Actually, It's Darkness

The Long Dark, Hinterland Studios, 2014

It's too bad she won't live, but then again who does?

There goes another week off. Five Marches later I still have the same problem. When I'm not working I quickly slip into a nightshift pattern. It starts innocuously enough with Sunday evening extending to 2am. From there it cascades later and later and by Friday the only thing I can do to rectify it is to stay awake until Saturday afternoon and take a nap to see me through the evening. It's not so bad in March when Spring is breaking through, as it did today, and there's some daylight to play with; but when I went through this in January I probably suffered a shortfall of Vitamin-D. Ironic, then, I should spend the middle of the night playing The Long Dark. I am without a doubt late to this party. You know I'd judge you for it in an instant, so why not be the better man? Fact is, I've not had much time to play games - aside from GTA Online, but then I got bored of (and pissed off by) that last August. What I've done to compensate is subscribe to a couple of YouTube channels thereby gaming vicariously.

Data Kiss

Valentine's Day sweet fleet, EvelynGiggles, 2007

Three is the magic number, oh yes it is. Well, at some point in this third year of OKCupid it perhaps might merit such a description. I'm certainly hoping it does, and there's a light on the horizon that's either thermonuclear death or the dawn of a new era. After writing last year's summary of two largely non-eventful years on OKCupid it mostly rumbled on in the same fashion - occasionally contacting someone every few weeks if they caught my eye in the search results. Eventually in August I came to the conclusion the current set-up wasn't working. I decided to massively overhaul my method. Let's be clear I'm not talking about pick-up artistry, rather I read a comprehensive guide on the Dr Nerdlove site and tore my profile down in order to rebuild it. That wasn't enough, though. You can construct the perfect profile for yourself but the basic fact of the matter is women don't contact men. I'm sure some do, but they're so rare they may as well be a statistical anomaly. The flip side of this universal is that you, the guy, must make yourself seen. It flies in the face of the spirit of the age that you can let your virtual presence do all the 'being' for you, but as above so below. Human nature is what it is, no matter the medium.

COMPUTERLIEBE

Know All Men By These Presents, Coles Phillips, c1910

It seems like there should be a morose Morrisey-penned song about a flaming meteor saving us from Valentine's Day. There might well be - I haven't paid any attention to him in years, so I don't know. This isn't supposed to be my critique of Morrisey's latter-day output, opinions, and jack-assery; but consider that a summary. This is about Valentine's Day, OKCupid, and another Valentine's Day on OKCupid. Oh yes, I'm on there - I obliquely mentioned it in 2012. All that stuff I said years ago about throwing darts in lovers' eyes were the over-dramatic ramblings of a nineteen year old. Not that I retract my statements. It was two years ago while I was reading my more popular and less pseudonymous East coast counterpart's blog that I was ensnared by an OKCupid (hereafter OKC) personality test. In order to save the results of my test I had to create an account. Thus began a relatively lame journey. Sorry, that was a spoiler.

Orbiting Your Living Room, Cashing in The Bill of Rights

Prism Demo [...], ubiquit23, 2013

Batman: Beautiful, isn't it?
Lucius Fox: Beautiful... unethical... dangerous. You've turned every cellphone in Gotham into a microphone.
Batman: And a high-frequency generator-receiver.
Lucius Fox: You took my sonar concept and applied it to every phone in the city. With half the city feeding you sonar, you can image all of Gotham. This is wrong.
Batman: I've gotta find this man, Lucius.
Lucius Fox: At what cost?
Batman: The database is null-key encrypted. It can only be accessed by one person.
Lucius Fox: This is too much power for one person.
Batman: That's why I gave it to you. Only you can use it.
Lucius Fox: Spying on 30 million people isn't part of my job description.
- The Dark Knight, 2008

Seen Enough?

Before the fall when they wrote it on the wall
When there wasn't even any Hollywood
They heard the call
And they wrote it on the wall
For you and me and we understood
-The Caves of Altamira, Steely Dan (1977)

Triplets 14th Street, heather, 2007

No-one is ever paid royalties for Robin Hood and the Monk - the oldest attested ballad of the titular archer. Look at the diverse productions derived from the folk tale of Robin Hood. Where would the modern entertainment industry be without the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm? Such public domain works preceded the shift from cultural to economic capital. The wealth of the developed nations is today largely composed of intangible assets, mainly concepts and ideas and their resultant products, which once known are easily reproducible. This is a problem as our wealth then lies in a naturally infinite source. In this context it's plain to see why copyright terms are continually extended; and if the industry lobbies are correct in their assertions of economic clout, then I can confidently predict that in twenty years a defrosted Cliff Richard and a waxwork Mick Jagger will once again be campaigning for the prolonging of terms for another generation. When these terms exceed the average lifetime they will in effect be infinite. The only ones around to observe the passing of a century-scale 'time limited monopoly' will be perpetual corporations.

The Artist Pretending It's Art, The Question is: Where Do You Pay?

Penny Black Printing Press, takomabibelot, 2009

What separates entertainment from art? If "all art is quite useless" then the last blockbuster you saw in the cinema is probably more so. But it makes a hell of a lot of money for those who control the media, hence these quite useless products are copyrighted for nigh a century. Our culture is far from ours in possession. How can it be called culture if can't share it? Last month I asked Who will be the first to give it all away, and Who will be the first to take it all for nothing?

 The web was the first gift, it's architecture free from commercial claims. The second question has already been answered by the millions running torrents over the global network, and the unlucky few who have been subject to legal action (that often never goes to trial). The latter is a direct result of the disruptive innovation of the former. The buying and selling of music is a very recent development in the history of music (which is entangled with language and similarly as old) made possible by the invention of recording media in the late 19th century - only then forming a concrete object with value.

The Information Chase

Banksy Leake Street London, The_Magician, 2008

The Leaning Tower of Pisa. An object which would long ago have toppled to the ground, if it were not for all those counterbalanced lead weights and years of continual stabilisation work. When the Italian government requested help in saving the structure, it was seen to be more important to preserve the tilt for tourism than make it a naturally stable building as it was intended and like any other. The earth shifting beneath it put it on the cusp of collapse centuries ago. The tower is as much a symbol of man defying physics as it can be a metaphor for the copyright industries.

Pretending To See The Future

so happy there is INTERNET COVERAGE, irina slutsky, 2008

In a mobile multimedia multichannel world it's difficult to imagine just how centralised information and communications were in years gone by. I'm not quite old enough to have grown up with the web (online just short of a decade) but I do know from having limited access when abroad that disconnection from the hive mind is like suffocation. It's hard to understand the shared experience of millions of people listening to the radio as Chamberlain declared war on Germany in 1939.

I remember looking at the audience figures in What's On TV? in the 90s and the major soap operas would bring in a maximum of 9 million viewers. Only something like a Christmas Day special of Only Fools and Horses would break that and be able to claim the nation itself was focused on that channel in that hour. But to think of something with the same gravity as a declaration of war, that could only be 'September 11th'. The first global event of the modern era. I first heard it over the radio when I got in from school, then I went online to see it on every news site, and I turned the tv on to see every channel carrying US news feeds. There were probably instant messages and e-mails and phone calls all communicating the same thing to others.

Introductory Nomenclature

Today is World Blog Day. Unbelievably it's been four years since I last did this. Since I realised I no longer read any of the blogs I cited four years ago, and also Para deleted her blog a while back, I decided to link to the ones I read regularly.

Heard From Telegraph Lines

Back at the end of last year I gave the blog a new layout when I realised I had been using an ancient template the whole time. The labels gadget prompted me to get the post tags in order whereupon I noticed there was a gap in the more academic topics between mid-2006 and the end of 2008. Interestingly enough, that was the period this blog lapsed into diary mode. I managed to get back on track in October 2008 when I laboured to produce five whole posts, but it wasn't until this year that I regained motivation by inverse resistance to the rise of microblogging. Since I've mastered Goggle Docs' spreadsheets, here's some illustrations:

Computerwelt

Lego Technic 2/2, MiikaS, 2008

The "mainstream-media" is always producing these pieces about internet addiction and challenging people to live without the internet for X amount of time. At no point have I seen the media challenge people to live without writing or the wheel - the preceding most important technical revolutions in history.

The greatest danger is viewing an innovation as a toy. The Classical Greeks had steam turbines, but elected to power spinning-tops instead of factories, or at least viewed it as a curiosity. The wheel was absent from the pre-Columbian Americas except for stone proto-wheels on children's toys. Despite how the internet/web has demonstrably revolutionised the dissemination of information, old media treats it like an amusing sideshow. Which is why they continue to flounder in the post-scarcity digital world, railing against progress and demanding someone stop the children.

[The web] is a full-duplex, two-way medium, more like the telephone than the television. Entertainment is experienced as doing, not just watching. Old Media types might think that the Web is filled with empty eyes and empty heads [...] There is no audience anymore: the Web's eyes are active and in search of actuality
-Steve Baldwin

[200]

Turn On, Turn On, Turn On The News

Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997

For the past few months Rupert Murdoch has been tilting at Google accusing them of stealing his 'content' - that is, linking to it. One gets the impression he hasn't a clue about the interwebs, which has become increasingly apparent since buying MySpace in 2006.

If you look to the Financial Times, it's true that readers will pay for real quality content. Murdoch's best-selling "newspaper", on the other hand, relies on jingoism (Gotcha!), xenophobia (Swan Bake), outright lies (Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster) and tits. If the dead-tree version is worth only 10p to the masses, who are you going to find willing to cross a paywall to access this moronic bullshit online?

Communication Let Me Down

Beginning, Kenneth Noland, 1958

Though I wouldn't consider this blog to be in the same league as Doctorvee's, it seems many bloggers are facing the same issues.

The post rate here and elsewhere is down. In the early days it's probably true the deluge of posts each consisted of 500 words or less. Occasionally I would post some grand interpretation or theory, until gradually great 2000 word essays felt expected. Writing multiple 100 word entries, even if it is a legitimate non-twitter-esque post, feels like cheating . I've tried Twitter and found 140 characters only suited to celebrities talking about a cloud they saw an hour ago, or more interestingly (links to) breaking news.

Book of Brilliant Things

Ten years ago, before I had an internet connection or Amazon started turning a profit, I remember being at my Nan's and the TV was on. During the programme break there was an advert for Amazon.co.uk. As a 75 year-old she dismissed the internet as a fad. A strange attitude to have for someone born 18 months before the first demonstration of the very thing she's sitting in front of. I do love the smugness that comes from looking back on that.

Live Forever

Public Domain, 2006

Death is an absurdity to the living. Those who say they do not fear death, do not believe in it - rather they believe in an afterlife. We have explored our planet, the solar system, and seen beyond the galaxy. Yet death remains terminal, and the experience itself remains open to conjecture.

At the moment, a member of some online forum might be killed by some random event, and that'll be that. But in the coming years, well into the internet's lifespan, the web will become increasingly cluttered with the deceased. That is, their online life will be preserved - MySpace, Facebook, Bebo filled with dormant accounts as shrines. In twenty years we might visit YouTube and see Peter Oakley alive and well, talking, sharing his memories and experiences long after the organic matter that stored them has decayed. Part of him will be preserved electronically, essentially forever.

What In The World

Fortunately, I was reading through a piece on blog terminology and came across Blog Day - August 31^st. On Blog Day, one recommends 5 other blogs. Thus, gaze in the vertical direction and sample:

If You Stand Up Like a Nail

Just perusing The Register and noticed a good chance for more fun with search engines in China.

I went to yahoo.cn and tried the usual: 'amnesty international' (their German site is the top result for some reason), 'corruption'. Then I tried the Simplified Chinese searches...

My combinations of 1989年6月4日 (June 4th 1989) with:
民主 (democracy) - Link
赵紫阳 (Zhao Ziyang) - Link

The above all give immediate time-out errors. "The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading." I'll continue to think of other subversive combinations until I get myself barred from yahoo.cn

Are The Results Half Censored or Half Free?

Are they still there?

"While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission," a [Google] statement said.
BBC News

Google tried to claim the amount of information censored would be was less than two percent of Chinese news sources and, "On balance we believe that having a service with links that work and omits a fractional number is better than having a service that is not available at all."
P2PNet

Google.com is censored (and now blocked) in the PRC by the PRC, Google.cn is censored by Google. What's the difference? Google is providing Chinese users with a degraded experience better than nothing? Google.com from Mainland China used to give you the same thing as Google.cn gives you now. Crap information better than no information? Depends what you're looking for.

Evil Empire

From today's El Reg letters:

Possibly the most frightening thing I have ever seen on this web of ours:

Search Tiananmen from Google Images:
http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen

Search Tiananmen from Google China:
http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen

Colin Jackson

What I find most frightening appears in the top left-hand corner on the Chinese site (primitively translated with Babelfish as always):

您是不是要找： 天安门
You are not must look: Tiananmen

Be careful what you look at. Be careful what you write.

Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed — would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper — the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed for ever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.

Backpacking Across the Great Firewall

Everyone's heard about it, but what are people doing about it?

Wiki vandalism at 20:05 Jan 26th:

Google is trading off freedom of information for market share

On the 25th January, 2006, Google has announced that it will censor itself in order to please the Chinese government. This means that thousands of search terms cannot be accessed by ordinary Chinese via google.cn. Taking into consideration Google's own mission statement, taking into consideration Art. 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, taking into consideration chapter 40 of Agenda 21 this is unacceptable. Goolge slaughters the promise of free information – a promise shared by the wiki community! – for the simple and crude reason of money. Thus, the world as a whole is left with two choices: 1.Google returns to its ethics and does not allow the Chines government to dictate its content. 2.Google does trade ethics for money and as a consequence the community still upholding the values of open source, open access, open information creates its own search engine and boycotts Google. Inaction on behalf of us, who have gathered here in order to give the world the greatest gift of them all – access to knowledge – , is not an option, not without selling our own open spirit. We cannot stand aside and tolerate and accept that the Google enterprise is turning into a corrupt, money-minded empire, which gives a damn where this world is going to end up. You may delete this appeal from this page, but you can never delete it from your conscious. Whether you hit “trash” or “copy” makes only a small difference to your keyboard, but it makes a huge to the rest of the world. If this world wants to be one nation of free and shared information we have to act now.

I, meanwhile, have taken to performing a daily censored-word search at google.cn. I got lucky today with a search for "June 4th" (6月4日) and Tiananmen (六四天安门事件) - at the bottom of the page the following appears:

据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示。

Poorly translated via Babelfish gives:

According to the local law laws and regulations and the policy, the part searches the result not to demonstrate.

Yes, it truly is the Asian Century: Chaos in Iraq, Thailand is considering censoring the internet, Religious wackos in the hills of Afghanistan, regional-power wannabes in Iran, the odd earthquake or tsunami, North Korea still exists, and school children are forced to kill each other in a bloody 3 day contest on a remote island.