Friday, December 20, 2002

Hollywood wants to outlaw crowbars Great quote from Patricia Benson, an attorney for the movie studios suing 321 Studios, who make DVD copying software that can be used to make personal backups: "It's like somebody selling a digital crowbar." As Ed Felten notes, "...the crowbar analogy pretty much speaks for itself. Ms. Benson would doubtless be shocked to learn that an outfit calling itself 'Ace Hardware' is selling crowbars openly, right here in sleepy Princeton, New Jersey." In other words, general-purpose technology can be used for general purposes -- good and ill. Hollywood's increasingly shrill and nonsensical demands that technologists only make gear that can be used for good are comparable to insisting that crowbar companies design crowbars that can only be used to jimmy open doors whose owners have lost their keys, and go limp when inserted into the jambs of all other doors. (via Boing Boing Blog) 2:45:40 PM    comment [] Open Source: Just Do It This is from Adam Megacz's XML Windowing Toolkit FAQ, via Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs weblog.   5.2 What do you think of Open Source? I mainly think people should stop wasting time pontificating and philosophizing about open source and just write some good code. My primary goal is to have a substantial, positive impact on the state of the art, and giving my code away for free is simply the fastest, easiest way for me to achieve this objective. I use the term "open source" to describe the licensing terms of my code, not my political agenda. 5.3 Yeah, but don't you have some pent-up highly political rant about Open Source, Microsoft, and how geeks are going to take over the world? If I haven't made it clear already, I don't get into the napoleonic aspects of open source. I use GNU/Linux/Apache/GCJ/Rhino because for my specific needs, they are undoubtedly the best tools available -- not because I think that commercial software is somehow impure or wrong. That said, I've always seen Microsoft, Startups, and Open Source as three snakes, each eating the next's tail. The Silicon Valley startups, driven by enlightened greed, come up with crazy, inventive new technologies. A few years later, Microsoft either buys out the startup or bundles a copy of its technology into the Windows Monopoly and puts the startup out of business. A few years after that, somebody completes an open source program with a crappy UI and a better implementation of all the features that Microsoft just finished bundling into the OS. And a few years after that, a new startup running out of a garage, strapped for cash, discovers that they can modify this cool open source program to do something new and interesting, or build on top of it, and they create a successful business. And then the cycle repeats itself. Like I said, quit whining and go write code. This is the way of the world; just keep the snakes moving and everybody gets cool new stuff. Got it? Got it. 2:22:21 PM    comment [] Brian Eno When I was in high school I would buy any LP that Brian Eno even farted on. He was -- and is -- a prolific collaborator. In this manner I was turned on to more good music than you can possibly imagine: Devo, Talking Heads, U2, Cluster, Ultravox, Roxy Music, Robert Fripp, Jon Hassell, Harold Budd, Laurie Anderson, Daniel Lanois, Michael Brook, The Penguin Café Orchestra, Terry Riley, XTC and many others. And of course Eno's own work in a variety of genres. And by branching out from there in ever widening circles I discovered the world of electronica, new age and ambient soundscapes which still hold my attention to this day. So I came across some recent Eno-related links, and thought I would share them here. Thanks to Bruce Sterling at his Infinite Matrix website, Schism Matrix for getting the ball rolling. ENOWEB, a good place to start. ENOSHOP, a good place to get some of his recent works. Here's The Life of Brian, a brief guide to Brian Eno. Here's an <A HREF="tp://www.studio-nibble.com/desktoppers/">Eno comic, very cute! (Thanks Bruce!) Eno published a diary, called "A Year With Swollen Appendages," published by Faber and Faber. Got great reviews, here's one, and here a few excerpts: On a traipse through Egypt, he recounts encountering a boy on a bike passing by repeating, "I am here." Eno observes: "Perhaps the central and single message of humanity." *** "A proposal that car-horns be tunable by their owners. Interesting to see what social harmony or discord would then develop." *** Eno recalls Japanese calligraphers who spend "a whole day spent grinding inks and preparing brushes and paper, and then, as the sun begins to go down, a single burst of fast and inspired action. . .more and more I want to try that Japanese model: to get everything in place (including your mind, of course) first, and then to just give yourself one chance. It seems thrilling." *** Much in the same way as the Whole Earth Review widened my intellectual horizons to infinity and beyond, the music of Brian Eno expanded my musical taste to cover a variety of genres from Rock to world musics, classical, electronica and assorted mutant hybrids that have no easily pronounceable names? For which I am forever grateful. 1:55:34 PM    comment [] It's alive! It's alive! 12:03:04 AM    comment []

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