This season's catch phrase: "abundance of sensitivity"

You've probably heard all about this, but here's a little recap:

1. RIAA files suit against guy for infringement
2. Guys dies
3. Upon learning that guy is dead, RIAA files motion to stay the case for 60 days to allow dead guy's family to grieve, after which they will pursue suit against dead guy's family
4. Story hits the blogosphere
5. RIAA spokesdroid tells Cory Doctorow that the RIAA — "out of an abundance of sensitivity" — has elected to drop the suit

Conclusion: the RIAA is staffed by douche bags

Mr. Doctorow also asked the spokesdriod:

Where was the "abundance of sensitivity" when the RIAA failed to initially drop its case against the Scantleberry family following the death of the named defendant in the case? Given that this "abundance" only materialized within 24 hours of this story hitting several large news outlets and blogs isn't it fair to say that the RIAA is demonstrating sensitivity to its public image, and not its sensitivity to the Scantleberry family?

Oddly, spokesdroid had no comment. He probaly had to go rough up a 15-year old girl or something.

Via EFF.

EFF: Fighting for Bloggers' Rights

By the way, if you're a blogger, you have rights, and the EFF wants you to know about them. Check out their resource page, which includes tidbits like a Legal Guide for Bloggers and How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else).

They're fighting for your rights, too. Support 'em.

One Thing Threepio Can't Do

I mean, really. Who doesn't need this?

Ding Dong, Tower Is Dead

Tower Records is dead. Chapter 11, the business dirt nap. Quite frankly, I'm wondering what took so long. The obvious answer is: The American public finally wised up. After years of paying 19 friggin', hard-earned dollars for each shiny, plastic disc, they finally stopped. Now, Tower is paying the Jethro Tull piper for its sins of avarice and greed.

Yes, the recording industry is whining about illegal downloading, file sharing and piracy (by honest Buccaneer-Americans), but they also have only themselves to blame. Just like Congress, old white guys in suits tried to keep the gravy train rolling. The problem is, people weren't coming to the station anymore. They found that bicycles were faster, and... well, let's stop beating that metaphor into the ground.

The point is, many of us wised up and realized that when you buy something, you own it, and can share it at will. You can let a friend use your car, your computer, your phone... why not your digital music files?

Now, if we can just stop the RIAA from suing dead people's families.

RIAA Annual Meeting

RIAA Annual Meeting A little gift for That Bald Guy.

Men can multitask

Thanks HMO!

Horror these days is teh suck

Charlie Stross went on vacation recently, read some pulpy books, and when he got back, posted a bit about the state of the SF and horror genres, and what their respective best-sellers say about the state of the reading public.

For starters, the strange rebirth of the horror field is quite illuminating. We used to know what horror was about — it was about Killer Whelks menacing a quiet English seaside town, from which a strong-jawed but quiet fellow and a not-totally-pathetic female lead might eventually hope to escape with the aid of a stout two-by-four and a lot of whelkish squelching after trials, tribulations, and gruesome scenes of seafood-induced cannibalism. Then Stephen King came along and transcended, becoming a mini-genre of his own. Attempts were made to replicate the phenomenon, but instead the bottom dropped out of the market.

The new horror isn't about whelks, killer or otherwise: it's about vampires, werewolves, and middle America. With police and detectives. Hell, you could even call it cop/vampire slash and have done with it, except that you'd be missing out on the tedious Manichean dualist drivel into which all these series eventually descend (unless they end up as soft porn instead — a very lucrative market, as Laurel Hamilton and her imitators have discovered — call it the fang-fucker subgenre). For the sad fact is, there seems to be some kind of law about contemporary American horror getting into furry sex by volume three then suffering a fit of remorse and going all god-bothering and Jesus-fondling by volume six. It must be all the crosses and holy water they need to fend off the blood sucking fiends, I suppose, but the endless re-hashing of tired old religious-sexual neuroses is getting to be a stereotype of the genre, and it's not healthy. Horror isn't about being born-again: it's about bloody screaming catharsis, not a warm security blanket of belief that blocks out all menaces. But in the new horror, if the bloodsuckers are remotely sympathetic the story turns into some kind of supernatural redemption epic, and if they're not, the protagonist eventually goes all googly-eyed and born-again.

What an interesting &mdash and frankly, sad &mdash point. And I can't say I disagree with him. But what do you expect from American culture? We use sex to sell everything, then tell people that sex is a sin against God and nature.

He also draws some conclusions from the rise of the alternate history sub-genre of SF:

Probably the fastest-growing sub-genre in the swamp is alternate history. I've been known to dabble in it myself, I hasten to admit: it can be fun and educational, a desert topping and a floor wax. But mostly floor wax these days, I find, because a lot of authors who should know better are turning to it in a mad collective ostrich-head-burying exercise rather than engaging with the world as it is.

Yeah, that's pretty much dead on. Americans don't want to think about the here-and-now, 'cause it sucks. Between Dubya, bombs in our Gatorade and our iPods, a costly and perhaps illegal war, constant reminders of the "threat" of terrorism, the NSA spying on our fellow citizens, oil dependency, poverty, pending thermonuclear war with Iraq, pending war with/between everyone in the middle east, the end of the world as predicted by the Aztec calendar or whatever, etc., etc., ad nauseam, people want to escape. Fans of alt-history must find a great deal of solace in a revised world similar to our own. It doesn't require a lot of thinking or the absorption of new ideas, just a different flavor of today. How nice. No wonder it sells so well.

But all is not lost.

Oh, there are exceptions. Vernor Vinge is swimming strongly against the flow in "Rainbows End", where he envisages a future just a couple of decades hence where the machines dance. Peter Watts is doing stuff with the genre that just shouldn't be possible (evolutionary biology, exobiology, and vampires in spaaaaaace — all done with a deft touch of plausibility and a refreshingly pleasant dose of bleakly nihilistic existential despair). And there are a few others.

In closing, let me point you to one of the others: Chris Nakashima-Brown. He's got links to a bunch of his short-stories on the intertubes and in print, one of my favorites being Welcome Back Qatar. Good, smart, reality-based stuff.

SoaP: Putting the Fanatic back in Fan

Fella name a' Doz (aka iBgerd) is clearly the #1 Snakes on a Plane Fan[atic], and clearly deserves some kind of prize.

Boing Boing has a great round up of more SoaP meme related stuff. Follow the bouncing link.

Told ya, we'll be flying nekkid

Says Cory Doctorow:

They're onto something here. If the existence of a plot to use implausible liquid explosives against aircraft creates a global war on moisture at the airports, imagine what a similar plot to smuggle a bomb up a terrorist's ass would engender. The war on moisture is bad, but it's nothing compared to the inevitable war on body cavities.

Via Boing Boing.

Movie: Brick

This weekend The Bad Kitty and I watched a movie called Brick. We'd heard that it was good, but it wasn't. It was really, really good.

Imagine Philip Marlowe as a teenager today. Not the various movie versions of Philip Marlowe, but Raymond Chandler's character as written: the hard, imperfect, honorable man who did the right thing, even when it meant taking a beating himself.

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

— Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder

And clearly, the movie and it's lead character, Brendan, are a loving homage to Chandler's work. Rian Johnson (the writer/director of Brick) did a great job of updating and reproducing Marlowe's quick, smart-aleck, private dick argot. Some examples:

Brad (the BMOC): Oh yeah?
Brendan (our hero): Yeah.
Brad: Oh yeah?
Brendan: Yeah.
Brad: Yeah?
Brendan: There's a thesaurus in the library. Yeah is under "Y". Go ahead, I'll wait.

The Brain: Ask any dope rat where their junk sprang and they'll say they scraped it from that who scored it from this who bought it off so and after four or five connections the list always ends with the Pin. But I bet you got every rat in town together and said 'show your hands' if any of them've actually seen the Pin, you'd get a crowd of full pockets.

Then there's "The Pin" (played quite creepily by Lukas Haas), who refer's to Brendan as "Soldier", like Eddie Mars referring to Marlowe in The Big Sleep:

"Convenient," [Eddie] said. "The door being open. When you didn't have a key."

"Yes. How come you had a key?"

"Is that any of your business, soldier?"

"I could make it my business."

He smiled tightly and pushed his hat back on his gray hair. "And I could make your business my business."

"You wouldn't like it. The pay’s too small."

See? Good stuff. Go see Brick on DVD, and then go read some Chandler.

Journal of Ottoman Calligraphy

Wouldn't it be nice if all writing looked like this?

The Journal of Ottoman Calligraphy is dedicated to Islamic art and Ottoman calligraphy and it is currently a Online journal. The JOC is a semi-academic online periodical devoted to the subject, and has been spearheading the ongoing discussion defining Islamic and Ottoman calligraphy, since its founding in 2006. JOC is a refereed online journal that publishes essays and reviews on all aspects, areas and periods of the history of Islamic and Ottoman calligraphy, from a diversity of perspectives.

Most articles are in English, with a few appearing in other European languages and in Turkish. Each volume also includes a calender of events and a list of puplications concerning Islamic and Ottoman calligraphy worldwide.

The mission of the JOC is to delight, inspire, and educate a diverse public through the collection, preservation, exhibition and interpretation of works of Islamic and Ottoman calligraphy. The JOC is a non-commercial project.

Via BibliOdyssey.

The Secret Love of Perez Prado and Spike Jones

Via Coop, who also points us to some more Spike Jones clips.

Live in California? Keep RFID out of your driver's license

From the EFF:

We're close to a major victory in the battle to keep radio frequency identification (RFID) tags out of California IDs, but we need your help to finish the job.

Without careful safeguards, RFIDs in IDs can broadcast your personal information to anyone nearby with cheap, readily-available equipment. Your government could be exposing you to the risk of covert tracking, stalking and identity theft.

In California, EFF has been working with a diverse range of concerned groups to stop insecure ID cards. The result, S.B. 768, faces a vote next week in the Legislature before reaching the governor. (The bill has already passed the Senate once, though not in its amended form.)

If you live in California, use our Action Center now to call your representatives and tell them to vote yes on SB 768.

Must have HD arcade cabinet

I don't think I've every really considered buying an arcade cabinet before, but an arcade cabinet for your PS2 or Xbox with hi-def and kick-ass audio? I don't think I can live without one!

Although, for 3-4 grand, I can learn to live without. But the suffering without one! The suffering!

Via Gozmodo.

All your locks are belong to us

Everyone who knows how locks work knows that they're really just a convenient fiction that are only good for keeping your stuff safe from the uninformed or ill-equipped. Here's further proof:

William Gibson says

Silver nitrous girls pointed into occult winds of porn and destiny.

Man, that cat can write.

Savage Chickens on a Plane 2

...and of course Snapes on a Plane.

You should read Savage Chickens every day!

Fly nekkid, arrive poorer

As a follow-up to Mr. Lupo's post, here's today's fun travel fact: if the TSA forces you to check your laptop, camera and other expensive goodies, then the airline loses or breaks them, you are SOL. It seems that, according to international rules, airlines are only liable for £15 per kilogram for lost or damaged luggage. Worse, your own travel insurance probably doesn't cover more than £1,500 for all losses, with a cap of £400-500 per single item.

That puts the "shit" back in shit-out-of-luck.

Musicians with the Bolshoi theatre company are having a particularly prickly problem, in that a) some of their instruments are worth tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, and b) they are legally obligated to keep those pricey fiddles with them at all times. So they're taking the train. Just like I will next time I have to travel.

Meanwhile, after suddenly becoming a grave threat to both transportation security and the American way of life, lipstick and baby food are apparently no longer being used to make bombs, nerve gas, or whatever other FUD-based weapons the "experts" were blathering on about on the "news." [Attention "experts" and talking-heads: you are helping the terrorists by spreading terror. Knock it off. Speak calmly and rationally about the facts. Don't make stuff up to fill the airtime between commercials. Thank you.]

Via The Consumerist and Boing Boing.

Moo. Baa. The people have spoken.

I don't know with whom I'm more frustrated:

• The government, for preaching and peddling FUD
• The FAA and TSA, for hiring completely incompetent drones workers
• The general public, for putting up with all of it
• The media, for taking the gub'ment FUD and spreading it like syphilis

In a nutshell: because of a thwarted attempt to hijack airlines, we are no longer allowed to bring liquids, books or electronics on board. No water (wait ad nauseum for a steward to bring it), no toothpaste (ew.), no books (just SkyMall, please. Consume!), no DAPs (music kills) and no laptops (because watching Captain Ron for the umpteenth time is sooo much better).

It gets worse: mindless chimps people are actually agreeing with authorities, spewing the usual tripe about feeling safer with more regulations and the "small price to pay" for safety.

Try this one, from Bill Brown, Harbeson, Delaware: "I agree with the UK banning all electronic devices in the cabin. These items need to be checked in and stowed in the cargo area. We can do without these items until we reach our destinations." And he's not alone.

F-ing what?! Are you serious? You'd rather place your cellphone, $2,000 laptop and PDA into the cargo hold and let the baggage apes throw it around like a dead panther cub in the wild? The utter lack of intelligence and foresight appalls me, and though I am no longer surprised, I still find myself shocked.

It's not that we're not safe; it's just a different perspective. We're just like the rest of the world, which gets on with its life and understands that things happen and crazy people blow things up. But Americans are giving up their rights left and right, telling themselves it's OK. You can sit at home and wring your hands over it, worrying that the terrorists will steal your personal data unless you let your DSL provider charge you more to send "secure and reliable" email. You can stay off planes altogether, or board them and arrive dehydrated in all your glorious bovinity, proud that you didn't let the terrorists win. You can sit and cower and obey everything the nice, white politicians tell you. And after a while, you won't have a choice to do anything except listen, because it will be law, and you'll be wondering why no one stood up to say it was wrong. No one stood up, including you.

Besides, you weren't using those civil rights anyway, were you?

RU Sirius has two podcasts

I can't believe I missed this. RU Sirius has two podcasts: The RU Sirius Show (which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago) and NeoFiles. I'm not sure what the difference is between the two as far as topics are concerned as they both seem to cover a pretty broad spectrum, but they're both brimming with excellent interviews with fascinating people. RU himself is perhaps cyberpunk's most prominent real-world prophet, with a firm grokking of culture (pop, fringe and otherwise), history, drugs, technology and art.

Since I seem to be coming to the party a little late, I've been catching up with The RU Sirius Show and there's a bunch of really good stuff there. This morning I listened to a two-part interview, which I strongly recommend, with Mel Gordon, author of Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin and The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber):

» Show #48: Seven Addictions & Five Professions (MP3 link)
» Show #49: The Hipster Whores of Weimar Germany: Mel Gordon pt. 2 (MP3 link)

NeoFiles, the other podcast RU hosts, seems equally populated with interesting folks. I've only listened to one so far, an interview with author Chris Nakashima-Brown, and it's a doozie. Mr. Nakashima-Brown seems to have taken the whole cyberpunk/near-future-fiction thing to heart and is doing sterling work with it. Anyone who can write Jorge Luis Borges into a lost episode of The Love Boat deserves ~26 minutes of your time.

» NeoFiles Show #49: The New Cyberpunk SF (MP3 link)

Book: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

I just finished Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel by Susanna Clarke. Rarely have I enjoyed a book more than I enjoyed this one, and I encourage you to pick it up.

Our friend Miss Ivy commented that it reminded her of the The Pickwick Papers, and I have to say that that description is not entirely inaccurate. It certainly does have a Dickensian feel, dry humor, and it's spiced with anachronistic turns of phrase and spelling that serve very will to enhance the atmosphere of c.1810-1816 England.

It also totally sucked me in. There was even one memorable moment where an event in the story actually shocked me, even though I knew it was coming and, not being one of the characters in the book myself, I knew that it hadn't actually happened. That is some skillful authorship.

Go read it.

Gator[ade]s on a Plane

Who indeed, Mr. Jackson? Who indeed?

I was going to post something from CNN's version of the story but I can't. The baseless and laughable speculation by "a senior congressional source" and "a U.S. counterterrorism official" etc. is just too depressing. Our nation's security is provided by people who are technically retarded. Check the link for more wacky governmental hijinx.

Via Boing Boing.

Pretty soon we'll be flying nekkid

The NTY reports that British government has foiled a plot to blow up 6-10 airplanes using liquid explosives with small electronic devices as detonators.

Here in the US, the TSA has "put in place new regulations barring passengers from carrying any liquids, gels or lotions onto planes, except for milk or juice for young children and medicines."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the restrictions reflected the belief of investigators that the plotters planned to bring liquids on board, "each one of which would be benign, but mixed together could be used to create a bomb."

The liquids were to be disguised as beverages and the detonators as "electronic devices or other common devices." Britain banned all cellphones and portable music players from flights.

Mr. Chertoff called the plot "a very sophisticated plan and operation" that was close to fruition. "They had accumulated the capability necessary and they were well on their way," he said at a televised news conference in Washington.

Sophisticated plans? This smacks of the kind of brilliant analysis the comes from watching the Die Hard movies, but I digress.

Liquids for children are allowed on board, as are liquid prescription medicines with the traveler's name on the bottle and non-prescription medicines like insulin. Parents were being asked to take a sip of the juice or milk to prove it is what they say it is.

Officials were requiring passengers to check everything except personal items like keys, wallets, and passports, which they had to carry in plastic bags. Drinks and other liquid items were banned.

Travelers were required to remove eyeglasses from their cases, including sunglasses, and those traveling with infants were required to taste any baby milk in front of security officials.

I understand why their government, and ours, is taking these measures: the very thought of not taking them, and having a plane blow up as a result, fills the decision makers with fear. Fear is what the terrorists want, therefore the terrorists win. But taking these measures means telling the public something about why they are being inconvenienced and hassled at the airport, which fills the public with fear. The terrorists win, but nobody dies, so the decision is a no-brainer.

However, all of the wacky security measures that the TSA has put in place in the last several years have not netted a single terrorist. Sure, they've caught senators, grandmothers and nuns, but no terrorists. The 21 people that the British arrested regarding this particular plot were not nabbed at the airport, they weren't caught by an NSA wiretap. The police got a tip from the Muslim community.

Interestingly, just last week the Cato Institute published a paper (PDF Link) that, well, here:

Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts.

Cory Doctorow, in his excellent post on the paper titled "Only traitors try to make us afraid of terrorists" said:

The bottom line is, terrorism doesn't kill many people. Even in Israel, you're four times more likely to die in a car wreck than as a result of a terrorist attack. In the USA, you need to be more worried about lightning strikes than terrorism. The point of terrorism is to create terror, and by cynically convincing us that our very countries are at risk from terrorism, our politicians have delivered utter victory to the terrorists: we are terrified.

Well said, that man.

The current administration has spent a great deal of time and effort to instill in the American public a pervading fear of terrorists, which to my thinking makes the administration complicit in the terrorism. Buncha dicks, all of 'em.

Via Consumerist and Boing Boing.

Technical Note: The link below is brought to you reddit's New York Times Link Generator, a nifty little tool for bloggers that will convert the URL of a NYT article to a link with a longer life than the URL.

UPDATE: More from Mr. Doctorow on today's story: British aviation bans all hand-luggage

UPDATE: Zefrank adds his two valuable cents: link

Digital Denim Denigrates Design

Levi's. Apple. Brand icons the world over. But iPod jeans? It insults my geek sensibility enough to... to... well, to get my crank on over the whole thing. This is the denim version of tape on your thick, black glasses. This is like carrying a Hong Kong Fuey lunchbox in 8th grade.

Think of the tech hazard here. Parents, check those pockets before putting your kids' iPod jeans in the wash. I don't know how much Goldschlagger their designers had to down in order to come up with this, but it was obviously too much or not enough. These jeans have a built-in docking cradle, a joystick, and retractable headphones. If you're Inspector gadget on holiday, these might do the trick. Otherwise, who would wear these things? As an avid jean wearer and Apple aficionado, even I'm embarrassed by these. And, um... $200. I sh*t thee not. Oh, the horror. The horror.

Robots! Software! Mayhem!

Having lived in Hoboken for a bit (East Coast, baby!), I remember much buzz surrounding the fancy new "Robo Garage". It looked liked a tall apartment building, but its classic brownstone architecture disguised the cutting-edge technology of a fully robotic garage. Pull your car in, punch in the code, and your car is whisked Matrix-like into a vast internal car farm. Need to get your car out? Punch in your code and get your car in 30 seconds. It all works fine, of course, until the city decides to renege on the software license and let a competitor in to check out the proprietary designs.

Never... never piss off developers. I mean, duuuude.