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"{irdial}...release my pain"
via email from Germany

Number 8: "black boxes"

[...]

******* What do you want from entertainment?

go out
smoke tabs
smell smoke
drink drink
hear drones
see drones
go home

Thats what going out is about right now, and thats fine. It is NOT however
sufficient for the people of Irdial. WE WANT ENTERTAINMENT, or at least FREE
FOOD & DRINK to have to put up with tiresome drones played by drones. Effort
must always be rewarded. You make an effort, you should be rewarded. Drones
drones drones drones drones drones drones. The ideas behind flat drones is well
understood. Drones are not exiting in any way any longer, except as historical
curiosities; DYNAMICS and RIGOR are far more interesting; the use of time to
divide sound up an disorganize it, in other words, composition, application of
intelligence...THIS is what is interesting. Real time manipulation of sources
and output, via anything other than a mouse.

THIS IS WHAT WE REQUIRE BOYS & GIRLS.

Imagine for yourself, a black cube, two foot on a side (yes, feet you E.E.C.
scum-sucking bastards.) This box, has a 1/4" audio output, and a three pin
balanced audio output on the rear face. On top of this box, is a T-bar lever,
that has one dimension of freedom about an axis that is perpendicular to the
user, rather like the throttle on a jet airliner. On the right hand face, as you
stand behind the box, is an interconnect so that you can join this box to
another box of a similar type. This box, when standing alone, plays synthesized
noises, the texture, tone volume of which is controlled by the way in which the
lever is thrust back and forth, and an internal pseudo random event generator,
which is also under the guidance of this single lever. When the box is networked
with other boxes of the same design, the motion of the T-bar lever causes the
mechanisms inside the other boxes to react. Each of the different boxes would
have a different mode of activation, for example a spinnaker winder, a set of
twenty five numbered push buttons, large steering wheels rotated by a knob,
7 parallel sliders, a large fighter jet joystick, a mallet driven rubber pad.

A performance (and people this would be a *real* performance) of these boxes,
either in unison or ensemble would be pretty breathtaking, since the player has
only intuitive and reactive control over the sound that is produced, and of
course, when she is playing with another person, we have two people and two
devices fighting to cooperate, five boxes? NOW THAT WOULD BE ENTERTAINMENT.
Ideally these people would be arranged in a circle, so that they could influence
each other, and then, they would play it the opposite way, with their backs
turned to each other, then with half facing and half blindfolded. Tempo, timbre
change, chance, all of these would be manipulated in real time, as a
performance, and I can GUARANTEE YOU that in terms of excitement it would be an
improvement orders of magnitude grater than watching an anemic escapee from
THX1138 playing with a mouse.

Surprise, anticipation, excitement, adrenalin, motion, performance, interaction,
collaboration, warm blood; this is what our boxes would bring to entertainment,
and of course, it would be a work in progress. We would be adding to the
technology of these boxes constantly to bring the audience more and more sonic
hysteria. After all, isn't that what got you into music in the first place?

[...]

"We also thank France, Germany and other states for their positions, which we need to say are considered wise and valid until now," said the narrator, who also urged economic warfare against Washington.

"Stop using the U.S. dollar. Use the Euro or a basket of currencies," he said on the video dated December 10, 2004.

Reads like a press release from 20AC.

The "Iraqi Resistance" video

Reuters carried this article yesterday which discusses the Iraqi video which asks Bush, ""George W. Bush; you have asked us to 'bring it on'. And so have we, like never expected. Do you have another challenge?"

Since it's in the news again, I thought I'd post this link to the video for anyone who may have missed it in my previous post.

A message from the Iraqi resistance

I have no way of verifying it's authenticity. The Reuters article has as much information as I've ever had about this video.

Comparing Israeli sunlight records from the 1950s with current ones, Dr Stanhill was astonished to find a large fall in solar radiation.

"There was a staggering 22% drop in the sunlight, and that really amazed me." Intrigued, he searched records from all around the world, and found the same story almost everywhere he looked.

Sunlight was falling by 10% over the USA, nearly 30% in parts of the former Soviet Union, and even by 16% in parts of the British Isles.

Although the effect varied greatly from place to place, overall the decline amounted to one to two per cent globally every decade between the 1950s and the 1990s.

Dr Stanhill called it "global dimming", but his research, published in 2001, met a sceptical response from other scientists.

It was only recently, when his conclusions were confirmed by Australian scientists using a completely different method to estimate solar radiation, that climate scientists at last woke up to the reality of global dimming. [...]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4171591.stm

[...] On show at Expo

Mac OSX Tiger: the upcoming release has more than 200 applications, including: Spotlight, a desktop search tool, desktop widget manager Dashboard (stock tracker, weather reports, dictionary etc), [...]
...and SafariRSS...

Another 100 quid to upgrade to DesktopGoogle OSX (when it eventually arrives), an RSS reader and Konfabulator.

Or what?



Meanwhile, on smoking, I detest the idea of a public smoking ban. I don't smoke. I also can't stand smokey pubs and clubs, but I choose to either put up with it or go elsewhere. My choice. If the pubs lose enough money because many people choose to go elsewhere, maybe they'll CHOOSE to become non-smoking venues.

Unfortunately, free choice on private property has been taken away in this instance. And that is CRIMINAL.
Now, if the government banned cigarettes altogether...

I'd also like to see cars banned from anywhere that pedestrians have to walk alongside, people with colds (or other contagious diseases) banned from leaving their homes, people with iPods/walkmans banned from everywhere unless they have enclosed (or noiseless) earphones as they really stress other passengers on public transport (similarly, chewing gum with the mouth open should be punished with a spell in the stocks).

Wetherspoon makes fresh start with Exeter opening
By Rosie Murray-West, City Correspondent (Filed: 11/01/2005)

One of Britain's leading pub chains, JD Wetherspoon, is opening its first non-smoking pub on Sunday, in preparation for a smoking ban in three years time.[...]

No system with that many users can be secure.

You may not even know it is happening. Local advertising campaigns will alert patients that the system is starting up in their area. If you fail to notice the adverts, your GP is under no obligation to inform you that he is about to post your most private details online.

The patient record programme — which will include new information, but not existing records — is part of the £6.2-billion IT system being built to cover the whole NHS. It is the biggest civil IT programme in the world, could eventually cost up to £30 billion and will link 240 hospitals, 8,000 surgeries, 100,000 doctors and 380,000 nurses on the internet, enabling computerised appointment bookings, an electronic X-ray archive and online repeat prescriptions (eventually, maybe). The electronic patient record forms a major part of the system. It “sits on the spine”, as one official put it. [...]

What the article fails to mention is that this contract is being executed by...

Micro$oft

So this means that it will be compromised before it ever goes online.

[...]

Thankfully, if you don’t trust the system you can opt out. You will, though, be automatically included unless you say you want to opt out, in which case all your records will remain with your GP. Hence the importance of catching the announcement that the electronic record is starting in your area. [...]

hmmm opt out who amongst you is now going to opt out? Will you also 'op out' of the ID card scheme? hmmmmm this NHS scheme is there to increase efficiency and save money, but you are going to be allowed to 'opt out' of it, and cost the NHS money and time...why?

Why is it an option for you to make the government spend more in this arena, but NOT be able to opt out of the biometric pasport and ID card?!

"...more staff and consultants working on the ID Card proposals than there are police officers in post in all the UK Computer Crime Units (including NHTCU)
added together."

In 2000 Putin ran for the presidency promising to rein in criminal activity, to extirpate corruption, to appoint modern managerial staff, to turn Russia into a country with a powerful dynamic economy, and to defeat terrorism.

Four years have passed. The crime level has increased. The scale of corruption has not been reduced. Governmental institutions have been deluged at all levels with the retired officers of the Soviet KGB. Now as before the state of the economy is defined by oil and gas prices.

The principal political achievement of the last four years has been the strengthening of the President's personal authority. In recent years no other goal has been strived for so consistently and effectively. [...]

http://www.komitet2008.ru/english1.php

A message from Kasparov's group. Sadly, the world is not 64 squares in area. 'Absolute adherence to democratic values' is as impossible as perfect socialism.