Saturday, August 04, 2001

Someone smart said:
Or download free stuff from MP3.com.

It's not like the bands the RIAA push onto us are significantly better than most of the better artists on MP3.com, anyway.


This raises a very good point. If RIAA's music control fails, and the consumers route around the damage, buying CDs in the Bahamas for artists who are willing to list MP3 songs so we can try them out, it really doesn't matter what Congress tries to do.

In the end, the market has no soul, no love for RIAA and the corporate music scene. If they increase costs and try to closed source their music, open source music alternatives will become more attractive. If I'm into Techno and they try to charge me USD$20 for a CD of 10 songs, when I can get decent (if not better) quality Techno for USD$0 for tryout and USD$0 for one or two sample MP3 songs (full length), then I'll send them USD$10 for the 10 song CD. Cost to band - USD$7 for production, shipping, handling, MP3.com split. Profit to band - USD$3. Profit under RIAA USD$20 CD to band is USD$0.20 at most. If you're a techno band and you can sell 2 million CDs with USD$3 profit or choose to sell 1 million CDs via RIAA groups for USD$0.20 profit, which will you choose?

Right, you choose open source, cause you get more fans, more net dollars to band, and you also get the charts of where your CDs sell the most to plan tours with and can then email those fans and crash at their places.

The market wins, open source wins, RIAA loses.
posted by Irdial , 10:24 AM Þ 

'I ccant helpo but think that it's all coincindene. think About it. A language has so & so many difvfernet sounds, ok? Like, let's say english has like 200 distintt sounds in it, for an expapkmple. Okay, then mixe them around (as in reverse speech). What do you geet? 15% ordinary sepeech. Not much make sence, bue treallyu? It'smt obcioue? obcois POBUVOIUS!

Sorry for beting rounk, but I thin kthis is stupi.
d

Also. I lvoe you alll. (serhliock,m sgerkicgksgierksherlock, you missed te publish button)
posted by Mikkel , 3:22 AM Þ 
Friday, August 03, 2001

yes I think its the end of the brass eye discussion - didn't really want to talk to much about the program itself cos everyone is pretending to either be totally against or completely understand mr morris. really I just wanted to talk about the aftermath of stupidity it created. ho hum lots of fun...reversespeech is great but will it harm the children?

this might entertain you for a while, its a voice synth, stephen hawkings generator,computer talk system (that's certified technical terminology) : http://www.bell-labs.com/project/tts/voices-java.html

anyone know any other good sites for that kind of thing? i like www.poptics.com
posted by Paul , 10:57 AM Þ 

wow, reverse speech is cool - the neal armstrong one really does say "Man will space walk" (I downloaded the wav file and tried it myself). I wonder if I'm secretly typing a message in reverse now? : )
posted by captain davros , 10:13 AM Þ 
Thursday, August 02, 2001

via email
Thought you might get a kick out of this page:::
http://www.reversespeech.com/
josh
posted by Irdial , 9:29 PM Þ 

You need this red button!!!!!
http://www.anonymizer.com/

UPDATED
Actually, this button anonymizez pages, but BLOCKS lots of interesting URLs based on keywords (aparently) so, actually, it SUCKS! use SafeWeb instead; free and no censorship.
posted by Irdial , 9:02 PM Þ 

i thought we'd stear clear of all that brasseye is bad gubbins... not that i mind, but it's all a bit boring really. or maybe not. polticians, the media and normal people (those less well off and educated than us, like blacks or gays.) are thick and don't get it. i didn't see it either, my flat mates were watching rancid aluminium or some other crap, and i didn't realise there was a repeat, maybe i'm in the right position to support it then? nonce sense.

i was reading through some interviews and articles on brass eye at this website and the article from the guardian about the peter sutcliffe musical just highlighted exactly what's gone on recently. and i was reading in one of this week's guardians (on my palm pilot!!) and this came up:

have you seen the daily mail?

no, but i've had it described to me, and i can say it's disgusting.

something else they said was, at least the sun doesn't hide it's arrogance behind pretences. the daily mail is the most disgusting hovel of little englanders, they wrap their self-righteous rhetoric up in thin veils of misplaced nationalism and bigotry. but then the guardian is no better. taking the moral highroad, maybe a bit more subtly than the mail, but you can still sense the oneupmanship.

and what about chris morris? i don't think he gives a fuck. and maybe we shouldn't either... it just proves the extortionate numbers of people out there who don't "get it" or don't want to "get it" - not that i am saying i do, but at least i try and understand before i go off on one.

well most of the time.

drugs are bad. ok?

disclaimer:

there's one really offensive sentance here which is a paraphrase of chris morris and therefore funny, and to be taken in context it will reveal itself to be an insight on what the daily mail would really like to print. hopefully everyone reading this will understand, but maybe some over zealous hack will be searching, and end up here and then report me to the relevant authorities.
posted by alex_tea , 7:19 PM Þ 

yup - I have to say my first thought on the Blunkett comment was and exactly how do you know eh blunket? Who told you what was going on? mmmmm? nothing against lack o vision but it is just daft. What I can't get my head around is how thick people in this country are, I mean really thick. I raised the point with several people and had various ridiculous arguments back like 'OK so what's next - gang rape being made fun of?' and then had to explain for 1,000,000th time that the program wasn't about mocking victims of anything, that trying to defend your point by using a subject such as gang rape i.e "I know how to shut them up and make sure I'm right - I'll use a highly emotive subject so they just have to agree with me" is just as bad as what they are wrongly accusing a program of doing i.e using emotive subjects for their own means and was outstanded to the response when I asked what was worse - a minority channel showing a late night minority program attacking media exploitation of paedophilia using dark humour and searing satire OR the biggest selling papers whipping up a social frenzy DIRECTLY against information provided by experts on the subject, masking itself as being a voice of the people in order to not only obtain greater but sustain higher sales. The look on peoples faces was astonishing it was like someone had just switched the light on. GET THIS: someones response was 'well its been going on for ages so that's different' WHAT????? Rape, murder genocide have been going on a long time, so its time to turn a blind eye is it? My god it is scary.

The Daily Star (i was told I don't purchase - it was on page 6) had the usual condemnation of brass eye on its left hand side and on the same page, yes the same page, had some 15 year old opera singer in revealing dress (where she was probably encouraged to show a bit) with something like 'shes grown up now' and I would imagine reference to her needing a good set of lungs. This is the reality friends.
posted by Paul , 2:56 PM Þ 
Wednesday, August 01, 2001

Satire has always been one of the most elegant and insightful ways of making moral or social comment - it's main drawback is that for satire to work a certain level of intellectual participation is required from it's audience - as usual the inhabitants of TV Land are looking without seeing. Some more mind-warpingly offensive obscenity from Brass Eye ...........
posted by > parge , 1:14 PM Þ 

If any of you have been reading the papers, the 180° that the Sun did for example, was quite simply breathtaking. It was absolutely clear that NONE of the journalists that wrote about the programme actually saw it.

There is also a very interesting facet of this whole sad saga that no one has touched upon yet; the Home Secretary David Blunkett is blind. There is no reason why he should not be Home Secretary, but some interesting situations are bound to arise in his job, since he has to make determinations on obscenity. How will he determine wether a picture or film is obscene? In the case of the Brass Eye episode, he had the programmes contents desctribed to him.

Surely, someone is going to argue that he in fact cannot make a judgement on what is or is not obscene because he cannot see the porn to determine wether it is likely to offend public morals. A section of Brass Eye had a customs official making an on the spot determination of wether or not a two foot tall picture of a childs head on the body of a 4 inch tall naked woman was obscene or not. It was totally hilarious. When the same head was put onto a different, but totally absurd picture featuring "bigger naked parts" the official said that it was obscene!

Someone is going to raise this point eventually; even when the officials can see, the standards that they apply to determine what is in violation of obscenity laws are clearly absurd. There has never been a time in the UK where so many elements are in place at the same time, the combination of which could destroy the obscenity laws once and for all.
posted by Irdial , 12:29 PM Þ 
Tuesday, July 31, 2001

morning, afternoon or evening - a multipurpose greeting

i don't know if anyone has ever seen the episode of the cartoon that this came from but it made me laugh. this particular thing almost made me evaporate - listen to the noise it makes - i want the power to make this noise at dimwit mannerless commuters, especially those who are currently sitting around confirming with each rather than thinkng for themselves that brasseye was sick and therefore they agree - it must be sick! a politician who hasn't seen it said it was and when the papers and politicians agree then what they say is correct, it must be! (by the way if anyone heard on radio 4 that hughes woman ACTUALLY SAY on the breakfast show in front of god knows how many people around the world, that the program was a disgrace and then have no retort when the interviewer said "are you really in a postion to say any of this being that you haven't actually seen the show" except simply repeat - after a lengthy pause where she maybe realised her crassness - what she already had said, would be thankful to brasseye for highlighting the amount of clots that are in positions of power in this country - trust they are clots and clots can lead to strokes if left untreated he said in a country/human analogy). Turn up you volume and go to:

http://hypnotoad.org/

The noise is fantastic..

Now I'm off to complain about ready steady cook - I noticed some lamb being handled in a delicate manner whilst ainsly harriot (cousin of jim herriot) whooped in the background - how can they show that eh? how can they make a joke out of these victims? it is offensive to not only joke about animal sex, but it was a little baby lamb therefore this is paedophilia animal sex and the worst bit is that as the poor ewe has been slaughtered therefore it is actually necrophile paedophilia animal sex exploitation. We should pick a tv show take it out of context and get as many people to complain as possible - then maybe we can also get politicians who have no idea of what they are talking about, let alone be representing anyone on a large media platform as a stand up memeber of society and reflection of the countries mood, to support greater idiocy.

I have no problem with personal opinion - that is why you have a choice to say yes or no and defend that point of view, but I detest this plethora of ignorance and tunnel vision thinking. Complain about something without thinking today and see what happens - not half as much as this I bet.
posted by Paul , 11:38 AM Þ 
Monday, July 30, 2001

We have always said, "dont worry/shout/complain/bitch about stuff you dont like happening, go out and DO SOMETHING about it" Well, some very clever people have done just that. Instead of using Microsoft Passport, use this. It looks good, works good, and the first million users are free.

You are not going to be forced to use Microsoft products in the future. Use them if you want to, but dont complain that there are no alternatives, especially when there are cool ones available!
posted by Irdial , 8:07 PM Þ 
Sunday, July 29, 2001

http://www.badart.com <--brilliant//haha!>
posted by ha , 8:09 PM Þ 

I just saw an amazing thing; at the US mint, they use a huge mechanical transcripting lathe to copy and reduce the original artwork for a coin to a master die, "to date, no one has found a better, more accurate way to transcribe the orginal artwork to the master die with such a high degree of accuracy" Hmmmmm....you know the rest!
posted by Irdial , 6:03 PM Þ 

Someone Clever Said...

Timeline..

* Printing press and phonograph invented
* Copyright is invented, a controversial law from the beginning.
* Publishers rise to control physical distribution, pay authors--though not always fairly. There is no alternative.. people need books / records, authors need some cash. This system works relatively well for awhile. Consumers bootleg copyrighted materials by exchanging physical media. Losses are minimal and individuals aren't worth prosecuting.
* Copyright law changes at the whim of publishers, effectively eliminating the creation of public domain works by extending the length of copyright indefinitely. Artists and authors increasingly produce "works for hire," which are then owned by the publisher they work for.
* Popularization of the Internet and new data compression algorithms render traditional means of disseminating information nearly obsolete overnight. Some artists and authors realize that they don't need publishers anymore. Publishers ignore the Internet, seeing little threat.
* Consumers realize that they can obtain copyrighted works on the Internet instead of paying for getting them on traditional media. Publishers for the most part look the other way.
* DMCA quietly slips through Congress, in the guise of protecting US businesses and complying with international copyright treaties.
* Napster shows the world the power of P2P information exchange with each user contributing a small part of the whole. Publishers get worried, can't sue every user, fumble for recourse. Napster falls and DMCA is challenged in numerous cases, but wins out in the end because money is power and those behind DMCA have lots of it. Consumers watch the Napster case curiously, stop using it after it's clear the end is near.
* Publishers finally realize that the future of distribution is online and design crude digital copy control technologies which are protected under the DMCA. Each successful attempt to defeat these measures is crushed legally but is given little attention by the media.
* Consumers aren't as comfortable with the new intangible online media and would prefer to keep buying books and CD's. Sales stagnate. Consumers don't realize the implications of future technologies that they have not yet experienced and remain quiet.

Prediction
* Publishers attempt to phase in online media sales. Some consumers bite, but are quickly frustrated by the inability to read an e-book or listen to music on multiple computers they own. HDTV arrives with its own copy protections. VCR's recording functions stop working. Copy protected audio disks don't work in consumers older players or in car players. Works are distributed in both old and new formats while consumers are encouraged to buy new (and better) hardware that supports the new formats. [This process would likely take at least 10-20 years given the installed base of CD players, saturation of the home computer market, and lack of inexpensive, eye-friendly electronic books]
* Just when the publishers think they have won the war over content, a movement similar to Open Source is established that sweeps the world and begins a modern cultural renaissance. Publishers disappear. The public domain expands rapidly. Artists and authors are fairly reimbursed by using alternative business models and handling distribution themselves. (eg. give away music, sell concert tickets) The world is a better place.

Wishful thinking? People said the same thing about Open Source 5 years ago and IT hasn't even fully taken off yet.
posted by Irdial , 11:30 AM Þ 

It started raining here about 90 minutes ago... now there's 3 feet of water. This is sort of creepy. Yikes! I've never seen rain this deep before.
posted by Barrie , 3:55 AM Þ 

fuck worms, I never get any :D Not even that sircam thing, I didn't get any cool mails with secret stuff in it. This sucks, I'm filing a formal complaint.
posted by Mikkel , 2:01 AM Þ 
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