Posts by Washington Irving

Feds seize 70 'filesharing, dodgy goods' sites

@ "And the week after that, no doubt they'll be feeling up Your Mom."

surely that was last week, courtesy of Thousands Standing Around...

Pirate Bay appeal failure spawns more DoS attacks

@ "What have they accomplished?"

well, they have keelhauled ACS:Law and the sharks be circling, arrr...

Global warming is actually good for rainforests, say boffins

i generally like lewis page

but strongly suspect his AGW posts are done entirely for the lulz, though they might just be for the cash.

either way, the CO2 he emits seems to be just the kind of forcing required to create hot and stormy environments.

3D printers, one-dimensional enemies

overstating the state of the art?

bicycle chainring printed out of UV cured resin on a Fab@home open source 3d printer.

http://fabathome.org/wiki/index.php/Image:Koba_uv_sprocket.JPG

Google patent feeds ebook 'monopoly' infrared 3D

@Chris C

You are allowed to build any patented item for experimental use in most of the world, with the recently added restriction in the US of not being allowed to do this if your business is in research. Which has pissed off a lot of universities.

see - http://www.wptn.com/patent_vol5is1/pat_007_vol5is1.htm

You are not allowed to use the patented item for direct commercial use under nearly all patent regimes, even if you have built the item yourself.

However the patent industry should take a long hard look at the recording industry if it wants to survive.

Bring on the personal fabricators.

Apple patents OS X Dock

praystation??

I would have thought that Joshua Davis's praystation would count as prior art for the zooming effect. I always assumed that they nicked it off him in the first place.

http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/Actionscripting/Expert/Building-Morten_B-529/index.php

http://www.joshuadavis.com/

A bit like the two finger zooming and rotation they nicked off Jeff Han.

Roll up for the freetard smackdown

music sharing - the ultimate free market economy

Once upon a time, many moons ago, the recording industry was born and killed music.

Before then, a very large percentage of people could play instruments because that was how you entertained your guests. There were also large numbers of employed musicians who made a decent living at social gatherings being paid to play as there was no other way of having music otherwise.

This changed with the introduction of technologies that enabled music to be recorded by a small number of musicians and then distributed so it could be heard without the tedious learning of an instrument, or having the expense of hired musicians cluttering up the place and making it look untidy.

This recording industry was an industry because recording and distribution of music was prohibitively expensive in terms of capital expenditure and it operated on the basis that the only way to keep unit costs at an affordable level was to have a few musicians who sold a large number of copies.

This has now changed.

We live in a world where the costs of recording and distribution are so low that the minimal basic equipment required can be sourced out of skips in many of our richer towns and cities and the distribution channel is given away free in pubs and cafes to attract custom.

There is no recording industry anymore.

An industry requires a technological niche in order for it to exist. The recording industry's niche has now gone.

All that is left is a limping husk, bleeding the vast amounts of money it made throughout the 20th century, screaming for protection from the state as it realises that it can support itself no longer.

Any right wing free market economist can tell you what should be done for an industry that no longer supports itself. Nothing should be done. It should be allowed to die.

For there is still a music industry. There is a vibrant live music industry that uses free downloads and streaming as it's principle means of promotion. Should the live music industry's promotional channels be targeted and monitored by the state so that the remains of a dead industry can squeeze money through the courts out of those it blames for its unavoidable demise?

And what is it called when an industry, that has no industry, is supported blindly by the state, is allowed to tie up the courts, has reams of new laws drafted in for it's protection, is given powers of mass surveillance and treated as something that must be allowed to exist, whether it has a market or not? Last time I checked, this was called Soviet economics.

However it is apparently plain to everyone that music sharers must be communist pirates and that the music industry is a shining jewel in the crown of capitalism, so I must have got something wrong somewhere... silly me, I'll get my coat.

Mines the one with the mp3 player in the pocket.

Stick health warnings on gays, says Stock Exchange chaplain

Free Tattooing! Yayy :)

can I choose the content and placement tho?