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Saturday, May 29 2004

Clear Channel Controls Bands' Rights to Immediately Sell CDs of Live Shows

Clear Channel, the corp that owns more radio stations and concert venues across the country than any other entity, has bought the patent for immediately producing and selling a CD of live concerts.
So if a band wants to buy recording and CD-burning equipment, play and record their own music at a concert, and immediately sell copies of the music to concert-goers, they have to clear it with Clear Channel first, whether they're playing a Clear Channel venue or not.

Thursday, May 27 2004

Pornography, Torture, Representation

Philosophy professor Susan J. Brison considers the real Abu Ghraib torture photos; the fake foreign soldier/Iraqi civilian torture and rape photos; violent porn produced by consenting adults in the U.S.; postcards of black men being lynched in the Old South; and tries to tie together the various bits with talk about representation and reality.

Tuesday, May 25 2004

Dance Dance Revolution

boingboing.net used to be obsessed with Atkins; now it looks like they're on a DDR kick. Recent links: lose weight with Dance Dance Revolution; and lose your friends and integrity with Dance Dance Revolution.

Tuesday, May 11 2004

The other thing all over the blogosphere is the torture of Iraqi prisoners, of course

(Except the news media is generally calling it abuse instead of torture.)
But if you read good political blogs like TPM there's nothing to point you to that you haven't seen already.
(Well, maybe you've seen it, but: Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S.

"Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates...
"The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time.
"The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the country's criminal justice system."

Two things all over the blogosphere: Andy Kaufman and Tapeworms

Andy Kaufman (so they say) said that if he faked his death, he'd return 20 years later. His old partner Bob Zmuda is holding an event commemorating the 20th anniversary of his death in Los Angeles on May 16th, 2005.
At Fray.com: The Worm Within. One man's tale of raw meat, shit, and the white worm that was entangled in his intestines.

Friday, May 7 2004

Best foreign-language software for your PDA...

In case you were wondering, it's BDicty Dictionary Reader. Nicest interface of the Palm translators I've seen, fairly large lexicons, and a decently-priced "linguist bundle."
And if you've got extra cash and a compatible PDA, they've even got talking phrasebooks.
(And for those of studying French, daily trips to this French blog are entertaining and educational.)

Monday, May 3 2004

Stupid Anti-Spam Technology

As a sysadmin, one thing I have to deal with is other people's strange/bad/misconfigured email systems.
Two recent annoyances:
Annoyance one: mailblocks.com. A mailblocks customer gets sent email through one my clients' domains through one of our webforms; mailblocks sends back a "go to this URL to confirm you're not a spammer" message. Why is this annoying beyond having to jump through that hoop? The message mailblocks sent went to the email address of the webform program, rather than the sender of the message, who's the one who ought to be confirming (s)he's not a spammer. So I go to the mailblocks website to look for a support address to whom I can suggest they fix their software, and - looks like they don't have a complaint box that non-customers can submit to. Did get an email address off their whois record, and emailed asking how non-customers can complain about mailblocks problems. No reply a month later.
Second annoyance: a bounce message from an sbcglobal.com user because my client's email addresses aren't in the user's "Address Book." Bounce message points me to a help URL at Yahoo: http://help.yahoo.com/help/mail/us/greenlist.html. That URL doesn't exist. Oh well.
Just use SpamAssassin, folks. It's not perfect, but it's as close as you're likely to get.

About this site

This is the personal web site for Edward (Ed) Piou. Consisting mainly of a blog (operational since 1999) and various photos.

Some online projects I'm working on

Politics

Charity, Non-profits...

A while ago, I decided to put my money where my mind is on a (roughly) monthly basis and give to:

Photos

Public events documented through pictures...