Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
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22
Sep
2009
The inane ramblings of non-talent Lily Allen
Lily Allen has set up a blog for musicians opposed to peer-to-peer filesharing to contribute their thoughts to. I only made it through her most recent blog post tonight, but if that’s anything to go by, we’re in for some more quality stream-of-unconsciousness ramblings from her in the future:
Apparently there are a lot of younger people at the record labels who do understand digital and want to come up with new ways everyone can get to music, but everytime they try something new it fails to win through against the ‘free’ stuff available unlawfully from file-sharing. So the fact there’s nothing in place to stop file-sharing is actually preventing the industry develop new ways of getting music to people, as well as harming new artists. I ‘d also like to stress that the music business is not just made up of artists and record company execs,. ALOT of people seem to think that the record labels are to blame for this whole thing because they have been overcharging the consumer for too long, while this may be partly true, i wouldn’t want to be seen as supporting file sharing, even if it does mean reaching a bigger audience and earning money from ticket sales . People are losing their jobs as a result of illegal downloads. In the same way that all those people lost their jobs at car factories last year, because people stopped buying cars. The music industry is now facing destruction because people have stopped buying music. For every car sold in the UK , a small piece of that profit will go to the designers of the cars, there are thousands ands thousands of other people working in the motor industry that need to be paid too. If we stop paying for a product, the industry supporting that product falls apart, as we have seen over the past few years. i hope that made sense….
Sounds like a presentation a 15-year-old would make for an Economics class in high school. Instead of even paying a single thought to the incredible exposure peer-to-peer sharing has given emerging and underground artists in countries they would never have dreamed to have reached, she assails this practice as being the final nail in the coffin for such musicians.
Same story as always, then… But told by an incredibly inarticulate girl who produces utterly shit pop music and will no doubt further embarrass herself on the blog in the future. Stay tuned, innit?
(Speaking of the which, first person to code a Text-To-Mockney-Speech utility for the sole purpose of reciting the garbage on this blog wins a grand prize. Get working.)
Update: thanks to Hugh, I came across this post on Torrentfreak, which tells us that:
The debut post on the blog includes a criticism of 50 Cent, who just a couple of weeks ago had the temerity to suggest that piracy and file-sharing are all part of marketing music.
However, aside from the critique of Fiddy, the rest of the blog post – put there by Lilly herself – is someone else’s work. Arrr mateys, Long John Allen lifted the entire post from another site – Techdirt.com – effectively pirating the work of the one and only Mike Masnick.
“I think it’s wonderful that Lilly Allen found so much value in our Techdirt post that she decided to copy — or should I say ‘pirate’? — the entire post,” Mike told TorrentFreak on hearing the shocking news.
“The fact that she is trying to claim that such copying is bad, while doing it herself suggests something of a double standard, unfortunately. Also, for someone so concerned about the impact of ‘piracy’ I’m quite surprised that she neither credited nor linked to our post. Apparently, what she says and how she acts are somewhat different. Still, Lilly, glad we could help you make a point… even if it wasn’t the one you thought you were making,” Mike added.
15
Sep
2009
Two exceptional blog posts
Came across two exceptional blog posts today I thought I’d share.
The first is another from Charlie Brooker. Its subject matter — intellectual property — has already been flogged to death, but despite this, it’s still an article worthy of your time, since he has, as always, a novel, amusing take on things. He begins:
Overvalued, irksome, conceited, pudge-faced, balding, boring, awful celebrity art nob Damien Hirst has apparently become embroiled in a ludicrous feud with a 19-year-old graffiti artist called Cartrain. Hostilities erupted in 2008, when Cartrain created a sarcastic collage that included an image of Hirst’s stupid bling-encrusted skull “artwork” (the one that reportedly sold for £50m at auction, although that figure is disputed by virtually anyone who still retains some degree of faith in humankind).
He then tells more of the intruiging, almost unbelievable story that’s developed between Hirst and Cartrain, and goes on to compare it to the stand-off that’s developing between today’s youth and the record and movie industry big-wigs.
The second article is far more solemn. Although posted on the Language Log, its main subject matter is homophobia, with only one or two references to linguistic phonomena. I was going to describe it in more detail, and even include a quotation consisting of the poem with which it finishes, but I think it would spoil much of the emotional effect of the post. Instead, I compell you to go and read it now, this instant.
13
Jun
2009
The idea behind reCAPTCHA
An entertaining talk from Luis von Ahn, the guy behind CAPTCHAs, about the reinvention of the idea in a way to benefit mankind. Some pretty incredible statistics throughout, especially towards the end.
10
Jun
2009
The first few miliseconds of a HTTPS connection
Stumbled across this very detailed description of what exactly happens when a HTTPS connection is established between a client and server. It includes a well written, easy-to-read description of the mathematics behind RSA public key cryptography.
Worth the read!
3
Jun
2009
Cassetteboy VS The Bloody Apprentice
Cassetteboy‘s gone to work on The Apprentice:
I’ve been working on this video for a couple of months, on and off. I watched 45 episodes of The Apprentice (most of them several times), and material from 43 of them made it into the final piece. Basically, it was a lot of work.
Watch it here:
If you enjoyed it, make sure you check out more of their work at their Youtube channel.
1
Jun
2009
The assassination of George Tiller
Yesterday, an abortionist in Wichita, Kansas, Dr. George Tiller was shot dead outside the Reformation Lutheran Church in the city. The BBC has a good op-ed piece on violence in the abortion debate:
While many pro-life organisations have come out and condemned the killing on Sunday, the fact remains that violence and intimidation have remained a constant thread in the history of the modern-day movement.
According to data gathered by the National Abortion Federation, a pro-choice group, there had been at least nine killings in anti-abortion protests, 17 attempted murders and 400 death threats.
Bombings and arson attempts of abortion facilities also happen on a regular basis with cases often reaching double figures every year.
The most famous was probably the Christmas Day bombings which targeted three clinics in 1984 with the perpetrators dubbing them a “birthday gift for Jesus”.
More reading material of a distinctly more repulsive nature is available in this blog post on Carnal Nation, in which the author has used Twitter for its only sensible purpose: mining public opinion. Gathered there is a collection of “tweets” from a fringe-group of pro-life nutjobs who, ironically, celebrated the assassination.
They would seem to be also supporters of the death penalty, which would make one doubt the creedence of their claim that they believe every life really is sacred. Or perhaps their flawed logic is simply the product of having been brought up to believe fundamentalist dogma, and they see no logical contradiction.
In any event, here are some of the tweets:
No need to pray for George Tiller. We know he went straight to hell!!!!!
Tiller the Baby Killer is finally dead….God took care of what needed to be done….
the killing of tiller the baby killer was JUSTICE, not murder.
All very Christian and forgiving, don’t you think? It’s worth noting that the overwhelming majority of tweets from both sides of the abortion debate expressed horror at the assassination of Dr. Tiller. Indeed, the last tweet linked above seems to be from a particularly screwy individual, who also appears to be a proud racist.
So, these people aren’t in the mainstream, but the Internet acts as a veritable megaphone for their idiocy. The effects on their lives is predictable, as “the stupid, bigoted comments people used to make at the water cooler now get preserved for future employers to find using Google.”
But what effect does this have on the rest of us? Comment and phenomena like this will always be sought out to satisfy a kind of morbid curiosity many of us might have. Is there the chance this will result in it becoming more acceptable and popular?
21
May
2009
Windows Email Clients?
At the moment I’m looking to begin using a local email client on Windows again. I was going to use Mozilla’s Thunderbird, but it appears to be rather bloated, and apparently fails at finding emails when there’s a few thousand to search through.
What I need is something lightweight that treats email correspondances as conversations (a la Gmail) and can synchronise with web email services (Gmail, Zimbra, etc).
So, what should I use?
17
May
2009
Album covers, Penguin style
Littlepixel has created a lovely picture album on flickr of classic album covers, re-done in design and style as Penguin books. An example:
Click here for the full flickr album.
14
May
2009
A sneak peak at Wolfram|Alpha
There’s been a buzz about the internet in the past few months about Wolfram|Alpha, a “computational knowledge engine” announced in March. It’s been put together by Wolfram Research, the same people who came up with the Mathematica programming language and the project is headed up by English physicist Stephen Wolfram. It seems to be due to be released in 4 days, on the 18th of May, 2009. Today, a video was released demonstrating the power of the tool.
I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything in computer science or computational linguistics (question answering and information extraction are rather busy fields of research in CL) that’s impressed me so much. The sheer power, flexibility and ingenuity of the engine is indescribable.
The opportunities for computer scientists it will open up, once it’s released, are also endless. If the project can take the strain of its inevitable popularity and keep advancing at the current rate of development, I dare say it’ll be a definite watershed moment in the history of the internet.
10
May
2009
Keeping an ear on the police
Back when I was in school, I’d have to wait an hour or so before being collected by one of my parents on the way home from work. I’d usually spend the time hanging about with what friends would loiter a bit longer after school, but occasionally I’d go find an empty classroom and get some work done.
There was one chap, a right arsehole if truth be told, who’d come around occasionally, listening to the cops and other emergency services on his radio scanner. I’d always wanted to get one, but they were prohibitively expensive, and, anyhow, at the time I lived in the middle of nowhere, so it wouldn’t have served much use.
Now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I can finally live out these past dreams. On scanamerica.us you can listen in on the emergency services in some counties of some states.
Apparently there’s a middle-aged, white male, dressed in a grey sweatshirt, standing on an overpass somewhere in Cook County, Illinois, with a huge sign that says “KILLING”.
Neat.
