Category: Uncategorized

Not only is Charles Stross a kick-ass sci-fi writer, whose new book Accelerando is now available for download (under a CC-license of course), but he also shares my views on the National ID card.

Go download Accelerando then wait til the book is published in print form and buy it, or check out his other books. Particularly Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise, both of which I really enjoyed.

I was going to write yet another rambling post about the government’s transport scheme but Charles has written a much better piece in his blog which pretty much says what I would have written anyway. He seems to have buggered up his permalinks on his blog though so I’ll just link to the frontpage and ask you to scroll down until you find Stupid, stupid on Tuesday 14 Jun 2005.

Tags: books

It’s all very well pledging to refuse to register for an ID card but how should someone do it in practice.

This thread at the NO2ID forum has a few suggestions.

In addition Unity of the No2ID forum has posted the following at their blog, Tests of Integrity and Intent. Which goes in to greater depth of what they see as the second line of defence

As I see it we have three clear lines of defence…
1. Kill the Bill
2. Change the Bill to include much tighter constraints on Government, etc.
3. Resist using Civil Disobedience.

Tags: ID cards

Oustanding quote of the day is from Clive Thompson at his Collision Detection blog writing about the flotation on the London stock exchange of PartyGaming as reported in this Guardian article.

The company was founded by a woman who’d made her fortune in online porn, who hired a 25-year-old kid fresh out of an Indian comp-sci program to write her software. That’s surreal enough, but my favorite detail about the company.

PartyGaming’s head office is in Gibraltar; its computer servers run from there and from Kahnawake, a Mohawk Indian reserve within Canada; its marketing office is in London but most of its 1,000 staff work in a call centre and software development site in Hyderabad, southern India

Man alive. Porn, call-service-centers, Canadian Indian reserves — it’s like the wireframe model for a sci-fi novel cowritten by Cory Doctorow and Thomas Friedman.

Tags: books, games

Matt Locke’s report on the keynote speech at Institute for Public Policy Research given by James Purnell, the creative industries minister.[via]

The speech announced the successor to Chris Smith’s ‘creative industries task force’ – a new policy initiative to support the creative industries in the UK. Most of the speech was quite routine, but he did announce a new project to deliver the Government’s manifesto pledge to review the copyright/IP laws for a digital world.

It would be a shame if the DCMS assumed that a monolithic protectionist approach was the best model for the creative industries, whilst ‘older’ industries were moving towards models that maximised the return on IP through more flexible approaches. Creative Commons, Backstage and the BBC’s Creative Archive License are breaking new ground in this area, and the DCMS should be encouraging more experiments like this, not discouraging them.

Given this statement at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport website.

DCMS sponsors the music industry acting as its advocate within Government. The Department works closely with leading players and trade associations to identify what the Government and industry can do to improve its economic performance.

It appears to me that the Department sees only the monolithic protectionist approach as a model for the music industry. It would be good if the other side of the argument could be effectively given to the minister, that perhaps British culture is not best served by ever increasing terms of copyright protection. That creative works that pass into the public domain do not enter a black hole but are liberated to be reinvigorated and reinterpreted by other artists.

Tags: copyright

There’s nothing I like better in sporting terms* than seeing England’s cricket team giving the Aussies a stuffing. Yesterday’s match where we beat them by 100 runs in the Twenty20 version of the game was an excellent example of that and sets up an interesting Ashes tour.

Lawrence Booth of The Guardian thinks there are many reasons to be cheerful and I agree.

*Possibly beating Germany at football in an important match would surpass this.

Tags: sport

Our screening of the movie “What the Bleep do we know?” for the Silver Screen (our special show for Senior Citizens) elicited more comments than usual in our comments book.

“What the Bleep…..” great film I love this cinema. Thank you. Fxxx

Dear Manageress
thanks for being capable and cute, and do enjoy what the Bleep XX

June 14th Silver Screen
‘What the Bleep do we know’
I cannot believe that this film would be chosen for the Silver Screen, it is without doubt the worst thing it has been my misfortune to view. No plot, no dialogue that is understandable Absolutely Awful!!! Where on earth did the producers get the money from to make this? when a lovely little English Film could have been shown. At 75 I want to be entertained.

June 14th What the Bleep…
Great! Inspiring! Just what we old folk need in Bath.
Good to see a film that gives science a look-in on the emotional/spiritual side of existence. It was serious, stimulating, educative, entertaining, provocative… but not trivial, so it won’t please everybody.

It appears from the second comment that one of the old folks is trying to flirt with my female colleague.

I agree with the third commenter this movie is absolutely awful. It’s pure New Age Cargo Cult science, they go through recognizable motions of science without understanding the true principles. There’s seems to be a lot of that going on at the moment.

Tags: cinema

I would urge UK citizens to go to Pledgebank and sign up to the following pledge.

“I will refuse to register for an ID card but only if 3,000,000 people will sign up.”

Join me for a bit of civil disobedience in 18 months time. 😀

More vociferous opponents of the ID card may wish to sign this pledge also

“I will refuse to register for an ID card and will donate £10 to a legal defence fund but only if 10,000 other people will also make this same pledge.”

Tags: ID cards

According to this Sunday Times article, which I found via Max Barry, the UK government intends to extend the current copyright term for sound recordings from 50 years to 100 years.

James Purnell, the new minister for creative industries, believes the change will allow record companies to generate extra revenue to look for new talent and nurture it. Purnell, who will outline his plans in a speech next week, said: “The music industry is a risky business and finding talent and artists is expensive. There is a view that long-term earners are needed so that the record companies can plough money back into unearthing new talent.

“Bands like Coldplay will make enough money for their company to help them discover around 50 or 100 bands.”

I believe that if this change will actually have completely the opposite effect to that which Mr. Purnell believes, in fact record companies will cease to have an incentive to find new talent if they can continue to generate revenue from their back catalogue.

I think in light of Chris Martin’s comment “I don’t really care about EMI. I think shareholders are the great evil of this modern world.” it is ironic that Coldplay should be used as an example for the extension of copyright, the primary effect of which would be to increase the fortunes of future EMI shareholders.

If the government wishes to foster innovation and creativity in the music industry this is not the way to do it. Economically it makes sense for companies to lobby governments to change laws in their favour so that they can continue to profit from their back catalogue which they know to be profitable rather than gamble on new talent that hasn’t proven itself to be profitable.

In comparison the current term of protection for patents in the UK is 20 years, this forces technology companies to continually innovate, make new discoveries and invent new technologies in order to remain profitable.

The public benefits from music entering the public domain as it allows other companies to now sell the music and the competition in the industry drives down prices from their artificially high levels. The sound recordings of many artists from the fifties such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Nat ‘King’ Cole have now entered the public domain and as such are available on CD at very reasonable prices. These artist’s music is still being sold by their original record companies and I’m sure even though the copyright has expired that they continue to generate much revenue.

I believe that the current 50 year term is a reasonable balance between the interests of the record companies and those of the public.

There is further discussion of this article in the follow Slashdot thread: Extending Pop Music Copyrights

If you have any views on this issue you can write to your MP here or write to James Purnell directly via his website here

For further information you may be interested in James Purnell’s TheyWorkForYou.com profile

Tags: copyright

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith: The Abridged Script

SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON enters IAN MCDIARMID’S CHAMBER.

SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Ian, you’re under arrest for being a manipulative motherfucker.

IAN MCDIARMID
I got a threshold, Jedi. I got a threshold for the abuse I’ll take. And right now I’m a race car and you got me in the red. I’m just saying that it’s fuckin’ dangerous to have a racecar in the fuckin’ red. It could blow.

SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Oh, you’re gettin’ ready to blow?

IAN MCDIARMID
I could blow.

SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Well I’m a mushroom-cloud-layin’ motherfucker, motherfucker! Every time my fingers touch my lightsaber I’m Superfly TNT. I’m the Guns of Navarone.

Suddenly, IAN pulls out his LIGHTSABER. He moves toward the JEDI, pulls his arm back, aims at a Jedi, kills him, pulls his blade out, moves toward another, and slowly kills him
too, all while SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON twirls his lightsaber around pointlessly behind them. Once only SAMUEL is left, they DUEL. IAN makes silly faces and is eventually beaten. HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN arrives.

SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Let me read to you from the book of Ezekiel for a–

Suddenly, IAN unleashes some force lightning on SAMUEL,
which he absorbs into his lightsaber and somehow pushes back
onto IAN, which causes him to grow old, apprently.

I love this parody so much.

Tags: humour, Star Wars

The best reason for buying a Gamecube has appeared.

Dipped in “noir-shaded” graphics of stark contrast, Killer 7 at first seems like a stylish first-person shooter, but that’s only a half-truth. While the majority of the actual action takes place in first-person, the rest of the game is unlike anything we’ve ever seen, for better or worse.

With a cast of seven split-personalities emanating from the mind of principal protagonist Harmon Smith, each of the splintered fragments of his persona come with their own powers and abilities. Like some dark psycho-thriller a la Se7en or Memento, Killer 7’s heroes aren’t cut from typical hero cloth.

Killer 7 often surprises us much in the way Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction “surprised” us. Which is to say it’s consistently disturbing and more powerful for it. First of all, you’re introduced to nearly every game mechanic and plot twist by Harmon’s gimp-like virtual assistant, who hangs from the ceiling wearing a red leather bondage outfit, typically proclaiming “Master, we’re in a tight spot!” From there, it just gets weirder. When you’re not talking to a sexy nurse about saving your game, you’re switching channels on a television set to pick your personality for the mission at hand. Occasionally, you’ll be harassed by a dude named Travis, whom Harmon killed a long time ago, but who inexplicably turns up to bother you now and then.

I noticed yesterday that I own five different videogame devices, not to mention the ones that I have owned and have discarded. Could Killer 7 be the cause of me purchasing yet another because I love the description of it.

Tags: games