ahawk

makinglight @ 03:04 pm: "Felony Interference with a Business Model"

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013973.html

Fox, CBS, and NBC have sued DISH Networks over its "Auto Hopper" feature, which allows viewers to auto-skip commercials in programs they record.

What's wonderful isn't that the TV networks are claiming that skipping commercials is "copyright infringement." I mean, that's insane, but no, there's more. The networks are also claiming that if you record a bunch of shows intending to skip the commercials...and then, the next day, you watch the commercials anyway...you're guilty of "copyright infringement" anyway, because you intended to skip the commercials back when you recorded the shows. They're arguing that this supposed "infringement" (which is, of course, not actually infringement) inheres in the intent.

It goes without saying that the word "copyright" is here being used in ways that would be utterly unrecognizable to the people who originally devised the concept. Beyond that, this is Because-We-Say-So legal reasoning of the purest, most flamboyant kind.

The problem isn't that these loopy arguments are going to win in this particular case. The problem is that the entertainment conglomerates have the resources to keep doing this kind of thing nearly forever, endlessly wearing away at the legal system and at our notions of what's just and unjust.

Pretty much the same way the energy conglomerates have nearly unlimited resources to keep propping up the notion that there's a "controversy" over whether we're undergoing anthropogenic global climate change.

The problem is that in order to spur economic development, we created a class of human organizations that are sociopathic. Our army of killer robots has made it clear: they work for themselves, not for us, and they will break the world.

makinglight @ 01:26 pm: Now available: DRM-free pirate LOTR e-text

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013962.html

The Flying Moose of Nargothrond's Tolkien Sarcasm Page, already known for the first-rate synopses on its Tolkien homework page,* now offers a free pirate text version of the entire work.

To quote one of the perpetrators, "Anyone who has an interest in living authors, at least, should illegally copy this anyway because he's already dead."

makinglight @ 11:33 pm: English usage rant

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013955.html

I realize that we're all traumatized from having been corrected when we would say "Dad and me went to the store" at age five, and that we suffer from hypercorrection as a result. But holy cow, it boggles my mind when really good writers use "I" when they should use "me," as in "Take a look at this picture of Melvin and I."

Some of my smartest and most well-spoken colleagues at Tor do this all the time, too, and I often wind up biting off bits of my tongue to avoid being an annoying real-time grammar cop. But this is Making Light, where I can be an annoying timeshifted grammar cop instead! Seriously, folks, forget any technical grammar explanations you may have been forced to learn. Instead, whenever you're making a sentence about yourself and another person and you're not sure whether to say "I" or "me," just cut the other person out of the sentence and see which one you'd naturally use:

Melvin and me immanentized the Eschaton.
WRONG, because would you say "Me immanentized the Eschaton"? You would not!
Melvin and I immanentized the Eschaton IS CORRECT.

The last survivors of the horrific massacre were Melvin and I.
WRONG, because you wouldn't say "The last survivor of the horrific massacre was I"</em>, now would you?
The last survivors of the horrific massacre were Melvin and me IS CORRECT.

(Disclaimer: I myself make all kinds of equally annoying usage and pronounciation mistakes. English is unruly. I'm just venting about the one that happens to get on my personal last nerve LIKE MAKING THAT SQUEAKY SOUND WHEN YOU RUB A BALLOON ARGH STOP. You know. How. It is. I'll go lie down now.)

UPDATE: See "pronounciation", above. This post is a self-demonstrating artifact. (H/t David Goldfarb in the comments.)

elisem @ 12:52 pm: at WisCon
I'll be off to the wonderland of WisCon bright and early tomorrow. Juan stays home to mind the fort. If anyone is interested in table-sitting or helping with the Haiku Earring Party or such things, stop by my table in the dealers' room and we'll confer.

Yay! WisCon!

Tags: haiku earrings, wiscon

immlass @ 10:04 am: Weekly media report
Vacation means never catching up on your to-read pile

Books:
- Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Finished this finally and I'm glad I read it but I found it really problematic. I can't recommend it to someone not already into meditation.

Movies/TV:
- None!

Music:
- Little Boots, Illuminations EP. Includes two songs from her album but the other three are great, including a cover of Freddie Mercury's Love Kills.
- Garbage, Not Your Kind of People. It's a Garbage album. To me, they've evolved their sound a little, but it's definitely an evolution rather than an abandonment of their last couple of albums, with an emphasis on more modern production (surprise!). A lot of people don't like their third and fourth albums and therefore think an evolution from them isn't any good; I liked them fine and enjoyed this album quite a bit.
- Carolina Chocolate Drops, Leaving Eden. I can't figure out why I didn't listen to this sooner. I really like the cover of You Be Illin but the rest of it is pretty good too.

This entry was originally posted at http://immlass.dreamwidth.org/859777.html. Comment here or there.

Tags: books, music, weekly media report

theljstaff, posting in news @ 12:47 am: LIVEJOURNAL RELEASE 92: NEW SITE UPDATES AND MORE
May 23, 2012 - The official LiveJournal Release 92 has been deployed. Here’s what you’ll find in this latest site update:

NEW

• Particularly long comment threads now collapse with the alert “...and [#] more comments.” Just click on that alert to see the rest of the comments. Here’s what this looks like:


• Notification emails now hide any content that was already placed inside an lj-cut instead of displaying the entire entry.


• Social Capital is now displayed for all communities on the profile page.


• You can now embed the Spotify player into your journal or community style.


• Personal userheads are now available for purchase. A personal userhead is of your own design and is unique to you, unavailable to anyone else. Purchase as many personal userheads as you like; each costs 5,000 LJ FunBux™, and is good for five years. Learn more.

BUGS, FIXED

• Scheduled entries should no longer return errors or double-post.


• Domain mapping should no longer force redirection to the LiveJournal login page.


• The format=light URL modifier works on entry pages again.


• Comment notification emails will send even if the entry has a poll.


• The "Music" section on the edit entries page will let you delete the entire text field.


• The help link next to “Do not add to friends pages and RSS” on the update page now links to the correct FAQ.


• The list of journals and communities added by default for new users has changed to news and lj_releases for non-Cyrillic users.


• Missing navigation items in the Classic journal style have re-appeared.


• Notifications about expiring add-ons will now have correct subject lines.


• The bold/italic/strikethrough buttons in the site default commenting scheme should no longer cause cursor positioning problems in Chrome.


• The Calendar feature will now update properly when you edit an entry and change its date.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD: HELP WITH A VGIFT!
Join us in standing up for reproductive health and education. Through the end of the month, you can send a specially designed Planned Parenthood vgift to your LiveJournal friends to help support this cause. (And if you need someone to send it to frank is always happy to receive gifts!). There are three variations for you to choose from ($1, $5 and $10), but they’d all look good on your profile. Thank you for your support! Learn more.

- The LiveJournal Team

makinglight @ 07:33 pm: Remind me how it goes: fear, anger,...?

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013944.html

I see that George Lucas has given up on his long-running battle to build more studio space on his Marin County property. His neighbors have blocked his plans to expand Skywalker Ranch for years, citing the area's residential character. So instead, he's proposing to use Grady Ranch for residential purposes...just not the kind that they are likely to approve of.

His new intent (pdf) for the land:

We plan to sell the Grady property expecting that the land will revert back to its original use for residential housing. We hope we will be able to find a developer who will be interested in low income housing since it is scarce in Marin. If everyone feels that housing is less impactful on the land, then we are hoping that people who need it the most will benefit.

Lucas claims that it's not revenge that motivates him.

"I've been surprised to see some people characterize this as vindictive," he said, adding that there was a "real need" for affordable housing here. "I wouldn't waste my time or money just to try and upset the neighbors."

Right.

The Twittersphere, also unconvinced, is abuzz with praise for Lucas for this shrewd move in the ancient game of Neighbor Go. And I was too, at first. Zing! With added social credit for helping people on low incomes! But the more I think about it, the less I like it.

Lucas is using the poor—or the specter of the poor—as a weapon. That's a bad thing twice over. It's harmful in the abstract: treating people as an inherent menace is never good, and doing so in a way that deepens the divisions between the classes is particularly pernicious in the Occupational Era. And it's worse in the particular. Imagine moving into that housing, just down the road from people who use phrases like "sheer terror" about you and draw analogies with Syria.

He should have listened to the little green guy. Knows a thing or two, that one does.

Yes, another post that started as a Parhelion, and grew and grew and grew until the ceiling hung with HTML tags and the walls became the back end and a comment thread tumbled by...

krisdresen @ 06:34 pm: She Said book and Grace recover now available!

Originally published at Kris Dresen Draws. Please leave any comments there.

FINALLY! The she said book is available!

Oh, and I illustrated a new cover for Grace, too. So if you were looking for a reason to pick that up, that’s a good a reason as any.

I’m going to be at CAKE and SPX, so if you’re there, too swing by and say hello! I’ll have copies of each available there as well.

 

 

Tags: grace update, she said

immlass @ 09:39 am: M83 & I Break Horses at Stubb's
M83 with I Break Horses at Stubb's. May 18, 2012.

This was a disappointing show for us despite the good reviews elsewhere. We were both wiped out and Stubb's, which is at best a mediocre venue, was full of douchebags and smokers, plus the heat was making me ill and couldn't be doing any better for Michael, who's more vulnerable to it than I am.

I really liked I Break Horses' album and was very annoyed that the sound was so crap for us even in our usual spot by the sound booth. The bass was high enough that I had earplugs in from the first song, and the vocals were so low in the mix that they were inaudible with the earplugs. Given that the problem solved itself when M83 came on, it was clearly an engineering issue of setting the board up for the main act. The fact that I couldn't get any enthusiasm up for a band whose music I already knew and enjoyed is an indictment of the live performance, but I don't think it was the band's fault.

Because we were so tired and fried, and because the band came on late (15 minutes, not too bad as band times go) we only caught the first half-hour of M83. If I could have sat down, I would have managed the whole show, but we ended up in the back on the hill to get out of the press of the crowd, listening to the douches yammer on about bodily functions. The light show from the stage was great, particularly compared to the LZR-epilepsy-inspiring lights for I Break Horses, and the band seemed. The sound was much improved, too. The physical conditions were just too bad for us to stay on, though.

I am very much looking forward to seeing M83 again at ACL, although by then I hope to have concert binoculars. I wish the conditions could have been better this time. Also, unrelated: M83 completes my 25 new bands requirement for this bucket list, so I've marked off one more item in my 101 in 1001.

This entry was originally posted at http://immlass.dreamwidth.org/859475.html. Comment here or there.

Tags: 101 in 1001, music, reviews, shows

makinglight @ 02:12 am: “Ask for it by name!”

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013941.html

I had just been saying to Chris that someone’s gonna get a grad-school thesis out of diegesis in The Office (the US version, but maybe also the UK version, which I haven’t seen as much of) — I mean, we’re talking about a show where one character’s constantly looking at the camera and making a face to comment on the show’s goings-on, and then at one point another character actually asks the camera what’s up with that guy always looking at the camera and making a face, and yet because of the documentary framing device all of this remains plausibly diegetic — when Chris directs my attention to the Tumblr blog Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table:

Me: “Book stacks? We’ve got book stacks!”
She: “There’s apparently a brand of refrigerator called ‘Smeg’. Someone needs to redo the ‘Fluckers’ ad.”
Me: “Are they good fridges?”
She: “Like I said: Someone needs to redo the ‘Fluckers’ ad.”

After some googling, she adds: “Their website says they’re ‘exuding style’, so they must be self-aware.”
Me: “That indicates either a modest amount of self-awareness, or a total absence of it.”