2002/8/31
I'm not making this up: Some Dutch students have written a VST plug-in which synthesizes Tibetan throat singing. I'm not making this up. Named Delay Lama, it uses formant synthesis, is MIDI controllable (with the pitchbender controlling vowel sound) and sounds uncannily lifelike. And if that wasn't enough, it draws an animated Tibetan monk, lip-synched with the audio, in the GUI. Best of all, Delay Lama is free (though donations to a Tibetan charity are encouraged).
I'm Wayne Kerr, and if there's one thing I hate... it's Bryan Adams songs being played on PA systems at railway stations. There should be a law against ubiquitous performance of Bryan Adams in public places (perhaps under the Geneva Convention, if we're still signatories to that oh-so-September-10 piece of paper, that is). I was subjected to Everything I Do I Do It For You whilst waiting for the train home this evening. That braying, jeans-too-tight vocal, and that moose-mating-call guitar riff were still looping in my head when I got off the train. Not a pleasant experience.
2002/8/30
Big Tick Audio have some pretty doovy-looking VST instruments, including a funky-sounding (and free) Clavinet emulator and the pretty impressive-sounding Angelina, a "formant synthesizer" which makes vocal-sounding pad sounds. Unfortunately, there's no Mac version of the latter yet.
Yes! Warren Ellis (the Transmetropolitan one, not the Dirty Three one) has a blog. It seems to be mostly a scrapbook of fringe news and scientific tidbits. (via bOING bOING)
Rumour has it that Morrissey is coming out of retirement to play at Australian teenage mookfest Livid. And this is just after I bought my ticket for the separate Mogwai show. Wonder if there's any chance of Moz doing a separate gig.
2002/8/29
A man in the US is facing 3 years in prison for dissecting his daughter's guinea pig on September 13, 2001. Benny Zavala claims that he believed that the guinea pig was a camera-equipped robot placed in his home by government agents. (via rotten.com)
Sleep researchers in Toronto turn brainwaves into "music", which, when listens to by the person whose brainwaves were used, induces sleep. They believe that they can use similar techniques to induce other states. It sounds like it works on a similar principle to "brainwave machines", only customised to the individual brainwaves of the user.
"Even the diseased brain has such enormous reserves that we can use the brain activity, even from a diseased brain, to heal it," he says. An anti-anxiety response, for example, can be produced even in someone who is seriously impaired by reproducing sounds that stimulate relaxation.
(via Slashdot)
2002/8/28
An article on the rise of blogging in Iran, and how a young generation of web-savvy reformists is leapfrogging the power of the theocracy, largely due to Iran's lack of resources and/or will to establish a Saudi-style censorship infrastructure. Wonder how long this will continue.
The Chinese government has stopped issuing custom numberplates because of concerns in the Communist Party about "an unhealthy fixation" with symbols of Western military power. Among the offensive numberplates were "IAM 007" (this is in a nation on guard against Western espionage), "FBI" and "TMD", a reference to Bush's Star Wars 2 programme. (via Athrist)
The Target chain in the US has withdrawn a range of streetwear believed to bear neo-Nazi insignia. The baseball caps and baggy shorts in question bore the numerals "88", believed to be "white power code" for "Heil Hitler". (Or perhaps Chinese numerology for good luck?) Are anti-racism groups jumping to paranoid conclusions, or did Target really stock neo-Nazi skate shorts? And when will someone do something about Microsoft Wingdings? (via New World Disorder)
A good interview with Hacktivismo founder Oxblood Ruffin, where he talks about pro-democracy technologies, and Western technology companies' complicity in totalitarian control regimes and also claims that the Klez virus is likely to have been the work of the Chinese Public Security Bureau. (via bOING bOING)
0wnz0red, a pretty doovy new short story by Cory Doctorow (of bOING bOING), touching on transhumanism, "trusted computing", secret military biotech projects, and a lot of hacker-culture references. Go read.
One day after East Timor signed a treaty guaranteeing to never hand US citizens over to the International Criminal Court, Australia is considering doing the same. I'll be surprised if they don't sign it; for one, they wouldn't want to displease Uncle George, our bestest friend ever, and secondly, such a reciprocal treaty would be useful if any Australians are charged with crimes against humanity (which, with the mandatory detention regime and such, is not inconceivable).
Of course, such a treaty would severely undermine the court, which Australia has ratified. Though a body such as the ICC is looking rather unfashionable in the landscape of Bushian international relations (i.e., "I'm the sherriff, you're the posse").
Oh yes, I got Blue Skied An' Clear (the Slowdive tribute CD) in the mail today. I've only listened to part of the first disc so far, and it has its highs and lows. It's rather German and laptoppish and minimal in places, which sometimes works and sometimes not. (As you can imagine, the Pygmalion covers work better than the wall-of-noise shoegazing ones, especially with guessed lyrics sung in high, thickly-accented voices. Manual's cover of Blue Skied An' Clear is particularly nice.)
(And nice to know that the Ulrich Schnauss' approach to Crazy For You is quite different from the one I've been working on for a year or so too...)
2002/8/27
Apparently the new Fischerspooner album is getting a local release; I may have to check it out. Bec Hornsby just played a track from it on her programme on 3RRR; it's much as I expected, stilted synthpop-inspired beats. I get the impression of them being to the 80s what the mid-90s Britpop movement were to the 60s, or perhaps Air to the '70s; not so much a slavish imitation as a reinterpretation and an updating. (Or perhaps an appropriation or opportunistic plundering.)
(Which makes one wonder what the '90s-inspired artists in a decade's time will be like. Grunge revivalists, perhaps, or 'old-style' commercial techno-pop with 909s and 303s in the mix; only done as an ironic reference, with a 'teens sensibility?)
Btw, while I'm on the topic, I think the word "electroclash" sounds rather daft; as it (i.e., Fischerspooner, Ladytron, Felix Da Housecat) doesn't sound particularly clashy, or indeed like The Clash. I prefer Mag/Tif's term "neo-electro". Then again, most music-journalist-coined genre names initially sound silly and ill-fitting (e.g., "goth", "shoegazer", "britpop", etc.)
The bloke with the trolley has just turned up to move all my stuff. Today I'm being relocated from my existing office to a broom closet downstairs. (Oh, it has a window; just that it's into someone else's office.) Fun, fun.
You mean to tell me that the census results won't result in government funding for Jedi academies?
A Liberal (i.e., conservative) parliamentarian in Western Australia recently took part in a slave-for-a-day auction to raise funds for the local Rotary club. His services were bought by a local brothel madam, who outbid a local Labor MP (among others), and intends to get her money's worth:
"I thought I would start him off with a frilly apron and he could clean the brothel," she said. "[He would] see that not all brothels are dirty and I think I will have the most fun teaching him how to massage."
The World's Leading Nation: In the US, 3% of the population are in gaol or on probation; most of these are convicted of drug-related crimes. Perhaps in a few years' time, Howard's Australia will end up following this lead, with massive prison cities in the desert housing hundreds of thousands of inmates, mostly those on the wrong side of morality legislation. (via rotten.com)
Another (somewhat more detailed) article, this time in the Grauniad, about the Blackshirts, the adamantly non-racist, neo-fascist, extreme "men's movement". This time it goes beyond the scary uniforms and the this-is-not-a-swastika logos and actually gets these gents' opinions (which are, as one might expect, somewhat unhinged): (via Feorag)
The Blackshirts say that their only intention is to promote the sanctity of marriage, and they believe that to achieve this aim adultery should be punishable by death. Furthermore, they warn that if the law does not change they may resort to dragging adulterers from their homes and lynching them.
One Blackshirt, who gave his name only as Dominic, admitted that he had been refused custody of his daughter because of an unfavourable psychological report, but put the result down to bias in court.
Gee, I wonder why...
(It reminds me of the guy in the Bourke St. Mall with the signs about how The Simpsons and rock lyrics are full of Masonic codewords, who claimed that the Freemasons were trying to destroy him because he got in fights with the sons of Masons when he was a boy, and now whenever he gets a job, they deliberately set it up so that he gets in a fight and is dismissed.)
Mr Abbott claims that a fifth of Blackshirts are female and that a women's arm of the organisation is about to be established. But there were no women at yesterday's demonstration. "They do more the administrative work," he explained.
I'll bet they do...
A number of scholarly (or perhaps pomo-wanky, or perhaps both) books are coming out looking at punk 25 years on. (via Rebecca's Pocket)
When punk emerged, it scrambled the distinctions between high and low culture even more severely than bebop jazz (whose practitioners sometimes wore "existentialist" goatees and horn-rimmed glasses) had in the late 1940s. The term "punk" had been coined in 1971 by critics who, disgusted by what they considered pretentious "art rock," were championing obscure American groups from the 1960s such as the Sonics and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators -- garage bands that made up in energy (and volume) what they lacked in instrumental finesse.
By the time newsmagazines and record companies were discovering punk, in 1977, a second generation of experimentalists had emerged, called No Wave, in which musicians abandoned rock primitivism for even more extreme musical experiments. (The feminist group Y Pants played amplified children's instruments, while the guitarist for DNA scraped and plunked on an untuned electric 12-string.)
Children's toys? Could those be the origins of Casiopunk?
Mobile phones are getting insanely feature-packed these days. Take, for example, the Nokia 7650; which contains a digital camera, Bluetooth networking, and an OS with user-level multitasking and custom-loadable applications. It makes my 3210 look quaint; though I'm not sure whether a phone that multitasks and can download add-ons is necessarily a good idea. (I wonder how long until there are viruses and worms infecting these things, and spreading themselves as Klez-style MMS messages between users.) Nonetheless, it looks very doovy indeed. (For one, it can use MIDI files as ringtones; and the screen is larger than my Visor's.) (via the Reg)
Steven McDonald, former bass player from punk-pop band Redd Kross, bought the White Stripes album and found something missing -- namely, bass lines. So he added his own and posted the "improved" tracks to his web site. Gradually the uninvited bassist became more comfortable with his role, and his enhancements evolved from the missing bassline to edgy counterpoints and even additional vocals. Unfortunately, the MP3s are gone now, though various online felons are undoubtedly bootlegging them all across the digital underground. (via Techdirt)
2002/8/26
Public Transport First!, a new group pushing for a less freeway-centric transport policy for Melbourne. They plan to run candidates in marginal seats, directing preferences to the Greens and against the most public transport-hostile party. Sounds good to me.
And then there's the PTUA. Of course, if these groups are too sane for you, you could always join the Transport Victoria Association, who are something like the SPK of public transport advocacy, and appear to be comprised entirely of the deranged people you see on buses.
Psychalking is a hobo-language for paranoids to communicate with each other about dangerous mind control hot spots. Interesting start, but they could do with some signs for the different alien races and thought-stealing TV celebrities. (via psychoceramics)
Yesterday, I bought a monthly Met ticket (as I usually do every month). Today, when the old one had run out, I boarded a tram and validated it. All very well, except for one minor detail: the validator machine was out of ink, and thus didn't print the date on the ticket. This has two implications:
- There is no way to tell that the ticket is validated without putting it into a machine; which means that if I'm on a train with it and the Ticket Nazis show up, I get an on-the-spot fine for fare evasion, and
- If the magnetic strip is corrupted (as happens from time to time, due to malfunctioning validators), the ticket is irrecoverably worthless.
I spoke to the tram driver about this, and it turns out that the drivers have no authority to certify tickets as validated or do anything about it. She gave me the phone number of the Yarra Trams customer feedback line. I called them, and they directed me to a number at the ticketing company, which is only staffed during the week.
I am not impressed with the efficiency of Jeff Kennett's automated ticketing system.
As the last entry suggested, I went to the RMIT film department stolen-gear fund-raising show at the Corner tonight; or at least to part of it. First up I saw part of The Night Terrors' set; they didn't have the trademark fluoro lights, but did do a set of their usual unrelenting onslaught of grinding bass guitar, buzzsaw synths and theremin, like some mutant gothic hot-rodders from hell. Or about as metal as you can get without being Metal (or using guitars), as the case may be. (Though the frontman could probably pass for a Scandinavian metalhead.) Ninetynine played a set with lots of energy, doing many old songs (starting with Wöekenender and ending with Polar Angle), and a few newer numbers (though the triptych they started their other shows with was there only in part). Then came La Scimmia, who played various brooding minor-key things (mostly instrumentals, apart from one anti-US rant at the start). The Grey Daturas then played a half-hour set consisting of sheets of guitar feedback, with drums kicking in in the middle. I left shortly after George W. Bush started playing as they seemed like fairly uninteresting pounding-drums-guitar-riffs-and-screaming hardcore punk.
Some photos from tonight's Ninetynine performance, courtesy of my new(ish) digital camera:
Ah yes; I've started working on a proper photo content system. Not quite up to Cos's level yet, but give it time...
(Note that the photo URLs will probably change from returning an
image/jpeg to sending back a HTML page for the image in question.)
Update: the photo URLs have now been changed to point to images in the more recently uploaded photo gallery for this gig.
2002/8/25
Oho, the Democrats may split in two. Buffy may be gone, but her allies hold the reigns and are cracking down on their opponents in the party, which may encourage their opponents (moderate reformers, including Aden Ridgeway) to leave and form their own party. And if this happens, the Democrats will cease to be a parliamentary party (having fewer than 5 members in parliament), but the splitting group (assuming that Meg Lees joins them) will gain party status.
Some excerpts from a manual for WW2 kamikaze pilots, translated recently from the Japanese:
At the very moment of impact: do your best. Every deity and the spirits of your dead comrades are watching you intently. Just before the collision it is essential that you do not shut your eyes for a moment so as not to miss the target. Many have crashed into the targets with wide-open eyes. They will tell you what fun they had.
2002/8/23
An Israeli company has developed CD-ROMs which cannot be copied. The CDs contain a smart card with a photodetector and LED and a chip containing a decryption key; to decrypt itself, the software requests the key from the card. Though I'm skeptical about the practicality of such a system; CD-ROM drives are read-only devices, and whether or not the software can control the laser enough to communicate with the chip (to send requests for codes) seems rather uncertain, given that it's not part of any standard that drives have to comply with.
A sobering interview a professor of psychology who has studied the psychology of genocide, or why ordinary people commit atrocities. Eye-opening, and not optimistic; basically, his thesis is that the line between everyday civilisation and genocide is rather thin; that it's very easy to dehumanise an "enemy", thus enabling ordinary people to commit atrocities against their now no-longer "human" foes and still see themselves as good people, and that genocide is not, as is widely believed, an intrinsically male specialisation.
And in the Holocaust you had incidences of this, too -- I'm thinking of Jan Gross' book, entitled "Neighbors," about a small village in Poland named Jedwabne where the Catholic half of the village killed the Jewish half simply because they were given permission to do so. You realize how thin this veneer of civilization is that we put up. We say we live as neighbors and in a community, but when something happens structurally that says now you have permission to persecute, to take from, to even kill people that you've lived with for years, the relative ease with which people can do that is incredible.
It's one thing to understand killing, but killing with brutality and killing with zest and killing by taking trophies as American soldiers did with massacres of American Indians, is another thing. Why is that necessary? You'll even notice that in executions throughout World War II, the person's back is always toward the executioner. There really is no logistical reason for that in terms of ease of killing, it's more just a psychological defense of not having to see the victim.
And, according to Waller, genocide and other atrocities are likely to increase as more people compete for fewer resources.
Q: What is the greatest superpower in the world which "annexed" each and every country, a military secret in many countries, runs on MS Windows, prevents cheating, fraud, fooling, nepotism, hegemony, corruption, illiteracy, confusion, ignorance, monopoly and computer insomnia, and takes about "9000000 (9 million) years" to read and understand? A: Linux.
Also on this page, the truth about baby universes, and why you don't really exist, alongside useful links for buying Linux-related books. Could this be the Dr. Bronner of software? (via Charlie's Diary)
Another one of those Rolling Stone top-50s; this time Rock's 50 Greatest Meltdowns. This is that peculiar Clear Channelised definition of "rock" which encompasses the likes of Michael Jackson, Jewel and Mariah Carey. (via Reenhead)
Luke has written a review of the new one by above-average (if somewhat pretentious) art-goth outfit Black Tape For A Blue Girl. I see Sam's still putting his girlfriends on his CD covers.
(Black Tape actually makes decent music, in a soundscapy sort of way (unlike all the we-want-to-be-Bauhaus/NIN/the Sisters bands which make up the goth genre), though is a bit melodramatic and over-the-top in places. Though presumably that's how you know that they're "goth" and not "post-rock" or something. I probably won't buy the new album though.) (via Cos)
The latest webcomic from e-sheep, the creators of the excellent The Man Guy I Almost Was and Delta Thrives:
The Spiders, set in an alternate universe where the dot-com golden age never ended, and a humanist west under an idealised Al Gore fights the Taliban with open-source robots, benevolent AIs and Ecstasy-laced marshmallow drops. It's a sort of cyberhumanist utopian war on terrorism, diametrically opposed to Bush's secret government and ideology of Biblical Fascism and "total information awareness".
It may not be particularly plausible (for one, I doubt that machine-man Gore would have possibly been anywhere near that cool), but it looks pretty doovy. (via 1.0)
A European skeptic investigates the strange case of Rudolph Fentz, a man attired in 19th-century clothing who mysteriously appeared in Times Square in 1950 and was killed by a car; when his body was examined, police found a letter addressed to Fentz, who had disappeared in 1876. Or had he? (via rotten.com)
This evening I went to Nic of Dandelion Wine's birthday do at Chung On, a good (if stuck in the '70s decor-wise) Chinese restaurant in Moonee Ponds. A good time was had by all, with a lot of entertaining conversation (not to mention good food; the mango chicken is highly recommended).
And the background music was quite amusing; just sufficiently loud to be audible during lulls in conversation, it consisted of an endless loop of ridiculously bland elevator-music instrumentals of pop songs (everything from George Michael's Careless Whisper, performed Kenny G-style, to Burt Bacharach's Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head; no Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins covers just yet, but give them time).
I was walking past Manny's in Fitzroy today, and stopped in, finding that they had a few items on sale. Hence, I ended up buying a copy of Waldorf Attack, the VST analogue rhythm synthesizer plug-in. (Something I had been meaning to get my hands on for a while; though the fact that it was on sale sealed it.)
It's pretty doovy; one can make all sorts of sounds with it, from analogue drum sounds to the sorts of bizarre noises found only in German laptop electro and Warp CDs, and miscellaneous odd burblings, hisses and insane ring-modulated cacophonies. And the fact that one of the preset kits it comes with is comprised of video-game sound effects is encouraging.
I laughed out loud when I heard the start of the "Beat Box 3" sample song, though; there it was: a perfect knock-off of the Casio VL-1 "Rock 2" pattern (that's the one from Ninetynine's Wöekenender).
2002/8/22
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, is #12 on a list of 100 greatest Britons ever, created by the BBC by polling over 30,000 people. Though, for some reason, Julie Andrews is #2 (behind only Alfred the Great) and David Beckham is at #9 (ahead of such luminaries as Chaucer, Dickens and Shakespeare). Ah, I get it.. it's in alphabetical order. Which makes the claim of Berners-Lee being in 12th place sound a bit daft.
Other odd entries include Aleister Crowley (didn't know he had that much of a following), Paul "Bono" Hewson (hang on, isn't he Irish?), and the "Unknown Soldier". And I'm not sure if people like Robbie Williams (wasn't he a former boy-band dancer or something?) belong on a list of "greatest Britons of all time". Ah well, at least they didn't accept Ayn Rand, L. Ron Hubbard or Jesus Christ as "Britons".
Yesterday's crop of search engine referrals to this blog was a mixed bag: "morrissey gay", autism blog (I may be somewhat introverted, but come on...), MIT blackjack team, quickzilla and three separate Slowdive- related requests. Not to mention the usual jumble of random words; what's up with that?
I rocked up tonight to the blog meetup day today. This time it was held at the Gin Palace, a classy (if expensive) drinking emporium, and not anywhere as offensive as the Starbucks.
My old friend Cos was there as well, and we ended up talking about digital photography, Ben Sherman shirts, subcultures in Singapore and Belgian beer, among other things I wasn't sufficiently sober to recall.
I wasn't too sure at first about what kinds of people would attend a public blogmeet; I was half prepared for a mix equal parts hairy-backed warbloggers and wacky, obsessive teenaged girls. Fortunately, it wasn't anywhere near that bad. I met a number of other bloggers, among them Mark O'Meara, Pixelkitty and Jen, and ended up talking with cypherpunk Julian "Proff" Assange (who must be commended on his taste in headwear) about mass surveillance and other fun stuff.
2002/8/21
Buffy Stott-Despoja, the Democrats' brash, trendy leader, has resigned from the leadership, citing a loss of support from her party.
Former Democrats leader John Coulter has said that this could be the end of the Democrats, as the party are now "a rabble". Though the Democrats always seemed a bit that way, like a motley collection of mugwump centrists and student-politician types (i.e., Buffy) obsessed with isms and buzzwords, and various others ranging from lapsed Tories (i.e., Don Chipp) to Scandinavian-style socialists. The Greens, in my opinion, are a more solid and trustworthy choice for a third party.
Yes! Mogwai are playing in Melbourne on the 17th of October. It's at the Prince of Wales, though; I just hope that the PA there isn't as abysmal as it was when FourPlay last played (I was right in front of the stage and the chatter of the people in the room drowned out the band).
An article about Turkmenistan's President Niyazov, arguably one of the loopiest world leaders in recent times. (The only other contender I can think of, the former Latin American president who sang as "the madman who loves", pales into insignificance next to Niyazov's decidedly quirky and somewhat Jarryesque take on the traditional neo-Stalinist cult of personality.
He began by renaming the months of the year after himself, his mother, who died in an earthquake when Niyazov was eight, and a few of his favourite words (Flag Month, for example); and followed it up by decreeing that old age officially doesnt begin until 85. This was possibly in relation to both his 62nd birthday which he celebrated by dying his hair jet-black and his rampant hypochondria. On Turkmenistans website, there is more about Niyazovs recent doctors appointment than on melons and sulphur combined.
Mind you, by this account, Turkmenistan sounds like it was a rather odd sort of place even before Niyazov. (via New World Disorder)
2002/8/20
Excellent; FourPlay cover Radiohead's How To Disappear Completely, one of my favourite Radiohead songs. I can't wait to hear what they do with it.
The Daily Adventures of Mixerman, a secret web journal maintained by an anonymous sound engineer working on an album with a major-label-signed band, and showing just how fucked up things are in the recording business. (via rocknerd)
Faith-based government: Florida, the state which gave George W. Bush the presidency, is leading the U.S. in its march towards theocracy. Case in point: the new Bush-appointed head of Florida's child welfare agency and his outspokenly fundamentalist views; among other things, he believes that ''biblical spanking'' that leads to ``temporary and superficial bruises or welts do not constitute child abuse'', that women should not work, and that husbands have ``final say in any family dispute.''
The essay also said Christians should not marry non-Christians, that divorce is acceptable only when there is adultery or desertion and that wives should view working outside the home as ''bondage.'' The ''radical feminist movement,'' the essay adds, ``has damaged the morale of many women and convinced men to relinquish their biblical authority in the home.''
(Notice the use of the word "biblical" there, seemingly to mean "atavistically brutal". Barbarism begins at home, folks.)
In other faith-based-government news, a woman in Nigeria has lost an appeal against a death sentence for bearing a child out of wedlock, and is sentenced to die by stoning (a slow and uncommonly unpleasant method of execution) as soon as her child is weaned. Her boyfriend was discharged.
So a woman who didn't harm anyone is sentenced to be tortured to death in a spectacle of bestial sadism, all in the name of an infinitely merciful God.
An article from an Irish newspaper on Ashcroft's 'Citizen Corps' informer programme, and other erosions of civil rights.
Effectively, if a repair man arrives to fix your fridge, and happens to notice a copy of Michael Moore's book, Stupid White Men, on your counter, he would be within his remit to call the Hotline and you could, depending on how busy the local FBI field office is, find yourself receiving a visit from the federales.
Being dragged away by the FBI at 3AM for owning an un-American book is somewhat unlikely; what seems more likely is that a large number of minor things (possession of subversive literature, professing atheistic views, associating with members of environmental groups, etc.) will contribute to your suspicion rating. If you regularly make phone calls or send emails to people with high suspicion ratings, that increases your rating as well, all done automatically by data-mining software. Not to mention if your supermarket shopping patterns match the characteristics of terrorists, subversives or un-American types, in various seemingly innocuous ways. If your rating exceeds a certain threshold, additional surveillance may be conducted on you, or you may be barred from flying in commercial airliners (like those Green Party members shortly after September 11 last year). This is the Stasi for the information age; subtle and pervasive.
A psychology study has found proof that alcohol makes you more attractive -- at least when someone else is drinking it. In a study of 120 male and female students, researchers found that two pints of beer increased the perceived attractiveness of the opposite sex by about 25%. This is hypothesised to be a result of alcohol stimulating the nucleus accumbens, which is responsible for judging facial attractiveness.
Insanely great? Could Apple be developing a mobile phone/PDA based on iPod technology and integrated with MacOS X?
2002/8/19
Wisdom, a website which generates a new secret cosmic truth every time you visit it; adapted from a crackpot-theory generator script I wrote some years ago. Heh.
A NYTimes article about Verlan, a French argot spoken by immigrants and countercultural hipsters, in which words are arbitrarily reversed. I suppose it's sort of like a French equivalent of Palare, the English gay/carnival argot.
Thus the standard greeting "Bonjour, ça va?" or "Good day, how are you?" becomes "Jourbon, ça av?" "Une fête" (a party) has become "une teuf"; the word for woman or wife, femme, has become meuf; a café has become féca; and so on. The word Verlan itself is a Verlanization of the term l'envers, meaning "the reverse."
Originally a criminal argot in the 19th century, Verlan was adopted by second-generation immigrants after World War 2, and now by bourgeois trendies and rebellious teens. Perhaps not a small part of its countercultural appeal is going against the mainstream dogma of linguistic purism and sticking it to the Académie Française.
Ms. Lefkowitz explained: "There are now different kinds of Verlan. There is the Verlan of the original group, the working class immigrants from the banlieus. Then there is the Verlan of the urban professionals, bourgeois Verlan or `Verlan geoisbour.' There is also the Verlan of the teenagers who use it to distinguish themselves from the adult word as a game and a form of amusement."
German laptop/glitch record label Morr Music have released a Slowdive tribute compilation. Titled Blue Skied An' Clear, the first disc contains covers by the likes of Múm, Manual, Isan and a number of other artists of that stripe. The songs covered include the obvious choices (from Just For A Day and Souvlaki) as well as parts of Slowdive's now-deleted minimalist masterpiece Pygmalion (the title track and Crazy For You are listed). Disc 2 is apparently all original compositions in a similar direction; not too sure about that, but it may be interesting. More information is on the darla.com new releases page. (via the Avalyn mailing list)
¡Oye Esteban! Miserablist pop star par excellence Morrissey has become a cult figure among young Latinos in Los Angeles, and nobody quite knows why. Morrissey's new fans aren't mopey white suburban kids (no, those have rap-metal and industriogoth to angst along to), but marginalised Mexican youth in the space between Hispanic and anglo-American culture but not quite belonging to either. And thus, tattooed, macho homeboys openly cry along to Smiths songs, whilst refusing to believe that Morrissey might be gay.
"Some nights I lay in my bedroom and I listen to 'There Is a Light That Never Goes Out,' and I cry," he tells me. "I cry and cry and cry. I cry like a little bitch, man."
"People are always asking me if I'm gay because I have a photo of Morrissey hugging Johnny Marr," says Alex Diaz, a 16-year-old Smiths fanatic who plans on joining the marines when he's old enough. "My friends always ask me, 'Why do you like these queers?' But, you know, he's probably just bisexual. His songs aren't all about guys. Look at 'Girlfriend in a Coma'--that's about a girl. I think there probably would be some people who'd hate it if Morrissey ever came out and said he was gay, but, personally, I don't really care. And like I said, he's probably bisexual."
Mind you, the few remaining aging anaemic, besweatered wallflowers from the 1980s who haven't grown out of their Smiths phase don't quite know what to make of the new Morrissey fan subculture, one which they are as much outsiders in as they were back in high school:
"People have actually said to me, 'You like Morrissey? That's weird for a white guy.' And I find that completely bizarre," Hensley tells me, momentarily dropping his veil of irony for a grain of semi-sincere annoyance. "Most of the other people here wouldn't even know who Jarvis Cocker is. They only like Morrissey. We just came here to make fun of people."
(via Plastic)
2002/8/18
Taking an example from such models of enlightened governance as China and Saudi Arabia, the RIAA sues backbone ISPs to force them to block access to copyright-violating Internet sites outside U.S. jurisdiction. It's depressing to think that (a) the U.S. may go down the Saudi path of Internet censorship, and (b) the reason behind this would be to protect the recording racket's revenue stream.
Introducing a Fun Family of Good Friends, an attempt to translate cute Japanese cartoon characters into English without knowing Japanese. (via Cos).
Perhaps the paranoid schizophrenics weren't that far off the mark. NASA plan to read passengers' minds at airports, using "space technology". ("Space technology"? As in "recovered from alien spacecraft"? It makes one wonder.)
"We're getting closer to reading minds than you might suppose," says Robert Park, a physics professor at the University of Maryland and spokesman for the American Physical Society. "It does make me uncomfortable. That's the limit of privacy invasion. You can't go further than that."
2002/8/17
French radio station Planet Claire Aligre has a lot of MP3s of live shows by indie bands including Piano Magic, The Field Mice, Art of Fighting, Cat Power and more. (Annoyingly, the site requires Java for actual links to appear. If Java doesn't work on your machine, you can manually pull the URLs out of the page source, though.) (via S?x and Sunshine)
Urbanoids is like a Java-based version of Paradroid, only open-source and set in a city. It's also written by former Commodore 64 game programmer Karn Hörnell (author of various Players games, including Fungus). Nice to know such people are still around and doing things. (via NtK)
Today I bought a photograph storage box, and rounded up all (I think) of the paper satchels of photographs and negatives (remember those? it's what people had before digital cameras) that I took over the past decade or two; well, all the ones I have been able to find. They almost fit in the box. I sat down and looked through them, all those scenes from the various places I have lived, echoes of the lives of the people I have been; frozen moments from the past, which were new and immediate back then. Looking at the photographs, I felt inspired to put on a Field Mice CD.
2002/8/16
I'm currently listening to some MP3s by The Bran Flakes. They're pretty amusing; a combination of twee electro-pop and post-ironic bulldada, combining beats and loops with samples of old children's records and various other spoken-word. In particular, the MP3 of "Record On Sex / Go Go Up" is worth a listen, sampling a somewhat creepy sounding sex-education record from (I'd say) the 1950s or so, with a somewhat menacing Patriarchial Authority Figure telling an alarmed-sounding Little Girl about erections and menstruation, before the whole thing turns into bootywhangular beats. Insane.
U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft is at it again. First he planned to establish an informer network exceeding the East German Stasi in coverage, and now he intends to establish detention camps for U.S. citizens deemed to be "enemy combatants". In normal times, such a plan would trigger immediate congressional hearings and reconsideration of his fitness for office; but these days nobody wants to be "unpatriotic" enough to question.
Putting paid to the clichés of alien god-emperors or insectile hive minds, a Professor of Psychology in California reckons that alien civilisations would have democracy. Prof. Albert Harrison of the University of California Davis claims that any civilisation having developed the technology to send signals into space is likely to have evolved to democracy, or something like it. Though I suspect that that involves too many assumptions of the aliens being humanlike, and not all that far from saying that they're likely to have reality TV, fast-food franchises and sports-utility vehicles, because we do.
I'd also doubt the assumption that democratic alien civilisations would be likely to be friendly and peaceful towards Earth if we ever make contact. Democracies aren't automatically peaceful; in fact, in the appropriate conditions, a democracy can become an irrational mob baying for the blood of real or imagined enemies. If enough of the alien populace was persuaded (by a pliant media or an influential orator, or some equivalents thereof) that Earth posed a threat, I suspect they'd be likely to vote to asteroid-bomb us out of existence before we do the same to them.
Of course, how alien psychology and decision-making (including perception of risks, aggression, altruism and such) would work would depend on the evolutionary conditions that shaped their neurology, much as human psychology depends on the hunter-gatherer condition.
More evidence that we're living in the age of George W. Bush: BBC bans atheists from "Thought for the Day" radio slot. (via Pagan Prattle)
The story of how a team of math geeks from MIT hacked Las Vegas blackjack, developing a team-based card-counting method that raked in huge profits and evaded the casinos' usual countermeasures -- for a while, anyway. (via Plastic)
According to this article, many prominent Britons, from diplomats and generals to academics and cultural figures, oppose invading Iraq. (via Charlie's Diary)
"Regime change, yes, but then what? There is no credible person to take over from Saddam Hussein. The Iraqis in exile are the most ghastly corrupt group you could imagine."
"How can we contemplate invading a country and deposing its leader without a UN resolution, without the support of its neighbours, without that country having committed an explicit new act of aggression, without unequivocal evidence that it is successfully developing weapons of mass destruction, and without the foggiest idea what to do with that country afterwards?" said Prof Blakemore.
Richard Dawkins, the writer, biologist and professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford, was also firmly against any US assault: "Obnoxious as Saddam Hussein undoubtedly is, it is not obvious that he is more of a danger to the world than 'President' Bush and his reckless handlers... It would be a tragedy if Tony Blair, a good man who has so much to offer this country, were to be brought down through playing poodle to this unelected and deeply stupid little oil spiv," he said.
(Mind you, it's from that notorious left-liberal rag, the Grauniad. I wonder if The Times could come up with a similarly comprehensive list of eminent proponents of war in Iraq.)
Microsoft discontinues free fonts, because they come with Windows XP and MacOS (the two legitimate operating systems) already, and thus in Redmond's book, there is no legitimate reason for anybody to not have them. So unfortunately, Penguinheads and the like will have to make do without Comic Sans from now on. Oh, the humanity. (via cos)
2002/8/15
You have probably seen Escher's Print Gallery; the drawing showing a viewer looking at a picture in a gallery, and the picture encompassing the entire scene. Some mathematicians at Universiteit Leiden have analysed this picture, "straightening" it out using specially written software, making a straight recursive picture (known to the Dutch as a "Droste picture", after recursively-designed cocoa packets in the Netherlands) of the Maltese cityscape in the picture, and using that to make other things, from doubly recursive versions of Print Gallery to doovy-looking animations which zoom in infinitely (when looped). (via Found)
How to make dub. Righteous! Mind you, some of the sound ideas apply equally well to other sorts of studio-based experimentation and What Is Music-esque weirdness.
Open a digital watch and take out the watch module including battery and display. Connect a two phase cable to the microphone connector of a tape deck. Then pierce a needle through each phase of the cable at its other end. Press the Record button on the tape recorder and set the counter to zero. Now you can start touching signal lines on the watch module with your two needles. You should be able to hear some pretty interesting oscillations. Write down the counter value when you hear something interresting and sample it afterwards (I tried this as a twelve year old with my first digital watch after the display broke. I was very amazed by the sounds I heard - But unfortunately forgot to record..)
(via The Fix)
Stencil bombing isn't just for south-of-the-Yarra commercialists. The following piece of political commentary was found in a car park in Fitzroy:
An article on stencil bombing; the use of illicit spray-painting (with smoothly designed stencils) as an underground advertising tool; predominantly by trendy T-shirt labels in Prahran (you know, the ones that sell $80 T-shirts where the logo accounts for $79.50 of the price).
Tim Everist, who runs a Prahran-based T-shirt label called Schwipe, says "stencil bombing was effective and underground in the '90's, but then all the big companies started using this form of advertising".
Toho, owners of the Godzilla trademark, threaten the DaveZilla weblog with legal action for alleged trademark infringement. Not a very solid case, but some suspect their strategy is to score an easy victory to establish a precedent and go after things like Mozilla. Anyway, in the spirit of solidarity against legalistic thuggery, this blog is temporarily renamed to NullZilla.
A Brazilian tortoise which lost the use of a leg after being hit by a stray bullet has been fitted with a pair of wheels, and is now happily rolling around. (via 1.0)
Autism linked to "geek genes". Dramatic increases in incidents of autism among children born in places like Silicon Valley and Cambridge, are evidence for the hypothesis that the skills associated with high-technology industries such as programming and engineering may be genetically related to autism:
Some doctors now think that workers who have the complex analytical skills needed to succeed in high-tech industry, and who are perhaps slightly awkward socially - the classic profile of the "computer geek" - may, while not fully autistic themselves, at least be carrying at least a few of the genes that contribute to it.
(I once heard it claimed that 70% of programmers/engineers/high-tech workers have Asperger's Syndrome. Then again, 86.7% of statistics are made up.)
I'm Wayne Kerr, and if there's one thing I hate... it's web sites which disable your browser's right mouse button, just to show that it can be done/to assert control over your web browsing. Like this one. If I want to open a link in a Mozilla tab, instead of the menu I get a pop-up message saying "function disabled". Oooh, I stand in awe of your godlike JavaScript skills. Wanker.
2002/8/14
An article looking at the miasma of creepiness hanging over Adelaide, and in particular at its unusually generous proportion of grisly serial murders, and also the social phenomena that may amplify the cultural effects of such. No mention of zoo animal mutilations though.
Casiopunk and the DIY aesthetic: Twink, a CD of music made with a toy piano and various other similar instruments obtained from thrift stores. And there are MP3s here. (via bOING bOING)
Pinkness and horror: In terms of sheer concentrated pinkness in one place, few things could outdo Goth day at Disneyland. (via bOING bOING)
Research has confirmed that the human brain has specialised faculties for detecting cheating and enforcing social contracts. These faculties are independent from general-purpose reasoning, and could be far older than it; similar faculties have been found in all social primates.
(I think it was one of Steven Pinker's books which gave the example of a problem stated two ways: as an abstract mathematical problem and as a problem of enforcing rules of social behaviour. The abstract formulation seemed difficult to solve, requiring thought, whereas the answer to the social-behaviour formulation jumped out at first glance.)
An interesting article from 1982 about how the multinational diamond-trading monopoly De Beers manufactured the public desire for diamonds, singlehandedly creating the association between diamonds and romance, and manipulating human courtship rituals to move the right sizes of stones, and create an illusion of security which doesn't actually exist:
DeBeers devised the "eternity ring," made up of as many as twenty-five tiny Soviet diamonds, which could be sold to an entirely new market of older married women. The advertising campaign was based on the theme of recaptured love. Again, sentiments were born out of necessity: older American women received a ring of miniature diamonds because of the needs of a South African corporation to accommodate the Soviet Union.
The moment a significant portion of the public begins selling diamonds from this inventory, the price of diamonds cannot be sustained. For the diamond invention to survive, the public must be inhibited from ever parting with its diamonds. In developing a strategy for De Beers in 1953, N. W. Ayer said: "In our opinion old diamonds are in 'safe hands' only when widely dispersed and held by individuals as cherished possessions valued far above their market price." As far as De Beers and N. W. Ayer were concerned, "safe hands" belonged to those women psychologically conditioned never to sell their diamonds.
(via The Fix)
Security guru Bruce Schneier critiques "Homeland Security" measures such as centralised identity databases. Not surprisingly, he finds that they leave a lot to be desired, and may actually reduce security.
The new technologies have enormous capacities, but their advocates have not realized that the most critical aspect of a security measure is not how well it works but how well it fails.
(via Techdirt)
A list of 10,000 statistically grammar-average fake band names, generated for a psychology experiment. Has some good ones, like Venomous Pinks (who'd be punk), Starvation Deal (mook/nu-metal/hardcore), Bedbug Stabilizer (post-rock or IDM), Crystal Twang (country'n'Preston) and Walker Dieter (probably Kraftwerk-inspired); and who could forget Lifelike Pancake Carcass, or indeed the thought-provoking Yourself Simulators? Some of them, though, ("Hole", "Cassette", "Codeine", "Peaches") are the names of actual artists. (via bOING bOING)
2002/8/13
Representing the people (who matter): The British government has drawn criticism from environmental groups for its choice of delegates to the Earth Summit. The British delegation includes senior company bosses from companies with records of pollution and human rights violations, including Rio Tinto and Anglo-American. It was also reported on 3RRR this morning that Britain had originally banned its environment minister from the summit for being too independent of Tony Blair's official line, but relented after criticism.
Alba the glowing rabbit, genetically engineered at the commission of conceptual artist Eduardo Kac, is dead. Though there is some dispute over just how brightly the rabbit really glowed.
I finally got around to seeing Waking Life last night. It was quite interesting; it started off as a number of animated people talking about reality, free will, identity and the like, but evolved beyond that, going into lucid dreaming and false awakenings, and even the question of what happens after death. And the visuals were quite effective; the film was animated (apparently drawn over video footage), and the animation varied in styles quite effectively. I'll probably have to see it again (perhaps when it comes out on DVD).
Apparently Glaswegian post-rockers Mogwai are coming to Melbourne in October. They're playing a set at alternateen rock fest Livid. I wonder if they're doing a solo gig as well; I don't really fancy paying some huge sum of money to see a short set by them and get a bunch of extreme-sports demos and skate-metal shows as a bonus.
2002/8/12
A Washington Post article on the whole Obey Giant phenomenon and its origins. (via Reenhead)
The latest big thing among those seeking immortality: donating your body to plastination. As one candidate says, it beats being worm fodder.
Via Graham, a near-comprehensive list of all those Factory catalogue numbers, and all the CDs and miscellaneous bizarre objects they were given to (at first posters and such, but then buildings, lawsuits, and famously, a cat; not to mention an 8-bit computer game Stephen Morris never got around to writing).
When memes compete for mindshare in the ideosphere, one of the things they're selected for is emotional impact. The most sensational story wins, as does the most disgusting urban legend, according to this paper. (via FmH)
(Which all makes sense; by the same token, there are other (so far anecdotal) laws of memetics. For example, it has been observed that urban legends that mention a "brand" of some category mutate to refer to the best-known brand. (For example, the one about some small fried-chicken restaurant chain supporting the Ku Klux Klan mutated into an urban legend about KFC, and it's probable that the "Albert Einstein said we only use 10% of our brains" UL started as a claim about some lesser known very smart person making that statement.) I'd speculate that this is the result of a selection for economy or consistency with one's existing knowledge/memes, or a streamlining process that erodes memes into more agile forms.)
Edward Felten, of SDMI-breaking fame, has a blog tracking the copyright absolutists' attemps to take away your freedom to tinker.
The pendulum swings both ways: while the teen-rebellion industry fuses rap into hard-rock, a new generation of black musicians in America, disappointed with the limited scope for expression in hip-hop and so-called "R&B" are picking up guitars and turning to rock.
Their sound is most often a deeply soul-inflected rock reminiscent of the mellower moments of Jimi Hendrix, Prince and Parliament Funkadelic rather than the full-on guitar assault of Fishbone or Living Colour. Much of this rock is difficult to distinguish from soul music, but the musicians use the word rock to distance themselves, they say, from the overly produced treacle that passes for modern soul.
(Meanwhile, commercial R&B producers such as Babyface have recently been knocking off '90s alternative-rock sounds for some of their projects (such as the very aptly named Pink).)
"Vulnerability doesn't work at all in hip-hop," Mr. Luther said. "You don't want to expose a weakness in that arena. Rock 'n' roll has no boundaries. You can talk about your dreams, fears, all kinds of things."
Though the black-rock movement faces serious barriers in the formulaic world of American radio/TV, not fitting into either black/"urban" formats or the predominantly white world of rock/alternative music. I.e., Clear Channel probably won't play it; though maybe it'll flourish in the MP3 underground.
Rock, they say, gives them the freedom to express their own ideas. Santi White of Stiffed said: "There's a Smiths song that I love that says, `Hang the D.J. because the music he constantly plays says nothing to me about my life.' And that's how I felt. So I said, `Fine, I'm going to find some music that does say something about my life.' "
Funny that they should mention that, as that quote is sometimes cited as an argument for Morrissey being racist. Though what would that make the equation of skin darkness with dance/club music? (via FmH)
2002/8/11
"Girl" is a very odd name for an audio synthesis program, but the description sounds pretty doovy. Basically it's a modular sample-based synthesizer/mixer of sorts, which can apparently work standalone or as a VST plug-in, and can be controlled in realtime using the keyboard or 2D 'plane controllers'; which brings to mind all sorts of glitchy loop-based laptop mayhem. The demo MP3s on the site also sound quite promising, in a What Is Music? sort of way. Though whether it's worth the A$200 or so it'd cost to register it remains to be determined.
Primatology imitates William S. Burroughs: monkeys get high on millipede juice. No mention of mugwumps though. (via rotten.com)
Film festival: Today I saw a documentary titled Fortress Australia, about Australian governments' (unsuccessful) attempts to obtain, or later construct, nuclear weapons between 1945 and the early 1970s. It was quite interesting; basically, we tried to buy nukes or knowledge from the British (who refused, because the Americans would get mad at them) and the U.S. (who refused because of Soviet spy activity in Canberra), in return for uranium and use of land for nuclear testing, and also sank a lot of money into F-111 bombers (next to useless against the much feared Indonesian invasion unless equipped with nukes) and developing missiles with the UK, who unilaterally canned the project before their obedient client state could get its eagerly anticipated ICBMs. Also, the Lucas Heights reactor, and one proposed for Jervis Bay, were intended to produce weapons-grade plutonium for tactical nukes for jungle warfare. Quite eye-opening.
There was also another documentary, about the author of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, and his definitions of what SF is. There wasn't much new to me in it, but I did recognise a lot of the locations in it (including Slow Glass Books, Monash University, and various places around Melbourne).
My favourite image viewer program is xv. A lot lighter than the GIMP, and is snappier and quicker to use than newer programs with "user-friendly" GNOME/KDE-compliant menus to navigate. xv is an X program of the old school; you use the 3 mouse buttons God gave you to call up windows and select, and pressing keys does convenient things (i.e., space goes to the next image, 'e' opens the colour editor). No GNOME integration, themeability (though it has a curious MacOS-6-lite look to its widgets), plug-ins or anything else.
Oh, and it's somewhat of a dinosaur. The last version was apparently released in 1994, and there's currently no Debian package for it (perhaps because they figured that everybody should get over it and move on to Electric Eyes or something). Even the page itself looks like a historical relic, with NCSA Mosaic-era HTML, floppy-disk-shaped icons ("daddy, what's that?") and a compress(1)-ed source archives for the people who don't have the new-fangled gzip program. But still, it does the job and does a better job for its humble task than more recent programs.
Mind you, this is coming from someone whose desktop consists of a window manager, an xterm window and xclock. (Yes, I've tried GNOME and KDE; though I found that they just got in the way.)
2002/8/10
Well, tonight I saw 24 Hour Party People. It was quite good; perhaps a bit too cleverly self-referential for its own good in places (with all of "Tony Wilson"'s asides to the audience, for example, and the scene with the real Howard Devoto in the bathroom), though that's forgivable. Some good scenes there, though not as much Joy Division/New Order as I expected, and a bit too much focus on the Happy Mondays. Still, I'd recommend it to anyone who's into New Order or Joy Division, or who grew up listening to punk, new wave or Madchester baggycore. If that kind of thing means nothing to you, you probably won't get much out of this film though.
2002/8/9
I saw three films today. First up was an amusing English short titled Knit Your Own Karma. This would best be described as Wallace & Gromit meet Brazil, or perhaps something by Jeunet and Caro. It's set in a world of English terrace houses that will be familiar to Aardman fans, only with a slightly dystopian twist, and a good dose of fantasy. Then was an amusing German comedy titled Mein Bruder Der Vampir (aka "Getting My Brother Laid"), about a 30-year-old retarded man who falls in love with his brother's girlfriend (despite being completely inept in that area of human relations), and his 14-year-old sister who develops a crush on a gang leader. As you can imagine, lots of awkwardness ensues. The feel of this film was modern and slick, with sharp editing (and good use of split-screens and camera tracking through walls) and an electronic soundtrack.
After that I saw Peter Weir's 1974 classic The Cars That Ate Paris. For those who haven't seen it, it's about a young man who has a car accident and ends up in a NSW country town where everything seems to be connected to car accidents. The town has that sort of picturesquely rustic look of small Australian country towns, yet with a sense of being a little too isolated. Before long, it emerges that there's something oppressive and creepy going on (insert the usual clichés about the miasma of horror and decay lurking beneath the placid surface here). Bizarre medical experiments, gangs of young rural hooligans in gaudily painted cars and a somewhat creepy mayor all appear, as does a classic country-town ball scene, with some genuinely bad musical accompaniment. All in all, The Cars That Ate Paris is a classic, and should be classed alongside the works of Cronenberg and Lynch and perhaps Peter Jackson's early works.
Anyway, got to rush off now to see 24 Hour Party People.
Is insanity a virus from outer space? A US psychiatrist/author has posited the controversial theory that an unknown virus or parasite could be responsible for the fivefold increase in mental illness over the past 200 years. (via Psychoceramics)
2002/8/8
Salon looks at the seedy world of someone-has-a-crush-on-you sites; some of which operate as unethical marketing operations at best and spam email harvesters at worst, preying on the desperate and socially challenged. (via Techdirt)
The turd in a can again: An article which argues that the recording industry's proposed (and likely to be passed) laws which criminalise bypassing copy-denial system for any reason are intended not so much to stop piracy but to lock out independent artists, giving the major recording labels a technologically-enforced monopoly on music distribution, backed by the full force of U.S. law:
Biden's new bill would make it a federal felony to try and trick certain types of devices into playing your music or running your computer program. Breaking this law--even if it's to share music by your own garage band--could land you in prison for up to five years. And that's not counting the civil penalties of up to $25,000 per offense. "Say I've got an MP3 collection and I buy a new nifty player from Microsoft that only plays watermarked content, and I forge the watermark to allow my legal MP3 collection to play," says Jessica Litman, who teaches intellectual property law at Wayne State University. "It is certainly the case that if I pass that around, I could be trafficking (in violation of the law)."
Of course, this thesis assumes that the recording industry are the sort of amoral, greedy scumbags who would do something like that. (via Techdirt)
Film festival: Tonight I saw a documentary titled Much Ado About Something; it was about theories that the plays and sonnets attributed to William Shakespeare were written by someone else (it mostly focussed on Christopher Marlowe, but also mentioned Francis Bacon). It presented both proponents of such theories and orthodox debunkers, and, in the balance, the question is still open to doubt. (For example, there is no evidence that Shakespeare had the degree of education required to write his plays; though this could be just as easily evidence of collaboration or partial plagiarism. The facts about the "death" of Marlowe also seemed a bit suspicious as they were presented there.)
Anyway, those in the US will apparently be able to catch this documentary on PBS soon.
A good article about the hobo subculture in America today. The old hobos from the Great Depression are gone, but there is a new generation of outsiders, ranging from anarchist punks and ferals to migrant workers to train-obsessed dot-com yuppies (and the odd neo-Nazi psycho killer, or so the authorities say); all brought together by disenchantment with mainstream American life and/or a desire for something else. (via bOING bOING)
(I wonder if they have a similar subculture in Australia. There aren't as many train lines these days, so maybe not. Perhaps the local equivalent is the Cave Clan or something?)
Research reveals that the MS Windows API is intrinsically insecure; any application can spoof window messages to any other application, regardless of permissions, bypass the feeble "security" present and pull off all sorts of exploits. In other words, typical Microsoft security. And furthermore, the flaw is fundamental to the API and is irreparable, short of changing the fundamental design of the Windows message queue mechanism and breaking every existing Win32 application. (via the Reg)
2002/8/7
MORTAL BODIES SLAY EACH OTHER, as they are taught to do by EVIL STUPID EDUCATORS!!!! THE MORTAL BODY CAUSES PAIN. Red White or Green characters can have double-sided combat winnings. Pain and suffering exist to be on Earth. You cannot suffer in other dimensions. Teachers, scholars, learners, they all are to say that your body is real. THIS IS NOT TRUE. Your body is a trap. Life Points measures your animal-sexing body. Life points are based upon a perfect math or your arm would be too short to wipe your butt.
Evil school traps ascending minds to plunder natural resources! It is up to you to free minds, STARTING WITH YOUR OWN STUPID ONE. School is in forest. Characters are attacked by wild warthogs. ROLL TO DAMAGE! Ascended minds are discovered to be just dead brains in jars. Dead stupid brains have gold and magic items.
(via Psychoceramics)
2002/8/6
In the US, legislation has been proposed to allow copyright holders to attack computers involved in file-sharing networks with impunity. However, with the global nature of networks, the RIAA/MPAA staff or executives could face prison time in Australia, where breaking into computers is a crime, regardless of justifications.
(If it came to that, I doubt that Jack Valenti or Hilary Rosen would see the inside of a Victorian prison for very long. Diplomatic and economic pressure would probably get them out swiftly, and the Howard government would undoubtedly attempt to rush through laws legalising such activities, as long as it's for large, respectable corporations. And if Labor and what's left of the Democrats blocked the legislation and the courts stubbornly refused to drop such charges, US economic sanctions would probably persuade the uppity Australians to toe the line. Still, it's a nice idea.)
Two English teenagers thought they were going on a holiday to Australia -- only to discover that they were in Canada. They suspected that the aircraft was too small, and discovered where they really were uon seeing a sign reading "welcome to Sydney, Canada". The mistake was believed to be the fault of the travel agent.
According to Angry Robot, US French-chick-fronted pop band Ivy's new record, due out in just over a month, will be entirely comprised of covers, including ony only The Go-Betweens' Streets of Your Town but also The Cure's Let's Go To Bed. The record will be titled Guestroom.
Ivy have apparently been dropped by Warner or Sony or whichever soulless behemoth had decided to refocus its declining revenues on cheaper-to-manufacture bubblegum pop and teen-angst skate-metal, and have been signed by an indieish label named Minty Fresh.
2002/8/5
The Culture War strikes again. Evidence has emerged that, in early 2001, the Bush administration held up a plan to attack Al-Qaeda, because it was believed tainted with the Godless liberal politics of the Clinton administration. It got lost in the political sanitisation of the US public service, and put on the backburner while attention was diverted to a missile defense plan, crackdowns on pornography and the War On Drugs.
Film Festival: Today I saw Carnivalesque: The short films of Jeunet and Caro. They were fairly interesting, though mixed. Foutaises (aka "Things I Like, Things I Don't Like"), was probably my favourite, and featured Jeunet/Caro mainstay Dominique Pinon (he was the clones in TCoLC and the hero in Delicatessen) reciting a list of things his character liked/disliked, with quirky, Amélie-esque visuals. Le bunker de la dernière rafale was a longer piece from 1981, featuring shaven-headed soldiers in greatcoats in a retrofuturistic post-apocalyptic bunker. One could see where some of the inspirations for The City of Lost Children came from, though the film in general seemed a bit random. KO Kid was an early computer-animated piece showing two elastic-bodied boxers fighting to an oddly wooden breakbeat techno soundtrack. The animation seemed a bit stiff and unsatisfying; though perhaps it would have been more impressive in 1993. There was also another film, Pas de repose pour Billy Brakko, which looked interesting, though it didn't have subtitles and my French wasn't quite up to understanding the dialogue.
Will those Internet users who are using Windows to read their mail please stop it? I've received something like a dozen copies of the Klez virus this weekend alone. (It doesn't do anything to me other than clog up my mailbox as I use Mutt under UNIX, but clearing it out is still an annoyance.) If you can't use UNIX, then for the love of Ghod, buy a Macintosh or something. My mailbox will thank you.
2002/8/4
This looks doovy: One enterprising hacker has developed an Atari 2600-based musical instrument cartridge. The Synthcart has beats and arpeggiators, and can be operated without a TV. Wonder how long until we see Ataris take the stage next to circuit-bent Hello Kitty toys and GameBoys running NanoLoop. (via Slashdot)
"Please don't invade us, Mr. Bush" The world's last hard-line Stalinist dictatorship, North Korea, has started a charm offensive to improve its image abroad. This includes talks with South Korea and tentative moves towards a market economy. Next up: Fidel Castro offers Nike use of his labour camps, and Moammar Ghadafi invites McDonalds to set up a franchise in Tripoli.
(Though if North Korea does open up somewhat, it could probably market itself as a Stalinist-retro-kitsch tourist destination, and make quite a bit of money from post-ironic hipsters.)
Read: Attack of the Chicken-Hawks, about how most of the people calling for an invasion of Iraq are civilian politicians, and the actual US military isn't too keen on the idea. (via someone named Ben)
I went to the Rob Roy tonight to see some bands. First up were La Scimmia, who were a sort of cinematic jazz instrumental thing; perhaps a little similar to Dirty Three. They were followed by Ninetynine, whom it appears most of the people came to see. The crowd got really packed. And the band rocked, playing all new songs and doing a great job of them.
(Aside: I can't remember ever seeing a Ninetynine show that didn't rock. I remember seeing them once many years ago and not paying much attention, other than "hmmm, vibraphones and toy keyboards.. interesting", but that's because I went there to see The Paradise Motel (IMHO, perhaps the greatest Melbourne band ever), and because I didn't really "get" the indie/garage-band/casiopunk aesthetic back then. And/or because their style has evolved a lot since then.)
Then the Night Terrors, whose CD launch this was, came on. A screen was set up behind the stage, and films were projected onto it (one of the first was Un Chien Andalou, and a lot of the audience weren't expecting the eye-slicing scene at the start). Fluorescent lights were placed against the back walls of the stage, and switched on and off during the performance, adding an eerie, backlit effect to the guy playing the theremin. In one word, the performance was electric.
Afterwards, Cameron Ninetynine took on DJing duties and entertained the remaining people with his rather odd record collection. (He seems to have a thing for that Star Wars disco theme piece.)
2002/8/3
This looks pretty doovy: Victoria Regina Tarot. A set of tarot cards made from collages of Victorian engravings; and you can view them online, along with notes on where the images came from. (via Lukelog)
More twisted spam: A few weeks after "Mortal Dance in Machine Ambulance", I found in my spam filter a missive from someone calling themself "Necro Babe", apparently advertising a Russian web site with "Women In Coffins", "Sick stories about Death and Corpses", "Real Murder Shots", and, cryptically, "Car Incidents". And, thoughtfully enough, they included a disclaimer, warning that it's 'not for so-called "normal" people'. No mention of extreme-right-wing heavy metal bands playing in ambulances this time; though it's a worry. Who would be into that kind of thing? Bored suburban teenagers? Serial-killer wannabes? Or perhaps all those jaded net porn addicts for whom milder bizarre sexual fetishes just don't do it anymore.
2002/8/2
Iraq invites back UN arms inspectors for talks aimed at resuming inspections. The US, though, says that a resumption of inspections is not enough. And Howard's eager for war.
(Aside: I suspect that we may see World War 3, replete with conscription, rationing and a full-scale war economy, within a few years at most. Even if the US, UK and Australia have enough troops and high-tech weapons to hold Afghanistan and Iraq, that will not be enough to invade Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Libya and put down the Saudi insurrection. And the invasion of Iraq is likely to add fuel to the fire.)
Proof that the webcast royalty scheme now adopted in the US was designed to kill small webcasters, securing a monopoly for large, docile mass-market services, and shoring up the RIAA's "turd-in-a-can" business model of homogenising the market and eliminating alternatives to an easily-manufactured mainstream. (via bOING bOING)
Frustrated with CityLink toll evaders speeding through their residential streets every day, some Melbourne suburbanites are fighting back, by staking out the streets with hairdryers, pretending they're radar guns. Wonder how long until the two-wheels-good-four-wheels-bad crowd take this up as a form of direct action.
Nifty photographic technique of the day: painting with light. It involves a completely darkened room, a very long exposure and shining a light over a very patient model. (via gimbo)
Film Festival: Tonight I went to see a Japanese film titled Suicide Club. It was quite bizarre; starting off with the surreal spectacle of 54 uniformed schoolgirls jumping in front of a train in an inexplicable mass suicide. Then it gets more bizarre; more suicides follow, some copycat attempts by impressionable teenagers, and some not. Along the way there are computer bulletin board poseurs, a gang of murderous teenage glam rockers, rolls of strips of human skin, and the phenomenon of a sugar-coated all-girl pop group, who can't possibly be connected to the mass suicides.. or can they?
(The director, a Japanese performance poet and former gay porn director, showed up at the screening and introduced the film, speaking through an interpreter. When it was released in Japan, he said, it came under close police scrutiny, presumably because of its dangerous subject matter.)
Anyway, I rather enjoyed it.
2002/8/1
Former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter debunks arguments for invading Iraq. According to him, Iraq could not have any remaining capability to develop weapons of mass destruction, and no links to terrorist groups were ever found, and the claims in the media about impending Iraqi-backed nuclear/biological/chemical terrorism are baseless, contrived for political reasons.
"Technically capable," however, is the important phrase here. If no one were watching, Iraq could do this. But they would have to start completely from scratch, having been deprived of all equipment, facilities and research because of Ritter's work. They would have to procure the complicated tools and technology required through front companies, which would be detected. The manufacture of chemical and biological weapons emits vented gasses that would have been detected by now if they existed. The manufacture of nuclear weapons emits gamma rays that would have been detected by now if they existed. We have been watching, via satellite and other means, and we have seen none of this. "If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have definitive proof," said Ritter, "plain and simple."
Nonetheless, preparations for the invasion of Iraq (scheduled for mid-October) are going ahead.
The next wave in marketing is here: chatroom bots or "buddies" with virtual personalities, which befriend people, make conversation and gently encourage them to consume lifestyle products -- and potentially provide marketing analysts with a lot of customer-profile data in the form of conversations.
Most buddies are programmed with personalities that appeal to their target audiences. ELLEgirlBuddy, the Internet ego of teen magazine ELLEgirl, is a redheaded 16-year-old who likes kickboxing, the color periwinkle and French class. GooglyMinotaur, a buddy for the British progressive rock band Radiohead, affected a British demeanor with words like "mate." The Austin Powers buddy, which promotes the summer film "Goldmember," interjects the movie character's favorite phrases - "yeah, baby" and "grrr" - into conversation.
Perhaps surprisingly, thanks to improvements in natural-language technology and extensive customer databases, the bots give the illusion of being sentient. People know they're machines, but choose to suspend disbelief.
ActiveBuddy's bots save details about each user - names, birth dates, even instances when the person used offensive language. When the buddy recalls these facts, it could appear to the user that it is taking a genuine interest in him or her. "We're programmed to respond to certain signals as though in the presence of a life form," said MIT's Turkle. "These objects are pushing our buttons."
(via TechDirt)
ode to the 90s, from a somewhat US-west-coast dot-com angle.
I was a millionaire at 27 for thirty seconds.
I learned HTML and swing dancing. moved to Seattle but I was back on the redeye. why did I eat those krispy kremes?
(via bOING bOING)