Month: February 2009
BBC News reports that former shadow home affairs minister David Davis believes that British people have been “careless” with their civil liberties, but that is beginning to change. Speaking at the Convention on Modern Liberty on Saturday, Mr Davis said people were growing increasingly angry at government intrusion in their lives.
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The Convention on Modern Liberty
Live coverage of The Convention on Modern Liberty at The Guardian
Download Abolition of Freedom
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The Mountains of Madness
The Gamburtsevs are a set of peaks equal in size to the European Alps, but they are hidden deep under the ice in the middle of the Antarctic continent.
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The Demon-Haunted World
Thought provoking presentation given by Matt Jones on urbanisation.
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In the New York Times, Author’s Guild president Roy Blount Jr. castigates the Kindle’s text-to-speech feature, claiming that it infringes copyright as it effectively is creating an audiobook without the right to do so. [via]
I think Blount’s argument contains a kernel of truth but he’s chosen the wrong target, the problem is not the technology but the agreements that authors might have with publishers.
It may be a long way off but eventually TTS is going to be good enough that a significant number of people will choose to buy ebooks to be read aloud on their device instead of buying an audiobook narrated by a human being.
This should be of no concern to authors as long as they get the same amount of compensation whichever form their work is sold in. I’m not privy to the rights agreements that authors might have with their publishers but if their is a difference then authors should take the advice of Neil Gaiman’s agent.
We’ve sold audiobook rights and print book rights as separate things. We must stop this.
I think that the only people who should be concerned by the future in which ‘audiobooks’ are all computer generated on the fly (if indeed that ever does come to pass) are the actors who work as narrators and the recording studios where audiobooks are recorded.
The first reviews of Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons classic graphic novel Watchmen have appeared and so far the news is pretty positive.
Ridiculous! That is fucking ridiculous!
After Bauer goes through all that to get the list of traitors from Dubaku he then hands off the all-important computer disc to some random cop to deliver to the FBI.
I thought it was some stupid plot point to enable the show to extend along the lines of Jack having to track down the data again. But of course it wasn’t, just a ridiculous TV device that defies logic to move the data plot on in one direction and enable Jack’s story to go off at a tangent.
Bauer really has become an unfeeling killing machine now. It’s almost as if 24 is converging with another FOX show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Jack in the jungle mirrors him coming around in the pilot episode. Focus on the eyes. What just happened? Why have they been randomly deposited on the island?
Hawking’s church is a Dharma station? The lamppost. How they found the island. Ben lies. Ben always lies.
The island is not done with Desmond. Some kind of game and we are just the pieces.
Dharma built the lamppost specifically to find the island. They’d gathered proof that it existed, the Black Rock Captain’s log perhaps. If Hawking was an Other how and why is she now in a Dharma station?
Ajira Airways! Same as the water bottle Sawyer and co. found on the beach by the boats. Were the Oceanic 6 the ones in the other boat that shot at them? Or was it some other passengers on the Ajira 316 flight?
Jack is clearly the Thomas the Apostle of the story of Lost. Does this make Jacob Christ? Then who would Locke be? Perhaps Judas.
Ben has to keep a promise to an old friend. The promise he made to Widmore to kill Penny I think. If Desmond is in town then Penny almost certainly is too and Ben thinks he can seize this opportunity to carry out that threat. I really hope he fails.
The Shepherd boys all have a wanderlust. What is the significance of the scene with Ray. It seems odd to introduce a totally new character just so that Jack can pick up his father’s shoes.
Did Kate give Aaron to Claire’s mum? Finally an explanation about Christian’s white tennis shoes. Ben is injured and at the harbour, does that mean he tried and failed to murder Penny.
Hurley is awesome and is totally not believable as an asshole millionaire who would buy 78 seats on a flight for himself. Sayid is a prisoner under escort, why is he being transported to Guam? I guess that Illana is acting under orders from Jacob and is aware that the plane is going to crash and that Sayid needs to return to the island in that crash.
Frank Lapidus is flying the plane! Wait a second… we’re not going to Guam are we?
Extreme turbulence. White flash. Jack wakes up in the jungle. He was not actually involved in a plane crash, he just materialised in the jungle. Is this what happened to him in the Oceanic 815 crash?
Jin is shocked and pleasantly surprised to see Jack, Hurley and Kate.
Not a great episode and it is interesting that they only took 6 episodes to get back to the island. I’d have thought a lot more of this season would have been off island. The start seemed like a dream sequence as it seemed so unreal that Jack would wake up in exactly the same way as he did in the pilot episode. And that he, Hurley and Kate would be back on the island but be spatially separated and not knowing how it happened.
Ben lies. It is pathological. The line about how he can read “my mother taught me” is a throwaway line, a joke, but it is also a lie.
I’m sure Desmond is correct that they are all just like pawns in a massive game of chess.