While record companies prepare for the sentencing of three Sydney men convicted of music piracy by the Federal Court, a new survey shows most musicians and other music professionals believe copyright laws are too harsh. It found that 81% of the 200 respondents felt that the Copyright Act should be changed to allow the copying of a user’s own legally purchased CDs, but not borrowed or downloaded music. Less than half of respondents felt that downloading free music constituted theft from artists and composers, while only 25% felt it was theft from record labels. 27% of respondents did not feel downloading music was theft
Everyone knows where Lego bricks come from. They’re scraped off the inside of magic trees by tiny Danish elves, right? Wrong! The truth is both more ordinary and much, much stranger. Take an interactive tour of a typical Lego factory and learn how Lego bricks begin the long journey that ends up under your couch
Noticing some commonalities in the spam flooding their e-mail in-boxes, a small group of hackers set out to track down who was responsible. Along the way they uncovered a trail that led them to an organised gang of criminals halfway around the world, and right back to some of the largest financial institutions in the US, and their customers, that became the gang’s prey
FilmForce has substantiated rumours of Farscape returning as a standalone project with no new episode commitment attached, independent of Sci-Fi Channel
Always been a fan of the homebrewed ginger beer. My great aunt used to make a legendary batch every year that was always a favourite amongst the hordes of relatives. I’ve always meant to start a batch and the Green Man has a recipe that has reminded me what a great idea for Summer the stuff is.
Worth remembering that forgotten batches of ginger beer can occasionally explode, as my aunt’s slightly mad neighbour discovered when he had a crack at her recipe.
Greens Senator Bob Brown says the Immigration Minister Senator Amanda Vanstone should appear before a Senate inquiry into last week’s arrival of suspected asylum seekers on a remote northern Australian island. The Greens also claim the Federal Government plans to excise more islands from Australia’s migration zone
In the Robert Redford Building, toilets flush themselves with rainwater — except for the urinals, which use no water at all — the floors are made of bamboo and the carpets from hemp
Russ Kick has proved himself a master at uncovering facts that ‘they’ would prefer you never hear about. The giant Disinformation Guide series edited by Kick has become the definitive place to find revelations about government cover-ups, scientific scams, corporate crimes, medical malfeasance, historical whitewashes, media manipulation, and other knock-your-socks-off secrets and lies. This CD-sized book packs the same powerful punch in a small, attractive package. Among Kick’s amazing discoveries, all thoroughly documented:
- The first genetically modified humans have already been born
- Hitler’s blood relatives are living in the US
- The CIA commits over 100,000 serious crimes per year
- The US planned to explode an atomic bomb on the moon
- An atomic bomb was dropped on North Carolina
- The main hero of portayed in the movie Black Hawk Down is a convicted child molester
- Pope Pius II wrote an erotic book
- Kent State wasn’t the only massacre of US college students during the Vietnam era
- Many of the pioneering feminists opposed abortion
- The world’s museums contain innumerable fakes
- The Government can take your house and land, then sell them to private corporations
- Carl Sagan was an avid pot-smoker
- The suicide rate is highest among the elderly
A uniquely valuable tool to debunk modern mythology and the people and institutions serving it up, 50 Things You’re Not Supposed To Know makes an amazing gift item and will prove just as essential in fashionable bathrooms as on the most well-heeled coffee tables.
Two days ago a boat load of Turkish Kurds arrived in Northern Australia by leaky boat. Both the foreign minister and the immigration minister stated unequivocally that ‘The passengers of the Minasa Bone did not claim asylum in Australia’. This is in spite of the fact that we can be reasonably certain that at least one of them was begging a Turkish interpreter, in Turkish, to be allowed to stay. But even if they were granted a Temporary Protection Visa, they would be forced into prison camps in inhospitable parts of Australia for years before being shipped back to their homeland to be killed
The US$10.99 Dakota reusable digital camera announced in July was usefully hacked on 6 November. First attempts to extract picture data took 10 hours to read out 16MB, but new code for Windows, Linux and Mac lets you get pictures quickly over USB and view or print them without Ritz’s help
In a rare sign of trouble for the booming search marketing business, Google is fending off complaints from angry customers who say recent changes to the company’s advertising program are costing them sales
An independent PC developer has created a program called MyTunes that lets users of iTunes share MP3 files almost as easily as they could using programs such as Kazaa
Arthur Radebaugh was an illustrator who teased the world with his images of the future. A place where we would all have Rocketeer jetpacks and hover cars. And all the cool stuff came with chrome, fins and streamlining
For dedicated fans of the legendary science fiction hero Doctor Who, the long wait is over. A new animated version based on the ninth incarnation of the doctor, played by Richard Grant, has been placed on the BBC’s Internet arm BBCi and can be downloaded for viewing. The 85-minute series called The Scream of the Shalka also coincides with the show’s 40th anniversary
Surround sound can make home movie viewing more fun, but requires peppering your room with speakers and cables. No more. Nirotek‘s DVD player, the NIRO 1.1 PRO, delivers the surround effect using just a single unit. It works by packing five small speakers into one case. Each speaker signal is then manipulated by computer algorithms to mimic the effects used by the brain to identify the direction a sound is coming from
Daniel Schacter and Scott Slotnick, at Harvard University, have revealed characteristic activity in the brain that predicts whether a memory is accurate or false. The difference occurs at the time of recall, suggesting that a test for false memory might one day be possible
Warren Ellis has released another iconic image into the ether. Disturbing on first read, but oddly comforting when read again:
She opens her perfect mouth and the sound of a modem pours out. The long shriek of signal, and then the radio-static-and-rubber-band song of connection.
And then another. She looks up, opens her mouth, and the electric scream beats up into the night. Another two, three signal-songs harmonise. More. A row of Shrieky Girls, all in black and hazmat orange, standing outside the club, looking up and dialling in.
Inside the place, there’s an ozone pressure from the mass of Shrieky Girls beaming internet whispers to each other. Shrieky Girls dance, turning slow circles on the floor as the DJ plays tripped Bristol beats spiked with Shrieky connection-sound samples and tranquillised by sibilant female voices whispering about sex and vodka in the dark.
Shrieky Girls lock us out of their world. Their shared gaze darts around the room in flock patterns, homing in one on one guy’s piercings, one woman’s shoulderblade brand. People still flinch when they see twenty, thirty girls all turn around to look at them at exactly the same time.
In the back, picked out in stopmotion by strobes, a Shrieky Girl stands against the wall and pulls a boy in to her. She unzips him, closes fingers around him, pulls him inside sharply. Her lips part, and you expect a sigh, but you hear connection hiss. On the floor, twenty, thirty Shrieky Girls stop dancing, and all their backs arch in exactly the same way. Heads thrown back and mouths open in modem screams.
It’s not that Shrieky Girl who finds someone worth going home with. But, when morning finally comes, it’s all of them who share the modemed sensation of a warm arm closed softly around them. It’s all of them who see him wake up and smile at them and look at them, and see him keep looking and smiling at them even though the make-up’s half gone and the hair’s been smashed by the bed, because it was them he wanted to be with, not the look.
Two, three hundred Shrieky Girls smile just a little bit and hold an invisible hand for a while.
Shrieky Girls are never alone. They live in an invisible web of constant secret conversation, transmitting raw feelings like they were texting notes.
Twenty, thirty thousand Shrieky Girls smile just a little bit and turn away to dance.
Bizarre and artistic boots for the lady who knows how to wield a whip
Microsoft plans to add pop-up blocking features to Internet Explorer next year as part of its Service Pack 2 update for Windows XP, a move that would go far toward stamping out the Web advertisements
Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble conducted a secret RFID trial involving Oklahoma consumers earlier this year. Customers who purchased P&G’s Lipfinity brand lipstick at the Broken Arrow Wal-Mart store between late March and mid-July unknowingly left the store with live RFID tracking devices embedded in the packaging. Wal-Mart had previously denied any consumer-level RFID testing in the United States
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