Author: geoff

Another Grand Prix… but this time I'll sleep on it

The Malaysian Grand Prix takes place this weekend, and reports from the first qualifying session suggest that it’s going to be a very interesting race. Once again the Ferraris seem to be out of contention. (Sadly, so is my man DC – though at least he was faster than Michael Schumacher.) However I think I’m going to put common-sense ahead of enthusiasm, and let the VCR watch this one for me – the TV coverage runs from 1:30am to 4am here in Boston….

SXSW Music

Steve turned me on to the massive BitTorrent download of new music sponsored by the south by southwest festival. Although I’m not a regular BT user, I cranked it up and downloaded all 2.75GB. It took three days. (And yes, I left BT running to share nicely.)
This morning I dragged it all into iTunes. 714 songs, 1.9 days playing time! Who’s got time to listen to all of that? However, over (extended) breakfast and (several cups of) coffee, I managed to scan most of it. (I know it can be unfair to judge on the basis of the first few seconds, but when you also consider the artist’s name, the song title, and genre….) I kept a window open to the SXSW Showcase page so I could follow up on particularly interesting artists.
From that vast collection, here are the 20 songs that caught my attention. If it looks as if I was biased… well, yes: the women singer-songwriters in this collection were very strong; the “pop”, “rock”, and “punk” offerings (though frequently mis-classified) were less distinctive. But there’s all sorts of music here – you might be surprised. Enjoy:
“Betty” by The Lascivious Biddies
“Moving Pictures, Silent Films” by the Great Lake Swimmers
“I Do Dream You” by Jennifer Gentle
“Silver Screen Demos” by Jesca Hoop
“Move On” by Jessie and Layla
“Old Fashion Morphine” by Jolie Holland
“Not Going Anywhere” by Keren Ann
“Nutopia” by Meg Lee Chin
“mudpies and gasoline” by Patricia Vonne
“Take the Long Way” by Po’ Girl
“Into My Heart” by Rachel Fuller
“Television” by Robyn Hitchcock
“Anonyme” by Samadha
“hard road” by The Shore
“Building a Road” by Spottiswoode and His Enemies
“I’m On My Way” by Theresa Andersson
“lie in the sound” by Trespassers William
“Beautiful Dawn” by The Wailin’ Jennys
“The Ghost of the Girl in the Well” by the Willard Grant Conspiracy
“Mannequin” by The Witnesses
(You can also stream or download individual tracks from SXSW.)

AOL responds

AOL reacted pretty quickly to all the negative publicity about their AIM Terms of Service. The new language is much better. The power of the web, eh?

The new text (with my emphases):“You or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to public areas of any AIM Product. However, by submitting or posting Content to public areas of AIM Products (for example, posting a message on a message board or submitting your picture for the ‘Rate-A-Buddy’ feature), you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. Once you submit or post Content to any public area on an AIM Product, AOL does not need to give you any further right to inspect or approve uses of such Content or to compensate you for any such uses. AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating Content posted to public areas of AIM Products.”

AIM Terms of Service

Welcome to the revised AIM Terms of Service from AOL. The interesting thing is that AOL wants the benefits of being a common carrier (e.g. they disclaim all responsibility for what passes through their system) while at the same time gaining full rights over that content. Would you use a VoIP service from somebody that reserved the right to record your conversations and publish them? If these various communications media (POTS, VoIP, IM, email, etc.) are really converging, let’s make sure that AOL doesn’t set the standard for privacy:

“Although you or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to any AIM Product, AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating this Content. In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL… the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses.”

(Via BoingBoing.)

Snow and zombies

Yet another snowstorm this weekend, bringing us to over 90 inches for the season. It snowed most of Saturday: big, wet flakes that stuck to all the trees and left inches of slushy stuff on the driveway. Very pretty… now go away!
Rather than venture out, I spent most of the weekend curled up with philosophy. Not only do I have a mid-term paper due in a couple of weeks, and my regular reading to do for class; I also received the new Dennett book, Sweet Dreams, on Saturday. (Amazon.com is hopelessly confused about this book: in some places it says that it’s coming on April 1, in others that it’s available now, shipping in 24 hours.)
Back in November, I blogged about David Chalmers and his obsession with zombies (philosophical and otherwise). In Sweet Dreams, Dennett discusses what he calls the Zombic Hunch: the intuitive idea that there might conceivably be zombie-like creatures that are EXACTLY LIKE ORDINARY PEOPLE except that they don’t have consciousness. Personally I find the notion of zombies incoherent – even in principle – but apparently a lot of people take them seriously. Like Dennett, I find the idea of philosophers arguing about the number of zombies that can fit on the head of a pin to be slightly unedifying. Oh well. If you want to get a feel for the issue without buying Dennett’s or Chalmers’ books, you can read this account of their debate.
And now I have to finish my notes on Searle’s infuriating Chinese Room. There are some interesting issues in this famous thought experiment, but ever since I first read it in The Mind’s I (over 20 years ago) I’ve been frustrated by the blatant equivocation and contradiction in the way Searle presents it. Perhaps it’s a useful discipline for me: learning to concentrate on [the important bits of] the message without being distracted by the lousy medium.

deadwing

Oh joy, oh bliss.
From the News section of the Porcupine Tree website:
The new Porcupine Tree album Deadwing is released on 28th March by Warner Music in Europe, and on 19th April by Lava in the US. […] There are guest appearances by Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth, and Adrian Belew of King Crimson.
The track listing of the album is:
1. Deadwing (9.46)
2. Shallow (4.17)
3. Lazarus (4.18)
4. Halo (4.38)
5. Arriving Somewhere But Not Here (12.02)
6. Mellotron Scratch (6.57)
7. Open Car (3.46)
8. The Start of Something Beautiful (7.39)
9. Glass Arm Shattering (6.12)
deadwing.com is a microsite dedicated to the album, with audio, video and other media relating to the album and the film screenplay on which it is based.
The European tour starts at the end of March, and a US tour will commence in mid May.
You can download a 19MB QT video mashup of some of the tracks from the album here; the single Shallow is on iTunes. And I just received email from Ticketmaster:
Porcupine Tree
Somerville Theatre, Somerville
Wed, 05/18/05 8:00pm
On Sale Fri, 03/11/05 10:00am
(Thanks for the corrections from the men from the ministry….)

How the FSF really gets its money?

Arriving at Google this morning for a routine search, I noticed that they were highlighting a new feature, Google Local. “I wonder what kind of local resources they cover,” I thought, and I tried a few sample entries. Plumbers? Boring. Restaurants? Lots of them. Escort agencies? The first result was the Free Software Foundation. Hmmm. And the second result was for the local Veterans’ Hospital. Career opportunities for those returing from Iraq? Earth to Google….
[Click image for screenshot]