The Null Device
2000/9/28
A US congressman has introduced a bill to guarantee users' rights to download music that they can prove they own. Which will no doubt piss off the RIAA to no end. Wonder if it'll get through.
Food for thought: Virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier takes apart cybernetic totalism; well worth reading:
Here is a partial roster of the component beliefs of cybernetic totalism:
1) That cybernetic patterns of information provide the ultimate and best way to understand reality.
2) That people are no more than cybernetic patterns.
3) That subjective experience either doesn't exist, or is unimportant because it is some sort of ambient or peripheral effect.
4) That what Darwin described in biology, or something like it, is in fact also the singular, superior description of all creativity and culture.
5) That qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of information systems will be accelerated by Moore's Law.
6) That biology and physics will merge with computer science (becoming biotechnology and nanotechnology), resulting in life and the physical universe becoming mercurial; achieving the supposed nature of computer software. Furthermore, all of this will happen very soon...
While Parisian police have cracked down on pitbulls, youth gangs have turned to attack-trained monkeys, mostly smuggled from North Africa. The authorities are beset by complaints of monkey violence, the zoo won't take the sociopathic primates, and the animal shelters are full.
Factoid of the day: A haiku must contain a reference to a season or time of year. One that does not is technically not a haiku, but a senryu.