has decided you are a "subversive personality" or other "kind of risk" and (f) any other reason we haven't thought of yet.

Please click the "accept" button for our EULA.

Apparently it's called "The Wisdom of the Crowd"

Sorry .. but try telling German Jews in WWII about the "Wisdom of the Crowd" ... they might laugh at you .. or cry ..

Bah!! - Whoever we vote for the government still gets in!!




December 9, 2005

Cover Pops

Having spent a large amount of my childhood reading science fiction it was with wonder and delight that I found the Cover Pop website.

Imagine sitting at a table covered with thousands of science fiction magazines and being able to look at the cover of each one.

Thats what this site does - the science fiction cover explorer allows you to mouse over a very large number of magazine covers - showing a small thumbnail of each cover.

At the click of a mouse finger you get a larger image.

Way cool - it took me ages to find the cover of a magazine I still own - screengrab here.

Each of those tiny magazines you see behind the main picture have their own picture ...

Science Fiction cover explorer

It would have been quicker to head over to the Visco Project, a "visual catalogue of the cover art of the science fiction, fantasy, weird and horror fiction magazines from the early twentieth century to the present day", but not so much fun.

The Cover Pop website has many more coverpops like this, including the excellent MAD Magazine coverpop.

The man responsible for all this magazine cover inspired genius, Jim Bumgardner, is also responsible for MetaScope a screen saver which is "an interactive software toy that can search the Internet for pictures, and make millions of different screensavers".

It really is quite amazing to watch as you type a search phrase such as "dollar bill" into the screensaver and have it download 20 different images related to dollar bills - which are then promptly turned into a kaleidoscope type screensaver.

I really like it when clever people do clever things with computers and the web - seeing human beings in their playful and creative modes helps to restore my battered faith in human nature and intelligence.

December 8, 2005

Piracy (1)

I was Googling for the word "pirate" and this strange website came up which could generate my very own "pirate name".

I couldn't resist, so I filled in a simple questionaire ...

My pirate name is:
Black Morty Bonney
Skull & Crossbones
Like anyone confronted with the harshness of robbery on the high seas, you can be pessimistic at times. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!
Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.
When I realised I had found the the wrong type of pirate I made this instead ....
My WaReZ name is:
bYtE KiLL@ BoB
flag2.jpg
You download Open Source software just to throw it in the waste bin and you make ashtrays out of LINUX distros. Nothing pleases you more than owning 100Gb of software you never use - so you can trade it for another 100Gb of software you will never use.
Tip of the hat to: fidius.org - Thanks

December 4, 2005

Random Numbers

Casting around for a method of selecting random numbers I happened upon a site which uses atmospheric noise to generate truly random numbers.

Could be pretty useful when looking for that truly random WEP key - but for other uses - as the author notes:

I should probably note that while fetching the numbers via secure HTTP would protect them from being observed while in transit, anyone genuinely concerned with security should not trust me to generate their cryptographic keys.

However, the coolest way to generate random numbers MUST be to build your own device to use radioactive decay to generate the numbers using a geiger counter and a commercially available radioactive source .

I was almost shocked - hackers playing with geiger counters and radioactive sources etc etc.

Then I realised that I was at the website of John Walker, a founder of Autodesk, which is responsible for AutoCad .

Still ... I'm sure that if most people tried to purchase a "60 microcurie Jordan Nuclear Krypton-85 (85Kr) source capsule, model BB-0005" they would have the police, or worse, knocking on their door in no time.

60 microcurie Jordan Nuclear Krypton-85 (85Kr) source capsule, model BB-0005

Luckily he had one spare in his toolbox ....

December 2, 2005

Sony DRM & DMCA

According to this report out today from LOT 49 out today:

Researchers Ask for Exemption to DMCA Protection of Spyware

If the DMCA protects a company like Sony when they foist an unwanted, uninstallable spyware rootkit which subverts the basic security and integrity of the operating system while still allowing unwanted malware to run undiscovered then we have a real problem.

Sony should shorten their EULA: "YOU HAVE BEEN OWNED"





December 1, 2005

SONY DRM debacle

I've resisted commenting on this so far because everyone else is doing it so much better than me.

Now, in the light of the recent EFF DMCA report that suggests that DMCA rulemaking is failing consumers completely and the latest from Mark's sysinternals blog

That was two weeks ago and still there’s no uninstaller. I could write an uninstaller in an hour based on my own research of the software without access to the source code. They have source code and an existing uninstaller. I find the delay utterly inexcusable.

I have to ask the question:

If Mark writes an uninstaller "based on the research of the software without access to the source code" is he guilty of "circumventing copyright measures" as defined by the DMCA?