Culture: October 2003 Archives
October 9, 2003
Apparently, it's okay to use the word "fuck" on live television as long as you don't mean it literally:
[T]he Federal Communications Commission … ruled without fanfare Friday that it's OK to use that word (for which we will substitute "feep") as long as you're not being literal. Follow the logical bouncing ball: You can say "feep" or "feeping" if you don't really mean "to feep."
Now, whether or not you think the 7 dirty words should be prohibited on-air or not, I think you pretty much have to admit that this ruling is truly fucked up.
October 7, 2003
I can't decide whether the record companies are hiring morons to design their protection schemes, or whether the people they are hiring are so ashamed of their employers they just can't bring themselves to do good work. Ed Felten has a post up about the latest CD "protection" scheme:
This technology is going to end up in the hall of fame beside the previous Sony technology that was famously defeated by drawing on the CD with a felt-tipped pen. This time, the technology can be defeated completely by holding down the computer's Shift key while inserting the CD.
All right, I suppose it's possible that most people will be using Windows, and that most people won't think to disable autorun (temporarily or otherwise) before putting in these CDs, but you can bet that a simple Google search will tell them how to copy those tracks once they realize something is interfering. Making the copy protection this easy to crack is ridiculous. I realize real protection is very difficult (read: impossible, at least as long as DRM isn't built into every layer of every CD-playing box on the planet), but if this is the best the record companies have, they might as well just quit trying.
October 6, 2003
Wow, whole lot of new CDs coming out this fall: Dido is already out, Barenaked Ladies comes out on 10/21, Sarah McLachlan's first new CD in 6 years on 11/04, and a collection of Tori Amos's music on 11/18. That's not even counting R.E.M.'s special edition "best of" collection, due out 10/28. It's like a smorgasbord of musical goodness.
October 1, 2003
This is kind of an interesting idea:
- Read a good book (you already know how to do that)
- Register it here (along with your journal comments), get a unique BCID (BookCrossing ID number), and label the book
- Release it for someone else to read (give it to a friend, leave it on a park bench, donate it to charity, "forget" it in a coffee shop, etc.), and get notified by email each time someone comes here and records journal entries for that book. And if you make Release Notes on the book, others can Go Hunting for it and try to find it!
Obviously I wouldn't do this with any books I really like, but it could be interesting for some of those books that just won't sell on Half.
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