So I snagged Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow this weekend via
BitTorrent and
then converted it to run on my PSP.
Actually, it wasn't that he snagged a major movie off BitTorrent
that had me thinking.
He wouldn't have been able to unless it wasn't a common albeit
illegal and shadowy activity.
What had me thinking was his response to the obvious questions:
I simply described an activity that many, many people are already
doing with or without
me. Do you really think that not talking about this sort of illegal
use of BitTorrent
is going to somehow protect it?
While my answer to his question is no, I do think talking in public
about illegal
activities does somehow cause changes, changes which the affected
or interested parties
(i.e. MPAA, FBI) may consider extremely harmful and thus proceed to
counter by setting
examples.
Based on my mutated theory of ying and yang, what belongs in
the shadow should
stay in the shadow. Failing to do so leads to chaos.
Grok Headline matches for Stealing with Mouth Wide Open?
Open source cracks publishing wide open
Open source cracks publishing wide open06/17/2004 11:24 AM Once upon a time, publishing was the domain of large corporations.
Then came desktop publishing and the tools to produce a book shrank
from the cost of an aircraft carrier to the price tag of a PT boat.
Now, small publishers on the bleeding edge of technology are fomenting
a revolution that may change the publishing market forever. Open
source publishing tools, long derided as not being ready for battle,
are proving themselves in the trenches of small publishing.
Bad Mouth or Free Mouth, He Ruffles Genteel Airwaves
Red Hat frees Wide Open05/16/2004 12:24 PM For all of the FUD that some are eager to spread about Free Software
and Open Source, the real truth is that the purveyors of such tripe
are truly fearful that you might learn the simple object lesson: a
long and happy life is filled with learning. They want you to believe
that you are too ignorant to understand new ideas, and that your
capacity for learning has eluded you. They need you to believe that
you are too lazy to make an effort to think for yourself. Don't buy
that idea, for it is nothing more than an abdication of your
obligations. Try to learn something new every day, no matter how
small, for it will sharpen your mind and rejuvenate your spirit.
In the New Age of Parity, Shinnecock Is Wide Open
In the New Age of Parity, Shinnecock Is Wide Open06/16/2004 04:35 PM Domination is out and parity is in, giving players who have yet to win
a major even more hope as they prepare for the United States Open at
Shinnecock Hills Golf Club.
iTunes DRM cracked wide open
iTunes DRM cracked wide open01/06/2004 04:24 AM A lot of work going on behind the scenes to capture and encode
streaming Video & Music. Links to a...
300 Holes Capped in IE - Still Wide Open
300 Holes Capped in IE - Still Wide Open09/13/2002 05:26 AM Despite fixing 300 holes in IE on Monday, security testers are saying
that "You can do anything...it's wide open".
CAN-SPAM Leaves Lid Wide Open05/20/2004 04:06 PM Almost five months after Congress passed a law to reduce the amount of
junk e-mail flooding the nation's in-boxes, industry experts widely
agree that the opposite has occurred: We're getting more spam than
ever before.
Mind Wide Open excerpt
Mind Wide Open excerpt02/18/2004 10:53 AM Salon is running a long excerpt from Steven Johnson's mindblowing new
book, Mind Wide Open, which I read last week and have been returning
to in my thoughts several times a day. Johnson takes apart the jargon
and theory of various kinds of brain and mind science and exposes us
to a bunch of aha! moments about the physiological, evolutionary and
non-material bases for our thought processes. Reading this book, you
get this curious form of vertigo in which you begin to see your brain
as a collection of chemicals and processes and physiological
serendipities, and then realize that that very same collection of goo
is the thing that is having this realization, and boy, that's a weird
goddamned feeling. As for me, after reading this I'm in the market
for a cheap travel-sized USB neurofeedback EEG.
Areas that do show noticeable changes appear on the images as a
cluster of bright yellow pixels, fading out to orange and red at their
peripheries. The images look strikingly like the Doppler radar images
you see on the Weather Channel. (If you blur your eyes a little, you
might think that yellow patch on the image was a thunderhead, not a
brainstorm.) The image is projected over a grid with numbers running
along each axis. The numbered grid and the slices create a
three-dimensional system of coordinates, the latitude and longitude of
neuromapping. The grid is made up of small cubes called "voxels," and
each voxel has a specific address.
Joy begins by laying down the twenty-five slices for stage one of our
experiment, the dreaded checkerboard. The pattern of activity is
immediately visible, even to my untutored eyes, mostly because there's
literally nothing going on in 95 percent of my brain. Only a thin band
wrapping around the back of my head, roughly at ear level, glows
yellow.
"We know that the flashing checkerboard is a very salient stimulus for
just the visual processing areas of the brain," she says. "And that's
exactly what's happening here."
Eyes Wide Open Over Anime Piracy07/27/2004 06:16 AM Amid proliferation of counterfeit Japanese animation products, an
American distributor fights back in court. Randy Dotinga reports from
San Diego.
How Gluecode led Debisys into the wide open spaces
How Gluecode led Debisys into the wide open spaces05/26/2004 12:02 PM Debisys, a prepaid phone transaction service processor, thought it
would be a Windows shop forever. Debisys runs Windows 2000 servers, a
SQL Server database, and Windows desktops. "There was a perception
that we'd always buy Microsoft software," says MIS Manager Mike
Figeuroa. But that is all about to change. "We are doing a complete
migration to open source."
Open Wide: Decoding the Secrets of Venom
Open Wide: Decoding the Secrets of Venom04/05/2005 04:31 AM Scientists believe that understanding how snake venom works will help
lead to medical breakthroughs.
In 1999, the World
Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee looked back on the previous
decade and lamented: “I wanted the Web to be what I call an
interactive space where everybody can edit. And I started saying
‘interactive,’ and then I read in the media that the Web was great
because it was ‘interactive,’ meaning you could click. This was
not what I meant by interactivity.†That vision of a genuinely
interactive environment rather than “a glorified television
channelâ€â€”one in which people not only would browse pages but also
would edit them as part of the process—did not disappear with the
rise of the read-only Web browser.1 It’s churning away more actively
than ever, in a vivid and chaotic Web-within-the-Web, via an anarchic
breed of pages known as “wikis.â€. This has been added to my Wikis
section in Bots, Blogs and News
Aggregators web page.
Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
galumpia.co.uk/how_wide/howwide.htm track this
site | 6 links
You Big Mouth, You!
You Big Mouth, You!12/31/2004 05:09 PM counting American donations .. here, by Chuck Simmins .. Tsunami:
Stingy??
blog.simmins.org/2004/12/tsunami-stingy.html track this
site | 4 links
No more dry mouth
No more dry mouth02/01/2005 08:37 PM David Pescovitz:
Developed by
researchers at Israel's Assuta Medical Centers, the Saliwell Crown is
an electronic tooth implant that stimulates saliva production.
Diseases like AIDS, Parkinson's, and some antidepressants and
chemotherapy can cause brutal dry mouth that inhibits speech and
sleep. The device contains a wetness sensor, microchip, and electrodes
that zap the lingual nerve to trigger saliva production.
Link(to Technology Review article), Link(to
News-Medical.Net article)
Shoot Off Your Mouth
Shoot Off Your Mouth07/01/2004 03:49 PM When Comedy Central tricked gun-rights advocate Jim Marsh into appearing on
the fake talk show Crossballs, they almost made TV history. "I came within an inch of pulling a
4"-class folding knife," he writes.
Bart's big mouth
Bart's big mouth08/02/2004 10:32 AM For 17 years, this wholesome Scientologist has played the naughtiest
boy on TV.
Hungry for some pizza, but can't stand all that pesky human
interaction you have to put up with ordering it on the phone? Pizza Party
is your answer:
Pizza Party is a free text based software package for ordering
pizza, or for throwing pizza parties.
Pizza Party has many features to make ordering pizza easy:
* Can order pizza with only a few keystrokes.
* Can save pizza preferences.
* Can use batch files for ordering many pizzas.
* Has easy to use flags for ordering different toppings.
* Runs on most UNIX-like operating systems.
* Supports most currently popular topings like "mushrooms", and
"pepperoni"!
* Unattended / background operation.
* Pizza Party is distributed under the GNU General Public
License.
Since it's released under the GPL, does that mean I have to share
my pizza too?
"On Tuesday, Cheney, serving in his role
as president of the Senate, appeared in the chamber for a photo
session. A chance meeting with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the
ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, became an argument about
Cheney's ties to Halliburton Co., an international energy services
corporation, and President Bush's judicial nominees. The exchange
ended when Cheney offered some crass advice.
'Fuck yourself,' said the man who is a heartbeat from the
presidency."
...Even if the Senate were in session, the vice president, though
constitutionally the president of the Senate, is an executive branch
official and therefore free to use whatever language he
likes."
I don't think I've ever told a business associate to "fuck
yourself", but I guess I've never been accused of corruption by an
associate either. On the other hand, I can't imagine ever calling my
company a super-duper company...
putting his money where his mouth is11/12/2003 01:16 PM can spend $15m+ to oust George Bush .. Celebrity Death Match: Bush v
Soros .. pledged to give millions .. $15.5 million .. Here's
what
washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24179-2003Nov10?language=printer
track this
site | 23 links
FC Now: Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth
FC Now: Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth09/09/2004 02:16 PM I feel like I should be caught and punished for what I've done this
summer. I've worked with Fast Company as an intern for three...
Straight from the horse's mouth!07/01/2004 02:17 PM MEMRI adds a TV monitoring
project.MEMRI (the Middle
East Media Research Institute) has added hundreds of clips from
various Middle Eastern television stations (lis
t of sources here). The archive of clips can be found here. There are
amazing primary sources available, like "Saudi Sheik Sa'd
Al-Breik on Human Rights in Islam and in the West", "Sheik
Youssef Al-Qaradhawi in Favor of Democratic Elections in the Arab
World", and "Former Dean of Humanities at Cairo's Ein Shams
University: 9/11 was 100% American".
Straight From The Horses Mouth
Straight From The Horses Mouth04/10/2005 03:56 AM The autobiography of Dave Prowse is now available on the new Official Dave
Prowse website. At £50 (approx $100) it isn't cheap, but you do
get a lot for you money including a second volume that is packed full
of lavish photographs spanning his career. So if you've ever wondered
what Darth Vader though of Superman, Dr Who, and crossing the road all
you have to do is click here!
WordofMouthResearch.com is a background
research tool that allows users to access the valuable information
source known as "word-of-mouth" on an international scale. People
submit their shared experiences on people who they know. The authors
of such information are either looking for knowledge or have knowledge
to share. Users from around the world can search for and find such
word-of-mouth information. Once it is found, the user can then contact
the author to begin communication regarding the subject of the search.
Their mission is to help connect people with one another, wherever
they are, to share their experiences, give advice and provide
information. This has been added to Finding People Subject
Tracer™ Information Blog. This has also been added to my posting on Online Social Networks.
Mr. Vice President has a potty mouth
Mr. Vice President has a potty mouth06/25/2004 05:16 PM As Jess Hemerly writes on A Great
Notion , "There's something about the way this Washington Post
article is written that makes the entire scenario 3,000 times
funnier." From the article:
"On Tuesday, Cheney, serving in his role as president of
the Senate, appeared in the chamber for a photo session. A chance
meeting with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the
Judiciary Committee, became an argument about Cheney's ties to
Halliburton Co., an international energy services corporation, and
President Bush's judicial nominees. The exchange ended when Cheney
offered some crass advice.
'Fuck yourself,' said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency."
...Even if the Senate were in session, the vice president, though
constitutionally the president of the Senate, is an executive branch
official and therefore free to use whatever language he likes."
Link to Washington Post article (free reg. required) Grok Description matches for Stealing with Mouth Wide Open? GrokA matches for Stealing with Mouth Wide Open?
Stealing with Mouth Wide Open?
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry:
Developed by
researchers at Israel's Assuta Medical Centers, the Saliwell Crown is
an electronic tooth implant that stimulates saliva production.
Diseases like AIDS, Parkinson's, and some antidepressants and
chemotherapy can cause brutal dry mouth that inhibits speech and
sleep. The device contains a wetness sensor, microchip, and electrodes
that zap the lingual nerve to trigger saliva production.