Recent Posts
He's an idealist of the hippie variety, but I agree with him on an awful lot of things. I wonder what that makes me?-iphigenie (February 13, 2012, 02:00 PM)
All this stuff is simply driving me way, way into the GNU camp.-Renegade (February 13, 2012, 09:53 AM)
I wish I had listened to that song at any other time. Literally so. My thermostat turned off ~30 minutes ago due to a different mode, and that makes the room lotsa colder all of a sudden. (It does that every day, but I'm too lazy to reprogram the stupid thing.)
Now I can't be sure if the test succeeded or if it is just my thermostat is messing me up.-worstje (February 13, 2012, 10:57 AM)
40... dammit... stop ruining the moment and predicting the future!
All I want is to be able to reasonably download stuff and use it... I suppose that's too much to ask... sigh...-Renegade (February 13, 2012, 09:00 AM)
it's going to take the insane audacity of someone like Steve Jobs to make any of these into something slick and shiny and promoted ad nauseum to catch on.-Edvard (February 12, 2012, 01:41 PM)
I have a bad feeling about this
This is my contribution to Uncensored: A Charitable Project to Support The Open Internet. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
This year I will celebrate my fiftieth birthday. While I haven’t spent a half-century hacking, I recall playing with punch cards in the 1960s, so it has been a good forty years of fascination with information technology. In those forty years, what have I done? I have not written any great books. I do not teach in a university. I did not make millions of dollars. I did not invent anything critical to the advancement of the human race.
My perspective is a little like that of C3PO in Star Wars, a minor character throwing his hands up in dismay at calamity and providing others with an interesting viewpoint on the great events of the last forty years.
Like any space opera, the story of information technology is a very simple one. It is played out in a myriad of different ways by a revolving cast of characters, but it always has its loveable heroes, its predictably nefarious villains, innocent civilians to be saved, and bumbling bureaucrats that aren’t inherently evil, but begin every story aiding the forces of darkness out of a misplaced belief they are preserving law and order in their corner of the galaxy.
.
.
.
I have a bad feeling about this
This is my contribution to Uncensored: A Charitable Project to Support The Open Internet. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
This year I will celebrate my fiftieth birthday. While I haven’t spent a half-century hacking, I recall playing with punch cards in the 1960s, so it has been a good forty years of fascination with information technology. In those forty years, what have I done? I have not written any great books. I do not teach in a university. I did not make millions of dollars. I did not invent anything critical to the advancement of the human race.
My perspective is a little like that of C3PO in Star Wars, a minor character throwing his hands up in dismay at calamity and providing others with an interesting viewpoint on the great events of the last forty years.
Like any space opera, the story of information technology is a very simple one. It is played out in a myriad of different ways by a revolving cast of characters, but it always has its loveable heroes, its predictably nefarious villains, innocent civilians to be saved, and bumbling bureaucrats that aren’t inherently evil, but begin every story aiding the forces of darkness out of a misplaced belief they are preserving law and order in their corner of the galaxy.
The heroes are always in possession of a great secret, one that will disrupt the empire. It always works the same way: It takes power out of the hands of the entrenched nobility and bureaucrats and puts it back in the hands of the people. The movie tells us all about it in Act I, deals a great setback to the heroes in Act II, and in Act III they prevail through pluck and a fierce disdain for the overwhelming forces arrayed against them. Who can forget Han Solo's grim tagline, “Never tell me the odds?”
In hardware, minicomputers disrupted mainframes. Then microcomputers disrupted minicomputers. Now phones and tablets are disrupting microcomputers. With each wave, a hardy band of rebels fought against everything the industry threw up in their way. Waves of salespeople spreading FUD. Rigged government procurement deals. Lobbyists in the halls of power passing laws against them. The battle cry of the empire has always been that a victory by the rebels would cost the economy everything, that jobs would vanish and chaos would reign. But each victory by the rebels actually created more jobs, more wealth, and more freedom.
Now in the next century, what does a somewhat battered and out-of-date protocol droid observe? That everything old is new again. The “intellectual property cartels” act like the hardware giants of old, buying politics by the pound and telling everyone who will listen that they need more protection for their patent portfolio, more protection for their cartoon characters, more protection for even the depiction of sporting events.
They tell us that only a “managed economy” for intellectual “property” will preserve jobs, and that ifthe serfs have more “freedom,” this will actually lead to slavery. The warn us that roving bands of pirates are living it up like drug barons on movie downloads. They explain how they need the senate to grant them special, temporary powers to download the contents of your phone or laptop when you cross the border, they explain why they need to send violent special forces police to arrest and extradite the owners of a file downloading business, they explain why they need to monitor the entire world’s tweets looking for jokes in poor taste.
And that’s just how they run politics. If you want to create the future, the possibility of successfully navigating a patent minefield is approximately 3,720 to 1. And I noticed earlier, the electoral motivator has been damaged. It's impossible to go to political innovation speed.
We are, I think, at the beginning of Act III. Some of you will agree with me that surrender is a perfectly acceptable alternative in extreme circumstances. But others will climb into their trusty ships and continue the fight, harassing and wounding the entrenched interests until the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own corruption. The future of our economy really does depend on the rebels succeeding. At every point in the last forty years, wealth, health, and happiness in our economy have been built on the freedom to disrupt the entrenched powers, not the preservation of their rent-seeking monopolies.
More jobs and businesses have been created by VCRs than destroyed by them. More jobs and businesses have been created by the breakup of AT&T than destroyed by it. More jobs and businesses have been created by the decline of IBM than lost in Armonk. More jobs and businesses have been created by the stagnation of Microsoft than lost in Redmond. And it will be the same with the RIAA, the MPAA, Intellectual Ventures, and everyone else scheming to enthral the people with digital “rights” management and criminal prosecution of “file sharing.” In the destruction of the monopolization of ideas, lie the seeds of a new revolution, one that will bring wealth, freedom, and jobs.
Rebels, the force will be with you. Always.
Not a music video, but a movie, "Color from the Dark" is an H. P. Lovecraft adaptation:
http://www.indiemovi...colour-from-the-dark
(Picking up from the Cthulhu stuff in another thread in case anyone is interested. Seems like everyone loves Cthulhu, though I'm sure there are some secret Azathoth lovers out there too~!-Renegade (February 12, 2012, 04:53 AM)
Are you guys crazy? Why would you want the Unabomber to return? What the heck is wrong with you?-Deozaan (February 11, 2012, 12:41 AM)
Deozaan, now you're going to get all literal on us?
Besides, his theories weren't all that off..... Except for the bombs.
C'mon - why so serious?!
Jim-J-Mac (February 11, 2012, 08:17 AM)
RockXP doesn't seem to lookfor anything other than product keys and activation details for XP:-Carol Haynes (February 10, 2012, 07:22 PM)
Haha! I had no idea there were so many Cthulhu parody videos. Nice.
- Oshyan-JavaJones (February 10, 2012, 02:42 PM)
Hooray for the ability to intelligently debate, consider our perspective, and modify our opinions or approach if necessary.-JavaJones (February 10, 2012, 03:15 PM)
It's little more than queen's pawn to queen's pawn 3 so far. An opening move. The real battle hasn't even begun yet. And the gloves won't come off until some time after that.Stretching the chess analogy beyond safe limits:-40hz (February 07, 2012, 10:15 PM)
So the Media Lobbies, with the advantage, are playing White? What's their meta strategy? To play the Queen Pawn systems a tempo down so that we get lulled into thinking they're beaten, or are they playing a King's Indian Attack aka a reversed defense as an offense?-TaoPhoenix (February 10, 2012, 02:55 PM)
Wait, 40hz, weren't you recently advocating *not buying anything* rather than buying from independents, as I suggested? Isn't that the opposite of "giving something back to the creatives"?-JavaJones (February 10, 2012, 02:09 PM)
I'd suggest we start by dumping outmoded and unnecessary parts of the distribution system, since it's the distributors and their trade practices that are the biggest part of the problem right now. Digital downloads have pretty much rendered most of the old industry models obsolete or inapplicable anyway.
.
.
.
Once the crud gets cleaned out of the distribution pipes we have a better chance of putting artists directly in touch with their friends and fans. And maybe out of that will come a new awareness of why it's necessary to actively and financially support the arts people are most interested in. And hopefully the people will act on their awareness without the need for givernment (not a typo!) to continue to propose crazy and unworkable laws and other regulatory nonsense.
) 
):Katzenjammer is a Norwegian band from Oslo which was formed in 2005.
The band members are Anne Marit Bergheim, Marianne Sveen, Solveig Heilo and Turid Jørgensen. Their music mixes genres such as folk music, pop, rock, country and balkan music. Even though the members are from Norway, their lyrics are in English. The four members switch instruments often and have a stated goal of playing instruments they haven't played before.[1] They play more than 25 different instruments, including some which are quite unusual in a band setting, such as accordion, contrabass balalaika, zither, ukulele and melodica. The band collaborates with Mats Rybø, a fifth "phantom member", who has written the bulk of the band's songs.
The band cites many influences including Goran Bregović, Danny Elfman, Django Reinhardt and Knutsen & Ludvigsen. Also, the band states that they are not only inspired by folk but cartoons as well.
)Um...booted up Photoshop maybe?No, don't have that-40hz (February 09, 2012, 03:31 PM)Paint.NET or GIMP is as far as I'll go, after SSC, but this one is genuine
-Ath (February 09, 2012, 03:53 PM)
