do_While(True)

This
is rather unfortunate. Richard Cheese (as his stage-name goes) is a cover
artist who re-appropriates other's songs and puts them in the cheesy "longe
music" style. I heard one of his albums, "Lounge Against The Machine," and
it was pretty humorous. Imagine Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" as sung by a
lounge singer.

Anyways, Cheese apparently lets his music be used royalties-free in
podcasts, so he was invited to a "new media" seminar as one of several
entertainment acts. But the fact that the bloggers and podcasters in
attendance were taking pictures and videos apparently upset him. The
article says he went around taking people's cameras and turning them off,
yelling at people, and even spit on someone who continued to tape him.

*sigh* Strike another artist off my list of "worth caring about."

Micheal
Phelps Returns to His Tank at Sea World
Yay the Onion.

So... there's an
article arguing that new research 'proves' that viruses are alive. I'm
less than convinced. I mean, it all depends on what you want to define as
'alive,' really -- though, I think something like "carries out metabolic
processes" would be higher on the list than, "can be compromised by a
virus." What the research found was that a "giant" virus that infects
amoebae has been found itself to be playing host to a smaller virus. Except
the article seems unclear as to what's really going on -- my understanding
is that the smaller virus is itself infecting the same already-compromised
amoeba, not the 'giant virus' itself. Regardless, my point is simply that,
as the article says, viruses are just "glorified scraps of DNA." A shard of
glass may cut my finger and a small stone may get into the cut, but this
fact doesn't make the glass or the stone any more "alive."

A few years ago, the medical field had high hopes for fake blood
substitutes, which were universally compatible and had a three year
unrefridgerated shelf life. That's a lot more than can be said about the
regular stuff we usually pump. Unfortunately, trials
have shown that the fake blood causes "vasoconstriction," making patients
2.7 times more likely to have a heart attack and 30% more likely to die from
one. Trials have been called off.

For those who, unlike me, don't keep up with the chaotic comings and goings
of copyright cases, the name Jammie Thomas might not ring any bells. The
long and short of it is that she was, apparently, the first person found
guilty of copyright infringment based on the RIAA's "making available"
argument; that is, they argue that putting music files in a shared folder is
enough to qualify for copyright infringment. The interesting bit comes in
when the Judge notes, after the fact, that he may have made a terrible
mistake, since copyright never uses the term "making available" --
and, in fact, 'distribution' is only an example of a protected right, not a
right in and of itself.

The Register has an article up about it all, none of which is terribly
interesting except that they quote a pertinent piece of the copyright law:

"And for sound recordings, it defines "publication" as "offering to
distribute copies or phonorecords to a group of persons for purposes of
further distribution, public performance, or public display"."

Emphasis mine. And I think that emphasis may be of particular interest
because file sharing isn't done for public purposes, but
private ones. I send a file to my friend so that he can listen to it, not
so that he can have a dance party with 100 of his closest friends. Which
only leaves the possibility of "purposes of further distribution." That is,
to me, it seems like the RIAA would have to prove that not only were you
distributing copies, but that you'd intended for those copies to be
further distributed. that's much more difficult, if not impossible,
to prove. And as the RIAA is already complaining that providing
proof of infringment is too hard, such a reading of the law very well might
kill the whole thing.

Is there anyone out there who knows more than I do who might weigh in on
this?

Last night as I was surfing the Internet, my computer started to have
major slow downs, and then began to freeze. After a couple restarts,
Windows decided that my disks needed to be check for consistency: first it
checked C: and found no errors, then it crashed again, checked D: and found
a boatload of errors, and found errors on C: after rechecking that.
Then it just failed to load; I got a Blue Screen before the login page ever
came up. Both C: and D: reside on the same physical disk, which is actually
the older of two that I currently have (E: is it's own physical drive). I
put all of Windows on C: so that I can reinstall Windows without actually
losing real data.

All last night I tried to reinstall Windows and failed. The Installation
hung on copying over setup files several times, and then told me that it
couldn't reformat C: and that the disk may be damaged. So I resolved to buy
a new drive today, install Windows on that, and try and recover data from
the dieing drive. This morning I gave it a final try, reseated the drive's
cables, and Installation was able to successfully complete. (I'm a little
worried that maybe it was just a cable problem to begin with, except that
there's nothing that would have jostled the cables to begin with.)

Reinstalling Windows is a pain. Mostly it's the reinstalling of all my
programs (ZoneAlarm Firewall, Avast! Antivirus, wireless card, video card,
and games), but also just reorganizing my files -- My Documents won't be
recognized as such when I relogon to the 'new' Windows. A piece of me is
concerned that I may lose data, mostly I'm concerned for my photos and
music. I have no idea how (assuming it's not dieing on D:) to re-associate
my iTunes with my music. (I've used iTunes extensively, so about half of my
music is DRM'd Apple files as opposed to easy-to-manage mp3s...)

I'm taking it all a little hard -- I'm absurdly attached to my computer, and
seeing her hurt this way has me a bit heartbroken. She's my major
connection out to the rest of the world (most of my friends live in my
computer); thankfully, my iTouch (and work computer) esure that I'm not
totally cut off while I'm fixing her.

Anyways...

For no reason I can find, I just got really sad.
Two and a half hours before I go home.

So the last two weeks have been kind of busy.

I feel like I owe you guys an honest update, but I'm exhausted so I'm probably going to cut corners. Sorry.

( Cut because it gets really long anyways. )

And though that's not the FULL story, it's now very late and I needs to be getting sleep. So I'm-a stop there.

So, I usually like The Register, but I think they got it wrong here when
they talk about the FCC action against Comcast and what it means. The
Register article does note that it's a victory for the Net Neutrality camp,
which is a good thing, but the tone of the article seems rather negative and
says that this ruling hampers the ability of ISPs -- large and small -- to
manage their network traffic. I believe this is simply untrue, and here's
why:

The whole thing started when Comcast started blocking bittorrent file
transfers. Bittorrent is just a protocol, though, and while it is
used for illegal sharing of copyrighted material (movies, music, video
games, whatever), it has lots of legitimate uses, too, such as
decentralizing the downloading of actually free software like most Linux
OSes, and actually free music, like what the guys at OCRemix do. Comcast
did two things wrong, really, and the FCC is only calling them on one of
them. What they did was forge internet packets in order to make
bittorrent users believe that their transfer had been interrupted. (For the
tech savvy, Comcast was sending Reset packets that were crafted to look like
they came from the remote source so that the bittorrent app would stop the
transfer.) Comcast then claimed that they weren't blocking the traffic, and
when later they admitted that they were "managing traffic" they
didn't explain to people what they were doing or how. Now, I
think that the first crime, forging packets, is the more serious offense,
but the FCC is just calling Comcast on not being up-front with their users.
Essentially, the FCC says the only thing Comcast did wrong was not tell
people what they were doing.

The Register article has a few lines about how the FCC censure threatens
"business modles that rely on a super-fast lane" for transferring video or
real-time data. That's nonsense, the FCC decision does no such thing. It's
not impossible (or even really difficult) to logically divide a connection
so that you have a 'super-fast' lane (presumably for 'premium' customers who
pay extra), and the FCC decision just says that if you're going to do that,
tell people. That's not hard and it's not going to break anyone's modle.
It MIGHT make you easier to compete against, if you're using 'network
managment' as a way to over-sell your capacity without the need to improve
your infrastructure (*pointed look at Comcast*), but I don't think that's a
problem.

On the tail on my last post, this looks like it should be an Onion
headline but it's not: Russia Looking To
Ban Goth And Emo Music And Websites