| There's a Crack For That |
[Nov. 6th, 2009|02:22 pm] |
Need to crack the security on the wireless networks of 250,000 - that's almost two-thirds! - of Eircom's broadband customers so you can share copyrighted content without falling afoul of Eircom/IRMA's private HADOPI law? There's an App for that.
Technically the Dessid app is marketed as a "password recovery tool" though the author admits it could, like the vast majority of networking software and hardware, be used for nefarious purposes. The app uses a vulnerability in the way default SSIDs, passwords and encryption keys were set up on the Netopia routers supplied to the majority of Eircom's customers. This is hardly a newly discovered weakness, the Eircom SIDD Thinger and the code it's based on have been around for about three years.
What this situation is really demonstrating is how hopelessly unfit Eircom/IRMA's Three-Strikes rule is for the broadband environment it's entering. How can you cut off customers for file sharing when more than half of your customers are using the insecure default configuration that you supplied them, a configuration that allows anyone to access their internet connection? How can you punish customers for breaking a rule with absolutely no way to prove who actually broke that rule? Is it now against Eircom's terms of service to not understand wireless security protocols? Naturally, once the animated corpse of the recording industry gets involved, logic no longer applies.
As with an increasing number of IT related stories, there's an XKCD strip for that. |
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| Halloween Horror Writing |
[Oct. 31st, 2009|01:43 pm] |
This is the most horrifying moment in Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan's zombie/vampire novel The Strain:
...the FAA had cleared a fifteen-minute window of downtime for airports within the range of the occultation [solar eclipse], out of concern for the vision of the pilots, who couldn't very well wear filtered glasses during takeoff or landing...
I had difficulty sleeping after that. |
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| Customer or Adversary, Pick One, Not Both |
[Oct. 15th, 2009|07:59 pm] |
Back in January 2006 I made this prediction:Going to the movies is not what it used to be. Security at the studio-owned theatres is heavy, it's not a trip to be taken lightly. But if you want to see the film everyone is talking about without waiting a year for the home release, you have little choice. When you enter the lobby the first thing you see are long ranks of tiny, thumbprint activated lockers. This is where you must leave all of your electronics...
Turns out I was wrong; it's already getting worse:I was refused access to a Cineworld cinema tonight because I had a laptop in my bag.
I was told it was a new policy to stop people recording the films. I pointed out that my laptop does not have the capability of recording a film. It does not have a camera on it for a start.
So why had I brought it to the cinema I was asked.
I pointed out that like many other people on their way home from work I had a laptop in my bag. That didn’t mean I planned to use it in the cinema. It was just in my bag as that seemed a more sensible option than leaving it in my car.
I was told that they would let me into the film, but I would have to hand my laptop over first and collect it at the end. It turned out that they didn’t have any kind of receipt system in place, so I declined the kind offer to look after my £1500 Sony Vaio that contains all my current work projects, plus some half baked book ideas.
These measures are a part of guidelines for cinemas drawn up by the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT). Perhaps their desire to control private citizens has overtaken their ability to plan any implementation of their schemes. It's as though they are so used to getting their way through lobbying and the purchase of laws that they have forgotten that something like this entails more than simple yelling, hand waving and the dropping of large bundles of cash at the feet of easy politicians.
Three years ago I considered the possibility that I might never visit the cinema again, a pledge based on the principal that I could not, in good conscience, continue to fund the activities of these people. Three years later and I have kept that pledge. Strangely, in that time, I have had absolutely no qualms about my continued boycotting of this toxic industry, no regrets at passing up three years worth of blockbusters. I can say, in all honesty, that I have not missed the experience at all.
Their continued struggle to introduce this private police state encompassing anyone found in front of a glowing screen only strengthens the resolve to never assist them again. The irony is that, at this rate, tens or even hundreds of thousands may join me unknowingly out of simple irritation and exasperation at being asked to pay for the privilege of being treated like criminals. But it is a certainty that any further drop in revenue that the industry causes for itself will only be used as evidence for the necessity of their tactics.
Here's another prediction, one I'm sure you are all quite capable of making yourselves: It will get worse, and it will not get better until the studios as we know them are long gone.
Via BoingBoing: Brit copyright group says, "No laptops allowed in cinemas" |
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| Augmented Unreality |
[Oct. 13th, 2009|01:10 pm] |
Inspired by this video from Christoph Rehage (or at least inspired by switching this video to full screen mode).
Other formats: JPG, GIF, PNG Blank (transparency for alternate image). |
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| It was the Journey |
[Sep. 25th, 2009|02:52 am] |
This just in from Slashdot:
"Google has launched a product called SideWiki. It takes the form of a plug-in to Firefox and Internet Explorer which allows users to mark up the web by adding comments which can be seen by anyone else running SideWiki."
Well, that's... humiliating. Don't suppose it could get any worse really.Google's version joins a long line of attempts to impose a layer of comments on the Web, including Microsoft's Smart Tags and Third Voice.
... If you'll excuse me, I have a very carefully optimised database to purge and a sub domain to free up, then we shall never... speak of it... again! |
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| The Recoding Industry is Dead. Long Live Music! |
[Sep. 18th, 2009|04:32 pm] |
There is very little short of murder that we would not blithely accept the recording industry as being capable of, but this sort of stupidity really just beggars belief. ASCAP and the BMI want to collect royalties on the 30 second track previews in the iTunes store. It seems as though they are determined to cripple what little business they have left, like a man lopping off one of his own fingers every time he drops something.
I doubt there is anyone left that believes the recording industry will still be with us in the future - at least no one intelligent, sane and not actually financially dependant on this dying model. So the question is, what comes after?
Along with radical copyright reform (shortening the term to a maximum of 14 years and excluding all private copying) I've been a supporter of the blanket license in one form or another, preferably something along the lines of an independent, non-profit organisation acting as collecting, tracking and redistribution service for all digital media. But where music is concerned I think something else is going to happen. Or perhaps, something else should happen.
I'll lay it on the line: artist should forget about royalties, forget about the sale of recordings.
In a world of ubiquitous copying technology recordings are worthless. The recording industry only continues to exist on a foundation of past profits from which they exert political pressure, changing minds and laws to favour the old way of doing things. But that foundation and that influence is not going to last. Those old profit margins are never coming back. They will never recover the money they are wasting right now to fight an ill-advised war on the people who use to line their pockets.
If we accept that there is no more money in recordings, what does that leave the artists? It leaves them the skills that they started with; musicians should be paid for playing music, singers should be paid for singing, songwriters should be paid by the artists they write songs for. The future of music as a business is sponsorship and live performance, a future where the distribution of recordings is merely a precursor to this main event. And think how much more inclined punters will be to fork out for concert tickets when they are not paying an idiot who has never played a good note in his life to do something that the punters can do themselves at a microscopic fraction of the cost!
This is not to suggest that all use of recorded music should be free. Commercial uses, uses that attempt to produce a profit from an artist's work, should involve a payment within the term of copyright. But everything else should be written off as normal, private use and beyond copyright including sharing, and playing the music on a radio in a garage.
There is this odd perception that the industry has attempt to encourage, that artists should receive money from the public long after they have completed their work, that we must not stop paying them because they have families and illnesses to support. It is a suggestion that completely ignores the simple truth that these people were not paid enough by the industry that exploited their talents in the first place, and that the only way to support them now is to give huge sums of money to the labels who then offer the artist some thin shaving of the profit. As an excuse for the extension of copyright terms, disingenuous just doesn't cover it.
What remains of the members of The Beatles should not be paid by the public unless they are playing live. When they reached the point that they could no longer play they should, by that time, have saved and invested in a pension to cover the remainder of their lives. Sound familiar? That's because it's they way the rest of us live when our work is not protected by the magical thinking of artificial and self-referential moral logic.
Yes, this situation will be hard on smaller acts. They will have a hard time getting work, they will have to accept small fees and big losses. Well, wake up! That's how it is right now! The music industry has never been a wonderful frictionless fairy-slide into a world made entirely of money and Learjets, and it never will be. Some people will put their whole lives into their art and get nothing for it. It is lamentable, but it is not a problem solved by eternal copyrights and royalty payments on sales of a dead medium. And hasn't this risk always been a part of the allure of making music, the romance, the machismo, the daredevil attitude? No creative process is a sure thing, so no efforts based on this process can truly be relied upon. That is no reason to create a vast complex of logically and morally precarious rules to protect them.
For some this future of real work might sound terrifying. If it truly scares them, then they are either talentless recording industry cling-ons, or are really not cut out for music making.
The truth is, no matter what happens, music will go on. For as long as there are people there will be music. We couldn't stop them making music if we made it illegal! Why would we think it could disappear just because we change the way we pay the creators?
Face facts: the recoding industry is dead. Long live music! |
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| StringThinger.com |
[Sep. 14th, 2009|04:25 pm] |
StringThinger.com
This is what I've been working on for that last two weeks.
-... ..- - / .... --- .-- / - --- / ... . .-.. .-.. / .. - ..--..
Basically, StringThinger is a string manipulation multi-tool. It allows users to apply multiple transformations to a string through a "stack" of functions which can be saved and shared. Thing is, it's very difficult to present an accessible example of what you might use it for.
Well, here's an impractical but simple one:02A80050 50122225 95555240 00000001 80000D00 001A0000 540000F8 00000006 1C618800 321A3186 BEFBEF80 00001000 04000000 20000FC0 01F00000 1861C620 20086863 9AFBEFBE 00000040 C0100180 0083003F 0607C00C 00100804 10301018 60400C43 00019800 310C0186 04040804 10180440 30088020 20808080 800600C0 30047580 08080010 7C002174 B604E4FE E1C1B802 83B20507 E40A0C08 36000000 00382000 751554E0 0AA00014 000F8000 7FC00380 E00C0060 340160CC 06611414 42244880 45100084 20010040 00940079 F478
This builds a stack with hexadecimal input that outputs the Arecibo Message using Unicode characters for clarity.
As you can probably see the pre-prepared StringThinger stacks are communicated using URL query strings, so keeping a stack for future use is a simple matter of copying and pasting, or even just bookmarking a link. For added convenience you have the option of pasting the link into a form on the page and building the encoded stack directly without the need to follow the link. This same process can also be used to combine two existing stacks.
The whole thing is executed in JavaScript so there's no need to send data to the server and it will work off-line too.
Other features include list processing and sorting, and what I call "Super Stages" which allow for processing sections of the input string and returning the result along side the original - very useful for building associative arrays. There is also a JS port of my HTML/XML balancing system and entity tidier as well as an implementation of the MD5 hashing function (something I've been meaning to do all year).
StringThinger started out as a diagnostic tool for Project Little Island when there were problems with character encoding. At that point it was nothing more than a set of JavaScript functions linked to a web page form. Troublesome output could be pasted into a textarea and processed for examination at the binary level. Later came functions for translating between UTF-8 and UTF-16 (the internal character encoding for most PCs), then hexadecimal translation, MD5 hashing and list handling. Then Morse Code... for some idle reason. Eventually there were so many loose functions that there was little choice but to organise them into something more usable. Really, what we have in StringThinger is the very embodiment of scope-creep.
I have this working in Firefox 3+, Opera 9+, Chrome, and even IE6+, which I think is enough for now. Earlier versions of FF and Opera should be okay as they've been compliant for a while. So far StringThinger looks its best in Firefox.
If anyone thinks of new functions to add, or even shortcuts combining several existing functions, I'd like to hear about it. The system is designed to be extensible so that adding and rearranging functions is simple. And, naturally, I'd appreciate any bug reports.
[ BTW, if you're looking for the Morse Code translation functions they're in the Misc section at the very bottom of the list. ]
,ognähâêchâiogìH@©oê@ahæj@ìêlljììfêccé@ê
ìjb@¬âäign¢aignjä@âo@bjliàajä@ìokj@läêbj@jgläéàâiogG |
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| Beginning of the End |
[Sep. 1st, 2009|12:14 pm] |
 ACCESS TO THIS IP ADDRESS RELATING TO THE PIRATE BAY WEBSITE HAS BEEN BLOCKED
WHY?
On the 24 July 2009, an Order was made by the High Court requiring eircom to block or otherwise disable access by its subscribers to the website thePirateBay.org, its related domain names, IP addresses and URLs. The Court was satisfied that on the basis of the evidence presented by the record companies that the PirateBay website is a website that facilitates the exchange of copyrighted sound recordings without the consent of the copyright owners.
eircom recognises the legitimate rights of the owners of copyrighted material and believes that individuals who share or download copyrighted material without the authorisation or the permission of the copyright owner are acting illegally.
The Order further provides that should the PirateBay website content be legitimatised in the future, then eircom has liberty to apply to the Court to have the Order vacated and access to the PirateBay website enabled.
eircom in compliance with the Order has agreed that access to the website the PirateBay.org, its related domain names, IP addresses and URLs from the eircom network will be blocked indefinitely from the 1st September 2009.
Previously: |
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| The 1st of September, Remember, Remember |
[Aug. 20th, 2009|01:15 am] |
Things are about to start happening in the War on Irish Internet Users.
According to The Irish Times the recording industry's favourite broadband provider, Eircom, will start blocking thepiratebay.org on September 1st. Well, actually it says "piratebay.org" which is just an alias domain, but who knows...?
The article also mentions that both UPC and BT Ireland have received ultimatums giving them one week to begin blocking the Pirate Bay themselves or face legal action. Both have affirmed their refusal to comply with the demand, stating that such blocking has no basis in Irish law. The article isn't too clear but this notice appears to have been received on the 19th this month.
There's no mention of whether Eircom will begin handing down the first of the Three Strikes warnings at the same time. However, according to a leaked document Eircom's part in the process will prove to be more hands on than previously feared.Eircom has also reserved the right to remove a customer from a particular level or not to effect a disconnection where Eircom has received representations or complaints and believes that the infringement as alleged has not taken place or where there are particular extenuating circumstances which would make the disconnection of the customer unjustified.
Eircom will engage with that person at all times to ensure that there is a full understanding of the issues and that any accidental or unintentional infringement can be identified and remedied.
While it is preferable to their simply taking the recording industry's word for it, this is not to say it is better by much. This engagement will, apparently, be conducted through Eircom's existing customer support system. This support system, I can tell you, is no more than you will have come to expect from a typical telecoms company anywhere in the world.
I feel compelled to give an example of exactly the level of sophistication I have experienced in my very few communications with these people. A few years ago I was helping a friend upgrade his internet connection package with Eircom. This was still dial-up and so required the user to do some manual configuration. My friend wasn't too confident that he'd get it right or even understand what he was being told during the process, so I agreed to stand in for him. Part of the call to the sales department for the upgrade went a lot like this:Operator: ...and can you give me the password?
Me: Sure, it's **********.
Operator: Hmm, that's not what I see here. I've got *********.
Me: [Incredulous pause, since this is the same password used for the associated email account]
Operator: Hello?
Me: Yes... Okay... I'll use that then.
The upgrade went surprisingly smoothly...
Well I'm sure the support teams are much better informed these days and will be quite capable of explaining to distraught parents why their entire household is threatened with losing it's Internet connection because their thirteen-year-old son downloaded a KISS album using a process that is entirely alien to them since their home network is entirely built and maintained by the same child, who also helps them out when they want to use Comic Sans in Word... |
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| Quick Hacks: Fixing Thunderbird's Default Faux Pas |
[Jul. 23rd, 2009|01:50 pm] |
One of the things that bugs me about Mozilla's otherwise wonderful Thunderbird email client is that it demands a default email account. This is the account that every new email you compose is initially attributed to. The problem with this is that it's the easiest thing in the world to forget to select the account that you mean to use rather than this default.
The unintended results can be awkward at best, perhaps genuinely embarrassing. But for someone in a sensitive situation it's not hard to imagine that a mistake like this could be career destroying.
Here's a simple solution I've been using for a while:
In Thunderbird's Account Settings add a new account using spurious information. It doesn't matter about the address, mail server or user name, just make something up. Locate the new account in the list on the left and click on Server Settings, then deselect the 'Check for new messages' options. Click on Advanced and deselect 'Include this server when getting new mail'. These settings will stop the fake account generating errors during automated processes. When you're finished, set the new account as the default.
Now when you compose a new email you'll still have to select a valid account, but if you forget, you will find you are unable to send. All you have to do then is cancel back to the composition window to make the correction.
I've tried a couple of add-ons that solve the same problem but found them unsatisfactory for one reason or another. |
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| That blasphemous statement was just resting on my blog! |
[Jul. 20th, 2009|06:26 pm] |
The Irish government, in a fit of what can only be described as some form of political mental illness, has reintroduced a law criminalising blasphemy.
Aside from a €25,000 fine (reduced from the €100,000 originally sought by the government), the new Defamation Act gives the authorities the power to stage raids on publishers: the courts may now issue a warrant authorising the police to enter, using 'reasonable force', premises where they have grounds for believing there are copies of 'blasphemous statements'.
Many are asking why on earth blasphemy should be criminalised, particularly at a time when the Catholic Church in Ireland is being investigated for widespread child abuse and its public image has hit rock bottom.
The government has responded to its critics by saying there is a constitutional requirement for a specific blasphemy law in Ireland. Indeed so: freedom of speech is guaranteed by Article 40.6.1 of the Irish constitution. However, it goes on to prohibit the publication of 'blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter'. One might call the Irish constitution a clear case of the left hand giving and the right hand taking away.
Ireland’s bizarre war on blasphemy (via /.)
This particular article proves rather more pragmatic in places than many of the commentators to date:
The fact that this has been the case since the constitution came into effect in 1937 seems to have blinded the government to its usual option: the traditional Irish response to divisive issues is to pretend that they don't exist. It is not for nothing that Ireland's acceptance of abortion for those with enough money to travel to Britain is called 'an Irish solution to an Irish problem'.
It goes on to froth a bit and then point out that the current government is on the ropes and trying to consolidate its support amongst the rural conservatives while playing primarily on political correctness rather than trying to bring the church and state back together (not that they were ever separated by much here).
Regardless of the excuses, thought crime is a sorry situation for any supposedly modern western nation.
Don't worry, I doubt that this is a goodbye to Father Ted repeats.
My personal feeling is that anyone believing in a giant invisible sky-daddy who grants wishes is perfectly entitled to do so... on one, single, solitary condition: that their fantasies must never ever impinge upon the freedom of those who do not share them. |
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| Here Lies TV |
[Jul. 11th, 2009|04:45 pm] |
At Mumbai's International Telecommunication Union - Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (ITU-AIBD), the MPAA and it's cronies have been discussing locking down future TV broadcasts. They are now mortally terrified of their A-hole emissions reaching the tubosphere. As ever, there is a deep irony in organisations that make their business delivering content going so far out of their way to prevent people from receiving it:
Conax AS International Product marketing manager Vidar Sandvik advocated "scrambling" for FTA [Free To Air] broadcasting. He cited Netherlands and Poland where 100% cable saturation did not prevent terrestrial television from thriving. In Poland where FTA had 30% of the market, FTA broadcasters added video-on-demand in HD, increasing value for consumers, and ensuring no leaks to the Net. Let the pay-TV operator subsidise the set-top box, he said, and then control box quality for content protection. As for cost, set-top box vendors paid nothing for Conax hardware, he said.
Scrambling Free to Air? Isn't that just Free to View? It's like suggesting vegetarian food should contain more meat. And "ensuring no leaks to the Net"? Oh, I seriously doubt that.
Licensing set-top box production and preventing consumers from becoming broadcasters, but enabling them to receive, store and do home networking are some rules that regulators should lay down to protect content, concluded Williams. He recommended making content protection cheaper by going completely digital. "Why do you need analog outputs?" he asks.
And there it is, who needs that festering analogue wound in the side of every receiver, spilling our digital goodness into the cupping hands of those evil pirates? Clearly the digital changeover in the US went so well that it was obviously just too easy. This time people should be forced to buy new TVs as well! Admittedly, this is the satellite TV industry talking, and they do have a habit of claiming special excuses for acting like the owners of content rather than merely the transmitters - kind of like the guy who delivers your new washing machine scratching his name on the front of it then hanging around and asking for money every time you want to use it.
Yeah, I think that's enough analogies for this weekend.
Over the last few years I've been watching TV die. Even after going out of my way to get satellite because it was the only way to get a reliable service out here in the woods, I've found myself watching less and less. It is a rare occasion indeed for me to actually sit down and watch a show from beginning to end. When I miss a show that I intended to watch there is no more "aw crap!" reaction that I recall from the past. On more than one occasion I've found myself with remote in my hand, staring at the listings and thinking "even though there is a show I thought I wanted to see, I can't actually be bothered to set up a recording." The new relationship with TV appears to be one of opportunistic sampling - when particularly bored or put out by some other medium or project I might turn on and watch whatever can be found that is the least anti-intellectual. Then, an hour later, It'll be turned off. So delicate is this connection that sometimes a show will be turned off, not because it's dull or offensive, but because having to turn down the ads to an acceptable volume every fifteen minutes is more annoying that the show is interesting.
Another thing that leads to this general malaise is that the listings are becoming a serious impediment to viewing. Despite having access to an accurate schedule for every available channel for the next seven days I can honestly say that for weeks now I have not looked at more than the next three hours in that "wall of worthless" for any channel. In a world of ballooning lateral access, locating anything of value on linear TV has become too much of a chore for too little entertainment.
So what the hell happened? Is it me? Or could it be the content, could it actually be less entertaining than it used to be? Or rather, has it stopped evolving in line my expectations of innovation? If this were multiple choice I think we'd check that last one.
The problem appears to be one of homogenisation - every channel, regardless of their original remit, wants to reach the largest possible audience. So if one type of programming draws a greater audience then every channel will want that type of programming. And so we have 24 hours of make-over and pimping shows on what used to be called "Music Television", and we even have reality TV on the SciFi channel... sorry that will be "SyFy" for the US viewers:
SyFy: where we're going, we won't need "i"s
The reason for this fuss over the locking down of a medium that is rapidly dipping below the horizon of relevance is because we can see a whole lot of defectors of this nature having a serious impact on viewing figures. The subsequent drop in advertising revenue will no doubt be blamed on illicit distribution of the same content that we can't be bothered to watch. Naturally, the finger will be pointed at the Internet. With Ireland already facing a de facto Three-strikes law and Internet censorship over music distribution, such attention is only going to add to the troubles. That the MPAA et al are deciding amongst themselves to further break our already compromised personal technology is a damning signal of both their mortally ill business and our own complacency over their power.
End result: an industry that produces something dull that we don't care about is trying to control us because we don't particularly want their product any more. The sounds of their desperate scrabbling for power are not unfamiliar. |
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| TripeFi |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|09:46 pm] |
For some reason (masochism, or perhaps atonement for unspecified sins) I sat and watched the greater part of SciFi's Polar Storm, staring Jack Coleman of Heroes fame.
I think I can accurately communicate the amount of sense this made-for-TV tripe made by quoting a single line of dialogue:"I saw an EM wave in the sky!"
...
A rapid google suggests that there is no one who was pleased with this sorry offering.
Examples from the upper echelons of the literary SF genre would tend to suggest that the convergence of writing ability and scientific understanding in a single author is not unreasonable. So why is it that we get so few science and science fiction movies and series that even make an attempt at some level of cogency? |
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| Dark Days Ahead for Irish Internet Users |
[Jun. 22nd, 2009|04:59 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | censorship, copyright, internet, ireland, irma, music, net neutrality, rant, riaa, technology, three strikes | ] |
Just to catch you up. This year my ISP, Eircom.net, settled a dispute with the Irish Recorded Music Ass. (IRMA) who had taken them to court over illegal file sharing. The claim was that Eircom were complicit in the illegal activities of their users. the evidence against them included internal emails showing Eircom execs joking about copyright infringement.
The out of court settlement, so far as anyone can tell, is entirely one-sided. Eircom have agreed to institute both content filtering - censorship by any other name - and a three-strikes rule - very like the situation promised by the recently defeated EU Telecoms Package. The Industry Ass. will put forward to the courts websites and online services that they feel need to be blocked in Ireland to protect their profit margins and Eircom have agreed not to contest any of them. A sorry little MediaSentry wannabe called DTecNet is in place to monitor internet users and provide accusations which Eircom will be asked to act upon by disconnecting those accused without any room for appeal. Remember, this is the same monitoring technique that lead the RIAA to sue a woman who did not even own a computer! Also keep in mind that this is a private arrangement, there is no public consultation, no democratic or judicial process, no tests for legality or constitutionality. This is the Recording Industry successfully inserting a de facto law without any need to lobby politicians or campaign for public support.
Fine, I'll ditch Eircom in a heartbeat, and I'll be sure to let them know exactly why I, and no doubt many other customers are jumping what has become the Recording Industry patrol boat to man the cruise liner across the dock. I'm thinking I'll sign up with UPC, an international company that bought out NTL and Chorus and that offer better stats for a similar price.
But there's a problem...
Since their success with Eircom the Irish Recorded Music Ass. has been sending threatening letters to all the other ISPs operating in the country (and a few that aren't ISPs at all) offering the same arrangement they offered Eircom and backed by the same threats of legal action. In fact both BT Ireland and UPC are already facing legal proceedings over this.
Eircom is the largest telecoms operator in the Republic, the one-time monopoly holder, their pockets are as deep as they get in the local industry. Even they could not face the legal avalanche that the Recording Industry promised to drop on them - appeal after appeal, case after case. Eircom have a maximum possible consumer base of maybe 2 million households and businesses. Subtract from that the customers who have taken up offers from other companies. What's left does not look like much when placed before the international cartels that are applying monetary leverage across the fulcrum of IRMA. All the other operators here are smaller than that, or at least have a smaller stake in the already tiny market. Even BT will probably settle before the cost of legal activity outstrips their profit margin. It seems we're about to find out.
How can anyone select a new provider when it looks like they'll all end up in exactly the same situation?
UPC have publicly stated that they have no intention of folding before the threats. In their own words "UPC intends to vigorously defend its position in court." And this is exactly the stance that lead Eircom to court in the first place. And look where they are now.
Angry yet? |
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| Elvis Costello on the Recording Industry |
[Jun. 5th, 2009|10:59 pm] |
Just a snip from an interview with Elvis Costello over on NJ.com:
Q. A couple of years ago, in interviews, it sounded like you had kind of lost faith in the recording industry altogether.
A. Yeah, but I think I started to think too hard about the industry, and less about the music. Since I stopped caring a damn about the business, I've got a lot of freedom. Look at how bad things are: it's a miracle any business is still going. I've always thought that there was more in playing concerts. I haven't made any money from records in 30 years. I don't know that I ever made any money from releasing records. I made money, probably, to a degree, from publishing record releases, because when they give you those advances that everybody makes such a song and dance about, when you sign a record contract, what nobody ever says out loud is they're just loaning you the money to make the records. It's not free money. The record companies set themselves up pretty well, to loan you the money to make the records. "Momofuku" took nine days. This took three days. I don't think it should take any longer than that. The Beatles' first record took a day. What in the world are people doing spending six months making a record? That's a nonsense. How long does it take to play a song?
The interview continues with some qualification regarding the conditions required for certain musical creations. But I'm sure you get the general idea: the real money is in performance, actually playing music (which one would think is a musician's Raison d'être), not in sitting on your arse while someone else takes money for making copies of something you did last year. |
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| Forgive me for Thinking Like an Engineer |
[May. 31st, 2009|01:11 am] |
Last weekend our cat, Tilly, was poisoned. When I saw him lying on the living room floor he was suffering some form of seizure, shuddering, stretching and curling uncontrollably. His pulse was so light, his breathing so shallow, that I was sure they had stopped altogether. The spasms were too strong to get him safely into a the carrier so he went to the vet wrapped in a towel.
Having heard and seen what happens to poisoned animals, I feared the worst. Even if he survived, I was sure there would be permanent damage, that he would never be the same again, would never be fit or well.
Fortunately we'd found him in time and got him medical attention as quickly as possible. So after a night on a drip he's back to himself with nothing but a slightly blooded leg from the IV.
Needless to say, my relief has been tempered to some degree by frothing outrage.
A while back there was a discussion in comments to a Boing Boing post on the so-called "better mousetrap", various parties offering advice on catching and killing vermin. I offered my own opinion that, catching and killing rats, mice, roaches, anything of that nature is essentially futile, no more effective than bailing out a river. Lay all the poison the pest-controllers will sell you, poison all the rats you like, there are plenty more waiting to fill the vacuum you are creating. In the meantime you are leaving incredibly toxic substances around for people's pets to find, occasionally in the form of dying, delirious rodents wandering away from their territory and taking the poison with them. Not to mention the possibility of inquisitive children coming into contact with the materials. And what do you get for your trouble? A couple of months without a pest, if you're lucky. But if you're unlucky...
A couple of years ago I was working IT on premises where they had fallen for this dumb idea to deal with a handful of mice in the building (which I had never seen but which the female staff swore were the rabid harbingers of all-consuming death). The pest controller left a half-dozen little white containers of poison around the halls and wandered off to the next job. Did he have any other suggestions? Not that I heard, after all, why give the customer a permanent solution when quick fixes guarantee repeat business? After a few weeks we began to notice a bad smell in the offices. You can imagine what had happened. It was a couple of weeks, during which the stench rapidly became unbearable, before the pest controller finally located the rancid corpse he had generated, tucked away under a raised floor.
As I said in that Boing Boing thread, the best mouse trap is not a trap at all. There are only two things that one need do to deal with a rodent problem: take away their reason for staying, then take away their means of getting in. Their reason for staying is food, remove the food source, or at least put it out of their reach, and the rats won't want to be there. Keep your house clean and tidy, don't leave spills and crumbs on the floor, throw out your junk and minimise their hiding places. Keep your trash secure in metal or plastic bins, not just a heaps of bags, and keep the bins and the area around the them clean. Find out how they got into the place to begin with and seal it up. I've heard stories about POWs beating food tins flat to armour-plate their food stores - this isn't rocket science. Think about the area you live in: is there flytipping going on, are there empty or derelict buildings, is there a neighbour with a garden full of garbage? These are things your council and maybe the police need to deal with.
"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."
Perhaps, Mr Emerson, but build a better world and they won't have to.
The bottom line is that a pest controller shouldn't be selling you something to kill every living thing that comes into contact with it, he should be showing you what must change to disrupt the rat-friendly habitat you are living in. If you have a pest problem you don't need a better mousetrap, what you need are better living conditions. |
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| Your Secrecy Makes you Weak |
[May. 15th, 2009|01:52 am] |
All closed source code is invariably poorly written, containing bugs, mistakes, design flaws and security issues from beginning to end. For every ten lines of code there is a disaster waiting, and when that disaster comes to pass you'll be lucky if the system even reports it. Within the cloak of secrecy afforded by closed source code programmers demonstrate just how careless and unprofessional they can truly be, and just how much they are willing to risk for the sake of making their job easier.
Prove... me... wrong. |
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| Broadcast Bill 2009 |
[May. 8th, 2009|01:52 am] |
Ireland's Broadcast Bill 2009 is about to be passed by the government here and it has come to the attention of a few watchful souls that something looks a little off.
Part of the bill deals with changes to the TV license. One of the these changes is the definition of "television set":
"television set" means any electronic apparatus capable of receiving and exhibiting television broadcasting services broadcast for general reception (whether or not its use for that purpose is dependent on the use of anything else in conjunction with it) and any software or assembly comprising such apparatus and other apparatus;
This means that any household which has a device that allows the receiving and viewing of RTE programmes is now required to pay the TV license fee.
Oh! RTE just launched their online RTE Player. Now anyone in the republic with a broadband connection can use it to receive RTE programmes. What a coincidence!
That's right, as it stands anyone with a broadband connection will need a TV license even if they don't own a TV!
However, there is just one additional facet to this pitifully obvious money-grab that Irish commentators are not mentioning, probably because, for them, it is the status quo. The thing is, our national, publicly-owned broadcaster, funded by the TV License Fee, runs commercials. I can tell you that, beyond its mandate to serve a small amount of Irish language content and Gaelic sports coverage, the services RTE offer are indistinguishable from other wholly commercial stations. And I'll offer this simple observation: if every RTE service currently available were to suddenly cease, it would be months before I'd even notice - that's just how little I value them.
When I moved here in 2K I was put out, to say the least, that I was asked to pay a tax for what was clearly a commercially funded enterprise. The extra reach on this double-dipping farce afforded by the new Broadcast Bill is not endearing me to the system at all. |
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| Work Once, Paid Forever! |
[Apr. 26th, 2009|04:49 am] |
The EU has decided that we, the public, must continue to pay performers of musical works for 70 years after they have completed the work. That's another twenty years closer to perpetuity.
Perhaps I should write to my MEP and enquire if this scheme could be extended to other areas of employment. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were all paid for the rest of our lives for every job we've ever done? I could really do with getting a half-dozen paychecks every month.
So how about this alternative: performers are paid a decent wage when they perform, and when the performance stops, so does the money! |
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tarmle's journal
