‮hjap‮

Lovelace and Babbage!

Starring: Ada Lovelace!

And Charles Babbage!

This is quite possibly the best thing ever. And the artist claims that she's not doing a comic. I need all of you to email her and tell her how many copies you'd buy, and convince her otherwise.

( Quite long )

Off to the West Coast for the weekend. I need a holiday.

This entry was originally posted at http://gominokouhai.dreamwidth.org/190644.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Remember that ridiculous three-strikes-and-you're-out legislation to ban filesharers from the internet? All you'd have to do is be accused, not convicted, of filesharing three times, and then your ISP would be compelled to cut you off. The EU sensibly voted against it.

Now they're trying to sneak the same legislation into an otherwise dull, sensible and bulky Telecoms Package.

This doesn't just affect filesharers: it means that your ISP is forced to monitor your connection at all times, and if somebody else uses your wi-fi or your kids use your connection wile you're not watching, you can be cut off without ever knowing what you did wrong.

And the bill is going through on a Monday—this Monday—while all the MEPs are preparing for summer break and have better things to do than meticulously pore over dull telecoms legislation to look for the creepy shit hidden within.

You know the drill by now. Write to your MEP, because your MEP works for you, and make this stop.

cairmen has an excellent form letter here, and there's another one on BoingBoing here.

Coming soon: machinima activism.

Half of my friends page has erupted in an enraged frenzy about self-declared fattist and narcissistic, imperious, self-absorbed bitch Ruth Fowler's article in the Grauniad today. Good on you all.

This comes shortly after a post on British Dining about Jay Rayner's idiotic allergy sufferers are all attention-seeking whiners screed in that self-same organ. I think that the Graun's Comment Is Free section is becoming a refuge for all those wankers who have been booted off the BBC's odious Have Your Say section. It's best just to ignore them and hope they go away.

The current flap appears to have been kick-started by that eternal beacon of small-minded nastiness the Daily Hate, who have denounced the Miss England finalist as being fat. Much as I hate to link to the Hate, go and have a look. There are pictures. (There would have to be, knowing the intellectual capacity of the average Mail reader.)

That's Chloe Marshall, size 16, BMI 26.03. Yep, she's a wee bit chunky on the thighs there, but she's smiling, she's got a pretty face, she's comfortable with her body and so should you be. Furthermore, she probably knows how to string a sentence together without infuriating the entire western hemisphere. Ruth Fowler, the Graun's resident fattist, has none of these qualities—although, for an allegedly serious writer, she does have an awful lot of nudie pictures on her shitty frame-based website.

One of these women is a normal, happy person. The other is an attention-seeking, misogynist, hateful, tiny-breasted, mean-spirited cow. To be perfectly honest, I know which of the two I'd rather fuck, but that's only because, as a wise man once said, woman unable to talk bullshit with cock in mouth.

Never before has the phrase I'd hit it been so appropriate. Doubly so, in fact.^[0]

If I had to take one of them out for dinner, I'd take the one who looks like she knows how to enjoy food—or, indeed, enjoy anything at all. Chloe Marshall might not be the brightest button in the box either—she is, after all, seventeen years old and a Miss England contestant—but I've seen no evidence that she's quite so utterly stupid as the bitter hag with the Cambridge First^[1], and she is, at least, a human being.

~

To my knowledge, to date, no terrorists have been caught with the use of the new anti-terror provisions. The ones that have been caught have had a tendency to announce their intention to drive flaming jeeps into airports by, um, driving flaming jeeps into airports, which was illegal before the new laws were brought out anyway. If I recall correctly, blowing stuff up was also illegal before September 11th, which makes one wonder what all those new laws were for in the first place.

This is what the anti-terror laws are being used for instead. Anybody surprised?

I've never met a terrorist and I don't need protecting from them. But I do need protection from officious council scumbags. Can I get some laws? Thought not.

~

All should read cairmen's excellent post on the bloodspell blog, in which he points out just exactly how copyright laws are doing the opposite of protecting the artists. Speaking as an artist, I'm not being protected by a blanket refusal to allow the release of my work. Nor are Bioware being protected by preventing distribution of a work that uses some of their art in a manner which is, pretty much undeniably, non-infringing. This really is taking the use of the phrase derivative work to extremes.

I've never met a plagiarist and I don't need protecting from them. But I do need protection from officious lawyers. Can I get some laws? Maybe—cairmen's post outlines how to start.

--
[0] While we're on the subject: never has the phrase I'd hit it been quite so inappropriate.
[1] It's a First from New Hall, so it barely counts anyway. And once you get into Cambridge, it's relatively easy to get a First as long as you buckle down to studying and eschew all semblance of a social life. I suspect that wasn't much of a problem for the Sociopathic Narcissist, since with a personality like that I doubt she would have been in much demand at all those garden parties.

I think I've figured out what to do about ID cards.

Let's all get ID cards, but insist on referring to them as multipass, repeatedly and ad nauseam. See how soon we can get people to stop asking for them any more.

Carrot-coloured wigs and costumes made from a couple of crepe bandages optional, but recommended. Especially for cute girls.

Wouldn't copyright laws make more sense if protection extended for a set number of years after the date of the last authorized derivative work?

As I understand it, originally copyright extended for 28 years from the date of publication. The period got extended and extended and now it's the entire life of the creator plus seventy years, and the next time Mickey Mouse is in danger of entering the public domain, it'll get extended again.

(Apparently Walt Disney's cryogenically-frozen head is kept in a secret sub-basement of the White House, whence he dictates policy to incumbent Presidents. Presumably there is an arcane Machine there that communicates Walt's thoughts and ideas into glorious Technicolor™. Presidents like to watch this stuff, since they know it keeps them Thinking American. Some Presidents even keep watching the Waltvision Oracle even after they've left office: they're in on the secret now, and the japes and knavery from Walt's deepest whims are too much for one human mind to behold[0]. That's why we never hear anything from Clinton these days.)

Suppose we were to go back to the original 28-year period (or some other number), but that copyright gets extended for another 28 years every time they make a sequel. They can keep Mickey perpetually in copyright as long as they keep making Mickey flicks. This would encourage creators to keep their properties fresh and relevant (as opposed to, say, old-tyme anti-Semitic Mickey[1]).

On the other hand, if they decide to eschew their creation, and after a fair period to allow them to change their mind, then it enters the public domain by default if they fail to keep using it.

And then: Internet Fanfic! Omgz.

It makes sense to me, but then it is three in the morning and I'm still working on that Organic Rye Vodka. (Sainsbury's Delivery)++

--
[0] Brings a whole new meaning to you so fine, you so fine you blow my mind, huh?

[1] I've got a theme here and I'm going to run with it. And old-tyme anti-Semitic Mickey is an excellent example of why creations should be kept fresh and up-to-date. If I'm recalling correctly, in one of the early shorts—this is your childhood hero we're talking about, Gentle Reader—in one of the early shorts, Mickey Mouse has to dress up as a Jew (spudtater: source?), big nose, frizzy hair, the works, and then does a big ha ha, Jews are so funny dance. Later, I think, he runs afoul of an Irishman.

M&S caught in copycat design row [news.bbc]

Unsurprising, but vaguely interesting. Of course, if you think you can get away with selling a handbag for five hundred quid—when an identical but less proprietary version can be produced, distributed, and sold for under a tenner—then of course someone is going to come up with a cheaper, better one. And of course the people who are making five hundred quid off each shitty handbag are going to think they have some sort of god-given right to make five hundred quid off each shitty handbag.

We're going to see a Fashion Industry Ass. of America now?

~

For those of you who haven't seen it yet: A Life in the Day: Tom Baker. It's almost certainly all true too (which I think marks the first time I've ever said that about anything in the Murdoch press). Tom rocks.

~

( For local-ites )

Cheney shoots fellow hunter. Perhaps he thought it was a `Quayle'. Ahaaah hah hah hah hah. Ahem.

(Best headline so far: Cheney hunts quail and everyone else ducks.)

Blair to miss key ID cards vote: his plane get held up in Pretoria. Go on, you bastards, losebyonevote, losebyonevote....

On which note: ID cards backlash as Brown says they can halt suicide bombers (web headline does't match the dead-tree version). Yes, I hear the new proposal is for ID cards to be six feet square and made of Kevlar. Otherwise, WTF? I suppose it's nice to see a newspaper finally calling bullshit, even if it is the Scotsman.

In local news, I was just compelled to phone Jehane to tell her that, since the conference delegates had left a lot of their lunch untouched, I was standing here with a armful of hot-smoked peppered trout that required disposal by consumption. I don't even like fish, and this was marvellous.

Just been entertained (moderately) by the spectacle of the housekeeping staff struggling with the new vacuum cleaner, which has rapidly been denounced as ``evil''. Perhaps ironically, it sucks too much.

ETA: Thanks to verdandiweaves: Android version Philip K Dick, author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, goes missing. Is there a bounty?

When I was purchasing Karajan's arrangement of Beethoven's Ninth, I also picked up a copy of Prokoviev's Peter and the Wolf, because it was only three quid and it had Willie Rushton doing the narration.

***ASIDE***

I love Peter and the Wolf. My love for Russian composers aside, I used to listen to an LP version of this[0] every Saturday when I was six or seven. It's Classical Music For Dummies without the dummies. It's aimed at children from an age when you could talk to children without being fucking patronising all the time.

It also gets funny when you listen to it after a twenty-year hiatus. The frequent references to ``Peter (our hero)'', as if we might have forgotten who was in the title, serve only to amuse, although they may have helped the target audience child with the low attention span to engage with the story... and ooh, look, a squirrel. The plot, in as much as there is one, is along the lines of ``something almost happened, but it didn't. Here's some music''. And the music is gorgeous enough to carry it.

Willie Rushton, when he does the narration (I must find out who narrated the version I used to listen to when I was younger), has just the right kind of plummy, story-telling voice to carry it off, although he does occasionally go a bit Cockney for no good reason[4]. Sometimes I wonder whether he's not being too ironic, but then I suspect that I'm taking it too seriously. After all, this is my childhood we're talking about.

And he does exactly the same voice for the Cat that Eric Thompson did for Buxton in Dougal and the Blue Cat.

***END LENGTHY ASIDE***

Remember the good old days when legal disclaimers were clearly distinguishable? I've got one here, conveniently from the aforementioned 1977 recording of Karajan's (Glorious) Ninth. It reads, around the edge of the disc, so that you have to strain to read the whole thing: ``All rights of the producer and of the owner of the work reproduced reserved. Unauthorised copying, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting of this record prohibited.' Then it says the same thing in German, for good measure.

We'll come back to that bit about ``lending'' in a moment. No, wait, fuck it, let's do that now. ``Unauthorised [...] lending [...] [is] prohibited'', it says. We're not allowed to lend our CDs to people? Let's stay away from the fact that this is an item of merchandise that I bought, and that I own, and have every right to dispose of as I choose, for a minute, and concentrate on the WHOAH SHIT I've been a criminal MY ENTIRE LIFE.

...enough dwelling on that. Let's just move on and hope the Police aren't reading this. (I mean the police, like the Lothian And Borders Police, not The Police. Although they might be annoyed if I'd been contravening copyright laws with any of their records, I definitely don't want to annoy Sting. He was the template for John Constantine, and he was Feyd in Dune, and I certainly don't want to annoy him. He will kill me!... or something.)

On my new copy of the 21st-century, enlightened version of Peter and the Wolf, we see the 21st-century, enlightened version of the same copyright notice:

Thank you for buying this disc and thereby supporting all those involved in the making of it.
Please remember that this record and its packaging are protected by copyright law.
Please don't lend discs to others to copy, give away illegal copies of discs, or use internet services that promote the illegal distribution of copyright recordings.
Such actions threaten the livelihood of musicians and everyone else involved in producing music.

Well, suddenly we're much nicer and more friendly. We're prohibiting the same random shit (that everyone does anyway) as has been done for thirty years or so, but now we have an obligation to explain just what you're doing to the economy, you bastards. This is the caring, sharing 90s, when the iron boot of oppression is wrapped in the velvet glove of consideration and harmony! ...and, yeah. I should drink less when I'm constructing LJ rants. I know this.

Patronising tone aside[6], the text goes on, it doesn't stop, it goes on: ``Applicable laws provide severe civil and criminal penalties for the unauthorised reproduction, distribution and digital transmission of copyright sound recordings''. See, there's the stick we were waiting for. Now we've got the considerate Nineties bollocks out of the way, they can start brandishing random threats in the full knowledge that they've already made their case politely once. Anything extra might as well be underlined by blue flashing lights in the street outside, the neighbours tutting and twitching their curtains, and a uniformed constable telling you that you have no need to say anything. You're already guilty, you music-stealing or music-considering-stealing fucks, so shut up and listen to our COPYRIGHT JUSTICE.

And yet (this being the caring, sharing Nineties[7]) it doesn't end there. They offer you a way out; absolution for your filthy cassette-lending (once, when you were fourteen) sins. Here it is: ``To find legal downloads, visit www.musicfromemi.com''.

EMI have gone to all this trouble to set up a website for us. It's only fair that we patronise it. So I did. Stop me if I'm wrong, but no downloads are available on the site in question, just a list of propaganda reasons why music downloading is bad---and any attempts to explain why music downloading is bad appear to get blocked by my Firefox; either that or the explanations never existed in the first place.

This is just like the buggy-whip manufacturers protesting about I'm not going to talk about the buggy-whip manufacturers. That's a point that has been made many times before, often better than I could have done it.

I didn't really have a point, now I come to think of it, except to observe that the recording industry people have now resorted to pleading.


--
[0] For those young'uns reading this, an LP is one of those flat black plastic things we used to listen to music on. This was round about the time that I was listening to a lot of Jeff Wayne's version of The War of the Worlds, so I can feel slightly justified in being patronising to the young'uns.[1] Recall that I'm still not, quite, twenty-six yet.

[1] I'm often similarly patronising to Jehane, who's something like fourteen months younger than I am, about major cultural events of which I tell her ``you're too young to remember this''. I'm usually right, but this is often because I got my enculturation from records ten years after the event. Records were just coming into vogue[2], and I got an extra ten years of knowledge from my family being behind the times and my own hurry to catch up: this is probably why I consider the 80s fascinating, because I had to rush past it perfunctorily on my way.

[2] I still maintain that there is no better way to grow up than by Dire Straits 48s played at 75rpm so that they ``sound like Pinky and Perky''. Such was entertainment in my house in the mid-eighties[3].

[3] Give me a break. It's a sight more advanced than telling stories around the fire or complaining about rationing.

[4] I'm reminded of the DVD extras to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets where the kid who plays Draco turns out to be this quintessential little Essex wide-boy[5], telling us that ``me an' `Arry... we 'ave this little wand fight, right''.

[5] I have no idea what ``wide-boy'' actually means. I suspect I don't want to, either.

[6] Another time I would have a complete LJ post about the patronising tone alone. This isn't one of those times.

[7] `Nineties' looks like a really stupid word when I type it. Am I doing it right?

Fuckers.

"Today's unanimous ruling is an historic victory for intellectual property in the digital age, and is good news for consumers, artists, innovation and lawful Internet businesses."

In other news: stock prices soar in the buggy-whip manufacture sector.

.torrent link to Supreme Court decision