Saturday, May 15, 2004
posted by chriszanf , 8:53 PM Þ 

U.S. passports to get ID chips

Sat May 15, 9:40 AM ET

By Frank James Washington Bureau

In the near future, Americans returning from abroad will have their faces scanned by cameras at ports of entry, then compared by computer to digitized photos encoded on high-tech chips in their passports for verification.

The goal is to prevent known terrorists from entering the country and to make the use of stolen passports virtually impossible. Because such biometric identification incorporates a person's unique physical characteristics, including fingerprint swirls or iris patterns, it is considered the best method yet invented of authenticating someone's identity.

The State Department plans to start issuing the first biometric passports in a trial run in the fall and hopes to go to full production next year. Carriers of traditional passports would not replace theirs with the biometric ones until they expire.

"In the case of the passport, what we are trying to do, not just the U.S. but the international community, is to help ensure for the border inspector that the person carrying that passport is the person to whom that passport was initially issued by that government," said Frank Moss, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for passport services. "In the lexicon, it's called a one-to-one match."

Questions of privacy also had to be addressed because the chips will use radio frequency identification technology to transmit data. Without protection, the technology theoretically might allow people--identity thieves, for example, or intelligence agents other than immigration officials--to electronically and surreptitiously determine the identity of a passport holder. [...]

U.S. officials rejected the use of hand geometry, another biometric measure used in some applications, because it is less reliable for identification. [...]

As the system is envisioned, Americans still will be able to mail their passport photographs to the State Department. The department will encode them into the passport chips and add them to a database. [...]

Yahoo News

What has consistently amazed me is how all of the privacy advocates, libertarians and right thinking people in the USA have completely missed this. Not a peep from any of them.
posted by Irdial , 8:40 PM Þ 

Back in Canada!
Worsthing about England: the constant, dirty feeling that I was being watched everywhere I went
Besthing about England: The green and the birds, oh the birds!

I don't see how MT's "commercial option" would be successful when there is always a good OS equivalent that is easy to transfer too. Sort of like OpenOffice I guess - why pay when you don't have to? MT is going to have to offer something truly amazing to make that price attractive.
Whisper looks interesting. Maybe I'll make a page with it this summer!
posted by Barrie , 7:25 PM Þ 

I'm Lovin' It

Shouldn't that be Love, innit??
posted by alex_tea , 1:34 PM Þ 

AK-47 Try this:

document.write('<a href="http://www.irdial.com/blogger.html" title="BLOGDIAL : We are the best"><img src="'+KW_ARI[j]+'"></a>');

Also pay attention to the quote marks, I swapped them over for improved readability (IMO), but just make sure you don't tangle them up. OR use the perl script I wrote for you ages ago so you don't have to update the header every time you get a new image. I'll send it again if you want.

I got a T610. I got it unlocked. I got a Bluetooth dongle. I can upload MIDI files as ring tones. Are there any Irdial/Blogdial MIDI files out there for me? Obviously I have Mimi Majick's one from A212... I'd like Storm as a ringtone. Or Pump Up the LEDs to Red.
posted by alex_tea , 1:31 PM Þ 
Friday, May 14, 2004



Since 2001, the German Federal Data Protection Law has required that the surveillance of public spaces by video camera be made known to the general public, along with details of the body responsible for the procedure. This new regulation has thrown up a number of questions concerning its practical application and has led to a multitude of different and possibly confusing designs. The authorities at Frankfurt Airport and the data protection authority joined forces to develop a uniform symbol which would be understood internationally and which would (initially) be used nationwide. They submitted their idea to DIN, the German Institute for Standardization. [...]

http://www2.din.de/index.php?lang=en

Hmmmmm The DIN pages dont validate!
posted by Irdial , 9:47 PM Þ 

Thanks to At permanent links now behave properly. Now I want to make the logo link to the main BLOGDIAL page from any old post. I tried the obvious; wrap the "a href=" around the img src='"+KW_ARI[j]+"'>" but it choked.....
posted by Irdial , 9:32 PM Þ 



You can now expect to see this sort of thing EVERYWHERE.
posted by Irdial , 6:32 PM Þ 

posted by Josh Carr , 5:52 PM Þ 

And for some reason, the permanent links dont show the TOP of the post, they show the BOTTOM first!

Because in your template you have the anchors at the bottom of the posts. You need to put the <a name="id"> at the top of the posts rather than in the signature.
posted by alex_tea , 4:11 PM Þ 

Satan's hoofprints are all over wicca

Jesus is not a sage or adept, He is the Almighty Lord God
of the Universe who came in the flesh, died and shed His blood
for you. If you aren’t trusting in that Jesus and that blood
for your eternal destiny, then heartbreakingly, you are in Satan’s
camp.



You are part of a system of ritual which is ultimately controlled
by Satan! It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in
Satan, he’s still there and he’s still horrifyingly
real! Just because you don’t believe in gravity doesn’t
mean that if you jump off a cliff you won’t get splattered
all over the landscape! The law of gravity cannot be violated
with impunity, and neither can the laws of God.



If you think Satan is just a Christian myth, you are whistling
in the dark. All you have to do is look over your shoulder and
he is there, keeping his eye on his toy — YOU!



You don’t have to be sacrificing virgins or turning crosses
upside down to be a satanist! All you have to do is spurn
Jesus Christ and you are a satanist! If you remember nothing
else from this book, remember this:



ALL pagan religions are controlled by Satan!



It doesn’t matter if you worship Pan or Krishna or Diana
or Thor; the face behind the mask of your god is Satan’s.
Even if you are a purported atheist, you are still worshiping
Satan; for you have undoubtedly made one element your idol (the
center of your life): whether it’s power, money, knowledge,
freedom or some other ideal.



The true God says:  







 I am the LORD thy God... Thou shalt have
no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven
image (idol), or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven
above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water
under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor
serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God... Exodus
20:2-5



It’s that simple. There are two religious
systems in the world. One is controlled by Satan. The other owes
its only allegiance to Jesus Christ. Put simply, if you aren’t
a believer in Jesus Christ as Almighty God come in the flesh
to save you from your sins, you are a satanist!



You see, both my wife and I worked unbelievably hard to be
the best possible priestly couple we could be and lead our covens
well. We studied and memorized rituals. We counselled our people
and tried to help them with their various problems. We were desperately
sincere, and thought Christianity was just a bigoted, monotheistic
system of legalistic jive!
posted by meau meau , 3:57 PM Þ 

This is how real aliens would do it. They don't arrive in the middle of the night with an interest in your asshole like the stories we're given, that's preposterous. Still less do they have an interest in the electrical grid, or the Gross National Product, or any of that. The problem with an extraterrestrial is to know when you're looking at one.
posted by captain davros , 3:30 PM Þ 



This is an illustration from a book "Ume No Chiri (Dust of Apricot)" published in 1803. A foreign ship and crew witnessed at Haratonohama (Haratono Seashore) in Hitachi no Kuni (Ibaragi Prefecture), Japan this strange object. According to the explanation in the drawing, the outershell was made of iron and glass, and strange letters shown in this drawing were seen inside the ship.

http://www.ufoartwork.com/
posted by Irdial , 3:03 PM Þ 

The pink blob looks like an egg dyed with pink codfish (?)
posted by meau meau , 2:59 PM Þ 
posted by Irdial , 2:51 PM Þ 

Well yes, but rewind to the hard shoulder some years hence where the offender is not carrying ID and is giving the police a false name and address. The logic of the law as it currently stands is that no one has a right to challenge us if we are going about our lawful business, and therefore we do not have to carry ID. However, should we have committed an offence or be suspected of committing an offence, the police may require us to establish our identity within a reasonable period. Now, on that future hard shoulder in the world according to Blunkett, the police have about their person a wireless biometric reader which could be used to shorten that reasonable period to, well, immediately. So Lord Marlesford is correct about the importance of biometrics here.

Regular readers will know that The Register is absolutely convinced that the mobile readers will prove to be an unusable disaster, but we'll let that pass - go with the Blunkett theory here for the sake of the argument.

Why are the police on this hard shoulder not using this reader? Well, given that the Home Office has specifically and loudly ruled out making it compulsory to carry ID, it has to tread carefully when it comes to the circumstances where your ID will be checked. And as it has said on numerous occasions that it's not the ID but the biometric that is important, i.e. you are your ID, reading the biometric as a matter of course while claiming carrying ID isn't compulsory does rather look like cheating. [...]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/14/uk_false_id_loophole/

I said this here, January 22nd.

And for some reason, the permanent links dont show the TOP of the post, they show the BOTTOM first!
posted by Irdial , 12:13 PM Þ 

There are plenty of questions raised concerning the video too. The body is completely motionless even as the knife is brought to bear ? not so much as an instinctive wriggle.

More graphically, some claim that cutting the throat's artery would cause a significant amount of blood to gush out. But little emerges and when the head was raised ? not a drop of blood is seen to fall.

In a possible explanation, one discussion room member suggested that Berg was killed and then beheaded later.

However, the circumstances of the video release are also strange. A Reuters journalist in Dubai first named the Muntada al-Ansar al-Islami website as the source for the video ? at www.al-ansar.biz.

Although the site has now been shut down, Aljazeera.net looked at the site within 90 minutes of the story breaking ? and could find no such video footage.

But Fox News, CNN and the BBC were all able to download the footage from the Arabic-only website and report the story within the hour. [...]

Al Jazeera


Get it here and make up your own mind.

Looks real to me.
posted by Irdial , 12:00 PM Þ 

What is the pink stuff?
posted by captain davros , 11:21 AM Þ 
posted by Irdial , 11:20 AM Þ 

new interface takes an age to publish in firefox on xp ... just crashed ie ... maybe it's me ... i get a continually refreshing page, for nearly 20 seconds ... the old one was pretty instant ... looks nice though
posted by a hymn in g to nann , 10:42 AM Þ 

Composed for Music Lovers,
to Refresh their Spirits

I cannot imagine ever tiring of those pieces ... quite by chance, after seeing 32 short films about glenn gould, then going to see it again the following night, I picked up a mint copy of mr gould's 2nd recording ... in particular, the clarity of that rendition, in the way that many artistic endeavours that can sometimes outwardly seem simple because of their immediate effect do, made me think that I would and should be able to write something comparable ... of course, the more that time passes, the more I listen to them, and am surprised by the details that continue to emerge, the more vain and preposterous that notion becomes ... but oh, the joy that comes with listening to something that can make you feel that ;]

one day, i aim to buy a piano and learn again, solely in order to attempt to play them ... anyone do so here ?
posted by a hymn in g to nann , 10:38 AM Þ 
Thursday, May 13, 2004

» The Problem with Trackback from The Frosty Mug Revolution
You would have to be insane to enable Trackback on a corporate blog. Look at the links at the bottom... [Read More]
posted by Irdial , 8:05 PM Þ 
posted by Irdial , 7:51 PM Þ 

Wow


00:39 - 00:44 of that video are absolutely amazing. I could loop that section for a LONG time and be quite happy. A dozen or so of these bucket drummers fill the NYC subway tunnels with their rhythms. They can magically make a gray commute into a bumping voyage home.
posted by Josh Carr , 7:13 PM Þ 

I once saw Han Bennink play a cardboard box for about half an hour before his kit turned up. which was amazing, he even managed to break a drumstick on it.
posted by meau meau , 2:50 PM Þ 
posted by meau meau , 2:31 PM Þ 

Wow

I saw this man when he was just a kid, a brief clip on a South Bank Show about New York, John Zorn and Sonic Youth. I liked the way he lifted the bucket up with his foot to get a different tone.
posted by captain davros , 2:13 PM Þ 

Clavierübung
consisting of
an Aria
with Diverse Variations
for the Harpsichord
with Two Manuals
Composed for Music Lovers,
to Refresh their Spirits, by
Johann Sebastian Bach:
Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon Composer,
Capellmeister, and Director Chori Musici in Leipzig.
Nürnberg: Published by Balthasar Schmid.


http://www.pentaone.com/hannibal/goldberg.shtml
posted by Irdial , 6:31 AM Þ 
Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Happy birthday, Alison! May birthdays are the "biz-awmb" - mine happens to fall on the 31st. It will be my 21st!

I'm still in England - don't you love it when the travel agency completely fucks up your whitesheet and tells you not only the wrong terminal but also the wrong airline?! Understandably this plane was missed, at their expense. Stupid dipshits. Anyway, I'm leaving on Friday now. Le sigh.
Faced with what to do with this spare day I was given three "options:" Manchester, Liverpool, or spend yet another day with my grandma whom I do not relate well with. After quite a bit of research into cool places to go in either of those cities, my dad replied it with "we should go to grandma's." That conclusion alone doesn't piss me off. The fact that he led me on with false choices pisses me off. This has happened far too many times. Next trip to England I will be financially independant enough to ditch the father, especially when he wants things his way or no way at all.
Family can be a bit of a bitch sometimes, yeah?
posted by Barrie , 11:53 PM Þ 

posted by mary13 , 10:54 PM Þ 
posted by Irdial , 7:25 PM Þ 



Mexican footage taken from a drug surveillance plane in the infra-red spectrum.
posted by Irdial , 6:13 PM Þ 

posted by Alison , 4:01 PM Þ 

I am blushing....

all of our parents must have been enjoying those hot summer nights...?

Yes they did Ken, my dad told me I am made in a forrest.
posted by Alison , 3:29 PM Þ 

New word for today: Concordance
posted by Irdial , 2:29 PM Þ 

For some reason, when I saw that first picture on the BBC, I thought "Its The Master!". Then I did a very quick search for a pic that resembled that one, and found the original, untampered image of "Z". And eventually found that other image of the "not Ainley" Master.

Im not sure why I made the original connection. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

It appears, sadly, that Anthony Ainley has passed away.
posted by Irdial , 2:07 PM Þ 

If you're posting what I think you're posting you might've got the wrong Master, @

http://www.gallifreyone.com/article.php?id=ainleytribute

If not, hey-ho. That's what happens with ye olde captionless picture posts though.
posted by captain davros , 1:50 PM Þ 

Anyone want a Gmail account? I can invite two people. Email me!
posted by Irdial , 12:44 PM Þ 

I don't know if this has been and gone but it's the first time I've seen it.
411 480|_|+ 600613

I was doing this search which is quite boring really. What is vaguelly interesting is the equivalent search for google.co.uk gives lots of botanical image search results.
posted by meau meau , 12:28 PM Þ 



posted by Irdial , 12:08 PM Þ 

What a fascinating idea; but how can you actively get people to spam you?

http://gmail.prattboy.net/
posted by Irdial , 11:53 AM Þ 

"Google's primary goal is to organize all of the world's public information, and this includes the widest range of opinions," said Krane. "We are also disturbed about the search results, so we have gone out of our way to inform our users about how to interpret the search results (with a public disclaimer). Our goal is to have the most trusted and objective search experience possible." [...]

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,63380,00.html
posted by Irdial , 11:42 AM Þ 

The purpose of hymn is to allow you to exercise your fair-use rights under copyright law. It allows you to free your iTunes Music Store purchases from their DRM restrictions with no sound quality loss. These songs can then be played outside of the iTunes environment, even on operating systems not supported by iTunes. It works on Mac OS X, many unix(-ish) variants and on Windows. [...]

http://hymn-project.org/
posted by Irdial , 11:29 AM Þ 

"In a scathing critique of Fox News and some talk show hosts, such as Bill O'Reilly, [Los Angeles Times Editor John S. Carroll] said they were a 'different breed of journalists' who misled their audience while claiming to inform them... Carroll cited a study released last year that showed Americans had three main misconceptions about Iraq: That weapons of mass destruction had been found, a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq had been demonstrated and that the world approved of U.S intervention in Iraq. He said 80% of people who primarily got their news from Fox believed at least one of the misconceptions. He said the figure was more than 57% points higher than people who get their news from public news broadcasting." [...]

http://www.dailyemerald.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/05/07/409bbfc0d5b00
posted by Irdial , 11:11 AM Þ 

"The U.S. Army said it will seek bullets from commercial and foreign producers because its biggest ammunition supplier, Alliant Techsystems Inc., can't keep up with demand... Alliant Friday said demand is rising to its highest level since the Vietnam War. [...]

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/news/21194.php
posted by Irdial , 11:07 AM Þ 

The grainy images of abuse coming from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq are as disturbing and offensive as they are unsettlingly familiar: a naked man is lying on a cement floor, a woman holding a leash tied to his neck; others are bound and piled naked in a pyramid or hooded and forced to simulate sex acts.

"What happened wasn't torture," one Iraqi prisoner, Hiadar Abed, told NBC News. "It was pornography."

A certain pornographic aesthetic shrouds the Abu Ghraib photos, calling to mind similarly shame-provoking images from some adult magazines, videos and Web sites. That these images came not from the dark imagination of the porn industry but from American soldiers in charge of guarding Iraqi prisoners makes for a most awful kind of reality show.

The prison photos resemble a niche called gonzo porn that experts say has been popular for the last five years or so, a genre marked by handheld cameras, the illusion of spontaneity and a low-tech aesthetic meant to suggest reality. One popular site, for instance, shows men in a van pulling up to random women on the streets of Miami and luring them inside for sex.

"People want to see what's real and those [Iraq] photos in a way, even though they're more violent than sexual, they're kind of somewhat similar," said Chip Rowe, a senior editor at Playboy. "It brings to mind a certain type of porn - the kind of thing where somebody's humiliated."

Even if the soldiers weren't intending to make pornography, that may be an unintended consequence of what they did. As prisons play a larger role in American life - with more Americans incarcerated every year -prison fetish has grown in popularity in the porn industry. [...]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-to.porn10may10,0,3469139.story
posted by Irdial , 11:04 AM Þ 

Treatment of Iraqi prisoners
May 11 2004: International Committee of the Red Cross report leaked to the Wall Street Journal. (pdf)

Killings of civilians in Basra and al-'Amara
May 11: Amnesty International report.
posted by Irdial , 7:06 AM Þ 
Tuesday, May 11, 2004

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!

DHS and UK ID card biometric vendor in false ID lawsuit
By John Lettice
Published Tuesday 11th May 2004 12:50 GMT

At San Jose Superior Court today (11 May) biometrics company Identix will seek to have a product liability and slander lawsuit against it and the States of California and Oregon dismissed. Plaintiffs Roger Benson and Miguel Espinoza are seeking restitution for the damage inflicted on them by duplication in police records which gave them other people's criminal records.

Benson was wrongfully imprisoned for 43 days for carrying a firearm when a convicted felon, although the felony on his record had been committed by someone else, while Espinoza, had his restaurant business destroyed by a false record of a criminally negligent homicide conviction. The plaintiffs claim that their problems stemmed from Identix's Livescan 10-print, a fingerprint scanner used to enter fingerprint data into police systems. Two months ago Identix was re-confirmed as the winner of a Department of Homeland Security Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) for fingeprint systems, this being worth and estimated $27 million over five years. Identix is also supplying equipment for the UK Passport Service's ID card pilot, so one might reasonably consider that the stakes in San Jose Superior Court will be rather high. [...]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/11/identix_false_id_suit/
posted by Irdial , 8:29 PM Þ 

alison: word to may birthdays! i've got one coming up this friday. i think if i add you in to the running total, there are like 7 or 8 of my friends/co-workers who are celebrating another pointless, personal milestone during the month of may. glad to hear you made it another year. congrats!

all of our parents must have been enjoying those hot summer nights...?

"do you like me...sexwise?"
posted by Ken , 8:27 PM Þ 

Happy birthday Alison!!
posted by mary13 , 6:49 PM Þ 

Something Awful has video footage of a a Furmeet

Some light entertainment!
posted by meau meau , 3:07 PM Þ 

Happy Birthday Alison!
posted by captain davros , 12:35 PM Þ 

An imaginary playlist for Alisons imaginary Birthday Dinner party:

the dawn of dachsman - hans reichel
Come on the Hudson - Monk
Roast Fish and Corn Bread - Lee 'Scratch' Perry
City of Isabel - Vangelis
1927 - 1939 Recordings Vol. 2 - Andres Segovia
Etüden für Orgel # 1 - Harmonies - György Ligeti
Night Vision - Daft Punk
Music In Twelve Parts Part 1 - Philip Glass
Rainy Night Dub - King Tubby meets Lee Scratch Perry
(You're a Fish and I'm A) Water Sign - Parliament
I Threw It All Away - Bob Dylan
Booji Boy's Funeral - DEVO
Goldberg Variations (harpsichord) - J. S. Bach

and so on!
posted by Irdial , 11:22 AM Þ 

Happy 28 Alison
posted by meau meau , 10:42 AM Þ 

God, I was really drunk last night... Don't know what all that rambling is about.
posted by alex_tea , 10:20 AM Þ 

It's not exactly every day that the Pentagon warns military personnel to stay away from Fox News. But that's exactly what some hopeful soul at the Department of Defense instructed, in a memo intended to forbid Pentagon staff reading a copy of the Taguba report detailing abuse of detainees at prisons in Iraq that had been posted at the Fox News web site.

An email to Pentagon staff marked "URGENT IT (Information Technology) BULLETIN: Taguba Report" orders employees not to read or download the Taguba report at Fox News, on the grounds that the document is classified. It also orders them not to discuss the matter with friends or family members. The emailed memo was leaked to TIME by a senior U.S. civilian official in Baghdad, who did not hide his disdain for the "factotums" in the Pentagon. "I do wonder how incredibly stupid some people in the Pentagon are," [...]

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,634638,00.html
posted by Irdial , 6:33 AM Þ 

new blogger = Gnome. or BeOS. Whatever. update Actually I like it, more later, when I'm less drunk!
me = very drunk on organic beer, apologies.
the broken = moi je suis pas un hacker. but thanks alison! my computer external hardrive died last thursday, it took me 9 days to restore all my data, resinstall the system and sophtware and get things back up to scratch. i hate being freelance. I set my hightlight colour to be some acidic green, it adds a bit of life to OS X's grey palette. If I have learnt one thing in the last week, it is to always back up and to never procrastinate. I did buy a DVD burner though, sexy!

ps: Fela was right, 'dem all crazy.
pps: Perhaps I should have linked to something more relevant, more concurrent, but that's been. Basically I am fed up with humanity. Is Piers Martin a genius, or a fool?
ppps: Listening to, not watching Fatal Attraction, parts of it sound very electro-acoustic, very noisy, very confrontational.
posted by alex_tea , 12:01 AM Þ 
Monday, May 10, 2004

Alex, This made me think of you: thebroken.org (if you dont know it already) I must recommend Video Release 0003: .... And we sit down with Kevin Mitnick to find out what life is like for a hacker in prison.

Besides, I really like the new interface of blogger... Uhhh-Ohhh my I am turning 28 years in 5 minutes....
posted by Alison , 10:58 PM Þ 

Yes, Mary you are correct, I am phat (and livin' large too). The detox thing is a mystery to me though - has anyone ever tried it and how do you go about it? Doesn't Mr Carr of New York know about this?

Currently having fun with eMovix. All that lovely hardware and RAM all tied up for plain old media and nothing else.

Blogger_59 is very good. One thing I have always wondered - who are the women in the early Blogdial titles - the one in red and the one drinking milk?
posted by captain davros , 9:50 PM Þ 

The new blogger interface kind of reminds me of AOL 9.0. The only reason I know this is I had to install it on my Uncle Dave's computer (which I am using right now). I guess it doesn't look too bad though.

belated thanks to everyone who gave me some advice on things British. I've had a very good time and will be leaving for home on the 12th. Here's why I haven't blogged for a while:
Sunday before last: Rufford old hall
Monday: Lake District/Castlerigg circle (very few people but many cows! AMAZING)
Tuesday: York, Yorkminster, Shambles
Wednesday: Chatsworth House (a very good education on Britain's former imperial power)
Thursday: Trough of Bowland (rocky areas, very nice)
Friday: more Lake District, train to Edinburgh
Saturday: Edinburgh castle, camera, some galleries, train back to Preston
Holy smokes that was a busy week! That's not to count the week before that involved London and Glasgow.
Lots of good beer, good English food (Old Pie Shop in Greenwich = best restaraunt ever), good candy, good people, not so good constant-watchful-eye-of-cctv-cameras. Yow.
Also I started to pick up "the Independent" newspaper. It's above and beyond anything I can get at home in hard-copy. What do other blogdiallers thing of it?

blogger_59.jpg = AWESOME.
posted by Barrie , 7:50 PM Þ 

The Russians are coming
Ashley Norris
The Guardian, May 10, 2004
...
All Of MP3 is a site that was originally aimed at the Russian market.
Now it has an English language mirror site, an extensive library of
tunes on its servers and some rather unique features.

Most impressive of all is its pricing structure. While Sony and Apple
both charge 99 cents for each track downloaded (or 79p for Connect in
the UK), on All Of MP3 users can fill their hard drives with up to one
gigabyte's worth of music for just $10. If they chose the lowest quality
settings, with tracks encoded at 128kbps, that's at least 20 albums for
not much more than six quid.

The question that is furrowing a few brows at Apple and Sony, to say
nothing of the world's copyright agencies, revolves around whether the
site is legal or not. Certainly the music on the site isn't licensed by
any labels. Yet it seems it can operate in Russia courtesy of a legal
loophole that allows music to be performed publicly without the
authorisation of the copyright owner if it is broadcast on radio or
transmitted over the internet [...]

http://www.allofmp3.com/index2.shtml
posted by Irdial , 5:35 PM Þ 

Every once in a while, I get something so amazing, so brilliant and so satisfying that I simply squeal with delight.

I got something like that just now. The file had been sitting on my machine for a few days, and I couldnt open it because none of my cocoa apps would run thanks to a corrupted font cache. I tried to run Onyx to fix the problem, but no dice. I then found this article, Cleared the cache and the problem was solved.
I opened it.

i gasped.

I squealed.

I loved it.
I got that feeling of being in touch with a stroke of insight. Of genius. And, I thought to myself...I know this person personally!!!

Put blogger_59.jpg into your browser - you know where - and you will see it.

Pure inspiration. Pure genius. Wonderful. Clever. Powerful. Awesome.

You know who you are!

We are very priveledged to be in the company of not just this person, but of everyone who contributes to this blog.

We really ARE the best!!!!!
posted by Irdial , 5:31 PM Þ 

Dav, don't you mean you are phat?

If you are going to try the beef and buscuits diet, at the very least, have a vitamin pill or a fresh veg juice daily to keep your nutrients going. But why not do a proper cleanse? That will trim you down, you will feel rejuvinated! You might be able to talk me into joining you, it is the perfect season.

The new interface is pretty!!
posted by mary13 , 4:42 PM Þ 

Bush should hold more press conferences, to provide us with ever more windows into the mind of one of the most dangerous men ever to occupy the White House. [...]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/madness.html
posted by Irdial , 3:45 PM Þ 

The New Yorker has more than enough images of the treatment of Iraqi inmates by the US personnel.

If they weren't there THIS wouldn't have happened, it has and the coalition is fully responsible, the whole system that allowed it to happen should be removed, the forces withdrawn, guards & officers courtmarshalled, generals sacked, Rumsfeld resign, Bush begone. And similarly for any case of these actions by UK forces.

At the least.

These actions have seriously damaged any 'moral authority' the US/UK could bring to any country that doesn't respect peoples' rights. You won't even need oil or a cheap workforce be able to ignore protests about human rights abuses.
posted by meau meau , 1:21 PM Þ 

the real reason

And its going to get "worse". HDTV files, like I said before, which are the same size as PAL/NTSC TV rips will make trading TV and Moviez much more desireable.

The only way they can put a lid on it is to release the episodes worldwide with no delay, in other words, Friends / Superman / $cultural_imperialism_2_nite shows the same episode here as it does in the USA for example. Then there will be no need to get the files just to see the latest ep. This of course means nothing to the people who make compilations to sell on DVDRs, but then they are PIRATES, and that is a totally different thing to simply copying a programme for your legion of online TV fanatic friends.
posted by Irdial , 12:54 PM Þ 

This is the real reason mp3 downloads are falling (if we believe they are). And what will the film industry do? Threaten legal action, make locked discs, raids at dawn...

All shown to be very effective by the RIAA
posted by meau meau , 12:26 PM Þ 

Clubbing and speed for a fortnight?
posted by meau meau , 12:16 PM Þ 

Weellll,

I have plenty of strings on my guitars dear meau, but the axe is not the way to lose lbs.

Thing is I ride my bike to work every day (6 miles per day), and don't smoke or drink. I often wonder what I'd look like if I didn't ride and drank loads of beer. I'd probably be massive.

Either way I don't smell bad, but, I dunno, it's just weird walking around thinking you are one thing (i.e. still inhabiting the same body shape as you did when 18) and then seeing yourself in a mirror/shop window and looking like a reet old blob and thinking "faaaaaaaaark, who are you?" and...realising it is me.
posted by captain davros , 11:15 AM Þ 

New Blogger interface. Hmmmm looks like the lofi box is now the default. Its certainly faster. What immediately took my breath away:
11,649 Posts
There is some math you could do with that number:
If each post took 5 minuets (yes, minuets) to create, that would be 5 x 11,649 = 58,245 mins = 970.75 hours = 40.447916666666666666666666666667 days of blogging.
40 days and 40 nights of blogging to make BLOGDIAL. Who amongst you now doesnt think that these are the end times?

There is now a "blockquote" button. We need that.

Excersise. That takes time. Not eating doesnt take time. Also, excersising when you are heavy is bad for your knees (running that is). Of course, you could swim, but who has time to go to the pool? And who in their right mind swims in a public pool? That means coughing up money to go to a "less public" pool. And who has money these days? You could join the army; then your work time would be mixed with your excersise time and your sex time, since you will be spending your time raping. But who in their right mind joins the army willngly these days? Anyway, theres nothing wrong with being fat, unless you smell. But who doesnt stink in these end times?

The preview buttton is also very fast and cool.
posted by Irdial , 10:31 AM Þ 

To lose fat you must exercise more. Maybe put some more strings back on your guitars.

New blogger interface.
posted by meau meau , 10:07 AM Þ 

Tea and 3 biscuits twice a day, and a bowl of bolied rice with a small amount of grilled beef for early dinner.

No Milk, Butter or Cheese. Or anything else other than what is in that list.

You can do this for two weeks, after which , you will have dropped alot of weight.
posted by Irdial , 7:00 AM Þ 
Sunday, May 09, 2004

I'm getting all fat - at least fatter than I want to be.

How to slim down? Advice?
posted by captain davros , 10:11 PM Þ 

This site is a crime against the Military Selective Service Act. It advocates. We are specifically encouraging resistance to the registration laws of the United States, seeing registration as the necessary step toward conscription (the draft). We are what the Selective Service calls 'anti-war intellectuals.' We see the direct link between registration, the draft, and aggressive war. Remember, non- registration is the strategy to beat the draft. If enough of us refuse, there is nothing they can do! [...]

http://www.draftresistance.org/


1. Life Ownership:

The most important reason why you should not register for the draft is because you own your body. You own your life. With the draft, the government says that they own your life and they will do whatever they want with your body for as long as they want when they decide the time is right. So don't register! [...]

Seven reasons why you must not register with the Selective Slavery System
posted by Irdial , 5:54 PM Þ 

"Dodging the draft will be more difficult than those from the Vietnam era remember. College and Canada will not be options. In December 2001, Canada and the US signed a ?Smart Border Declaration,? which could be used to keep would-be draft dodgers in. Signed by Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Manley, and US Homeland Security Director, Gov. Tom Ridge, the declaration involves a 30-point plan which implements, among other things, a ?pre-clearance agreement? of people entering and departing each country. Reforms aimed at making the draft more equitable along gender and class lines also eliminates higher education as a shelter. Underclassmen would only be able to postpone service until the end of their cur-rent semester. Seniors would have until the end of the academic year.* [....]

http://community.nbtsc.org/wiki/DraftEmail2;1.1
posted by Irdial , 5:44 PM Þ 

R2I: "Resistance to Interrogation"

The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing, according to British military sources.[...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1212197,00.html

And more photographed and videotaped atrocities to emerge.
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller's comments come a day after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld extended his “deepest apology” to any prisoners abused by American military personnel, telling Congress that he accepted full responsibility for the shocking events. But he also warned that worse was yet to come.[...]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4855930/
posted by Irdial , 12:38 PM Þ 

Earlier this week we got the final, official call: Disney will not put out Fahrenheit 9/11. When the story broke in the New York Times, Disney, instead of telling the truth, turned into Pinocchio.

Here are my favorite nuggets that have come out of the mouths of their spinmeisters (roughly quoted):

"Michael Moore has known for a year that we will not distribute this movie, so this is not news." Yes, that is what I thought, too, except Disney kept sending us all that money to make the movie. Miramax said there was no problem. I got the idea that everything was fine.

"It is not in the best interests of our company to distribute a partisan political film that may offend some of our customers." Hmmm. Disney doesn't distribute work that has partisan politics? Disney distributes and syndicates the Sean Hannity radio show every day? I get to listen to Rush Limbaugh every day on Disney-owned WABC. I also seem to remember that Disney distributed a very partisan political movie during a Congressional election year, 1998—a film called The Big One… by, um… ME! [...]

Mr Moore
posted by Irdial , 11:57 AM Þ 
posted by Irdial , 11:48 AM Þ 
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