(Wiimote, WMD with PPC64 patches and patched Python, Inkscape.)
Month: December 2006
links for 2006-12-26
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“The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the
longest suicide note in history.”
Christmas & New Year
I am going to be largely offline over christmas and new year. I have a Wiimote to play with from GNU/Linux and will be soldering up a sensor bar for it. I’ve also got some colour sensors when my soldering station arrives. I also have lots of reading to do and some thinking about exactly what to get up to next year.
Have a good Christmas and new year.
links for 2006-12-21
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“The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is funding the Internet Archive to scan rare, unusual and culturally significant books and artworks at a bunch of major institutions, including the Boston Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty Researc
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“On October 25th, 2006, in Blanch v. Koons, the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Second Circuit ruled on an important case dealing with the fair use of copyrighted material in an artistic, “collage” setting, affirming that artist Jeff Koons' incorporati
links for 2006-12-20
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“BoingBoing reader Cameron snapped this photograph of a Edison Laboratory phonograph cylinder container from 1907, covered with anti-copying, anti-piracy fine print: “UPON ANY BREACH OF SAID CONDITION, THE LICENSE TO USE AND VEND THIS RECORD, IMPLIED FROM
links for 2006-12-16
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“The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today launched BadVista.org, a campaign with a twofold mission of exposing the harms inflicted on computer users by the new Microsoft Windows Vista and promoting free software alternatives that respect users’ security a
links for 2006-12-15
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Hacking the wiimote and tghe wii. Links to examples and code.
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DRM-free MP3s of millions of independent music tracks. Including ones you actually want.
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Mr. Ubuntu puts forward the case for free VR
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Real-world badges to advertise that you are looking for DS gamer opponents.
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“The following list sets out some basic things that you should think about before you apply a Creative Commons license to your work.”
I’m on myspace. If you are astonishingly cool I’ll add you as a friend. Failing that, if you’ve always wondered what I look like I have photos:
http://www.myspace.com/robmyers
To answer your question, this is in a separate compartment to anything I have to do with Free Culture. Much like my Second Life membership…
Free Duke
Sun have made Duke “Free graphics”. His graphics are BSD licensed (not BY…), and some are Illustrator postcript files which are a bit difficult to load. So here they are converted to SVG:
One has some bad artefacts on Duke’s-actually what is that? A nose? An eye? Anyway, the red blob isn’t very good on one of the images. If anyone can fix that let me know.
See Duke’s homepage for more info, 3D files and more images. No idea how Duke’s freedom interacts with his trademark status. Someone should definitely produce some Duke pr0n to see how this works. 😉
Promises To Keep
I read “Promises To Keep”.
It’s a fact-tastic read, crammed with data and diagrams, and a very well argued thesis, with the two places where the argument doesn’t follow from the examples sticking out like sore thumbs (these are minor parts of the argument, I mention this simply to emphasize how coherent the rest of the book is).
I still have a problem with ACSes, although that is one less problem than I had before reading the book. The balance of privacy and accuracy that the system must strike seems much more plausible from Fisher’s description, but someone like me who listens to old Art & Language songs, fantastically obscure electronica and people with cellos and digital delays won’t be reflected by any system that tries to be representative by sampling rather than by monitoring the entire network.
The problem is that an ACS is still phrased in terms of “incentivisation” and of replacing lost revenue. Comparisons to a “pizza right” aside, I think this argument needs recasting positively and progressively rather than in its current reformist mode. Present it to the record companies as compensation by all means, but let’s see if it can work and take it forward as the first genuinely democratic form of patronage.