Sun, 04 Jun 2006
CrimethInc Shareholder Report
The Anarchist front group criticizes itself and continues the message that
the logo is just a means to an end. This is an exceptional quote
Among other things, CrimethInc. has been an experiment in
structure. In adapting the decentralized, radically participatory approach of
Food Not Bombs and the Earth Liberation Front to the project of propaganda
outreach, we have attempted to put whatever notoriety we win for ourselves at
the disposal of all. The objections of traditionalists that this approach could
not provide enough control over who acts as CrimethInc. have not been borne
out by reality: neither fascists nor communists nor liberals have attempted to
hijack the CrimethInc. bullet mid-trajectory
I encourage you to
read
the whole thing. CrimethInc is the most amaingly consistant collective when
it comes to writing with a tone of hope and discouragement at the same time.
Moralistic without the morals.
posted at: 11:16 | path:
/power |
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Tue, 16 May 2006
Sell It To Me Or I'll Bittorrent It Dot Com
A recent bit of hilarity at the workplace, kept discreet for our reader's sake
(note that "reader's" is the singular possesive, not the plural). We need a
video to record from cable television. Since the business pays for cable, we go
to the trusty cable box and change the channel to the station and attempt to
purchase the pay-per-view content. Weird, there's no option to buy it, only an
option to call the phone number printed on the screen. Okay, called the number.
Looks like business accounts are not allowed to purchase pay-per-view content.
...
Did I hear that correctly?
...
Wow. Ummm, I guess I have nothing more to say...time to head over to the PC and
bittorrent it. Hey, we tried to pay you but you said no.
posted at: 01:13 | path:
/power |
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Thu, 11 May 2006
Fuck You iTunes. And Your Whole Company Too.
I'm using iTunes because my workplace got one of those
Apple
Airtunes thingies
that let you "wirelessly connect" to speakers from your iTunes library. I might
mention that this adventure began with installing VMware on the GNU/Linux host
OS and installing Windows XP as a guest OS. Then installing the sound drivers and
iTunes in that. Fuck you iTunes #1, you don't support my operating system.
So I start importing my big ass folder of music only to realize that 80% of it
isn't getting added. I then remember that iTunes is the last big player to
intentionally not support ogg/vorbis by default. Fuck you iTunes #2.
I find the official xiph.org vorbis Quicktime component. Cool! They took over
the dying project from five years ago. I install the component and lo and
behold, the rest of my music library is added. But wait! There's no metadata.
Huh? I'm very particular about marking up music files and I know I have
metadata on all of these. I confirm this and say fuck you iTunes #3, you make
volunteers program to a crappy API that only half functions on your product.
Whatever, I can handle re-adding some metadata. Artist and album will do fine
cause all the filenames are the track title. I do that and listen to some music
in my franken-os-itunes-ified virtual machine. I'm using headphones from my
computer's sound card. Now's the chance! I "connect to remote speakers" and
start playing some mp3 files over the speakers. THen I start playing some of
the ogg/vorbis files. Guess what? They don't play with airtunes, only on the
local system's sound card. Fuck you iTunes #4, your product's components don't
work with your other products.
Then I notice the cool sharing feature. I share my music, hell yeah! Then I
connect to a co-workers shared playlist and try and play a file. Oh shit! It
asks me for a password because "
that file is only allowed to be shared with 5
others". 5 others? Who though up that number. Fuck you iTunes #5, you're just
being stupid this time.
I later discover that a xiph.org employee was approached by the company who
makes the software on the ipod and told they will never support vorbis. Guess
what? That company wasn't Apple. Fuck you iTunes #6 your compatible products
software isn't even made by the company that makes you.
All this so I can play music over the office speakers. Seriously. Ughhh!
posted at: 20:39 | path:
/power |
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Tue, 18 Apr 2006
Getting Real by 37 Signals
A book recommended to me by a friend. The advertising has the bravado of a
dot com wanker but hey, I use basecamp and everyone I tell about it loves it
too. Maybe there's something to
this book?
posted at: 00:20 | path:
/power |
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Tue, 04 Apr 2006
This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb
I have a sticker on my bike which is the name of a small punk band from Florida
I discovered in college. Their name is This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb. Good stuff. I
ride my bike everywhere and no authority figure has ever confronted me about
the blatantly obvious fact that my bike is not
literally a pipe bomb.
This fact gives me a small amount of faith in the NYPD, Port Authority, MTA
Police, and United States National Guard.
If you have not lived in New York, the agencies I just mentioned have at one
point or another assumed the responsibility of guarding the city's trains, buses,
bridges and tunnels from terrorist bombings. I have rode public transport in
said trains, busses, bridges and tunnels with my bike and it's accompanying
sticker. This did not seem to alarm any of these agents.
Unfortunately, other states are not so fortunate. There appears to be an epidemic at Ohio University of people
labeling their pipe bombs built inside of bike frames with red stickers
describing the contents as indeed containing a pipe bomb. That is the only explaination for
what happened last
Friday.posted at: 19:58 | path:
/power |
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Sat, 18 Feb 2006
Critical Mass. City looks like a fool standing before a judge.
The state has decided that the NYPD are a bunch of fools with too much power.
All the laws the city has been arresting critical mass riders under have been
called
out by justice Michael D. Stallman in NY state supreme court.
posted at: 17:23 | path:
/power |
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Wed, 18 Jan 2006
Fascism in America, Part I
This page from
wikipedia got me interested in researching the history of
Fascism in America. It appears that there was a popular movement for a Fascist
coup d'etas on the federal government after The Great Depression. Military
force was required to defend against it.
posted at: 13:08 | path:
/power |
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Sat, 14 Jan 2006
Steve Jobs Still Believes In What He Does
And he's
grand-fucking-eloquent about it. He gave a comencement speech at Stanford about following your dream and not finishing college.
posted at: 02:11 | path:
/power |
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Mon, 24 Oct 2005
FCC trys to order all VoIP systems to comply with wiretaps
The whole concept of a
wiretap when dealing with voice
over IP networks is
ridiculous. It's incredibly difficult and could potentially involve hundreds of
variable situations. Compare this to tapping a traditional analog pair from your
local CLEC, which simply involves finding the demarc and touching a speaker
with two wires on the end to the pair, and you will begin to see the gravity of
this mandate.
So the FCC
thought it would be a cool thing to try and order every single VoIP company and
non-profit institution with existing VoIP infrastructure to comply with some
abstract concept like "let us listen to your phone calls in the name of
freedom."
posted at: 12:54 | path:
/power |
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Fri, 03 Jun 2005
It must be hard to maintain accuracy of consistancy of informationwhen you're a public figure
The Daily Show is really good at catching our friends in the white house on their lack of cross references. Just today they had a segment where they showed Secretary Rumsfeld hating on Amnesty International for comparing Guantanamo Bay to the Russian Gulags after WWII. They compared it to a clip of the same Secretary Rumsfeld using the findings of Amnesty International to elicit support, using their credibility for his argument. Then the segment was ended with this wonderful quote from the President himself, said during
a speech at a school in New York:
If you've retired, you don't have anything to worry about -- third time I've said that. (Laughter.) I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. (Applause.)
It must be extremely difficult for public figures with this much visibility to maintain the consistancy of their information. Hell, I have enough information to deal with at the day job. Imagine if I was attempting to lead a country of millions. But the difference with these public figures is it's
their job to stay consistant at public appearences. When they fail at it, it's their credibility on the line. Of course they have this covered, as made clear by the President's speech about repeating their propaganda until it's popularly understood to be true.
At moments of weakness like this, I get sad. But I can keep thinking about the incredible power of information and the glut of it in American culture. If the largest beaucracy in the country can't keep track of theirs, I take that as a challenge. If they can't do it with their own tools, perhaps they should employ some better technology and talent to make sure their dialog with the American people and the world backs itself up. That's a challenge that could be interesting.
posted at: 00:00 | path:
/power |
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