Pirates keep music industry afloat | Information, Gadgets, Mobile Phones News & Reviews | News.com.au: A study published this week by the Columbia University, titled "Copy Culture in the US and Germany", shows that frequent users of peer-to-peer networks end up legally purchasing 30 percent more music than those who don't pirate, according to a report by The Huffington Post. Several studies have produced the same result over the past few years.
The Never-Before-Told Story of the World's First Computer Art (It's a Sexy Dame) - Benj Edwards - The Atlantic: During a time when computing power was so scarce that it required a government-defense budget to finance it, a young man used a $238 million military computer, the largest such machine ever built, to render an image of a curvy woman on a glowing cathode ray tube screen. The year was 1956, and the creation was a landmark moment in computer graphics and cultural history that has gone unnoticed until now. Using equipment designed to guard against the apocalypse, a pin-up girl had been drawn. She was quite probably the first human likeness to ever appear on a computer screen. She glowed.
"Third World Problems" (with tweets) · flashboy · Storify: The rant was not intended as a total argument. It was an intervention, a reminder that the ways of being human are complicated. Things can’t be blithely tagged “white girl problems” or “First World problems” or “middle class problems” and then filed away. To think you alone have to deal with banality, that other people’s lives are high drama all the time, is the height of unexamined privilege. When I went to the Venice of Difficult Things this weekend, I found it squalid, true, but I also saw generators and satellite dishes. A guy is struggling to program CNN International on his TV while his 7-year-old is literally swimming in shit creek. The paradox is this: not every aspect of the life of those who are terribly poor is terrible poverty. Everything—the normal things and the awful things—happens all at once for other people. You know, just as in your life.
Adactio: Journal - A question of time: The question is: If you could send a message back to younger designer or developer self, what would it say? What professional advice would you give a younger you? This is my answer: Rather than send a message back to my younger self, I would destroy the message-sending technology immediately. The potential for universe-ending paradoxes is too great.
(There used to be a Grooveshark playlist here, but then record companies happened.)
Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
Pink Floyd - Run Like Hell Two PF tracks; mostly because I saw The Wall live and partly because I ended up in hospital with a raging fever - and yes, the lyrics to Comfortably Numb did wander through my head a few times.
Hilltop Hoods - Recapturing the Vibe I'd been sick for a month, at home doing nothing for days on end, feeling increasingly disconnected from life. The day I finally went back to work, effectively the day I rejoined the world, I put on my headphones and this was the first song... now bound to that moment.
Garbage - Control While I was sick my computer was in pieces (we'd just moved) and I'd hardly listened to any music at home. L bought new headphones and lent them to me one night so I could listen to the new Garbage album off my laptop. It made a huge difference to my general state of mind, reminding myself of the joy in music; the simple pleasure of just zoning out with some great headphones and a new album.
Moby - Be The One I hadn't listened to Moby's more recent albums and finally gave Destroyed a listen; and loved it.
Tom Waits - Hell Broke Luce Knockout song, knockout video.
Rammstein - Te Quiero Puta I'm amused at Rammstein being ambiguous - are they being political or just plain filthy? Knowing them, both.
Mindless Faith - Canaan Couldn't add this to playlist; but this track just kept coming up on random after I discovered I liked their older album even more than the first one I bought.
Massive Attack - Girl I Love You Just a soundscape that took my breath away at the right moment.
Your 2013 resolution: Come to terms with being "only" an engineer: I've met many engineers who think that a half-hour standing meeting that occurs weekly is "the biggest waste of time ever," when they have no idea what it's like to swim through the Olympic-sized pool of bullshit that their founder and CEO must endure. You don't have to get up to CEO level for that to be true.
Shouting Into The Void | The Problem With The Big Bang Theory...: Why do I feel uncomfortable watching it? Because whenever I laugh at a joke, and I do sometimes find it funny, I feel like I'm laughing at my friends, like I'm putting myself and the people I identify with down. And that's not a nice feeling, that's not how I want to feel when I watch a comedy.
While the post makes a lot of good points I actually think it is an incomplete view of TBBT, as the non-geeks get laughed at as well. Stupidity is ridiculed; the bully role is often reversed (people aren't consistent); and essentially nobody in the show is truly comfortable with themselves (including Penny, supposedly the 'normal/cool' character). I don't think you're meant to empathise with just one character or 'side' all the time, it changes between episodes.
TBBT really takes the piss out of everyone involved at some point; and a lot then rides on whether you find that form of humour acceptable. Perhaps what's missing, really, is a greater sense of empowerment: if more characters were saying "this is me, so get over it" it would build a more palatable picture.
Michael Moore: Those Who Say 'I Support the Troops' Really Don't: I don't "support the troops" or any of those other hollow and hypocritical platitudes uttered by Republicans and frightened Democrats. Here's what I do support: I support them coming home. I support them being treated well. I support peace, and I beg any young person reading this who's thinking of joining the armed forces to please reconsider. Our war department has done little to show you they won't recklessly put your young life in harm's way for a cause that has nothing to do with what you signed up for. They will not help you once they've used you and spit you back into society. If you're a woman, they will not protect you from rapists in their ranks. And because you have a conscience and you know right from wrong, you do not want yourself being used to kill civilians in other countries who never did anything to hurt us. We are currently involved in at least a half-dozen military actions around the world. Don't become the next statistic so that General Electric can post another record profit -- while paying no taxes -- taxes that otherwise would be paying for the artificial leg that they've kept you waiting for months to receive.
