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E-mail me at david_isbister@hotmail.com
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Off-Topic/Unrelated
I'm going to try out Blogger for a while and see how it goes. Pitas doesn't allow comments, and it screws up if I put quotation marks in the post titles. Plus, Blogger lets me post photos, and has some cool tools that Pitas doesn't have. If I discover something lame about Blogger, I'll be back. For now, the address of my blog will be http://davidisbister.blogspot.com 02:18 p.m., Wednesday, October 13, 2004 Mean, but funny. If Drudge's latest "flash" is correct, then Dubya deserves more of this. 01:32 p.m., Wednesday, October 13, 2004 A group called "Voters Outreach" (fully-funded by the RNC) has been registering voters in Nevada, and then tearing up all the forms of all the democrats. Apparently, they have moved on the Oregon. Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats. "We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee. 10:30 a.m., Wednesday, October 13, 2004 By now, if you have been following John Kerry's campaign, and the vast consiracy to do anything to derail his momentum, you have probably heard about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a rabidly anti-Kerry group of Vietnam veterans who are still upset with John Kerry for speaking out against the Vietnam War. If you're a bit more of a political blog-head, then you've probably heard about the Sinclair Broadcast Group's plan to force their affiliates to air a rabidly anti-Kerry documentary two weeks before the election. Well, the bloggers have come through again, figuring out that Sinclair owns (through some flimsy financial smokescreens) a company called Jadoo Power. Guess who just got a fat contract to develop power systems for the US Special Operations Command? 04:56 p.m., Tuesday, October 12, 2004 Interviewed by Michael Krasny... 02:50 p.m., Tuesday, October 12, 2004 Matt Taibbi brings us the second movement in this season's "unrelenting symphony of horseshit." 11:59 a.m., Tuesday, October 12, 2004 This is not only sad, but truly disgusting in the context of never-ending giveaways to corporations and the rich. 11:51 a.m., Tuesday, October 12, 2004 Today the price of oil hit yet another new high: $53.70. And while I keep hearing that high oil prices are just an artifact of jitters over Iraq and that "fundamentals" suggest the price should be more like $35 or $40, I'm having an increasingly hard time buying this. Oil prices have been rising steadily for three consecutive years now, oil production capacity is barely increasing, and global supply is now a microscopic 1% above global demand. So what happens when global supply is 1% below global demand, which will probably happen sometime in late 2005 — or sooner if OPEC decides to start playing games or riots break out in Venezuela? That chart will stop increasing smoothly and will suddenly spike upward, that's what. And we'll look back fondly on the days of $50 oil. 11:39 a.m., Tuesday, October 12, 2004 That was the day that James Baker negotiated the terms for the debates. It was Mr. Baker's job to negotiate the 32-page debate agreement with Vernon Jordan, representing the Kerry camp, and by all accounts, the Bush campaign got almost everything it wanted. Yet as we now know, every Bush stipulation backfired, from the identically sized podiums that made the 5-foot-11 president look as if he needed a booster stool, to the flashing "Time's up!" lights that emphasized Mr. Kerry's uncharacteristic brevity and Mr. Bush's need to run out the clock by repeating stock phrases ad infinitum and ad absurdum. 12:06 p.m., Thursday, October 7, 2004 Served with a small bottle of champagne, Barclay Prime's cheesesteak is made of sliced Kobe beef, melted Taleggio cheese, shaved truffles, sauteed foie gras, caramelized onions and heirloom shaved tomatoes on a homemade brioche roll brushed with truffle butter and squirted with homemade mustard. I'm sorry, but that sounds gross. 03:36 p.m., Wednesday, October 6, 2004 The list of business professors who have signed on to this scathing open letter is staggering in its depth and weight. 01:03 p.m., Wednesday, October 6, 2004 The New York Press creates a tournament of political journo-jackasses for this election season. Hilarity ensues. 02:52 p.m., Tuesday, October 5, 2004 Bye bye Roy Moore... 03:12 p.m., Monday, October 4, 2004 Hahahaha... 01:14 p.m., Monday, October 4, 2004 After realizing how biased international IP law is toward the developed world, India has second thoughts about signing on to WIPO treaties. 03:18 p.m., Friday, October 1, 2004 "He doesn't," you say... Well, then, how come he doesn't go to church? 03:14 p.m., Friday, October 1, 2004 Andrew Orlowski from the Register talks to the UK record industry about some business models that don't involve suing customers. 01:26 p.m., Friday, October 1, 2004 Hugh Hewitt of the Weekly Standard is upset that Drudge's two-day "Orange Alert" didn't pick up any traction. How about some other stories that didn't get picked up in the last few days... 1. Seymour Hersh's book is out. 2. Farnaz Fassihi of the Wall Street Journal has been on the ground in Iraq, and is very frightened by what she sees. 3. Scalia admitted to being a swinger. 4. Mothers of dead soldiers can't get a lick of press 5. And finally, Tom DeLay is at the center of about a million ethics investigations. All I have to say about the worthless "Orange Kerry" story is "get in line." 04:49 p.m., Thursday, September 30, 2004 Wow. 11:41 p.m., Wednesday, September 29, 2004 Choice bit: DeLay also created children’s charities to cover his political activities. His Celebrations for Children, Inc. charity planned to host a variety of high-dollar events during this summer’s Republican convention in New York City. DeLay quickly cancelled the events after questions arose about how the donations would benefit children. For contributions ranging from $10,000 up to $500,000, donors could receive tickets to Broadway shows, participate in a golf tournament at an exclusive golf course and get access to a private suite for Members of Congress, Senators and Executive branch officials. Donors at the $500,000 level could dine with DeLay in a luxury suite before and after the convention. "DeLay Inc uses children’s charities as a front for political and illegal activities," said Morrison. 'This isn’t just unethical, it’s down right immoral." 01:43 p.m., Wednesday, September 29, 2004 Look what just showed up in my inbox... 
11:51 p.m., Tuesday, September 28, 2004
This interview had me chuckling all the way through. I must now go see "A Dirty Shame." 01:42 p.m., Monday, September 27, 2004 This is my favorite story from the last few weeks of the Daily Show, complete with some kook from the Club for Growth providing "balance." 11:46 a.m., Monday, September 27, 2004 At least, that is what the makers of the "trance vibrator" peripheral for Sega's awesome "music shooting" game Rez want you to think. All I know is that the LAST thing that turns my wife on is the slack-jawed stare that I get when I play videogames, and no amount of trance music and teledildonics is going to change that. Warning - Not very safe for work - no nudity or anything, but there are some colorful peripheral-n'-panties shots. 11:24 a.m., Monday, September 27, 2004 Hollywood. This is pretty out-of-control legislation. Not sure how it will be enforced, either. 04:51 p.m., Wednesday, September 22, 2004 Welcome to the No-Fact Zone! 03:24 p.m., Wednesday, September 22, 2004 E-Music is back online, and is selling actual un-DRM'd MP3s, for a subscription. Music is $0.25 per track (but you pay a subscription). Strangely, the last Shimmer Kids album (The Natural Riot) is available, and we will supposedly receive royalties from it if people download the MP3s. I guess this happens through Parasol (the label who released the record), but I'm not holding my breath. 02:56 p.m., Wednesday, September 22, 2004 A: We both hate the INDUCE Act. 01:36 p.m., Wednesday, September 22, 2004 Not "how do artists get paid?" It's the following: Forget every other consideration — even though they're fair and important considerations — and see if you can acknowledge that a world in which everyone has free access to every work of creativity in the world is a better world. Imagine your children could listen to any song ever created anywhere. What a blessing that would be! Great series of comments too... 01:54 p.m., Tuesday, September 21, 2004 It involves flattery, fake websites and a good old-fashioned staged con. 10:54 a.m., Tuesday, September 21, 2004 These guys built a Voice-Over-IP phone box and plunked it down in the middle of Burning Man. ...and the results were amazing and surprisingly emotional. People refused to believe it, then cried out with joy when it became real. In spite of problems, about 1600 calls were made all over the world. 10:33 a.m., Tuesday, September 21, 2004 This speech lays out, in plain and simple terms, a pretty great case for Kerry, based solely around Bush's handling of Iraq. 02:33 p.m., Monday, September 20, 2004 I searched CafePress, and nobody seemed to have made a t-shirt with the phrase (seen next to the driver booth on any Muni train) "Information gladly given but safety requires avoiding unnecessary conversation." Nobody, that is, until now. 01:09 p.m., Monday, September 20, 2004 This Sunday. Reason has an interview with the creator, David Simon. 03:17 p.m., Thursday, September 16, 2004 Thanks MeFi! 12:08 p.m., Wednesday, September 15, 2004 This was my favorite line about chickenhawk commentators in Michelle Goldberg's article about the American Film Renaissance Festival, the Right's "answer" to the recent spate of Bush-hating cinema. 09:48 a.m., Wednesday, September 15, 2004 A case study in "failing upward." 12:49 p.m., Wednesday, September 8, 2004 Conrad Black versus Richard Perle. While the report documents how Black spent company cash on himself, he resented it when Perle did the same. The report, again: Black "told [Hollinger executive Peter] Atkinson in an e-mail dated [Dec. 29, 2002] that he was 'well aware of what a trimmer and a sharper Richard is at times.' " Black wrote about Trireme. "As I suspected, there is a good deal of nest-feathering being conducted by Richard which I don't object to other than that there was some attempt to disguise it behind a good deal of dissembling and obfuscation." (In Black's book, it was OK to feather your nest but not OK to lie about it.) 01:53 p.m., Friday, September 3, 2004 The New Yorker explains. It's not that they are stupid, it's that they respond better to vague emotional appeals and heuristics. Oh wait - that means they're stupid. 11:13 a.m., Wednesday, September 1, 2004 By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location [in a Diebold voting machine], a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks. 09:56 a.m., Tuesday, August 31, 2004 XM radio has decided to discontinue their USB peripheral for PCs, after homebrew time-shifting software appeared. Welcome to the DRM future, where the latest gadgets have less features, and last year's models are fetching top dollar on eBay. Oh yeah, and innovation moves overseas. 08:55 p.m., Monday, August 30, 2004 Garrison Keillor lashes out! 03:51 p.m., Monday, August 30, 2004 Blacks out the following passage from an anti-Patriot Act filing by the ACLU: "The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent." 03:35 p.m., Monday, August 30, 2004 Finally, a hybrid sports car! The "Volta," from Toyota, will have a V6 engine coupled with two electric motors, giving 0-60 times at just over four seconds! 10:58 a.m., Monday, August 30, 2004 First, Robin sent me Top 10 Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics of All Time Then I found a couple great things over at MeFi: How to write a best selling fantasy novel Soapbox racing for grown-ups Study showing that allowing same-sex marriages in Scandinavia has led to more heterosexual marriage. 01:23 p.m., Thursday, August 26, 2004 This guy has created some awesome light fixtures and installations using LEDs. 03:30 p.m., Wednesday, August 25, 2004 That's "Holographic Versatile Disc," which supposedly can store "up to" one terabyte on a DVD-sized disc. What is it about websites that use the Courier font that makes me think their claims are bogus? 11:00 a.m., Wednesday, August 25, 2004 Planet of the Apes, re-imagined as a Twilight Zone episode. 11:51 a.m., Tuesday, August 24, 2004 Apparently (according to Kos): "John Hannah, a Libby deputy, has been 'turned' by the investigators and is singing like a canary." The question seems to now be whether the indictments will come before or after the election. 03:35 p.m., Monday, August 23, 2004 I call Alice Cooper a traitor - to rock and roll! 03:25 p.m., Monday, August 23, 2004 No, not Bush, it's Stephen Baldwin, recently-converted, after - everybody now - "the terrorist attacks on September 11th." Looking to promote an "edgier" (his words) form of Christianity with his new skateboarding video, "Livin' It" (with edgy lack of "g"), the creepiest Baldwin brother gave up his lucrative Skinemax "career." Skeptical? So was Stern - see the July 23rd show. 03:00 p.m., Monday, August 23, 2004 Well, according to the Internet Storm Center, it will be infected by worms before it even has time to download the security patches/. 01:50 p.m., Monday, August 23, 2004 Alan Keyes isn't exactly getting ringing endorsements from his fellow Republicans: “A lot of the mainline Republicans in our area would like to have seen somebody who isn’t so far right,” said state Sen. Dale Risinger, R-Peoria. “We’re going to support Alan Keyes and hope for the best.” 04:23 p.m., Friday, August 20, 2004 Great stuff. Of course, if the INDUCE act passes, this case will be irrelevant. 11:51 a.m., Thursday, August 19, 2004 Halstead may sound like a broken record, but his ideas remain worthy of serious consideration. 11:21 a.m., Tuesday, August 17, 2004 Sorry, hippies, it's for clearing clogged drains. 06:01 p.m., Monday, August 16, 2004 A $350,000 two-channel, 150W/channel amplifier, that's what! 11:20 a.m., Monday, August 16, 2004 This time G4/TechTV gives us 5 stars! 11:48 a.m., Friday, August 13, 2004 This thing makes those "fancy" Pioneer CD players look like toys. 04:35 p.m., Thursday, August 12, 2004 "Normal monkeys and people procrastinate - tend not to work very well when they have a lot of time to get the job done, and work better when the reward is nearer in time," Dr Richmond says. "The monkeys under the influence of the treatment don't procrastinate." The treatment consists of blocking an important brain chemical - dopamine. Great. Block their dopamine so they can never feel pleasure or satisfaction - they they'll work forever! 03:38 p.m., Thursday, August 12, 2004 This time Bush is taking his voter purge game to Latin America. 11:15 a.m., Thursday, August 12, 2004 Lots of insight here, including a look into the infighting between Al Qaeda and the Taliban. 04:40 p.m., Wednesday, August 11, 2004 I say cute... 04:35 p.m., Wednesday, August 11, 2004 From the sad-but-nevertheless-funny-as-long-as-it-doesn't-happen-to-me-or-anyone-I-know file. Bonus link - Wacky photos! 04:08 p.m., Wednesday, August 11, 2004 This is, in my opinion, a very fair look at the issue of copyright in the digital age, filtered through the following economic criteria: -Property rights and other elements of a regulatory regime for creative works should be regarded as instruments for allocating creative resources. Hence, existing copyright law should not be viewed as an absolute, inviolable set of rights to which either creators or consumers are entitled. -Revisions to copyright law should be made without regard to the vested interests of particular business and consumer groups. Instead, they should be assessed with regard to their consequences for efficiency in markets for creative works and other products. And, the third criteria, which, while simple, is often lost in the debate: -Property rights are not free. For a system of property rights to be accepted and upheld, the costs of establishing and enforcing that regime must not exceed the eventual benefits from it. PDF here 03:56 p.m., Wednesday, August 11, 2004 by Rep. Goss... Video here 01:15 p.m., Wednesday, August 11, 2004 Well, this chess game is, anyway. 02:09 p.m., Tuesday, August 10, 2004 Check out this hack. 10:05 a.m., Friday, August 6, 2004 Lots of sleazy stuff in here. For example: I'd like to know how many options Cheney owned, and what they were worth, at the end of 1997 - before the Dresser merger and the secret accounting change. But for some strange reason, Halliburton's 1998 proxy statement seems to be missing from the SEC's on-line data base. Go figure. ... Of course, I'd also like to know how Halliburton managed to escape a more serious legal slap on the wrist - despite what the SEC vaguely described as "lapses in the company’s conduct during the course of the Commission investigation." Maybe I'm too cynical, but I'm guessing those "lapses" systematically shredded any evidence that might have even remotely tied Cheney to the secret switch in accounting standards. 04:05 p.m., Wednesday, August 4, 2004 ... 11:02 a.m., Wednesday, August 4, 2004 Cheney seems to have been aware of what Halliburton was up to (how could he not have been?), as his lawyer would not answer pointed questioning along those lines: A lawyer for Cheney, Terrence O'Donnell, said that the vice president's "conduct as CEO of Halliburton was proper in all respects," adding that the SEC "investigated this matter very, very thoroughly and did not find any responsibility for nondisclosure at the board level or the CEO level." O'Donnell declined to answer a question as to whether Cheney had been aware of the effect of the accounting change on the company's profit. 10:15 a.m., Wednesday, August 4, 2004 Check out the photo - that's a 12" Powerbook G4 in the picture, dwarfing the new Panasonic R3. 04:47 p.m., Tuesday, August 3, 2004 What documents, you ask? The topics addressed in the named documents include information on how citizens can retrieve items that may have been confiscated by the government during an investigation. The documents that were to be removed and destroyed include: Civil and Criminal Forfeiture Procedure; Select Criminal Forfeiture Forms; Select Federal Asset Forfeiture Statutes; Asset forfeiture and money laundering resource directory; and Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA). As if forfeiture laws weren't punitive and complicated enough already... 04:45 p.m., Tuesday, August 3, 2004 Pimpin' the vote! 04:44 p.m., Tuesday, August 3, 2004 Imagine how much companies could save from outsourcing THESE guys... 10:13 a.m., Friday, July 30, 2004 Chris Matthews, at the end of the interview: "You have a stunningly developed political mind, and I fear you." 03:34 p.m., Thursday, July 29, 2004 It's ALL a big effin' joke to these people. 02:26 p.m., Thursday, July 29, 2004 From the probably-too-unreliable Capitol Hill Blue. Juicy bits: President George W. Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue has learned. ... [Bush's psychiatrist] prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay. “Keep those motherfuckers away from me,” he screamed at an aide backstage. “If you can’t, I’ll find someone who can.” ... One long-time GOP political consultant who – for obvious reasons – asked not to be identified said he is advising his Republican Congressional candidates to keep their distance from Bush. “We have to face the very real possibility that the President of the United States is loony tunes,” he says sadly. “That’s not good for my candidates, it’s not good for the party and it’s certainly not good for the country.” 04:25 p.m., Wednesday, July 28, 2004 The ACLU imagines what pizza ordering will look like if Bush wins another term. 04:07 p.m., Monday, July 26, 2004 No agenda here... No siree! 10:20 a.m., Thursday, July 22, 2004 Why you can't afford a house? Are you asking these questions? Billmon takes a close look at real wages. 01:32 p.m., Wednesday, July 21, 2004 Originally posted at bainst.com, this video overwhelmed the poor guy's bandwidth limit. Luckily, metaknet (link above) stepped in to mirror it. Watch twin Voldos from Soul Caliber dance together in sexy sychronicity. Well, that mirror is dead too. If you want a copy, IM me 11:46 a.m., Monday, July 19, 2004 Chiquita continues on its evil path, considering adding "other flavors" to its bananas. The only thing that would make this eviler is if they used genetic modification (which they don't, in this case). Warning - Heinous Marketroid-Speak Alert! Marketing analyst Gary Stibel, another former P&G executive who now runs the New England Consulting Group in Westport, Conn., lauded Aguirre's aggressive focus on innovation. "In a business that hasn't changed for thousands of years, he is aggressively attacking every aspect and will do more for the banana category in the next five years than we have seen in our lifetime," Stibel said. "Successful marketing is about changing the entire experience for consumers in new and unexpected ways, and Aguirre is trying to change the entire banana experience from a mundane category to one of excitement and adventure." Stibel said not all of Aguirre's ideas may succeed, but not all of them have to succeed. "He is pursuing multiple routes aggressively, and it only takes a few good ideas to reinvent the banana in the minds of consumers," he said. "What he is doing will be good for the whole industry. It just won't happen overnight." 04:23 p.m., Thursday, July 1, 2004 We played at Bottom of the Hill last night. The whole show (recorded off the sound board) is in my briefcase. Since Josh's guitar amp is so loud, not much of it ended up in the PA, which is why not much of it ended up getting recorded. This means that, for once, the other instruments can be heard loud and clear, warts and all. 04:20 p.m., Thursday, July 1, 2004 Legendary comic book artist John Byrne has a new webtoon up. It loads extremely slowly, but looks promising. 10:37 a.m., Monday, June 28, 2004 It's Hatebeak, of course! (thanks, BoingBoing) 04:31 p.m., Thursday, June 24, 2004 If this law passes, the law will change from requiring "substantial non-infringing purposes" for electronics devices, to requiring no substantial infringing purpose for a device. Under this proposal, everything from copy machines, to iPods, to FTP could be declared illegal. 02:37 p.m., Thursday, June 24, 2004 Here are two tracks from our upcoming album, Sunset Homes: One is a stripped-down track called "Friends and Enemies," in which Josh takes a turn at the piano. The other is a straight-up rock song called "Untitled" that was written in the last minute, at the recording "studio" (we call it "The Hole"). I play on neither track (though I play on most of the rest of the album). 04:27 p.m., Wednesday, June 23, 2004 A number of "think tanks" have sprung up in recent days, decrying the open source movement for various reasons... Why are all these think tanks so down on Open Source? Well, the Small Business Survival Committee is concerned that using open source will expose small business to the risk of lawsuits. Citizens Against Government Waste is concerned that the Government might waste money on Open Source. Defenders of Property Rights is concerned that Open Source might be a threat to intellectual property rights. However, I was able to detect a common theme to all their criticism. They all seem to be funded by Microsoft. 10:02 a.m., Wednesday, June 23, 2004 A whole gaggle of electronics, computing, and networking companies have given their support to changing the DMCA to remove some of the anti-circumvention provisions. 09:55 a.m., Tuesday, June 22, 2004 FERC continues its disgusting treatment of California. This is especially evil given the release of the "Enron Tapes" over the last couple of weeks. 11:46 a.m., Friday, June 18, 2004 Then we all get prescriptions for anti-depressants (from some of Bush's biggest campaign donors)! What a fucking nightmare! 11:35 a.m., Friday, June 18, 2004 We'll see if this happens. In the meantime, here's a letter I wrote to the author of this review of Larry Lessig's book. ---------- Hi there - I read your review of Larry Lessig's book. It seems as though you didn't actually read the book, but read the RIAA's REACTION to the book. Since you seem to have their argument down pat, perhaps I can educate you a bit about approaches to copyright which are not so heavily-weighted toward the copyright owners. You write "The owner of a work has the exclusive right to authorize how it may be used." Yes, you qualify that a bit in your next paragraph, but you don't seem to understand - WE, as a democracy, decide what level of control over a work an artist (or, in most cases, a PUBLISHER) has over his or her work. One of the balances we have to prevent too much control over a work is called "Fair Use." Another is limiting the time before copyright expires. A ten-year limit (which you call "laughable" without explaining why this is unreasonable) seems pretty reasonable to me, as a huge majority of the profits made off of copyrighted material are made in the first decade. More importantly, what you don't seem to understand is all of the potential upside (cultural and financial) of limited copyright and compulsory licensing, or the huge downside of infinite control over copyrighted works by the publishers (and the Catch-22 of the DMCA which effectively gives them this control and destroys fair use rights). First, the potential upside: 1. Many works that are somewhat older, but have not been around 70 YEARS AFTER THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR (THIS isn't unreasonable?) have slipped into legal limbo, with no active publishers, and yet still not in the public domain. There are many services which would love to aggregate this content but are prevented from doing so. Compulsory licensing/copyright renewal (nominal renewal fee every ten years or so) would allow such useful services to exist without harming authors. 2. None of the legal download services can hold a candle to the breadth of their illegal counterparts. Instead of decrying this, we should harness it. Compulsory licensing, or Lessig's "bizarre, unworkable" system for a small broadband fee or tax (kind-of like in Canada - not exactly a lawless dystopia) could compensate studios in an ASCAP fashion, while allowing people to provide the biggest content library that the world has ever seen (at no charge to the studios). It would also enable countless new business models, as it would eliminate the need to negotiate with EVERY SINGLE copyright holder (not just the "big three") in order to add their content into a service. If you would like examples of these models, I'd be happy to share them with you, once you sign an NDA (just kidding). 3. You may not be a fan of "sampling," but many people are. This is an art form that was declared practically illegal before it even had a chance to get off the ground. Compulsory licensing would allow for sampling without making it only affordable to the biggest, richest musicians. Besides, at this point in human history, any musician that claims to be making "original" music is either kidding themselves or making extremely avant-garde music. And now on to the downside of infinite control: 1. The DMCA destroys fair use rights, plain and simple. If you are not allowed to hack into "protected" content at all, how are you supposed to get fair use rights? This contradiction in the law needs to be resolved ASAP, as it is very serious. 2. Electronics manufacturers are being forced to create products which adhere to all of these truly "bizarre, unworkable" standards that are being set by Hollywood and its lobbyists. None of which has actually worked to do anything other than make older products more attractive. Do we want to create a "flea market economy" for consumer electronics? Do we really think that products with less functionality will somehow be MORE attractive to consumers? Do we really think that we should be burdening our products with expensive, easily-defeated "features" that no consumer is asking for? This sounds more like a coporate welfare program for well-heeled campaign donors than good public policy. If this all sounds like an annoying "slippery slope" argument - let me assure you it is very real. As an electrical engineer, I have recently run up against two concrete examples where current law and "digital rights management" schemes have forced my company to either create worse products than we could have, or, in one case, to abandon a product entirely. 3. Absent truly-"unworkable" global standards, all of this hand-wringing will amount to nothing. As much as copyright owners equate copyright infringement with "stealing," it is not stealing. It may not be morally ok, but it is not the same thing as stealing. It's in some fractal moral dimension between sharing and stealing. Ultimately, all of this is unenforcable unless copyright owners can convince the parents of the USA that they should send their sons and daughters to fight and die so that other countries can't "steal our ideas." Sounds like a tough sell to me. Finding a balance in copyright and patent law is what keeps the wheels of progress and culture turning. Too much control over content and ideas by the "originators" can be just as damaging as rampant infringement. I hope that I've helped you to see the other side of this story - although if Larry Lessig didn't get through to you with his book, perhaps this small email has little hope. ---------- 09:50 a.m., Friday, June 18, 2004 This bill could potentially give us back some fair use rights. 04:31 p.m., Thursday, June 17, 2004 This is mostly stuff I've heard before, but Neal wraps it up in a pissed-off gonzo rant against dubya and his goofy Christian buddies. 09:52 a.m., Thursday, June 17, 2004 This is a real product. It look like someone grafted a CD player onto the back of a star destroyer. And then covered it in ass. 11:49 a.m., Wednesday, June 16, 2004 The Beeb has digitized the goals of the Euro 2004 football (soccer) tournament. Now you can watch the goals as if you had scored them in your favorite console football videogame. 03:39 p.m., Tuesday, June 15, 2004 The United States launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi leaders during the early days of the war last year than has previously been acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties, according to senior military and intelligence officials. Only a few of the 50 airstrikes have been described in public. All were unsuccessful, and many, including the two well-known raids on Saddam Hussein and his sons, appear to have been undercut by poor intelligence, current and former government officials said. 03:15 p.m., Tuesday, June 15, 2004 Finally, with OSX (and XP, apparently), real-time computer-based effects "pedals" are possible. 03:24 p.m., Monday, June 14, 2004 Sony has the GPS receiver for you! 02:08 p.m., Friday, June 11, 2004 Gizmodo has some cabling that will help you dispose of your income, including a $6700 power cord, and an 8-foot speaker cable for $32,000. For that money, these cables better come shipped wrapped around a pile of hookers and blow. 02:04 p.m., Friday, June 11, 2004 One example: Supercharged! teaches the basics of electromagnetism by enlisting students to navigate a spaceship that acts like a charged particle through electric and magnetic fields. MIT physics students who played Supercharged! did 20 percent better on subsequent tests than students who did not play the game. 10:34 a.m., Friday, June 11, 2004 Let him smoke doobs before the game! 09:43 a.m., Friday, June 11, 2004 Peter Bagge, whose South-Parkian take on the war (all extremists are lame) seemed a little cynical at the time, admits what a lot of us should admit - that he wishes he had "done more" to prevent the war in Iraq. Cynicism about protestors' motivations and tactics is an easy way to avoid action. I'm as guilty as the next person of this laziness, so this cartoon really hit home for me. 10:53 a.m., Wednesday, June 9, 2004 Funny you ask. Apparently, with the help of some (mostly Republican) congressmen, he's been busy crowning himself as some sort of messiah/emporer. First, we're shown a rabbi blowing a ram's horn. Most Jews would hold off on this until the High Holy Days, but it probably counts if the Moshiach shows up in a federal office building at taxpayer expense. Then we see the man of the hour, Moon, chilling at a table at the Dirksen in a tuxedo, soaking all this up. He claps. He's having a ball. Cut to the ritual. Eyes downcast, a man identified as Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) is bringing a crown, atop a velvety purple cushion, to a figure who stands waiting austerely with his wife. Now Moon is wearing robes that Louis XIV would have appreciated. All of this has quickly been spliced into a promo reel by Moon's movement, which implies to its followers that the U.S. Congress itself has crowned the Washington Times owner. 09:57 a.m., Wednesday, June 9, 2004 CA Senators demand immediate $8,900,000,000 refund. 04:54 p.m., Tuesday, June 8, 2004 Of course, the coolest song part ever is exactly what you think it is. 01:41 p.m., Tuesday, June 8, 2004 Great news for my company. There is a huge amount of competition in this space, so this is some nice recognition. 10:01 a.m., Tuesday, June 8, 2004 There is a bunch of information packed into these pages, in an easy-to-read, dynamic format. 03:54 p.m., Monday, June 7, 2004 Still, he can't resist a bitchy little anti-Kerry barb at the end. Guess he's still smarting from getting conned by Chalabi. 03:44 p.m., Monday, June 7, 2004 Lots of juicy stuff in this article. Example: On January 27, 1998, Chalabi met in London with Scott Ritter, who was then working as a liaison for the U.N. program. ... “I should have asked him what he could give me,” Ritter said. “Instead, I let him ask me, ‘What do you need?’” The result, he said, was that “we made the biggest mistake in the intelligence business: we identified all of our gaps.” Over the next several hours, Ritter said, he outlined most of the U.N. inspectors’ capabilities and theories, telling Chalabi how they had searched for underground bunkers with ground-penetrating radar. He also told Chalabi of his suspicion that Saddam may have had mobile chemical- or biological-weapons laboratories, which would explain why investigators hadn’t been able to find them. “We made that up!” Ritter said. “We told Chalabi, and, lo and behold, he’s fabricated a source for the mobile labs.” 10:05 a.m., Monday, June 7, 2004 For real. "Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and wouldn't hear of it," says an aide. "That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying 'that's it George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now." 04:30 p.m., Friday, June 4, 2004 Bye bye Creed! 01:43 p.m., Friday, June 4, 2004 Lets talk about the real world for a moment. We had been discussing it earlier, and I…I wanted to bring this up to you earlier about the real world, and this is I guess as good a time as any. I don’t really know to put this, so I’ll be blunt. We broke it. Please don’t be mad. I know we were supposed to bequeath to the next generation a world better than the one we were handed. So, sorry. I don’t know if you’ve been following the news lately, but it just kinda got away from us. Somewhere between the gold rush of easy internet profits and an arrogant sense of endless empire, we heard kind of a pinging noise, and uh, then the damn thing just died on us. So I apologize. But here’s the good news. You fix this thing, you’re the next greatest generation, people. You do this—and I believe you can—you win this war on terror, and Tom Brokaw’s kissing your ass from here to Tikrit, let me tell ya. And even if you don’t, you’re not gonna have much trouble surpassing my generation. If you end up getting your picture taken next to a naked guy pile of enemy prisoners and don’t give the thumbs up you’ve outdid us. We declared war on terror. We declared war on terror—it’s not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I’m sure we’ll take on that bastard ennui. But obviously that’s the world. What about your lives? What piece of wisdom can I impart to you about my journey that will somehow ease your transition from college back to your parents' basement? I know some of you are nostalgic today and filled with excitement and perhaps uncertainty at what the future holds. I know six of you are trying to figure out how to make a bong out of your caps. I believe you are members of Psi U. Hey that did work, thank you for the reference. 11:15 a.m., Friday, June 4, 2004 All the math I've read on the subject says that this kind of key exchange is 100% secure, but the paranoid skeptic in me thinks that the NSA knows how to snoop this stuff already (or, they've added some kind of backdoor like they've done before.) 04:07 p.m., Thursday, June 3, 2004 At a time when 12-year old girls are being arrested for harboring an MP3 file of their favorite TV show's theme tune, and the RIAA dons paramilitary outfits to terrorize street vendors, this seems to be an unfashionably optimistic view. But as Griffin explained in a lengthy interview with us, flat fee pricing will eventually prevail, forcing the industry to the table. Why? Because the pigopolists will realize that they'll make more money out of a flat fee model than by trying to force the world - particularly developing countries - to buy expensive content under lock and key. ... By promising to play nice, and building DRM and TCPA technologies, the computer industry is simply making come-hither noises that the rights holders want to hear. "When I was 14, I told girls I loved them to sleep with them too. It was a fiction. Steve Jobs just leaves a little money on the table," he says. "These theoretical notions of control run headlong into the real historical experience." 10:12 a.m., Thursday, June 3, 2004 "They're f------g taking all the money back from you guys?" complains an Enron employee on the tapes. "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?" "Yeah, grandma Millie, man" "Yeah, now she wants her f------g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a------ for f------g $250 a megawatt hour." 09:49 a.m., Wednesday, June 2, 2004 Will this be as good as "Dogtown and Z-Boys?" 01:53 p.m., Tuesday, June 1, 2004 WHAT IS THE STRANGEST NOTE YOU RECEIVED? Garth Jennnings (Hammer? Tongs? Your guess is as good as mine), sent me a note once that said, “When Zaphod first comes out of the temple and is approached by well wishers, the banana alien on the mole-horse needs to replace the multi-headed groupie.” You just don’t get notes like this every day. 02:33 p.m., Friday, May 28, 2004 These figures paint a pretty bright picture for Biodiesel. Biodiesel+Turbochargers+Hybrid engines = The future of the automobile, IMHO. Plus, wouldn't the algae in this system also produce oxygen? 01:48 p.m., Friday, May 28, 2004 I read this book a couple years ago, when Josh was kind enough to lend me his copy, and I was blown away by the scope of thinking behind this book. Robinson definitely traffics in archetypes for his characters, but the richness of their interpersonal and political interactions is what makes the book feel true. This book should be required reading for ANYONE involved in the space program. 10:29 a.m., Friday, May 28, 2004 Ironically, the giant F-150 fares much, much worse. 10:24 a.m., Friday, May 28, 2004 (again) 03:03 p.m., Wednesday, May 26, 2004 According to Drudge, that is. Doesn't sound "unhinged" to my ears. RealMedia Link 03:00 p.m., Wednesday, May 26, 2004 From the "not fucking getting it" department... 03:12 p.m., Sunday, May 23, 2004 There's something awesome about a product that looks like this which can play MP3 CDs. 09:57 a.m., Friday, May 21, 2004 There's something awesome about a product that looks like this which can play MP3 CDs. 09:57 a.m., Friday, May 21, 2004 Read how special effects were created before the age of the server farm. 09:49 a.m., Friday, May 21, 2004 Pelosi lashes out... 03:13 p.m., Thursday, May 20, 2004 Great stuff. Any one of these items is a thousand times more inspiring than "we've got to fix medicare" or whatever stupid focus-grouped crap the democrats seem to come up with every four years. 01:12 p.m., Tuesday, May 18, 2004 Just one more reason to ditch this scary team of promise-keepers come November. 10:36 a.m., Tuesday, May 18, 2004 There’s just no explaining it. It’s not a damn fuzzbox, it’s not a tube-amp simulator, and it’s not the slightest bit like anything else you’ve ever seen / heard. Think of the TX-1 Agonizer as a magical 1965-era industrial-music sonic reducer. It screws everything down to a nice, crunchy sonic pureč with aluminum shavings and broken glass mixed in. Yum. Please understand, it’s not a nice, sweet, well-behaved pussy-pussy “vintage tone” effect. You simply can’t get a simulation of a Fender Super Reverb out of this horrible yellow box. Trust us. If you're another one of those little obedient, cowardly, sniveling "tone lovers", the TX-1 is not for you to snivel over, so don't buy one. And if you worship METALLICA, perhaps you should buy some nice pink fairy wings instead of a TX-1. 11:06 a.m., Monday, May 17, 2004 I wonder if my aunts will do this. 09:32 a.m., Monday, May 17, 2004 Maybe I'm too partial to this stuff, but it is interesting. 09:29 a.m., Monday, May 17, 2004 Moral? Never use an escrow service with EBay. Or, never try and scam a nerd. 10:12 a.m., Friday, May 14, 2004 This is very cool, but also a bit scary: This is a virus that can be spread by having sex, just like HIV (although if it works, that could be a good thing). It's also possible that HIV and the therapeutic virus could mutate around each other and recombine to make an altogether new virus. 04:05 p.m., Thursday, May 13, 2004 Archives |
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