July 20, 2008
kewlchops
By any other name.
Today was my first day volunteering at the San Francisco Botanic Garden! It was wonderful. I have dirt under my nails, grubby knees, a new climbing rose and a To Do list for next week. After orientation around the nursery, Diane asked the four of us if anything caught our fancy. There was a lady with previous gardener-ing experience, a young girl fresh out of school who would rather have been at
by george at July 20, 2008 08:43 AM
icanhascheezburger
I AM The Security System
I AM The Security System
well diz IZ mai security sistem.
picture: dunno source, via our lolcat builder. lol caption: loranlovesdoxies
by ichctcf at July 20, 2008 12:00 AM
the excuse of the day
The Excuse of the Day for 20 Jul 2008 is...
Democrats
July 19, 2008
warrenellis.com
Collecting Stray Thoughts - 2008-07-19
- good morning scum #
by Warren Ellis at July 19, 2008 10:59 PM
Collecting Stray Thoughts - 2008-07-19
- good morning scum #
by Warren Ellis at July 19, 2008 10:59 PM
jwz
Tentacles?
icanhascheezburger
Brekdancin panda
by ichctcf at July 19, 2008 10:00 PM
ongoing
SPotD: Fireworks
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>Today’s summer picture is of some of the fireworks after the <a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2008/07/18/Baseball">ball game featured yesterday</a>. They weren’t big-league, but it isn’t a big-league park, so you get to sit pretty close to them.</p> <img src="PS081276.png" alt="July First fireworks at Nat Bailey Stadium"> <p>Before the game I went looking for advice on photographing fireworks and it seems that it’s all a matter of taste, except for one thing: use a tripod. For what it’s worth, these are with the ordinary 40mm prime lens at <i>f</i>8 and using the “B” setting to keep the shutter open for quite a while. Next time I’ll try shooting with a wider-angle lens.</p> </div></content>
cafe au lait
Apple has released version 3.1 of Xcode, "Apple's tool suite and integrated development environment (IDE) for creating Mac OS X Universal Binaries that run natively on PowerPC and Intel-based Macintosh computers.
Apple has released version 3.1 of Xcode, "Apple's tool suite and integrated development environment (IDE) for creating Mac OS X Universal Binaries that run natively on PowerPC and Intel-based Macintosh computers. The IDE provides a powerful user interface to many industry-standard and open-source tools, including GCC, javac, jikes, and GDB. Xcode is designed to fully support the Carbon and Cocoa frameworks and Java. It contains templates for creating applications, frameworks, libraries, plug-ins, Java applications and applets, and command-line tools. Developers can use Xcode to construct a user interface, test code performance, and perform many other common development tasks." New features in this release include: More...
warrenellis.com
Saturday Night Open Mic
Saturday Night Open Mic is up, over at my internet church. Say hello.
by Warren Ellis at July 19, 2008 09:11 PM
JOE 90
Okay, so this was a kid’s tv show. A Gerry Anderson production, hence the puppets. But I think it underscores the basically creepy nature of children’s fantasy tv in the UK. Not as out-and-out fucking strange as, say, THE CHANGES or SKY. But, really, without any context — or, hell, even with it — the intro to JOE 90 is still kind of nervous-making. I didn’t particularly like this show even as a kid. There was something essentially Wrong about it. Stick a kid with fucked-up eyes in a huge spinning machine with pulsating lights while computers ooze magnetic tape like worms. The machine he’s in, by the way, is called The Big Rat. Which is also kind of Wrong.
by Warren Ellis at July 19, 2008 07:46 PM
icanhascheezburger
Ugly couch
by ichctcf at July 19, 2008 06:00 PM
warrenellis.com
British SF TV: Some Bits
I realised how little that old British sf tv has still penetrated beyond our borders (and probably a couple of generations) when I made Joss Whedon look at the credits sequence for JOE 90 and got a WTF? from him. So, while I’m waiting for my forebrain to spool up this afternoon, I thought I’d YouTube a bit and collect up some stuff that some of you may never have seen (and some of you will get hideous flashbacks off):
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT:
BLAKE’S SEVEN:
SAPPHIRE AND STEEL:
DOOMWATCH:
by Warren Ellis at July 19, 2008 03:20 PM
icanhascheezburger
Dis 2 storee condo on de water
Dis 2 storee condo on de water not wut I wuz xpectin.
mai condo nawt sew gud either.
picture: dunno source, via our lolcat builder. lol caption: Dottie
by ichctcf at July 19, 2008 02:00 PM
Hunny,
by ichctcf at July 19, 2008 10:00 AM
ongoing
SPotD: Ball Game
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>On July first, we celebrated Canada and my son’s birthday by going to the ball game and fireworks. It was a warm, warm evening. The Summer Photo for Today is an outfielder and a scoreboard.</p> <img src="PS081251.png" alt="Outfielder and scoreboard"> <p>Yeah, the home team got thumped. But the fireworks were pretty good.</p> </div></content>
kewlchops
presenting the horses before the race
By phitar
by george at July 19, 2008 08:43 AM
james tauber
iPhone Stopwatch Comparison
<p>Below is a photo of my original iPhone next to my new iPhone 3G. </p> <p> The original iPhone (on the left) is still running 1.1.4 (4A102) whereas the iPhone 3G (on the right) is running 2.0 (5A345) which it shipped with. </p> <p> <img src="/2008/07/iphones.jpg" title="Stopwatch on both old iPhone and new both showing 2,203 hours"/> </p> <p> The first thing you might notice is that 2.0 has fixed the problem with the stopwatch taking up too much space when it goes over 1,000 hours (although not the lap time) </p> <p> You might also notice the colour temperature difference (the original is more blue, the 3G more yellow) that has been much talked about. </p> <p> But other than that, they look pretty similar. Except that's where it surprised me. The stopwatch is almost the same on both: about 2,200 hours. But that's three months and the 3G only came out a week ago. </p> <p> That's right: when iTunes synced the data between my phones, it kept the stop watch going! </p> <p> As far as I can tell, the 1.4 second difference is actually due to the clock in the iPhone itself not the stopwatch specifically. If the old iPhone could still sync its time from the cellular network, the two might show identical times on the stopwatch. </p> </content>
warrenellis.com
links for 2008-07-19
-
This is fucking incredible: rediscovered Delia Derbyshire tapes reveal her as being 40 years ahead of her time in sonic experiments.
by Warren Ellis at July 19, 2008 12:31 AM
icanhascheezburger
OMG!
by ichctcf at July 19, 2008 12:00 AM
the excuse of the day
The Excuse of the Day for 19 Jul 2008 is...
the CIA forgot to update its maps
July 18, 2008
warrenellis.com
Collecting Stray Thoughts - 2008-07-18
- so tired cannot see hate everything going to pub #
- And Now A Message from FREAKANGELS: http://www.freakangels.com/?p=46 #
- The internets are very quiet today. You are all hiding from me. I can tell. Perverts. #
- Of course, with such quiet, I can just turn off the net and have a nap. (Finally cleared the last of the lungplague, but it left me tired) #
- Slept. Still tired. On the other hand, I’m still not going to San Diego next week. Ha ha ha hahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAAA cough #
- Love opening Twitter to see all my comics-making friends working themselves to death. Makes me feel better about working myself to death. #
- @BrianReed there are Marvel people on Twitter? Quick, stamp on them before they breed! #
- Obama would amuse me if he pointed out that the commander in chief probably shouldn’t be the guy who let himself get caught by the enemy. #
- “My war expertise is eating rats & getting cornholed by water snakes in a flooded paddy field for five years, but here’s the plan, boys…” #
- And yes, @dogsoldier , hope is not a plan — but it sure seems to bring the cash in, don’t it? #
- @bremxjones How can you put your penis in someone who doesn’t hate Kula Shaker? That’s like fucking a Nazi. #
by Warren Ellis at July 18, 2008 10:59 PM
xml.com
OSCON for FREE!
I am offering a novel idea about Open Source.
by Ric Johnson at July 18, 2008 10:46 PM
icanhascheezburger
Noe, srsly. Tooth farey leavz bebe kittehs now. Rly. Iz tru.
Noe, srsly. Tooth farey leavz bebe kittehs now. Rly. Iz tru.
but i wantz monee. i needz 2 buy sum ice creem.
picture: eliza. lol caption: catserver
by ichctcf at July 18, 2008 10:00 PM
ongoing
Mobility Blues
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>These days, I’m gloomier and gloomier about the prospects for the mobile Internet; you know, the one you access through the sexy gizmo in your pocket, not the klunky old general-purpose computer on your desk.</p> <p>We’ve all heard about the glowing future; <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/">Jonathan</a> is particularly good at telling it; “There are more mobile phones sold every day than computers sold every year, etc.” (OK, I’m exaggerating, but that’s the thrust). And indeed there are big parts of the world where a networked computer is in the economic reach of very few, but a cellphone is attainable to many.</p> <h2 id="p-5">The Legacy Problem</h2> <p>We all know that cellphones have been able to access the Net for years and years. In theory. I’m a heavy Internet user and have carried a phone for a decade or more, and have never seriously used the one on the other. The browsers suck, the programming models suck, and lots of things are intentionally crippled, like my current pretty-good Samsung whose JVM won’t run anything that didn’t come with the phone.</p> <p>And anyhow, I remember the first time I got a phone advertised as “having Java”. So I went and got whichever flavor of Mobile Java was current at the time. Quickly discovered that I couldn’t use it to make a phone call on the phone, or pretty much anything except write pretty-but-vapid games. Couldn’t see the point.</p> <p>“But wait,” you say, “the iPhone has changed all that!”</p> <h2 id="p-1">The iPhone Problem</h2> <p>Yep, iPhone owners do actually use them as general-purpose Net clients. And, for the first time ever, they’re decently programmable in a somewhat-uncrippled way.</p> <p>But there’s a little problem and a big problem. The little problem is that I don’t wanna learn Objective-C and I don’t wanna learn a whole new UI framework. I acknowledge that lots of smart people think Objective-C and Cocoa are both wonderful, and quite likely they’re right. I don’t care. I’m lazy; I know enough languages and enough frameworks. You’re free to disapprove, but there are a whole lot of people like me out there.</p> <p>The <em>big</em> problem is this: I don’t wanna be a sharecropper on Massa Steve’s plantation. I don’t want to write code for a platform where there’s someone else who gets to decide whether I get to play and what I’m allowed to sell, and who can flip my you’re-out-of-business-switch any time it furthers their business goals. <a href="http://pragdave.blogs.pragprog.com/pragdave/2008/07/if-you-work-for.html">PragDave’s experience</a> is hardly a confidence-builder. Call me paranoid if you will, but I just ain’t going there. No way, nohow.</p> <p>Granted, the device is slick and has massive consumer pull, and maybe we’ll end up with a situation where the only way to be relevant in the mobile-apps space is as an Apple sharecropper. That’s not the future I want, but maybe it’s the one we’ll get.</p> <h2 id="p-2">The Android Problem</h2> <p>I guess it’s a little impolitic for a Sun person to say this, but I really like Android, at the conceptual level. It seems more modern in its feel than the other mobile SDKs I’ve looked at, and the amount of new stuff I’m going to have to learn is much less, and the platform has no intrinsic lock-in that I can spot.</p> <p>On the other hand, it seems like there’s not much there there; haven’t seen much in the way of updates or hardware or movement, and there seems little transparency about what’s happening behind the scenes. And Android doesn’t address the dysfunctional business model that has crippled mainstream as Net clients, to date. More on that below.</p> <h2 id="p-4">The JavaFX Mobile Problem</h2> <p>It’s easy to like the JavaFX Mobile idea. It’s just Java SE only with access to the whole device, so you can use the phone as a phone, and with a layer on top to make it easier to program. In principle there’s no reason I couldn’t actually write my app in JRuby or Jython or some such. It’s probably got the least lock-in potential of <em>any</em> of the mobile-future options.</p> <p>The problem is that it isn’t here yet. A year ago, my feeling was that maybe they’d started too late. Given the whole industry’s lack of progress since then, and the generally dismal outlook, I think there’s still a window of opportunity if FX Mobile ships before too long and turns out well.</p> <h2 id="p-3">The Business Problem</h2> <p>I’m on the record <a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2004/11/15/WalledGarden">here</a> and <a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2007/11/20/Android">here</a> and <a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2007/09/23/Flat-Rate-Considered-Harmful">here</a>; many of my commenters disagree with me, but they’re wrong. Until we get network operators who are willing to open their networks, and a business model that makes access affordable while incenting operators to encourage its use, all the shiny SDKs and glitzy pocket-jewels in the world aren’t going to come close to realizing the true potential of the mobile Net.</p> </div></content>
cafe con leche
Several updates from The Mozilla Project today.
Several updates from The Mozilla Project today. First up is the initial bug fix release in the 3.0 tree. Firefox 3.0.1. This release fixes security issues and other bugs. All 3.x users should upgrade. More...
warrenellis.com
NO HERO #1: Pencil Art Preview
I just threw some of Juan Jose Ryp’s pencilled pages up at Whitechapel. Here’s one, in smaller size — the others are over here, all in larger size.
NO HERO #1 is published in September. (Avatar released the #0 issue, containing the crucial first chapter, ahead of BLACK SUMMER #7, which ships next week.)
by Warren Ellis at July 18, 2008 08:40 PM
jwz
ninety-sixopus
"George W. Bush Sewage Plant" makes the ballot
Satire at the ballot box to 'honor' Bush
They want to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant come January, when the next president is sworn in. During the inauguration, the group also wants supporters to participate in a "synchronized flush" -- a way to send a gift to the renamed plant, which supporters say, would be a "fitting monument to this president's work."It sounds like a harmless joke, or maybe a college civics lesson gone awry. But they have already collected 8,500 signatures in support of the plan - 1,300 more than the minimum needed to put the question to city voters in November.
The biggest opposition in this Democratic stronghold, McConnell said, is people who oppose naming anything after the 43rd president.
Officials at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which owns the plant, say they get the humorous intent. But they note that the plant is an award-winning facility that keeps the city's streets and the ocean clean.
"If you are looking for a place to make a negative statement about the Bush administration's impact on the environment, this would be the last place to do it," agency spokesman Tony Winnicker said.
icanhascheezburger
I not eat kitteh toys no moar…
I not eat kitteh toys no moar…
at least u dont poop lettel meez.
picture: dunno source, via our lolcat builder. lol caption: User#101363
by ichctcf at July 18, 2008 07:00 PM
creative commons weblog
ccLearn (bi)monthly update - July 18, 2008
June slipped by before we knew what was happening, so this is a two-month update. These past two months have seen ccLearn giving a presentation at CSU Sacramento relating open education and universal design, attending the first CC tech summit, and plowing along on the various projects already underway. Also, we welcomed a summer intern, Grace Armstrong, who is coordinating with CCi and open education leaders in Latin America and beyond on holding meetings and identifying promising collaborative opportunities. More on this later this summer.
We have also released a great mapping tool for identifying upcoming open educational events, now found on ccLearn’s home page. What is unique about this tool is that the data are derived from a wiki-table, and anyone can contribute or edit event info. We encourage you to add any events relevant to open education that you may be aware of. We intend to re-purpose this tool for other mapping exercises as well, and since it is open source, like everything Creative Commons builds, you can also use it for your own mapping needs. One idea that has already been discussed is “mapping the open educational space” at the upcoming iSummit… this exercise could take many forms, and the open, collaborative nature of the wiki allows for a lot of creativity in how the map takes shape.
Look for other developments and research projects to come to fruition in the coming month. The days are getting shorter here in the Northern Hemisphere, but the fire season has just begun.
-Ahrash
by Ahrash Bissell at July 18, 2008 06:58 PM
jwz
smoking ban: level up!
San Francisco smokers are already banned from lighting up inside restaurants, bars and public buildings. Now Supervisor Chris Daly is proposing tougher restrictions, including no smoking in taxicabs, at outdoor cafes, in lines at the ATM, at farmer's markets and within 20 feet of the entrance to businesses.The city's Department of Public Health says there's no safe level of second-hand smoke. "There's been research that shows the exposure in outdoor areas. The levels can be as toxic as indoor levels," said Alyonik Hrushow from the San Francisco Health Department.
Smokers may feel like pariahs in this city, but according to the American Lung Association, San Francisco is behind other cities including Belmont, Berkeley and Ross when it comes to trying to limit second-hand smoke.
This will be a slight hassle for us at the club, since we'll have to make people move farther down the block to smoke, but that's fine with me, because I find it absolutely disgusting to have to walk through that gauntlet of stench on the sidewalk in front of the exit door.
You're welcome to smoke, and to play with your own poop. Just keep your smoke, and your poop, off of me.
creative commons weblog
“then you win”
“then you win” is an initiative aiming to release a series of documentaries that focus on international development issues under a spectrum of CC licenses. The documentaries are produced by Loin de l’Œil, a voluntary association in France, and will be released under Yooook, an open content platform project under development run by Camille Harang. You can read more about the project here.
With active donations, “then you win” will move these documentaries from All Rights Reserved into more open licenses - from BY-NC-ND to BY-NC-SA to BY-SA. The more money donated to the project, the more open these documentaries become. The hope is that with a more open license (the project is already powered by a suite of open source solutions) the documentaries will gain more exposure, greatly increasing the impact they are able to achieve.
by Cameron Parkins at July 18, 2008 06:39 PM
icanhascheezburger
invisibl olimpiks
invisibl olimpiks
dun furgit olympic diver kitteh.
picture: dunno source, via our lolcat builder. lol caption: buttersoft
by ichctcf at July 18, 2008 04:00 PM
baybeh, yo daddy musta been a
baybeh, yo daddy musta been a cheeszburger cause i cud nom you all night.
if dat duznt wurk, u can tri da purdy eyez line.
picture: CJerry. lol caption: theslyestfox
by ichctcf at July 18, 2008 01:00 PM
ann & the city
DVXVI
I was thoroughly uninspired by the antipope actions going on around town. Until this.
by ana at July 18, 2008 11:46 AM
warrenellis.com
And Now A Message From…
by Warren Ellis at July 18, 2008 11:36 AM
ascription is an anathema to any enthusiasm
Mushrooms
It’s been great weather for mushrooms lately. Dry the last few days, but yet we found all these on a short walk in our little wooded neighborhood park.
Thanks to my honey for here mosaic mojo!
by bhyde at July 18, 2008 11:30 AM
debian-administration.org
Commands you might have missed: pstree
If you're using a system which has a lot of users, and you'd like to see who has started a particular script, daemon, or binary, then the pstree utility is very helpful. It draws a tree of all currently running processes - allowing you to see which processes are related.
ongoing
Ephemeral Aggregators
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>I’m thinking that <a href="http://anarchogeek.com/articles/2008/7/7/the-ascendancy-of-hacker-news-the-gentrification-of-geek-news-communities">The ascendancy of Hacker News & the gentrification of geek news communities</a>, by <a href="http://anarchogeek.com/">Rabble</a>, is, in its quiet way, one of the most important think pieces I’ve read in quite a while. It’s pretty clear that online aggregations of individual contributions are occupying a bigger and bigger slice of the spectrum of useful information sources. And also clear that this new landscape isn’t stable, but steadily shifting underfoot.</p> <p>First off, I’d recommend reading the comments on the “Gentrification” essay along with it. Like the a couple of the contributors, I think the pattern of conversational flow is accurately described, but am uncomfortable with the use of “gentrification”.</p> <p>Here are my take-aways, the first couple lifted more or less directly from the essay:</p> <ul> <li><p>Success as an aggregator is ephemeral.</p></li> <li><p>The pressure of the SEO slime is continuous and unrelenting; a significant evolutionary force on whatever it is online communities are becoming.</p></li> <li><p>The effect of individual burn-out is maybe understated. Consider Slashdot; one reason it has less traffic these days is that the editorial quality filters are pathetic compared to back then; the regime where CmdrTaco and friends had the wheel and <em>just instinctively knew</em> the wheat from the chaff was probably just not sustainable.</p></li> <li><p>The value of following a few carefully-selected primary sources and keen-eyed individual observers just can’t be overstated. The right selection of blog and Twitter feeds can put you in a situation where you’ve already seen most of the good bits of today’s Reddit or equivalent. Yeah, it takes a little more time than just dropping by an aggregator. Whether this is a good trade-off depends on what your job is.</p></li> <li><p>It should be painfully obvious that these lessons probably apply to news loci outside the technology ghetto; today’s hot news fora for politics or sex or knitting are just as vulnerable to online traffic’s fickle flow patterns.</p></li> </ul> </div></content>
SPotD: Lemonade
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>I’ve been too overloaded to write much or even post pix, but never (it seems) to <em>take</em> pictures, so they’ve been building up. I look at the buildup and discern a theme; herewith the first Summer Picture of the Day; more to come. And what could be more summery than lemonade?</p> <img src="R0010559.png" alt="Lemonade at the Liberty Café, Vancouver"> <p>This is at the Liberty Café on Main Street on Vancouver, and a fine place it is for lunch or refreshments, albeit not fast. One of their better offerings is home-made lemonade, which comes in a big plastic pitcher, visible behind the glass.</p> <p>Some internationalization is called for. This is <em>North American</em> lemonade, which is just lemon juice, ice, sugar, and water; terribly refreshing on a warm day. The word can mean <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemonade">something completely different</a> elsewhere in the world.</p> <p>Confession: Not much <a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2004/03/15/Photointegrity">Photointegrity</a> here; this is oozing artificial sparkle and heat, courtesy of Lightroom. I can live with myself.</p> </div></content>
It’s Called AtomPub
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>Recently, I was asked for feedback on some technology being built inside Sun which was said to rely on “Atom Pub/Sub”. In related confusing news, more than one big company has talked about “Rolling out APP”. Branding matters. So we took it up on the Atom Protocol mailing list and, for what it’s worth, the community of implementors has agreed that we’re all going to refer to the protocol specified in RFC 5023 as “AtomPub” and nothing else. Please co-operate.</p> <p>Next, we need a logo. Might Google or Microsoft, who are taking the lead in rolling out AtomPub-based services, be willing to dedicate some design talent to a candidate or two? Do any indie hackers with graphics skills want to play?</p> </div></content>
mac me up
Relaunching Finder
How often should I need to be relaunching Finder? I'd have thought the answer would be “almost never”. On my Mac Pro, which is up constantly, pretty much rebooting only when required by Software Update, and often sleeping overnight, Finder is wedging itself (by which I mean becoming almost completely unresponsive to user input) about every two or three days. Days. Relaunching Finder fixes the
by Paul A. Hoadley at July 18, 2008 08:43 AM
creative commons weblog
ccMixter to the max Q&A; proposals due July 29
May 29 we announced that we are accepting proposals for a new home for ccMixter, the innovative remix-oriented music community that Creative Commons has run since late 2004. The Request For Proposals was covered many places, including Advertising Age, Boing Boing, and WIRED as well as discussed on the ccMixter forums. Proposals are due July 29 and must be emailed to ccmixter-rfp@creativecommons.org. Questions are welcome at the same address.
We’ve received numerous questions since posting the RFP, which we’ve distilled into the Q&A below.
Before getting to the Q&A, check out (or come back to) some cool ccMixter and related developments over the last month: new site features galore, new developer features, a call for remixes from Shannon Hurley, a new weekly show featuring MC Jack in the Box’s ccMixter picks and of course lots of great new music.
ccMixter RFP Q&A
Why is CC doing this?
This is answered clearly (if dryly) in the RFP (emphasis added):
ccMixter.org was launched by CC in November 2004 to demonstrate legal mixing and reuse of music content, one area in which CC licenses have found firm footing and support. CC believes that ccMixter.org has fulfilled its initial mission of concretely demonstrating “legal reuse.” However, running a community music site is not one of CC’s core competencies, and accordingly, CC’s Board of Directors has decided that ccMixter should be transitioned to another person or entity with the necessary resources and expertise for ccMixter to continue to grow and reach its full potential.
In other words, we think ccMixter has the potential to “blow up” — in the right hands.
Does CC own all IP contained in proposals?
No. Section 3.2(c) of the RFP says, “All RFP responses, supporting materials, and other documentation submitted with responses will become the property of CC.” Our intent is not that CC become the owner or assignee of any intellectual property conceptualized or contained in a proposal response, only that CC needs to retain a record and copy of everything that’s submitted (for audit purposes, etc.).
What did Lessig really mean by “free”, “no ads”, “.org”, and “no variances”?
Appendix B to the RFP restates (verbatim) the criteria articulated by Larry Lessig for spinning out ccMixter to a new home.
“Free” means the entity does have to provide current ccMixter services at no charge, but does not prohibit it from providing “pro” services to users at another, related site. The related site can be linked to from the ccMixter website.
“No ads” means the free ccMixter site cannot have ads.
“.org” means the site will be served from a “.org” domain, but more importantly, have a “no ads” face, though the site content could be served from other domains as well, consistent with the license(s) the content falls under.
“No variances” will be considered from the spirit of the principles Larry articulated, but admittedly those principles leave some room for interpretation. We may need to refine those points in negotiation depending on the ideas contained in the proposals. But the over-arching and guiding intent is to ensure the ccMixter website remains a community environment where remixers can do their thing, legally, and not suffer abuse or feel that the essence of their community or the terms governing their participation have changed. We’re happy to review proposal ideas and drafts and provide feedback on whether the direction envisioned is tenable. This isn’t a matter of throwing one over the transom and hoping it isn’t immediately disqualified … if you’re interested in submitting a proposal, let’s talk.
What is the activity level of the site?
Probably the best window into how the site is used is on the ccMixter stats page.
Over the last 30 days, ccMixter has 333,871 pageviews in 58,158 visits from 39,234 visitors (according to Google Analytics).
Alexa, Compete.com, and Quantcast provide publicly available traffic indicators.
How much does it cost to run ccMixter?
The technical answer is that the site currently runs on one box, currently hosted at ServerBeach for $229/month, including bandwidth (2000GB/month). A <$10/month Dreamhost account is used to help with bandwidth. The other cost, much larger, has been its people. That basically means Victor (who has to date performed services at well below market rate) and a small amount of legal/finance/hr/management overhead from CC.
All this said, the question we encourage proposers to be thinking about is not “what does it cost CC, a non profit, to run ccMixter today?” The circumstances of our development and maintenance of the site in its current form should only inform, not drive or be relied upon in determining, costs going forward.
The question you really should be asking is “what would ccMixter cost [your name here] to run?”, which will be largely determined by your vision for its future.
The reason is simple. For almost every case, the current cost to CC does not translate to what ccMixter would cost somebody because the CC infrastructure of lawyers, accountants, tech staff, etc. would all need to replicated. And the “market value” of the very valuable work Victor performs at a cut rate for CC almost certainly will not translate to your real world scenario.
So the answer to this inquiry really depends in what kind of infrastructure you have at your organization, and even more importantly on your vision and plans for the site.
…
Remember, proposals are due July 29 to ccmixter-rfp@creativecommons.org! Please read the RFP carefully if you are considering submitting.
by Mike Linksvayer at July 18, 2008 04:12 AM
Digital Copyright Slider
Thanks to The Wired Campus, I stumbled across this nifty digital copyright tool developed by the American Library Association’s Copyright Advisory Network (in the Office for Information Technology Policy). The ALA Copyright Advisory Network is dedicated to educating librarians and others on copyright, something that is no simple matter, since, “with copyright, there are no definitive answers.”
Check out the digital copyright slider. The tool itself is pretty simple. You basically slide the arrow up and down the years starting from “Before 1923″. The boxes on the left (Permission Needed? and Copyright Status/Term) tell you whether a work is still copyrighted or whether it’s now in the public domain, free for you to use and repurpose any way you like. Unfortunately, actually figuring out the copyright status of a work isn’t so simple as dragging your mouse—most of the years seem to be marked by a fuzzy period of “Maybe”. For example, say John Doe wrote and published a poem between 1964-1977 and you are able to find a copyright notice—you still can’t really figure out whether the copyright still applies. And if you can’t find a copyright notice? Well, you just don’t know then either. The same answer (don’t know) seems to apply to a lot of years here…
Props to the ALA for illuminating the incredible complications in US copyright (yeah, that’s right—this sliding scale also only applies to works published within the US). And double props for licensing their tool CC BY-NC-SA. I leave you now with this thought:
Photo licensed CC BY-NC by Nancy
by Jane Park at July 18, 2008 01:19 AM
warrenellis.com
links for 2008-07-18
-
Stevie Gray finally makes an online home for her writing.
-
My friend Sanny’s new clothes shop
by Warren Ellis at July 18, 2008 12:36 AM
the excuse of the day
The Excuse of the Day for 18 Jul 2008 is...
the CIA
July 17, 2008
warrenellis.com
ASTONISHING X-MEN 25 Sold Out At Distributor, Second Printing On Way
ASTONISHING X-MEN 25 has sold out at the distributor. This means that the entire print run (these books are usually overprinted by some additional percentage of orders, and I don’t know what the margin was on this book) has now been ordered by comics stores. There may well still be copies on shop shelves somewhere. But the reorder velocity has apparently been such that a second printing has been ordered, due sometime in August — I would imagine it’s being timed to coincide with #26, though obviously I couldn’t swear to that.
Anyway. If you are having trouble finding a copy of the book, that’s why.
by Warren Ellis at July 17, 2008 11:31 PM
ascription is an anathema to any enthusiasm
Markup
There is a lesson here:
Abstract. Individuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment from more expensive wine. In a sample of more than 6,000 blind tastings, we find that the correlation between price and overall rating is small and negative, suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive wines slightly less. For individuals with wine training, however, we find indications of a positive relationship between price and enjoyment. Our results are robust to the inclusion of individual fixed effects, and are not driven by outliers: when omitting the top and bottom deciles of the price distribution, our qualitative results are strengthened, and the statistical significance is improved further. Our results indicate that both the prices of wines and wine recommendations by experts may be poor guides for non-expert wine consumers.recommendations by experts may be poor guides for non-expert win consumers.
From: Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better? : Evidence from a Large Sample of Blind Tastings
You should pay me to buy your wine, scrap off the prices and replace them with tasty robust high price labels.
by bhyde at July 17, 2008 11:28 PM
warrenellis.com
Collecting Stray Thoughts - 2008-07-17
- I am afraid of @cascio ’s Dr Cyclopsesque new Glasses Ov Futur3 Visionz. #
- appears to be surrounded by police cars and helicopters at the pub. The jig’s up. #
- Every day I smile about the fact that I don’t have to go to San Diego this year. #
by Warren Ellis at July 17, 2008 10:59 PM
creative commons weblog
Archive.org Releases Improved Uploading Interface
Prominent Free Culture activist, ROFLCon-ite, and close CC friend Dean Jansen blogged recently about Archive.org’s new absolutely amazingly easy-to-use new interface for uploading media. As he writes,
This is great news, as Archive.org has historically been notoriously difficult to publish to. I’m encouraging them to go one step further and add easily accessible RSS links (with media enclosures) for users, categories, searches and so forth. This will turn Archive.org into an amazing free 1-stop (non-profit) publishing platform for independent podcasters and video bloggers alike.
Very cool. It currently only works for things less than 100 MB, and for anything larger, there’s the Creative Commons Publisher Tool. Check it out!
by Tim Hwang at July 17, 2008 10:24 PM
CC Salon LA Follow-Up
3 weeks ago we had an amazing experience putting on the CC Salon LA. Presenters Curt Smith and Monk Turner spoke eloquently about why they have used CC and it seemed a shame that their words were constricted solely to the space of FOUND Gallery. Thankfully we recorded the presentations and, after editing for brevity, we were able to post them online. Check them out below:
Curt Smith’s Presentation:
Monk Turner’s Presentation:
All the videos are released under a CC BY license and you can download them in their raw format at either vimeo or blip.tv. Similarly, we will be posting the unedited presentations to Archive.org in the coming days. You can also see a Flickr photoset of the night.
CC Salons are one of the best ways we have found for people to better understand how CC works and what we do - hopefully by taking these presentations online, they can educate an even wider audience.
by Cameron Parkins at July 17, 2008 05:45 PM
warrenellis.com
ASTONISHING X-MEN 26: Preview
Six (unlettered) pages of art.
by Warren Ellis at July 17, 2008 03:59 PM
Jamais Cascio, Futurist And 1940s Movie Villain
"Distance-only glasses, new pair to go with bifocals."
Richard Kadrey/Kaos Beauty Klinik
|
"I am afraid of @cascio ’s Dr Cyclopsesque new Glasses Ov Futur3 Visionz."
"When both Richard Kadrey and Warren Ellis make the link, it must be done."
by Warren Ellis at July 17, 2008 12:33 PM
an eternal thought in the mind of godzilla
Shiawase no Ichibanboshi, 1974
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/R1qT0wfYKTI&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/R1qT0wfYKTI&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p> <p>Dreamy Saijo Hideki!!!</p></div> </content>
by Patrick Macias at July 17, 2008 08:44 AM
debian-administration.org
Commands you might have missed: tree
tree is a very simple utility which will draw a tree of a directory structure. It isn't a command which is generally useful, but it can be very handy to know about if you're writing articles!
the excuse of the day
The Excuse of the Day for 17 Jul 2008 is...
a squirrel chewed through the cables
July 16, 2008
warrenellis.com
Collecting Stray Thoughts - 2008-07-16
- i has an Eee #
- @sispurrier got it with XP, as I don’t have time to learn an OS written by and for unemployed pasty Finns in frightening knitwear. #
- (also, I’ll never get it online around here without XP, and I don’t own a Linux edition of Final Draft…!) #
- Online at the pub with the Eee (901 XP) via broadband USB wireless modem (no wifi around here, you see). No trouble at all. #
- There’s nothing showing at the local cinema that I’d watch even if the only alternative was having Don Rickles’ balls rubbed into my eyes. #
by Warren Ellis at July 16, 2008 10:59 PM
creative commons weblog
Seesmic Adds Creative Commons License Support
Super cool video conversation site Seesmic just rolled out its most requested feature today, Creative Commons licensing of course! Seesmic added all 6 primary licenses as option and CC Attribution 3.0 as default license for videos uploaded. “This means you determine how other people can use your content. Your choices are now between six combinations of Creative Commons licenses, and “All Rights Reserved,” says Jeremy Vaught from Seesmic.
Joi already beat me to the punch in blogging about this and posted up a video. If you head over to my site or Joi’s and you can see also the video that Loic shot with me at the CC office in San Francisco yesterday.
And, if you head over to Seesmic’s main page right now, they have a community video discussion with a fair use and copyright expert (~3:30 PM PST).
Tim “ROFLcon” Hwang and I have been working with Seesmic to add this over the last few weeks and they rocked it out pretty quick! Joanne and Loic followed up with me noting where they added CC support, which is cool for others in similar position to note as well because Seesmic relies heavily at present on Flash video (like Youtube and others) and Flash-based interface elements:
- Either logged in or out you see a link where it says’s Some Rights Reserved at www.seesmic.com
- When a community member goes to post a video there is a small icon that defaults to the Attribution license, but one may click, scroll down to see the other license options and learn more.
- Community members also access CC on their profile page and in the embeddable player, where the license option links out to the selected CC license deed page.
- You can read more about our announcement at http://blog.seesmic.com/.
- Also added to CC our Terms of Service (ToS) with links to CC’s site where appropriate: http://www.seesmic.com/docs/TOS.html
As such, IANAL, and CC doesn’t provide legal support. These are just notes on how Seesmic has integrated CC licensing.
CC integration should be rewarded with traffic, right! Head on over there and start posting videos. Oh, and if you want to know the verb form of Seesmic, its to Seesmic.
by Jon Phillips at July 16, 2008 10:50 PM
jwz
XScreenSaver 5.06
XScreenSaver 5.06 out now. Only one new hack this time, but it's a fine one, if I do say so myself. Also this includes a bunch of fixes related to adding, removing and resizing monitors (RANDR/Xinerama) on X11 systems, as I mentioned earlier. So please stress-test that junk. Or be devoured.
warrenellis.com
GI JOE: RESOLUTE
Okay, I meant to get around to this several weeks ago. But, you know, working for a living, etc.
So I wrote what we call a "micro-series" called GI JOE: RESOLUTE. (This has been misreported elsewhere as GI JOE ABSOLUTE, which may give aid and comfort to the people at Hasbro who weren’t wild about the title!) It’s an hour long, broken into ten 5-minute episodes and one 10-minute final episode.
It went like this. Sam Register phoned me up and said, we’d really like you to write a GI JOE animation, at a PG-13 rating, aimed at an older viewer. I said, I’ve never seen a GI JOE cartoon in my life. The closest I got to a GI JOE comic was drinking with Larry Hama. I’ve never even seen a GI JOE. Couldn’t tell you what they look like if you paid me. I know nothing about GI JOE. It is meaningless in my world.
Excellent, Sam said. Just the guy we need.
It was hard not to notice, at this point, that Sam Register is crazier than a shithouse rat. Therefore I decided to take the job.
I was told, some time after I finished the job, that GI JOE is actually kind of similar to Action Man. "Why didn’t they SAY so?" I yelled. Eagle Eyes! Gripping Hands! The Red Devil Action Man who had a hideous accident in a tree during a parachute op in my back garden when I was three years old. The mutilated Action Man whom my grandad found in a lay-by and thereby became default Torture Sequence Action Man for several years. Ah, the 1970s, where setting action figures on fire in the woods was considered part of a healthy childhood.
"Ask them if GI JOE and Barbie can have a really disturbing sex scene where they get naked and then realise they don’t have any genitalia," said my girlfriend.
Everyone was so helpful during this project.
Anyway.
So my brief was to produce a non-tiny-child-oriented GI JOE. Which necessitated reading just a toxic amount of research, leading me to birth an odd, lumpy, normal-for-Norfolk-looking hybrid of the comic and the cartoon. The idea was, as I understand it, that bringing in a writer with absolutely no nostalgia for the property would give them the tone they were looking for. I think they were happy when I presented them with the initial list of characters I was going to just kill. And then the list of things I was going to blow up.
The people at Hasbro were actually remarkably supportive. And I did apologise after shouting at them those times. And they did give me one of those conversations that you never really expect to have when growing up:
HASBRO: No, Warren, you cannot wipe Beijing from the face of the earth.
ME: Shit. (pause) What about Moscow?
HASBRO: Wiping Moscow from the face of the earth would be fine.
The point was to write an hour-long story that really put the property and the characters through some shit changes: as if this were the GI JOE film (at the time of my writing RESOLUTE, there still wasn’t a locked script on the live-action film) and I was rebooting and re-grounding the property on my own. These sort of gigs are immense technical challenges, and really sharpen up some skills I wouldn’t ordinarily use.
One other error in the reportage I’ve seen: someone mentioned Lady Jaye in connection with RESOLUTE. Lady Jaye is not actually in RESOLUTE. Scarlett is the female lead on the Joe side of the story, I guess, although there is another female character on the new Joe team with a significant role. Two probably-beloved characters die in the first five minutes. Snake-Eyes gets to impale someone while travelling at a hundred miles an hour. Cobra Commander isn’t very funny any more. Although, really, given that his uniform includes wearing a bag over his head, there are limits to how unfunny he can be at any given time.
RESOLUTE will be screened on the web first, I believe, sometime in 2009.
Hasbro, as I say, were pretty easy to work with, especially given the things I was doing to their toys. The animation team were lovely people, and I’m hoping I get to work with crazy Sam Register again in the future.
by Warren Ellis at July 16, 2008 03:49 PM
debian-administration.org
Commands you might have missed: watch
There are many times when it is useful to be able to repeatedly run a command, or set of commands, repeatedly. You could do this yourself with a simple shell script, but using watch makes it simple.
xml.com
Grouping in XQuery
One of the really convenient features introduced in XSLT 2.0 is Grouping. It is a typical second-generation change in a programming language: Not essential for the language itself (grouping can be done by hand using techniques such as the Muenchian...
by Erik Wilde at July 16, 2008 10:17 AM
an eternal thought in the mind of godzilla
Saijo Hideki Does Julie
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_gvZLVzHZdk&hl=ja&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_gvZLVzHZdk&hl=ja&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p> <p>jay tack picks another winner from the video vault.</p></div> </content>
by Patrick Macias at July 16, 2008 08:44 AM
ann & the city
The ‘Gut Feminism’ of Elizabeth A. Wilson (or, oh, divine lipophilia!)
I found this a therapeutic read for my own full-body walk through the drowsing and dyspeptic valley of paroxetine: “… there is particular significance in the oral administration of antidepressants: there is an intimate connection between the gut and depression, making intervention via the gut an especially felicitous means of treatment for depressed mood (Wilson, 2004a). [...]
by ana at July 16, 2008 06:51 AM
the excuse of the day
The Excuse of the Day for 16 Jul 2008 is...
rats in the wall
July 15, 2008
warrenellis.com
Collecting Stray Thoughts - 2008-07-15
- happy birthday @kellysue #
- @katelanfoisy I have to tell you that @zdarsky can only speak porno-movie French. His German is also limited to “Fick mich im Arsch.” #
by Warren Ellis at July 15, 2008 10:59 PM
jwz
Did you know that cable cars poop sand?
There's something you don't see every day:
A Powell-Mason cable car jumped the tracks while turning onto Powell Street just before midnight Sunday night, July 13, 2008, leaving at least four people injured.
I assumed they were, you know, attached.
Which led to me learning about that sand thing:
The track brake does the lion's share of the work. The friction between wood and steel is what primarily stops the car. Make that dry wood and dry steel. Wet equals slick... this is not good.This is where sand comes to the rescue. A small pedal on the floor is pressed to drop sand on the rails. The wheels crush the sand into powder, the powder soaks up the moisture and provides -- the magic word -- friction!
frickin' russian ravers with frickin' laserbeams in their eyes
Ravers at the Aquamarine Open Air Festival in Kirzhach, 80 kilometres northeast of Moscow, began seeking medical help days after the show, complaining of eye and vision problems."They all have retinal burns, scarring is visible on them. Loss of vision in individual cases is as high as 80%, and regaining it is already impossible," Kommersant quoted a treating ophthalmologist as saying.
Partygoers say heavy rains forced organisers to erect massive tents for the all-night dance party. The damage seems to have been caused when laser beams that were intended for outdoor use to illuminate the sky, were somehow turned or reflected onto the crowd.
creative commons weblog
Curt Smith
Curt Smith, solo-artist and co-founder of Tears for Fears, presented at the most recent CC Salon LA on why he chose to release his new album, “Halfway, pleased“, under a CC license. He spoke so eloquently we wanted to commit his words to text - as such, we bring you the latest in our Featured Commoner series.
Credit: Justine Ungaro, CC BY
Can you give us a bit of background on your musical/artistic trajectory? Many of our readers may be familiar with Tears for Fears, the band you gained notoriety in, but may be less familiar with your equally impressive solo career. Please speak to both.
Roland and I have been in bands together since we were 13 years old. We signed our first record deal at 18 with a band called Graduate, which last