The Null Device
2001/3/2
Tapeworms are good for you. Or so claims Japanese parasitologist Koichiro Fujita. After studying healthy yet parasite-infested children in Borneo, he was so convinced that the intestinal parasites have a positive symbiotic function that he introduced one into his own gut. Oddly enough, he is not having an easy time of selling his message to a broader public. (Though maybe tapeworm therapy will ultimately take its rightful place alongside trepanation and urine therapy.)
An article on upcoming security improvements in Linux; includes capabilities, cryptography, /dev/random, and the NSA-sponsored type enforcement patches.
There was a mini blog-scene conclave in Melbourne (or Northcote, to be specific) today; Graham the Happy Scum is in Melbourne for a few days, and staying on the couch at my place, so we dropped in on Lev, did the rounds of the local eateries and talked about various things (mostly of an outré nature). Not quite the glamour of the A-list social calendar, but it'll do. I'll probably catch up with another blogger, Peter of Dumplings in the Dark, sometime over the next few days.
Unintended consequences: A while ago, Canada passed laws requiring cigarette packets to carry graphic images of rotting teeth and cancerous lungs. Whilst this has yet to cause large numbers of smokers to quit, it has spawned a new industry in cigarette case covers:
One mock cover - manufactured by a Quebec company called Cigarette Cover - shows a yellow smiley face with the caption It's Cool! Others by that company depict a flower below the caption Bla Bla Bla . . . Bla Bla!; a smiling sun with the words Wind, Fire, Earth, Water; a skull and crossbones with the caption Smoking Preserves Meat; and a picture of a marijuana plant with the warning Marijuana is not a Safe Alternative to Cigarettes.
(via Unknown News)
A Suck piece on the end of the Golden Age of the Web. That's right; no more free stuff sponsored by venture capitalists' largesse, freely available plunderphonic musical parodies on Napster, or crashable product-launch raves. Soon it will recede into distant myth, and we'll be paying for web content to view on our CPRM-protected trusted clients. Welcome to 2001.
You go, girl! Courtney Love takes her record company (the behemoth Vivendi Universal) to court, claiming that the industry standard record contracts are unlawful. If she succeeds, this could shatter the hold major labels have on artists, much as Olivia De Havilland's lawsuit in the 1950s smashed the Hollywood studio system's grip on actors' careers. Given how egregiously unfair and corrupt the recording racket is, and has been since the dawn of time, it's more than about time that something like this happened. And Courtney Love, with her resources and aggressive attitude, may be just the person to do it.