Category: Miscellaneous

There is a lesson in here somewhere.

A bunch of guys decide it would be a good idea to fire roman candles at a human target. (Via Dave Barry)

An engineer from San Fransico writes an open letter rant to the Crackhead that vandalized his sparkplugs. (Via all over the blogosphere).

On Wednesday morning I emerged from my girlfriend’s building by U.N. Plaza to find that you had sawed the tops off both the sparkplugs on my motorcycle. At the time, I had no idea why anyone would do that. Other than the sparkplugs, the bike was untouched. Some kind of bizarre vandalism? A fraternity prank gone awry? I had no idea. All I knew is that I looked like a huge douchebag riding the Muni to work in a padded motorcycle jacket and helmet.

Because the bike was immobilized I got a $35 street sweeping ticket that night. Thursday I had it towed to the shop ($45) where they replaced the sparkplugs and the boots ($50 including labor). They explained to me that “people” – I use the term loosely here – like you break off the tops of spark plugs and use the porcelain tubes to smoke crack. As an engineer and former MacGyver fan, in a way I think this is kind of cool. But then I remember that I just paid $100 for YOUR crackpipes, and I get angry again.

Submitting a link to the New York Times website? When you input the link you want into The New York Times Link Generator it gives you a URL to a permanent page. That way, your link will go to the NYT archives, and not to a page asking for money.

Prepared for my New Media Seminar class; it’s called, Creative Commons: Innovating Creation and Culture.

Wired magazine has reported that Japanese and Korean scientists working in collaboration have bred a mouse with two female parents and no male parent. While some may speculate that this is the first step to making men obsolete, I must remind them why the world needs men. Without them, who will mow the lawn, reach things off the top shelf, or open jars?

I want to say happy birthday to my girlfriend Anna-Maria.

She has this worked out… the year is 04, the month is 04, the date is the 22nd (2+2=04) and she turned 22 (2+2=04 again). 04040404 Some crazy sign or much ado about nothing? Either way, Happy Birthday Anna-Maria.

I’m making her a marbled cake (two small ones actually — I guess I should have made her four).

While researching Larry Lessig’s new book Free Culture, I came across a reference to http://www.archive.org, a site dedicated to archiving everything. This afternoon I downloaded a copy of the now famously ridiculous “Duck and Cover” film from the 50’s. It taught kids that the best thing to do in case of a nuclear attack was to duck and cover. There is a myriad of material there waiting to be analyzed in a historical context, or perfect for remixing into multimedia products.

I’ve been writing an essay (on and off for the last 2 days) on copyright and society and found BoingBoing’s link to the EFF and what they are doing to prevent patent abuse:

In light of growing concerns about illegitimate software and Internet patents, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today announced a new initiative to combat the chilling effects bad patents have on public and consumer interests.

“Patents traditionally only targeted large commercial companies,” said EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz. “Now bad patents are threatening non-profits, small businesses, and even individuals who use software and Internet technology.” These threats target non-commercial personal use, such as building a hobbyist website or streaming a wedding video to your friends.

The new EFF initiative seeks to document these threats and fight back against them. EFF has pledged to file “re-examination” requests with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), asking the agency to revoke patents that are having negative effects on Internet innovation and free expression.

I, for one, am not surprised that the RIAA is going back on it’s word to “protect” users that have admitted to copyright infringement. The eligiabilty requirements for entering into the clean slate program with the RIAA were:

1. You delete or destroy all copyrighted sound recordings that you or others illegally downloaded to your computer(s) or devices (including all storage and portable devices) using a P2P Network, and all copies you have of those files in any format (including CD-R).

2. In the future you do not illegally download copyrighted sound recordings using a P2P Network, you do not allow others to illegally download copyrighted sound recordings to your computer(s), you do not make copies of any such downloaded files in any format, and you do not “share” (that is, upload/distribute) such files on P2P Networks.

3. As of the date your Clean Slate Program Affidavit is received, you have not been sued for copyright infringement by an RIAA member company for the activities that are covered by this Clean Slate Program and RIAA has not begun to investigate you by requesting from an Internet Service Provider (“ISP”), by subpoena or otherwise, identifying information about you.

4. Any downloading or file-distribution that you engaged in was done on a noncommercial basis. Individuals who undertook these activities for commercial purposes or for payment are not eligible for this Clean Slate Program.

Then through another 4 steps involving signatures in front of a notary public and mailing away the Clean Slate Program Affidavit, you’ll be all signed up.

However, for you suckers out there that actually deleted your MP3 collections, you will be sad to learn that:

The RIAA has finally seen the light with regard to its “Clean Slate” program, which offered false amnesty, or shamnesty, to people who admitted to file sharing. Citing the success of its “education” campaign, the group has abruptly cancelled the program.

“Clean Slate” promised that in exchange for a confession, you could gain meaningful protection from lawsuits for copyright infringement. In fact, the program left you vulnerable to lawsuits by record companies and music publishers, as well as bands like Metallica that retain independent control of music rights.

Eric Parke, represented by Ira Rothken, brought suit, charging fraudulent business practices — and here, perhaps, we can glean the true reason for the RIAA’s change of heart. Its attorneys announced during a recent court proceeding that the group had discontinued “Clean Slate” — and that therefore the case was moot. The announcement took Mr. Parke, his attorney and the judge by surprise.

When music is outlawed, only outlaws will have music. When will music distributors learn that people like downloading music? It’s not so much the price as it is the convience. We will pay a reasonable price but please give users a chance.

While researching a paper for school I came across a Creative Commons post that lets you know there is a contest that may end up winning you a car.

Cool: David Bowie has just launched a new mash-up contest. There’s a new ad campaign for Audi cars that features two of Bowie’s songs mashed-up. They’ve decided to throw a mash-up contest to capitalize on this, awarding a new car to the best song that uses samples from his new album and any older Bowie song. Voting on entries starts this weekend and the contest ends next month so get your turntables cranking.

Mash-ups are hybrid songs that generally feature one artist’s vocal track (or a cappella) electronically grafted to the instrumental track from a different artist’s performance of a different song. Digital pitch-shifting and time-stretching ensure that both artists are performing in the same key and at the same tempo; the trick is to find two songs with similar harmonic structures, although their styles may be wildly varying. In this case David Bowie is being mashed with his own music, but in some cases the brave listener can find some really far out mashes.